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man a month past oh fuck nearly two months lol...and i finally get around to posting about my trip to scotland. better late than never eh.  and i even decided to give the flickr slideshow a whirl.  i don't know why i never used it for my past trips.  has it always been there?  mysteries...

the thoroughness of this recollection of the trip is suspect at best, given it's based purely on the photos taken.  i didn't bother jotting notes of my trip, since most days were taken up with drinking.  lots of drinking.  fuck, so much drinking.  i have a newfound fear of drinking with glaswegians now.

GLASGOW
i arrived wednesday morning.  max came by the airport to pick me up...him and patsy had been in scotland for a while already sorting out wedding details and concurrently having their work visas get fucked.  that's another story tho...and not even mine to tell.  so moving on...i dropped my luggage off at the hotel before we roamed glasgow.  this was my fourth time in the uk, but my first time in scotland.  the other three times were based solely in london (and a side trip to the english countryside).  we grabbed lunch with one of max's friend who works for the company both max and i used to work for (it was a scottish firm). after lunch, we went for my kilt fitting.  yea...kilt fitting.  word.  i'm in scotland for a wedding, fuck yea i'm wearing a kilt.  a nice one at that.  made of alot of wool...in the mild/warm scottish spring weather.  i would regret this later.  but for now, i just wanted a kilt.  we roamed some more afterwards, and most likely drank beer.  it's sorta fuzzy.  i was most likely groggy and jetlagged and inhaling coffee later in the evening.  anyhoo...moving onto the next day.

EDINBURGH
max and patsy had wedding details to sort out, so i took a daytrip out to edinburgh.  there was something weird about glasgow as we were walking around the day before, and i figured it out when i got to edinburgh...no asian tourists!  actually, hardly any tourists at all in glasgow.  in edinburgh tho...yea, everywhere.  definite tourist city...and rightly so.  it's very picturesque and touristy, with it's royal mile, closes, and of course, edinburgh castle.  pretty place.  tho one aspect let me down.  i was hoping they'd play up more of the haunted aspects of the castle...which they didn't.  at all.  sad.  i also decided to climb up arthur's seat, this massive hill in holyrood park.  i don't know what i was thinking...that was a bad idea.  i have enough things in my life to remind me that i'm out of shape...i didn't need a vacation to remind me too.

i got back to glasgow in the evening and we went to a house party. more drinking ensued.  

MAX AND PATSY'S WEDDING
we had lunch with max and patsy's family before the wedding in the afternoon.  from there on out it was a brief wedding reception, then nonstop drinking til i don't know what time.  3am?  4am?  i don't remember.  and that wool kilt and ensemble?  yea, that was painful.  i stripped off the wool jacket shortly after the reception, but still had on the wool kilt and wool vest.  blargh.  on the flipside tho, the sporran was totally rockin'.  i kept my wallet and iphone in there.  handy.  it's like a purse...but manlier.

POST-WEDDING
we had lunch with max's family the day after, and then roamed glasgow.  we drank more at night.  yea.

AMSTERDAM
i planned a nice one day layover in amsterdam before heading back to nyc.  it'd been years since i saw lysha and alice, and i thought it'd be a nice place to (ironically) detox after scotland.  lysha lived out in ijburg, and we just laid on the beach in front of her apartment for most of the day.  we grabbed dinner in amsterdam, then roamed the canals for a bit.  <3 amsterdam.  i also really wanted to see the old neighborhood...the amsterdam branch of the company i worked for was shuttered months prior, and the old animation space was turned into an underwear shop.  how sad.

