What are your jeans doing today?

[kayodic]

Ranon; thank you my friend, i'm humbled... your kinds words are more than enough... indeed i had such great time, who didnt? with those burgers, brownies, beers and blokes LoL....

Obbigood; cheers James... i'll post Benzak's edition soon on OGL thread

[beatle]

must spread..looks like u had a great time

[kayodic]

yeah, apparently it was Beats.... so lucky to be around these people

Thanks!

[-Z-]

here is the end of new york city...

hope to have more material to post up from over here. have fallen off a bit in terms of shooting and have done most of it with my iPhone of late...not wanting to lug my camera around given its so damn hot out. hope everyone is doing well...look forward to getting a bit more involved again.

[ThinFinn]

2nd shot is money...

also done that with the iphone?...

[Megatron1505]

Kayodic and Z, beautiful shots and great updates.

[saintkeat]

wish I could rep up Z, his black and white shots always blow me away.

[-Z-]

2nd shot is money...

also done that with the iphone?...

Thanks everybody! Its good to be back posting more around here. Hey Finn, actually i shot that from the street with my 5DII and found a shot i liked in it when i was messing around with it in photoshop...i edit everything i shoot, but not usually as much as i did with this one. wanted to save it and i'm glad there was a shot in there.

here was the original straight from the camera compared to the final piece.

[laxlife1234]

That is a nice shot, how did you get it so straight though?

As for everyone else, I need to spread but I love reading all your WAYJDT posts! Keep it up guys.

[-Z-]

i used the lens correction tools to vertically shift the image until i keystoned the straight lines, cropped out the distortion around the edges from the shift, and framed it how i wanted and that was it. pretty easy, it doesn't always work if you have to shift too far, and i had to shift this one a long way, but it ended up working out!

[roy6]

(From yesterday)

Visited an old friend in Oakley, CA.

Artwork at friend's mom's house.

Closeup of ceramic rabbit lawn ornament at friend's house.

While friend was out of room collecting things to leave, I persuaded his mom to get out his prom picture. Hmmnn, popular.

Went to a farm.

Picked peaches.

[HoustonChris]

Today was pizza day again:

First one is spinach and prosciutto. Toppings are under the cheese, so it's a bit underwhelming looking.

Second one is sun dried tomatoes, goat cheese and fresh basil.

I haven't been happy with the crust, so I've been experimenting with new dough recipes. This batch was disappointing, so I'll probably be making another attempt later this week. Luckily, my wife is willing to put up with my constant tinkering on my pizzas.

EDIT: sorry about the pic size; Photobucket seems to be uncooperative for me right now.

[Baeyer-Drewson]

The secret to a good pizza (in addition to good dough, good sauce, etc.) is to put most of the cheese (like 2/3 to 3/4 of it) directly over the sauce/base, then toppings, then the remaining cheese lightly sprinked over the top of everything.

[devilish]

Substitute a little of the water in the dough mixture with vodka. It evaporates more and helps make the crust crisp. America's Test Kitchen has a recipe, I think. Also fresh, sliced Mozzarella not grated.

[HoustonChris]

The secret to a good pizza (in addition to good dough, good sauce, etc.) is to put most of the cheese (like 2/3 to 3/4 of it) directly over the sauce/base, then toppings, then the remaining cheese lightly sprinked over the top of everything.

Yeah, I've done it that way before and it's definitely better.

Substitute a little of the water in the dough mixture with vodka. It evaporates more and helps make the crust crisp. America's Test Kitchen has a recipe, I think. Also fresh, sliced Mozzarella not grated.

Interesting suggestion; I'll have to give that a try. My problems seem to be yeast related- I can't get it to rise properly, so that it has the right mix of airy chewiness on the inside and a nice crunchiness on the outside.

And yes, fresh, authentic buffalo milk mozzarella is better, but finding decent fresh stuff is a crapshoot, not to mention expensive when I do. This is why I occasionally miss living in New Jersey.

[kit714]

UES jeans in Vancouver Island Horne Lake for a short vacation I tried to resize, something is wrong sorry !

Horne Lake

Self Guided Cave Tour

Beautiful drive to the resort!

Jeans after the cave tour

Beach behind the resort

[ranonranonarat]

just wanted to throw up another update on my recent trip to Hong Kong before photobucket starts screwing up on me again. its been a bitch to upload pictures there in the past week..

so a couple of weeks ago after my return from bangkok, we made a trip down to Hong Kong the day after. it was a great trip, great food and something pretty different from bangkok. i will have to admit that without the language barrier it made everything a lot better since i can speak manageable cantonese. there were a lot of huge malls in hong kong, very much so like singapore but i liked it for all the street food they had. definitely one of the pitstops for anybody visiting asia. good thing is that a lot of their shops close pretty late. 10ish or 11ish. so that was good albeit tiring.

so we took the 7am flight in the morning which was good since we slept 95% of the 4hour flight to hong kong. customs was crazy upon arrival and the queue was mad long but it was all good since we were more than happy to be in hong kong.

bought a ticket for the airport express train towards kowloon. very clean and fast. cheap as well. much less than what a cab would have cost.

here we are in the train towards kowloon. it was a pretty empty ride. the thing i love about hong kong transport is that their train carriages are MAD long. they are deceptive in a way that it is always crowded on the train though.

some in train entertainment. they have a screen where you can watch those pre-recorded shows and have speakers inbuilt into your seat so you can control the volume via the knob. cool.

much time was however spent looking out the windows. great view, a little hazy in the day but it was great as passed through all the different stops. dont mistake this train for the MTR though because this one only stops at 4 different stops and is basically the airport line. the MTR is way more crowded.

checked in at our hotel. great room which was huge but we paid a bit more for it. thankful for the decision because we did a lot of walking during the trip so there was nothing better than coming back to a clean and comfortable room.

went out for lunch after that. headed to one of the typical tea houses and the it was a more famous one called tsui wah where they served noodles, rice and sacks. really good!

ordered some iced tea. came with lots of lemon slices and not just your typical lemon syrup drink. nice.

this was my main. some noodles with fishball and toufu and toufu skin. coupled with some of the chilli it was really tasty. the soup base was fantastic. i love chinese food like these. great comfort food for a hungry stomach.

