The Misadventures of Jason - A Travel Blog

Best of 2011 - Part 2

2012-02-07T16:39:00.000-08:00

Part 2 of the Best of 2011

I lived in London for 5 months of 2011. Here is "camp potter" where they are camping out waiting for the release of the last harry potter movie.

I lived near brick lane

so many foxes in the night

worlds collide. John and I were in New York and Japan together. I was with Angel in Beijing. and now we're all in London together.

the giant strawberry cupcake i lived in with Lucy and Sioban.

Lucy, a beautiful photographer, homeowner, dog owner, and flatmate. here she is with betty.

wildman wilf.

regents canal. one of my fav places in London.

after the london riots

personal tour of the BBC with Zainib

borough market and especially this desert wine soaked cheese.

tea, scones, clotted cream, and jam. awesome.

meeting people randomly on the street, going to their party, and becoming friends. Hooray!

had the first annual tri-wizard croquet tournament

illustrations for Spider children's magazine about a blue gorilla that gets lost on his way to florida.

visited Paris. people watching at cafes is awesome.

the seine is awesome.

love whatever these things are and this kind of architecture.

soaking up the view.

looking forward to more of these.

looking forward to staying at my aunt's house, yes house, in Paris.

Van Der Kock.

was in Tachen's Illustration Now! 4

trip to oxford. Pitt Rivers museum is one of the most fun and best museum going experiences i've had. totally accessible to the average person (me).

first painting i ever bought. at brick lane market

did this huge poster for the offices of Facebook in Singapore.

won the Stevan Dohanos award from the Society of Illustrators in New York!

got this really expensive 24mm f/1.4L lens from advertising money.

made illustrator friends in NY for the first time. it's been the first time i've been in NY and a successful illustrator.

chrismas with the fam, and Van Der Kock.

bringing an obscure catalan culture to upstate new york and beating the crap out of it.

brody has grown up to be huuuuuuuuuge. That's it for 2011. I spent the last month of it in New York. 2012 should be Paris and who knows what else. thanks for reading this year. see you next year!!!!

Best of 2011 - Part 1

2012-02-05T10:30:00.000-08:00

so 2011 was quite a dramatic year. I lived through the 9.0 great kanto earthquake/tsunami/radiation, the running of the bulls, the London riots, and another huge life disrupting year ending event. It was also a great year. A diverse year. I lived in 5 different countries in 2011. Japan from Jan-Mar. Korea for the month of April. Spain from May-July. UK from Aug-Dec, and USA for the Month of December. I saw the snow monkeys in Nagano. I went to the DMZ btwn North and South Korea. I saw the start of the Spanish protests at ground zero in Madrid. I camped on a nude beach in Spain. I got a personal tour of the BBC. I received a medal from the Society of Illustrators. I received many illustration awards. All this moving around made it hard to settle into one place and get my groove on. While it was cool, I don't think i want to live in 5 countries in 1 year again, it's too much. You have to make friends and say goodbye to friends too quickly. You don't get to assimilate into the country and feel more local and not like a tourist. Sure it's better than a 2 week vacation but if possible I would like to live somewhere for 1 year. I've lived harder and faster though. years ago in new york, and recently in tokyo i was at peak efficiency in the fun and work categories. Somehow accomplishing great amounts of work and great amounts of fun while getting just enough sleep. Maybe its because I didn't have time to get my groove on anywhere this year or maybe it's because I am starting to tire of the life of traveling? It's probably a bit of both. and i'm getting older. I don't feel as bright eyed and bushy tailed as i used to like when i was in China and Japan. Hopefully the 3 months i spend in New York growing my wings back will rejuvenate me and I will have that lust for life and my work that i used to. all that aside, 2011 was definitely one for the record books. Let's take a look.

these three dudes. what a bunch of dudes. I spent the first 2 weeks of 2011 in New York

Hill Country BBQ

Crif dogs bacon wrapped hot dogs and tater tots

Bologna and Cheese sandwiches a classic for me. but now so expensive, what gives?

back in tokyo at this awesome little old paper store.

my birthday, first time i got to wear this suit i had made in Beijing

alpagartas with my stuff sew ontop

Nagoya, snow monkey hot spring park

onsen town in Nagoya with tons of bath houses and this outside area too.

museum of emerging technology. ferrofluid and they strengthen or weaken the magnetic force around it so they can time its actions to music. crazy

whale sashimi. its pretty good. did you know this was right next to the shibuya 109 building? neither did i.

ikebukuro earthquake center. we received light training in various emergency situations. little did we know a few weeks later the 9.0 real thing would hit.

last meeting with my Japanese family, fu-balls and the sugimotos. a few days later it was earthquake time.

earthquake hit, all the foreigners ran away because of radiation ultimately so i figured i should to. mad rush to pack up my life and get out of japan. these guys helped

Korean Air is the not only has the best everything they also have the best looking flight attendants.

14 hr layover in Moscow. slept like this.

after fleeing to safety to yoon's house in seoul i spent the next week, 16 hrs a day working furiously on 3 posters with over 2,000 unique animals for a Bounce dryer bar campaign. It definitely payed off because it won awards from like 6 or 7 different organizations including communication arts, and the society of illustrators! and it was a decent chunk of change.

spent a month of 2011 in Korea

Seoul motor show. first auto show i've been too because i've always blown them off as a super dude thing to do which it is. but once you're in there you're reduced to a caveman like every other dude.

ate nakji finally, which is chopped up octopus that is still squirming around when you pop it in your mouth.

Yoon and I have had our little ping pong tournaments in many many countries and he came out ontop this time. just this time.

visit to the DMZ with embassy people. freaky to see the north korean soldiers staring at you.

I lived in Barcelona, Spain for 3 months of 2011. the view from our balcony.

Barcelona is a beach city. 10 min by bike and you're here. you can take the train here. or walk for 30 min. that's cuz i lived in the north. Marco lived a 10 min walk to the beach here.

finally got my Canon 5D Mark II after one got lost in the mail.

Spanish food is amazing. I really really like how they eat and what they eat.

Gaudi's Sagrada Familia is amazing inside. Barcelona has a bunch of his famous and less famous stuff.

the start of the protests in Madrid. ground zero.

the most gobsmacked i've ever been at a museum. Reina Sofia in Madrid with Picasso's Guernnica. its huge, meaningful, and rocked my world. Saw a lot of picasso in Spain and loved it.

street festival in Barcelonetta. unexpected fun times.

Festival de San Juan. jumping over bonfires is part of the tradition. its the biggest beach party of the year.

i can't lie, this CBO chicken burger from McDonald's was awesome. I think I ate this 3 times. shame on me i know.

San Fermin running of the bulls in Pamplona, the biggest party in Spain that goes for 7 days, 24 hrs. I got my arse kicked by this party. I went by myself and ended up the most drunk i've ever been in my life making this the worst best part of 2011

Salmorejo, variant of gazpacho, maybe my favorite

"teaching" Yuko's kids

i was amazingly hung over the day after the running of the bulls when they dragged me here, costa brava. i'm glad they did because it was amazingly beautiful

right before i left spain i visited valencia, another city along the coast. met a couple friends there, rode a bike around, and had a good time. bye bye spain. next up part 2 of the best of 2011 featuring London and New York

Don't Tell Porkies

2012-01-29T17:16:00.000-08:00

Don't tell porkies = don't tell lies. Porkies comes from Cockney rhyme slang. So Pork Pies rhymes with Lies. so pork pies further turns into porkies. This is a collection of photos that i found on various cameras i have. my canon 40D and my phone camera.

Prince Andrew silver plated spoon i bought for bob for Xmas. This is at Covent Garden.

a BMX bike course on the way to Broadway market.

for a while Lucy was ordering and collecting tons of dolls from ebay. This is her childhood doll. creepy. She was doing a photoshoot with lots of dolls so for a while there were creepy dolls around the house and studio.

brick lane market.

brick lane market. jerked meats?

some game at brick lane market. it looks like finger hockey pool

Arnold Circus. I don't think this is a famous circus (roundabout) but its near bricklane and has this thing at the top. i can't remember the name for this thing.

irish stew (wasn't good but then again it was like 30 pence), the full monty (the works) which looks like beans, mushrooms, sausage, rashers, and who knows what else. Cheshire cheese is weakness. again its tesco cheshire cheese so maybe real cheshire cheese is good. but if you want a hearty cheese you had best look elsewhere.

clever gal. trees turned into giant carrots at spitafield market.

The sandwich barge moored in regents canal next to broadway market. This woman is so nice. great hand made tea blends. www.thesandwichbarge.co.uk/

my south african friends had a "braai" (Afrikaans for BBQ). there was tons and tons of meat. it was all about meat.

this girl marinated her stuff in homemade tandoori stuff for like 3 days. it was awesome.

The blind beggar pub on whitechapel road. It was infamously ruled by east-end gangsters back in the day and someone famously got shot in the back there. On 9th March 1966 Ron Kray walked into the saloon bar of The Blind Beggar and shot George Cornell in the head using a 9mm Mauser. Legend would have it that this happened because Cornell had called Ronnie a 'big fat poof', in public, to which Ron obviously took offence and sought revenge. This story seems highly unlikely according to reliable sources and it is more likely the shooting occurred due to a 'business disagreement' involving the Richardson Brothers. This wasn't the first murder in The Blind Beggar. In 1904 a man called Wallis who was a member of The Blind Beggar Gang (a notorious firm of pick-pockets who frequented the pub), stabbed another man in the eye with an umbrella. Its actually a cool place and has a great outdoor area.

The London Jazz Festival. I went with those girls I sketched at the bike cafe. They're friend was playing so we got in for free. Ilhan Ersahin's Istanbul Sessions. He owns Nublu on Avenue C in new york which i've been to a bunch of times

the O2 arena where they play sports, concerts etc...

Year of the Dragon 2012

2012-01-16T16:09:00.001-08:00

Happy 2012! Here is my take on a Japanese new year's card (nengajo, 年賀状). Traditionally they feature the Asian zodiac animal of that year, 2012 is the year of the Dragon. Basically the bottom says Happy New Year and the top says 2011 and the final box below that is the character for dragon.

have i learned nothing? i am a fool and spent 4 hours working on that first color sketch and didn't explore the other compositions i had thumbnailed out. after thinking maybe i hadn't explored enough i fleshed out this 2nd color sketch. I spent like 7 hrs total on these 2 sketches. I forgot to mention that the dragon is probably the one card i was least excited to illustrate because it is so cliche and has been done by so many people and is kind of a symbol of bad taste and bros that love awesome dragons and yin yangs and nunchucks and have posters of scarface on their wall. We've all seen millions of images and tatoos of asian dragons twisting and looking awesome so i wanted to do a crop of a river dragon zooming along his river in a straight line instead of in the sky all twisty and turny. I wanted the feeling of if someone were to look out the window of the boat they would catch a split second of a huge dragon eye ball and scales zoom past the window basically at water level height. In japan dragons usually live in bodies of water like the ocean or rivers. i thought this was cool and interesting. Like that Miyazaki movie spirited away, that dragon was the spirit of some river in Japan. A huge dragon zooms by a japanese party boat, the kind i frequently saw on the sumida river in Tokyo. He is looking ahead (maybe to the new year?) and doesn't look like he is going to harm the boat at all. In fact they are the guardians of rivers and stuff. Dragons are also associated with spring in japan. What i wanted to achieve was to make it look like he is flying fast-ish, really close to the surface of the water. The shadow had to be created perfectly and the water movement had to be perfect too. I hate doing water movement and suck at it so badly, i can never get it right. The problem is that there was no proper reference for this kind of water movement. I know i've seen it before in some anime or movie where a missle is cruising 2 inces above the water or something. I even watched the scenes in a few Harry Potter movies where they fly close to the water but the special effects team always copped out and didn't show the water being effected by these wizards flying super close to the water. I even enlisted in the help of my fellow illustration collective to find reference but couldn't find any.

the shadow was super hard to get right and i never got it right. i even used google sketch up and taped together paper and a lamp.

had to cut this paper cuz I couldn't find the same weird size i found in china to match the other previous paintings.

gesso borrowed from Angel. you'll get it back some day.

background

i'll spare you the tedium of painting all the cherry blossom petals and transferring the drawing to the painting, so here it is after all that and inked in.

Here the colors are all blocked in and then i had to fly to NYC to accept an award at the Society of illustrators. hopefully i will paint all 12 asian zodiac animal cards through the coming years. So far this yearly card has been the 1 time a year i get to paint something and not use photoshop. I had this half painted and then due to some extenuating circumstances was unable to finish the painting in time so i had to clean up my sketch and use this all digital version. The momentum is gone, will i ever finish the painting? I have to i guess.

A Very Van Der Kock Xmas - Part 2

2012-01-16T14:24:00.000-08:00

Sausage gravy and biscuits. A man's breakfast.

go on van der kock you know you like it. the recipe calls for a whole stick of butter melted into that gravy.

targets for the sportsman's club that my dad runs or use to run or supervises or something.

bob's behind a wall of his favorite beverages at Wegman's.

sushi time. it would have been a lot better if sushi grade fish was available at wegman's but it turned out ok.

Van Der Kock is from holland remember. This was his first waffle ever. at least it was homemade. Also it was his first time trying rootbeer and cream soda. come on guy, god.

my new Canon 24 mm f/1.4 L USM lens. wide angle, super fast f/1.4, silent USM motor, L glass, all comes at a hefty price and weight too. The photos out of this are so crispity.

the new 24 mm is fixed at 24 mm so naturally its image quality is better than my old 20-35mm zoom lens. The old 20-35mm is so much lighter though.

the lens hood that came with the new lens is ridiculously large and i never use it because it draws too much attention to the super expensive gear i'm carrying.

film crew on the hill.

hey ladies, are you into rugged, yet refined gentlemen with their domesticated beast against a back drop of earth-toned country goodness? Look no further.

I don't know which one of these i like better so i posted both.

please don't leave too many comments about how i look so cool and like the wong kar wai of my generation.

into the forest.

in another life me and bob have decided that we would be the Asian Coen brothers. And this would be a photo of us scouting a location for our movie that is not Fargo. But seriously we wish we could make movies but it is too late as we are in the twilight of the making a career out of something years.

This trail cam captured a bear and its cubs a few weeks ago.

Did you that we are in a bad Azz rock band with Van Der Kock though? We rocked a crowd of 2 for 4 days straight, 1 day and 1 night show. the crowd of 2 were not our fans though and the novelty a rock band wore off after 2 songs.

my pal Allen Ying started this new skate board magazine "43". this is the premiere issue, check it out if you can, they're rare these days. http://43magazine.com/

Our attempt at English tea time. We even faxed my mom this invitation that i made. We wore suits, mom wore a dress. Bob made scones, crumpets, and clotted cream cuz i had to work on a magazine cover. Do you know how hard it is to make clotted cream? it took a day and a half and yeilded almost nothing. But bob is a soldier. I made bunting (that triangle pennant cloth thing) and hung it up. there were many kinds of Fortnum & Mason teas and gooseberry jam. Then the power went 10 minutes into our "tea party". We pretended that this party was happening during the Blitz and that the scones and crumpets didn't suck, but we could only keep it up for so long. Please don't make fun of us. We're two full grown male brothers still trying to get mommy and daddy to play tea party with us.

I hate the internet meme "Fail" so i'm just going to say Failure. It's ok bob, you tried your best with the scones and crumpets, it's baking so the same would have happened to me. We just need a better recipe next time. That is if we're not all growns up by next year.

A Very Van Der Kock Xmas - Part 1

2012-01-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

Sebastiaan Van Der Kock of Holland had no where to go for xmas so he came to my house in upstate Canisteo, NY. This is what happened.

Dinosaur BBQ in Rochester

xmas tree decorating timelapse. As always you can see it in higher quality by clicking that vimeo button and watching it on their site.

Brody and Angus. Brody is the biggest Newfoundland my parents have ever had. He is huge. He can rest his head on the kitchen counter.

"The Raish Brother's Meat Bang" the Raish brother's signature dish is once again. Bob has become a "flexitarian" so for the first time in like 8 years we are able to reunite and create this delicate and sophisticated dish. We may never be able to top this one due to the variety of meat we happened to have at our disposale. Van Der Kock just looked on in horror, and then shut up and fried all our meats. Venison bacon burger, venison hot sausage, 2 types of chorizo, SPAM, philly cheese steak, turkey, bacon, pulled pork, brisket, rib meat, and pepperoni on a bed of potatoes, onions, peppers cooked in meat fat topped with corned beef hash. Then finished with 2 eggs over easy, cheddar cheese, cracked pepper, hot sauce, and garnished with parsley.

we did not have smiles on our faces 20 minutes later.

they got this old school tractor so now its parked next to the spitfire.

finding the perfect log

searching for tools

pompador leg cutting

there is no photo to really show the size of Brody

um we need that

All of this log hunting, prep, and cleaning was in order to make Caga Tio. He is an xmas tradition in Catalunya a region in Spain (including Barcelona). For example Marco from Madrid does not do this. It literally translates into "Shit Log". you hit him and he craps out presents. And let me reiterate that kids do this, not full grown adults. Spanish kids.

