"Smut from Around the World"

One of my favourites parts about travelling is that I get to send inappropriate postcards to Dean. See Dean's blog post, 'Smut from around the world' for examples. It all started when I went to Musee D'Orsay in Paris way back when, and came across a painting entitled L'origine du Monde, and I thought, wow, this would be an awesome postcard to send through the mail, if for nothing else than to have some mailman see it and assume Dean was a pervert (FACT). And with that, a tradition was born for every overseas trip we take.

Oh, one other funny thing overseas mailing thing. Whilst in Portugal, I sent a BB gun in the mail to Dean. Mostly because it was cheap and I wanted it, but was afraid of bringing it home in my luggage. So rather than mailing it to myself, I sent it to Dean with the reasoning that if it was a problem, he'd get in trouble and not me. I'm a great pal.

This photo is completely unrelated, but I love this odd sight of this dude just chilling on a tiny plastic lawn chair in the middle of a street in Ho Chi Minh, watching oncoming traffic. Actually, now that I think of it, this would make for an interesting postcard image too.



Photo taken with a Kiev88 CM and Arsat 80mm f/2.8 lens on Ilford XP2 Super400.

The Chinese Betrothal Ceremony

Some of you may have experienced a Chinese wedding before, but unless you are 1) a wedded Asian, or 2) relatives of someone who has gone through a traditional Chinese wedding, you may not have experienced a "Guo Dai Li" (or betrothal ceremony). Essentially, this is a pre-wedding ceremony in which the groom's family visits the bride's family and presents a series of wedding gifts - mostly very traditional and auspicious foods (whole roasted pig!) - and then the bride's family gives back a set of gifts in return. I'm not sure that these ceremonies are usually as boisterous and full of guests as my cousin's was this weekend, but it was definitely fun!




Today's festivities brought to you by the red letter 囍 (aka 'Double Happiness').








Can you tell who the father of the soon to be bride is?






Fathers of the Bride and Groom ham it up.








Trying out the various flavours of 'Wifey Cakes'.




And as you may have seen before from my previous posts, there's always incense and a head-on chicken as part of Chinese festivities.

YYC Sunday - Part II

Generic photo post. More shots from our Sunday photowalk. Kiev 88 and Arsat 80mm f/2.8, on Kodak Ektar 100.










Random dude that approached and inquired if we was Canadian folks.


Eric, shoving his face full of healthy McBreakfast.

Giant Heads, Steel Horses, and a Lion Mask - Just another YYC Sunday.

Scott, Eric and I went on a short photowalk this morning downtown. Scott suggested the rather heinous hour of 7am as our start time (F@CK!!!), so there weren't many people on the streets to photograph. Having said that, I did get a portrait of some random dude with a runny nose who asked us if we were Canadians or not. Portrait not shown below cause it hasn't been developed yet).






Looking out, from inside the giant head.








Stay!















All shots taken with a Leica M6 and Voigtlander Nokton SC 35/1,4 on expired Konica VX 400. This film yields really interesting orange and magenta notes. If you can find some (discontinued a while ago), you should grab it.

_MY PHOTO plastered across a retail storefront in PARIS_

I was contacted by someone in the Graphic Arts department of a French men's clothing retailer this week, inquiring about using a photo I shot for their store window displays. Be still my fluttering heart... MY PHOTO plastered across a retail storefront in PARIS (my favourite city of all the places I've been)?! I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven (aka, a place where Ryan Gosling reads poetry to you while offering a light for your cuban cigar handrolled by the ghost of Fidel Castro himself). What is WRONG with me?!

Anyways, back to my story. The message from said retailer didn't mention anything about 'buying' my image, just a request for the original file (photo below). I googled my way onto their website, and got punched in the face with their pricing - their dress shirts ranged from 115 to 450 Euros!! So I politely responded that I would provide them with a copy of the file for the nominal price of 100 Euros. Surely, an upscale purveyor of French fashion that felt right charging customers 450 Euros for a piece of cloth with some buttons and two sleeves sewn on it could afford to pay one quarter of that for a photo which would be used as promotional material to further increase the sales of their - did I mention the price of 450 Euros?! - shirts.

Well, turns out I didn't even get a response from them. My Ryan Gosling/ Fidel Castro-esque dream has been crushed, but I also feel good that I didn't provide my personal work for a "pathological profit at all costs, screw the artists" type of corporate entity to use in their advertising.

But still... feeling a little bittersweet at the moment. Having said all this, I'd still throw all moral qualms and principles out the window if they agreed to my (generous) terms. Vanity, eh?

Adventures in Fooding - Big Fish

Another weekend, another food and drink blog post. As I sit here blogging about our eating adventures (again!), Anita is currently doing what appears to be endless sit-ups to work off our restaurant meal (technically, MEALS considering we haven't had one single homecooked one this weekend). It's amusing to watch her work out, but it also makes me feel like a total lard ass for not joining in. Whatever, I have photos to upload, and typing to do! Clearly, my threshold for justifications and rationalizing is extremely low.

We hit up Big Fish Seafood Restaurant and Oyster Bar tonight for... wait for it... seafood and oysters. The name sorta says it all. We shared a half dozen fresh oysters, which Anita informed me was the first time we'd consumed these libido boosters in 293 days. For real. She keeps a log of every raw oyster we eat, complete with which region/ bay/ coast they're sourced from, and the taste profiles of each... sort of like an extreme version of a wine snob. We also indulged in: 1) sturgeon skewers served with spaghetti squash fritters and mango lemon aioli, 2) lamb and lobster burger with cambazola cheese, avocado and salsa cruda, and 3) seared salmon on French lentils with wild mushrooms, sage, and dungeness crab. YUMMY! Unfortunately, the specific dish I really wanted to try (a softshell crab sandwich) was only available on the lunch menu. Who wants to meet us there for lunch sometime?


















I'm holding an oyster shell, in case you couldn't tell what it was.

Ox and Angela - Crispy Fried Sardine Bones, anyone?

Anita and I have had our fill of strange food fare on our travels, so it was interesting to finally have something exotic that we haven't tried before, within our very own city. We hit up Ox and Angela yesterday afternoon for a quick meal, and the menu offerings were an extensive and eclectic mix of Spanish tapas. The place was packed full with reservations, so we were ushered to the bar to eat, where we had a great view of the bartenders mixing a variety of very interesting looking cocktails (I would probably return for those alone). The food was decent, and the highlight piece of 'ooh how interesting' were the grilled sardines. Those in and of themselves, were good, but the surprise was that post consumption, they took away the bones and crispy deep fried them, representing them to us on a butcher block with a paprika aioli. Very TASTY!





The presentation of these fried fish bones reminded me a little of my 'Dead Bird Diaries' series of photos.








Afterwards, we went to see The Place Beyond the Pines (Ryan Gosling!!!), which was some heavy heavy subject matter. But that's beside the point - what I really wanted to talk about was the dude beside us who was eating THE. STINKIEST. PIZZA. EVER. It smelled like an unwashed dog and a bag of vomit blended into one, topped with a pile of sweaty socks. Seriously, that lethal cocktail of aromas should have been enough to knock out even the most hardy Spartan. I have no idea how he managed to chow down on it like it was actually food. And I thought I had an iron stomach...