clearcubic.com blog

Misc. stills

2009-10-01T21:56:00.002-04:00

Now that I have been posting nothing but Cadi for the last 3 months, it's time to dig out the few non-Cadi photos. =D

Ya, fire alarm.

A budding plant. Believe it's ginger.

Sniff, sniff. Guess who's sick?

2009-09-27T23:32:00.000-04:00

Well, it's Cadi. On 9/25/09, I started noticing a different sound coming from Cadi's breathing and the next day, Cadi started to have mucus coming out from her nose. So 9/26/09 marks the official first day that she catches a cold. To celebrate her first cold experience, in addition to posting 2~3 months old photos of Cadi, I'm going to post the most recent ones as well.

Cadi needs her pacifier to fall asleep. Without it, it's practically impossible. And Cadi has a pretty strong neck already. We say she's a turtle when she does that.

Two new photos of Cadi and mommy.

Don't think sitting is good for the baby right now but when she sits up, it's just so darn cute.

Cadi turning 3 months old

2009-09-16T23:50:00.008-04:00

Yes, Cadi's 3 months old now. She's certainly heavier, taller and much much louder than before. She also smiles quite a bit now. As usual, there will be photos of her but just not now. I recently upgraded my Mac OS to 10.6 (Snow Leopard) so I've been reinstalling all the programs I have (Mac OS X is awesome btw ^^).

However, there is one new photo of Cadi that I found to be hilarious that I just wanted to show it first. Here it is.

Cadi's latest expression of "What ya looking at, huh?" (left) vs. her 1 month old expression (right). I think it's just too cute. Haha~

Cadi turning 2 months old

2009-08-16T13:26:00.003-04:00

Cadi turned 2 months old couple days ago. She's now 11 lb. 15 oz., close to double the birth weight. And to celebrate, I'm going to finally post some photos from a month ago when she turned 1 month old. :)

We'll start with her finishing take a shower and preparing to get dressed in several outfits.

Outfit #1

Outfit #2

Outfit #3

Outfit #4

Outfit #5

So which one is your favorite outfit? :)
And we'll finish off with a more recent photo (from a week ago).

Chubby Cadi.

Cadi turning 1....month old. =D

2009-07-14T18:15:00.001-04:00

Cadi turned 1 month old yesterday and this officially ends Joy's 1 month postnatal home imprisonment as well and today she went out for the first time since she came back from the hospital. She feels good now. :)

Before Joy's mom left, we celebrated Cadi turning 1 month old by buying her a cake (even though she can't have any) and have her change into a couple of new outfits. Those photos will come later. Today, I'm posting photos of Cadi being 2~3 weeks old. Oh, and we went to see the pediatrician today. Cadi went from 6 lb a month ago to 9 lb 3 oz and no more jauntis. We did our job in the past month. =D

Cadi is a pretty strong baby I think. Her kicks are especially powerful. Doesn't she look like she's doing boxing here?

The "What da heck are you doing" stare.

Cadi, the mummy. Wrapping her tightly worked wonders when we wanted her to go to sleep but I get the feeling that she's beginning to not like this.

Joy's mom and cousin, Maggie. Don't know where Maggie learned to do the thing on her head (she said it appears in Korean dramas). We think it's so cute that we want to put the same thing on Cadi. Cadi's head is a bit small but the towel thing still looks cute on her.

More of Cadi

2009-06-27T21:34:00.003-04:00

Some of my favorite.

Cadi coming out

2009-06-20T00:28:00.002-04:00

After 9 months, Cadi finally decided to come out. Here's how it happened.

While I was working, Joy called to tell me she thinks her water broke. When Joy called the doctor, the doctor told her to stay put since her contraction wasn't that regular yet but when Joy called her cousin, her cousin told her to go to the hospital right away. Thanks to her friend, Emily Tsai, Joy was able to get to the hospital much sooner than had she waited for me to get back home from work.

When I arrived the hospital, Joy was lying in bed and in pain due to the contraction. Since we hadn't finalized on the baby's name yet, we started discussing and "Cadi" is what we decided to go with of course. :)

After an hour or so, a doctor from the hospital decided to give Joy epidural to relieve her pain.

After the epidural is given, Joy was able to rest for a bit without pain.