We had a whole Spain themed night with spanish omlette, chorizo, manchego cheese, gazpacho, wine, and pan con tomate.

out of focus gazpacho

He doesn't know how bad he is gonna get beat.

sorry guy. check the video below.

Beating the Sh!t out of Caga Tio. As always you can see it in higher quality by clicking that vimeo button and watching it on their site.

I got a Hahnel Giga T Pro II wireless camera remote/intervalometer

charges these batteries or anything with a usb cord.

Evoluent vertical mouse. hopefully this helps with my inevitable carpel tunnel

Christmas dinner set up.

Spider Magazine - Gorilla Blues

2012-01-08T17:38:00.001-08:00

A while ago I did 3 illustrations for Spider Magazine (which has illustration on almost every page). The story is titled "Gorilla Blues" by Trinka Enell and it's about a big blue gorilla who loses his way to Florida one snowy night and is helped by a little girl.

getting this perspective right was so hard and it's still not right.

I was in 3x3 magazine's Illustration Directory 2011

Society of Illustrators - Stevan Dohanos Award - Part 2

2012-01-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

Dim sum at Dim Sum Go Go

"pink china", the restaurant across the street from Mel's house

I saw this twice this week. I thought they were just burning garbage which is kind of crazy in NYC but mel said it was some kind of ancestors tradition.

party at Tara Jacoby's house.

Robert McGinnis painted her! He's the artist that did the old school james bond posters and the breakfast at tiffany's poster among other things.

on the way to brooklyn bowl

inside brooklyn bowl

they have a dance floor and a salsa orchestra that night.

the young illustrators crew.

got my hair cut at astor hair.

i am seeing china-centric magazines in the stores now too. China is taking over, watch out now

meatball shop is awesome.

Rockafeller center tree

bottom of central park

from the offices of Discover Magazine.

Williamsburg xmas lights

Ghost Bikes are painted all white and are left at the place where a person has died in a bicycling accident. I have seen a few of these around. I notice them because I have been hit by a car and hospitalized with a fractured skull and I bike too. RIP Nicolas Djandji, age 24. From Ghostbikes.org - Nicolas Djandji was born on November 8, 1986 in Alexandria, Egypt. His childhood was highly nomadic; Djandji lived in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Indonesia, and Argentina before his family relocated to Texas, where he attended high school. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, studying Painting and Illustration. Djandji moved to New York in 2009.

Panna II

Society of Illustrators - Stevan Dohanos Award - Part 1

2011-12-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

I got a call on a friday that I had won the Stevan Dohanos Award this year at the Society of Illustrators in NY. I decided to fly from London to NY for a week to accept the award. This would be my first time back in the US in a year.

Asian Americans for equality. What do they do in there?

B and H photo is a crazy place. orders zip around the ceiling on these conveyer belt things. I need to buy a lens filter for my new 24mm f/1.4 L lens which i'll show later. It's amazing so lots of pics on this blog from here on out will be with that lens.

Salih showing me how to use Final Cut Pro. I'm trying to make a travel video out of all the clips i've taken. It's doable but will take a while to learn the program and learn about video, timing, music, cuts, pace and that whole universe

at the opening of the Society of Illustrators Member's Open show. My piece in the back with the red bridge won top prize, the Stevan Dohanos Award. The Society of Illustrators is the top place probably in the world to be recognized for your work in the illustration field so I was dumbfounded. I was even more dumbfounded when they gave me one of the Society's medals!

had to give a little speech. The Society owns this awesome old New York building on 63rd and Lex. Upstairs is the members bar where all the old school founding fathers and so on have hung out and jammed.

after a bunch of drinks at the Society it was off for celebratory champagne.

after celebratory champagne we were very inebriated and any old $2 PBRs would do. Many were consumed and you know the rest of the story.

Max Fish

the twighlight series owned by Mel's sister.

here's the medal! it's heavy. I never thought I would own one of these and now i have one. It's amazing.

djembe drummers on the subway

churros lady didn't want her photo taken

bedford ave station on the L

I never noticed this before in NY but it seems like there are tons of "perro flautas" now. perro flauta meaning dog flute, like what they call these guys in Spain. I mean they are the same down to the dread locks and owning dogs. what gives.

a lot of this in NY

williamsburg

the view of manhattan from williamsburg. somewhere near north 7th or 8th. Sophie has moved back to NY and Steven (we went to Oxford together the week before) came from London to visit her.

Kenka used to be my favorite place to drink. its a funky Japanese drinking hall on st. marks place. I don't know how it is now though. I will have to give it another try and see.

the cotton candy machine is inside now.

the Chinatown Dragon Fighters. The firehouse is near Mel's house.

Mel had a party for me at her house on East Broadway. Thanks Mel!

Sandra's dog pudge is sooooooo cute. he's like an Ewok/Koala Bear mix.

Van Der Doodle got noodled before he even got to the party.

which is why you see him here drinking out of a pot.

pickleback shots at 169 bar on east broadway. Its this new craze where you take a shot of whiskey and then chase it with a shot of pickle juice. its not that bad. how do they produce huge jars upon jars of pickle juice to fill the demand? are they making synthetic pickle juice now? No one else seems to think its gross.

go go dancer at 169 bar.

cheetah pool table

Oxford

2011-12-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

Oxford is the home of many universities, the most famous and prestigious being Oxford University. It has a population of just under 165,000. It lies about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of London.

what's up with this one teated cow

Steven is upset that this is a mobile phone store

awesome places by the river

this wolf/dog was just wandering the streets.

cigarette ends?

forget the name of this museum but there was some cool stuff life this chinese chair and the samurai kabuto below

i'm really into this indian art

I asked the woman what's up and she said they have a collection of rings, some of which inspired the lord of the ring's ring. when the light hits it just right it lights up inside.

side street next to the flag and lamb or eagle and child pub, can't remember which.

this says "hands off vietnam" could this still be there from the 70's?

one of the coolest museums i've ever been to, the Pitts Rivers museum. it's an accessible museum that knows what it is. It's for the everyman and his kids and not the museum snob. It is jammed to the brim with cool stuff. I highly recommend this museum if you go to oxford. I wish i had more time in oxford because i could have spent a few more hours in here. the displays literally are jam packed.

they're called buggies in the England.

what's happening here? this door seems really small.

the building was quaint and awesome.

one of the famous buildings of Oxford. i think it's a library.

tiny alley that is easy to miss. down this alley is the Turf Tavern, one of the famous ones in Oxford. the smaller sign says "an education in intoxication".

court yard of one of the other universities. it seems to be the dorms.

salmon something or other. good stuff. at this point me and steven had been to 3 pubs including the "flag and lamb" and the "eagle and child" both of which JRR Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to frequent. We had quite a few pints and i forgot to take photos of that.

we missed our train, went to drink another pint, found this pub with 5 british rednecks, one of whom upon hearing i was from america asked if i liked toby keith. he said he went to a toby keith concert and thought he would be the only one there but to his surprise there were 40,000 other british fans. upon getting back to london we were still filled with pints and had no reason and proceeded to go to the Sun on bethnal green road for more pints. that was dumb. Oxford was a charming city

thanksgiving in foreign countries has been interesting. this year it was a KFC box

what is wrong with KFC in foreign countries? in London they don't have mashed potatoes or biscuits. one of the options for sides is gravy. since when is a cup of gravy a side!

Satoko from Tokyo came to London. she got drunk and really let loose for once.

loft party somewhere. Satoko was bouncing around like she was drunk on gummy bear juice.

phones i have used in the last 3.5 years. from left to right. USA Verizon phone i've had since 2002. 2 identical chinese Motorola phones. purple samsung softbank phone from japan. red spanish sony erickson phone. British unlocked HTC smart phone. and lastly my landline phone through vonage (VOIP, internet phone that has remained my 917 new york number).

i was in this Neo Folk mini book that they gave out at some big show in Paris. it was put together by Kult, an agency in Singapore.

Betty

Wilf

A paper model i put together so i could get the shadows right for this painting i'm working on. You'll see that later

Tri-Wizard Croquet Tournament

2011-12-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

Here is something I forgot to post from the summer to warm up your dreary winter day. We held the Tri-Wizard Croquet tournament at Clapham Common in London. The houses of Griffindor, Slytheryn, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw all participated. After everyone entered their names into the goblet of fire the sorting hat divvied up teams. Note: I'm not a harry potter dork but i had to trick everyone into coming to play croquet somehow.

I saw the real life Hagrid on the tube on the way there but he had to go feed some mythical creatures so he couldn't play.

we had a bountiful spread

grounds keeper Filtch in the foreground (aka Ed) explaining the rules and walking out the field of play. I threw the rules at him so he could deal with it since he's good at that kind of thing.

the 18 pound set handles started breaking

arguments heating up on the field as no one really knows the rules

ideally everyone would have been wearing their 1920's sunday in the park outfits but its was on short notice.

Griffindor

the cheating bad sports Slytheryn

the always mediocre forgettable Hufflepuff

Ravenclaw. the winners? cheaters? on the left is Sioban, my other flatmate, probably the only time she's been on the blog.

even the tri-wizard tournament can get photobombed

hey look it's j ribiero and j raish.

Client Sketches and Cafe Sketches

2011-11-22T15:36:00.001-08:00

cover for the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section about Obama, the loner president and how doesn't try to befriend people in Washington, make allies and play politics like you're supposed to to get re-elected.

spot for the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section about Obama, the loner president and how doesn't try to befriend people in Washington, make allies and play politics like you're supposed to to get re-elected.

maybe i'll start posting (some) of my sketches up. i think its interesting to see illustrator's sketches against the final. and you can see how horrible most of mine are.

spot for Golf magazine's rule's guy column. this one is about a ball that bounces out of the cup.

The first time i've pulled out my sketchbook in ages. sketching at "Look Mum No Hands" a bike-centric cafe on old street in London. I was sketching these 2 girls in front of me and thought they didn't know but they said they totally knew i was sketching them after they asked to see it when i was leaving. halfway down the block one of the girls came running and asked if they could have it. So i hung out with them a couple times so far and made new friends in London town.

another sketch from the bike cafe.

my flatmate at the Vintage Emporium cafe on Bacon street off of Brick Lane in London. A super cool place and my flatmate knows the owner and its right down the street from our flat.

first time i pulled out the watercolors and sketchbook in a long time. This was on another day at some french cafe on Broadway market in London. I've been on a decent cafe sketch run the last few weeks compared to my once a year average. It's sad, when I was a student it was every other day and now its been reduced to a few times a year :(

Its Doing My Head In

2011-11-15T15:03:00.000-08:00

Britishism time. It's doing my head in means it's driving me crazy. Like, the occupy London protesters are doing my head in.

final drinks at the London Bicycle Tour Company before seb heads off to NY for 3 months.

I bought this Felix Fox tea towel at a store in Spitafield Market because i haven't purchased any UK stuff yet and foxes are thing that i have come to dig about the UK. the artist is Sarah Young www.sarahyoung.co.uk

occupy london in front of St. Paul's Cathedral.

I was thinking about how it would be cool to do some kind of art installation thing on top of bus stops so when you're on the top level of a double decker bus you can see it, but, did this guy that shoves q-tips into these gross balls of matter beat me to it with his schizophrenic art? i saw them on a few of the tops of bus stops along this route.

boot leg Korean bibimbap made with mince (aka ground beef in American)

AZ for Angel Zhang. this is at first thursdays, where galleries are open on the first thursday of the month in many areas in london. Basically its a lot of sh!tty art and a lot of people getting wankered and wandering around galleries. Occasionally there is good stuff. So it's more like 80% drinking and party and 20% art, which is fine sometimes.

This is the first painting I ever bought. I saw it at the brick lane market one sunday and couldn't resist because i have a tiger fetish. the artist J.M. Liberty is actually from the US and married a Brit, Barry the Barber and lives here now. I think you can find them teamed up at the brick lane market frequently on sundays in The Tea Rooms, part of the Truman Brewery on Bricklane where she exhibits her paintings and he gives old timey shaves and haircuts.

http://www.onesugarhill.blogspot.com/

http://barrythebarber.com/

I love it!

http://www.onesugarhill.blogspot.com/

you can tell these guys grew up in the early 90's because their eyes can't believe what they are seeing. Bung Hole

um wats going on here. In the US it's TJ Maxx. who came first?

I for one hate how the zombie and vampire genre has blown up. Now there are huge categories like this at book stores.

The Star of Bethnal Green, one of 6 pubs that I went to that night thanks to Steven, who always suggests another pint, and then i suggest trying a new spot, and then we always end up wankered.

A society party that was made up of a fashion show, live music performances, live painting, and a party afterwards that is put on by the Yumihu group every month in this decadent building in marble arch. what was i doing there?

artwork on the wall of one of the many rooms with 20 ft ceilings.

taken from the top of a rainy double decker. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) was released for sale this rainy tuesday night. there were event people dressed as soldiers with guns inside the store while a line of people that doubled around the block waiting to get their hands on this video game. excerpt from www.cartoonbrew.com "the biggest launch of any videogame in history. Within its first 24 hours of release, the game sold 6.5 million units in North America and the UK, earning $400 million dollars and well on its way to over $1 billion. “We believe the launch of ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′ is the biggest entertainment launch of all time in any medium, and we achieved this record with sales from only two territories,” claimed Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision. By contrast, the all-time single-day movie gross record belongs to the latest installment of Harry Potter, which took in $91 million earlier this year."

crochet taxi on sclater street off of brick lane.

sign behind the bar at the old blue last which is owned by Vice magazine, which was my favorite magazine in NY and it's free. I haven't read it in a while so i can't say if it's still my fav but i read stuff online sometimes and it still seems good. they have the magazine in a ton of international cities now so the UK issue launch parties are always here.

here are a couple shoreditch "hipster" examples. Here is an explanation for my mom if she doesn't know already, which she might. basically shoreditch is the same as williamsburg in NY. If you didn't know there is a wide scorn for "hipsters" throughout the world, some of it coming from people who don't know they are hipsters themselves. The term used to be pretty specific but these days it seems like hipster style has expanded so much that much of the population of east london and brooklyn NY, and beyond falls into the hipster catergory. if you were to look at bob with his long asian jesus like hair, or me with my silverback gorilla hair you might think we were hipsters, and for all we know we could be since the term is so broad now.

here is a good example. this looks like it could be from 1980 and she would be made fun of profusely in highschool. But now in 2011 it's cool. There are a lot of sites like "hipster or homeless" or "Halloween or Williamsburg" where the show photos of either people in halloween costumes or hipsters in their hipster clothes and you have to guess what's going on. Also this is what i need to do all the time, ask people for photos or just take them, i got these because i was drunk and had the courage to ask them. I know it might be hard to believe that Jason Raish is scared to ask people for photos but its a lot harder than you think! If i want some truely captivating material i guess i'm gonna have to grow some balls.

Look Mum No Hands, a bike-centric cafe on old street. Angel and I drew those two blurry girls in the foreground.

man this camera makes everything look awesome.

my two on the left, angel's on the right.

party at Mariya of Bulgaria's attic flat. We met them randomly on the street one night.

hung over, i woke up to muddy dogs going apesh!t in my bed. they're so cute so its hard to be mad, especially when you're hung over too.

i tried to meet up with everyone for the lord mayor's fireworks show but the buses were all on diversion (diversion = detour in American) because of the parade and going weird places so i only caught a glimpse of it as i ran to the river. It only lasted 10 minutes though and everyone said its nothing compared to the fireworks you see on Guy Fauke's night.

King's Head Theatre pub. there is a door in the back for the theatre. we really like the interior of feel of this pub in Angel on upper street.

Camden market. somewhere between the street and the stables market. Camden market is huge and seems like it's for teenagers. they have stalls in old converted horse stables, but most of the stuff is for teens or hippies. I don't recommend Camden market unless you are a teenager or a hippie or a weirdo or play a dijeridoo. Also it was a transportation bermuda triangle that sunday. the trains were f'd because of Olympic refurbishing, the buses didn't stop cuz each one was full to capacity (two in a row kept driving on by). we ended up having to find the public bikes to ride home. We tried to get out of Camden for at least an hour.

Gobsmacked

2011-11-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

Gobsmacked in American means utterly astounded, speechless. Gob means mouth, like "shut your gob!" + smacked and you have been smacked in the mouth and are therefore stupified and speechless. Some uses are, I was gobsmacked by the text message i recieved today, or I'm gobsmacked by this girl's beauty. Which I was but we'll get to that below

Fortnum and Mason is one of the high end brands if not THE high end brand. I sent this to my momma who loves english tea.