[ranonranonarat]

also had some condense milk buns. they are somewhat like toast but they add a dash of butter and condensed milk to it. great savoury treat and great lunch. spent most of the day in the different malls and shopping. hong kong is great for discounted shopping (read: no tax) so we spent the entire day heading out to different malls.

on the second day we decided to take the tram out. been commuting most of the time in MTRs which were fast but insanely crowded and tried the trams instead. got to see some parts of hong kong as we passed by.

some of the sights along the streets.

the inside of the tram is a little dodgy (sometimes also dirty) but i love public transport like that. no better way to experience the city. hit all the big malls that day and chainstores where my girlfriend wanted to check out stuff. I.T, Lane Crawford (great selection of some techwear as well as brands like Monitaly, LVC shirts, Common Projects, White Mountaineering, Tricker's etc. Lots of brands under one roof), H&M etc.

had dinner after the second day of shopping at this chinese restaurant called yung kee where they were apparently highly rated for their roast goose. they served some appetisers like pickled ginger and one other item which was century egg. not sure why but i dont typically get served century egg at chinese restaurants though.

ordered some vegetables

fried rice as well

also tried the suckling pig here as i dont have it often. very good with really really crispy skin and the meat is really tender. we ordered one helping for the two of us but not really recommended unless there are 3 people. it is easy to get tired of the taste after having too much.

of course this is the roast goose we ordered. very very good roast goose. i like how they also served it with a dipping of plum sauce. the skin is tasty and i must say i miss having it already! be sure to try this in hong kong if you ever go. more shopping after dinner as we headed to the hotel tired from all the walking that day.

on the 3rd day of our travels we went to a warehouse sale somewhere really far away. had breakfast early in the morning and because it was raining it was great to have some congee for breakfast which is basically rice boiled to a really thick consistency.

[ranonranonarat]

also a chain eatery but i have to say their food is awesome.

had congee with preserved egg and minced pork. they are all mixed into the congee. what you can see on top is some spring onion and a fried dough fritter which is typically served with all kinds of congee. it is crispy but you dip it into the porridge and it is really fragrant.

also ordered a fried dough fritter wrapped with some cheong fun. which was really good when topped with chilli and sesame seeds.

washed everything down with a really good cold soy bean milk. nothing like a good hearty breakfast to start the day! prices were really cheap too. less than 15USD for the both of us. spent the next half of the day traveling to the said warehouse. picked up a pair of converse JPs for 15USD. great price.

after that we headed back for a quick snack. pretty overpriced this pop up stall called brat located inside this mall that had an Alden store. can't remember the name of the mall. not bad but definitely not worth the price.

came with a small serving of chips as well.

after that we took a train to take5 to have a look. this is the typical train in hong kong. not at peak hour though. expect lots of shoulder to shoulder standing during peak hour.

some kind of WAYWT. love these tricker's x present. high comfort level and i walked a lot in these during my trip.

a john bull shirt i picked off the supermarket for a good price. didn't get any pictures at take5 because we had a hard time finding the place and i didnt think that they allowed photography. haha. apparently the address i found was the old one so had to do a lot of asking around to find the new place. they had a lot to offer and the salespeople were really friendly but i wasn't really looking for anything in particular so i passed on making a purchase there. great store though! had dinner after that and then ended up going to langham place for a walkaround after that.

on the 4th and final day there, we didn't get to do much since we were too tired from all the walking and woke up late. haha.

[ranonranonarat]

went out for a quick lunch at this mall in mongkok where i ordered a charsiew and chicken rice. not too bad!

got back to the hotel and checked out and then headed to our last place to eat which was this macau cafe. the food was good! ordered wings with spaghetti.

and also a beef stew to share. the beef stew was really nice. will head there again. took the airport express back to the airport where we departed on our flight back to singapore. all in all it was a great holiday and i would definitely love to return in a couple of months to probably go to all the places i missed out on this trip.

[Obbigood]

suckling pig is never enough for me!

can see that you have enjoyed throughout, Ranon.

Talk to you soon

[ranonranonarat]

haha i feel 'gelat' after eating too much. enjoyed for sure.

talk to you soon too!

[HoustonChris]

Looks like a great trip. I always love your posts, ranon.

[ranonranonarat]

thank you i am humbled!

[kayodic]

Ranon; i wish i was your jeans! such happy jeans i see.... seriously your monstrous food posts are never enough... thanks Ranon for making me envy your jeans even more and you're good at it.

[Sugar Mountain]

GREAT Hong Kong pictures Ranon! I love the place so much. Hoping to be there soon... fingers crossed.

[jigsaw]

@ranon

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to ranonranonarat again."

why......

Those pigs...

i miss mongkok

[BIGBERTHA]

Love the hong kong pics. I'm wondering myself if we should stay a few days in hong kong on our way back from Bangkok in sept.

[Vanquish Gold]

Great HK pics ranon.... you make me wanna get some plane reservation now!

[ranonranonarat]

thank you for all the kind comments! hong kong was really fun!

BIGBERTHA i highly recommend that you do. you will have a lot of fun in hong kong and since you are already in this part of asia, why not make the trip down? it will save you a lot of money and to be honest, dining in hong kong is pretty decent unless you hit the upmarket places, so i dont see why not!