Today, my Sensei presented me with my first level black belt in Shotokan. I tested last Sunday and was told I passed, so it wasn't a surprise to me. Still, for the rest of practice, I was a little shocked whenever I caught a glimpse of my own waist, wondering why my belt was so dark against my white gi.
A black belt. That's what it was. No big deal, it's just a different color of my belt, right? I don't feel particularly different. There are still many things to learn, many things to improve about my karate techniques. There are still plenty of years to be training and levels of black to strive for and possibly achieve. How is this belt color change any different than the last time I changed belt colors?
Perhaps it's the expectation that comes with the words 'black belt'. The term assumes mastery in a martial art. The other colors don't have that connotation. The expectation feels a little intimidating. I don't necessarily feel like I've mastered the art. Far from it. But I told myself earlier that now I'm training and studying for real. So far, it's just been a preamble to the real thing. And for some reason, that made me feel better.
I started karate again a little over 6 years ago when I realized that I was horrible at keeping up with a regular workout. The gym membership near work ended up being free money for them because I always came up with an excuse why I didn't/couldn't go to the gym at lunch. Even a semi-regular stint with the rock climbing gym in the evenings didn't take as well as I'd hoped. Exercising at home, in front of some exercise videos ranging from Taebo, belly dancing, Pilates, to hula dancing was even shorter-lived. So I went back to my college roots and looked up the nearest Shotokan dojo near me.
I had good memories of going to karate practice in school. Even through finals, I would make sure to go because it had such a calming effect on me. I started on a random whim when some cute boy asked me to join his karate class. I was thrilled that the Sensei taught karate in terms of forces and vectors and other engineering terms I was learning about during my classes in the day. I had just earned my green belt three years later when my Sensei moved away. Between co-op jobs, graduating and applying to grad school, I never did settle into a new dojo afterwards.
Cut to post grad school when I discovered that the nearest dojo to me was being taught by the Sensei of my college Sensei. I figured that was a good a sign as any that I should start up again. I went to watch a class and I was itching to get up and practice again. So I signed up for a class the very next day.
Since then, I've competed at some local tournaments, attended karate camps, injured my ankle, healed, worn my share of bruises and now I'm a black belt. As a marker on my path, I guess it is a big deal to me, after all. I hope to be practicing karate for many years yet to come.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Black Belted
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Back in the Rice Habit
I come from a culture where rice is the basis of the three squares a day. And by rice, I mean the white, sticky stuff, not any of this fancy wild/brown/yellow and loose alternates. We'd gotten out of making rice at home because I grew to loathe cleaning the rice cooker pan afterwards. It always needed to soak because the rice had crusted and burnt to it. The lid would be covered in white, hard to scrub froth. The pain had not been worth it since I would just get my rice fix when we ate out. It's especially not worth it when an impatient toddler will not wait until I am done with the dishes and will physically try to push me away from the sink so I can play with her.
But we discovered that she's a fan of brown rice. We try to feed her healthier than I feed myself so I looked into what it takes to make brown rice. Apparently, it's more finicky and harder to cook than white rice, which didn't recommend itself to me. Enter Zojirushi
We were at some friends' house for a barbecue where they served up some brown rice. Their daughter is the same age and I figured that if they could manage making the stuff, maybe I could learn some tips and tricks. It was simple enough - she pointed to a squat, bubble-shaped appliance on the table and declared that it was easy to make brown rice with it. The bubble shaped thing was apparently a rice cooker. I had enough time to note the name emblazoned on its side before my daughter decided she wanted to tackle the steps on the deck by herself and I had to go supervise.
Later that week, I went to look up Zojirushi and see what they had to offer. They have a bewildering array of rice cooker choices, boasting bells and whistles I never knew one needed for a simple pot of rice. But they're a Japanese company and they should know about rice and I was determined to wade through the choices to see if they had a rice cooker that would work for us. Of course, they had the simple standard rice cookers I recognized, but what if I actually needed some of those extra features and I never knew it before? Their comparison chart only sort of helped. I zeroed in on the ones that listed brown rice as a menu option. Ooh, the same rice cookers could also do sweet rice. Mango sticky rice, here we come! Oh and there's a timer function so we can have our rice ready at our preset time? Score! And it also does porridge (read: it can do the good oatmeal that takes half an hour)? With a timer so it can start breakfast before we get up on a weekday morning? Score another point! I don't really need my rice cooker to make cake or use it as a slow cooker. I also wasn't sold on induction heating element or the pressurized system, especially as it added another $100-$150 to the cost. So we ended up with the NS-YAC10 model.
