Thank you!
Mood:  happy
Topic: Family
Even though I know that my parents won't see this post unless I tell them to, there is something about this post that makes it feel to me as if it was an open letter in the New York Times.

Mom and Dad, I want to thank you for everything you have done for me this Christmas break.

Thank you for helping me out with my job search. Thank you for taking me to the job fair and checking over my resume and cover letter.

Thank you for all you have done for my wedding. Thank you for looking through magazines to find reception areas. Thank you for flying my fiancee and her mother down to help discuss the wedding person-to-person. Thank you for helping her pick out a wedding dress.


Thank you for helping me where I need it, including making me do things on my own if that is the best thing for me at the time.

I love both of you and I am reall excited for your future plans.

Weddings
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Family
This weekend I was in NYC for my fiancee's cousin's wedding. It was quite a bit of fun. One of my favorite parts of the wedding was getting to see my fiancee and her girl cousins dressed up in Ao Yais (probably spelt wrong), the traditional Vietnamese dress. I'd never seen her in one before and I think it was her first time wearing it since here in the States they're only worn for special occasions like Weddings. Over in Vietnam they are worn to school or Church like a dress here in the US. The difference is that the ones for special occasions have much more elaborate designs and colours. The one worn to school is plain white.

My other favorite part was taking pictures. This was the first real event for my Fujifilm Digi-SLR. Luckily I bought it last Spring Break and have been spending a lot of time learning all of the modes and controls. I still learn new things every time I use it and figure out better techniques, but I would say that on a scale of 1-10, I probably have a mastery level of 8 with it. I still have a few secrets to learn and some of them just have to do with SLR techniques. I was never able to take photography in High School so I'm having to self-teach myself proper photographic technique and how to use F-stops and all of that.

But, much to my joy, everyone loved the pictures I took. I don't know yet how they compare to the professional photographer because he was using an analog camera, but mine came out great. Based only on watching them on the Tv, which always is worse quality than a photo, my fiancee's mom said that she loves the pictures and requested a CD with all of the pictures on them. And, she's not just saying this because I'm her future son-in-law. She also said that her own son's pictures were pretty poor quality. (Her family doesn't mince words) My mom saw some that we sent her over IM and she said they looked beautiful too. My mom wouldn't say they looked bad, but she wouldn't say that it looked good if it didn't. Of course, that doesn't mean that every picture is worth putting into a book on how to take wedding pictures, but I think it takes many years of experience to consistently achieve that level of quality.

But I always believe in being obsessively knowledgeable in my passions. At the beginning of last summer I was considering doing some wedding photography and so I was looking into a ton of books and resources. I'm happy to report that it worked. I used a bunch of techniques that I picked up in some of the books to get some great pictures. In fact, among my top ten favorite pictures is one that I took of the bride having her makeup applied. That was something that I read about in one of the books and the effect was pretty good. Another thing I borrowed from the book was the use of black and white photography.

I was previously of the opinion that it is pointless to take pictures in B/W because you can always convert to black and white later. But that was in my less sophisticated days when I realized that if I'm taking a 24-bit picture on my camera in 6MP, then putting it on Adobe 7 with 8-bit depth and saving it as a jpeg again (because that's the standard needed to print at most places at this point in time) then I'm losing quite a bit of quality. If the image is already a 2MP picture, then who cares. But if we're talking a 6MP picture then we're potentially losing a lot.

But speaking of my favorite pictures, I've always loved closeups. But only now with my camera's 6x optical zoom have I been able to get the type of closeups that are so amazing without being intrusive. In other words, I was quite a distance from the bride and groom because of logistical reasons and because the professional photographer had "dibs" (since they were paying him) and I got some amazing closeups. My absolute favorite shot is a closeup of my mother-in-law (to be) wiping away the tears from the bride. As any female knows (and a few enlightened guys - such as myself) the person crying can't really wipe them away or she may smudge her makeup and cause all of the subsequent pictures of her to look as though she transfigured into a racoon. So someone else has to dab at it and get the tears off. So the entire shot is consumed by the two faces and the hand wiping away the tears. There isn't a thing in the background to distract you from the image. It's perfect. In fact, after seeing me take the picture, the photographer tried to imitate me and got pictures of her wiping her nose - not quite the same effect if you ask me. My second favorite was one I got when the bride and groom first saw each other. They look SOOOO in love. Granted, it's obvious that they are in love because they're getting married. But as you can see in some of the other pictures, the marriage process takes its toll on the participants and the bride and groom have a harder time smiling later. Not that they look ticked in future pictures, just exhausted. So I caught the freshness of the day as well as the fact that this was the first time they saw each other in this garb - both in traditional Vietnamese wedding garb.

In the end it made me pine for my own wedding - tentatively a year from now. But it also made me wonder who will take these kinds of pictures of us? We are currently debating whether we need two photographers, one to take candids and one to take the usual poses. For, I must say, my favorite shots were the candids. BUT, the posed shots are not only needed, but they have their place too and some of them look quite stunning in their own right. Well, I need to runt to class. See you next time!

Have a cookie
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Family
One thing that I love about my dad is that he's like The Oracle in The Matrix - he tells us [his sons] what we need to hear. This doesn't mean that he distorts the truth, but, like The Oracle, he tells us the truth in the way that we need to hear it in order to fulfill our destinies. After all, if Neo hadn't been made to come save Morpheus he would never have displayed his true powers.

Of course, my father has it a lot harder than The Oracle because he doesn't know what my destiny is. The Oracle had a rough idea, or, if I don't completely understand The Matrix, a complete idea of what Neo needed to do. My dad, on the other hand, has no idea what my purpose is. Am I to silently contribute to society in the background? Am I supposed to become a world leader? An artist? Cure some disease? Raise a son who will do these things?

Yet, he remains able to do this - it's his gift as a teacher. I see part of this in me and I hope to be able to develop it to the extent that he has.

When I graduate this May I will be the product of my loving parents who each played their respective roles at the right time in my life. Once I leave the nest I hope to be able to continue to gain guidance from both of my parents and therefore avoid the mistakes that they have made.

Congrats Bro, Congrats!
Mood:  happy
Topic: Family
Big congrats to my brother, Dan, who is most likely getting the prestigious NSA scholarship. All he's waiting for is clearance so unless they take to heart any of his blog posts about Bush or mine - he's pretty much in the clear. Any way, the NSA is party-independent: they have to exist no matter who's in office and they work through many presidencies. Neither he nor I said anything that inflammatory - just the typical criticisms of some dissapointed young men.

On Why My Mother is Awesome
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: "Sound Life" from the Trigun Sountrack
Topic: Family
Well, there are many reasons why I think that my mother deserves extra merit, but today she proved why I think she's a great person, and one of my role models. I don't want to say too many details about the person, but someone that my mom works with cam to her distressed. For certain reasons she was not going to be able to feed her family this month. My mom went to Costco and bought her $180 worth of food so that her six kids could eat. She didn't have to do anything. It's the person's own responsibility to feed her family. Yet, my mother adhered to that exaltation to love your neighbor as yourself. My mom would do anything in her power to keep anyone in our family, immediate or extended, from going hungry. She, as she proved today, will also do it for her "neighbor". Wall tall mother, walk tall!