And even smile for me. Oh, btw, the hospital doctor took 3 tries to succesfully insert the IV needle into Joy's arm. Poor Joy.

Joy's doctor finally came to the hospital at around 9pm or 10pm. And about an hour later, he said it's time to go into labor but there was a problem. Because of the epidural, Joy has lost the sensation to push the baby out too. Joy's doctor stopped the epidural but it took around two hours for the anesthesia to fully lose it's effect and so the first two hours of Joy in labor moved the baby very little. When the epidural fully faded, that was when Joy felt the painfulest pain that she has ever felt but it was only because of that pain, Joy was able to push Cadi out into this world. And here are Cadi and her mom.

Joy, the mommy to be

2009-06-11T14:04:00.004-04:00

So we think the baby is nearly here and we hurried to get some photos taken this past Saturday of the pregnant Joy before it's too late.

Shooting location: Our home
Time of the day: Late afternoon

Since there are only 7 (6 really) photos and I like all of them, I won't put them here. Just click on the blog title to view all.

A note on the above photo. Joy likes the colored one better but I wanted the entire 6 photos to be 2 colored so to satisfy us both, there is both a b&w and a colored version of it. :)

On a side note, before I started shooting, I tested out the lighting on myself (while Joy was taking a nap) and created my first ever self-portrait. It's nothing special but it's a first. I now have a "face" photo for my Facebook. =D

Evan's now 3 years old

2009-06-11T00:41:00.005-04:00

But I bet if you asks him how old he is now, he would still say "Two". :)

For Evan's bday party, ~~Lin~~ Lin, Jannelle, Jennifer (Lin's sister-in-law), Fanny, and David bought him this toy or should I say the "toys" that consists of many types of sports equipments.

First up, a football. Look at Evan, he's a natural at playing football.

Then, basketball. Already dunking at 3 years old? Amazing.

Hockey. I'm sure Evan won't disappoint Erik in hockey either with that stance.

It was a group effort to put this frame together. It probably tied or beat the record for the number of people taken to open the battery compartment of that thermometer at our home a while ago. :) The set also contained soccer and baseball. It really was quite a complete set.

When it started to rain, Evan went inside the house to watch some TV. On the left side is his treasure box. Containing his collection of Geotrax cars, which he got more of at his party.

Another new toy, bubble maker.

Evan wasn't the only person who liked the bubble maker. Brandon and Frank liked it too.

When the 'adults' started playing dodge ball, Evan became extremely useful for David...as a human shield. :)

You know, I've never seen actual trick candles on a cake before but I did on that day. They were FUN, FUN, FUN. Especially when the kid has no idea what is going on. LOL. Whoever put them there, THANK YOU!

After Evan threw up and changed clothes, this is what he showed every body.

Buddha's Birthday Festival

2009-05-29T15:36:00.000-04:00

I was at the Buddha's Birthday Festival around two weeks ago. Here are some fun and cute face photos.

For photos related to the event, go check out photos that I posted at NY YAD website.

Must be tasty.

Cute Angie.

Cute Joy. Hahaha~

Michee and Jasmine.

I felt intimidated by Nixon's stare.

This serie is very cute so I decided to put the 4 photos together. Love the expression on the kid. Amy isn't too bad either.

Get-together @ JC Home

2009-05-28T12:29:00.002-04:00

We just finished moving not too long ago and Joy thought that it would be nice to invite some YAD people to our home to warm the house a bit. People started to arrive in the afternoon and we started to prepare for lunch but I started to take photos late as I was helping with the preparation as well.

Here's Michee celebrating...something, maybe Lin and Jannelle's arrival (but only Lin showed up).

Whatever it was, it sure was funny. :)

One of the 2 or 3 weird cheeses that Jean brought. My first cheese tasting. I remember 1 was tasty and 1 was not. :)

When it came dinner time, we had spring rolls, curry and some left over from lunch. People seemed to have a lot fun making their own spring rolls.

One thing that our kitchen lacked (and still lacks) are tables and chairs but I think this actually looks more like a gathering. :)

Since Joy is having a baby, people took this chance to bring some gifts for the baby. This 'device' in the photo is to be placed on the person's lap when feeding the baby but it also looks like an over-sized travel pillow, you know, the ones that people bring onto the planes.

