Comments Posted By Kevin Kim
Displaying 601 To 630 Of 4,392 Comments
I’ll confine myself to two questions: why the constant Dutch angle (true in the last video, too)? Do you not realize the lens is crooked the way you’re holding it?
Two questions.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 17/February/2025 @ 7:30 am
Paul,
If so, he came so close.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/February/2025 @ 10:05 pm
but it sure makes for some jilted phrasing
jilted = (adj.) (of a lover or spouse) rejected or cast aside, especially abruptly or heartlessly (Dictionary.com)
Maybe “twisted” or “awkward” or “unwieldy.”
If you’re losing so many letters, maybe it’s time to just get a new computer.
re: first video
While there’s a lot to say about this latest video, I’ll confine myself to two questions: why the constant Dutch angle (true in the last video, too)? Do you not realize the lens is crooked the way you’re holding it? Tilt the camera a wee bit to the left. Gauge how level you are by looking at the ground, the horizon, the ocean, buildings, etc.
This restaurant has not opened yet, but the name sounds tasty
And given the rolling-pin/bread symbolism, it should be called Temple of Carbs.
re: second video (beach walk)
At 3:30, as you’re saying that you’re gonna watch the sunset, the Dutch angle goes away for a blessed moment. Also: a bit of rasping and coughing in the first half. You sure you’re okay? Maybe see a doc about that.
All in all, life is still a beach in the PI. Stay happy. And watch that breathing.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/February/2025 @ 5:23 pm
Hell, Mary. Where is Grace?
I guess there’s some anti-Catholic sentiment in the PI. I’d love to know more about that, just out of sociological curiosity.
We did a walk around back to San Isidro. Here’s a two-minute take from there:
Nice video, but please remember to show the sights earlier by training your camera on them about 5-10 seconds earlier than you currently do. It often feels as if we’re getting only a belated glance at certain things after you’ve started to pass them by. Try focusing on an object, person, or event while it’s still a little bit distant so that we have a chance to focus on it with you. You want to avoid an “afterthought” kind of feeling.
The focus on the young lady (about 0:17) was very good. You said “…thanks to this young lady,” then reinforced this by panning over to her and letting her wave, and you didn’t pan away until after she had completed her wave. Great job.
“Here’s the rest of the pack” (about 0:20) started off well, but you didn’t hold on them, instead swinging away for no good reason while you asked the pack where Stuart (Stewart?) was. As a result, “Who’s that bringing up the rear?” was a mess of wild pans back and forth. So when we see the waving neighbor, there’s no focus on him, and the whole thing feels distracted. For audio purposes, too, it’s a good idea to focus on the people who are speaking. If you ask who’s bringing up the rear, focus the camera on the person answering and let them answer completely before moving on to the next thing.
Fruit stand (about 1:23): this was another hasty glance. Again, try focusing on the fruit stand before you get to it, say hello while you’re focused on the stand, and finally record the owner’s greeting before moving on. Get a sense for complete moments—their beginnings, middles, and ends. Anticipate.
Catching the trike(?) at about 1:39—that was good. You caught the trike as it approached and held on it while it passed. Smooth.
Final narration: also good.
I don’t want you to get the impression that I think any of this was bad. You’re still just starting out, and frankly, you’re probably doing a better job than I’d have done in your place. But my humble suggestion would be to get better at “reading” when a significant event is about to happen (e.g., walking by a fruit stand), then anticipate that event, focus on it, and let it play out to its conclusion in front of your camera before you pan away to something else. We want to avoid that “afterthought” feeling of catching something only right as it’s going by you. This requires a bit of foresight, intuition, and situational awareness.
Michael and his gal Tae joined us for a snack on the roof.
Is Tae Filipina? If not, where’s she from?
The route of our 7.5K journey
That looks like a dude about to dive off a springboard into a pool. Or a really long, skinny cat that’s blowing out cigarette smoke (north end) while sporting a bulky erection (toward the south), with piss dribbling off its foot (southern end). Hey, I see what I see.
My lovely date for the evening
You’re getting better at smiling like a human.
I blame it on VD!
The calories of someone who just doesn’t care anymore. But at least you’re counting them.
400 hundred calories versus almost none in pussy
I may have linked to this song once before. Listen for the phrase “spam purse.” And as a Hasher, you will, of course, recognize “gash.”
Man, writing is tough without a properly functioning keyboard. Bear with me.
