I Like Colors

I like colors a lot. In my 4 blogs I rarely post black and white photos, the main reason being I like colors. I like black and white photos too, but not as much as colored ones. My philosophy in photography (yikes!) is I like to show what my lens captured is the image my eyes saw. My eyes always see colored images.

How can I convert these images to black and white when the colors are so vibrant, so alive, so expressive?

From Islam to Cosplay in One Night

Last night was a lazy night in our household. A load of laundry was all I could muster to do after a full-day's work. I don't think I was tired, I was just lazy. That's all.

Compounding this situation was the hubby's seemingly deliberate attempt to join my parked butt on the couch the whole night long. I actually have 2 very important things on my calender to complete last night, but well sad to say laziness won.

It wasn't an unproductive night however. While channel surfing I veered to PBS to check out if ANTIQUES ROADSHOW was on. I really enjoy watching this show and each time I watch it I tell myself that I have got to get me to visit antique stores around the area, which I never do because away from the tv screen, I have very little interest to go antique-ing.

There was no Antiques Roadshow last night. Instead, the station was showing part 1 of the documentary LIFE OF MUHAMMAD. Very interesting, very informative. I was glued to the tube, was so fascinating. Part 1 tackled his early life until he started to hear the words of God.

I have always been curious about other religions outside of Christianity and this is a very good way of learning about Islam. I'm thinking about showing this to the congregation one day so they too could learn more about other religion.

The show is a 3-part series and I have to find out when they will show the continuation parts. But I'm really really interested. What a good film.

Later on after the documentary was over, my channel surfing found me on Syfy, which is one of the favorite channels in my household. The hubby is a huge sci-fi fan and we watched so many of these crazy unbelievably outrageous movies on Syfy like the Sharknado, remember this? Well if you don't know what his tv movie is I'll tell you. It's a movie about tornado filled sharks, so once the tornado touches ground the people get eaten by sharks. Stupid and so so bad. But well I believe when it debuted on Syfy, the social media was abuzz with #sharknado.

Anyway, last night there was no movie, but there was a show called Heroes of Cosplay. Okay so I'm not totally clueless about cosplay. I have heard of it online somehow. I know it has something to do with sci-fi characters and that people are fully garbed in costumes and they role play or something.

What I didn't know before I watched this show was that the people participating in cosplay have dreams and aspirations of becoming costume designers, etc. And the road to convention is littered with hopes and excitement, frustrations and hard work, creativity and more hard work. I did not realize that to compete in costume competition one must be able to create his/her own costume and it's not enough that you copy a character's costume. One must be creative in doing so, must use different techniques and the degree of difficulty in creating the costume is judged heavily. In addition one must also play up to the character once on stage. It's a lot of hardwork. I salute those people who do this.

I was really impressed with their creativity. I used to enjoy sewing when I was younger. My mother had a sewing machine. She was a great seamstress. She used to earn money sewing dresses once upon time. Her weakness is in making patterns. She can sew if she has a pattern, but creating a pattern is not her strong suite.

Anyway, when I was younger I also dabbled in sewing, which I thought was really weird of me because none of my friends were into it. But I went ahead and made dresses for my dolls.

Then high school came around and the ugly reality of peer pressure came into fold. I abandoned the sewing machine.

Seeing this show last night I marvelled at how one's husband was not only the designer of her fabulous glowing dress, but he was also the one who tailored it, which I think is really against the rule. If I heard it correctly at most help would be 15% of the entire costume.

I have a few sewing projects in my closet right now. What I don't have aside from time is a sewing machine. I really don't need a fancy machine, just something that can stitch something together. Coincidentally while at Target over the weekend I spied 3 different kinds of sewing machines and none of them were over $300. I think it's high time I save up for a sewing machine and take up sewing again, even if only to alter jeans and such. After all altering can be really expensive outside.

Oh-em-gee!

You can understand my excitement. My photos in Flick'r got over 1,000 views today!!!!

I wonder who would be looking at my photos.

I'm happy and all smiles right now.

That's It. Close the Book

A couple of days ago I received this nofitication from Yahoo. It reads:

As part of our continuing effort to provide you with a wonderful Yahoo! Mail experience, we want to make sure the mail you send gets to the friends, family or other contacts you are trying to reach. In support of this commitment, we have removed Yahoo! email addresses from your address book that are no longer valid. All other information remains part of your address book.

There were only 2 invalid addresses that they list. One is from my h.s. bff who is connected somehow on FB. The other is a friend of mine who died last year in childbirth.