REMAINDERS
oh, i got my niece a mini-kilt and a clan pin from edinburgh, and my brother-in-law a bottle of bowmore whisky.  you're welcome dave!
 

new york city's an infinitely changing city.  it always has been and always will continue to change...that much is stating the obvious.  but aside from seeing old photos or hearing about the city of the past, it's not always as easy to relate to or personally see until you get to a point in your life where you can slow down, look around, and go "what the...where the fuck am i?" 

case in point...we're moving into a new office sometime in september.  our space is still being renovated, so every so often we get an email showing the progress, with subject lines reading "new photos of the tunnel" and "tearing down walls at the tunnel".  and i kept going "the tunnel, the tunnel...what the fuck is the tunnel?"  whereby the reply was "that's the name of the building".  a light bulb goes off.  i put two and two together.  i knew we were moving to the far west side of chelsea, but it took me an embarassingly long period of time to realize that the building we were moving to was in fact the old site of the club "the tunnel".  fuck...am i now old enough to be working in an office housed in a space where i used to club when i was in high school and college?  admittedly i wasn't a massive clubber...more of a wannabe raver that clubbed occasionally when i wasn't raving.  but i'd been to numerous new york staples in my youth (tho the majority one or two times at most).  and even then, i only have slight recollections where most of them were even located.  most are gone now...nyc clubbings mildly comatose these days.  not that i would even know if it wasn't.  so it got me wondering what happened to the other places i used to go to when i was younger...

the tunnel | welp, now i know what happened to the tunnel...it turned into my new office!  i don't have many memories of this place.  in fact, i don't have many memories of most of the clubs i went to, save a few.  the thing was, back then, i didn't really pay much attention to the area.  i just remember dark side streets, lights all around the entrance, and late night food vendors lining the sidewalks.  it's probably easy for me to say that the area probably didn't look anything like it does today...


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palladium | see...this one i already knew about.  the palladium was (one of?) the largest clubs back in the day.  it's now the nyu dorm called the palladium on union square south (hint...trader joe's resides in the ground floor).  i recall union square being pretty shitty back then.  it's cleaned up nicely.


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limelight | it's a mall now.  if you told me ten years ago one of the best known clubs in nyc was going to be turned into a shopping mall inside a church, i'd laugh hysterically, then maybe go "for serious?  are you a time traveler?"


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twilo | i have a higher than average amount of memories of twilo...but still not much.  i remember the bouncy ball chairs upstairs tho.  i was trashed this one time and bouncing around on them for an indeterminate amount of time.  i stopped going long before it became spirit, tho i don't know if its still around.  it still says spirit on the awning on google street views...


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wetlands preserve and vinyl | these two i lump together because i have the most memories from both these places.  partially because we went so many times, and partially because i was sober every time.  in high school, i ran with the 'white hat' crew...the majority of which liked to see jam bands and whatnot.  a small fraction of us frequented clubs however.  so when we headed out, these two places filled our needs quite well.  wetlands was a jam band venue for the likes of dave matthews, from good homes, moe, etc...while vinyl featured the likes of françois kevorkian and was literally down the block.  so we'd head in on a weekend, split up between the two venues, then meet up again at three in the morning.  both are long gone now, replaced by fancy pants luxury apartments.  i googled the addresses yesterday and barely even recognized the area...


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crap, the journal has yet again fallen to the wayside.  i'm going to blame....*spins the wheel-o-blame"...my job this time.  for inundating me with short deadlines and then making me tired once i get home.  ya.  for real.

i had on the agenda a massive post ala anna's year-end photo recollection, but that's turning out to be taking muuuuuch longer than anticipated.  so fuck it.  i'll post it when i post it.  in the meantime tho, a recollection of the year thus far.  it's already halfway thru january...time just continues to fly right by.



JOSIE ELLA
first and foremost...welcome josie ella to the world!  my new niece. ella was my suggestion too.  she rocks.  niece's rock, because i get to be a proud uncle without having to deal with the actual parenting.  it's a win-win situation.  a concern we're having at the moment however is, given her older sister's astonishingly advanced developmental state (i know parents/uncles/whatever always say this...but seriously, this is not hyperbole), we've postulated that she may in fact turn out to be functionally retarded.  or something.  too many awesome genes were invested in may.  we don't know what was left for josie.  i know...feel the love emanating from her uncle.  just kidding, we <3 josie.