You seem to have survived the ordeal.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/February/2025 @ 7:21 pm
My mom had a Vietnamese friend who invited us over to her house for a lunar-new-year party. One of the dishes was pig brains with peppercorns. The brains had been cooked, then chilled, and they were about as gross as you’d imagine they were. I agree: no, thanks. That said, I’ll try anything once.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/February/2025 @ 8:41 am
UPDATE: Swan just showed me how to copy and paste using the mouse. Duh!
There’s a whole world of right-click options out there.
I’d have suggested learning a few basic HTML commands, which is how I do boldface, italics, and link insertion in your comments section, but HTML doesn’t solve the C/V problem.
Art on the wall
I like it! More like this, please.
I went with the beef enchiladas.
For a second, I thought you’d gone crazy and ordered pig brains.
A bar that meets the needs of everyone is there if you look for it.
But is there a bar for us people who don’t enjoy bars?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/February/2025 @ 3:15 am
I appreciate the honesty this time.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/February/2025 @ 9:43 am
That said, I WANT to do better, and I do sometimes notice when something I write looks off. So, I’m not giving up, but I won’t promise you’ll see significant improvement either. I do appreciate your attempts to educate me.
Wanting to do better is fine. But please don’t tell me you’re making an effort, or that you think you’re improving, when you’re obviously doing neither. If you were truly making an effort all this time, you’d be able to quote back terms and rules that I’ve mentioned over the years, none of which have sunk in. If I were really your teacher, my top priorities would be to make you (1) regurgitate, in your own words, the terms and concepts I’d just taught you and (2) apply those terms and concepts to (a) examples I give you and to (b) your own original examples. And I’d be a bastard about it, too: if there’s one thing I learned from working at that tutoring center for almost three years, it’s that you never let the student get away with not demonstrating knowledge. As I wrote in my little book, if you’re not checking knowledge, you’re not teaching. That’s why a true teacher never uses the yes/no question “Do you understand?”—because most students will say “yes” just to get the teacher off their backs. “Do you understand?” is just lazy teaching that invites lazy student responses. This is why, when you successfully correct a grammar point after I’ve brought it to your attention, I almost always ask a followup question: “Why?” And usually, after I ask why, your response is almost always… nothing. Silence. Silence that reveals the bullshit. (Or reveals that you just parrot Grammarly.) Which means you didn’t really know the relevant rule, which in turn means you’ll make the same mistake again.
Basically, the onus of learning must be on the student. The student has to provide the feedback, show the knowledge, demonstrate understanding of the why. How else can the teacher know the student’s learned anything?
When it comes to better language, getting better means doing more than sensing something is “off” or “doesn’t sound right.” This is something I told my students over and over again: if you want to be consistently better, you need to learn the rules so you can see the how and the why. That means learning rules and terms related to grammar and mechanics (i.e., spelling, capitalization, etc.).
Some idiots will say something like, “You don’t need to learn the terms; just learn the rules.” But the terms are actually a useful shorthand for concepts so that people in a given field (in this case, language) can talk to each other without having to re-explain everything from square one over and over again. That’s why you need to know what a phrasal adjective (or, as Grammarly calls it, a “compound adjective”) is. Or a complex sentence. Or a noun phrase. Or what the future-perfect tense is.
Anyway, if you say you “want to do better,” I’ll tentatively believe you. But for that desire to be more than BS, I hope to see actual effort, not excuses about a deteriorating mind or hedging language like “but I won’t promise you’ll see significant improvement either,” which just gives you an escape hatch to be lazy.
Think of it this way: your bad habits (re: carb ingestion through food and alcohol, especially alcohol) are way worse than mine when it comes to bodily health, and while I’ve bellyached about the unfairness of that before (stroke and heart attack for me despite a lower level of carb abuse), the harsh reality is that, for someone like me who lacks your tolerance for carbs, I need to work harder because that’s the hand I’ve been dealt. I’ve got bad genes, so I have to deal with that instead of whining. By the same token, saying “I was never a good student” and talking about “brain deterioration” just means you’ll have to work harder than other folks to achieve the same results when it comes to language. Them’s the breaks. So either admit you don’t really want to get better or gird your loins and make a real effort, showing real progress.
If you want, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and tailor a curriculum to your needs and take you through a several-month course, step by step via daily email (weekdays only). I won’t even demand hours of homework per day. At most, it ought to be just a few minutes. If you’re serious. Frankly, I don’t think you are, but if you are, please let me know. And it won’t cost you a penny. We’ll start with your old enemy—commas. I’ll take you through the first six chapters of my blog series on commas, stretching the learning over several months. The first two chapters, once mastered, will solve 90% of the problems I see in your posts.
