October 28, 2008
The Sports World and Mother Nature are in kuh-hoots to screw my beloved city of Philadephia. I don’t understand what this city ever did to deserve it. Philadelphia fans don’t lack for love-for-their-team or even a forgetful-love that loves year-after-year despite disappointment-after-disappointment. What’s absolutely bewildering is the fact that Philadelphia teams aren’t actually bad, in fact, they’re actually pretty darn good. But it’s as if the Major Sports Commissioners have conspired to screw this city.
Case-in-point: Game 5 of the 2008 World Series. Philadelphia is shoe-in to win the World Series with Cole Hamels on the mound… like a near-actually-guarantee to pitch lights out to the Tampa Bay Rays, and with Philadelphia bats catching fire and ready to launch this city into the stratosphere — literally… the craziness that people would be exhibiting would be like that of people so oxygen-deprived… they’re in the stratosphere.
But baseball commish, Bud Selig, in his infinite wisdom 1. allowed the game to start when the conditions were clearly horrendous, 2. allowed the game to play UNTIL the Rays tied the game when FOX cameras had panned to the oceans of puddles on the field of play about 10,000 times beginning in the fourth inning, and 3. not allowing both teams to finish the game in conditions that were clearly not going to be much different in the ninth inning than they were in the sixth. Bud Selig single-handedly took the momentum from the Phillies’ and let it be Gone with the Wind.
One tidbit I found out this morning that just makes it all the worse: it wasn’t raining in New York City last night. A.k.a. the storm cloud was only over Philadelphia.
October 24, 2008
The Phillies’ are in the World Series. They’ve been different from teams in recent Philadelphia history in that they actually havn’t gone to Game 7’s to have to duke it out (where they would almost certainly lose because they’re a Philly team). That’s been pretty exciting. They won Game 1 of the World Series… and lost Game 2. All is not over. But it’s too unsettling how unable we are to score when we have plenty of people on base… meaning that we’re actually hitting! We are ACTUALLY hitting! But it seems that we can’t just learn how to do two related things at once — hit to get on base, and hit to… score.
On another note, as much as I love photography and my DSLR, I realized a void in my life… a need for a sexy point-and-shoot to take with me when I go out with friends and something just to have with me at a moment’s notice in my pocket. So I got me a Lumix DMC-FS20. The 3″ LCD screen is pure bliss. It’s true that the longer you wait, the better these cameras get. I love it. Took the two shots below with it.
And I do like Qdoba’s gumbo.
And of course, this was the real reason I bought the camera.
October 7, 2008
2008 will go down as a milestone year in my life. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The sub-prime mortgage crisis leading to the meltdown of the American economy. Meeting her. Coming to understand and deal with my insecurities. Second year of law school. Life is difficult. Life is exciting. Life is day-to-day. Life is year-by-year.
I’ve had an opportunity this year to try my hand at fashion photography, though not quite, basically taking pictures of people wearing t-shirts that some buddies of mine have been designing for their start-up t-shirt company. I’ve loved the experience because I’ve already learned so much more about taking pictures, and plus, getting t-shirts as payments isn’t too shabby either. Check’em out — if you like them, by some. Good quality, American Apparel t-shirts. Their website.
September 15, 2008
I’m writing this post as I try to divert my attention from studying for just a little bit — in hopes that this brief break will allow me to blaze through the rest of the work I have to do before my night class and the Eagles’ game tonight. On that note, I have to say — there is nothing that can bring a whole city of people — or an entire school of law students (who know nothing but studying) like an Eagles’ game — I must’ve counted at least 8 Eagles’ jerseys today — I should wore mine.
I’ve also been learning recently how to study hard and play hard — when it’s time to play or do other things outside of school — just do it without regard — and when it’s time to pull an sleep little on certain days to get things done — do that without regard. Life is so much better and studying becomes so much more efficient and productive.
After having been on a photo-taking hiatus, I think I’ve re-caught the photo bug and I am loving it. This picture with her just makes me smile on so many levels. God love art (not that I’m calling myself an artist — but what the hell, I find it to be art, so it is art).
One more random topic to mention — this past weekend was the mid-autumn festival. If you were in Chinatown for even a moment of it, you might’ve seen what me and her saw — how a crowded street of people is only just a word or two, or an act or two away from a riot. There’s a reason why people aren’t allowed to loiter. When hundreds of people loiter in the streets with nothing better to do than… loiter… you’ve got the makings of a perfect riot. Especially when the weather is hot and muggy. Smoke, humidity, sweat, and teenagers is an explosive mix.
