Marina City Condominiums

Downtown Chicago, IL

Cabin 110813

Dad rockin’ out to When The Levee Breaks. This is THE CABIN.

Theme: Bags

Taken on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at the Santa Monica Pier and 3rd St. Promenade, CA.

Lemons?

I don’t know about them. But when life gives you limes, you make margaritas.

And make sure to wash them down with a good cigar.

I received my first job rejection about an hour ago. After all the obligatory calls to eager parents and significant others, and their obligatorily encouraging condolences, I am less distraught over it than they are. Doesn’t mean I won’t accept a conciliatory dinner or two. Now it’s time to head back to that e-drawing board and tweak the resume before I load it into the GMail machine gun and shoot some spray-and-pray emails.

VIDEO: Androp’s “Bright Siren” MV–Using 250 60D+580EX-II

The end-product of 250 Canon 60D dSLRs wired up with speedlites. Plus a ton of programming. Excessive, high-budget, and very visually appealing. Cool song, way cooler music video.

In other, semi-related news, B&H is taking pre-orders for the new Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM lens that is coming out. $1500.00 USD

 

Fretless Frankenbass

Fretless Frankenbass, originally uploaded by jubbis18.

This is what has filled my time post-matriculation. Once I can play something worth recording, I will. I have made half-hearted passes at this instrument for almost ten years; this time I am doing it right. Theory/sight reading first, scales second, everything else after.

A Little Remembrance

I watched We Were Soldiers this morning, after reading comments by veterans attesting to its largely ‘realistic as possible’ treatment of the war as compared with many other films dealing with the war in Vietnam. While I obviously cannot comment on its realism, the events portrayed in the film of the battle of Ia Drang are ones of brutality and terror, bravery and perseverance, camaraderie and humanity, and in the soldiers a sacrifice that I do not know if I would ever be courageous enough to make. Watching it was especially poignant for me as just five days ago I was at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Seeing the over 58,000 names inscribed in Optima is a harrowing and humbling experience, and in its austerity the memorial distills down the horrors, controversy, and politics surrounding the war into the most important facet of it all–the soldiers who gave their lives in it.

Wikipedia article describing the battle and its background: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ia_Drang)

Breaking the Fast, with photos!

Maybe I’m just hungry. It’s the middle of finals week, the last of my undergraduate career. Same as everybody else, given the multitude of similar facebook status updates. It’s also the first time since November that I have so much as typed in ‘www.wordpress.com’ into my browser to log into this blog. But I will resurrect it yet.

Much past the $75 I spent to reserve my own URL, the plans to incorporate this blog into my own website never even got out of the soil, much less off the ground. It’s on the Summer To Do List, along with so many other dreams, hopes, desires. Completion of my goals seems to have the success rate of the NAVY SEaL program. Addressing that issue is first on the Summer To Do List. Wish me luck.

This thesis on China’s counterculture and its potential to act as a force for social change is going to be the death of me. Or should I say it is the things I do to avoid working on this thesis that will bury me.

Things like this photo dump–a collection of shots that have caught my eye too many times to ignore. Most of them come from trips that were post-worthy, that I just never got around to doing. To be honest, I still owe this blog the photos and write up from my trip to Yunnan, which was over a year ago. Thankfully it was memorable enough that between the good times and the gigabytes of photos I took recording said good times, I will be able to relate the highlights of the trip in all its detail.

Not much rhyme or reason to these photos, no real theme tying them together, except that I took them, and I like them, and I think you will, too. The food, unless otherwise mentioned, was made by me too; another dangerous hobby I have.

Enjoy, and welcome back to foundmeinchina.

Bodhisattva. Summer Palace, Beijing, China.

Making the Pilgrimage

Well, after holding out for what seems like centuries (but is probably more like a year) I have decided to move this to tumblr. Despite my original decision to move to my own domain-hosted wordpress blog, the lack of time caused by school has sapped my desire to deal with that much upkeep. Tumblr, on the other hand, makes upkeep easy, and more importantly syncs with most of the other SM technology that I use natively, which means I can focus more on content. Hopefully I can move to that domain that I pay roughly $100/year eventually, but we shall see.

foundmeinchina.tumblr.com

Gulou Dajie LIVES!!!鼓楼大街不会死了！

This makes my day month year. I was in the early stages of writing a lament about how one of my most beloved places in Beijing, Gulou Dajie 鼓楼大街, was soon to be no more. Gulou Dajie is one of the oldest of the remaining traditional hutong 胡同 neighborhoods that made up imperial Beijing. It is named after the Drum Tower (pictured above), that along with the Bell Tower 100 meters north, looms over the neighborhood, due north of the Imperial City 故宫. The two buildings were originally used as instruments, and later to tell time in the city. Here’s a link to learn more about the Drum Tower and Bell Tower’s history. Gulou Dajie used to be the home of ministers and nobles in Beijing, though now it is home to both poor and very wealthy, the former who have no money to move out of their generation-old homes, and the latter who want to hold live in a chic, fashionably traditional space (with all of the modern 21st Century accoutrement, of course).