thepismire CURIOUS THOUGHTS OF AN ANT

Mattebox

In Interesting on 23 January 2012 with

Pretty awesome camera app. Considering that a third of my usage of the iPhone is the camera function, I wouldn’t mind the price point.

via Jon Baik

Merry Christmas

In Day-To-Day on 20 December 2011 with

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

Call Me ASQ Certified Son

In Day-To-Day on 13 December 2011 with

It’s been a while since I was in any kind of course with a test at the end. I forgot the sweet joy of passing. Suhweeet.

Birthday Celebration?

In Day-To-Day on 12 December 2011 with

My buddy Edward celebrated his birthday over the weekend. Apparently, he’s in the running for Time’s Person of the Year so he suggested we hang out in Skid Row to pass out care packages/food/clothes. In all honesty though, it was a good event and hopefully some people were blessed by this small gesture. Happy birthday Ed.

Also, big ups to Cafe Dulce for the food donations!

Shirt Swap

In Day-To-Day on 7 December 2011 with

The Ben Sherman store in LA will be doing a Shirt Swap starting this week. Bring in one shirt and get 20% off on your purchase.

Thanksgiving Weekend AKA Glutton Fest

In Day-To-Day on 28 November 2011 with

Visited family up north for this Thanksgiving and my stomach had no idea what was about to happen. My cousin Dennis not only loves to eat, but particularly has a liking for the AYCE. And this love of his manifested itself into many meals that were designed for multiple stomachs. I, unfortunately, only contain one stomach. Currently my stomach and I are not on speaking terms, but we’re working on it. I partook in three turkeys done three different ways: brined, deep-fried and Chinese styled (don’t know what that meant but it was tasty). Each of these meals consisting of the usual mash, stuffing, gravy, pie, ham, chow mein etc. all greedily portioned. I just realized the two Thanksgiving meals served as bookends since I started with one and ended the weekend with the other. In between there was the AYCE Indian buffet, the AYCE shabu shabu and ridiculous amounts of Thai food. Basically my stomach couldn’t keep up, and it was a continuous cycle of dinner table to bathroom and back to the dinner table. Repeat. I am now in hibernation. We ate, we laughed, we watched Die Hard, we shot guns, and we ate again. If that isn’t good times, then I don’t wanna live. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Oh, and we finally have a girl in our family! The first one born in America on my mom’s side.

New Hire

In Day-To-Day on 21 November 2011 with

So whenever you are hired or converted to full time at my company, a letter goes out to share a little bit about that person. For example, when I was hired, I wrote that I enjoy photography and eating cookies. My friend recently got hired and this is what he wrote for his new hire announcement. Keep in mind that everyone in the company receives this…

Dol’s Are Getting Crazy

In Day-To-Day on 14 November 2011 with

I went to a “dol” (1st birthday celebration), which is a big deal for Koreans. But the lengths parents are going to these days to celebrate this is kind of getting out of hand. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it…well, not every moment. I wouldn’t have missed the sermon and hymn. By the way, why do Koreans always have to stick in some sort of sermon at any event? I see the heart in it, but I think a simple prayer of thanks before everything begins is okay with me.

Back to the dol. Right when I found out that it was held at the Los Coyotes Country Club, I immediately knew this was going to be, for lack of a better phrase, “bahhllin son”. It felt like a wedding reception. Actually, it was BETTER than some wedding receptions I’ve been to. This thing was branded. Everything from the napkins to the centerpieces had one unifying theme, and this theme was “I’m a rich baby”. There was a candy bar with bags provided for me to choose and take home. It was a mini Sweet Factory. For lunch, did they ask me if I wanted steak or fish? Or perhaps steak or chicken? Hell to the no. I pity those that have to make that choice. Not I. The lovely parents provided a lunch buffet with my unlimited choice of steak and/or chicken and/or fish. As Will Ferrell put it so eloquently before, “I cried tears from my butthole”.