I certainly wasn't expecting to spend over $200 for a rice cooker. I'm a victim of my own self-imposed feature creep and besides I put in all that effort to research the cooker and it was recommended by some friends. Darn it, I deserve that rice cooker now! To get back to my roots! And feed my girl some tasty, healthy rice!
The rice hit the pan last week, and I'm still plotting the list of rice/oatmeal we need to try with it. White rice? Delicious, chewy, better than the restaurant rice! Brown rice? Well, it's not my preferred and we ended up eating it the day after because it took about an hour longer than we anticipated. Definitely a candidate for that timer feature. But still tasty and The Girl shoveled it into her face by the handful (to be fair, it's how she eats most things that she's willing to eat). I need to find some sweet rice and then we try the good oatmeal one morning. The best part? It's a breeze to clean.
Our household has joined the 21st century of rice cooking.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Cat Truths
Found this video that encompasses both Ka's and Zaia's behavior around the computer. Ka takes it one step further and actually chews the cable in two rather than just unplugging it though.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
NaNoWriMo Year 4 Win
And I thought I was delusional to think that I could write 50,000 words this past month with work, a new baby and little sleep. Once again, my goal-oriented self won out. I'm happy to report that I've won my 4th NaNoWriMo (I skipped last year's).
Synopsis:
When the leading MMO game company hired neuroscientists, the world was thrilled to welcome the ability to control their games and computers with thoughts. But the picture behind the scenes tell a more sinister tale. Brilliant scientist Penelope Redding inadvertently opened the door to TsunamiCorp.’s new tech but she scrambles to undo its darker ramifications when people start disappearing, trapped in the machines they play. Will she be able to destroy TsunamiCorp’s secret labs before it's too late or will she become a victim of her own breakthrough research?
~~~~~~
Penelope was still poring over the data on the screen, "If they did it the way I would have, the only thing the consciousness that transfers would have is the knowledge that their body is breathing, their heart is beating, all of the autonomous stuff. You don't actually need to transfer the signals that actually carry out those processes. They wouldn't actually be controlling anything so they might mess up actual systems in the new consciousness housing but the consciousness would need to 'know' that these things are happening or else it would believe itself dead and actually die. The readings here have the correct profiles that would match that behavior."
"So the body left behind would retain enough autonomous function to keep the flesh alive?" Gabriel completed.
"Yes. If they did it right. That way you can reverse the process and download the consciousness back."
"Seems like there would be some loss somewhere. Epsilon radiation isn't the most precise of technologies," Gabriel said.
"Upload is theoretically easier than downloading. Thanks to Sally, we can communicate with the brain matter and impose new pathways, but the download after an upload of a consciousness isn't making any new pathways, just turning them on again."
"Sounds like that would be easier?"
"My theory is that epsilon radiation is far less efficient at that than creating new pathways. It's a more nuanced communication that I've just started to contemplate. There's no way they have that sort of nuance perfected."
Gabriel waved his hand around the bank of equipment, "They have a little more resources available to them than you do. Maybe they might have gotten ahead of you?"
"Obviously they have gotten ahead of me," Penelope said as a look of irritation crossed her face. She adjusted her glasses. "My point is that they can't have done it right. That level of nuance can't be done methodically. It's not a linear calculation that you can just canvas over. You tend to miss things. When has the human brain looked like a nice, neat grid you can methodically march through?"
"I don’t often get a look at the human brain, but the few times I have it looked pretty organically laid out."
"Exactly,” Penelope scratched her temple. "Somehow, they did upload a consciousness though. And it wasn’t an accident. This most recent pass was their most successful, but this isn't the first time they tried." She stabbed a finger at the display. "See these other files? Similar profile but they get simpler the farther back in time they go. It's trying to do the same thing. They just keep forgetting some bit of information that's key to a functioning consciousness."
"Do you mean to tell me that they've killed as many people as they've tried?"
Penelope’s lips narrowed to a line, "Not dead exactly, but comatose. Vegetables. Unless they perfect their download process, they'll stay that way."
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Alice: Madness Returns Steamdress
Baby Girl's costume was a conglomeration of 2 costumes. A pirate princess one and of course, a bunny one.
My costume was a bit more involved. But first, I neglected to put up a reference shot of the back of the dress.