REWIND
two weekends ago was hot pot at my place with jen di, sarah, and crew.  i'm very much liking a semi-regular hot pot to be honest.  it's a social activity that involves everything i love...eating, drinking liquor, and watching movies.  we followed this up with thursday noodling at the excellent pork chop house with di and em.  they'd never been, so i felt like it was my obligation to wise them to the goodness that is taiwanese cuisine.  we headed next door after dinner to apotheke, which was hilarious considering two drinks cost more than the entirety of our dinner a few feet away.  they however did send us free rounds of their mulled wine, called gluwein.  very soothing.  after apotheke, we migrated to the whiskey tavern to meet up with more people and continue our drinking (with the addition of tater tots).  i felt like shit the next morning...it was super.

and hmm...yea, i didn't do shit this past weekend.  doh!

super fascinating look into the origins of one of the most sampled drum loops ever.  this is all news to me...had no idea whatsoever they're pretty much all sampled from one b-side from 1969.  yay for new trivia!

originally from the cracked article "6 inventors who got jack shit for changing the modern world"

i'm home! and when i say "home", i really mean "home"...as in "mi casa". it's been nearly a full year since i first started looking for an apartment to buy...but now i've finally closed, moved in, started piling shit into my place...etc. and its been pretty good so far. the apartment is nearly fully furnished. there are only a few pieces left to either build or put up, but hopefully by the end of this week i can say that my apartment is 99% done (with only random household doodads left to buy). k, now i have to backtrack (per usual) since it's been a while.

FURNITURE SHOPPING
the saturday before i moved in, i headed out in the shitty weather to furniture shop around manhattan with ky. i had an entire list of shops to check out...for some reason i thought i'd actually hit all the stores. ha! we spent most of our time browsing cb and cb2, who are admittedly straight up my alley. cb2 more than cb...but i dig both their stuff. i ended up ordering a couch set from cb, along with a number of other pieces of furniture from cb2. by this time it was already well into the evening...bugger. we ran thru the rain to have dinner at blue ribbon sushi in soho, followed by drinkies at little branch. then i had to dart back to port authority to catch the bus back to joisey (i won't miss those)

MOVE-IN
i moved in the following saturday...and then pretty much spending every day after that picking up extra household necessities and assembling the furniture i'd ordered (with a ton of help from g+r). they were pretty much over every night helping me assemble furniture and setting up my apartment, so mucho thumbs up to them...you two rock. <3 friends as neighbors. i made a trip out to ikea in red hook too on sunday to pick up some book shelves (and other random shit i happened to come across). i met up with ky again afterwards for dinner at cube 63 in...whatever brooklyn neighborhood we were in. lets be honest...i know shit about brooklyn.

FIOS
the verizon people swung by wednesday to set up my fios cable and internet....fuck yea! wednesday nite was also g's big berfday bash at kanvas! except kanvas is gone! so we relocated to la bottega instead...woots.

FUGIO DIEM
thursday was steph and jj's premier party for their short film fugio diem at the knitting factory. very cool...there were even boobies. boobies!

MARISOL'S WEDDING
i continued picking up more things for my apartment all week long...eventually leading up to saturday...m's wedding. omg! i met up with sean and anna saturday morning at grand central to catch the metro north. m and chris were having their wedding at a water-side park in connecticut, so we took the train out to new haven, then caught a taxi to the wedding site. the ceremony was held out on the beach (should've brought sandals...doh) and the reception was held in a carousel house next to the beach, replete with a working carousel. very cool. it was a nice and not-too-formal wedding...word. grats you two. considering my currently-broke nature, i took a ton of photos for them in lieu of an actual wedding present. only a few hundred photos left to photoshop...whew.