If you’re not serious about this, though, just be honest and say so. Please don’t claim to have a desire and then refuse to promise anything. That’s just empty talk, and neither of us wants to waste our time. How would it sound to a woman to hear, “I really like you and want to date you, but I can’t/won’t promise that I’ll hold up my end of the relationship”? Does that sound like something a solid, trustworthy person would say? Better to be honest and admit you don’t want a relationship at all. At least neither party would be stringing the other along.
Life is short. Let’s not waste time on bullshit. If you’d rather answer privately via email instead of in the comments, that works for me. I won’t say a thing publicly.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/February/2025 @ 5:50 pm
Phrasal adjectives that modify the nouns they PRECEDE should be hyphenated. There are some exceptions; otherwise, it’s safer to hyphenate if the phrasal adjective represents a single concept.
a tax-paying citizen (no hyphen: a citizen who pays tax)
a six-foot-tall man (no hyphen: a man who is six feet tall)
a three-month-old affair (no hyphen: an affair that’s three months old)
a bang-up job
a no-name brand
a fucked-up situation (no hyphen: a situation that is fucked up)
an end-of-semester party (no hyphen: a party at the end of the semester)
a faux-Irish wake (no hyphen: a wake that is faux Irish)
a well-written sentence (no hyphen: a sentence that is well written)Don’t hyphenate if the first word in the phrase is an adverb ending in “-ly.”
a quickly deteriorating situation
a rapidly learning student
a mostly empty theater
A Swiftly Tilting Planet (children’s book by Madeleine L’Engle)It’s not a hard rule to memorize, but I know you’re lazy and won’t learn it except passively, i.e., you’ll know to look for the error if I point out that there is an error (and you’ll find/correct the error without remembering the rule, which is why you can never articulate why something is wrong). But if, by some miracle, you were to practice the rule, you’d stop making mistakes in the future. I haven’t critiqued your prose in a while, but I’ve seen plenty of instances where hyphens were needed.
Every time you say something like, “I’m trying; I really am, and I think I’m improving,” I have no reason to believe you, and I wish you’d be more honest and stop saying that. Your time in HR made you think that it’s enough just to say something mollifying to get me off your back, but that’s a transparent grade-school tactic (see what I did with the hyphen?).
Anyway, here’s the classic example of why this sort of hyphenation is important:
1. a violent weather seminar
2. a violent-weather seminar(1) is a weather seminar that turned violent; (2) is a seminar about violent weather. So it’s all about clarity. The classically dirtier version of this problem is that headline:
1. students get first hand job experience
2. students get first-hand (or even firsthand in this case) job experienceThe error in (1) leads us salacious folks to think of handjobs.
Why, oh why, won’t you make the effort to just memorize and practice this stuff? Is it an old-dog-new-tricks thing? One rule a week, and if you’d started five years ago, you’d be a grammar genius with all the rules you’d have mastered by now—no Grammarly needed. But the fact is that we make an effort only when something is important to us, which is why you walk and drink (which, to me, is a paradox) but don’t give a shit about language. Priorities. And turning that criticism on myself: if I had a stroke and a heart attack, it’s because I was a lazy shit who didn’t prioritize his health until too late. So I try to apply my standards fairly to myself and others. This language stuff isn’t meant to be criticism “from above.” We’ve all got our flaws and problems. All of us.
Anyway, at the beginning of this comment, in bold, is the rule. Learn it and practice writing a few phrases every day. And practice the non-hyphenated “-ly” phrasal adjectives as well. Learn to tell one from another. Really make an effort instead of just making an empty claim (“I’m improving, I swear!”) that’s patently untrue. I’d love to see your error rates go down. I really would.
But it’ll only happen if you make learning this stuff a priority.
Which is why I’m not hopeful.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/February/2025 @ 2:53 pm
And those hyphens need to be there because…?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/February/2025 @ 7:24 am
First up was finding a way to get that power of attorney shipped back to South Carolina. The LBC Express agent told me they could get it there in five to seven days. Good enough. They lightened my wallet 3000 pesos worth, I filled out the required info, and they placed the POA in an envelope for shipping.
I hope you got a tracking number.
Death is the ultimate problem solver
And what’s the punctuation problem in that meme?
I like your moon shots.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 13/February/2025 @ 5:18 pm
I’m glad everything went fairly smoothly. Too bad your friendly interlocutor turned out to be a wokie. Good luck to your family as they sell that property.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/February/2025 @ 6:05 pm
I got a kick out of this fountain of youth
That’s based on the famous Manneken Pis.