A Supermarine Spitfire MkVa WWII model plane kit flown by the brits. I sent this to my dad, a WWII enthusiast. We used to go to airshows together. He used to put these models together.

there's actually a lot of bikers in London. It's just not very safe so like half of the people wear these neon vests.

Sebastiaan is from Holland and is a tour guide at the London Bicycle tour company. He takes groups of like 20 people around London and gives tours in English or Dutch if he has to. It was cool to hang out with all the tour guides from various countries and drink with them after work here. Everyone was doggin' on each other and it was an international bros session.

chinatown in London is pretty small. only a few streets.

Rosie's friend Regina is from Taiwan and showed me Zhùyīn fúhào which is what they use to use to teach mandarin. Its like an alphabet of letters and is only 37 characters so its easier to learn and teach Mandarin Chinese. It was phased out in Mainland China in the 50's but is still used in Taiwan. Here is Zhùyīn fúhào in its own letters ㄓㄨˋ ㄧㄣㄈㄨˊ ㄏㄠ. So i guess this is why whenever i would type pinyin (the way of writing chinese words in english) to Ryan in Beijing he wouldn't know what i was talking about because he's taiwanese and uses this.

A 5th of November treat. Actually this was made famous in my mind by the movie V for Vendetta which is about Guy Fawkes and how he tried to blow up parliament on November 5th. Its called eggs in a basket and is butter grilled toast cooked with an egg in the middle. it's easy to make and gets you points for doing something new with a usually boring breakfast. give it a try!

Prams = baby carriages in American. All these prams are for a project Lucy is working on.

Ami's shoelaces frequently just pop undone when she's walking like she's a real life cartoon whose main problem for that episode is how her shoelaces keep coming un-done. If you can see by the left shoe you can see why, her laces are way too long. I think this is a funny thing to happen to a cute girl. If it was happening to me it would just be sad and pathetic.

recently bob finally listened to Amy Winehouse and has acknowledged her brilliance. So now he knows what a blow it was when she passed away. I thought even though she was influenced heavily by ska, and 60's girl groups, etc... that she was making the freshest, realest music out there (even though she hadn't made an album since 2008).

Pudding Lane, another example of Candy Land names in London.

raclette cheese from france is heated on one side and scraped off onto a plate or onto potatoes and stuff.

they were also making amazing looking grilled cheese sandwich things with this cheese too but i ate already so didn't try it. Looking forward to this in Paris if i don't get it here first.

at the tate modern. the artist was korean.

some pretty common beers to find here. London Pride maybe is the most common of the four. but the real star here is Doombar over on the right. I love that stuff.

what's that you say? at the old blue last

Taiwanese pork belly. delish, but not as delish as the pork belly at Ryan's friend's place in Beijing

Taiwanese toast. delish but not as delish as what i had in china. Inside is a creamy stew of sorts and its all contained in a perfectly hollowed out loaf of bread that is somehow completely fried lightly. this one is also 3 times smaller than what i got in China.

F U Chip and Pin!!!! chip and pin is the bane of American's existence in Europe. i have no chip on the top of my credit cards so i can't use them in tons of places.

I saw a lot of foxes in this week where i went to a lot of parties and was a nocturnal animal myself. this is on my street.

this is at Howl at the Moon on hoxton street. My friend on the right is from South African, the barmaid is from Swaziland and she was gobsmackingly beautiful. oh my god. this is not a good photo of her but she was a sight to behold.

so if you saw above the guy from south africa basically looks like jesus with that hair.

a scratch off map to show where you've been in this cool store in spitafields market. all of india is scratched off but only a few finger nails worth of Siberia is gone. and it looks like some exuberant Kazakhstanis and Mongolians had at this map.

closing time at Pimps and Pinups hair salon on the side of spitafields market.

on this hungover sunday i came to meet my friends at the antique emporium to find the place packed and the only available seat was occupied by the owner's other dog (the huge wolf hound was nowhere to be found). I came over and looked at him and he just looked at me and slowly opened up his legs as if saying "what up sh!thead, scratch my mother lovin' belly b!tch, i'm the king here". and so i squeezed in and did.

Illustration Now! 4, I'm in there!

2011-11-07T07:07:00.001-08:00

I'm in Illustration Now! 4 published by Taschen that just came out this year. It's a collection of top illustrators from around the globe, so i don't know how I got in there. I've see the first 3 incarnations of this book and it's cool to be included in this one and have two spreads.

Left: art for Saatchi and Saatchi (NY). Middle: Hartford Courant Ella Fitzgerald. Right: Yahoo! Singapore

Left: Personal piece inspired by a "Wish-Tree" that I saw in Shanghai. Middle: Tiger Beer. Right: Yahoo! Singapore.

Give Me a Bell

2011-11-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

you guessed it. give me a bell means give me a phone call. would you have gotten it if there wasn't a picture of phone booths?

Vintage Emporium. upstairs is a cafe, down stairs is a vintage shop. its a cool place and they always play music like billie holiday and johnny cash.

my flatmate Lucy, with for the first time on this blog, Betty.

Betty is also a "working cocker spaniel". she is the sweet intelligent one while wilf is the crazy wild man.

i think this place is called the bridge. its under a bridge on kingsland road and looks like a great date spot. downstairs looks like a nice greek-ish pub or something and then you go upstairs and it looks like this. look its sophie and steven in the mid-ground.

Micela introduced me to Zainib who is a director at the BBC. she directs the Breakfast show, the news at 10 and 1 and probably other stuff. She directed the Royal Wedding!!! She is a crazy super woman and has ADD but you have to to do this job. she was shouting into microphones, sliding levers, pushing buttons, cueing up clips, and directing a whole team to bring the news to everyone in real time. It looked super stressful, she has like 5 computer screens to look at and then all those tv screens you see in front of you. all while she would intermittently turn around and explain things to me and i would just nod my head in the hopes that she would turn back around and not miss any cues on account of talking to me.

here she is at 1 oclock news time at the audio mixing board or watever it is. it looked like she was just randomly sliding levers when she felt like it but she is super sharp and on point so i'm sure she knew what she was doing.

i'm assuming hard talk is a political talk show, but i don't watch tv so i don't know.

she showed me pics of celebs that she meets there like will ferrel, Jason Raish, and twilight dude.

Lucy has a studio steps from brick lane on sclater street.

she does portraits here. www.lucytanner.com

not creepy in the slightest.

corner of HSBC and bethnal green road.

school near my house on vallance road. Lots of signs in my neighborhood are in Arabic.

Lucy and Wilf at victoria park.

he's the bad one. betty didn't go in there.

lucy betty and sophie pan W wenlin. sophie is beijing time buddy and just moved back to NYC after getting her masters here.

phone booths at primrose hill.

primrose hill. what a place.

i nice late afternoon session on the grass with some Crabby's alcoholic ginger beer.

what's a cottage pie? i don't really know either. it's gravy'd up ground beef topped with mashed potatoes.

The benefits of being an Illustrator

2011-10-26T14:41:00.001-07:00

I'm missing out on them! I was asked to be a VIP guest at a Tiger Beer party in Beijing, a VIP at a Rides magazine party in Vegas, and the American Illustration party that i've missed every year. I'm continually in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Paris - A visit to the city of light - Partie Six

2011-10-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

the 6th and final part of my Paris Visit.

lock on the upstairs bathroom. i love old school european details like this. and its because i grew up American and never seeing things like this.

what looks to be a ham and cheese baguette sandwich being held really weirdly by my grinch hand.

this is the first time i've noticed a place for all the scooters and moto bikes to fill up in all the countries i lived in. this was just on the sidewalk in Le Marais.

that equals $10.12 a gallon. One liter equals $2.67. 3.79 liters equals a gallon. Exchange rate october 27th, 2011, $1 = .79€, or 1€ = $1.39 . really bad if you're holding dollars, probably normal for europeans. can you imagine paying $10 a gallon? i don't know if this is regular gas or some mix for motobikes.

Azag had a lot of cool stuff. i bought a koi nobori japanese style windsock there. they spoke english and told me about a children's book library around the corner. will have to check that out sometime.

Chorizo we love you. yes we do. either this is a tag (a really sh!tty one) or someone just ate an amazing bite of chorizo and had to proclaim their love to all of Paris.

this VW van parked curbside had seating in it as an extension of the cafe.

when i was here on the weekend there was a long line for this falafel. Chez Marianne

5€ ($7) for a traditional falafel. it was good but $7 is a lot for a falafel. I have been getting raped by the pound and the euro.

of course there is a Japanese Harajuku style crepe place in Le Marais. even the girls working inside were dressed up like lolita maids.

don't know what the ABC lights under the taxi sign mean.

now this is a cool graphic stand out poster. take note graphic design dork buddies! but part of the reason may be because a bayonet is bloodily stabbing 3 hats and the word commune is on it

did i already say how its a law that they have to give you a glass of water with your coffee? and that the espresso isn't that strong cuz i usually drink one and am wired cuz i never have caffeine outside of chocolate? I drank like 2 or 3 of these a day.

but its the perfect way to people watch. and capture fleeting parisian beauties on bikes. have i mentioned how i have a girls on bikes fetish? what is it? besides physically being up on a pedestal for all to see i guess it shows motivation, initiative, and guts on their part to ride a bike. which makes them a lil' more special. and initiative is sexy.

coca cola promo girls

the koi nobori i bought. if you're joining us now, these are traditionaly flown in japan around may 5th, which is children's day in japan. they are koi fish windsocks. this was designed by a french person but obviously takes its inspiration from the traditional ones. I love this one. Someday when i have a house there will be a few of these hanging in it. I think in only have 1 other one from japan. there is a madame mo tag on it, i guess that is the artist who made it http://www.madamemo.com/

Paris - A visit to the city of light - Partie Cinq

2011-10-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

Part 5 of my trip to Paris

my aunt has a bedroom on the basement level of her house and i get to live there! let's go take a look.

with a little tidying up it will be awesome.

awesome tiling that came with the house in the shower

other half of the floor.

toilet is separate like in London.

this is at like 9:30 in the morning on sunday cuz I went to the market with Josh. people pop into these cafes and throw down a little espresso in like 2 minutes and bounce. when i was there i was thinking what a cool tradition it was. there were also a few people drinking wine already.

the market that Josh goes to every sunday near the house. i've never seen so many kinds of potatoes in one place before.

that's the spirit dudes. flying high fives.

as we were walking down one street Josh said that someone burned a whole row of motor bikes there a while ago. I thought, um ok sure. But then we were walking down another street and I was like is that where a motor bike got burned? He said oh yea, i think that happened around last christmas. What kind of a place is Paris where vehicles get burned out on the regular?

that cute mother loving labradoodle. I love when dogs do this thing where they stretch their back legs out. it means he really wants you to pet him. or maybe it means they have phantom itches because you chopped off their balls.

ham and cheese crepe. i was with my aunt and she said it was the biggest one she's seen. score!

Ernest Hemingway lived in this neighborhood for a bit.

street near the house.

love the multi chimney architecture that happens in London and Paris.

a sampling of what awaits you at the bakery on the corner.

croque monssieur is a hot ham and cheese sandwich with the cheese on top for some reason. was it delicious? yes indeed.

maybe its just cuz i was in Paris but i thought this was the best croissant i'd ever had.

cleaning robot cleaning the pyramid at the Louvre. the line to get in was super long. i forgot to make a panorama shot of how ridiculously long it was and am too lazy to do it now. it only took about 20 minutes to get in though.

winged victory.

one of the big Paris disappointments. Do you dream of seeing the Mona Lisa and studying it and becoming enchanted by that cheeky smile and trying to find hidden meanings? well good luck because there is a sea of orangutans with cameras mindlessly snapping away that you have to get through first. the closest you can get to it is still too far away to see anything anyway.

its so far away there is no point in even trying to look at it. it's like trying to look at an 18"x24" painting standing 15 feet away.

it's an absolutely ridiculous scene.

i'm assuming these examples are Korean people but i've seen them do this in China too. Why Korean people why?!? it's embarrassing to you and me.

a little less crazy at the venus de milo. remember last year when me and bob and fu-balls saw a giant statue of this and winged victory somewhere in Japan? we didn't know what this armless statue was but now you have it, it's the venus de milo.

Louie the something's something rooms of decadence.

i liked this series of three statues of a guy doing the 3 things that a man juss gon do: 1) wrestling a wild boar and throwing it over his shoulder 2)wrestling a deer 3)wrestling a woman and throwing her over his shoulder.

Ingres's turkish bath. pretty sweet. thanks to computers i don't know proper grammar and if it should be Ingres's, Ingres', or none of the above.

Jardins de Luxembourg. coolness dudes, keep it up. old guys and middle aged guys and a few younger guys chessin' it up

i saw an old dude come and rip this off the side of a bus stop and throw it on the ground like he was looking for all of these specific ads. he didn't put up something of his own or anything he just walked away. I don't know what this says but dude was not happy with it.

the view from the Montparnasse tower which has a better view than from the eiffel tour because the eiffel tour is in this view and the ugly tower im standing in now isn't.

the service at montparnasse tower is horrible and rude. anyway as soon as you get up there you're faced with this so lots of people end up falling into this "photo" trap

there were mad chinese people that had gotten their pictures taken against that green screen in this line waiting for their prints. look at how horrible that looks. are people retarded? the real eiffel tower exists directly outside of the window to the right!

i saw these things a lot in paris. i guess they just stay there in areas where they have markets. Josh was saying something about how its a law that they have to have so many markets and bakeries like every 300 meters to keep the quality of life up or something.

at dinner in chinatown which is near the house. a lot of employers give these out and you can pay for certain stuff with them. I guess eventually i'll learn more about how the french system works but it sounds like you pay a ton of taxes but get tons of free stuff and perks like these restaurant cheques and free health care.

Paris - A visit to the city of light - Partie Quatre

2011-10-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

day 4 of my visit to paris.

Paris is like the third place in france to have this free bicycle system. there are 20,000 of these in paris. it's awesome, and biking in paris is highly recommended. when will HSBC USA make chip and pin credit cards so they can be used in the rest of the world? I'm sick of trying to use my card in all these countries and getting a big middle finger from my chipless card.

bike lanes, there are quite a bit of them so it makes biking safer, unlike london where there aren't that many.

I took a stroll through Le Marais, a lot of it is the old jewish quarter. its full of cool stores and stuff.

check out this city construction vehicle. pimpin' it with a landrover.

i tried to go to musee caravalet but there was something going on and the fire dept was carrying a hose out of there.

this guy that i presume was french looked at me with disgust as i took a photo of this dead pigeon. he kept looking at me down the sidewalk even like 200 yards away. the kind of look you give someone if you had raped their cat (which i didn't). another instance in Paris where i was preparing to fight someone.

parting the waters in the jewish quarter

i love lamps like this and long for the day when i can own one of these to draw with instead of the $13 ikea one that i've owned in every country i've lived in.

so much wine is consumed here that they have these wine bottle recycling things everywhere.

what that isss? a mini tuba?

i really like this. there are so many two wheeled vehicles in Paris that they need this type of signage.

i looked online for 30 seconds and couldn't tell if this is made by the space invader street artist but my guess would be no.

at this bakery this machine handles all the money, the human workers dont ever touch money here.

quiche, a french institution. good stuff. looking forward to trying the many varieties.

the george pompidou center. the concept was to turn a building inside out and put all of the inner workings like air ducts on the outside. George Pompidou is a former french president that is loved and hated.

Both Ray women in one wes anderson like shot

the tail end of the techno parade. it ended at place de itale and looked like bad news because i thought it looked like a bunch of unsavory youth drinking and ready to go wild, but my aunt didn't think so. but that's cuz i can't read the streets of paris yet.

500th Post Anniversary!!!

2011-10-11T18:32:00.008-07:00

500. Did you ever think we would make it? Can you believe I wrote 500 of these things? To commemorate the 500th post on my travel blog i have compiled the best of my blog up until now. I tried my best to compress the 3.5 years worth of this travel blog into 60 photos, complete with commentary. It's not an easy task to trivialize 3.5 years of traveling around the world into 60 photos. This blog has taken us from New York to China to Hong Kong to Japan to Korea to Spain to the UK and to France. This is not a best of photos post. These photos represent the best of my experiences thus far. If you're just joining us, here is my back-story. I was living in New York City slowly making progress as a freelance illustrator when one day my Aunt who was working for the Washington Post as their Beijing correspondent suggested that I come live with them in China. It had been 2 years after i had graduated and I was starting to get more and more illustration work, so i thought, maybe i might be able to actually do it. So I jumped. I lived in Beijing for 1 year and 4 months and my illustration business grew enough that i could make it in way more expensive Tokyo, where I lived for 1 year and 6 months. The earthquake happened, my visa was soon over anyway, and so I fled to Seoul for 1 month of fun. Then it was Barcelona sun for 3 months. Next was London, where I have now been living for 3 months with a visit to Paris in between. 500 posts. 500 adventures. 500 memories. Thank you readers and supporters. Here's to 500 more!