August 6, 2008
I’ve been spending my summer working at Community Legal Services. Since starting law school, I’ve been on a quest to determine what sort of practice embodies who I am and what I believe I’ve been called to do. While at CLS, I’ve had first-hand experience working with clients who subsist on $200/month and/or some other menial amount that is just barely enough to cover their monthly mortgage payment. I’ve also had an opportunity to see other units at CLS working with clients trying to get welfare, trying to prevent their utilities from being shut off, trying to hold off mortgage companies from foreclosing their homes, and also trying to keep families together that are being torn apart by domestic violence. It’s unbelievable that that is only just a piece of what public interest attorneys/paralegals do for people who simply cannot afford to lose anything more in their lives but are completely powerless to help and save themselves in such impossible predicaments. The more difficult reality that I’ve had to cope with is the fact that, there are many clients that we cannot help because we lack the resources, or, we can only provide them legal services when what they really need is friends, family, and community to be there for them from day to day. Yesterday I was told that 1 in 4 women have experienced domestic violence in their lives. How ridiculous and sad is that statistic. I don’t know exactly what I’m gonna do with my legal career, but I sure know now that there are plenty of people out there that are in serious need of help and I wouldn’t mind spending my life helping the world out one client at a time.
On another note, life has been really good, much better than I know I ever deserve it to be. She’s heaven sent.
My first time at the Free Library.
June 11, 2008
As I’m writing this the Phils just lost a second game in a row to the Marlins. Things had been incredibly exciting for the past couple weeks — things are hardly bad yet, but after winning so much and scoring so much recently — checking ESPN.com and finding out that they didn’t win is slightly annoying and frustrating. “We can’t win ‘em all.”
This game that I went to with small group people was freaking awesome though — we scored 7 runs in the 2nd inning. There was definitely a lot of jumping-up-and-down, screaming-and-losing-my-voice, high-fiving, and an utterly-irrational-level-of-happiness. Sports really can just get too emotional for me sometimes.
May 26, 2008
Things have been a blur. Blurs can be negative in the sense that, it’s just too much going by at once and there’s not enough time or energy to focus. But when all that is passing by is positive – positive not necessarily in the sense that life is dandy — but positive in the sense that life is moving forward with some rhyme or reason that I’m able to grasp and deal with at some level — the blurring can be just a showering of good things and a reason to be happy. I’m not sure that it’s been 100% positive, but I’ll venture to say that it’s been enough positive that right now I can’t think of any reason why it isn’t.
Although, another meaning of blur is that I’m currently up at 4:03am trying to make headway into my write-on for law school journal and it is killling me. I got some work done, so I’m just gonna have to sleep and try to pull it through again tomorrow nite into Tuesday afternoon.
I never quite know what to make of self-portraits. I love it when people take pictures of me — because I really don’t think I know what I look like. Everytime that I see myself in a picture I don’t know what to think of myself. Is that what people really see? Do I like what I see? Nonetheless, I feel that I have way too few self-portraits and I love it when people snap pictures of me. Especially when it’s on my camera.
Oh and by the way, if you havn’t been watching the CBS3 3:30PM Asian News hour… it’s time to start tuning in.
May 15, 2008
An original piece from thoughts after hearing about and seeing images from the recent earthquakes in China.
THE CHILDREN ARE DYING
The children are dying.
The children are getting hit by stray bullets.
The children are dying.
The children are getting crushed inside their schools by the roof caving and the ground shifting.
The fathers are digging through cement blocks to find and save their children from under the rubble.
The children are dying.
The children are strapping explosives to their bodies.
The children are slitting their wrists; their families are splitting.
The children are free-falling in an abyss.
The children are dying.
I hear a song playing, a chorus of violins singing.
It is the instrumental to a silent film reel where fathers are throwing their hands to the sky
In despair because the children are dying.
It is the wretchedness of man.
It is evil in green, the greed, the fleecing, the “I will benefit at all costs for one dollar.”
It is the mechanism that turns on the helpless deed, the voiceless and the forgotten –
It is the machine into which the children are being fed to lubricate the cogs.
The children are dying.
The children are dying.
The children are gunning each other.
The children are dying.
These eyes that have not seen enough to understand what shound never be undrestood… are closing.
These hands that are too small and too soft to have gripped anything more than mom’s hands are going limp.
The children are dying.
May 12, 2008
Mother’s Days tend to be great excuses to eat well.
April 27, 2008
In recent weeks, the FLDS church has been plastered all over the news. Since the 400+ children were evacuated, there has been constant footage and interviews of FLDS families and members. While I personally feel frustrated and have my own reservations against their practices, I also can’t help but feel that the FLDS is being exploited by the media. It’s one thing to “rescue” (a big issue in itself) these children in addition to the women who want to escape, and then make it known to the public that this is happening. It’s another thing to put FLDS women on television and in essence ask them “do you think what you’re doing is wrong?”
It is either irresponsible journalism or ignorant individuals injecting their close-minded perspective into the news, or both. Enough of the FLDS church members have entirely subscribed to the tenets of their religion and know nothing outside of their enclave. Those that should be in the public eye and receiving the brunt of public backlash should be the leaders of the FLDS church who have clearly brainwashed these people to believing in such practices and caused them to live as they do.
Just another problem that has arisen since the public limelight has shone on the FLDS church is that of deprogramming the rescued children. Whether these children can be brought back and assimilated into a vastly different world is questionable — what they need now is families who can take them in and love them.