I WILL give credit to where it’s due however. Despite all this, I knew the birthday girl was heavily loved by her parents. Even though she is too young to know what was going on, it didn’t matter for the parents. I’m just excited for her future because if her parents go all out for something she can’t comprehend, how much more will they give (and not just material things) to her when she can actually take and understand this love.

Waking Sleeping Beauty

In Movies on 14 October 2011 with

I put this on my Netflix queue and it finally arrived last night. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a documentary about the animation department at Disney. It primarily focuses on its re-awakening (hence the title) of a department that had been waning since Snow White. You follow how Disney was able to achieve success again with feature animated films in an industry and a culture that forgot about this medium. Very rarely does Disney lower their guard and allow people into the nitty gritty of their business, past the magic, because this achievement didn’t come easy. I was reminded that past all the magic of Disney, deep down, it is still a business.

An aspect of the documentary that I really enjoyed was seeing what kind of leaders and people were needed to achieve this goal. At the chairman level in a company, it requires a different breed of leaders. To be able to lead a company like Disney in a new direction required them to not only have an ability to see the bigger picture and a vision, but to get people on board with you, whether they liked it or not. It meant that not everyone will liked their ideas or even them as a person, but they had to be able to take the hate. I had no idea that a power struggle was going on between Roy Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner. After watching how much work went into these films, I now have a whole new respect for them. Who knew they were about to cut the “Part of Your World” scene out of the film because management felt it wasn’t relating with their test audience. These are the things you’ll learn about from this documentary. Wow, I feel like a Reading Rainbow kid, summarizing a book. Oh well. But, you should definitely check this documentary out.

Gungor

In Music on 13 October 2011 with

I had the pleasure of going to David Crowder’s last appearance in LA as the David Crowder Band this past weekend. The evening would have been pretty darn perfect if it wasn’t for a few “fans” that happened to be standing right next to us. I didn’t want to hate, especially being at a Christian event, but come on with the come on. These guys had no respect for the people around them with their initial declaration of “excuse me, but here to here *outlining an area* is our space”, their constant talking, their lack of respect of other patrons in the theater, and the massaging. WOW, the massaging! It wasn’t even the nice, affectionate sort of massaging. The next step would’ve been sex. And she was massaging him the whole night. Amazing. This is not to mention the few drinks they had during the pre-show, which is a whole different discussion.

I blame it on the Fish 95.9. Yes, I’m calling you OUT. Please, from now on, do not sponsor anymore concerts because you attract the vermin of SoCal. Also, get out of my city. La Mirada does not want to host the Fish anymore. I am the mayor (Foursquare says so).

ANYWAY, I’ll get to the point of this post. What really redeemed the night for me was the band Gungor. Now, I’ve seen their album on iTunes, and sampled some of their songs, but never took the plunge and bought their songs. So when I heard they were one of the opening bands, I was curious already. They came out. Three of them. The guy started playing guitar, and this girl is singing with him. She is very pretty from afar, and I’m already liking this band. Then comes the cello, and I get even more excited because the sweet, sweet sound of this giant violin makes any song better. So far so good, and then all of a sudden I hear a beat come in. I’m confused though, because there’s only three of them, and they are all occupied. So I look a little closer, and EFF. The frickin cellist is beatboxing. Right then and there, Gungor became my favorite band, and chose to follow them forever. It was mesmerizing. To top everything off, they go into an instrumental, and show off their musical abilities and I realize my mouth has dried out because it has been open since the beginning of the song. Not even the massaging was bothering me. Actually I probably would’ve joined them if I knew them better because I was so happy.

I went home and bought both their CDs. Oh, and I found out later that the girl is married to the lead singer. You can’t have it all.

They announced at the concert that they will be back in LA in the Spring for their own concert, and I know that everyone that heard them with me that night is going. I plan on going too since they’re my favorite band now, remember? If you want to join me and be amazed over and over again, let me know. For now, you can just watch/listen to this: