MY CAMERA'S FIRST WORDS // A Sibling Bonding Trip in Seattle

So, nope, no camera still, but since my last post was about my camera's "last words" I thought I'd share some of the first pictures I took with my camera during a trip to Seattle that I made with my brothers 2 years ago. It's one of my favorite memories in life, and I'm so glad we did it. At first we almost didn't go because we weren't sure how financially practical it would be at that time, but we scoured the internet for cheap tickets and booked a really terrible hotel in an obscure city outside of Seattle to stay at for $30 a night and went for it. The hotel was pretty hilariously bad, but it's become one of those memories we just bust out in belly aching laughter whenever we refer to it.

When I was little, I always wished I had a sister, but my brothers were totally worth not having sisters. We were all born one year apart, and literally did everything together whether we liked it or not. Sure we had drama/fights/issues, but it also made us super close. There's nothing I'd ever want to change about it, and I'm so thankful for family.

Here are some places we visited. (We also visited a ton of other incredible places like the Space Needle, the Seattle Public Market, and even saw Jonathan Safran Foer give a lecture on his book Eating Animals. But this post is getting really long, so I think I'll save those for another day.)

OFF THE SIDE OF THE FREEWAY PICTURES





Our first tourist destination was actually the side of the highway. Just driving around in Seattle was so beautiful and we couldn't resist getting out of the car and looking around. I'm not sure if it's because I've gotten so used to the freeways in LA, but I was just so in awe of all the trees and nature everywhere. The sky and the clouds were so moody and beautiful. The colors are just different, and the air is so clean. And it's quiet- so quiet!


SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY







The Seattle Public Library! This was one of my favorite buildings when I was in college, and I could hardly believe I actually got to visit it in person. It was amazing, pictures cannot do it justice.  (If you are unfamiliar with the building, here is one of my favorite TED talks given by Joshua Prince Ramus about the project.)



SEATTLE ART MUSEUM







The Seattle Art Museum was another place we visited.  This is where I got inspiration for a"Clothespin Deer Head" project I did a few weeks ago.  There was this humongous giant man made out of mini coke bottles.  Unfortunately, I can't remember what it is called anymore, but it really stuck with me, because in college, my professors would always talk about the concept of "part to whole" which was hard for me to understand, but the sculpture really helped me visualize it better.


EMP MUSEUM - Sky Church






So, for some reason, none of us were initially all that excited to go to the EMP museum.  But there was a flea market that was on the way, and the building was designed by Frank Gehry, so we figured, ah, what the heck, let's just go.

Upon entering, we saw the Sky Church room, which has all these crazy colors and oversized ottomans for people to lay on and look up at these changing  umbrella thingies suspended from the ceiling while Jimmy Hendrix songs kept blasting on repeat.  To be honest, it looked really gimmicky, but it was hot outside, and we were tired, and we got sucked in and literally stayed there for an hour and a half just staring off into space.  It was so addicting! These pictures always make me laugh, because you can tell that we were totally out of it.

CAR KAROKE





And last but not least, the trip was filled with countless memories just laughing, singing along to the radio and being crazy in the car. The kind stuff you'd only do with family because they still have to love you no matter how embarrassing you are.

It's kind of funny- I'm the oldest, but we made my youngest brother Geoff drive the whole time, and I sat in the back relaxing while my middle brother josh sat shotgun and gave directions. This is where the whole not having sisters thing really comes in handy- you never have to share princess privileges with anyone else!

THE BUILDING AND THE EGG// Design in nature

<image source for sydney opera house>

It's crazy to think that some of the most fascinatingly beautiful  and complex buildings are designed around a structural concept that can also be found in an everyday object sitting in your fridge.

The immortalized roof structure of the Sydney Opera House, designed by  Jørn Utzon with engineers Ove Arup and Partners was designed around the concept of that concrete shells were structurally stable form resistant structure.  These thin shells are able to span huge distances because their shape can resist loads by developing stresses in their own plane.  So simply stated, the elegant thinness and curved nature of these shells is actually exactly what gives these forms their structural strength! Not only is it beautiful, it has a reason for being that way.

