oh btw, last friday before i left for delaware, i finally went to brooklyn museum of art and checked out basquiat's one-man exhibition... man, his work just blew my mind off! while his work is very PRIMITIVE, yet his poetry and the use of icons and imagery were pretty raw, honest and in harmony together. i love his street knowledge for the fact that he never had any formal art training. that's something rare you see in this world with his great talents... so check his exhibition soon before it ends in brooklyn on june 5th before moving to, i believe, houston and los angeles later this week...

long live samo©!!!

susie and i took off to delaware last friday to see susie's sister's family as susie wanted to see his adorable nephew, christopher. we crashed there for two nights and on that saturday, with susie's eyes glued on his irresistible cute face all day, i set myself a nice drive through a few primitive amish villages to meet my friend, tim, for a few hour bouldering session at the governor's stable near harrisburg, pa. while i have not climbed for about 6 months due to my finger injury, i was very rusty and could not climb much. i think i only lasted for an hour before i called a day. today was a busy day for us... from suz's sister's home, we took off to delaware's capital city, wilmington, aka "a place to be someday" to join christopher's first ever visit to a zoo. he seemed to enjoy in gazing many different kinds of animals. after leaving christopher and his family there, susie and i took a little ride around wilmington to look for a lunch spot, but we did manage to find it pretty D-E-A-D so we zoomed to philadelphia to taste pat's original philly cheesesteak. when we got there, the line was pretty long, just around a block, but the wait was well worth it as our cheesesteaks were pretty good, something different from many 'quick' cheesesteak joints. many cheesesteaks were pretty soggy, but not pat's... so you get the idea... afterwards, we went back to big apple where we immediately packed ooqboo's whole inventory into susie's car and dropped 'em off at my business partner's apartment... afterwards, we joined jak n ck for a long scroll around east village ane LES looking for a nice place to dine... we've managed to find a nice asian fusion tapas restaurant in LES... i believe the name of the restaurant was kuma. delicious dishes... so check it out on ludlow st. if you got a chance... afterwards, we scouted a new bar for ck's birthday party... she really dug this bar that she decided to have a b-day party there for sure. after downing our exotic drinks there, we walked to chinatown to get some ice cream at chinatown's factory ice cream only to find that my favorite ice cream, mango, was out due to cleaning (it was closed at 11 pm and we came like 15 min late but they had many 'american' ice creams left... so i have to ask, why couldn't they just start cleaning out the 'american' ice creams first instead of exotic ones... nevertheless, we went back home afterwards and were alll POOPPPPPED out, especially susie who just literally fell asleep on my yoga mat while i'm just yakking away here now! guess i'll have to carry her to our bed now! toodles... my apologies if i ever give you a yawn over this useless blog... ... ... ... ...........

on friday evening, i went to a nice asian fusion restaurant called highline on washington st. in meatpacking district for dinner with a small group of friends. the restaurant is pretty massive with three floors. they have wonderful tasty exotic cocktails as well as dishes. also, they got a few nice beds with trays as a table for any customer who likes to eat on bed. afterwards, we took off to magnolia's to get a last bite of this delicious cupcake before i move out. we then split off. susie and i took our chicagoan fella, john, to east village to check out its raunchy nightlife.

saturday... it was very mellowing day though john and i went to brooklyn heights to check out manhattan's skyline and we took a water taxi back home. later that evening, i went to the delancey bar for my farewell/30th birthday and you know the story where a fresh 30 year old person would get: a nice long supply of drinks from friends... but i have to admit that the highlight was on my wife, susie, who took a big beating than me as she got a hangover the next day (while i never did, thanks to a big dose of h20). again, thank you to everyone who attended the bash... i hope you guys enjoyed the greeny o2 atmosphere on the 2nd floor.

here's a picture of Monkey Qee that everyone at the party signed for me. It was my wife's idea and my business partner, Jacob, embraced the idea by purchasing it. So, again, thank you y'all.

Now, let's see how does it feel to be 30 for the next 363 days...

just woke up like a couple of hours ago and i'm just chilling out at my place checking out the ebay progress like every 45 seconds! gotta love the crazy biddings once the end nears in...

a friend from chicago is flying in so i'm waiting for him and then we'll be off to do some damages on manhattan.

later tonight, i'm hoping to get one last bite of magnolia cupcake!

just got on a bus....

i took a long stroll from east vilage to tribeca. it was actually nice to celebrate my early birthday by yourself. i ended up hanging out at max fisch bar, an old timer, that was still crowded during friday's twlight with many young hipsters.. but the highlight was actually observing an 80-year old regular sitting by the bar taking many glances at young ladies.. i can't help but chuckle at him... since i haven't drank that much lately, i had a good buzz after just a few reddie stripes in an hour. now, ill need a good sleep before i have friends bugging me to drink more later today... i don't actually think that many peepos get the chance to celebrate his/her 30th b-day alone for once in nyc.

