judyonthenet

We’d been using a cheap-o IKEA bench-like coffee table thingy as a media stand, putting all our electronics on top of it and piling the rest underneath it on the carpet. After getting my PS3, the situation underneath the TV was getting pretty dire. I couldn’t put it on top of the 360 since I’m pretty sure 360 + PS3 = disaster, and there was no room on the media bench since Kelvin refused to move his printer away from his stupid Time Capsule, despite printers having no place underneath a TV. For a couple days, I left my PS3 on top of an AI textbook underneath the media bench, and the ridiculousness underneath our TV was looking like this:

We went furniture shopping on Saturday to find a remedy to this mess. I had been leaning towards this puzzle entertainment center from Crate & Barrel, but the store didn’t have a floor sample to look at, and the bookshelf equivalent felt kinda flimsy. Based on Yelp, I went to Cocoon Furnishings to see if I could find something similar, but didn’t see anything in their catalogs that I wanted to order then and there. Before I left, I had looked up on Yelp sort of on a whim furniture stores near Cocoon, and HomeRev Inc. was listed being down the street. We almost missed it after being distracted by a large “erection” sign but eventually located it. From the outside and inside, it looks like a converted office building.

When you walk inside, you’re greeted by “Appointments only” signs and room full of tables with their catalogs on top. There were two service reps helping customers at the counter. We didn’t have an appointment, so we weren’t sure of what we should, so we sat down and looked at catalogs. But people kept coming in and walking right by us into the doorway that had a “Showroom by appointment only” sign. We got up and did the same; apparently that sign just scares away people? The hallway to the showroom has framed pictures of the store’s primary furniture supplier/manufacturer in Taiwan, some company called Poundex. (We first saw this brand name on a bedroom set on the showroom and couldn’t stop giggling. Oh, we’re so mature.) Really, they have framed pictures of Taiwanese people working in a furniture assembly line. I guess they’re proud of their foreign sweatshop? Bizarre. There were stairs leading to more showroom, which were basically old offices stuffed with office and kiddy bedroom furniture, but we skipped it for the moment.

Passing through the hallway, you finally enter their main showroom/warehouse, which is huge and completely filled with cheap furniture. I mean, their prices are soooooo reasonable, but our perspective might be warped because, being sick of Target and Ikea, we’ve been looking at higher end furniture. Their prices were comparable, but to be frank, the quality was comparable, too. There was some freaking cheap quality stuff. In fact, we saw a loveseat similar to the POS Milano Espresso & Mocha loveseat we got at Target that Kelvin spent forever replacing cuz it sucked so much… for $120 cheaper!!! In fact, the sofa is $40 cheaper than the Target loveseat!

ZOMG Target FTL!

Yes, this place is cheaper than Target in price… and probably in quality. Still, some of the stuff wasn’t too bad. Kelvin wanted to get this recliner, but there’s no way it would fit in my Prius. Moving past all the living room, dining room, and bedroom sets, we made it to the back to where the media centers were. We saw an $80 TV stand in the catalog, but it was pretty crappy and flimsy in person… but right behind it, we found exactly what we were looking for. No cool puzzle functionality, but the TV stand felt pretty sturdy, had decent-sized shelving to hold our consoles, had a shorter-than-average depth to fit in our small living room, wasn’t particularly ugly, and was only $100. After looking at media stands in the $400-$500 range for the past couple weeks, Kelvin and I immediately said, “Let’s get this now.” There were zero salespeople on the floor (maybe that’s what appointments are for), so we went back to the front and ordered it with the guy behind the counter. He told us to drive to the side of the building where the warehouse opening is, and some dude with a fun-looking Nissan forklist came out with our media stand. We took it home, where Kelvin toiled for the day assembling it and setting up our TV area, resulting in this much more presentable entertainment center of crap:

I would have preferred all our next gen stuff on the shelf (this setup looks a little Xbox-centric to me), but Kelvin needed all the video wires in the same area. At the moment, the Xbox and PS2 are purely ornamental. It looks great; I’m stoked! Thanks Kelvin, for sweating away your Saturday setting this up, and thank you HomeRev Inc. for your uber-cheap furniture!

New thing I learned today: Nissan makes forklifts.

So earlier in the year, I had expressed desire to purchase a couple gaming systems this month. This month, the God of War red PSP bundle came out, as did the uber-popular 80GB MGS4 bundle (not to be mistaken with the limited edition MGS4 40GB bundle). I was originally prepared to take the hit for both, but then June rolled around, and I had a change of heart. I’ve been trying to figure out honeymoon stuff (it’s been stressful, more on that in another post), and seeing how much it was going to cost us, I decided I didn’t really need another handheld, nor should I be spending $540 to play one game. I almost fell for the Walmart $100 giftcard deal for all Blu-Ray players, including the MGS4 bundles, but I knew it wasn’t worth trying because of the demand and limited numbers (around 4) per store. Release dates passed, and I patted myself on the back for not blowing ~$760 on video game hardware.