Bamboo can be a bitch, too
Korea’s bike trails have lots of surprise bamboo groves, but they’re usually manicured so as not to impede travelers. I’ve always had fantasies of sneaking out to a grove and cutting myself a walking stick, but I don’t want to awaken the bamboo gods.
And we were rewarded with this view of Easter Mountain
Ah, there’s a different angle.
At least according to the MapMyWalk app. No way I had the same elevation gain as I did in La Union. Still, you can see how freakin’ long it took me to walk less than 6K. It was tough going!
Yeah, the step count is fairly low, but relative to the rest of the data, that trail seemed almost brutal.
After the Hash, we triked out to It Doesn’t Matter for some more comradery. And I was fine after ten [Zeros] for the day.
“camaraderie”? It’s a French word, from camarade, or “comrade.” A camarade de classe is a “classmate.” And again—ten! God, your poor kidneys.
My [number-one] priority is NEVER to see the inside of a Filipino jail.
Hard to control if you’re drunk off your ass and acting obnoxiously. Worst-case scenario: get so drunk you don’t remember what you did, then wake up in jail having pissed your pants. No access to your meds, your equipment, your lady…
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/February/2025 @ 2:05 am
Back on the Zero again
Just don’t drink twelve of them. Why is it called Zero, anyway? It’s not actually zero alcohol or zero g of carbs, is it? So what’s the zero?
We loved the show!
Nature puts on a good one. Is that a broken fingernail?
Swan is addicted to the birria tacos and has ordered them on each of our last several visits
Sounds like something you both could learn to make.
Two years ago, during a visit to the mountain city of Baguio, I declined to try this Filipino delicacy. No regrets!
Your leftie chicken-hugger self is showing. Some vocab words on that page: etag, Igorots. Me, I’d be happy to try some brutalized chicken.
Well, good luck in Manila. Don’t get killed by traffic or unsavory people.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 11/February/2025 @ 2:36 pm
Sorry to hear it was such a difficult path.
A tree I liked
Very nice! Looks almost like an AI picture. Surreal.
Occasionally, the trail would flatten out and you’d think, good, the climbing is over. It wasn’t.
As a veteran walker, you know as well as I do never to get your hopes up when you’re on unfamiliar ground.
re: Swan’s video
I see evidence of editing! Maybe she can teach you.
It’s also healthy and apparently is a natural diabetes preventative.
“So I snatched a few of the ripe ones to take home, prep, and eat. And lo and behold, my blood sugar is down today!”
The “7K” trail turned out to be over eight kilometers long. These stats are from the MapMyWalk app, and I think they are accurate. So, the question posed at the beginning has now been answered: I gained 291 meters in elevation during the Hash.
My opinion: you can never tell how accurate any of these apps and devices are. I’m beginning to think they’re all just randomly calibrated (if “calibrated” is even the right word in this context), and we’re left to figure things out for ourselves. About the only thing I trust is the step count on my pedometer since I can physically count my steps while also watching the pedometer’s numbers. So I know my pedometer is accurate to within a percent or two. For steps, anyway. My pedometer app (Samsung Health) doesn’t measure altitude, and I deleted the MapMyWalk app; the other stuff the pedometer measures, like speed and distance, are all untrustworthy. Best to just go by number of steps. At least on flat ground. Stride length and step rate all change when things get hilly. I use Naver Map to calculate distances on certain hills, but even Map is dicey.
I brought a bag of cookies for the Go Resort bar staff to apologize for my drunken behavior the night before. I was feeling no pain after the Hash on Saturday but didn’t do anything stupid like the night before.
If you go at a rate of 1-2 drunken incidents a month (memory loss, bad behavior, need for apologies), I’d say there’s a problem. You gotta stop rationalizing. Or one day, someone special is not gonna take it anymore. She’s been remarkably tolerant thus far. I hope you don’t take that for granted.
And it was cold that day!
Looks like an ice dragon rearing its head.
For what it’s worth, I hope the Monday Hash went well.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 10/February/2025 @ 6:19 pm
You should try balut once just to test your self-control. I bet I could get through eating a baby bird. It’d be like a soft-shell crab. But with proto-feathers. Crunchy and juicy.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 10/February/2025 @ 5:47 pm
Meow
I like how the two female students are smiling as the boy is talking.
Good for you re: trying a new breakfast. Is the egg traditionally Filipino or an attempt to make this an American tie-in?
Looks to have been a good time. I look forward to the after-action report.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 09/February/2025 @ 12:17 pm
An interesting tree I saw along the way. Yes, it encroaches on the highway some, but I’m glad they didn’t chop it down.
They might here in South Korea, where tree-impingement is an obsession.
