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Have spent a week looking for a place to live in New York. Quite challenging – the market moves fast, and desirable properties are rented quickly (and I am well-aware that my budget isn’t quite right for any of the beautiful upper east side luxury apartments in the city). When I started thinking about looking, the first thing I did was actually sit down and think about my priorities and what it actually is that I need from this apartment. I soon came to the conclusion that I am looking for a place that is convenient to NYU (for me) and to the uptown subways for Nik (my charming jetsetting girlfriend).
I had heard horror stories about demanding landlords and high prices, but it has turned out to be easier than expected, given my total absence of a credit record in the US. (I have not lived in the US for 21 years). I started by looking at a few different rental apartments on real estate websites similar to Urbanests and then everything else just seemed to fall into place. I have been accepted for every apartment I applied for so far. This turned out to be a huge weight off of my mind. After all of the trouble that I expected to face during my apartment hunt, I can’t believe how straightforward it seemed to be. All that was left for me to do was to look through all of the apartments for rent that I decided to apply for and choose the one that would be right for me. I had to choose one that wasn’t too expensive, was close to my girlfriend and one that was an easy and convenient trip to NYU so that I could get to my classes on time. After sleepless nights and some careful consideration, I think I found my perfect apartment.
It looks like I’ll be living in a nice pre-war building, big one-bedroom apartment with a newly refurbished kitchen. I had looked at some of the ones a little further into the center of the city after reading about moving into the city on Manhattan Miami, but this will work just fine for me. It’s on 2nd Avenue between 10th and 11th, so just one block away from one of New York’s “Little Japans”. I already spotted the Asian convenience store that sells onigiri and unsweetened tea.
I travelled to San Juan, Puerto Rico for the weekend, to visit family and see my uncle Rafael’s (Chafo) exhibition. It is his first showing after 45 years, after a self-imposed exile.
Apparently the exhibition has been a huge success, with several works sold.
Well, everything got packed up and put on a ship, and I got on a plane.
Nik took me to the airport, and we shared a tasty pre-flight meal of spicy Thai beef noodles. I will miss sharing meals with her. Fortunately, she’s coming to NY in October, and a break from rich food will be good for both of us.
Stroke of luck: instead of going on the cheaper, indirect flight I had booked, United asked me if I wanted to go on the more expensive, previously overbooked direct flight to New York, at no extra charge.
Now staying at my sister’s house in Brooklyn, in the midst of extensive renovation work…
My last big outdoor party in Japan: Californication, organized by Brainbusters. The venue was amazing: a mountaintop shrine in Chichibu, Saitama. Experienced some magic moments, admiring the illuminated shrine, the teahouse lit by candles, fascinating artwork and a stunning sunrise over the mountains.
Difficult to imagine an event like this at a religious monument anywhere else in the world! The Shinto priest actually blessed the party before it started! Click here or on the picture below to see the pictures.
This article, “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”, has been a great help to me in my life. It has made clear many otherwise inexplicable things, and the matrix of different types has been a useful tool for me.
The matrix basically classifies actions on two axes: benefiting or harming yourself, plotted against benefiting or harming others. If you live your life in order to benefit yourself and others, you are Intelligent. If you harm others to benefit yourself, you are a Bandit. If you harm yourself and benefit others, you are Helpless. And finally, if you harm others, and harm (or derive no benefit) yourself, then you are Stupid.
As an exercise, try to classify your own actions and those of others using this matrix.
The Transitions party was a huge success! More than 300 people showed up at SuperDeluxe, and danced the night away until 5am, with great tunes from Yoppy, Vanessa, Tsunami Devil, DJ 7777, Ida, and Shomi. Nataku played a very high-energy live set, Crackitbaby did an extra-large sized painting and drumming performance, VJ flyflyfly and Xochipilli filled the screens with exotic imagery. Also very special thanks to Heidi for all the organization and the very striking circular screens.
Victor has posted some photos of the party. Tomo has posted more photos taken by his friends. And finally, some of my pictures.
Here is a video of the live painting + video mixing performance that Tomo and I did, and here is some video of the party. (Warning! Shows cute chicks dancing!)
After 3.5 years in Tokyo, I’m leaving to attend the ITP Program at NYU (but I plan to return to Tokyo). Since my friend Tomo is also heading off to CCA in San Francisco, we’ve decided to hold a joint sayonara party at SuperDeluxe in Nishi-Azabu.
The party will be called “Transitions”, click here for more details.
I went to see this exhibition:
Tabaimo Exhibition “Yoroyoron”
Venue: Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
Schedule: From 2006-06-03 To 2006-08-27
Address: 4-7-25 Kita-Shinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-0001
Phone: 03-3445-0651
Very interesting work, combining hand-drawing, animation and elaborate sets to create immersive installations.
I received a lens I had ordered, a Ukrainian Hartblei 35mm f2.8 Super Rotator. This is an unusual lens in, in addition to focus and aperture controls, it also supports shift and tilt movements. There are other tilt and shift lens, but the Hartblei is unique in allowing the tilt and shift axes to move freely and independently.
So what’s it for?
A typical use is to take pictures of buildings where the sides don’t converge towards the top. For this application, it is described as a perspective correction lens.
The tilt function allows the plane of focus to be tilted, away from parallel to the lens. This allows either extreme depth of field along a plane, or radically shortened DOF when the lens is tilted the opposite way. This has been used to generate the strange effect in the picture.
It makes big things look like toys!
More of my tilt/shift pictures here.
I was booking some travel today.
The United voice recognition system is really spooky.
UA: What city would you like to travel to?
Me: Chitose
UA: I think you said Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Is that correct?
Me: Uh, OK.
(Chitose is the name of the airport for Sapporo)
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The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
This article, “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”, has been a great help to me in my life. It has made clear many otherwise inexplicable things, and the matrix of different types has been a useful tool for me.
The matrix basically classifies actions on two axes: benefiting or harming yourself, plotted against benefiting or harming others. If you live your life in order to benefit yourself and others, you are Intelligent. If you harm others to benefit yourself, you are a Bandit. If you harm yourself and benefit others, you are Helpless. And finally, if you harm others, and harm (or derive no benefit) yourself, then you are Stupid.
As an exercise, try to classify your own actions and those of others using this matrix.