Easter in Times Square

Funny the thing you see walking to work in the morning. Here the divider between Broadway and 7th Ave in Times Square was nicely decorated with ... flowers of some sort... tulips I think. This space is normally filled with throngs of teenagers screaming for some attention from the MTV studios above.

Cafe St. Bart's

Tuesday was a gorgeous day in the city. The sun was shining, the clouds had cleared, the wind died down, and the temperature was a balmy 55+ degrees. I was on Park a few blocks from the office waiting to take a client to lunch and snapped this pic of Cafe St. Bart's. When the weather finally does warm up, this place will be jam-packed with midtown office-types such as myself hoping to catch a few rays of sunshine before heading back indoors to the soft glow of the computer monitor light.

Happy Belated Birthday

A successful weekend came to a close and back to work. I was pleased to be greeted by a little surprise decorations at the office. I think i'll leave this up for the rest of the year.

Taxi Ride Home

shot from the taxi on 10th Ave and 43rd St, going home to change and get ready for dinner

Iggy's

After our pot o' gold and education we needed burgers. Stopped into my new favorite bar, Iggy's Keltic Lounge where Paul negotiated the menus with the bartendress and ted adjusted his hat.


this is the bathroom.

it's actually a lot cooler than it looks here.
i swear.


we signed in our mark in the book. gave a little shout out to Sato Wada

Pot O' Gold & Free Education in the L.E.S.

Paul, Ted and I followed the rainbow down to the Lower East Side and it led right to... a Guinness distributor!
Coincidence?
i think not.



on the next corner we got a free education

Poker With The Boys

poker with some of the crew before the boys night out party got started

Up and At 'Em

Up and at 'em today! Brought the last 12-pack of Guinness to LM and her team who were doing their office move/expansion. Then down to Tops Cut in chinatown to get a haircut. This is the best place in town--inexpensive, the girls who wash your hair give 5 minute scalp massages, and the guy in the camo shirt, Joseph, does a great job cleaning me up.

Rudy's

Rudy's is by far our favorite watering hole. I live just one block away--not sure if that's a good or bad thing. We always end up there after a good night out on the town. It's a nice winddown and there are always cabs outside to take everyone home. These shots are an excellent representation of what a good night at rudy's in like--dark, fuzzy, and lots of unfinshed drinks left on the table.


Dinuka, Miki, and me
(just before D fell asleep at the table)

Good Nights For Now

Anna kisses goodnight


And the Cope Elliots perform a farewell pile-on

Paddy's Day Party at The Pad

Maryclaire doing deals, planning parties, drinking irish punch


...the party...

Wish You Were Here

Wish you were here

Dinuka & Hattie wish you were here

St. Patrick's Day Parade

This is the line waiting to cross the parade route on 5th Ave. I was on my way to a client visit (and then home afterwards) and we had to cross 5th. We had to wait two lights before we finally got across. In this shot you can't even see the front of the line.


We finally crossed into Rockefeller Center. This is one of the staging areas on 48th St.

Dinner with Joe

My best friend since i was in third grade, Joe, came into town tonight. He has a meeting with a new client tomorrow in the city. He and I have an online insurance site, GuardYourWealth.com, that has seen some trials and tribulations. It finally got approved by the legal department AGAIN and so is now live AGAIN.

He took me out for an early birthday dinner tonight. This is the escaltor bank at the Marriot Marquee where he was staying. I forgot to get a shot at dinner, but hey, enough of my life revolves around food without photographing EVERY single meal.

Brunch at Balthazar

Sweep dramatically into balthazar during brunch primetime when the masses huddle at the door hoping to get a glimpse of the seated few in the trendy soho bistro. let lm do the talking to the hostess, "how are you sweetie, you look wonderful, let me give you my updated business card, thank you so much for everything" and be seated in minutes as opposed to hours. Ah, the life of the manhattan socialite.

socialite? well, not really, i just play one online. lm has the connections in this town.

Beautiful Saturday in Hell's Kitchen

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood, won't you be my neighbor?
I had some errands to run today and then off to do... what else... kungfu. But first to enjoy the weather and possibly get my haircut. Here I'm wandering down 46th St between 9th & 10th aves. no such luck on the haircut, places are just too expensive


And then off to the UPS pick-up to get the package that has been waiting for me for 2 weeks. This is a look back at the neighborhood from 11th Ave. Oh, and by the way, the UPS pickup location was closed. I didn't do so good on the errands today.

Paul's Botique and 2012

I left work early today for some Friday afternoon commitments--NYC2012 called for a last minute shoot downtown, then off to Praying Mantis to open the school at 5pm.