Yes, I’ve been shamed into trying some local delicacies, but not yet.
This is what happens when shame meets stubbornness and inertia! Look, short of tying you to a chair and cramming food down your throat, I can’t force you to do anything. If you like boring, stick with boring. But why live abroad if all you really want is an America-bubble all around you?
but for about thirty minutes, the waitresses and GROs go up on the stage and strut their stuff.
So who’s serving the customers while that’s happening? People just… have to wait? (Sure, in the cosmic scheme, what’s thirty minutes?)
The chicken parmigiana dinner that came with the price of admission.
The bluest meal I’ve ever seen.
If my count is accurate, I had twelve
Exactly. I think back to that “nine(?)-a-week average” post. Twelve a session!
For some reason, I don’t remember much after we left Footloose.
You don’t strike me as worried about your cognitive health, old-timer.
I can do better and I will.
Promises, promises. But hope springs eternal among the cognitively impaired. (And I bet I’ll suffer a mind-erasing stroke after writing that.)
I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and then Swan watched the video above and observed that I hadn’t closed the door behind me when I left for breakfast. Damn, it sucks to be stupid.
And you see no connection with the drinking?
Yongson Garrison
I’ve heard of Yongsan Garrison. Where is this “young son”?
Well, drinking oneself into oblivion is, I guess, an adult choice like any other. If you’re happy on the River Lethe, then I guess you’re happy. But think about those around you. Are they made equally happy by this “choice”?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 08/February/2025 @ 4:00 pm
Oh, and good luck at La Union, both for the Hash and the weekend.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 07/February/2025 @ 9:12 pm
Good walk. I was sad to see the pic of the teen who died. Congrats on the lower BP. May the trend continue.
I didn’t eat the shell, though.
But did you eat that incongruous sprig of parsley?
I see that pecan pie is your kryptonite. Hoo, boy.
Scott Baio! He’s one of the few Hollywood conservatives.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 07/February/2025 @ 2:56 pm
It might be better to ask the locals for their recommendations. I know next to nothing about Filipino food except adobo, lechon, and lumpia. Surely, there’s plenty out there, and if it’s carby, that’s a great excuse to try just a tiny plate or bowl of it. With Swan’s help, maybe make a list of foods to tackle weekly for a ten-part series.
As for the psych test: you can find other Big Five tests online everywhere.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 07/February/2025 @ 7:20 am
renowned chef Gordon Ramsay is a fan of Filipino food, even preferring it over Thai delicacies. I’m skeptical, but what do I know?
It’s nice that your current life has you feeling contented, but contentment can easily become a mask for lazy incuriosity as you sink deeper and deeper into stultifying routines. Get curious about the local food. Try it—the good, the bad, everything. Figure out what you love and what you hate through actual experience. Don’t be the ugly American who just looks at something and goes, “Ew.” So rude. I know you personally wouldn’t go out of your way to express dislike, but the people closest to you can doubtless see, by your preferences, a certain measure of disdain—very likely unearned, undeserved disdain. So, yeah—get it on video: open your mind and try some local food. Life isn’t just Americanized Mexican grub and bland salads.
I looked back in my archives for your Big Five personality-test results, and you’d scored a 50th percentile on “openness,” indicating that you’re not really willing to engage in new experiences. Something to work on!
And I now take back what I’d written then re: your 95 “neuroticism” score. I was wrong: as your blog attests, you do indeed get easily stressed when things don’t go your way, especially in a drinking context. Relax, take a breath, and accept the Filipino way. (I realize that the Filipino way might drive me crazy, but I’m not living there.)
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 06/February/2025 @ 5:47 pm
The kind folks at the immigration office are allowing me to stay another sixty days.
That would bother me to no end. Every sixty days. Yeesh.
But you know what? I am okay with the life I’m living.
Hey, if you’re happy, you’re happy.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 06/February/2025 @ 4:38 am
I imagine you can just buy the movie direct from YouTube, which has its own streaming-movie service.
Just checked. Yup—you can buy it hi-definition for $12.99 or rent it for $3.99. I don’t know whether you have to sign up for YouTube Premium to be able to buy streaming movies. Lemme check.
Checked. You only need a Google account and a payment method (e.g., credit card). You also don’t need to download the movie to your computer. You can store it in a “digital locker” in the Cloud. Most services are like this. Most of my Apple TV movies are stored on the Cloud. Each movie, especially if it’s hi-def, is several gigabytes in size, and I have dozens upon dozens of movies. Not just on Apple TV, either—Amazon Prime as well. I never download.
