destination unknown

it's still very surreal to me that curtis and i just packed up and whisked our way off to destinations unknown. by that i mean it's an unsure future. sure we know that we'll be staying in the philippines. we also know that we have 6 months to experiment. we needed to set some guidelines so 6 months is the amount of time we've allotted ourselves for discovery. there are some ideas we want to work on, some more feasible than others. i still want to pursue my photography out here. there is tremendous opportunity to break into the wedding and fashion industry out here. but first, it really is just a break from life. a time to take a moment and re-evaluate our priorities and life direction. the world is changing and we're missing a lot of it.

anyway....thought i'd clue you guys in on some fun facts comparing the philippines and california..

• the philippines is comprised of 7,100 islands totalling a span of 300k sq km (115.8 sq mi). population is estimated at 91M
• california on the other hand spans 411k sq km (158.7 sq mi) with a population estimate of 36.5M

.... interesting. till next time!

kari

the girl knows her hip hop. meet kari, my hip hop teacher from OCC. i dragged curtis to one of her classes last semester. he couldn't keep up coz she kicks ass... he went back to surfing.

she needed some new pix for her portfolio so we headed off to orange circle with her roomie maribeth and flashed some smiles on the street. this is just a few of the things we came up with.

anyway... she just finished an intesive masters program this summer and she's got all new material and inspiration to work from. so intensly jealous that i can't be there this semester to reap the benefits of all that new fun :(. next time!

balikbayan boxes and stinky limits

ack! boxes, boxes and more boxes. i've been going thru my closet for the last few days. it's not enough that i took out 32.5% of my closet and handed it over to buffalo exchange and goodwill. curtis says i can't take everything that's left. somehow i have to fit what i own into 2 balikbayan boxes. phooey! --- for my non-flip friends, a balikbayan box is a standard size box that filipinos use to haul all kinds of goodies back to the motherland. it's very TSA and FAA compliant.

well, with renewed vigor i thought i would show curtis that i'm more than capable of flashing fashion with a limited closet. i set my goal for 1.5 boxes... i got close. after 3 passes thru what was left of my closet, i selected 40% of what i had left (because i'm a math nerd, i worked out that it was 27% of my original closet). i got it to fit in 1.75 boxes. now i just need to go thru my shoe closet and hope to god that i don't exceed the 50lb per box limit.

wide angle lens

which lens do i spend my money on? this seems to always be a nailbiting decision up until the point i hit the BUY button (i shop online for just about everything camera related).

i've been wanting an extra wide lens. it's such a challenge when i've got an EF-S mount camera currently and i want to graduate to a full size sensor. it makes the lens picking decision twice as hard. well no more! i've decided that i will always have an EF-S mount as a backup. i'll get that full size sensor eventually but i can happily purchase EF-S mounts with peace of mind.

that said, my new baby is the tokina 11 - 16 f2.8. it had awesome reviews and i couldn't wait to get my greedy lil hands on it.