And for the comparison:
I started with the Simplicity 2827 pattern and added some modifications: changed the neckline, shortened the skirt length, added snap opening to the front. I attached the apron to the dress to cut down on the weight that the belt harness would have to hold up. The icons are painted onto the apron, but I'm going to have to thicken those lines to make them show up more.
Lesson learned: if I'm going to use a moleskin cloth type of fabric to get a leather look without having to work with leather, I should pick a fabric that doesn't require finishing to make the edges look nice. The straps (galore) on this dress took a lot of extra seams to clean up the edges.
The belt harness required some internal boning structure to hold up to the 3 belt buckles on the front and hold it's shape. I attached the bow straps to the harness, but the bow was velcroed on for easy removal. Given that the bow is made with wire hangers covered with the moleskin cloth, I would not have been able to sit and drive in it. The compass in the middle of the bow glows in the dark though I think technically, it's supposed to be another clock. I also learned that hot glue does not make a robust system for maintaining the bow shape. I had the bow knocked off my back a few times during the Halloween festivities and it's now droopy and the compass fell off. I'll have to come up with something else to hold that together better.
It was kinda fun adding the eyelets to the apron and strings with my new eyelet pliers. The trimming around the skirt and sleeves was a ribbon though so I didn't need to do those. Have I mentioned the straps yet? I opted for simpler vest buckles on the arms and harness so they could be smaller and actually fit 7 on one arm. The smallest belt buckle I found were the 3 on the front of the belt and that would have been ridiculous to wear 7 of. Oh, and for the fun of it, I got some green contacts to wear.
Carrying my white rabbit around along with my vorpal blade was kinda heavy. I ended up using my boots as a sort of sheath to hold the blade in. My other boot was where I sheathed my phone. Sadly, no one I work with was cool enough to recognize the outfit (aside from my immediate circle of friends) but they appreciated Joy's bunny outfit anyway. For that matter, no one at Lee's work recognized us either. Oh well.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Madness: Scaled back Halloween costuming
I can't believe Halloween is almost upon us, which means it's time for making a new costume. I tossed around a few ideas with some new parameters. I'm looking to do a coordinated costume with The Girl that would be fairly easy to construct on limited time. Lee ended up going with a different theme (he's always wanted to do a good Jedi outfit and since we're not likely to be attending a nighttime costume event together, it made sense for him to splinter off this year). We considered a Portal 2 costume with me in the main character, Chell's, outfit and the baby as the cutest Portal gun ever. Instead we settled on a revisit of American McGee's Alice in Wonderland, only this time based on the second game, Alice: Madness Returns. Happily Alice has quite a wardrobe in the game, so I'll be able to wear a different style dress than the first goth Alice attempt. Due to fabric availability, I decided to go with this one: 
Meanwhile, Baby Girl will be my trusty White Rabbit. Only not quite as dementedly evil as the picture below.
I've already got a white rabbit outfit for her. I need to deck it out with a red waistcoat, top hat, a giant clock and gears. I've gotten my fabric for my dress and even a bought pattern that I'll be modifying to better replicate the steam dress. The stripey tights were relatively easy to buy and shockingly so were the shoes (thanks Spirit Halloween Store!). And Epic Weapons already makes the Vorpal Blade. Now all I need to do is get some sewing time. Whew.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Nifty Technology: Photography
This is a DSLR camera clipholder being made by Peter Dering that looks like a better way to have your camera attached to you, so that you can carry it around, ready to take shots while having it more rigidly attached to prevent accidental damage. (Of course, it doesn't take into account walking yourself into objects that could damage your camera, but at least you won't be swinging it into said objects.)
Aside from the actual product, (which does sound nifty, but I'd have to defer to the resident DSLR photographer in the family, Lee, to determine its true user niftiness), I was also intrigued by the method by which this is being manufactured, getting funding, getting advertised. I'd have to look into it further to see how he found his small run manufacturers, but the product clearly has some prototypes but hasn't gone through a larger scale production. He's using the Kickstarter website to solicit funding and generate some enthusiasm out there before he has production going. The marketing apparently worked since I stumbled across this on the internet and I don't know the guy. I know enough people with good ideas for useful designs that could hook into this system for getting that good idea into the hands of more than just their friends and family. It strikes me as somewhat akin to Amazon's self-publishing system only for more than just books. I'll have to keep this in mind the next time I get a bright idea that needs to be made in bulk.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Memorization Skills
I found an interesting article in the New York Times a few days ago called Secrets of a Mind Gamer. I found the article intriguing because I've been told I have a good memory. I have a distinct memory from my childhood of sitting in my grandfather's office one lazy afternoon while my grandfather taught me how to memorize. I think I had somehow finagled my way out of naptime that day and my grandfather promised my grandmother that he would keep me quiet. So I was tasked to memorize the Apostle's Creed, all 12 lines of it, by dinnertime. He instructed me to memorize it line by line. Memorize the first line until I knew it. Then read the 1st and 2nd line and be able to recite that. Then the 1st, 2nd and 3rd line and so on. I'm pretty sure I got a pre-dinner cookie out of the deal too. Bonus!