SUNDAY REMAINDERS
...and ideally i wouldve ended the post there. but hey...the fun continues. sean and anna came over for brunch sunday morning after they got out of church (they were already uptown). i made them home fries and my specialty omelettes, feta and chorizos with cilantro, basil, pepper, and other random spices. the home fries came out especially good...yay! they headed home to rest after brunch, while i headed down to soho to pick up extra things. i actually ran into ky and her friend outside of cb...which was a nice coincidence. we talked for a while before they headed back to brooklyn and i went into cb to find some nice coasters. i decided to continue south towards muji, and while waiting for the lights to change at prince st, i thought i spotted another friend of mine and called out to him. holy fuck its brad! brad not only went to cornell with me (one of only a few non-architect friends of mine), but is actually from my hometown also. he wouldve even been a frat brother if i hadnt come to my senses and wondered to myself "wtf...did i just rush a frat?!?" i hadnt actually seen brad since he graduated from cornell and headed off to tulane for med school. we had just gotten back in touch thru facebook about a month ago, but shit...this was just freaky coincidence. we grabbed coffee at cafe angelique and caught up on about 8 years worth of stuff, which was pretty nice.

i headed off to continue shopping after coffee and met up with di later for sunday night ramen. shoyu char-siu ramen at setagaya...yum yum. we grabbed a round of drinks at angels share to round out the night, since i hadnt actually seen di in a while and had a ton of stories to tell. woot.

k, now im shit tired. ive gone thru only about 10 photos so far from saturday. *sigh* so many...

i wonder if 30 is even considered the "mid-life" anymore. doubt it, right? so yer...um, im "officially" 30! official as in ive made peace with it. shit, its not that bad. actually, its just another day i get an excuse to throw a big party for myself. but i have to rewind a little bit because while ive (surprisingly) been posting, they havent actually been journal posts. whups.

for the most part i cant remember what i did...but last week greg did come up to visit noo yerk from austin. woot! the g-man was my roommate second and third year of college, and is honestly the only friend i kept from my freshman year dorms (class of '22 word!) and one of the few non-architect friends from college in general. wahoos! he came up with his friend tom, and we hit up the moma with some other friends of theirs to check out the prefab exhibit. we pretty much just bummed around central park afterwards, then headed to croxleys for stonkin' wings and to watch michael phelps win his 8th gold (which he did...yay!)

THE BIG 3-0
fast forward a wee to this past week. my official partying started friday. lysha and alice were visiting from amsterdam, so i took the day off to show them around this ginormous city. the "day off" seemed a little inconsequential tho, considering by the time we got out of brunch at delicatessen, there wouldve only been about an hour and a half left of work anyway. we had a half day and a company picnic that day (it was originally the friday before, but got rained out). fuckers. well, it was all good then because i brought lysha and alice to the great hill in central park for some bbq, frisbee, and soccer-ball kicking into sides of peoples heads. it was super.

we lazy'd around in the sun for a while, then headed back down to marisa's place so they could prep for the big partying. steph and kyoko were already at en when we arrived, followed by a long and steady stream of people showing up...wee! it was a pretty big gathering of friends from a variety of circles...cornellians, ex-coworkers, travel friends, and shit...even random coincidences (terence had reservations there that night anyway!) all coming together to get drunk with me. =) we eventually took over the entire front bar area with a ton of sake, food, and good vibes. big big big thanks to everybody who came out to have fun with me. best. berfday. evar.

as an aside. everybodys told me plenty of times before, and its not like i didnt know this already...but shit do i have a disproportionate number of female friends to male friends. it was made all the more apparent with everybody gathered in the same place for once. the night btw, actually started with five girls...and me (not that im complaining!)

THE BIG 3-0, PART DEUX
ya we're not done yet! saturday was my original party day! except alot of people either couldnt make it, couldnt afford it, or were just scared off by the whole thing...hence how friday came about. ;p burlesque, word! and not just any burlesque, this is burlesque with murray hill and the pontani sisters! and i have to say, everybody who wasnt there missed out. not only did the performances rock (miss saturn...wow), but i got a free birthday cake! it came with tassles. it was pretty good too.

pictures! yay! thanks everybody!

extra special hai fives to steph for friday, and gina and renee for saturday!

last full day in tokyo...sigh. we started it off with a trip to the tsukiji fish market. yea...not at 5 am or anything. sorry...i dont do that. it was more like 10am. chika had offered to take dano and i around the fish market, since she was familiar with the market, having shopped there numerous times before as a chef. the fish (and various aquatic species) area was still pretty busy, even at 10 am. when we werent dodging giant fish heads on the floor, we were dodging the carts that darted up and down the aisles. and it all surprisingly didnt smell fishy!