When I first started the blog back in new york the photos were this big and taken with a canon pocket camera. I've since upgraded the size of the blog photos and to one of the most expensive cameras you can get. In New York I had a bunch of friends and was kind an organizer. This is a dodgeball game. We got some mexican kids to play with us too.

the last ever Viva La Everything party that I threw with my roommates. We did this party maybe 6 times at Happy Ending Lounge and everytime it was a raging party.

upgrading laptops from that IBM thinkpad T21 circa the year 2000. I make my living with this 15 inch macbook pro. I do huge illustrations on that 15 inch screen and take it with me everywhere in the world. It's been up and down mountains in southern china. the logic board blew up in tokyo and i had to pay $600 to get it fixed.

this was a big moment. this was THE moment. That sack of crap was going in the dumpster and then me and bob were going to the airport to fly to China where my journey would begin. After living in NYC for 7 years I gave away most of my possessions. things that i spent years accumulating. That jar of peanuts? toast.

I met Angel on Flickr before i went to Beijing and met her the first day I was there and we've been buddies ever since. She helped me out with everything and all the friends i made in Beijing were through here somehow. If I didn't meet Angel my time in Beijing could have been horrible. What a friend.

Peking duck gets a shout out because it's my fave food from beijing. There is too much other good food from China to show here.

seeing the extreme poverty in parts of China was a good for me.

collecting cultural artifacts from China and everywhere i've gone.

Bob coming to China with me really helped. Its always awesome to have someone to share the first days of your new territory with. Sharing the laughs, the blunders, and the sweaty summer times. I also like laughing at bob when he does things like get minor heat strokes at the great wall 20 minutes in.

My first visit to Japan. This was a magical moment in Kyoto when i was by myself for the day and wandered onto this hill of jizo.

Everyone should just let Japan wash over you the first time you go there and you should really enjoy the first time you go there because it will be the most magical and crazy time. I bought this Gachapin costume and wore it around shibuya, it's polyester and it was july. sweat factory.

I saw 4 Olympic events in Beijing. Handball, Women's beach volleyball, Women's badmitton, and Track and Field in the bird's nest stadium. What an energetic time in Beijing and in life. I was getting the hang of beijing life and still seeing tons of new things everyday.

My visit to Hong Kong. people ask why i like hong kong and this photo is part of my answer. It is literally bursting at the seams with life. It's like a compacted chinese version of New York and there is this whole underground city too. I remember looking up once and it looked like the Jetsons city with multiple layers of roads zooming past skyscrapers

The biggest art i had made up to that point and turning point for me. I got this commission from Tiger Beer and could basically do anything I wanted so it was my first chance to put my chops to work combined with the new found inspirations from china. This illo won in a few competitions including Communication arts and Luerzer's 200 best illustrators worldwide.

A trip to western China, to Li Jiang. I saw the most beautiful village, the only hierglyphic writing still used in the world by these guys, the worst worst worst bathroom i've ever used, a pristine lake village high in the mountains where the women hold all the power, and climbed the jade dragon snow mountain that is 4680 meters.

chinese new year is a sight to behold. weeks of fireworks at all hours amongst other things. i hope to see it in southern china or hong kong where there is even more fanfare someday.

seeing the thousands of buddah's carved into this mountain in Da Tong, which has the coal plants where all of beijing's power comes from. Also saw the hanging monestary hanging on the side of a mountain on this trip. and I saw an average sized chinese city and how dirty it was. it was a good character building experience.

another commission for Yahoo! Philippines where i could do anything i wanted. It's proved to be a theme that when I do what i want I make my best work. funny right?

Debbie and Salih coming to Beijing. the first time i could share the craziness of china with my friends from NY. It's nice to have that reality check.

food is so cheap in china that i didn't really have to worry that much about where to go eat because everything was available to me (the A-hole American earning dollars). pictured here are xiao long bao and tofu "brain". awesome breakfast time food. The best times in Beijing were exploring alleys on my bike and trying new food at new places.

my parents came to China. it was good to share this new crazy world with them.

another do whatever you want job from Yahoo! Singapore.

I lived near Lake Houhai in Beijing. i spent many a day biking, jogging, eating, and relaxing around this lake.

a trip i made by myself at the end of my time in china. i went to southern china, to yangshuo, guilin, long ji, and rode a boat down the Li river. this rice terraced village at Long Ji was the most amazing memory of China. the sun was setting as i walked around the rim of this utopian village.

Next up Japan, WTF. what a country. every western person is drawn to it, every asian person too. its a weird, wacky, wonderful place and it was my dream to live there and I did it! Here is a scene from Design Festa that they have a few times a year in Tokyo and you have to go!

Karaoke in Japan is far superior to anywhere else in the world. sound quality, song selection, food and drink are far far far above everywhere else i've lived in the world. and japanese people are by far the most fun to go to Karaoke with. Here are my old FIT buddies Yuri and Fumika.

The first of hopefully 12 years of Japanese new year's cards featuring the asian zodiac animal of that year. 2010 was the year of the tiger. i did 2011 the year of the rabbit. next year will be the dragon. this is signifigant because it's all paint and no photoshop at all. If i want to be a real painter i have to keep doing this.

did i almost die? I woke up in the hospital not knowing where i was. I was there for 4 days after being hit by a taxi somewhere near akasaka in tokyo. my skull was fractured and took 3 months to heal. I have to remember to live my life to the fullest and all that other good stuff that you're supposed to feel when you have a brush with death like this. talk about dramatic, this is as dramatic as it gets.

one of my favorite moments from Japan, this day at Yoyogi park during cherry blossom season in April. warm weather, cherry blossom petals falling, sake, and friends and strangers laughing really hammers home the Japanese utopia feeling.

everytime i look at this photo i get the feeling of spring, that feeling of anticipation and wonder. This IS my romantic image of Japan and i can't think of a better one. This photo is pure magic, and its real and exists in Kyoto and probably many other places around Japan during cherry blossom season. it makes me sad to look at this too because it's over. the moment in this photo is like a cherry blossom, its so beautiful but only lasts a moment before it's over. maybe if i was older i could be one of the people that appreciates that they had this moment instead of feeling sorrow that it's over. maybe when i'm older i will feel that when i see this photo.

Fushimi Inari in Kyoto is probably my favorite shrine. I went to Kyoto maybe 4 times before and never went here and when i finally did a 5th time I was blown away and couldn't believe i hadn't been here before. things like this are why i want to live in countries i go to for extended periods of time as opposed to just visiting and being a tourist.

the iga ninja festival. a day of running around in a rented ninja costume with the rest of the town makes you gotta love japan.

I've been to Korea 3 times since I've started my worldly travels. Everytime was to visit Yoon. One time I had horrible horrible food poisoning and was up all night throwing up and went to see his doctor uncle. I was supposed to go to Chongju but took the wrong bus to gyeongju which is at the other end of the country. what a horrible sweaty food poisoned day. but funny for others. enjoy.

Marco was my best buddy in tokyo. we were in the same class and i don't know which one of us hated the school more. and bob came to tokyo for another installment of raish brothers good times.

sushi in japan is the best. and its cheaper than anywhere else. both obvious points but i'm just sayin'. i mean it blows everything else away.

a huge development, getting into the DSLR game. i started with this Canon 40D and 6 months later made a huge leap up to the Canon 5D mark II. from here on out the quality of pics on the blog were 100x better.

my japanese family, the sugimotos. I went to school with fu-balls in New York. Also i ran a half marathon in 1 hour 42 minutes.

climbing mt fuji. it sucked and sucked even more going down. but at the top it was heavenly. i would never do it again though. but its one of those things you can brag about. even though all you have to do is set yourself in motion, get your friends to go, buy the bus tickets, buy some water, and start walking, and then anyone can do it, including super old elderly people (and they certainly complain a lot less about it!). but still its something to brag about.

festivals, another reason to love japan, and this moment at this festival is one of the great memories. the awa odori festival in koenji, tokyo. these girls are about to spring into a high energy routine along the street lined with people drinking, clapping, and being merry.

another kind of do what you want job for a book on phobias. this is the fear of crossing bridges.

for some reason I love the movie step brothers. It features olan mills/sears studio portrait style portrait of the two brothers and the whole family. Me and my assistant bob whipped together this makeshift studio. we are totally serious.

trip to nagano to the onsen town and the hot springs monkey park. he's not really smoking, its photoshop, sorry to burst your bubble.

Earthquake! my visa was about to end and I was about to get ready to end my life in Japan when a 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan and caused a huge tsunami and nuclear power plant disasters. I spend a few days in my apartment nervously working on the most laborious advertising project ever as aftershocks and nuclear radiation fears increased. finally i ran away like all the other foreigners in Japan did. I fled to Korea floating on a rubber tire.

trip to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone between north and south korea. things are super serious there. it was weird to see the land of evil before my feet. North korean soldiers were staring at us. Our cable car thing got stuck in the 3rd underground tunnel that the north koreans dug into south korea and for a minute i thought it was all over.

The car show in Seoul. Man what a day. I usually scoff at these car shows and these girls but once you're in there your primitive caveman with camera instinct comes out.

piles and piles of Korean meat.

I have known Yoon for 10 years since we were roommates at Yonsei University in Seoul. Since then our friendship has seen many countries, which of course means ping pong matches. Recently Yoon got this trophy for us to trade back and forth depending on who wins. It currently resides in Seoul with Yoon but not for long.

screen golf in Seoul

14 or 17 hour layover in Moscow, flying from Seoul to Barcelona. I slept on the floor with all of my bags looped around my body in the cold of the airport overnight. Actually got a few hours of sleep.

La Sagrada Familia, the best of Antoni Gaudi's architectural works in Barcelona. it is a sight to behold.

festival de sant joan is the biggest beach party in Barcelona and other areas along the coast. it marks the longest day of summer i think. jumping over bon fires more than 3 times or something like that brings good luck. it was super fun

spanish food is awesome. salmorejo is one of my favorites.

the running of the bulls in Pamplona is the biggest party in Spain. i got the most drunk in my life ever and don't remember anything from midnight on. it is scary actually and i'm lucky to still have my expensive camera. people just party and drink in the streets 24 hrs a day for a week. oh man.

Next stop, London. Regents Canal in London and the Sandwich Barge, a narrow boat with a cafe on it

my flatmate Lucy and one of her dogs Wilf.

The Strawberry shortcake kitchen.

huge poster for Facebook Singapore featuring some of the archetypes of people from the countries I have lived in.

Cafe in San Germain in Paris and people watching.

The streets of Paris and the grandiose architecture.

What does the future of the blog hold? Bob is coming to London for 2 weeks before xmas and then we are flying back to new york for xmas. I'll spend 2 weeks in NYC and after that I am coming back to London for a month. Then i'm moving to paris for either 3 months or 1 year if i can get the artist visa. after paris it's kind of in the air still. I will try to get a special business visa for Hong Kong because i still really want to live there. if i can't get that visa will i just live in HK for 3 months? can i really see myself in south america? it's kind of distressing that i have no goal that i am super hellbent on accomplishing now that my goal of living in Tokyo has been realized. Have i ruined the specialness of the world for myself? Will this blog see 500 more posts of me living in other countries? Stay tuned to find out.

Harvest Time Illos

2011-10-10T12:55:00.001-07:00

This was made through Kult design agency in Singapore, and it's like my 5 or 6th time working with them. All of the pieces that people like of mine were done through this agency because they let me do what i want. This means the projects get very personal and I put WAY more time into them than i should. The Client was Facebook Singapore and I had to illustrate this fact: There are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices". There was no way i was going to draw an insane amount of figures like I did for the Bounce Dryer Bar campaign so i though of taking a cross section of people and then i remembered the personal project I have been meaning to do where I illustration people from every country i have lived in. Here are 18 people from China, South Korea, Japan, UK, and Spain (i'm not including NY). I wanted to draw some of the archetypes of people you find in these countries, the common types you see on the street everyday. Examples are, Shibuya girl, Spanish protester guy/girl, Beijing belly man, Korean acid wash jeans/jeggings girl, Chinese Pajama man, japanese salary man, etc. This is the largest piece of artwork i've made so far, it's A0 size (32.7 x 45.4 inches), but my macbook could handle it because i actually worked on each figure on its own file and put them all together in the end. eventually I will post the tweaks I have done to these characters and the blurbs i have written about them and present it to you in properly because this project took me 7-8 days working on it 12 hrs a day. The photo research alone took half of the time I think. and its all because it's so personal to me and my travels and I wanted it to look right. But for now here is the version that Facebook used.

there was a big party for the opening of the Facebook office in Singapore. you can see my art in the background. there were 6 artists in total.

this is an alternate version

spot for chicago magazine about Fashion Trunk, a new service where you can have a "trunk" full of clothes delivered to the comfort of your home so you can watch football and try on clothes at the same time and you pick what you like and send the rest back.

spot for triathletes world magazine in the UK. it's about a woman who has to drop out of a triathalon because of under training.

Paris - A Visit to the City of Light - Partie Trois

2011-10-04T15:49:00.000-07:00

I thought this was a delorean for a minute but its 4 door

French vehicles

The Moulin Rouge, pretty disappointing outside. I heard its crazy inside though.

Pigalle is the red light district.

Mont Martre again to check it out properly

Sacre Coeur is a roman catholic church at the top of mont martre and is the highest point in Paris.

i was taking a photo of this while sitting on these steps and a middle aged french dude sitting next to me pointed and said "chinatown". I'm sick of this sh!t so i said WHY DID YOU JUST SAY CHINATOWN?!! WHY WOULD THE FIRST WORDS OUT OF YOUR MOUTH BE CHINA TOWN?!!!! He said well its not a requirement its just a suggestion. we sat there longer and eventually he started telling me about other places in Paris every now and then and eventually he suddenly got up and walked off and said goodbye. the day before some indian/pakistani/bangladeshi construction worker guy on the sidewalk was saying "chinois, chinois" at me. I was pounding down the sidewalk in a hurry to get home and was so shocked and already too far away before i realized what he was saying to say or do anything. I seriously get in a murderous rage when things like this happen. why would he say that to me? the surface answer is for sh!ts and giggles. a little deeper its because he knows asian people never do anything, but if i was white or black or spanish for example he wouldn't say that because he would get punched. Paris could be the end of Jason Raish. I might end up gutted by a knife in the street one day after i knock one of these clowns. These instances make me so angry they cut the logical thinking cord in my brain and i turn into a red eyed bull.

as i descended from Sacre Coeur i felt like some guy crossed the street to follow me i crossed the small street a few times and he always ended up on the same side. I stopped, he stopped and looked at some fabric shop. i was thinking there is no way this guy gives two sheits about fabric. I finally stopped to take a photo of this and watched as he turned the corner. He saw me looking at him and came over. I was ready to fight dude and he was saying something in french and i was like i don't know and he asked where i was from and I said America and we shook hands and he said enjoy paris and walked off. was it a series of coincidences followed by him seeing me eyeballing him as he turned the corner which might make anyone pissed off or was he sizing me and my camera up for the steal. Did the guy on the steps at the top of Sacre Coeur tip him off? anyway now these occurances have made me paranoid about Mont Martre and Paris in general. I felt an element of crime in Paris that i haven't felt else where. and it was hard for me to get a read on what was going on there in the streets. Asia is no problem. London and New York, I got it. But Paris, I couldn't tell if it was full of unsavory characters or if most of them were normal people.

to help counteract the sour event from before i was lucky to stumble upon this market, which i guess isn't so lucky because they seem to have markets all over the place all the time, which is awesome.

this cheese round was like 1.50 euros i think. whats the name of it? rocamadour? fermier? i don't know how to decipher this yet.

these are the potatoes that sit under the rotisserie chickens and catch all the drippings all day long. good stuff. i think it was like 1.50 euros also.

how is this 500ml bottle of water .18 euro cents(24 US cents)? That is approaching Beijing prices! I don't know how a bottle of water anywhere can be a quarter, but it was and it was priced correctly.

School crossing guard.

the Palais Royale garden.

royal palace courtyard or something.

a ferret or weasel or something. great and descriptive post this time around right?

Paris - A Visit to the City of Light - Partie Deux

2011-09-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

Part 2 of my visit to Paris

This is Kaz, short for Kazam. He is a Labradoodle, a mix between a Labrador retriever and a Poodle. He is a mid sized dog.

My aunt and uncle bought this house in the 13th. It's a rare thing to own a house in Paris, especially one with a back yard. I'm happy to be staying in this house.

one last shot of the magnificent beast.

someone on our street got the boot.