Next week, we start at Waltermart, a 5K journey from Barretto, and I have no issues with taking a Jeepney to get there.
Yes, but would you walk to the starting point? 5K isn’t much.
I didn’t realize you could hear my gnarled old lungs at work in the video.
I wear headphones when I watch stuff on the computer so as not to disturb my neighbor. As a result, I hear every little thing. And your mike picks up every little thing.
Get editing software, dispense with a video’s audio track, and overlay the video track with a musical audio track (I know how much you love music), and add another layer of narration on top of that. We’ll miss out on the ambient noises, like wind blowing, feet crunching on soil, and phlegmy lungs, but the result might be “prettier.” Of course, you could also go all-in on the lung thing and give us a real earful of phlegm. Get a lavalier mike, clip it close to your chin, and let us hear the symphony.
One warning: if you overlay your video with a song, there’s a risk of getting a “copyright strike” from parties that think you’re using their copyrighted material. There are lawyers constantly on the prowl, looking for people using non-original music. To counter that, there are websites that sell snatches of music, from short stuff to long-form stuff, for a subscription fee, and there are no copyright problems with using those. That, or get good at making and/or recording your own original music. I’d actually love to hear an original recording of traditional Filipino music—songs, instruments, the whole shebang.
I’m not sure how comfortable folks will feel being recorded, but we’ll see what happens.
Start with the kids, and let the adults watch. If you use your cell phone, show the kids the playback afterwards so they know you mean no harm. That ought to be an opportunity for amusement and laughter, especially if someone burps or farts. Some of the adults might get interested and submit to their own exchanges with you; others might shyly or resentfully wave you away. We adults are a finicky bunch, saddled with lots of hangups acquired over years of learning how to be reclusive assholes.
she went in, looked around, and told me, “No, thank you.” She seems to prefer her homeless lifestyle.
Well, I did warn you that she’d act that way. I used to work with the homeless. You can’t just give them a residence and expect them to completely change their lifestyle. Until change occurs at the level of the mind and heart, there’ll be no progress.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/February/2025 @ 8:29 am
To begin with, it started three kilometers out of town, requiring a Jeepney or trike ride to get there.
Sounds like a short walk to me. But “3K out of town” is not the same as “3K from my front door.” If you had walked to the starting point, how many km would that have been? Of course, your own route was radically different, so I guess it’s a moot point.
re: your latest 7:33 video:
1. As Brian suggested, a GoPro would allow you to keep your footing. Strap it to your head or to your chest for a roughly eye-level view. Head is preferable as you have more control over the angle of your shots, but I don’t know enough about GoPros to know whether you can see what you’re filming while you’re filming it, and how you might start/stop recording if you’re free-handing (hands-freeing?) it. I normally think of GoPros as being for bikers, windsurfers, BASE jumpers, and trail runners—people intent on filming minutes of footage while doing an activity just to give everyone a first-person view, like those mountain-biking videos I occasionally slap up.
2. Why’s the breathing so phlegmy? You okay? That’s worrisome, as if mucus were collecting in your bronchi or lungs.
3. Do you ever just sit and hang with Onelia?
4. Overall, angles seem to be better. No more obsessive ass shots, and you even managed to rope in some extra characters (Onelia, Buddy Fucker, Fuck Buddy) along with the ladies.
I hadn’t seen Mama around town for several days, and I’ve never seen her way out like this on the backstreets of Barretto.
Now that you’re getting into video, I’d love to see a video’ed conversation between you and Mama—about her life, what she thinks of the town, you, the future, etc. That would, in fact, be a series I would watch faithfully (I don’t often click on the Reekay/Pea stuff): Interview a Local Filipino. Maybe one interview a week or every two weeks until you run out of locals. Interview ’em all—young and old, men and women, rich and poor. And if they don’t speak English well, Swan can be on site as an interpreter (or you can get that editing software and learn how to place English subtitles on screen).
I’d also like to see an interview with Almoranus (sp?) about his training regimen. How does he stay slim and keep those muscles? What’s his home-gym setup, or is he a gym member? And I’m sure there are other interesting expats who’d love to have their words immortalized… even if all they do is tell a dirty joke.
Circle up! Over fifty Hashers in attendance yesterday (we are normally in the mid-thirties)
So I guess almost everyone else likes Vienna Sausage’s routes?
On the ice for the socialites! (those who didn’t do a trail and just came for the circle)
Scott didn’t do the trail, eh?
Recognition on ice: Cums Alone has 22 runs, Cum Together has 333.
Well, that’s half the devil’s number. 333 more to go!
