Good food, folks, and some art.. (And, happy hump day!)
And, so, on Saturday, I hung out with friends, did some shopping at Frank and Sons, played some Rock Band 2 and Ghost Recon, ate Sizzler with salad bar buffet for lunch and ate Pho for dinner. Handful of us-- Audrey, Dan, Mark, Drew and I-- played some cards late in the evening listening to 80's one-hit songs on YouTube and drinking red wine with cheese. I had bought a $17 bottle of Francis Coppola Merlot (which had really good buzz from many sources... no, not that kind of buzz) to share. It was perhaps one of the really good Merlots I've had, I think. We rented a Redbox dvd of a straight-to-dvd horror/thriller called Timber Falls. As such, most of the time, we were making fun of all the dumb actions of the characters. I certainly understood why it was straight-to-DVD.
Francis Coppola gave a Merlot you can't refuse...
On Sunday was a lunch celebration for Julie and Kaitlyn from my old small group. Bunch of us hung out for talk and ate lots of good meat at Lucille's BBQ in Brea. We had coffee at Starbucks afterwards and did a lot of catching up with old friends. It's nice to see us people still just hanging out even though my old small group disbanded a year ago. Pretty cool.
Getting ready to order...
Ta da!
Babyback ribs = excellent
The three Fates....
Since I was in Brea area, I decided to give Jong, my old high school buddy, a visit, who happened to live nearby. A group of friends often hang out a lot in his apartment on Sunday (me among them). It happened that it was Richie's birthday and we wanted to take him to Kingswood, a Chinese hotpot restaurant. Debbie, who is the only Chinese in the group, luckily always orders for us, whenever I go. Really excellent and spicy food.
Readying for the food...
This sauce taste like a kick in the stomach
Conversations about boiling heads...
My usual cam angle...
Spicy? Or Spicier?
Fried rice on the side...
Hanging outside after the dinner in Kingswood...
Jong's garden has been growing quite well. Very cool contraption.
It was raining on Monday morning... a view from my bedroom...
Digital Pic and thoughts...
And, so, off and on, my 3-D dragon is worked on... unually in my lunch hour. This current process is called "mapping." The checkered pattern lets me know if the mapping is overly skewed or not. A nice, non-overly stretched checkered pattern is preferred when I finally get to texturing.
In other news my Rumplestiltskin image won a bi-weekly competition at a forum in ImagineFX.com. I don't get any monetary reward or prize, but I do get to choose the next topic for the competition and some bragging rights. Of course, a real artist doesn't need to brag if his art speaks for itself. Similarly, people don't need to brag if their actions speak for themselves.
About last week, at the book club I was attending (we're reading Dennis Prager's Think a Second Time), the topic was about how we shouldn't judge motives, but judge actions. One of the main reasons was that motives tend to be very hard to define, measure, and verify the truth of what people say. In addtion, everyone excuse their bad actions by saying that their motive was right. Ultimately, of course, God will judge our motives. For the rest of us, we can only really know a person's character by looking at the actions. A good point, I think. Why are we so caught up in trying to explain our actions all the time? Once you've explained once, you should move on and practice consistent forms of action that align with your intentions. People may actually learn to respect you.
Trailer: The Good, The Bad, and the Weird
Can't wait to see this one. The director is Kim Ji-Woon (Bittersweet Life). Lee Byung Hun plays a bad guy, which speaks volumes. Song Kang Ho (The Weird) is in the same level as Choi Min Shik. He has been in some of the best Korean movies, Memories of Murder and JSA. Jung Woo Sung certainly plays the quiet good guy role a lot. I'd like see him play an obnoxious, loud-talking nutcase one of these days.
For those who do not recognize the title, it is one of Grimm fairy tales. For those who do not know who the Grimm brothers are, they are kind of like Hans Christian Anderson, and just as famous. I hope kids these days are still exposed to classic fairy tales...