As I grew up, I learned that my memorization skills were not only useful, but not necessarily common. I can learn new katas at the dojo in three or four repetitions. I could perform a 7 minute speech from memory after 2 or 3 practices (I suppose not counting the act of writing the speech to begin with). I had plenty of other skills I needed to concentrate on with public speaking so it was a bit of a relief that I didn't really need to work on my memorization skills on top of it.
But back to the article in question. The author is himself a memory champion, having memorized the order of a deck of cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds, a US record at the time. The interesting part is that he didn't start off as a memory prodigy to begin with; he trained himself to become a champion.
From the article, I learned that the human brain is better equipped to remember things spatially and visually than numbers and words. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors needed to know which plants to eat, which was the correct way home instead of logins and passwords for a myriad different websites. Using this knowledge, memory champions train themselves to attach a sequence of cards or numbers or words to odd combinations of visuals and imagine themselves walking through those visuals as if situated in a memory palace. Perhaps the five of clubs becomes a bear juggling spoons in the foyer, and behind it is a crab playing hopscotch in the living room (Queen of spades), meanwhile a herd of buffalo stampedes in the fireplace (King of diamonds) behind them and so forth. To recall the associated information, they only need to visualize their walk through their very strange palace and pull the attached information.
I thought it was an interesting methodology for memorization and completely unlike the one I was taught. But upon looking at it more closely, perhaps I am engaging the visual part of my brain when I recall things. When I memorize words, I'm envisioning reading them off of the paper or screenshot in my mind. When I memorize katas, I'm also engaging some muscle memory, so I guess that's spatial memory. Memorizing stories is probably the closest to the technique described above since I'm envisioning the movie of the story playing out in my mind. Nifty! I want to try out the picturesque memorization to see if that's faster or better or something. At the very least it should be entertaining coming up with absurd images to go along with more mundane things like numbers.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Totoro Nursery Theme
We've been pondering the nursery theme for a few weeks as Lee finished up the closet and we finished painting the room (pale yellow). Because of my penchant of creating costumes of actual characters (Tali, Harley Quinn) rather than concepts (disco vampire, zombie banana) I wanted a theme that included actual characters. It has the added benefit of style consistency in case anyone else in our family wanted to help with the theme. Stitch from Lilo and Stitch still looks recognizably like Stitch regardless of which store it's bought from; safari animals may run the gamut of styles from cartoonish to realistic.
At first, I was drawn to a some sort of Disney theme, just not the princess ones. As much as I loved watching Little Mermaid, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, etc., I disagree with the over-princessalization being taught to girls and I don't want to start a baby on that stuff. And I'm not all that fond of too much pink. Then I was drawn to a Winnie the Pooh theme - this idea is so popular that Babies R Us has it as its own nursery theme category. Lee was mostly fine with it except that he felt that the Disney treatment of a classic book made it seem too commercial.
I noodled around the internet for some more ideas but ultimately, it was still Disney that provided the payoff. Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio headed by director Hayao Miyazaki. Disney licensed the rights to distribute their films in the US. My Neighbor Totoro, one of their earlier films, tells the story of two young girls befriending the wood spirits near their country home. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Here's the trailer:
Since Disney is one of the strongest merchandising companies in existence, there are Totoro themed items that can be bought in the US. However, most of these items are plushes and toys, not quite all the paraphernalia needed to outfit/decorate a nursery. Wall decals are all the rage for their ease of application. We'll probably make our own Totoro decals from acrylic paint and contact paper. I've found a seller in Japan with some Totoro-related fabric type things (rugs, Japan-sized bedding, towels) but they're expensive to ship here so I'll probably only get a few key items, perhaps a rug and a door hanging that can count as curtains. Other fabric-based items can be Totoro'd via printed iron-ons. I'll probably leave the bedding as something that's just generically forest-themed or colored because I'm not sure I feel like sewing bedsheets even if I did find Totoro cotton fabric.
Besides the charm of the characters and the story, the aspect that appeals to me about a Totoro nursery is that we get to craft our own decorations. There are a few other Totoro-themed nurseries in internet-space where I'm sure we'll get some great ideas. I can't wait to get started!
Monday, January 31, 2011
Christmas in Belize (Part 2 of 2)
After a 10 minute puddle jumper ride we landed on a tiny, paved runway on Caye Caulker; a small island off the coast of Belize in the Caribbean. Luckily, ours was the only baggage in "baggage claim" (aka the cart they pushed over to the plane to fetch luggage) so it didn't take very long at all. We stayed at the Iguana Reef Inn, the place all the locals considered the nicest hotel on the island. Since we didn't know where it was, we approached one of the folks hanging out and looking helpful. Turned out he was a cabbie and could take us to our hotel via the golf cart he had parked next to him. We marveled at the cozy feel of the town as we rode through - people walking barefoot through sand-covered streets, golf carts and bicycles comprising the majority of the vehicular traffic, lengths of rope serving as speed bumps. Almost every restaurant had a Belikin sign advertising their name (we theorized that Belikin sold the signs cheap in exchange for free advertising. Belikin is the local Belizean beer and apparently quite good).
Once we got settled into our room, we pored through the tourist guest book as well as our own tourist guide book. It was almost disorienting having to plan our own meals and activities. Mystic River had served as an almost all-inclusive resort (we had the option of striking out at the nearby towns on our own but we didn't.) We were too hungry to fully appreciate the choices we had so we went with the hotel's recommendation, The Rainbow Bar & Grill on the beach. That was the lunch when I discovered that there were multiple flavors of Fanta and vowed to try all they had available.
That afternoon, we just wandered around the streets to get the lay of the land. It was a surprisingly short walk; probably only half an hour to walk the main areas. We spotted some of the restaurants and tour guide offices we had already read about in our tour book.
Later in the evening, we ate at Rose's Bar & Grill because they had fresh fish/seafood at the front of the establishment where we could pick out what we wanted grilled before we even sat down to eat. As we waited for our food in the back of the restaurant, we heard a commotion and some reggae Christmas music playing outside. Since most of the restaurant went to go look, we had to get up and check it out as well. And what to our wondering eyes should appear but a Santa Claus sitting in the back of a small pickup truck with some of his helpers waving to the crowd, spreading good cheer while a small parade of children followed the truck on foot. They even had a lighted Christmas tree in the back with them. Just another reminder that it was Christmas time in the Caribbean.
The next morning after brunch (had a delicious honey mustard chicken quesadilla with my Red Fanta - strawberry) we went on a manatee tour given by local legend, Chocolate (yes, he goes by that name). It was through his advocacy that the 9000 acre Swallow Caye Wildlife Preserve was established in 2002. While Chocolate's knowledge of the manatees was somewhat limited, his adoration for the gentle creatures was crystal clear and quite endearing. Manatee sightings were somewhat slow at first. We didn't see any at the first stop and even at the second stop where Chocolate and his apprentice would point them out in the distance, I wasn't able to differentiate water glare from sea creature. As luck would have it, a mother and calf took a liking to our boat for the last 40 minutes or so. They swam back and forth under our craft, surfacing on either side for plenty of closeup opportunities. I tried the underwater filming thing, but the Discovery Channel isn't hiring me for ocean footage anytime soon.
The following day was snorkeling day with Patrick and Rafael of Ragamuffin Tours. (Captain Patrick pictured below)
We were on the RaggaGal, a yellow wooden sailboat, for our 3 stop snorkeling tour. The first stop was the Coral Gardens, fairly shallow with plenty of interesting fish in the sea grass and coral. We were left to our own devices to snorkel around. Back on the 'Gal, we had some watermelon, papaya and pineapple while I noticed a chill in the air. One of our fellow snorkelers pointed to a horizon that had grown ominously dark to explain the chill (cue Gilligan's Island music). That same snorkeler asked with some trepidation if we were headed directly into that rainstorm. To which Capt. Patrick shrugged and replied, "That's how we roll," as donned his shorty wetsuit. The second stop was called Shark Ray Alley, where there was a proper downpour going on. Unwilling to brave the water when I was already shivering, I opted to stay on the boat while Rafael took most of the rest of the snorkelers on a tour just beside the boat. At least I didn't miss out on the nurse sharks and rays because Rafael picked one of each up, plopped them on his chest to point out their poor, confused features to the snorkelers. Meanwhile, Patrick was flinging sardines into the water to attract those sharks and rays and even a flock of seagulls looking for a free lunch. After Shark Ray Alley, we had our lunch and headed off to the crown jewel of snorkeling stops, Hol Chan.