But then the Microsoft Live eBay cashback deal happened. For a period of time, clicking eBay ads through Live search would yield a 35% cashback on just about any Buy-It-Now auction. You could use it 3 times and get up to $250 back each time. The only catch is that you won’t get the cash back until two months later, but whatever. In case you can’t tell, 35% is pretty frickin’ huge, especially on eBay. Scalpers who horded all the Walmart MGS4 PS3 bundles were hawking them on eBay for $600 (probably even cheaper ones were available earlier, as I found out about the eBay deal six hours after it was posted on Slickdeals), which is a $200 profit for the seller if you include the Walmart giftcard they get. (Minus ~$70 of taxes, eBay, and Paypal fees.) I just wanted the Walmart deal or better, and 35% makes the bundle $390, which is about $50 better plus I’m not forced to buy $100 of stuff from Walmart. So yeah, I bought one. I debated spending an extra $60 or so to get the limited edition grey bundle, but I decided I’d rather save the money and get an 80GB. About 10 days later, my new toy showed up in a giant banana box:

The seller is apparently not a good speller.

And why the heck not, I got the red God of War bundle while I was at it. A little under $140 shipped, I picked it up at the local UPS hub on Friday.

So for about $530 (less than the MGS4 bundle alone with CA tax), I got both the MGS4 bundle and God of War PSP bundle. Sweet. I couldn’t think of anything pricey to get for a third purchase, so I didn’t buy anything else. It’s not like I didn’t spend enough money anyway. Plus, I won’t actually have my rebates until August, so really, at the moment I’ve spent about $800. I’m not worried about not getting it… I mean, Live still has eBay cashback active, just a smaller percentage. btw, if you’re going to do a Buy-It-Now auction anytime soon, the Live cashback is back up to 20% after dropping to 10% right after 35% died. That’s still a decent chunk of change, but keep in mind, sellers might have inflated their price accordingly, so I’d make sure to compare prices to regular auctions.

Initial impressions to appear later, hopefully.

I bought Dr. Mario Online Rx at the end of the May, right when it came out on WiiWare. It’s my first (and currently only) WiiWare game and probably my last download for a while until Nintendo comes up with a decent storage solution. (My Wii truly is full. I can’t even download the update for Dr. Mario Online Rx, whatever it does.) I paid 1000 Wii Points for it, which is equivalent to $10. Considering how simple the game is and how little it’s changed over the years, I’d prefer cheaper. However, considering the amount of time I’ve spent playing this game the last few weeks, I’d have to say I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth already.

Kelvin playing some guy named Moose.

If you don’t know what Dr. Mario is or have never played it, well, it’s simple. REALLY simple. Basically, there’s three colors of viruses (blocks) all over your screen, and you get rid of them by lining up blocks of four of the same color with dropped pills (combos of two colored blocks). The goal is to get rid of all the viruses. So yeah, simple. This game is so simple it appeals to everybody, even mommies. (I didn’t have Dr. Mario as a kid, so my mom preferred Tetris. Kelvin’s mom liked Dr. Mario tho.) When you’re playing against opponents to be the first to remove your viruses, multiple lines removed will lead to random blocks dropped on your opponents, often times messing up their block setups and screwing up their flow by making them wait for blocks to fall.

A couple other gameplay modes have been added to the game. “Classic” mode is where you aim to get rid of all the viruses on your screen, while the new “Flash” has you aiming for 3 specific viruses amidst other viruses. In single player, you can play for high score, or you can play against the computer in Versus. The computer is surprisingly good… or maybe I just surprisingly suck. I thought I was okay at Dr. Mario, but the computer kicked my ass on friggin’ Normal! I don’t even want to talk about Hard.

They’ve also added a new spin on the Dr. Mario game called Virus Blasters. Jessica tells me this game is already available in the DS game Brain Age 2. This is where there is one screen of viruses, and any player with a Wiimote grabs a falling pill by pointing their Wiimote and dragging down the pill. One thing that’s slightly different (outside of the control scheme) is that, when only half of a pill attaches to something, you can drag the leftover half elsewhere. Usually if the pill falls on something, the whole pill is stuck. Virus Busters is interesting in that multiple players share the same screen, and up to 4 players can play together, which makes it a viable party game. I don’t know how fun it is with 4 people since I haven’t tried it; it’s not bad with two, but I’m still partial to Classic mode.