You could virtually build any curved shape using this principle but granted, it's not as easy as it sounds.  It requires a really sophisticated level of mathematical analysis by engineers and can get really costly when it comes to construction.   So in other words,unless you have enormous stacks of cash hidden in your bedroom mattress, you're not going to be going through all this trouble for the everyday building.

But that being said, nature seems to have the opposite approach! This concept of form resistant structures has been popping up in bird nests all over the world since the beginning of time.  As you can observe from everyday experience,when you take an egg in the palm and wrap your hand evenly around it, it can resist a great deal of uniformly distributed load in relation to how thin it is because of its shape.  Pretttttty nifty, no?

If that egg were in the shape of a cube, I can almost guarantee you that chickens would be extinct by now!  and you of course know what that means right?  Say goodbye to your roast chicken, your pollo asada tacos, your omelettes, your fried rice, pretty much all baked goods- bread, cakes, rolls, scones, croissants; your custard, ice cream, quiche, meatballs....ok I'm going to stop listing things now because this could go on forever and it's making me really sad, haha!

Anyway, in other news, I rescheduled my test from the 5th to the 14th!  I'm kind of bummed about this, because at this point I just want to get this exam over with and move on with life! But I guess it's better safe that sorry right?  Anyway, I hope you enjoy you weekend, wherever it takes you.  And if it happens to involve eggs at one point, I hope you able to stop and appreciate their structure for a second or two!

A NIGHT IN K-TOWN// New old friends + Ham Ji Park

I've grown really fond of K-Town over the past two years. We are usually there on Sundays for church (I have probably eaten more all you can eat Korean BBQ in the past two years than my whole life combined!)  Taylor and I even had our wedding ceremony in the area, and the time these two took me to Wi Spa, will be always be an unforgettable memory. 

Walking around K-Town is a really interesting experience.  You can see the shift in demographics over time just by looking at the eclectic mix of architecture.   Nestled in between the high rise office buildings of the 1950's and the historic New York style apartments of the roaring 20's which once housed  Hollywood's elites, the Academy Awards, numerous presidents and even Queen Elizabeth II, are the vibrant and bustling Korean shops, restaurants, and community buildings that give this area its undeniable charm.

We met up with our new old friends Char and Johan.  (Later I'll try link you to their wedding website, they have the cutest engagement story, and the fact that these too have movie star good looks doesn't hurt either! Taylor has the link in his email, but I can't get it yet because we're both at work right now....don't worry i'm  writing this on my lunch break right now I promise! ) We call them our new old friends because we've known them for a while, but never actually hung out with them in a  more intimate setting like a double date.  We are so glad we finally did because these two are so down to earth and generous, we had such a great time with them!  I also got to learn more about Johan's clothing company 3sixteen and one of his local stores in LA, Self Edge Denim.  If you (or maybe your dad, since Father's day is coming up!) are a fashion savvy man with impeccable taste who knows how to appreciate every stitch, detail and thread of fabric that goes into high quality clothing, be sure to check them out!  It will save you a plane ticket to Japan, since you actually can't find the stuff they carry anywhere else in the country!

They took us to Ham Ji Park, rumored to be the best bbq pork in the nation.  Sooooo good! But don't take our word for it, you can ask Chef Roy Choi (known most for his infamous Kogi truck) who took Anthony Bourdain there on his tour of LA for the food network show, the Layover. Siiiiiiigh, writing this  is making me depressed that I am eating leftover pasta for lunch right now...

Also, here are some really blurry grainy pictures of downtown at night taken from the car window on the way home. I love how the city looks at night. That spot on the 110 going into downtown could arguably be my favorite part of the city.  It's actually really sad that my favorite spot is inside a car, I will probably eventually  need to find a more legitimate favorite spot.  But anyway, one of these days I'm going to try to take a real picture!