And, so, the past weekend, I was involved a little bit with Newsong's CWOW (Church Without Walls) Extreme Home Makeover. (CWOW is refering to the idea that church is not meant to be a building, relegated to a place, time, and event, but a group of people to "live out" / do works wherever and whenever) So, a group of volunteers got together to give an extreme makeover for an interior of a home in a period of 3 days while the owner of the house is gone during that period. The house we worked on is Rainbow House Ministry house, owned by Liz Lee. Here's her story (excerpt from one of the designers):
Liz Lee is an amazing woman that struggled a lot in life. At
a young age she had daughter on her own. She was on the streets, an alcoholic,
and no where to go. She became a Christian and attributed her survival to the
grace of God. 7 years ago she felt burdened to help other young ladies in
similar situation as her- so she started Rainbow House Ministry. In her own
home, she takes in young pregnant mothers, most are recovering from drugs, in
trouble with the law, or living on the streets. For six months, Liz gives them
a home to clean up, get counseling, get parental training, and get a job. Over
7 years, many young ladies have owed their lives to Liz’s generosity. She
currently has 4 mothers (some with small children) living with her now. To make
matters more challenging, Liz has also had cancer twice with the last time
being just a year ago- this is one tough and tenacious woman. This past year,
Liz was able to buy her first home to expand her ministry. She has a 6 bedroom
house but she wishes it had more to help more woman. It has a lot of room but
is very old and run down. As you can see from the pics, it has pink walls,
sparse decorations, and has mix/match furniture.
The work that needed to be done generally involved repainting, redecorating, and refurnishing. It was great to be involved in something big and something certainly bigger than myself, and it's a great feeling helping those who help others (whichever way that may be). You put various diffferent imperfect people (like me, for example) together, and as a whole, it becomes perfect (unless everybody has the exact same imperfection..hehe). I was there to help out for just Saturday, helping with a little bit of painting (quite fun, actually). I had a great time and just meeting people with big hearts was great. The big "reveal" was on Sunday afternoon and I think Liz and the people who lived there was blessed. I take it a video clip should be available on YouTube soon.
Tony gives a pep talk to the group...
Painting in progress...
Living room is added a warmer color.
Furniture is painted white.
Excellent pasta and meatballs for lunch!
I think I was trying to be cool... or something.
Sunday is here.... as we gather up.....
Here comes the owner!
An introduction before the big unveiling..
Korean newspaper wrote an article about the event..
Living Room (before)
Living Room (after)
before....
after!
before....
after!
before...
after!
before...
after!
Such a beautiful hallway...
The Master Bedroom
A satisfying finish to a good weekend! And, that's the way... (uh huh, uh huh)... we like it!
So, here's an image I worked on last weekend. As you can tell, Sebastian the crab can be seen on the middle left. If I remember correctly, I think I may have based it off some kind of Jamaican crab. Happy Friday, y'all!
Lately, I've noticed a lot of venom from feminists from the Left regarding Governor Palin. Now, here's a woman who made it up there on her own, and didn't have to marry somebody to get to where she was (hint, hint). Obviously, she wouldn't be there if people didn't support her or respect her. Apparently, she's not a real woman, according to these feminists. Let's just say they aren't quite helping their own cause by saying this. It's interesting how majority of the media is so focused on Palin. Who's Obama? Who's Biden? Is there really nothing about them that is worth talking about? All I've heard recently was that Obama went to go rub elbows with Barbara Streisand and Hollywood "elite" because he needed money.
I've heard Texas has been suffering a lot lately. It's too bad you don't hear much about it on TV. I hope they recover okay. This is the type of thing that needs more press.
My coworker, to her credit, doesn't watch any TV and gets news from online (which may explain why she seems to have better information) and she has her own garden and grows her own food. I must say that doesn't sound too bad. She brings in some really tasty tomatoes and it's always a treat. I myself try not to watch too much TV... but I did hear that Heroes is coming back next week. During work yesterday, my dad called me to say that ING Direct may be doing bad and that I should take some money out. Well, it turned out that he thought I had AIG (not ING--hey, it sounded similar), which has been in the news lately. Ooops! He meant well.
This coming Thursday, I'll be checking out a book club with couple of friends. It's been a while since I started to do some good reading and it's a ton of fun (especially if you can talk about it). We're going over Dennis Prager's Think a Second Time and the first chapter touched upon a bit about the nature of good and evil. Should be very interesting.
Digital Pic!
Title: Icescape
Over the weekend, I made something kind of neat... I'll reveal it on Friday, however. :]
Thought of the Day:
If everybody agreed with your opinion, it probably was never an opinion in the first place.
True