Me and some buddies chasing some viruses in Virus Buster

In fact, most of the time I play this game, it’s against Kelvin in versus. We’re not too far apart in skill level, so it’s not unbalanced towards one person. Even if it was, there’s options to change the number of viruses and speed of the pills falling for each player, so you can assign handicaps. Actually, messing with these options lead to radically different games. Maxing out the viruses leaves a tiny empty space at the top, allowing little room for error, making it a race to do the first combo to mess up what little space your opponent has left and likely eliminate them from the getgo. Putting the least amount of viruses leaves you with a handful of viruses in a lot of empty space, making it an all out speed contest to eliminate the viruses, with combos hurting your opponent through falling time. The real difficulty changes with the speed option, as time to rotate your pill and decide where to place them is crucial. The virus level seems more to make the game longer or shorter. Right now, Kelvin and I are enjoying the max-out on virii with speed on slow setting.

This match was really close. Of course, I messed up placing the last yellow-blue
pill. Tho Kelvin had just messed up before I messed that up. But as you can tell,
my mess-up from way earlier really jacked me to the end.

If you don’t have roommates, family, or a significant other living with you to be your Dr. Mario rival, it’s cool. The developers have made the (obvious) addition of online play. Of course, this is Nintendo we’re talking about, so you’ve got lame-o friend codes, and you can’t customize the things you say or pick strangers to play with. Nintendo does all the player matching for you, and there’s a set list of 8 phrases you can in between matches. I don’t mind this too much, as the idea of playing with complete strangers intimidates me, so their limited speech kind of makes me feel better when they kick my ass. (I’m telling you, there’s some Dr. Mario fiends on there. And I’m sure it comes as a surprise to no one that the top ranked players are all Japanese.) You can’t customize the game settings for random online play, either. You can play with your friends with friend codes, but I haven’t had a chance to try this out, as neither of my two Dr. Mario friends are ever online at the same time as me. (It’s kinda annoying how their names won’t show up until they’re on the same time as you, so my list is currently just a list of numbers.) The game also keeps track of some ranking score thing, but I’m indifferent to it. Unlike local battles, the game keeps track of your win-loss record overall, along with the score of the current opponent you’re fighting. (I really wish they had this for local.) I feel that multiplayer is the real fun of Dr. Mario, so online play was definitely a necessary addition.

In depth conversation on Dr. Mario.

That said, why don’t they have 4-player Dr. Mario?!? This omission really pieves me, as 4-player multiplayer was available in the N64/Gamecube versions of Dr. Mario. Do you know how many hours I spent playing Dr. Mario with Rodney and Jamie in college? A lot! It was hella fun! Now I spend $10 for a new spiffy version of the game that is minus a feature? Lame! I’m not asking for 4-player online, just local. It’s a great party game. I hope one day there will be an update to put this feature back in. Also, you can’t play Virus Busters online, which I thought was strange since it does have local 4-player.

I have no friends :(

I really dig the new, clean look of the game. The old versions of Dr. Mario have always been pretty dark, while in Online Rx everything is very white and sterile looking, much like anything else Wii-related. In single player you are still Dr. Mario tossing pills; in multiplayer you play your Mii. Miis show up chasing viruses in Virus Busters, and in single player Dr. Mario they jump around and cheer for you when you win. I know some people aren’t fans of Miis, but I love them. Anything integrating Miis is always a plus for me.

(These images were yoinked from IGN.)

On NES

On N64

On Wii

Anyway, I dig this new Dr. Mario. I haven’t played anything else on WiiWare, but I’m willing to go out there and say this is the best thing offered on WiiWare at the moment. If you’re not willing to spend the $10, you can download a demo that only allows online play with friends for free. It’s available through the Nintendo Channel on the Wii, or you can get a friend who owns the game to send you the demo.

Oh yeah, and be my Dr. Mario friend please. 5652+7731+9520

(If I ever figure it out, the following summary will go in a spiffy little box.)

In a nutshell: Dr. Mario has a new coat and goes online.

The good: Dr. Mario will always be good. ALWAYS. Even then, three different modes, handicap options, and online versus provide an incredible variety of play. Clean looking graphics, Miis in doctor’s coats look super-cute.

The bad: No 4-player for Dr. Mario! WHY? No online for Virus Busters, and zero options for online play with strangers.

New thing I learned today: “Viruses” is the proper way of spelling the plural of “virus”. “Virii” was made up teh interwebz.