We didn’t finish watching because we were both tired from the Hash, and the YouTube video I selected wasn’t high quality and was rife with commercials. I’ll try another version when we resume watching.
I’ll just buy the movie on Apple TV. I see it’s not on Netflix for some odd reason.
Looks to have been a good Hash even if it had little to do with the actual route.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/February/2025 @ 12:04 am
Sorry for the undesignated photo with my siblings. I did mention that Greg is my baby brother, and I was the one with the goofy expression, but I should have been clearer.
I think I figured out who Greg was since you said “baby brother,” but there are two younger brothers in that photo. And what you’d written was: “Damn, by the expression on my face, the woman taking this photo must have been a hottie!” No mention of “goofy.” At least two of the brothers have a possible “she’s a hottie” expression on their faces, so yes: I’d prefer captions where everyone is properly named and labeled.
But the reason why I marvel is that you normally caption all of your other pictures of people pretty thoroughly. It’s just your old family pics—specifically, the ones with you and your brothers—that you neglect to label. I mean, to be fair, I’ve put up unlabeled family pics of my own, but that’s because they were meant to show, generically, what the family looked like when gathered together, and in such cases, the pics were usually of our older selves (i.e., we were each easy to identify), with no attempt at self-identification (e.g., “Here’s a pic of me and my brothers” with no further clarification).
Anyway, no pressure. I’m merely stating a preference for how to caption certain pics, not pushing you to do so.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/February/2025 @ 12:10 pm
Sorry, but I had my pork pulled.
Oh, that was painful. The move from “ground hog” to pulled pork was too much of a stretch. But my new pet psychological theory is that, as men get older, they take a perverse pleasure in deliberately being unfunny, thus introducing a new layer of metahumor: laughter provoked by awkwardness. The humor falls flat, and the rest of us are forced to give a pained smile, laugh politely, and cringe as we wait for the next burst of humorless humor. The only question is why men become like this. I see it happening in myself, too. Does the urge spring from some desire to be useful and/or relevant? If so, why does it manifest as something so off-putting (or at least cringeworthy)? More research is needed. Of course, a lot depends on whether the old jokester himself realizes he’s being unfunny. Some obviously don’t (Dunning-Kruger effect), but some old men know exactly what they’re doing, which is why I used the phrase “perverse pleasure.”
Ah—I see there’s a lot of information on the topic.
Well over 200 kids were serviced yesterday. (Damn, that sounds a bit perverted, doesn’t it?)
Yeah, but you knew what you were doing when you wrote that. And when you “serviced” those poor, now-traumatized kids.
Don’t blame me, I only feed them once a week!
Don’t blame you… for how (cough) skinny they all are?
Having gotten what we came for on the floater, it was time to head to John’s place for dinner.
Is John’s place being run according to John’s template, or is there new management that’s just as committed to high-quality food as John used to be?
Since pigs can’t fly, they are grounded. Or pulled.
Still trying to get juice from that joke. Argh.
The waitress claimed I was not permitted to give Swan the wine–I had to consume both drinks. I asked her where it said that on the coupon, and she argued that only one customer could use it.
This is like a person who gives you a gift, then tries to control what you do with it even after it’s been given. If I receive a gift, it’s mine to do with as I please—give it to someone else, throw it in the trash, burn it, whatever.
No big deal, of course, but I still don’t understand the waitress’s logic.
I’m guessing she wanted Swan to buy her own drink.
Well, damn, if I’m going to eat an apple pie, by golly, I’m going to enjoy it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top!
So where’s the pic of a McDonald’s apple pie with ice cream on top? I’ve never seen that done with a Mickey D’s pie before. Awkward shape. I am, however, glad that the pies are still fried in the Philippines, as they are in Korea. In PC America, they’re baked, and have been for many years because baking such a carby treat is somehow “healthier.” For fuck’s sake, it’s a goddamn apple pie.
Happy 68th birthday, Gregory! (Damn, by the expression on my face, the woman taking this photo must have been a hottie!)
How is it that you never label who’s who in your family photos? You think we can just guess which one is you?
That’s even higher than the Kalaklan Ridge! And colder, too!
So who was the photographer?
In today’s YouTube video, Filipina Pea talks about the ways in which you are liable to die here in the Philippines.
What she said about earthquakes was interesting. So… nothing about drinking yourself to death?
As for typhoons… you’d think a country with so much volcano and typhoon activity would have developed architecture that was typhoon- and earthquake-proof. Of course, the same applies to Japan and California…
I noticed that the Pea’s videos often end with bad jokes. A woman after your own heart!