I went off to meet my friend Betty from New York. she was at the top of Monte Marte, the highest point in paris (not that high). the area around Monte Marte is full of cool streets. I didn't have much time to look around that day but the next day i did.

what does it mean? and what is the meaning of this artwork?

a stones throw west of Sacre Coeur is this square with tons of portrait artists set up.

yes the Moulin Rouge is at the bottom of Monte Marte but this is not it. you will be disappointed to see what it looks like on the outside at least in the next post.

oh my lord french women. but then on further inspection i saw that it was Monica Bellucci, who is Italian. But back to french women, they are hot, beautiful, have some kind of dark-ish complextion thing going on (due to some mixing but i don't know my french history), and ooze sex appeal. they dress well and have this air about them that whispers "sexy", and not in a forceful way, it seems natural. I heard many comments about the merits of French men from all the foreign females I hung out with on this trip but who cares about them.

oh look it's Betty, who i last saw in Tokyo on new year's eve with Fumika when I lost my wallet. She came to Paris for 1 day and 1 night with her brother and their friend and I happened to be there at the same time. the power of facebook. naysayers should take into account the benefit it serves to us travellers at least.

the Seine. what a place.

Notre Dame. swarming with tourists.

service.

bob said come on a sunny day so you can see the stained glass well. i don't know if it even matters because of how the stained glass diffuses the light but i can't yet give that go ahead tip yet because when i went to Sagrada Familia in Barcelona it was also on a sunny day.

across the street at Subway (the american submarine sandwich chain) you have to pay 50 euro cents (75 cents) to use the toilet.

notre dame, the seine, and what i think are excessively large river boats. why can't be be smaller more charming boats? come on mayor of paris!

notre dame is to the left but then i wouldn't have been able to get the golden 6pm rays of light on these beautiful riverside Parisian houses.

this is for bob. probably too small to read the titles of most of these books but it looks like they're all in english. i think bob once mentioned that even in china the books are in english cuz that's just how the math world works or something.

Drinks with Betty's French friends that used to live in NYC. this was just a normal place and the coronas were $9!!! other beers were cheaper though. watch out if you order imported beer is the lesson.

Kaz gets day old baguettes and either eats it immediately or chews on it for hours. I found in barcelona that i couldn't buy baguettes everyday like you're supposed to but in paris everyone does it so i guess i will have to. it also helps that there is some law where there has to be a bakery every 300 meters or something crazy like that.

Paris - A Visit to the City of Light

2011-09-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

My visit to Paris, the City of Light. My aunt, uncle, and cousins live in Paris so I went to visit them. I will move to Paris next year and stay with them. The french have a reputation for being rude and snobby, but i didn't see that.

I rode the Eurostar train through the "chunnel" from London to Paris. i think its called the chunnel cuz it goes under the english channel and its a tunnel? and i heard that no one calls it the chunnel and that is just a tourist marketing campaign for losers?

the metro in Paris is grimy like new york.

if you look really quick this looks like NYC. i don't remember any other cities i've been in with crap scratched into the doors besides NY and Paris.

that's me

first thing i saw was this cat chillin' next door.

this was taken the next day in the afternoon but i'm putting it here to show what i saw when i first came rolling down the street to see where my aunt lived, and ultimately where i would be living. I was pretty excited to see this street.

this is their house, pretty cool, and pretty exciting.

they even have a yard. like in NYC its rare to have a house in the city proper so they are really lucky to have this small back yard/garden.

who is that dude? he looks russian

Arc de triumph. This is the original and its 50x bigger than the one in washington square park in NYC. this is the biggest roundabout in Paris and it's at the top of Champs Elysees.

Champs Elysees, the most famous street in Paris. its lined with luxury stores, restaurants, cafes, and then a bunch of regular stores. it's the biggest and most beautiful shopping street i've seen thus far. that said, i don't love shopping so i don't know how much time i will spend on this street

why do tourist fall for these guys all over the world? don't they know their pockets are gettin' picked?

the architecture in france is pretty grandoise. its' like Barcelona on steroids. both cities have their charms though. Barcelona has smaller quainter streets and alleys while Paris has everything bigger and taller.

The Obelisk. these pharaoh guys are maybe the sh!ttiest living statue guys i've seen.

The Louvre. I took a taxi home one night and we drove through here, it was pretty cool.

the Seine is the river that runs through Paris. It's in countless movies and there are something like 30 bridges that go over it. I love canals/rivers in cities so I love the Seine.

sorry to ruin it for you but there is a photographer on the left that i cropped out. this couple is getting pre wedding photos taken, they aren't creating your romantic Paris dream fantasy moment. it would have been nice though.

oh hey look everyone is having fun and laughing!! but wait, they are gypsies and are bothering the sh!t out of everyone with their Deaf Mute signup sheets and they are not deaf or mute and are pick pocketing little sh!ts!!! they approach you motioning for you to sign their sheet and point to the english part that says something about deaf mutes. I was trying to take photos and they kept bothering me so i ripped one of their signup sheets out of their hand and we all saw things were getting hostile so we all went away. they are all over paris at the tourist spots so after the first time i saw them somewhere i started getting annoyed.

couples write their names on locks and lock them to this bridge.

i like how some of the boats have these smaller sub-boats on the back.

there are all these cool book seller stalls installed on the the walls above the river

St. Germain is such a cool area. its full of cool cafes, smaller streets, tons and tons of galleries with actually cool artwork, etc...

i had espresso at this place. i think coffee is weaker in Paris than in the US. If i drink 3 espressos in a day in NY i will be wired for hours and hours because i never drink coffee. but i drank a few a day in Paris and felt nothing.

i liked these frames.

M.Chat, also known as Monsieur Chat is the street artist responsible for this yellow cat. usually he has wings and is flying. he's been on the blog before when i saw one in Seoul. there was one above rosa's pizza on 27th and 7th ave in NYC across from FIT. He was caught in the act a while ago so now he's not anonymous anymore and everyone knows his real name.

Juarez Mercado is a Brazilian artist who has a french connection, the creators of the French movie "Amelie" credit Mercado as their color and style inspiration for the film. Amelie is loved by almost everyone including me. I dig Mercado's work too.

I bet they have to move something in through the window because the inner workings of the apartment are so small that its impossible to get it into the top floor any other way.

is this where Steve Zizzou used to hang out with Esteban?

you know what this is. One of my uncle's 3rd cousin's daughters and her friend were staying for 1 night so i went with them to dinner and the eiffel tower.

Tokyo tower is inspired by the Eiffel Tower, and is 8 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower but for some reason this feels bigger.

you would think i would make fun of her but I just want to applaud her effort in the pursuit of the best shot.

access to the top of the tower shut down an hour before we got there so we could only go so high.

every hour these lights sparkle for 5 minutes. of course it's best seen from somewhere that is not the Eiffel tower.

going up and down the elevators is weird cuz they go at odd angles and it looks like your going down into some secret government research lab. After this we walked around for an hour trying to find somewhere that sold wine this late at night. we couldn't find one until we got a taxi to go home and asked the driver and he knew a place.

I'm getting P!ssed

2011-09-23T03:40:00.001-07:00

Another Britishism. I'm getting P!ssed doesn't mean i'm getting angry, it means i'm getting drunk. if you want to say you're getting angry you have to say i'm getting p!ssed off.

It's the 1 year anniversary of me getting a DSLR camera and greatly improving the quality of photos on this blog. I used this Canon 40D for about 8 months and made a super upgrade to the Canon 5D Mark II and have been using it for about 4 months now.

Wilfred Tanner looking sad and pathetic after all his dignity has been taken from him.

Lucy and Wilf. When will betty make it onto the blog?

Lucy made me my first Jacket potato. when they say jacket they mean the skin. its filled with baked beans, tuna mayo, butter, and cheese. really unhealthy and really good.

some kind of demonstration near whitechapel station

there are these little windows at the ends of the cars so if you're standing in front of them your hair gets blown like this

the Association of Illustrators if the UK's version of the Society of illustrators only proportionately smaller and compareable to the size of the US vs. the size of the UK. this is the annual show. I would enter my stuff since i have a lot of british clients but if you get any pieces into the show you have to pay like 500 pounds which is rediculous!

i forgot to write down the name of this illustrator.

Beibei Nie is my pal and she just got her masters in illustration from Camberwell. this is at their masters show. http://www.beibeinie.com/

There was some big exhibition of art by Chinese people/students or something like that that Beibei was part of.

Tianzuo Chen is beibei's friend and a fine artist also from Beijing. I get the skull and ramen noodles but don't get the jade. http://tianzhuochen.com

the big performance art thing was these people running back and forth in these suits. was it commentary on chinese labor?

I finally got a smartphone. this HTC wildfire S. its android so it kind of f's up a lot. its like having a mini pc which means its like having a mini baby. you have to make sure it doesn't get sick and that its ok all the time. it is a useful tool though and its nice to have the GPS maps and check mail and stuff. I'm just not a fan because the battery sucks so bad and doesn't even last a whole day if you are using it. i was expecting to combine my phone and ipod into 1 device but because of the battery sucking i can't. unacceptable!

plugs in the UK are huge and i had to buy a bunch of adaptors. little things like this add up and it makes moving a little annoying sometimes. lets see what else i had to buy....

a printer. it was 25 pounds ($40)

i can't live withough music and i can't live with the laptop speakers built into my macbook. these JBL are acceptable i guess. a far cry from the soundsticks i had in Japan. i bought these used from a guy on gumtree. its just temporary so i can live with it.

this is a huge developement. that huge huge and supery heavy thing in the back is a 1TB harddrive. it weighs almost 7 pounds. the two black things in the front are the size of 4 passports stacked up (hence their name, western digital My Passports). they are 1TB each and cost like $130 in the UK, and are like $100 in the US. They weigh half a pound each. So no more having a 10 pound bag of flour in my backpack when i travel! I originally got that huge monstrosity because its super fast and you can work off of it. these smaller ones are powered through the USB and way slower. But i rarely work off external hard drives and the savings on weight and size are so great that it has been one of the best travellers upgrades i have made so far.

watercolor postcard by laura lopez balza on the left and marco pardo on the right. some dudes postcard on the bottom left and a postcard from Joan Miro's exhibition at the Tate Modern.

the rooftop of the Red Lion in shoreditch.

Casablanca beer from Morocco at some hookah place. i'm slightly interested in going to morocco someday.

my friend asked them for burger sauce and i was like what the H is burger sauce. and then they pulled out this. i guess its standard fare in Britanica.

i was on columbia road late at night for some reason and saw this.

rou jia mou and shang xi noodles at Chang's Noodles across the street from from the Bi Won Korean restaurant btwn tottenham court road and holburn. Beibei brought us here.

two random pieces of paper in my pocket. one from a protester guy camped out in that square opposite westminster, and the other being the pre-made strips of paper with the number that drug dealer gave me.

a huge project for Facebook's Singapore office. I will show the final artwork when i can.

Ami is from Japan but here on working holiday and is a hair stylist. here she is cutting a gorilla's hair.

we saw these people coming out of my apartment complex and later saw them doing this in shoreditch. i am so cool and my neighborhood is so cool i just want to punch it and me in the face.

Best of Spain - In Conclusion

2011-09-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

The Best of Spain. Spain, the 4th country I have lived in since I left the US in 2008. I lived in Barcelona for 3 months. My buddy Marco persuaded me to come. I studied spanish for 1 month for 2 hrs a day everyday. I went to Valencia, Madrid, Pamplona, Costa Brava. I went to festivals. I went to Sonar, the biggest electronic music festival. I lived in a big apartment with 6 people. I rode my bike around everyday.

Barcelona is rated one of the best beach cities in the world. its crazy how i could ride my bike here in 15 minutes and be on the beach.

as with every new country going to the super market and having a whole new world of food and products available to you is awesome. especially when that means serano ham, chorizo, monchego cheese, spanish tomatoes, etc... I also fell in love with pan rustico aka those little hard bread rounds. tomatoes in spain are a million times more flavorful than what you get in NY or London

look at how horribly this photo was processed. I will leave it like this to shame myself. anyway my apartment was shared with 6 people in total but was big and had this balcony overlooking this barcelona street (Enric Granados).

Tapas/algo a pikar are awesome. there are so many and an infinite world of them out there but the super common ones like pan con tomate here are simple and awesome.

another common one, pimientos de padron

this beer held me down and everyone in barcelona down all summer. they are like 33 euro cents at the store or 1 euro on the street from your closest walking bar

the pipa club on the second floor of a building in plaza reial is hidden. they have random stuff going on there and i went on a night when they were doing tango dancing. the inside is decorated like a 1930's style old boys club

this square where they executed people against that wall during the spanish civil war is one of the most amazing things i saw there.

crema catalana is like creme brulee but not totally, so its a little different, I only had creme bruless in paris once but so far i have to say i would choose crema catalana if i had to.

Madrid was an awesome city, and it helps going with Marco who is from there and knows it well. the La Latina district really surprised me and you should go to this lively area anytime but especially on sundays.

its in Spain that I finally had access to tons of cheeses so i tried a lot. out of the manchego cheeses i like the mature older ones as opposed to the young fresh ones.

Pamplona is a city transformed once a year by the running of the bulls and it really kicked my arse. i got the most drunk i have ever been in my life because it looks like this all night and day for 7 days and everyone is partying and drinking in the streets all the time. What an experience, the parts that i can remember.

the festival de san juan is the biggest beach party of the year in barcelona and probably anywhere along the coast. it went til sunrise and was super fun. jumping over bonfires is part of the tradition

the churros at san gines in madrid are famous and delicioso

the Mediterranean, i love this view from the back side of mont juic for some reason

i finally got my 5D mark II. at $2,500 the most expensive thing i've bought in my life so far and my final camera upgrade for many many years. It's an amazing camera.

Catalan food including these huge toast with stuff on top dishes are awesome. Its unique to barcelona and a few surrounding areas so get it while you can. and La Taverna Llesca is the best place i had it in Barcelona

Friends in Barcelona, there are too many too name and there are many more that are not in this picture so I will just say thanks to all my friends in Barcelona!

plaza espanya, a place that i ended up at many times. mont juic is in the back

pepitos in valencia. i fell in love with this tapa from Valencia at first bite.

salmorejo is the cousin of gazpacho and is a cold soup. amazing stuff and im totally in love with it and eating it with bread.

Spanish women are hot. that's all there is to it.

this spanish woman is not hot. this is marco pardo doing what he likes to do. I went to school with Marco in tokyo for a year studying japanese. we were in the same class and shared the same hatred for the school and hung out everyday after class. thanks to Marco showing me Spain and getting me to come over. And thanks Laura for being one of my only Spanish friends that couldn't speak spanish but would still be friends with me.

bocadillos are an awesome invention and really hit the spot.

of the Antoni Gaudi stuff Casa Batllo is on the best of list

seeing picasso's artwork in spain is a must, especially seeing his guernica painting in person in its enormous size and enormous message. it really got me and hopefully it will get to you too.

a strange but fun night at jamboree in plaza reial. it was wednesday hiphop jazz night and was a strange but cool mix. it immediately literally 3 seconds after the jazz ended turned into a hip hop dance club that flooded with youths literally 5 seconds later. I don't know if i can recommend this place but it ended up being interesting for us.

of the Antoni Gaudi stuff la sagrada familia is at the top and for good reason. its amazing inside.

gazpacho the cold soup from Andalusia is also amazing and i'm in love with it.

Joan Miro's artwork and museum in barcelona

"teaching" Yuko's kids was great. teaching really is good for your soul and you learn things about yourself and your art when you teach. and its rewarding when you have students who really want to learn and enjoy it. i can see how you could get addicted to teaching (bob and mom). for teachers out there who have horrible students, sorry that must suck super bad.

this festival in Barcelonetta was unexpectedly fun. just drink something and dance like everyone else and don't try to fight it.

Costa Brava is such a beautiful place. this trail that winds along the coast all the way to france blew my socks off. you walk through peoples back yards, up and down beautiful gorges from beach to cliff, all while overlooking green waters.

horchata in Valencia, a drink made out of tiger nuts or something.

galleries and art. barcelona is absolutely packed with galleries and artists. 50% of the people you will meet in Barcelona will be artists, painters, designers, architects, interior designers, etc... there is always a gallery opening to go to or some art event

this is a best of that happened after I left. My buddy Illustrator Marco Pardo in Barcelona asked me to take part in a project put together by Spanish illustrator Elenio Pico (who is a professor at Escola Massana in Barcelona). He got a group of artists together and printed their art on sails for small boats that float in fountains around Barcelona.