I originally wrote “virii” all over this review, thinking it was an actual word. I’m stupid. I corrected myself, but I left one or two in for good measure :P

The next morning, Sandra took me to Bed Bath & Beyond so I could get a last minute wedding gift (I need to procrastinate less…) and dropped me off at Budget so I could get my rental car. We got a blue Nissan Altima, which is actually a pretty okay car, especially when considering the POS rental Ford/Chevy compacts I’ve had to drive in the past. (Driving one of those is like driving a toy car… scared the sh*t out of me driving one of those on a freeway.) I found the braking and acceleration to be a little jerky, but for the first few miles, it was apparently because I left it on first gear :P (It’s a freaking automatic, how was I supposed to know it has “gears”?)

The church the wedding was held at is about 45 minutes away from Sandra’s place. Both Sandra’s place and the church are close to 405, so the drive was easy. We left early in case of bad traffic, but traffic was fine, and we got there early. Sean and his now-wife Susan were getting in this giant glass church called the Crystal Cathedral. It looks like an elaborate greenhouse with a row of fountains in the middle and a giant organ in the front. The church was next to two other buildings which also had interesting architecture, and the grounds were sprinkled with statues pertaining to Bible events and figures.

Joseph: I told you not to accept gifts from strangers! BAD T1000 Baby Jesus! Bad!

People were still setting up inside and outside the church, so we wandered around for about half an hour before settling at a church pew. The ceremony was nice, as expected. I was surprised at how religious it was, probably because I wasn’t aware how involved Sean and Susan were involved with church. There were two pastors speaking. One of the unity candles went out during the ceremony, but it didn’t phase the pastor at talking at the time, which is smooth. The ceremony was thankfully not too long. (Don’t get me started on a wedding I went to where they had 7 pairs of married couples do individual vows for them during the ceremony. Ugh.) This did mean, however, there was over two hours left until hors d’oeuvres started at the reception location. Not being the mingling type, Kelvin and I walked around the church a bit more, loitered at a local Best Buy for an hour (Lego Indiana Jones is disappointingly boring), and then arrived early to the reception location at DoubleTree Guest Suites next to Disneyland.

Sean and Susan’s first kiss as husband and wife

We watched several girls set up the lobby while we were there. There were several large portraits of the lovely couple, including the mandatory giant album of Chinese studio pictures. I signed in at the reception table, where I found out I was seated at Table 6.837 AKA Intro to Computer Graphics at MIT. (Now that I think about, I think I took that class the same time as Sean did. I think his group had an awesome final project, while ours… well, no comment. It wasn’t exactly a good class for me.) I also noticed that there were 40 tables of 10 each, so I realized there was at 400 people at this thing!

An hour later, when hor d’oeuvres were being served, I was more aware of the size of the wedding as the waiting area became PACKED with people, most of which were Cantonese. Man, those Cantonese like their large weddings. One old Cantonese lady tried to cut in front of us in the hor d’oeuvres line, but then Kelvin gave her a major stinkeye, so she instead cut behind me, where the couple behind me was preoccupied talking with friends. Hor d’oeuvres were miscellaneous fried Chinese snacks, like these fried wonton/crab rangoon things. (Crab rangoons are incredibly unauthentic, as they’re basically cream cheese wrapped in wonton skin deep fried. That said, last time I had crab rangoons was in Boston, as I have yet to see a restaurant near San Jose serve them. They were soooo yummy.)

The “head and shoulders” tables

Eventually, the doors to the reception hall were opened, and people herded to their tables. Table 6.837 was adjacent to the dance floor and near the bridal party. In fact, we were next to the bride’s parents’ table. With the reception hall completely filled with dinner tables, the cake table was situated on a table in the dance floor, with decorated with several frosting math equations. My table was all MIT alumni. Even tho they were all my year and most of them my major, I didn’t know any of them. (I’m not kidding when I say I wasn’t social in college.) Most of them were Sean’s frat brothers; they’d leave periodically throughout the evening to do shots, according to Kelvin. The table had a lazy susan with a simple but tall centerpiece. Each person got a small menu, a wrapped Chinese pastry, and a neat-o hand-rechargeable LED flashlight to take home. Not only was the flashlight a favor that actually had some sort of utility, you could use the lights to light up the ceiling to cheer and be festive during parts of the wedding. I was very impressed with the favor idea.