That time, Patrick was our snorkeling guide. An accomplished spear fisher and free diver (he said he could dive 80 feet), he had no problems freediving down to the 20 or 30 feet to point out the fishes for us. Thankfully, the rain had stopped by then. We saw a giant grouper hanging out underneath the boat as soon as we got back in the water. It even came over to get a chin scratch from Patrick. We saw some green moray eels investigating a conch shell. The schools of fish were much bigger than the earlier stop, both in numbers and size. There was a tightly packed group of black margaritas looking very much like a black cloud underwater. There were also a few groupers trying to hang with the cool kids and blend in. Patrick showed us an underwater cave 20 feet down by freediving through it. Only Lee and one other snorkeler managed to make it through it. I was sticking close to the surface so I wasn't about to try it.
The highlight for me (and I'm bummed our camera glitched out so we don't have a picture) was when we swam to the shallow sea grass and found a grazing sea turtle. Poor thing had a stub in place of his right flipper, but seemed to have no trouble getting around. I swam alongside it for a while as it alternated between munching on the sea grass and getting gulps of air from the surface.
Back on the boat, everyone was treated to rum punch and shrimp ceviche. I had a Coke and chips and salsa. To our delight, the wind had picked up and Patrick and Rafael put up the sails to sail our way back home. I joked with Lee that he had gone native as he strolled through the sandy streets in bare feet, carrying his sandals and rum punch.
The rest of the time was low key. We tooled around Caye Caulker, spent some down time hanging out at the hotel "beach" which consisted of hard sand near a dock. I finished my Fanta tour of Belize - Orange, Red (or strawberry), Ginger Ale and Yellow (pineapple). We also made it a point to buy some foodstuffs from the wandering vendors as the tour book suggested. We had some of Charlie's Tamales, but my favorite was the Cake Man (The tour book tells me his name is Lloyd) who sold us a moist and delicious chocolate cake and oatmeal cookies on our way to the Lazy Lizard bar at the northernmost part of this half of Caye Caulker for some sunset viewing. We took in another half day snorkeling tour with Ragamuffin where I actually got to be in the water when we visited the nurse sharks and rays.
Christmas Eve was our final full day in Belize and we packed our schedule. We had breakfast and spa massage at Coco Plum Spa near the airport. It was a farther walk from the busy "downtown" but set in among a veritable jungle where it felt isolated and relaxing. I got a prenatal massage from a Mayan midwife who, in addition to providing me with the traditional Mayan womb centering treatment, found the baby's heartbeat and let me feel it too. We went back to Sobre Las Olas where I had my honey mustard chicken quesadillas again for lunch. We were befriended by a local dog who was happy to keep us company as well as a roaming band of neighborhood kids. One little girl, Teoni, took a liking to me, wanting to share my swing seat as we waited for our check. She grabbed my hand as we got up to leave and wanted to know where we were going. Then she was distracted by a jellyfish sighting by one of her friends and she scampered off to ooh, ahh and squeal in disgust at it. We found Cake Man again for our Christmas Eve chocolate cake and headed to the Catholic church for the very small Christmas Eve service. Besides us, there was a family from Chicago and a local family in the church with a service given by a Jesuit priest. We wandered back to our inn where Lee had some rumpopo (rum egg nog. Is there any liquid they don't add rum to here?) and rum chocolate fruit cake. I had orange juice and the white cake (and of course my chocolate cake from the Cake Man). For dinner we went to the Sand Box where I had the local favorite, stew chicken with rice and beans. Lee had his customary grilled lobster. Then it was off to the movies at the Paradiso Bar where for the price of a drink, we could watch a DVD being projected onto the side of the building by the beach. We watched Unstoppable with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine and I collected a whole lot more bug bites on my legs.
Christmas Day was a day of airports and family phone calls. Traveling went relatively smoothly, even getting through customs in Houston was palatable.