Final Thoughts:

Spain is in Europe so it's got that European touch of class to it. Many people don't know anything about Spain and imagine it to have spicy food, be as hot as a desert, and be a dangerous place. All not true. It seems that the general attitude in Spain is work enough to enjoy life. That means no overtime and other work related stress. No stress at all actually. The general mood is chilled out, no one is walking fast, running up subway stairs to get to their next appointment, etc... People don't seem to care about money or material things here either. As long as they can chill with a beer on a terrace or go to the beach and have enough money to eat tapas they are cool. So this is why Spain is both a good and bad place for me. Especially Barcelona, one of the best beach cities in the world. Combine the beach with constant fair sunny weather, and the Spanish work ethic and it makes an environment that is very hard to work in. I did very little work basically for 3 months because everyone was always going to the beach or meeting for a beer at an outdoor terrace/plaza or something. There is no push or culture of working super hard for 12 hrs a day. You might say, that is F'ing awesome! and it is. But if you have dreams it can be bad because you have to have the determination and self control of a monk to advance yourself/career/dreams here. It seems that Spanish people don't really aim high, which is fine for some people, but I have things I want to accomplish in life. So in short, Barcelona is an awesome place for the sun, beach, parties, relaxing, de-stressing, etc... but not a place for me to further my artistic goals because, like it or not, your environment seriously effects you. Why do you think everyone moves to New York? I am sad to leave Barcelona, I will miss the glorious weather now that i'm trading it for London where you have to wear a jacket in the summertime. And on a final note being an Asian and especially an Asian male in Spain sucks. I was just another untouchable Chino in the street. Everyone says I am imagining things but I'm not. I have verification from a Chinese guy that lives here because I had to talk to him all the way to Pamplona because he randomly was assigned the seat next to me on the bus. I won't go into it again but I posted about the "Chino Factor" at the bottom of this post if you want to read my thoughts on being an Asian male in Spain.

Ok so in conclusion Spain: Weather is amazing, food amazing, relaxed lifestyle with no stress, but hard to do work if work is what you want to do, sucks being an Asian dude there.

End of Summer Illos

2011-09-21T13:16:00.001-07:00

My buddy Illustrator Marco Pardo in Barcelona asked me to take part in a project put together by Spanish illustrator Elenio Pico (who is a professor at Escola Massana in Barcelona). He got a group of artists together and printed their art on sails for small boats that float in fountains around Barcelona.

this one is my boat.

cover of the travel section for the washington post about time shares and all the crap that rains down on you when you take part in them. Such as dealing with points, paperwork, incentives, and pitches

why oh why did i pitch an idea with so many intricate objects?

spot for Times Higher education in the UK about some education organization and how secretive they are about their testing methods. They are like ninjas. The deadline was super tight so i only had one shot at the ninja and had to leave everything the way it fell. or else i would have done it until i got it the way i wanted. Maybe i will revisit ninjas later on but for now they go back onto the pile of personal projects i have going on.

spot illustration for Emmy Magazine, which is the magazine that gets mailed to all the members of the Academy of Television Arts and Science (aka TV's Emmy Awards). Its about some guy who was on a game show and lost but came away with a borrowed shirt from the guy who played Carlton on the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire.

spot for Jazz Times magazine about Jazz musicians and the ear damage they receive.

Are You Alright?

2011-09-21T11:29:00.001-07:00

Are you alright? in britspeak it doesn't mean they are concerned about your physical and mental well being, it just means "what's up". This throws me off all the time because in the America "are you alright" means it looks like there is something wrong and that i'm in need of assistance.

Tayab's is a a famous and popular and always packed indian joint a little below whitechapel road. it's really cheap but very good. thumbs up

did you know how easy it is to get an international driver's license? you send 15$ to AAA and that's about it.

next to Weiden and Kennedy off of brick lane.

somewhere near tottenham court road.

what?

i rode the thames clipper. its like 5 pounds. i like boats so it was pretty cool. would be cool for anyone. this is tower bridge.

blue cranes

the london eye. its like 20 pounds to go up in it. F that.

big ben.

one of the sides of Westminster palace. its pretty massive. the sun was not in my favor at this time so all the photos of the other side are absolute "rubbish"

across from westminster is this square with protest people camped out, legally i think. Looks like there is a Korean hunger strike going on around the corner, for what i don't know.

me like shiny things.

The Getaway. I like this shot of a taxi driver and old woman in the back taking off from some church that is probably famous.

st. james park

factoid time. This is Pall Mall street. the name comes from Paille Maille, a french word for the game of croquet which literally means ball and mallet. it gained popularity in england and was played on this here area so much that it was named Pall Mall.

i saw all the movie studios in this square.

filming something in that square.

All Saints is a british clothing brand and they're stores are decorated like this with old sewing machines.

you have to pay 30 pence (47 cents) to use the toilets, at least in liverpool station.

fish and chips from Poppy's off of brick lane. It's huge. the two most popular kinds are cod and haddock, one or the other is better, whichever one is listed first is the most common and the second one is the better one. confused? me too, hope it helped.

"crackling" is the fried batter and juices that come off the fish in the frying process that you can get at most places. so eating this is basically eating a pile of fried if that ever were to be such a food.

cockney rhyme slang adorns the walls at poppy's. the real english word equivalent is next to the rhyme slang.

i had to buy this when i saw it at the store. big saucy bangers. bangers aka sausages. it is the british version chef boyardee crap. the bangers were made out of the same stuff basically.

another example of candy land. Elephant and Castle is a tube station for real.

Borough Station

borough market called me, i had a deadline but i couldn't resist.

this hunk of that dessert wine marinaded gorgonzola cheese cost like 10 dollars but its awesome.

the apartment across from BeiBei's apartment looks amazing inside.

And Bob's Your Uncle

2011-09-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

No It doesn't mean my brother Bob is your uncle. And Bob's your uncle is Brit speak for, "and there you have it" or "and you're all set". For example, "to set a car alight, simply poor gasoline in the driver's seat, throw a lit match inside, and Bob's your uncle".

I've seen a lot of photo shoots/video shoots going on in my neighborhood. And they're always dressed funky.

drinks at the Griffin, which is across from the Book Club basically. Everyone drinks outside on the sidewalks in London pubs.

Hoxton Square is cool.

a Beef pie with mash(ed potatoes is what the brits mean).

a random assortment on the sidewalk

down the street from my house.

London has a "free" bike public bike system too. its a 1 pound access fee and then a 1 pound a day rental fee for 24 hrs. or 45 pounds for a year. I have hesitated to do this cuz London is not a bike friendly city cuz the roads are narrow, no bike lanes, and drivers are not yet aware of bikers like they are in tokyo.

Brick Lane review number 2. me and johnny wanted to try somewhere new so we let a guy tout us into "Cafe Bangla". I think he started at 11 pounds and johnny got him down to 8 pounds for whatever meal crap.

This place gets an A+ for awesome artwork on the walls. This isn't the only mural where you'll be wondering what the hell is going on.

chiken tikka starters. super sad size and not so good.

papadoms or however you spell it. are you supposed to dip into these are spoon out onto the papadoms? i don't know what the status quo is so i have been mashing my things in there and i'm probably not supposed to.

all i can remember is that the portions were super small and nothing special. So this place ultimately gets a thumbs down for skimping on everything and not tasting the best despite the fact that it has the best weird art on the walls.

what is going on here?

oh they just threw in a princess diana mural amongst the 13 year old boy's heavy metal dream land murals.

What is this thing called? a spatula, a pancake turner, a flipper? Lucy insisted it was called a flipper or "flippa" in her accent. The official product name is "Nylon Turner". I came downstairs in the morning to find that some clever gal was trying pull a fast one on me. Double gloucester is cheese that uses cream from the morning and evening milkings or something so its yellow and kind of like cheddar. it's not bad. Wenslydale is frequently mixed with fruit and ends up tasting like dessert cheese. also not bad if thats what you're looking for. but if you're looking for a cheese that slaps you in the nuts these are not it.

badminton at some sports center near angels house. I guess some sports that are not so cool in the US are at least tolerated here by people from all walks of life.

my first real cream tea at this cool place in stoke newington meaning just tea.

my first scones with clotted cream and jam. clotted cream is chilled and kind of like butter but creamier and chilled-ier so its awesome. scones are basically biscuits with more sugar in them. they don't even have biscuits in Britanian.

Angel's parents bought James a new Roland.

A melodica that you blow into. Yann Tierson who did the soundtrack for the movie Amelie uses this.

there are a lot of these stores in my area.

I hope to capture the complete "Poor Man's Harry Potter" cast on camera before I leave London. I missed my chance at the perfect Poor Man's harry potter at the airport last time cuz i was in a hurry. will i get my chance again? here is the poor man's Neville Longbottom.

Columbia flower market again with Lucy. This photo is horribly edited but i gave up on it so here it is anyway.

Lilies and Gladiolas from the flower market.

Lucy came home and said the riots were now 2 blocks from out house. I had a magazine deadline i was working on so i couldn't move from my desk to go take pictures or run away if necessary. all i could do was listen to the BBC and have a little adrenaline running through my blood the whole day. Lucy has been living in the area for 10 years so she has friends all over that were texting her updates like that their store is getting looted now and that they're not attacking people with cameras yet and looters yelling get out of here white people. She would yell these updates up to me in my room but all i could do say oh my and keep working. By the next day the carnage was over and a lot of the businesses in our neighborhood had been trashed. I tried to go Argos with Sioban but it looks like it got looted.

So tons of windows smashed all over London and England, fires set, (here on the news they say alight, as in 50 cars were set alight), trainers (sneakers) stolen, electronics and liquor stolen, and cars burned out. There was a riot in the 80's where they cut a police officers head off with a pen knife, in the same area where this riot started. I can't believe the police even let this whole thing come to this but everyone said the police in london don't beat people down like that. So they just let their city be set alight and ravaged by "youths" for a few nights.

Are You Taking the P!ss?

2011-09-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

No it doesn't mean what these three possibly european bums did in the corner before they passed out on top of each other on this couch on Brick Lane. In Brit speak "are you taking the p!ss" means "are you having a Giraffe?". Which in Cockney rhyme slang means "Are you kidding me?". So in the end it means are you joking? Insert British accent for more humor.

Drug dealer on Old Ford Road. I was taking a pic of those chimneys in the back when this dude rolls up and says "what are you taking a picture of, take a picture of me". So i quickly snapped a few horrible shots while he asked me if i smoke or do coke. I said eh and he handed me a fortune cookie sized piece of paper with his name and number hand written on it and said call him and he can sort it out. I later saw dude on Old Ford road again on day 2 of the big London Riots with a bandana around his face, I was going for a jog. I didn't say hi to him cuz number 1, why would i do that, and 2, he probably remembers that i have pics of him. On the news they were asking people to send photos and identify rioters. whether he was en route to partake in some unsavory activities like breaking windows remains a mystery, but he certainly was dressed for the part, and this prior encounter doesn't help either. Don't look for them, they'll find you. Everyone gets asked if they want drugs by what seems like the majority of the male population in whitechapel/bethnal green/brick lane/hackney.

A way cool discovery was regents canal. I guess there are other canals too like little venice. I have to check it out.

I'm in love with these narrow boats. I saw a sign that said they can only stay for 14 days and then have to move their boats. Maybe that means they don't have to pay for moorings to dock their boats if they just move down the canal every 2 weeks?

boot planters.

you can rent this kind of narrow boat/canal boat. I want to do it for a night and have a little party on one. but summer is over so i don't think its going to happen. but for anyone reading this that has a chance next year, think of how cool it would be slowly chugging through the canals of London, sipping wine/beer/champagne with a few of your good buddies and male/female companion.

a different kind of canal boat.

back of that same boat.

there is a path along the canal with lots of joggers and bikers, it's a cool path that transports you from london to like some cool canal path. creative descript i know.

water fowl with freaky feet.

why don't they have these east west signs other places? they would really help travellers.

i saw a few young people with these boats and talked to two boats. 1 guy said the boat was 10,000 pounds. he had a solar panel and internet. he uses his parents address for mail.

this one was cool. it's a traveling tea and snack boat. i talked to the Woman and she says she travels between the different canals in London and you can see her location on her website. I didn't have time to have tea there but I will soon! lets go everybody!:

http://www.thesandwichbarge.co.uk/

bookshop boat

what appeared to be a bike repair boat but just may be a young guys boat that was fixing his friends bike and selling this one.

ping pong in some park with James and some of his friends.

pints at some pub that had board games and this game where you guess what you are but you can't see the card.

these seem like new bums. they may be eastern european. this was on brick lane, in this alley that smells like p!ss. this is one of the downsides of brick lane. this is not Japan. well it could be if they were wearing black suits, replaced the couch with subway benches, increased the money in their pockets from $0 to a lot, and replaced that garbage back there with a suitcase or something.

Every sunday they have the Brick Lane market, I took a stroll with my flatmate Lucy and her dogs through here and up to the Columbia Flower market which is also every sunday. From wikipedia: Pearly Kings and Queens, known as pearlies, are an organised charitable tradition of working class culture in London, England.^[1] The practice of wearing clothes decorated with pearl buttons originated in the 19th century.^[1] It is first associated with Henry Croft, an orphan street sweeper who collected money for charity. There is a pearly king and queen from each part of the city that is elected. in the old days these pearly kings would protect the street vendors from bullies trying to oust them from their spots. The suits are woan at charity events, christenings, weddings, and funerals. My photographer flatmate Lucy did some event and they were there.

of course its so stereotypical for there to be a fox doing needle point embroidery in the window wearing james dean/hipster/shoreditch clothing above the columbia flower market. I got 3 big bundles of Lilies for a sunday dinner party at Ed's house.

whitechapel road and valance road. E1 PMP. its a subaru something. due to the neighborhood you can almost guarantee that this is owned by someone from the area of india and that they are super cool. why else would they park it on the side walk?

I sorted It

2011-08-29T17:01:00.000-07:00

I sorted it in Brit speak means, I got it done, i worked it out. In this post I sorted a lot of my flat issues.

at Henry Root in south kensington. Henry Root was some famous writer who wrote funny complaint letters to various companies and corporate entities in the 70's or 80's or something. the restaurant is named after him and is delish. Artichoke, bread pudding

my first round of british groceries. i tried that canned ham in the back hoping it would be like spam and it is a poor imitation. the duck eggs were good, richer than chicken eggs. the cheeses were both acceptable. not something i would buy again given the wide selection at the store. I'm on a mission to try every cheese. seriously i love cheese.

Lucy took me to a slew of these kind of furniture shops in our neighborhood.

everyone knows what this is don't they? its the infamous swedish meatballs which means i'm at ikea.

i had to resort to ikea in the end because of price and need. I have kind of specific needs when it comes to a drawing table because i draw directly on it. so i just went with what i knew would work and what i've had in every country i've lived in. god i hate ikea. this is how i took the whole unweildly thing home. it was kind of rediculous. i carried the biggest desktop, legs, an office chair, laundry rack, and floor lamp. at both stations that i had to transfer at tube or overground train employees helped me along. the MTA could take some lessons in british manners!

it was my mission to review 1 indian/bangladeshi/pakistani/curry place on brick lane a week. I have already failed and am a horrible food reviewr also because i only have like 4 adjectives to describe the food i'm inhaling, unless you count grunting. good, bad, no, yes. No and Yes aren't even adjectives. So the first place is Curry Bazaar, which is Bangladeshi.

i got chicken bhuna, it looks like its tomato based. if you are wanting fatty creamy tikka masala type stuff this is not it. it was nothing special. I guess the first thing i need to do is learn about indian/bangladeshi food first before i can even pass judgement on a restaurant. this was the first time i had chicken bhuna. British people have a far superior knowledge of Indian food than americans. They say Curry is the official food of Brittan (unofficially).

when we were walking along Lucy said all the cab drivers have to go to these schools here in this area to learn the "knowledge". I was like ok sure. she meant the "Knowledge" as in the actual name of the test they have to take where they have to memorize every street in London.

who is that little scallywag under my bed? why it's Wilfred Tanner, affectionately called Wilf. He is a _________ breed?

the book club. opening of this french guy and some other dudes exhibition. the book club is a cool spot and recommended by me. they have ping pong tables too.

the basement of the book club.

we went to Bei Bei's flat which is like 1 street over from the book club btwn shoreditch and old street. she pays 400 pounds a month for this place and it has an awesome 3rd floor outdoor patio thing. so lucky.

Bei Bei is from Beijing and just graduated from some masters in illustration course. Angel met her on Chinese twitter and so i met her through angel. we have pu'er tea on the patio.

she cut out her name for each one of these business cards individually with an exacto blade. crazy.

near shoreditch high street station. they are lit up like its an approved and commissioned street art area....

these taxi stands are few and far btwn in London and there are only a few left. you can hang out and drink tea in there.

oh it's the two people i hate the most from albany in one photo. Johnny ribiero and grace chan. grace passed through london for a day on her way to ibiza, spain.