Dinner was a several course Chinese banquet, with plenty of seafood and meat dishes. I don’t think it was totally traditional or authentic; it seemed to have twist to it. It wasn’t bad, but I can’t remember what food was served because I forgot to take a menu, and I went to another Chinese banquet the weekend after. To add to the nerdiness of the wedding, the banquet started off with food marched in by waiters to “The Imperial March” (AKA Darth Vader’s theme). The DJ played random music in the background as we ate. We were also entertained with the typical maid-of-honor/best man speeches, parent dances, and cake cutting. Highlights of the evening was the bride and father-of-the-bride disco dance (that daddy must really love his daughter to do that), Sean’s little brother/best man’s SUPER cute musical tribute to the groom, done to the tune of “Uptown Girl”, and finally having a chance to actually speak to Sean when he visited each table. What’s funny is that, after we shook hands with the parents and the bride (who I’ve never met before, and after shaking her hand for about two seconds, I’m pretty sure she still has no idea who I am), Sean kinda hung around our table to talk to all his friends. The bride and both sets of parents kept going on, leaving Sean behind. I guess that shows how important the groom really is in everything! Sean certainly didn’t seem to mind; he finally ran off to catch up with them once they were 4 tables ahead of him. I’m glad he took a long stop at our table so I could finally get a picture with him!

I forgot to recharge my battery before flying down, so of course, my camera
dies right when I get a hold of Sean. Luckily, Kelvin has a tolerable camera on his
phone. Sean’s Chinese getup looks way more comfortable than Susan’s qipao.

Around 10PM, Kelvin and I were getting ready to jet, since we had to leave for San Jose the next day. I insisted on staying until we got some cake, which we did. In order to keep the people from chaotically yoinking the centerpieces, they designated centerpiece ownage to the oldest lady at each table. I’m sure this is meant to respect your elders, but for a table full of young people, it was hella awkward. Everyone at our table was the same year, so of course I end up getting the centerpiece since I was born in January. Yay for being old :P The dancing began around this time, so it was time to jet. I spotted Sean for a second, so we ran off to go say goodbye, but then we lost him again. I was bummed I didn’t get to say goodbye, but I was getting tired looking for him, so we finally left. I wonder if there was a bouquet or garter toss, as we seemed to have missed it.

The drive back was just as easy as the drive to the church. I spent the rest of the night chatting with Sandra, Owen, and their friend Bryan, the other person who worked on the Veidt commercial that wasn’t submitted in time. (Have you seen the winners to that contest? They’re not bad; I rather like the one by watergunfilms. The exception is the Nostalgia commercial picked by fans they have featured on the Youtube main page. Ugh, terrible. Can you say “rigged”?) The next morning, I returned the rental and flew back home, ending my short trip to SoCal.

New thing I learned today: How to spell “hor d’oeuvre”.

The weekend after my engagement pictures, Kelvin and I flew down to LA to attend my collegemate Sean’s wedding. In all honesty, I don’t remember how I met Sean, but every meeting with him I can think of seemed to have something to with anime. I know he was in MIT Anime Club, so maybe I met him while trying to get the club to show Sokodei’s parody dubs. Anyway, he apparently was getting married, and I was invited. Even though it was all the way in LA (and ticket prices are *&%$ing expensive right now), I figured I’d go down there, enjoy being part of his special day (also do some wedding research ;) ), and FINALLY see Sandra. I’ve been telling her I’d go down the last several months, constantly flaking out.

We hopped on a plane after work on the Friday. The trip was quick and fairly smooth, definitely much nicer than driving down. Sandra lives fairly close to the airport, but she didn’t make it LAX arrivals as soon as she thought it would because gajillions of people were arriving in LAX at the same time. Not to mention half of these people (and the people that were picking them up) were complete dipshits. There’s two lanes for driving by, plus an additional lane for stopping. I witnessed TONS of the following:

1) Idiot drivers parked in the stopping lane, with their passenger nowhere in sight. (I see this at every airport.)
2) Idiot drivers parking with the front half of the car in the stopping lane, back half of the car in a driving lane, blocking the driving lane.
3) Idiot drivers driving in parking lane.
4) Idiot passengers running over across two lanes to the left most driving lane with their luggage and loading themselves into their ride in the
leftmost lane, almost killing themselves and causing traffic mayhem, especially with the leftmost lane being blocked by a parked vehicle.

Eventually Sandra and Owen made it through the sea of retards, picked us up, and took us to her place to dump our bags. It was already 10PM-ish, but since this is LA, there are actually plenty of restaurants open late. We went to Cafe 50’s on Santa Monica. Kelvin and I had eaten a little before the plane ride, so we each ordered a set of fries. I ordered a large so I could share with Sandra and Owen. HUGE mistake. Kelvin and I each got an obscene amount of fries, especially me since I got a large. Kelvin got garlic fries, and his garlic fries has WAY too much garlic. Sandra and Owen’s meals were already decent sized, so they couldn’t help me with the fries. Kelvin and I should have shared a small. We had an obscene amount of leftovers we couldn’t keep. What a disaster.