Hope you enjoyed your improvised Hash.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/February/2025 @ 1:32 am
I wrote:
“a commercial-airlines pilot who get on the PA and tells people”
Sorry: “gets on.”
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/February/2025 @ 12:44 am
There’s more of her to love.
Damn, you could crawl into that belly button (or under that flap of flesh) and never be seen again.
re: first video
Nice footage, but you’ll need to angle your camera up a bit so we can see ahead better and so that you don’t seem to be focusing obsessively on Swan’s ass (esp. at the video’s beginning). The angle you hit around the 2:50 mark is good. Also: is it possible for you to zoom back a bit so we get a wider, clearer shot of the houses you’re passing by (e.g., 7:30 onwards)? If your camera is already zoomed back to 1.0 magnification, maybe try hanging back a bit to capture the buildings from farther off. It feels as if we come upon everything rather suddenly. The sequence with the little girl from 8:08 was really good, though—well composed, sort of over Swan’s shoulder while the girl timidly then excitedly descends. Thumbs-up for that. But I’m not sure why you panned away at 8:20 before we had a chance to see the girl get her snack. Let the moment unfold!
Filming is a matter of understanding the beginnings and endings of complete moments. These are all little stories playing out before you—beginning, middle, end. If you’re always moving on to the next thing before the previous thing has played itself out, the result looks and feels hasty and impatient.
I do like your narration/commentary, which often marks off moments and reminds me a bit of a commercial-airlines pilot who get on the PA and tells people to look starboard as the plane passes over a famous mountain range. Even the ending/sign-off comment that you do is a good idea: you’re at least leaving us with a good-bye and not merely stopping the video all of a sudden. Veteran vloggers like Reekay still need to learn about the need for more “intro/outro” stuff than just the title cards they use.
I enjoyed the zoo-like feel of these kids lined up on the other side of the fence for some sweets.
Look at those little political prisoners!
I was a bad boy last night and couldn’t overcome my urge for a bowl of vanilla ice cream with a crumbled Oreo cookie on top. Damn, it tasted good!
Just one Oreo? Come on. Well, you seem (seem!) to have come in under budget, so congrats, I guess.
re: Groundhog Day
Happy February 2, for what it’s worth. I should rewatch that movie and write a review that goes into its religious/metaphysical implications. I thought Bill Murray and Andie McDowell had great chemistry in that film.
Damn, remember when adult video stores were a thing? An absolute, um, Blockbuster!
In that photo, there are two signs: “Adult Video” and “Jesus is Watching.” Does this mean, “Be careful when you get adult videos because Jesus is always watching,” or is it more like, “Even Jesus watches adult videos”? I remember how some of our local video stores had special, curtained-off sections where they kept the naughty movies. I ducked in more than a few times to gawk at those over-the-top videocassette covers. Ah, youth.
re: 9 alcoholic drinks in a week
You’ve talked about having 12 beers in a single session! And when someone points that out, you normally deflect with a “But they were all San Miguel Light!”
Damn, am I living my own Groundhog Day?
May your life never become too samsaric.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 02/February/2025 @ 9:50 pm
«« Back To Stats PageAnd the day ended pretty much like this.
Happens “rarely,” you said. Heh. 2025’s gonna be a banner year!
Oops! Tim was the last one to use this bench. Just wasn’t up to American-sized standards.
Well, Tim’s learning. He wears better footwear now, and he’s probably built up a bit of endurance from all the walking he’s done, and the next lesson is: in Asia, everything is cheaper and flimsier and built for Lilliputians.
And I did a short (two minute) video of a rickety bridge crossing:
I’m stuck between reacting with “Damn, that was painful to watch!” and “Hats off to these guys despite being barely able to move!” That bridge didn’t look that rickety. Okay, to be fair: the first guy across and the third guy across were okay, and the ladies, being younger, were okay… but a couple of those guys were having some real trouble. I was wincing as I watched them.
Ten years ago, I tossed four tons and an unlikely 101 out for a fifteen-dart finish.
What’s that in English? I know nothing about darts.
Oddly enough, I don’t miss my darting life all that much these days.
Is it the interpersonal drama?
I spent a year trying to change her mind, but in 2016, she said she wanted a divorce.
So why didn’t she get what she wanted? And if I’m not mistaken, you’re still expecting her to make the first move, so I guess the followup question is: why hasn’t she made a move yet? Is she, like you, currently dating while married?
re: Phil Collins video
Phil enjoyed a brief-but-intense heyday, then everybody turned against him for some reason, at least in the States. I still don’t get it.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 02/February/2025 @ 2:57 am