just got off a bus at 2nd ave and 8th st just to take a stroll to crif dog's and celebrate my sole b-day with 2 doggies in east village... more to come on this crazy day...

since i'm moving out soon, i was feeling little torn out that i'm selling some of my beloved toys on ebay. i felt that my toy collection was too big for me to move to california that i went through baffling decisions whether to keep and sell some of my urban toys...

finally, i have managed to spend a good 6 hours on ebay two nights ago from 11 pm till 5 am with 31 auctions! so far, the auctions look good to me... 27 out of 31 have been bidded already! wwhoooa.. of course, most of the $$$ goes to the wedding fund!

i'm gonna try to sell most of my clothes, so if there's any attire that you're interested in purchasing, gimme a holla! they're cheap, too!

this week is going to be crazy one... tonight, i'm heading out to the mets' game as i haven't gone to the shea stadium before! i'll have to make a trip to the yankees' game sometimes soon, too. also, i'll be turning a big ol' three-zero this weekend... so guaranteed, everyone's going to try to make me the _ol' white trash_ entertainer of the year soon.

again, many thanks to my devoted bloggin' readers for the congratulatory messages of my elopement. again, i don't feel much different at all except that my shiny ring keeps distracting me when i sign...

also, my ex-roommate found this in the web: sick of me again?

just got back home late today - 230 am - from JFK airport:

may 6th: only had a few hours of sleep as i had to get up early for a haircut appt and pack my stuff for a nice brief getaway trip to las vegas with susie that no one knew about (except for our families).

may 8th: susie and i eloped. (yes, you read it here correctly!)

may 10th: got back home with susie at around 2 am and had a difficulty time of unlocking my apt's door... we struggled with the door for about half hour until i woke up my super about this and he came over. after a few minutes of jimmyin' around, he was able to get the door open.

anyway for more details/pictures about our lil' secret vegas style elopeness, you'll have to wait until after october 15th. that's when we plan to show pictures/movie of our own 'american' version wedding ceremony in our chinese wedding banquet.

now, everything's back to normal... meeting with my client and working...

now, here are the pictures taken from tate's len during the cinco de mayo's evening:
4 of us

gabe in one of those floors

gabe striking a pose while others do some graffiti work

you can check out more pictures at tate's blog

also, my ex-roommate, jak took a wonderful shot of me while on the roof:

tate, my deaf neighbor, and i went out to cinco de mayo's abandoned building party in LES. the building seems like it was copied off from brasilan movie, _city of god_'s slums. the interior were torn off, floors were creaking, doors were damaged, you get the picture... many people were on the top of the roof, and we were able to hop to a couple of buildings. we caught some of taggers in action and it was cool to see 'em do it. ck/jak joined us later. behind the building is a big ol' church. some people actually climbed the church's roof and went to check out a tower there. ck and i climbed up the steep roof with a peaceful ease to the tower. ck then went further by climbing up the tower's roof to sit next to the church's st. mary's statue. (or a saint?) also, we met a drunken gal named jennie and she thought that tate and i were lovers. after we told her that tate's married while i'm engaged, she still insisted that we'd be a wonderful couple... glad that we got to go through this throwback 1980s party as we had a blast there, but afterwards, tate and i took off to williamsburg to do some night photograph. tate wanted to take some pictures of me for his portfolio before i get my hair cut later today. (i plan to get a clean cut as i have had this shaggedy look for almost a year) however, during the shooting, tate's camera went into a malfunction and wasn't able to read the card. it indicated that there was no image on the card. of course, tate was going nuts and wanted to format the card... i told him not to as he should check out the card with a separate card reader once he gets back home... we had so much fun with night session until this incident happened.. so we went back home at around 4 am. now, i'm drinking a herbal tea before i hit the sack... tate had just paged me recently that he didn't lose all the pictures. he was able to get 3/4 of the pictures back!!! whew... off to catch zzzz now...

my fiancee and i just got back home from DC as i wanted to scope DC out before i move back to california soon this end of the month. i haven't gone to DC for almost a year, so it was nice to see some ol' faces and catch up. but there's one thing that i've noticed about DC since my last visit - lots of renovations around. dc's properties' prices according to friends have tripled/quadrupled for the last few years! also, we went out to check out GWU/GT's area and it has gone too glitzy with many $$$-grubbin' chain stores and conservative mommies/daughters meshing around.

also, we went to dina and joe's birthday bash. got to meet some ol' faces and was surprised to see some faces from our ol' town, chicago. also got to meet some new faces, too.. we had a ball at the party... nice chance of scenery from nyc, yet, a weekend was good enough for us to hang out in DC.. after a long bus ride back home due to heavy traffic, it was such nice to be back home...

happy birthday dina + joe... guess i'll be joining the boat soon in a few weeks...