Masako said there was a double rainbow where she was. DOUBLE!

oh awesome bob lets book out tickets now! come on don't you remember 70 years ago when we used to read agetha cristie novels with a flashlight under the blankets?

oh great attitude as usual Mel. Melissa came to london and paris for a vacation. It was all albany alumni, all day.

the W hotel bar.

my twin, only his shirt is probably better, mine is from uniqlo.

the night bus is not so bad if you know what you're doing. they come about every 20-30 minutes. in NYC, tokyo, seoul, beijing, barcelona, there is no night bus. the night bus is awesome actually. in NY you would be waiting that long for the train, and in the other countries you would out of luck.

Braithwaite Street formerly know as Wheler Street. can they really do that?

Oh, That's Well nice, yea?

2011-08-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

"well nice" is a british-ism. like, "that smells well nice".

Borough Market is fully approved and recommended by me. it's awesome. its on thurs, fri, and saturdays. I've been twice now. Pies in britanica mean more than just desert, they are stuffed with all kinds of meals fillin's. i tried the wild game pie filled with, venison, pheasant, rabbit, and pigeon. it was good and fatty. If you've lived outside of the US for a while one of these is a meal. they're like the size of a softball but super compacted with stuff.

add your own jokes

desert wine marinated Gorgonzola. i was in heaven. I loves gorgonzola and the desert wine gave it an extra zing. This one cheese maker there only makes a small wheel of this every week and we got a hunk of the last part and at it all.

this beer stall has everything. even a kind of sapporo i never had.

wild boar (like a real wild boar not that american processed deli meat company) sausage panini with gravy.

grassy area next to borough market. british hipsters look like american hipsters no?

The Gherkin. that's what people call it. it has a real name and its not after a pickle but who knows what it is. its london's modern landmark.

in britania they say joe bloggs instead of john doe.

the Thames river with tower bridge in the back.

millennium bridge is the bridge the death eaters blow up at the beginning of the half-blood prince harry potter movie. it leads to the tate modern.

Death Eaters running about the aspens at the tate modern.

building sand castles on the vast and beautiful beaches along the Thames river

Battersea park south of kensington. we had a few tennis balls but nothing to do with them so i set out to find a stick for some stick ball. all i could come up with is this huge branch that blew off in the storm. So we played huge Un-weildly branchball. baseball is not popular in Britain so people don't know the rules and common baseball terms used in english like "that's strike 3 for you Mr." go over their heads.

Ed liked scoring "stick goals"

Cricket match. i guess they go from the morning till dusk, like 10 hrs or something.

Watch a cricket pitch or whatever you call it when they throw the ball, the field is called the "pitch".

i had to break the huge branches into manageable pieces so we all got scratched up swinging them around.

our Branch Ball league rookie cards

A trumpeter vine for my mother.

My first real mainland chinese food since i lived in China. There are a bunch of people from beijing that live in london now that angel knows. Included is my pal Sophie Wenlin Pan W Wendle who is actually from NY but lived in Beijing when i did and I met her there.

Your parting shot for today is a dead fox on the sidewalk near Johnny's flat in South Kensington. I turned the corner and was freaked out, and then wondered if someone was playing a trick on me, throwing this stereotypical British thing out where i would run into it. In the morning it was gone. Insert BBC wildlife narrator David Attenborough's voice here about how this is the unfortunate consequence of cities encroaching on nature and then stay on this shot for a few seconds and then fade to black, and commercial.

Living Inside a Giant Strawberry Cupcake

2011-08-21T04:09:00.000-07:00

So I got a flat finally after a week of looking everyday on gumtree.com and moveflat.com. It's in east London, off of the happenin' Brick Lane. Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Brick Lane, Liverpool Street, and Old Street are all within walking distance. I chose this area because east london is where it's at. The girl owns the place and has lived there for 10 years. It is an ex-council flat that she renovated with all the nicest and high-end stuff. The place has style. She is like Strawberry Shortcake if that character grew up to be a hip beautiful photographer that now has mature tastes yet retained part of her signature Strawberry Shortcake style that we all know and love from when we used to be 6 year old girls. The kitchen is all pink including the high end appliances like the Smeg fridge. I liken it to living in a giant strawberry cupcake. You might say gross, or what where you thinking Jason! But in the age of ikea it is nice to live in a place where no expense was sparred and everything is high end, and most importantly where someone actually gives two pence about what the place looks like and has a style. I like the kitchen, it looks like something i would put in my illustrations. it's 600 pounds a month ($1000).

film. she switched over to digital in recent years and has the same camera as me. only she's a pro and really needs it.

shes really nice and lovely and has a great sense of humor. i guess you could call it british humor because its constantly sarcastic.

It's called a toilet not a bathroom because in many houses the toilet is separate from the shower/tub and in another small room all together.

my other flatmate is a lecturer on psychological well-being and lives in this room now.

the bathroom is newly tiled

i like this pull string light.

this is my room.

that's an antique lampshade by some guy, i can't remember the name.

Finally here is a video tour of the flat. You can see it in higher def if you click through to the vimeo website.

Harro Rondon

2011-08-20T18:27:00.001-07:00

If I have to spell it out for you its "Hellon London" in Japanglish.

this is the first picture I took in London. a large gentleman squished into the super skinny handicapped box. this is one of my prize captures.

Brick Lane is all Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani restaurants. Curry is the official unofficial food of England. Everyone here as a way better knowledge of Indian food than Americans.

side street off bricklane that is always full of merry making drinkers. this side street has cool shops, a cool record store, and a cool bar (the big chill bar). and this picnic table side cart establishment that you see here at the start of the street.

there are these wait button signs everywhere because the streets have these mini islands in the middle where you can cross halfway but have to wait to cross the other half.

One sign amongst many in my argument that London is like CandyLand. once i get enough of these signs together i will make a comprehensive post and you will see how Jubilee, Elephant and Castle, Picadilly, Battersea, Oxford Circus, and Gumdrop Lane come together to form a giant CandyLand board.

the finest english breakfast i've eaten so far, somewhere in Chelsea.

a woman facing her demons at the Saatchi gallery. Or else wondering what the hell is going on like the rest of us.

Old street is another cool area that just blends into Shoreditch.

at the brittish film institute they were giving out these hats that are from the Avengers to promote something like classic england or something. I knew we could take a stupid uninspired pic later on and we nailed it.

Electricity Showrooms is in shoreditch and is highly recommended especially on thurs, fri, sat nights when the downstairs room is playing music and turns into a dance party.

i like the wall paper downstairs too. it looks like it could be designer wallpaper.

the light up dance floor downstairs.

Oh look its the full british version of David Joseph instead of the half british mexican jew version we have to settle for in New York.

outdoor tri compartment p!ss stations.

just look at this specimen will you. dude is a walking human hamburger and he's not afraid to show it. Look at his shirt. Kudos on the body proportions. I don't think he's getting home anytime soon. Looks like he did too many hamburger shots

Phone booths around london are frequently decorated with this.

somewhere off bricklane

CCTV mobile enforcement vehicle. whatever that means.

The End of Barcelona

2011-08-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

This is the first time anyone has ever organized a going away party for me because I always do it. thanks marcus and selena. this party happened at the ADA gallery, thanks Isa. and thanks to everyone that came.

they got me a piñata but it ended up being this kiddie one with no stick, you just grab the streamers and pull down.

there were these inside. this will be one of many times in the blog post that marco looks really gay.

next was an absinthe place

its not hallucinogenic though, i don't think you can buy that kind

are you making fun of me?

next was this bar/club place where everyone was in high spirits, even marcus pardus. well everyone except that guy behind marcellus.

Laura part of another group show at this gallery.

the ladies gettin their nails did.

we drank 1 euro beers at plaza del sol

here is one reason why you should just take the pic when you see it. the first day i was in spain i saw these free bikes and thought that i would just take a picture of them another day. and i never did until the last day by accident. anyway if you pay some low fee you can access these bikes from many stations all over barcelona, many of them down random alleys you would never think of.

one last fiesta de dibujo at Luis's house. Its amy winehouse and who is that on the right? i don't know. i thought it was going to be kurt kobain until they threw the skirt on me. you know how you're immune to the smell of your own vomit? well this pic makes even me want to vomit slightly so it must be pretty bad for you. hahahaha enjoy what i've burned into your eyeballs for the rest of the day. I hope you think about this photo when you go to sleep tonight.

someone OD'd on agua de valencia (cava and orange juice)

I like how he went and took his shirt off and got back in the dress. i almost got a picture of him with a dress half on, unzipped in the back looking totally like that was his thing. we met eyes for a mili-second before he saw i had the camera up ready to capture the worst picture of him ever and he slammed the door shut. This is the photo I wish i could forget.

artwork exchange time.

So Barcelona is over for me. It was 3 months of fun and sun. I didn't work that much. My final thoughts are that Barcelona is beautiful, there are tons of beautiful people, its cheaper than the rest of europe, the weather is always perfect, and its laid back and relaxed. The down side is if you have goals and dreams you have to have the self control of a monk to achieve them because the combo of sun and Spanish work ethic make it almost impossible to get work done. I have the feeling that other places in spain that are not next to the beach might be a little more productive. I also had issues with the "Chino Factor" discussed in my post here if you missed it. Basically the beach, beer, terraces, gallery openings (there are tons everyday), and rooftop parties are calling you everyday and night and everyone else around you is down and concerned about working that hard to make money so it kind of takes the wind out of your sails and you end up chillin' all the time. It seems like Spain is a place where the people are fine with living check to check as long as they have a little money left for a few beers in a terraza and some tapas, because the beach and conversation (which the spanish LOVE to do) are free. This Spanish attitude, for the most part, is a beautiful thing. In Spain Arnold Schwartzenagger says Sayonara baby! instead of hasta la vista baby!. So Sayonara Barcelona!

A spot of spots

2011-08-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

I thought i would use some British speak for the title since I moved to London. Here are a gang of spots for various publications.

spot for Emory alumni magazine where an alum talks about her experience restoring ancient art in cambodia and how there is no clear linguistic distinction between buddah as a religious spirit or as a mere statue. She says it's one in the same for them.

A spot for the university of new hampshire about water fleas and new findings. I can't remember but it looks like maybe they can grow or evolve whatever they need?

A spot for Asian Lawyer magazine about how students of Korea's Judicial Research and Training Insititute (JRTI) are angry because the ministry of justice plans to hire from other law schools instead of solely from their school as has been the tradition in the past.

spot for THE (times higher education) in the UK about a red, greed, and amber university ranking system and its negative points. I can't remember fully but it was probably something where being ranked green had a huge advantage over other rankings.

spot for RIDES magazine for their "talkin' crash" column about celeb hiphop car crashes. this one is about Kendrick Lamar when he was a wee lad

spot for golf magazine's "rules guy" column about removing rock from the field of play. doing rocks is really hard and not too enjoyable for me.

another spot for RIDES magazine for their "talkin' crash" column about celeb hiphop car crashes. this one is about Big Sean crashing his grandmothers car and coming away with only a swollen pinky.

Valencia

2011-08-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Valencia is a beautiful little Mediterranean city in Spain with a population of about 1 million people, making it the 3rd largest city in Spain. it's about 3 hours away from Barcelona on the fast train

you go along the Mediterranean sea on the train!

the slower train i rode on to Valencia.

Columbus market

this is the super talented Raquel Aparicio. I stayed at her house for 2 days. I know her from Illostop, an illustration collective that we are both part of. This is the first time meeting her in person though. I love her work and you should check it out. http://www.raquelissima.com/

love the floor of her apartment.

her hobby is restoring furniture so there were a couple pieces of cool stuff she was working on like this old record player unit.

the Valencian version of coca.

Aitor isn't in any of these photos but he is from Valencia and i hung out with him both days because Raquel had a deadline. He took me here to eat tapas. He says he comes here with his mom. I recommend this place. La Pilareta.

Russian salad, mussels, and picos

I am in love. this is a pepito. this word seems to mean many different things but in Valencia this is what this thing is called. It's bread stuffed with meat, roasted red peppers, hard boiled eggs, tuna, and other stuff. then cooked in the oven or something. it's awesome!

trees somewhere in that old river bed they turned into a huge park.

Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències. the city of arts and sciences is a complex with cool architecture designed by the guy who is designing one of the new world trade center buildings.

i saw a postcard of this place and there was an old car parked in front of it like it was cuba or something.

bocadillo blanco y negro. a black and white bocadillo because it has blood pudding/sausage (morcilla), and sausage (longaniza), and some kind of beans on it too. delish. it's either from Valencia or almost.

horchata is from Valencia and is an sweet icy drink like thing that you eat with a spoon or dip with those sweet pastries. it's made out of tiger nuts (chufa). it is delish

Aitor took me to this horchata place because its in an area where tourists never go. Looks like its called La Suprema. You gotta try horchata if you go to Valencia.

ok train-o-philes. here is a fast train

and there is the bullet train i guess.

Costa Brava

2011-08-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

Costa Brava is a stretch of the eastern coast of spain that goes from Blanes northeast of Barcelona all the way to france. we went to Isla Roja, a beach near the town of Begur. It's a nudist beach. No one had any qualms about lettin' there tapas hang out. We also went to a couple other spots beach hopping but i don't know what they were called.

when i see maps like this on peoples blogs or anywhere that do not pertain directly to where I am going in the next 5 minutes I glaze over and keep scrolling. I'm just putting this here for the people who might be interested in this kind of geographical stuff. googlemaps said it takes 2 hrs to drive there. i think that grey line is the border of france. this is noteworthy because later you'll see pics of this beautiful seaside trail you can walk all the way to france

5 people in this SEAT Ibiza. Javier's car. this one day after my pamplona trip and i had a 2 day hangover so dragged me into the car, i was barely alive. i was like a pile of rotten hamburger that they had to shape into the form of a human.

we got there on a friday night. one thing that really helps a hangover is a skinny dip in the moonlight in your own private half crescent shaped beach paradise.

we camped on the beach and slept in tents. we ate various stuff including flame grilled anchovies.

Woke up to this. and by wake up i mean finally fell asleep after a night of pain on the sand and woke up 30 minutes later to this. sleeping in a tent on the beach is hard work.

this photo is kind of redundant but it shows mary joe's friend's dog. Spanish people can't say my name and they say "yason". so for the longest time i thought this dogs name was Yak, like a cute name for a little white and brown spotted dog juxtapozing the size difference btwn a huge white and brown spotted Yak. foolish me, his name ended up being "Jack". hahahahha

pretty sweet right?

next for some reason we beach hopped over to this semi hidden alcove that Mary Joe's friend knows about cuz he lives here. There was no one else around. we ate bocadillos, cheese, cherrys, and other crap. They said to watch out for dark spots under the water because they are sea urchins and you don't want to step on one.

this made me really paranoid so i took my time wading out to swim so i wouldn't step on any spiky sea urchins. the current was strong there so the proper way is to just plunge in and swim out instead of wading out and slipping no razor sharp rocks because the waves are pushing you around. I ended up getting a pretty sizable laceration on this foot and a smaller one on the other foot. it was bleeding a lot and it looked super deep. I didn't want to ruin anyone's good time so i just waited it out. finally i soaked them in the Mediterranean and when the blood was gone it didn't look so serious.

iodine.

another inlet

Costa Brava is where rich people, a majority of them being foreigners buy houses.

There is this trail that you can walk on all the way to france that follows the Mediterranean sea along the coast. we walked it for half an hour. see those potted plants that lead to those stairs that lead around the corner? that's part of the trail. the trail also leads you through people's property and in one place right through their patios. it is super beautiful and the rich people really take care of their landscaping. you end up walking up and down and along ridges jutting out over the Mediterranean all while being surrounded by beautiful houses, architecture, and landscaping.

the trail.

they said this symbol can be found throughout europe and signifies especially special trails. there was one of these symbols every 20 feet or so.

one of many docks or watever you call this that we walked through. just walking through people's backyards basically.

one of the many coves

this shot was taken from the trail up on a ridge. we hungout at this beach for a while. the water was so aqua it hurt. What a day. can you imagine walking all the way to France looking at this kind of stuff all the way?

the next day was stormy. but in spain that doesnt mean it will rain. it was really cold and windy though so we went home.

but not before javier jumped off this tall rock.

Pamplona and the Running of the Bulls

2011-08-11T04:54:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows about the running of the bulls and have seen clips of it on the internets and TV. But did you know it's also the biggest party in Spain that goes for 24 hrs a day for a week? 1,000,000 plus people. Hemmingway writes about this festival in his book "The Sun also Rises". Boy did I learn the hard way. I died in Pamplona. I am just a walking zombie now. I went by myself with my $2500 camera and am lucky to have it today.