How many people does it take to open up the battery compartment on a digital thermometer??? Too many. It took more than 4 people to finally open it. Bravo to Fanny for overcoming this arduous task. Haha~

Thanks again to everyone who came to the gathering, our home temperature reached the highest that we've seen since we moved back. You guys REALLY warmed up our home. LOL.

A Day at Central Park

2009-05-25T23:53:00.000-04:00

Joy's cousin, Ann Wang, and her family came to visit NY for a couple of days a month ago and we accompanied them to the Central Park on a Saturday. Since there were kids involved, we just picked a spot and sat there for a couple of hours. :)

I just love the look of these two ladies.

Wang family's two boys (MuMu, the older one and BoBo, the younger one). Kids can play with anything, including a willow tree's leaves.

Wang family's friend's daughter whispering something to MuMu.

Unfortunately, this photo can't really express what I experienced on that day. The father was blasting music with his portable boom box walking in Central Park and the kid just held the stereo as he walks along with his dad.

In the foreground is BoBo's shoes and underwear and they are being dried in the photo. He fell into the lake while playing with the sticks. Fortunately, the spot he fell into was shallow so only parts of his waist and down got wet. I saw him fell into the lake. Originally, I thought he jumped into the lake to retrieve something but when BoBo heard me saying that, he said "No, it was an accident." :)

During mid-dinner, BoBo's eyes started to become smaller and smaller and eventually, this is what happened. It was very interesting seeing a kid chewing while half-asleep. :)

Yakitori Totto

2009-05-17T21:19:00.008-04:00

Yakitori Totto is a Japanese restaurant located in mid-town Manhattan. I love some of the food from this restaurant. Unfortunately, it's price is a bit (just a little bit) on the expensive side and the place is usually packed with people that if you go there late, you'll usually have to wait for a while. The longest that we ever had to wait was close to 2.5 hours on a Friday night. As a result, this is a restaurant that we only bring people to if they are visiting NYC and we want to to let them taste some good food.

Joy's brother was visiting NY a couple of weeks ago and so we went there. Since we did not want to wait, we had Joy's brother getting there early to reserve seats.

I just love this salad. The greens are fresh. The little fishes on top are crispy and the dressing is fantastic.

Don't remember what this is but I remember it was tasty. It came on a skewer with 4 or 5 pieces, not just 1 on the plate. :)

Joy loves fried calamari. She orders them wherever she is.

This photo is blurry but I like the way it looks anyway. Grilled bacon with asparagus. Bacons are always tasty. :)

I LOVE this one as well. The sauce on top of the grilled tofu is yuzu flavored miso.

First time that we ordered this. Thought it was an egg omelette but it was tofu too. Although its texture is different from what we normally have. It was cooked with sake so I felt buzzed after we left the restaurant. Haha~

Joy's brother loves pig related stuff. He brought that pig all the way from Taiwan and this pig appears in many photos that he takes. :)

Some other restaurant we passed by on the way home. Nice reflections I think. :)

4/17/2009 - Jannelle + Lin Weddings

2009-05-07T18:00:00.001-04:00

Lin, a tall guy whom I met in our youth group a couple years ago, asked me to photograph his wedding ceremonies on 4/17/2009 and of course I said "Yes".

What's interesting about this couple is that they had two vastly different ceremonies on that day. One held in a Buddhist temple and one held in a church nearby where Jannelle grew up. Different religions among families can sometimes be a problem so it's nice to see what this couple did.

The first ceremony at the temple was held in the morning. Here are some photos that I like.

Lin's sister helping him with his traditional "tuxedo". :) I love the face expression of Lin's cousin? on the left side.

According to the shop lady, Jannelle and Lin are the first borrowing these traditional clothes so these closes are completely new. Kudos to this couple for going with this radical route. =D

With their traditional clothes, I wanted to create an old fashioned looking photo as well. I think Jannelle definitely has the look here but I'm not sure if I have acheived 100% of what I really wanted.

The traditional Chinese wedding bow. I like how you can see the people tilting their body to the middle more and more to see or photograph this couple.

While Jannelle's parents and Lin's mom and uncle are signing official documents at the front, the couple was entertaining the crowd in the back. I love how I can see the couple looking at each other here and the crowd looking at them...smiling.