However, for some reason i left work an hour earlier than needed and ended up on the Lower East Side with an hour to kill. I realized this on the subway ride down so i started looking for starbucks in the LES. found none and despite being a big starbucks fan, not finding any in LES kinda made me happy. Instead i saw a listing in Vindigo for Paul's Botique. Being a Beastie Boys fan i had to check it out. It was a cute little cafe with sandwiches and a strong espresso. I hung out there for a while, made some phone calls for work, and then went off to the 2012 event




The 2012 event was at the Chinatown YMCA after-school program. This event had the children making felt cutouts with an olympic theme. They had formed a goodwill partnership with a YMCA in Beijing (where the summer games will be in 2008). Everyone was having fun.


The two people here are Justin and Roger (the adults, that is, from left to right). Justin is the 2012 Manager of the Nations of New York and calls me to shoot some of their events. Roger is one of the Counselors for the Chinatown Y and does an incredible job with the kids in his program.

Lots of Kung Fu

Late night tonight at the school. They usually all are. This is the floor of my kungfu school, Praying Mantis Martial Arts Institute. After a good workout tonight, I stayed behind and had a great discussion with my senior brother, Vance, about the rich history of the 7-Star lineage. Then home for food, shower, and sleep.

Flash Blizzard

we got hit with a sudden blizzard today. the weather was warm and beautiful walking to work this morning. then out of nowhere this afternoon the temperature dropped and the snow and winds kicked in. this is park ave only 30 minutes after the weather changed

Time to go home

paul and i chillin, getting ready to get to the bus

Evil Paul

paul doing his "Evil Villian" laugh


ted


beer, poker, and some great friends
good weekend
actually, it was a great weekend. nothing beats hanging out with the boys, eating burgers, drinking beers, having some laughs. glad i went down to see the crew.

Guinness

ted getting ready to party


our special guest

Good Morning DC

At paul's safe and sound. woke up after the bus trip to greetings from Riddick, paul's pug puppy

Last Shot Before the Bus

after dinner we had a drink in the neighborhood and then i was off to catch the chinatown bus to DC. the chinatown bus is the cheapest way to travel to DC, Boston, Phila, or even Delaware. yes, delaware. anyway, you cath the bus in deep east chinatown, a section that borders the lower east side. nice wall of graffiti on my way to the bus.

Dinner Then Gone

Mr Chuy (my kung fu teacher) took some students out to dinner down in chinatown. This picture above is of the street vendors selling fresh vegetables on division street. this part is off the beaten path of the touristy chinatown section and bustles with activity into the night. the restaurant is across the street.


in the restaurant, some of my classmates from left to right, Xue Rei (aka Fast Ray), Phillip Truong, Dan Odham.


more classmates from left to right, sam lowe, stephen baker, norberto valez. people who didn't make the shot at this table were jenny norberg and oliver hudson.

Veggie Night Out

Angie, Lai Ming, Kent at Gobo
there is this great vegetarian restaurant in the village called Gobo. Any non-veg's we've taken there have always enjoyed it. don't get me wrong, i love meat, beef, swine, game, you name it i'll eat it. but a good veggie meal is alright every now and then. Gobo is where we go.

good food, good times.
and the carnage:

(the colors are really bad on this camera! maybe next year i'll look for some convergence technology and combine my PDA, phone, and a mini-camera with better colors. until then, the greens will come out blue, oh well)

Just another day in the life

Just another day in the life. nothing exciting to report. wake up, get starbucks, go to work, eat, work more, eat again, go to kung fu, eat again. go home and geek out on the computer.

when the most exciting thing in my day to photograph is a post-lunch shoe shine at grand central, maybe i need a life...

actually, i'm happy.
after all, those are my light blue socks.
i got mad steelo!

NYC2012 Is Everywhere

NYC2012 is everywhere! i have been volunteering for them as a phtographer since the summer. it was one of those chance encounters that make new york such a great city. ever since then i've shot about 7 or 8 different events for them, most recently the Flushing Lunar New Year Parade.
Anyway, they just had their big week with the olympic selection committee. hope it went well for them. the sticker above was on the taxi this morning while on my way to work.


these stickers were next to every door on the 6 train. the campaign is really covering the city--taxi tops, phone booths, buses, light post banners, pretty much everywhere you can stick a 2012 logo there was one to be found.

This is the start of it all

It all starts here.
This is actually the very first post.
All the posts earlier than this are post-dated.
Here's why:

I got a new Palm Zire 71 for my birthday. OK, early birthday present. It comes with a built in camera. Now I’m a photography geek so naturally I turned my nose up at this grainy little 640x480 thing. But this weekend just for kicks i snapped a few pics and the idea was born: to photoblog. And so I snapped a few more and then a few more. Grainy, poor lighting, bad colors, all around shoddy photography. But what the heck, if a personal website is self-indulgent, two personal domains are self-indulgent, then why not go for the coups-de-grace of technocrati self-indulgence: a blog. And then take it one step further: add pictures!

And so, on this snowy evening in the month of March I begin my journey into the photo blogging world.

Welcome.