The perspective of this picture is weird. It doesn’t look it,
but my plate of chili cheese fries is like twice the size of
Kelvin’s plate of garlic fries, which is like the size of my head.

When we got back to Sandra’s place, we showered and just hung out, playing Mario Kart Wii until bedtime. Sandra and Owen have a pretty cool apartment setup; lots of neato toys everywhere and art on the walls. It was really nice to finally hang out with Sandra on her home turf.

Around this time, I also gave Sandra her “mystery bag” from Taiwan. There’s this stationary store near my grandparents’ house that I always go to, and they sell these mystery bags, which are paper bags of leftover, unsold crap from their store. Last time I got her one, her bag had the worst crap in: cheap rusty skull rings, plastic pictures of mystery Chinese idols you’re supposed to carry in your wallet, and I don’t remember what else. This last trip to Taiwan, I bought her the most expensive goodie bag ($6USD!), and I got myself the cheapest one ($1USD!) for comparison. Surprisingly, my bag didn’t turn out as crappy as Sandra’s last bag. There’s actually usable stuff in it! I got a cheap cellphone trinket that’s filled with old water and beads, a “painted pen”, and, uh, bar code stickers! And three kinds of glue! (That’s right bitches… three.)

Sandra’s bag had some quality stuff… Naruto pencils (one needs to be sharpened and one is that crappy kind were it’s basically a FIFO of lead), Naruto pencil lead (which she can’t use in any of her Naruto pencils), Naruto highlighter, Naruto ruler, Naruto glue, and a Naruto pencil case to put all her Naruto junk in. She also got 3 pens that had nothing to do with Naruto.

You know what I just realized? I was just going through my stuff to remind myself what I got, and it turns out I stole Sandra’s Naruto glue when I was packing. Awww yeah, FOUR kinds of glue… (Sorry for stealing your glue, Sandra. I honestly don’t need it.)

After laughing at our prizes, it was about time for bed.

Next, Sean’s wedding!

New thing I learned today: Route 66 starts in Santa Monica, and the Cafe 50’s we went to is located on Route 66.

For me, replace “swamped” with “hella busy”.

Because I didn’t arrange our engagement session sooner with our wedding photographer, FC Wong, he ended up being booked for several weekends straight until July. I wanted to take our engagement pictures before then, so I made an appointment with him on a Thursday. Kelvin had suggested Palace of Fine Arts (PFA) as a photo locale, and he also recommended we check out the Exploratorium while we were there. Well, if we’re going there anyway, why not take some pictures in there while we’re at it? FC was open to the idea, so I arranged to meet with him at 3PM in front of the Exploratorium on the chosen Thursday. Kelvin and I had to take days off from work, so we made sure to make a day of it.

We left early to get lunch in SF. I had my Shu Uemura makeover appointment at 1:30PM, so we just ate somewhere nearby in Pacific Heights. We ate at some random Japanese restaurant two doors down from Shu Uemura called Osaka. It was alright, nothing exceptional. After lunch, I got my makeover done early, and we headed off to the Exploratorium, pretty close to Pacific Heights.

We were 45 minutes early to the Exploratorium (we would have been even earlier if we didn’t accidentally get on the freeway instead of turning into the PFA parking lot), so we bought tickets and scouted out the museum. I had never been to the Exploratorium, so I was eager to check things out. The Exploratorium is a science museum where almost all the exhibits are interactive. I imagine there’s usually tons of kids, but because we were here on a weekday, there weren’t many people around. (The exception is the first Wednesdays of each month. Apparently, the Exploratorium has free admission on those days.) I wanted to look for interesting places to take pictures, but Kelvin and I didn’t make it very far, getting distracted with exhibits near the entrance.

In particular, there was this one table with a spinning disc, and you roll other discs onto the table to try and get them to keep rolling. It shouldn’t be that fascinating, yet we were enthralled.

We wasted so much time on the spinning table, we didn’t have time to scout any good spots to take photos. We met up with FC around 3ish out front, gave him an admission sticker, and we all went back to start the shoot. FC had never been there before despite taking lots of engagement sessions right outside at the Palace of Fine Arts. He had expressed initial concern about adequate environmental lighting in an indoors location, but from his first look, he could tell lighting was not an issue. He gave us a spiel about what to expect, which basically was he’d let us do our own thing and wouldn’t give explicit instructions unless he thought something might be neat or necessary.