we headed back to the hotel to rest and eat lunch, and then i headed back out to akihabara for some last minute perusing. friday was the release date for the new dvd of the evangelion reboot...so i went looking for it. well it wasnt that hard to find...the shit was all over akihabara. but when i finally did check out the special edition dvd, i found out that it didnt have any english subtitles. fuck! argh...suckage. so i decided not to pick it up. *sigh* i continued roaming around some more, then roamed shibuya for dvds and music. i rejoined g+r at g's house in shibuya for some home cooking with her family...yum! nice way to cap a vacation.

we wandered around ginza the next morning before heading back to our hotel to catch the shuttle to narita. and then we landed in newark airport, i fucked around doing nothing for a week, and now here i am...back home and not in tokyo. *sigh* <3 tokyo.

REMAINDERS
and now to tack on what i did since getting back. i met up with steph and jj er...last week...at oh taisho. then i had ippudo with jess sometime last week...whatever day...cant remember at this point. friday was mario karting at sean and annas. i visited my sister and my niece sunday, since i had a ton of toys from japan and i hadnt seen my niece since before heading off to amsterdam. and yesterday i had din with di and her friend sara in fort greene (brookyln! omfg!) at ici, which was yum.

*full set already up on flickr eh.

coming down to the last two days of the trip...pooters. thursday was started with haircuts for g and dano. g needed a trim, and dano wanted a super-japanese haircut. some of the styles he was looking at in his hair style magazine were pretty frightening...ranging from glay, to emo anime character, to jesus hair. yea, curly jesus hair. he picked out one of the better (ie: normal) styles...pointed to the picture, and away they snipped. me and r headed off to wile away the time why they got their hair snipped. in the span of half an hour wandering shibuya, i managed to blow $300+...fuck! after hitting the $300 mark, we scurried back to the salon so i couldnt do any more damage. shit shit shit i was doing so good til now.

after g and dano finished their swishy hair stylin', we caught a nice japanese lunch, then went sneaker shopping in daikanyama. after everybody (literally) got a pair (or two), g+r and dano decided to go rest up back at g's house in shibuya, and i decided to continue roaming daikanyama (one of my favorite neighborhoods). it started raining tho...so yea, that was the suck. i roamed a bit, checked out the various stores (while hiding my cc), then grabbed a late afternoon snack at the mermaid cafe before hustling over to shinjuku to meet up with the crew again. chika found me at the station, and we waited for the rest of the crew to get there before wandering into the golden gai area for dinner reservations at cha-cha (name...? guess so). which was swishy. after din, we roamed shinjuku and hung out at advocates bar, which for anyone who does their homework, does NOT in any way, happen to support your theories. ;p

*full set already up on flickr eh.

wednesday was our long-awaited onsen roadtrip out of tokyo. g booked us a relaxing day at the amagi-so onsen three hours outside of tokyo. so we headed oot in the morning out of the dense cityscape into the countryside. we had a huge kaiseki lunch when we got there...sashimi, boar meat, grilled fish, the list goes on...yum yum. we rested a bit after lunch before going to get changed and head out to the outdoor springs. amagi-so is a unisex onsen that also lets you wear swimsuits, for those of us that are a bit prude...or just want to hang out with our friends of the opposite sex. we went thru the range of temperatures, from lukewarm to omfg. the omfg didnt actually feel too bad since we had been hopping from spring to spring. but after relaxing next to the waterfall for a bit, then going back in for a dip, the actual temperature became apparent. holy shit hot. we rested a bit after our dip, then started our three hour ride back to tokyo. we made a pitstop at a wasabi center...that was interesting. but then we got back to tokyo! yea!

we dropped our stuff off at g's parents place before heading out for an italian dinner at capricciosa nearby...where we ordered like a pizza, three pasta bowls, and a bunch of other dishes we probably shouldnt have. ugh...stuffed. we continued on afterwards for an end-of-the-night drinks at an izakaya in omote-sando. wew!

*full set already up on flickr eh.