Pamplona is a beautiful small city close to the Basque region. But during the San Fermin festival it turns into the biggest party ever.

in a short while i found myself in this beautiful square. I saw a glimpse of a giant black bull with some elaborate fireworks and sparkler thing on its back but didnt have time to get a photo.

I met these two american guys on the bus from barcelona to pamplona, Erik and Jeff. They found me on facebook later cuz i gave them a business card. The first order of the day was to get outfitted in traditional San Fermin festival garb. I guess this is a pretty cool life photo to have.

from there we immediately each got bottles of red wine to slug from which is where I can now pinpoint the start of a bad choice. People just drink and party in the streets all day and night

what's going on here? what's that other language to the right of the Spanish?

hey dudes where are you going with that pot of something?

calmer street of more civilized sitting down drinkers.

originally back in barcelona i was looking online at balconies to watch the bull run from. they ranged from $120-300. In the end i decided against it because the bulls run by in like 5 seconds and then it's over. Probably there is a lot of drinking and merry-making with whoever else is on the shared balconey and it would be cool to oversee the sea of red and white festival goers. in hindsight i should have done this instead of getting the most drunk i have ever been in my life.

market that is open into the night. By this point I had finished 1 bottle of wine and moved on to 40 ounce beers. why did i do it.

jeff is a school teacher so we got blackmail photos of him hanging out with these underage girls. I remember there being tons and tons of teenage girls everywhere.

ok whoa jason, time to slow down there, jason, JASON! he is not listening.

what am i doing? I basically would hang out with anyone.

just keeps getting crazier.

now the party is really jumping off if it hadn't been already in the last 2 hours. I'm friends with these guys on facebook now too cuz i guess i gave them a business card.

this is how the night probably looked to me. craziness, drunk spanish people zooming in and out of my field of vision, and me not knowing what the hell is going on.

I guess after that last night shot i was completely destroyed beyond belief so there are no more photos. Here we're waiting for the bulls. I don't remember this. I can now say it was the most drunk i've ever been in my life and that's saying a lot after living in Korea when i was 21 amongst all the alchohol challenged places i've lived in my life. I am not bragging, it was a horrible thing and really scary because I was by myself in another city in spain with my expensive camera.

There are two barriers. you're not allowed to sit on the shorter barrier closest to the bull run so if you ever go to san fermin don't sit there because those police dudes will kick everyone off right before the run. Make sure you get there early to get a good spot on top of the second barrier. I was destroyed out of my mind so i didn't get there early and couldn't even see the run because i was basically a walking zombie. Someone must of helped me along to get me even this far.

it was this guy, Au Goût M and his girlfriend that helped me live through the running of the bulls part of San Fermin. I'm friends with him on facebook now.

good thing he was a good guy because there is me and that's not me taking a picture of myself with my expensive camera.

there I am, a giant dumbass, totally incredibly passadisimo.

there it is, the moment of truth and this is all you and I get. These are the lead bulls that are less dangerous and know the path so the black bulls follow them. Why don't i have any pics of them? i don't know. I don't remember anything. I remember arguing with some dude who was sitting up on the top of the barrier and just giving up because i knew i was too drunk and powerless to do anything.

after the run party time resumes. later on all the bulls from the run would face death at the hands of matadors all afternoon in the bull fighting area behind me.

this old dude was cool i kind of remember.

why is old dude showing this to us? it looks like a lung, and he did have an amazing raspy voice, maybe it means he had lung cancer or something?

high ground to avoid the river of street cleaning.

what am i doing? being creepy and drunk

at this point the couple left and i was on my own again (i think). i slightly remember walking around some shopping area and it being really hot.

I didn't correct this photo so you can see what it felt like to be me at this point in the afternoon. Since i was already out of my mind i kept drinking cups of something throughout the day (probably coke and wine). So I was still the most drunk i've ever been in my life at 4pm. it was hot and the sun was raging and i was out of my mind. why did i take a picture of this? i'm assuming i was photographing the baby. at one point i remember thinking i was trapped in some kind of davicci code like conspiracy. did i think the baby was part of this conspiracy. I was literally insane.

this is the final picture. what does this mean? is it the symbol for basque freedom? again i met another stranger that helped me stay alive. I met this older skater dude that spoke english at some point. maybe he saw me wondering around with my arms out like a zombie and helped me. maybe his girlfriend who worked at the bar we were at asked him to take care of me because I was being a nuisance to the customers. who knows what happened. i just remember drinking beer with him in the bar and talking about franco and basque freedom. he asked me how i was getting back to barcelona and i said by bus and he said what time? i told him 6pm and he said oh sh!t you have to go right now! so if it wasn't for that dude i would have been stuck in hell forever and woken up in a park somewhere if i ever did wake up. He asked some african dude taking my bus to look after me and he did. why are people so nice to me? seriously thank you spanish people who helped me in my darkest hours in Pamplona!

i took the bus to barcelona which was like 6 hours. it was horrible but i didn't throw up. we stopped halfway and i got off, still drunk and wandered around. what was i thinking? i got back just in time for the bus pulling out. I would have been stuck in who knows where if i hadn't happened to circle back. i took a taxi from the station to my house but looked in my pockets and had to get out because i only had enough money to get halfway home so i had to walk the rest. what a horrible 15 min walk. This is me in the elevator when i got home, i am just a mound of semi-animated undead flesh. I even had to wake up the next day and do an illustration for a deadline the following day. Ok so in the end the spirit of San Fermin and the biggest party in Spain caused me to go way overboard and get the most drunk I have ever been and become temporarily insane. I am not kidding. Sure it's funny to you guys but to me it is super scary and horrible. This could be what scares me straight. Now i should carry a picture of the taxi accident and san fermin on my camera so i can periodically remember how lucky i am to have made it out.

Pamplona/San Fermin/Running of the bulls conclusion: go with friends, but if you go by yourself don't drink or somehow have the self control of a monk and only drink a little because the spirit of the street party will carry you away. Get to the bull running course early, I would even rent a balcony next time. It was really fun for the time I can remember. I am bummed that i don't have any running of the bulls pictures

Japanese New Years Card - 8 months late

2011-08-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

Did I really forget to post the final finished Year of the Rabbit card? It was done back in December. Well here it is 8 months late.

this year's holiday/new year's card. It's my take on a Japanese new year's card. Here is the process. first i made a color comp on the computer.

a couple of layers of gesso on coldpress watercolor paper.

had to paint the back with some color i have a lot of so it doesn't curl and evens out the paper.

printing out and transferring the sketch to the painting

stars made by flicking a toothbrush

sponges and brushes were used to paint this. everything except for the rabbit is done at this stage. I'll show you the final product when i do my happy holidays post.

The Final Product. I sent this to my friends in Japan on a postcard and my parents printed them as cards for family back in the States. Here is my take on a Japanese new year's card (nengajo, 年賀状). Traditionally they feature the Asian zodiac animal of that year, 2011 is the year of the rabbit. Throughout Asia, because of an old story, it is believed that there is a rabbit on the moon (instead of a man on the moon). Basically the bottom says Happy New Year and the top says 2011 and the final box below that is the character for rabbit.

excited about next year's card? So am I, 2012 is the year of the dragon. My goal is to do all 12. You can see the year of the tiger in 2009 I did here

First London Visit Part 2

2011-08-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I knew i was moving here in 2 weeks so I didn't go crazy with the photos, breaking my rule of just taking the photos when you have the chance because more often than not you will forget or won't get the chance again.

the natural history museum or something in south kensington.

Jan Jan (pronounced john john) didn't know she had her own website. the first girl on the front of janjan[dot]com looks suspiciously like our friend jan jan. that website is NSFW

i like how the rollover says jan jan (in katakana) Chinese. that is jan jan perfectly in a nutshell.

who is that i spy? this is one of the times i wish i had a zoom lens.

why it's Charles Darwin, it was cool to see a super famous British person while on my trip.

steak and ale pie. it was delish and so was the "mash" (mashed potatoes)

Euston station i think.

this reminds me of a room where blade would throw a tri star weapon and it would encircle the circular shaped walls and cut off the heads of 10 vampires in a mili second. and then he would catch the tri star weapon and maintain his unflappable look for close up for 3 seconds before they cut the scene. except for its the tube in london dork.

camden is a cool area and has a bunch of locks.

Jan Jan is also good because you can tell her to do stuff and she'll do it. Like stuffing her jan jan in a giant horse nostril.

Pimms is a fruity summertime drink from Britain. It works as a summertime drink.

See, I am the funniest and best friend in the world and even Micur knows that. That's why she got an internship in London a month before i was even there so she could make it look like she didn't plan it all just so she could hang out for 2 days before she had to go back to the states forever.

as soon as i got back to Barcelona that night it was business as usual. this time it was Selena's birthday party on Javier's awesome rooftop.

Coca is some kind of sweet bread/brittle like thing that is catalan.

Mari joe and Cecilia, two of my 5 roommates.

bollywood dance session cuz people from Selena's bollywood dance school came.

business as usual for Marco Pardo too.

my first attempt at making Salmorejo, the cousin of Gazpacho. it is also a cold summertime soup but is thicker depending on how much bread you blend into it, so it can be a sort of dip too. hard boiled eggs and serano ham are often combined with it. it is awesome and you should get up on some of this.

Scholastic Read 180

2011-08-08T15:49:00.001-07:00

my first book ever. I did this over a year ago and it just got published. thus is the publishing world. This was for Scholastic and it's for a Read 180 series book called "False". It's a reading intervention book that debunks urban myths. I did 8 illustrations inside

This myth is that Walt Disney is frozen in ice somewhere. not true.

Here is that the 5 second rule makes it ok to eat things you drop on the floor.

Carrots don't give you perfect vision, it was a rumor started by the British during world war two to cover up their new radar technology's success from the Germans. So they said it was because of carrots. The vitamin A keeps your eyes healthy though.

Elvis is not alive, sorry.

The myth is a dog's mouth is cleaner than a humans. I guess this is believed because they have natural cavity fighting chemicals and other stuff. This is the color scheme they went with.

This is the color scheme i liked.

Dropping a penny from the empire state building won't kill someone because the wind will blow it away and other scientific stuff will make it so it never reaches a dangerous velocity.

Elephants are not afraid of mice, they have bad eyesight and are startled by any small thing that moves. This is the color scheme i liked.

this is the color scheme they went with.

The color red doesn't make bulls mad, the motion of the cape gets 'em going.

First London Visit Part 1

2011-08-07T19:54:00.001-07:00

So I went to London for my friend Angel's (from Beijing) wedding. I moved to London 2 weeks later but still had fish to fry in Spain so i went back to Spain for 2 weeks after a week in London checking out neighborhoods.

Why do I always do smart things like drink a lot the night before i have to fly? it was a horrible day.

Look who lives in London. That a-hole jonny ribiero.

Angel's wedding was held at Chartwells way out in the shire on part of Winston Churchhill's estate. (I know I know, the shire is not a real word but I like to use it to annoy brits).

the tube in london is super small and claustrophobic. so far there have been almost no crazies or reasons for me to feel in danger on the tube. so far London appears to be a safer, cleaner, more civilized NY.

a new discovery, ginger beer. there is no alchohol so its like root beer with a ginger twist. me likes it.

Hyde park

Jan Jan from NY came for shag tourism. Jan Jan is cool because she will laugh at anything you say and make you look like the funniest guy in the world. and laughing is usually a good time.

first fish and chips in london. its fried food so of course it's good.

trafalger square.

again with trafalger square. What's going on here?

oh it's the insane harry potter fans camping out for 2 days waiting to see either the harry potter premiere shown on a big screen at the square or the actors or something walking the red carpet or a combo of the two.

we told jan jan we would meet her outside in front of camp potter. as a joke we pretended not to see her and inquired at camp potter where she was. they didn't know a jan jan by name so they went and pulled out their leather bound camp potter registry to see if she had signed in as a resident of camp potter. how crazy are these HP freaks.

some bridge next to battersea park

a sundy roast is a really British thing to do. A cheese board is as well. a cheese board is a platter of various cheeses that you eat after the meal. strange for us americans yes, but cheese after meals is a normal thing i guess here.

the bridge next to the Tate modern.

private joke.

at this point Ai Wei Wei was still in the clutches of the Chinese government and there was a thing on the wall saying this. His installation of millions of unique ceramic sunflower seeds used to be all over the floor and you walked on them but everyone pocketed 1 and took it home and now look what you get.

Diego Riviera

Salvador Dali. I like this disconnected phone thing he is doing. The Tate Modern is highly recommended by me.

Some graffiti area near waterloo station.

An english breakfast.

Kim Jung Eun

2011-08-03T08:13:00.000-07:00

My old pal from when I studied in Korea in 2001 came for a visit in Barcelona. She was in the snowboard club and jazz club back then and i've seen her here and there over the last 10 years.

Aitor and Jung Eun

I was missing Crif Dogs (from NYC) and their bacon wrapped goodness so i tried to make my own bacron wrapped avacado, cream cheese, and chives dogs and its just not the same because i think they deep fat fry them.

one of these went off right next to me on the walk home after that huge beach party and i had like 50% hearing out of my left ear for like 3 weeks and i still have i high level of ringing in it. me hopes it goes away.....

postcards from the picasso museum. you might think the bottom one is sheit and looks like a child drew it but it is brilliant picasso.

the Barcelona gay pride parade.

This is not gay, it is a Catalan tradition where they build a human castle out of people. They are called Castellers.

this shot is basically done. all that girl does is stand up and put her hand in the air and then they start disassembling.

See how poor and Paula are wearing helmets? it's because the top level castellers are always little kids and there were a couple times where they fell from the top and died so now they all wear helmets.

at the end the whole parade ended at plaza espanya where there was a huge stage. the performers were the worst and most untalented ever and the music was the WORST ever and it was tolerated by thousands because they were all LGBT and/or they were waiting for Alaska to perform (famous singer in spain). Seriously the music was the worst. it was some super untalented black dude from america first and then some transvestite from Israel next all backed by horrible music. after that i just go outta there as fast as i could.

My friend Yuko that I met in Barcelona is from Tokyo and married a Catalan guy and they have two daughters that are interested in art so I went to their house a couple times and "taught" a kind of class on illustration and art. It feels so good to teach and you learn things about yourself and your trade and also things from the kids.

Antoni Taipes gallery. his work is super avant garde and not accessible to the average or even above average person. We saw Flavia and her boyfriend, both from mexico there randomly and he said the work is maybe not so avant gaurde but more pretentious. this is also a good description. Taipes was Catalan and another darling of Barcelona. I don't recommend this unless you like this kind of art or have absolutely nothing else to do because you've lived here for 3 months already.

at the picasso museum there are mostly early picasso's. going from his school days thru the blue period and then including a few abstract expressionist and cubist works. and a whole huge gallery dedicated to Las Meninas, his spoof/interpretation of the Velasquez painting of the princess Margarita housing 58 paintings on the subject.

picasso print

one of his wives and kids

same wife, i love this and how he drew the nose

picasso again don't know who this is.

Los Caracoles is a famous paella place next to Plaza reial.

caracoles means snail so their bread is shaped like a snail.

some people like black paella made with squid and squid's ink but i don't. If you want to be safe go for the regular one. I've tried black twice and am not a fan.

this kitchen you walk through was super hot.

plaza reial.

didn't i tell you spain is all about terraces? even mcdonalds has a terrace on la rambla.

shot from the top of Las Arenas overlooking plaza espanya and montjuic.

Messi is the best soccer player in the world and he plays for FC Barcelona so there are thousands of kids and adults wearing his jersey on any given day.

the buzzer in my building. I can't even remember which one i live on, quarto 2a i think. which is the 4th floor but actually the 6th floor.

the fish sculpture by frank ghery at barcelonetta

aitor from valencia. We went out drinking all night around the streets of barcelona which was a bad idea because i was flying to london for angel's wedding the next day. I would see him again in Valencia before i left spain.

From the Camera of Norman Nublowski

2011-07-31T16:13:00.000-07:00

Photos by Norman Nublowski, German. Taken by him and edited by me.

Plaza Catalunya. This guy has taken being the king of his sh!tty domain to the max. Here he is waking up in the morning in his flannel robe and fanny pack, boldly surveying all of Plaza Catalunya, ready to defend his tent built on a foundation of pallets that he built with his own two hands.

probably in reference to how the police beat up people here earlier in the summer.

oh look a graphic design studio in Plaza Catalunya. This is creating work at its most basic.

another shot of what plaza catalunya has become.

somewhere near Jaume I station. these European tourists flooded our nice and quiet terraza and plopped right down in there next to us.

Plaza Espanya turned into a hip hop music filled NBA promotional land. Did you basketball is super popular in Spain? but not baseball.

the former FC Barcelona (soccer team) field on Montjuic.

banister detail at Casa Batllo

light detail at Casa Batll0

light detail at Casa Batll0

casa batllo glass barrier.