What a wonderful way to spend a tropical Christmas. We'll have do it again someday.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Christmas in Belize (Part 1 of 2)
I would be lying if I said I'd never before experienced a tropical Christmas, but I was a kid the last time I did. I do know that I have a bit more appreciation now than I did back then. Still, wearing shorts on the beach next to a palm tree decorated with Christmas lights and listening to White Christmas on the radio is a little surreal.
As the last Christmas BK ("Before Kid") and since we hadn't actually taken our annual vacation this year, Lee and I decided that a tropical Christmas would be the perfect thing. We wanted to visit inland to see the Mayan ruins and also get some beach time so we split our week and a half long visit between Cayo, in the eastern border near Guatemala, and Caye Caulker, one of the quieter tiny islands in the Caribbean. 
First off, Cayo. The picture is our humble abode at Mystic River. The jungle resort is owned and run by a French and American couple, Nadeje and Tom. On our first afternoon there Tom gave us a tour on his beloved Polaris four wheeler to the top of their hill where he had some unexcavated Mayan ruins he was excited to explore. Apparently once we started recognizing unusually geometrically shaped hills or mounds, it's quite easy to spot Mayan ruins and they're everywhere. On the way back down to the resort proper, Tom put the Polaris on coast as we bumped down three sizeable plateau steps that were once Mayan terracing. As someone later dubbed it - Mayan roller coaster sans rails.
The following day, we set out for a cave adventure at Actun Tunichil Muknal or ATM with our guide Ben. We had never been cave adventuring before but Gina, Mystic River's tour coordinator, insisted that it was a must-do. So off we went with another couple from Mystic River and originally from Colorado and a Dutch pair that we picked up along the way. The last part of the ride there was once again on bumpy, dirt/gravel road that is a common theme inland. Once we parked, it was about a 40 minute easy hike to the cave entrance. The hike in was also where we acquainted ourselves with the the water via three river crossings. It was cold but not unbearably so and seemed pool-like. At the entrance, we snacked on some watermelon, donned our head lamps and left any unnecessary (read: things we'd like to keep dry) gear.
And there was the entrance:
Yes, that is a swimming pool (though a bit warmer than the river crossings) to get inside. Inside, there was more moving water, sharp rocks and bouldering over, under and through said rocks. There were a few tight squeezes and narrow tunnels but they were always short passages so it didn't trigger any claustrophobic reactions. This was definitely an athletic tour. Once we clambered up a particularly tall rock, we came upon a treasure trove of ... shoes? It turned out that we were to shed our shoes and traverse the rest of the cavern in our stockinged feet. Ben made sure to carefully position us as we moved from area to area before we could look around. As we went on, it was clear to see why: calcified pottery blending into the cavern floor was littered all throughout. He pointed out several that had already been broken by previous careless tourists. He told us that the government had limited the number of licensed guides that could make tours through ATM to cut down on the traffic, but judging by the number of souls in that cave with us, we wondered if that were enough or if they would eventually have to shut the place down for tours.
The cave itself was primarily used by the Mayans as sacrificial grounds. As we swam and crawled and scaled rocks, I tried to imagine carrying that pottery with fire-making supplies as the Mayans must have. The pottery lying about was to cook their corn offerings. The human offerings they left whole.
The skeleton above was a teen-aged Mayan girl from the elite class that was sacrificed. Dubbed the "Crystal Maiden" because her bones have been calcified and look sparkly.
The way out went much more quickly than the way in and once back at the picnic area, we really appreciated the delicious lunch Ben provided. On a side note, I think Belize has the best banana bread I have ever eaten.
The following day, we went to Caracol. A two hour bone-jarring bumpy ride towards the Guatemalan border. The site itself is about half an hour's hike to the border. We were on the tour with the same couple from Colorado as well as another couple from the far-away land of San Francisco, CA. Along the way, Lewis, our tour guide treated us to many stories about the sights we saw. The most interesting one was by way of explaining the sign that we were to have a military escort into the Caracol site.
Apparently four or five years ago, Guatemalans were crossing the border to harvest leaves from a particular tree in Belize. When they had largely decimated their chosen crop, they decided it was more lucrative to rob the guides and tourists that were coming to the area of Mountain Pine Ridge where Caracol was located. It wasn't until an American tourist wrote about their ordeal on the internet that the government took action and installed a military presence at Caracol and required that all tours entering be escorted to and fro for the last 10 miles. This also shortened the hours that the tours could go visit (9am to 2pm). On an interesting side note, the crop that the robbers were previously harvesting was the leaves that would create the green dye used in US currency; someone was paying them (rather poorly at that) in order to counterfeit US dollars.
