Season of Good Rain

My friends know I'm a sucker for acoustic guitar music and great movies and great conversations. Combine those, add bamboos, rain and a cute cross-cultural love story - ahhhhh love it! The Director of the film was also the Director of the movie April Snow = love that one too. Anyway, reminds me of Before Sunrise and After Sunset. The actors had to switch from Korean to Chinese but the conversations were mostly English. It is better to get the movie with subs because there are words you they pronounce thats better read :) Likey very much.


This is my third Jung Woo Sung movie. The first one was devine but heart breaking called A Moment To Remember. 

The second one was a re-make of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly but was called "The Good, The Bad and the Weird" of which he won an award as Best Supporting Actor. I did think he wasn't bad at all considering that he had to be compared to Charles Bronson and Dirty Harry : )

Must watch.

Bored - walk

I haven't been blogging much. Sometimes I get caught up with work that I can't remember to post anything. Other times, I find myself having a very slow week with nothing to do and so end up with no topics to post. I remembering that there was a time when I forced myself to write even if I had nothing to write. It's a writing exercise that once you get started, you will soon get to a topic and it will begin a chain of thought that ends up on you blabbering yourself away to kingdom come. Which is why I'm posting today. I've been neglecting this blog far too long.

So what have I been up to? I've been walking in Boardwalk. If you live in Iloilo, you would have heard about the bike lane in Boardwalk.

It's a 1+ kilometer of concrete road alongside the Iloilo River - sort of like the sidewalk in Manila Bay. It begins perpendicular to the Marcos highway and ends on the smaller Tabucan Road. It started as a bike lane. But in the afternoons up to late into the night, it has become a hotspot for healthbuffs and hangout enthusiasts. After office hours, it gets populated with bicycles, street vendors, joggers, motorcycles at controlled speed, strollers, skateboarderss, waveboarderss, skaters, taebo and belly dancing groups right in the middle of the road. It's colorful. Not exactly an ideal place to jog if you are a serious jogger. But it's free and conveniently located right in the center of the hub. Walking distance to Smallville, UP, the real Boardwalk establishments and a short ride to SM City - the one stop shop.

My friends and I have started joining the taebo class - if schedule permits it - at sevenish or 6:30ish in the evening. To support the program, you can drop any amount in the basket they pass around to pay for the trainor and the sound system. Good business if you ask me. It's also a sight to see because people of all ages and all walks of life converge into a dance routine together. I find it enjoyable to watch. There are several older people there who memorized the routine way better than the trainor does which is funny. There are kids jumping up and down together with their moms. And there's us who just wants any excuse to dance and sweat off. My friends and I have started walking at least 3 times a week. While the guys jog, the girls walk back and forth along the road while updating ourselves with the latest gossip and talk about what's happening in our lives. The talk is just as much therapy as the exercise. So by the time we finish, we had a bit of exercise and a bit of fun for two hours.

Hmmm, the post is longer than I expected. I have to go now. Next time, I'll talk about murder - hehehe. I butchered another pig. Will tell you about that later. Or maybe tomorrow. I'm off.

Beauty

I've spent the whole afternoon editing pictures of a beautiful girl to make her picture perfect. As I was doing it, I started to reflect on the body's imperfections and started to love every wrinkle in my face - LOL. I know I would like to be younger, more healthy. more fit and YES, have the body of an image model - or at least her height. But I also realize that every wrinkle in my face represents the bit of wisdom I've acquired through the years. And every scar is a token of somethings survived or a reminder of a past mistake I promised not to do again (but end up doing again anyway LOL). I'm glad this model needed a make-over. Her wrinkles, though I had to hide them, revealed what she had gone through and survived. Makes her more human that way. Makes her more like me - well, maybe a hundred pounds lighter LOL.

While doing this job, I argued with myself a lot. It goes with the territory if you're working alone freelancing. I wanted her to be beautiful. But I also wanted her to be real. A smudge can make so much difference in Photoshop. But do I really want to smudge it there? I know people like looking good. I just wonder if people ever thought that being real is so much better? I follow a lady photographer's blog, and the pictures I really like are the ones where it doesn't hide the person's flaws but it's the flaws themselves that adds beauty to the picture. That's why I really like portrait photography and like to draw people. There's a story behind every line.

Speaking of stories, had client meetings during the week. Talked to a new client, a black British businessman. I usually talk to foreign clients over email and IM or Skype. Most of the time, I just meet up with my local clients to talk of projects or make a pitch. This guy was here for business so I got to talk to him without having to type my words. Which was weird.  I realized I was less nervous speaking to foreigners than I was speaking to my local clients. And I was not intimidated at all. Which was also weird because I always tell my friends that foreign clients tend to give me more stress than my local clients. Maybe because they demand so much? Not true really. Maybe I just give more pressure to myself with foreign clients than with local ones. Is it because they pay more? That's not true either. Maybe in my mind, there are more opportunities with them when it comes to service? One thing I know, this business is broadening my horizons quite a bit. And I like having a better view of the world from where I'm at.

I should blog more. But I've been busy. That's not really an excuse but can't help it. I have very little to say nowadays. Well, that's not really true. I have plenty to say. I just don't say it here quite as often as I should. I'm currently trying to give my life more balance. It's a struggle but it might result to less time with the computer and more time with reality. ; )