It saddens me when I got the notice that her email is no longer valid. I don't know why I thought that an inactive email would be kept valid for all these months. I just felt that that's the end of it all. I never deleted her emails to me, although there weren't many. Occassionally she would remember me and would poke me with an e-mail or we would find each other online on FB and we would chat.

The last thing I remember before her death was that she was very pregnant and I even inquired about her delivery date. Apparently, against doctor's orders, she went ahead and carried the baby full term. No one was speaking among her friends, who also happens to be my friends. I didn't dig deep enough, maybe I would have found out. But I was trying to be sensitive and let them grieve.

While I was in Mexico two weeks ago undergoing some fertility treatments, I dreamed about her. I cannot remember the exact details of the dream, but I woke up agitated in the middle of the night, thankfully the hubby didn't wake up.

I was afraid that the dream meant I shouldn't be allowed to carry a baby, or face the same fate as my friend. It scared me.

I missed my friend. She looked up to me. Before she was my friend, I was her guidance counselor. She was my favorite student, and she knew it and played it to the hilt.

I missed my friend.

Humidity, meet the Bay Area!

I know I am going to talk about the weather. Again! Just humor me. One of the many reasons why I enjoy living here in the Bay Area is the no-humidity factor. Okay, low, very low, humidity. It's not even a factor.

The past couple or so days however humidity made an appearance around here. And in the first week that I got back from Cancun, where it's not only hot, it was also super humid. It's a big deal around here, because we don't get the muggy feel. It is now. When we have temps rise, it's a dry heat, much like desert heat. Which I prefer. I can endure dry heat. I hate sweating like a pig. I'm a big sweater so when it's humid I don't feel pretty at all. I am not pretty, I only feel pretty all the time. Ha, ha, ha!

Street Photography #18

I haven't posted a Street Photography series since Sept 2012, nearly a year ago. How did that happen? So to remedy that here's one night shot from a trip to New Orleans in November 2012.

Don't You Just Hate It When Plans Go Pffft?

I do. This is why I seldom make plans and always play things by ear. My latest disappointment and plan that went kaput? I planned on blogging daily while in Mexico this past vacation I took.

What happened? I didn't foresee the following: that internet connection would not be available for free. While I made a great deal with the accommodation, the lack of internet was something I thought could be remedied easily. Sure there was internet connection, but for a fee. A large fee. Like $25/day. Huge, considering I was paying $40/day to stay in a beautiful studio suite by the beach, inside a family-oriented resort.

Still on the first day I thought that I could easily go to any cafe with wifi, like Starbucks for instance, since we rented a car for the duration of our vacation. But there were some days, most days actually, that we preferred to laze about in beach chairs looking at clear turquoise waters of the Caribbean and/or walking the fine white sandy beach.

Anyway, that's that. It's done. Can't cry over that no more.

Let me report that the vacation was wonderful. We flew out of SFO on July 27th at night and arrived midnight in Denver. We had a 10-hour layover, but that was shortened because of the delay in taking off at SFO. We had the presence of mind to reserve a hotel room so we can rest fitfully that night. Early morning of July 28th, we flew out of Denver to Cancun.

This would be my second time in Cancun. The first was in 2010. On that vacation we stayed for 6 days and stayed mostly in Hotel Zone, which is where all the tourists are - the center of tourism so to speak.

We did many things for the first time on this vacation. This time around we stayed in Puerto Juarez area of Cancun, and we drove everywhere. We drove to the cathedral, to the pharmacy, to the grocery store, to Costco, to Walmart, and to eat at roadside eateries, where all the diners were locals and not one of the servers spoke any English.

We spent my birthday with daytrip to a small island immediately across the sea from Puerto Juarez, an island called Isla Mujeres. What a charming little island it is. The shopping and dining is fabulous. We also got to visit the turtle rehabilitation center.

A tip from a local gave way to our discovery of a public beach called Xpuha. We initially planned on a road trip to Playa Del Carmen when the local suggested we check this public beach out. She said it's her favorite beach and only locals know it.

Since we were in Playa Del Carmen in November or was it December, we decided to see something new. And boy oh boy, what a beautiful beach it is. In addition to the beach being a local haunt, it is also popular with the backpacker community.

All in all, I felt like I have gotten to know more about Cancun and my appreciation level is getting up there after this vacation.

Oh, I'm also burned. The skin in arms are now starting to peel. I hate that feeling.