Throughout the day, most of his instructions were to “act natural”, like talking to each other about whatever and playing with the exhibits. Every so often, he’d tell us to do something romantic, most likely something to do with kissing. Kelvin and I kissed a lot in the museum, occasionally freaking out a child passerby. (I didn’t hear exactly what one girl said, but I assumed she said “Mommy, they’re kissing!” because I heard her mom grumble in response, purposefully looking away from us, “Yes, they are… let’s keep going.”) Sometimes we’d pass by an exhibit, and FC would say, “Oh, we’ve got to get you in there.” If we were distracted by a non-photogenic exhibit, FC would either wander around looking for more spots to take pictures, or he himself would get distracted playing with random exhibits. FC seemed to really like the museum, and I think he liked the opportunity to take a pictures somewhere a little atypical. Here is a small sampling of what he took:

This tile wall is actually at the entrance to both the men’s and women’s bathroom, so
we’re making out in front of the bathroom as people are passing us so they can go do
their personal business. This tile wall is an optical illusion called the cafe wall illusion.
The lines in the tile are parallel!

This exhibit talks about effects of the mind, like even though the toilet water fountain
is as sanitary as any other water fountain, it’s harder for people to drink from it since it
looks grosser. Even though Kelvin is over a toilet, he looks so great in this picture,
doesn’t he? Kelvin grumbles about it, but even FC mentioned this was his favorite.

I should have taken my own picture of the entire exhibit, since FC is focused on making
good couple-y pictures, but this image is actually the head of a robot. The screen is
what it sees. So basically there’s this giant robot with lightening beams between its arms,
watching us make out. There was also a small crowd gathering around, either curious to
see what we were doing or irritated that we were hogging the exhibit.

In this exhibit, you try to figure out what things are by touching and feeling them. FC
made a ring shot out of it. Kelvin is caressing my hand; I’m caressing a light switch.

This is actually a giant screen with a simulated sky and ocean, with variables that can be
modified with a provided Xbox controller. We made the poor decision to try the “scary”
option before taking the picture, which created all these ugly super-high mountains in
the ocean. We had to wait for the peaks to fade before we could take a nice picture.
Also, the view shifts, and the moon would keep rotating out, so we had to wait for the
moon to show back up. I’m surprised how nice the background looks, because in person
it looks really pixelated and kind of ugly.

I think this exhibit, which was a giant plastic ball attached to a lense, demonstrated how
an eye functions. It didn’t look anywhere near this clear in person; to me it was really fuzzy
and pale looking. I don’t get how FC got this shot. Maybe I was looking through it wrong.

As the picture clearly shows, we’re sitting in some sort of sound booth with headphones on,
listening to some audio clips. What the picture doesn’t show is what we’re actually listening
to, which are audio clips of married couples arguing with each other. We didn’t realize what
the exhibit was about until we got in, put the headphones on, and read the display. I think the
goal was to figure out which couple is arguing in the most civil manner. I thought they all
sounded pretty pissed. Anyway, the audio was very unromantic and strangely (in)appropriate.

We didn’t get to see all the exhibits since we only had a couple hours until closing (5PM closing time is so early!), plus some of the exhibits were closed/broken. When the Exploratorium was about to close, it was time to go outside and do more standard engagement shots. Being outside sucked, as it was cold and windy, and my hair was flying all over the place. FC was concerned about the timing; he usually starts engagement sessions closer to sunset when the light is soft and flattering. At 5PM with an 8:30PM sunset, the sun is still high, and the light is harsh. Luckily, the area between the Exploratorium building and PFA structures had a lot of shade, with the light poking through the trees creating a soft light, so he was still able to take several pictures in not-as-harsh lighting conditions.

We call this “the stalker photo”.

Another thing FC had warned me about was that the PFA was currently under construction, and the dome thing had scaffolding all over it. I figured we’d still be able to find nice shots of other structures, and the PFA is near a lot of other places to take engagement pictures (Presidio, Golden Gate, Golden Gate Park, etc.). I wasn’t surprised of the scaffolding of the dome, but I was surprised some of the other structures were also surrounded by ugly metal fences and construction equipment. We still had some free columns to pose next to, thankfully.

Out of pictures FC picked for us, there were two taken with both harsh lighting and construction in the background, but I actually thought they were pretty nice. In fact, this one is one of my favorites:

I also took a picture of my own in harsh lighting and construction in the background, and I like that one too!

After circling around the PFA, FC felt it’d be nice to go to one more place, since the PFA was pretty limited. I thought he’d stop at this point, but I was happy he was up for one more locale. He suggested Baker Beach, which was pretty close to the PFA. If you don’t know Baker Beach, it’s the beach in SF west of the Golden Gate Bridge. Look at any Bay Area wedding photographer’s portfolio, and I can pretty much guarantee they all will have at least one picture from this beach. If there’s a couple walking/running/hugging/kissing on a beach with the Golden Gate in the background, that’s Baker Beach. I’ve never been to this beach before, and I was surprised there was actually a somewhat decent beach in Northern California that didn’t have bark and seaweed all over the place. It still had quite a bit a wood, but it was still pretty. The beach was real windy, and the water was still f*cking cold, of course.