While giving the speech, Lin's mom became very emotional and so did Lin and Jannelle. You can't see it in this photo of course. :)

The song they were singing is in Chinese. Since Jannelle does not speak Chinese, she constantly looked up at Lin for support and I believe Lin was trying to teach her to sing. Very sweet.

When I said "Be goofy", this is the result. You need to enlarge the photo to see how cooperative Jannelle was. Lin, you disappoint me. :)

This photos is way funny. The boy in the back is copying what the girl is doing. =D

These are very "Lin", either expressionless or the big smile.

Joy said why put up this photo, no one knows what she's doing anyway. I think people can tell (if they look carefully) but in case they can't, I'll explain here. Joy is giving a congratulate card to Lin. There's a pocket in his sleeves.

This one is quite funny as well. The person trying to run away went up to the couple wanting to congratulate them but then instinctively said, "Happy New Year". But can't blame her, the couple does look very Chinese New Year. :)

Later in the afternoon, another ceremony took place. Unlike the first, the second ceremony was very intimate. Consisted of both side's family members only.

Having only attended a church wedding once (and that was a long long time ago) and never photographed any previously, I found myself running around the place quite a bit and missed certain shots. Sorry, guys.

A portrait taken before Lin arrived at the church.

The bride's side preparing to enter. As soon as the organ started playing, they enter. I thought that the groom was supposed to have a walk-in as well but there wasn't one.

Not only does the lady plays the organ, she sings too and quite well may I say. Can you tell I'm a total newbie at church weddings. :)

After the ceremony. Taken in the church with the light coming from the Window. Very cool I think. :)

And there was still plenty of sunshine outside so we went out and took some photos. I like the following photos.

Lin and Jannelle, thanks for inviting me to be part of your weddings and being brave enough to have me photograph them too. Hope you are happy with at least some of the photos I've taken. =D

Minor site redesign

2009-05-04T11:27:00.001-04:00

Made some minor changes to the clearcubic.com website. The current HTML and CSS standards have always made it difficult for me to put the footer at the place that I wanted. So I moved the footer to the top. Now that the footer is on top, I guess I can't call it a "footer" any more. =) Also made some minor, minor changes to most of the pages.

And the first album of 2009 is coming soon. Yipee!!! And here's a photo that will give you a hint on what the album is going to be.

Food Incident

2009-04-14T11:03:00.001-04:00

Pop Quiz

What is the BLUE object in the photo on the left?

1. Type of Food
2. Type of Poison
3. Food Decoration
4. UFO (Unidentified FOREIGN Object)
5. Rubber Band

Answer: I would say it's a combination of 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Yesternight, Joy was nice enough to boil some dumplings and veggies for me as my dinner. Shortly after I started eating, Joy said "Sorry, you know how pregnant lady are very forgetful." and she pointed at the blue band in the photo. That is the rubber band that ties the veggies together in the supermarket and Joy has forgotten to remove one of these and boiled them together. So what did I do? I removed the rubber band and continued to eat. Gosh, I certainly feel healthy today.

Georgia Aquarium

2009-04-03T10:38:00.003-04:00

Found these unposted photos taken back in 2006. Went to Georgia on a business trip and company took us to the Georgia Aqaurium after work. It is supposed to be the world's largest aquarium but I remember it did not take us that long to finish walking the entire place. :)

To view the entire album, click on the title of this blog entry.

Did some one say "crowded"?

small fishes, BIG fish.

And many, many fishes.

This looks like a dancing lady to me or just some one saying "HI"!

I believe these are piranhas. They sometimes are portrayed as terrying fishes in movies. While they may be, here, I think they actually look kind of cute.

Reynaldo & Marcia Wedding

2009-03-25T12:00:00.001-04:00

Haven't updated anything in quite a while. It's not that I haven't taken any photos during this time, it's just that I have been so busy moving in the past couple of months that I simply don't have the time to go through what I took. That and it's Winter time in NY. Winter isn't exactly my favorite season to go out and take photos. =D

But today, I will finally post some photos from a wedding that I took back in Dec. 1, 2008. This wedding was a first for me. It was an extremely small one. There were the bride and the groom, the 5 family members, the priest and myself for a total of 9 people. I certainly felt honored, but at the same time awkward to be there.

The wedding ceremony took place in a small NYC Italian restaurant at 5:30pm. The restaurant had very dim lighting (which I was very much afraid of as I'll have to resort to using the flash). Since the restaurant was small, there really wasn't much room for me to move around to begin with and when there were other customers coming into the restaurant, the space available to me got even more limited. When adding these two factors together to photograph a bride who's dark skinned, we got ourselves a not so easy task.

Marcia and Reynaldo, thank you for having me be part of your special day. I wish you two the best.

Now, onto some of my favorites from that day.

The bride, Marcia, after she finishes preparing for the ceremony.

The bouquet that Marcia created herself.

I love the serene look on Reynaldo, Marcia and her god mother.

This is probably my top 1 favorite from that day.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T09:48:00.000-05:00

Wishing EVERYONE a happy and safe holiday season.

Following are all from our friend's house.

Yes, cat does enjoy Christmas as well.

2008 Village Halloween Parade

2008-12-24T10:26:00.003-05:00

Like the previous years, I went to the Halloween parade in the village. Unlike the previous years, I went with my cousin and another friend this time. Even though we arrived on time, the place was already packed when we got there. As a result, we spent a good amount of time standing outside the parade watching just like most people did. Luckily, the three of us were able to blend into the parade later on. :D

My first time seeing sooooo many "Richard Simmons". A bit scary but I thought their group dance was terrific, not to mention HILARIOUS.

This is after we got into the parade. He was sitting inside the fence watching the parade.

Given the current economic condition, you can be sure someone is going to poke fun at it.

I have no idea what this is supposed to be. Someone care to englighten me?

Go Go Power Rangers. I saw these guys after leaving the parade. Wished I had seen them inside. They would probably have give me some good photos.

Random People

2008-12-21T00:25:00.002-05:00

Had a chance to shoot some people photos from our youth group's reunion event a couple of weeks back. Here are my favorites.

This kid is not afraid to pose. A great model to shoot with in my opinion. You go, Edward! :)

BBQ at Bear Mountain (2008)

2008-11-02T12:27:00.001-05:00

Why do I have to put the year, "2008", in the title? Because we have been going to this place for BBQ once a year for at least 4 years. I wanted to go somewhere else this time but two of our friends have never been to Bear Mountain before so I succumbed to their wishes.

The weather for that day may look nice in the photos but it was actually pretty cold. Hence you'll see photos of us staying near the grill to stay warm.

The owl is our grill. There is a total of 3 different grills. Each is a different animal.
With the charcoal burning, the owl looks like it's quite angry.

The large tin can is a pretty cool gadget, it's used to get your charcoal ready for BBQ more quickly and easily. And as you can see in some photos, it can be used as a mini grill and hand warmer too. LOL.

The bag has working speakers that you can plug into your phone, ipod, etc. The name of the bag? Mini boom box. Hahaha~ Vivian was demonstrating how one would use the bag to listen to the "boom box". In this photo, she was threatening me to stop taking photos of her or she would stop the demonstration.

Somewhere in Woodbury Common mall. Since the mall is nearby, why wouldn't we want to go there after finishing BBQ?

Finally

2008-10-22T11:32:00.000-04:00

Finally received the new 15" Macbook Pro on 10/21/2008. Joy says it's hers but I say it's mine. However, sharing is caring so I'm willing to share it with her. LOL.

Apple just came out with a new 13" and 15" model. Unfortunately, I don't like what they did with the new screen (neither is Joy) so I got the older version. This laptop is going to replace my aging 12" Powerbook. After using an old laptop with a small screen for a long time, all I can say using the new one is WOW! =D

Light Bulb

2008-10-06T00:01:00.001-04:00

Urbanity: NYC

2008-10-05T23:40:00.004-04:00

Been quite busy lately so I have not been taking photos or posting photos that I like. Plus that a new Mac (which I will buy) is supposed to come out soon, this makes me want to delay processing photos even more since I'm using a 5 year old portable. Gosh, it's slow.

The following photos were taken in May, 2008, in SOHO, NYC. Since there are only a few of them, I decided that I can tolerate the time to process them. The theme here is urbanity.

No real subject here but I sort of like this hard processed look.

The above photos have this film look in my opinion.

I think the reflections in the mirror make these photos interesting. I believe that's my reflection in the 2nd photo.