We took the typical e-pic shots, and then FC wanted to try something with the rings. This involved us spending quite some time trying make handprints in the hard sand. I guess NorCal beaches still aren’t that nice after all. Eventually, we were able to make non-crappy handprints, but it was closer to the waves. FC then specially placed the rings for this cool shot:

Kelvin really likes that shot since you can see the tension setting of the ring in shadow. As FC took shots of this, Kelvin and I had to pay really close attention to the waves. If the waves hit the handprints, you’d be left with a very unhappy couple.

When we took our last picture at Baker Beach, it was already 7PM! I was so tired from the whole experience, but the whole thing was really fun! You can tell how much fun I had because I have an goofy grin on my face in so many of the pictures. FC was fantastic to work with. The last time I saw him was when we first met with him to talk about his portfolio and rates, and he was very nice then, but who knows if he was just giving a good first impression to lure us in? After the engagement shoot, I can say he really is a nice guy. (What a relief.) I never thought Kelvin and I would be comfortable being all smoochy-smoochy in front of somebody, but FC is strangely not-creepy like that. Aside from the locale, we gave him zero input on the shots. I liked his natural shots, but I’m also appreciative that he made sure to do more traditional pictures. FC gave us very little direction, which is in total contrast to the studio pictures we took, where every inch of our body was specifically placed and posed. The former’s method gives more natural and artistic (and not as corny) pictures, and it took me a little time to get used to looking at those kind of pictures, since I’m very self-conscious and don’t particularly like looking at my own pictures. (Damn my slouching, where is my mom when I need her to slap me on the back every five minutes? And my profile… I still hate my profile!) I got used to it though, and I think I may actually like how I look in them! Kelvin looks great in all the pictures, damn him *shakes fist* One thing I regret about the shoot is that I completely forgot to take a picture of FC… I had kept reminding myself earlier in the day to do so, but it didn’t happen :\ Anyway, FC has been great so far; I really look forward to doing the rehearsal dinner and wedding pictures with him!

And for reference, FC posted previews of our pictures in his blog the day after the shoot, and the gallery was done just 3 days later. Pretty quick. Prints can be purchased from the 30-day gallery. Getting the digital negatives for the engagement shoot cost extra from the actual shoot. However, they’re included with the digital negatives we’d get with for our wedding day, which for our package requires an album purchase. We probably won’t be buying any albums until after the wedding, and we’re tight on the monies right now, so I don’t know if we’re going to have any prints from this session for our wedding. I’m curious to see the unedited digital negatives, as FC said it’d include all the pictures taken. FC selected all the pictures in the gallery. Considering how Kelvin tends to look in pictures, I hesitate to think what some of the reject pictures look like…

Since this was a rare occasion where I was up in SF, I planned to meet up with Rodney for dinner in the city. After the shoot, there was an hour until dinner, so I just relaxed and enjoyed the beach atmosphere in the warm shelter of my car. I ventured out momentarily to take a couple of my own pictures before driving off to meet up with Rodney and his coworker friend Alice at a restaurant only a couple miles away.

Dinner was at Isa, a French tapas restaurant with TONS of Yelp ratings. I say it lives up to its ratings. All the plates are meant to be shared, and we had 9 different dishes plus 3 different desserts. It was all pretty delicious. I’m particularly partial to their steak dish and goat cheese dish. (Oh, that goat cheese is SO GOOD.) I also tried foie gras for the first time. I was scared it’d taste like those gross livers in Chinese dishes, but fatty liver is… fatty so it tasted okay. I’d still rather have my goat cheese. We also had one of the best waiters ever. He was very knowledgable and informative about the dishes, and he was friendly and cheerful without being fake or annoying. Too bad I don’t remember his name… how was I supposed to know the service would actually be good? At least, we tipped him pretty decent tho.

Because of Isa’s weird serving method (only one or two dishes served at a time), dinner was like 2.5 hours. When we got home to the South Bay, it was past 11PM, and I was exhausted. Man, what a day, but it was worth it. I got a bunch of nice pictures out of it, great food, fancy makeup, and I had a ton of fun all day. I need to go to the Exploratorium again sometime, but next time more playing with toys and less making out :P

New thing I learned today: The cafe wall illusion is given that name because the doctor who first described it saw it on a cafe wall in Bristol, England.

I tried to learn what causes the optical illusion, but I’m too tired/lazy right now.