But back to Mayan ruins. Caracol is the largest Mayan ruin site in Belize that supported approximately 140,000 people at its height. The picture below is the top part of Caana, the tallest structure on the site standing at 140ft. above the ground floor. There are less than 100 steps to the top which made climbing up there a decent workout. There are still significant portions of the site that are unexcavated, but they're easy to spot as very geometrically shaped hills.
We learned quite a bit about their elite class who liked to flatten their foreheads and induce cross-eyedness by piercing the bridge of their nose with something bright and colorful to focus on. We also learned about a brutal ball game they played that involved throwing around an 18lb. latex ball. I didn't get to hear what the rules of the game were (I suspect it isn't definitively known) but it sounds like it would hurt.
After lunch and Caracol we stopped by a much shorter cave, the Rio Frio Cave. No water scrambling needed, but we did take some nice shots towards both entrances for the nifty contrast. A little farther away were the Rio Frio Pools where we could take a swim. We didn't actually go swimming, I just wanted to see how far I could get across the river by hopping from rock to rock without getting my sundress wet. I didn't manage to make it across the river, just halfway across, but it was fun nevertheless. Then it was back to the resort through some more bumpy roads.
I don't want to leave Mystic River without mentioning their very earnest bartender, Leo. Every meal he would come to the dining room from his bar at the hut next door to check to see if we wanted anything. He also had a daily drink special that sounded like he concocted himself and was very eager to have people try. I almost felt bad that I couldn't order any of his drink specials so I ordered some fruity smoothies instead. Our last night there, I told him about my favorite Forbidden Island drink, the Banana MamaCow and in exchange he told me about a new banana flavored drink that I'll have to wait to try out - the Dirty Banana.
The following day, we took the 2 hour drive back to Belize city with Angel, our cab driver, and the other San Francisco couple, David and Amy. The local airport had apparently suffered during the last hurricane as their terminal lost a wall they were still in the middle of repairing. Our ride to Caye Caulker was a prop plane. Sadly I couldn't sit in front right behind the pilot as we did in Costa Rica since we would be the only ones getting off at Caye Caulker. Everyone else was headed to Ambergris Caye, the more popular tourist destination.
In the interest of hitting the publish button, I'll save the Caye Caulker write-up for the next post. Stay tuned!
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Birthday 2011
I celebrated my birthday on Monday, but it's not my birthday that occupies my mind nowadays, but rather the upcoming one in June heralded by the above picture.
We sent a copy of that picture in a frame to the soon-to-be-first-time grandparents for Christmas and received delighted, excited, even emotional reactions across the board. It was fun to finally be able to share our little secret and get that reception both in person and over the phone.
Thankfully, I have had an uneventful first trimester. No morning sickness - yay for me! Even so, the routine medical appointments are annoyingly frequent. I understand it gets even worse in the third trimester. Blessedly, the prenatal tests are all coming out normal and quite average. I'm not showing yet, I can still wear my regular pants and so far no one has been guessing that I'm pregnant. Perhaps they're just assuming that I simply ate heartily over the holidays. I certainly feel full - full of baby. It's starting to be a little extra effort to pull my socks on. I noticed that my balance isn't quite what it used to be at karate practice. Sensei has banned me from sparring but I hope to keep going to practice up until I have to go to the hospital. We'll see.
We felt the baby kicking two nights ago. My doctor described it to me as feeling like gas bubbles. Once I recognized the sensation, it felt more like someone was poking me from the inside. Lee got to feel it too. That moment, every time I get an ultrasound or I hear/feel the baby's heartbeat makes all this seem real. Without that, I just feel like I'm getting extra round in the middle.
Not that I don't have moments that come up short of wonder and joy. Mourning for my rapidly fading figure - and to think I only recently started to like my figure in the past year (I had a waist! My body will never be the same again!). Pre-mourning for having the time to sleep, go out to movies, dinner, outings, video games, having the time to make elaborate Halloween costumes. I've been reading a bunch of books on pregnancy and preparing for the whole labor and delivery process. Scary! My dad is OB/GYN - I grew up listening to painful sounding experiences of delivery. There were many dinners growing up where I vowed to myself that I'd rather adopt than put myself through that. Guess I lied. And let's not even get into the worries of complications and issues with the baby or the extent of psychological damage I would inflict on another human being throughout its life. Deep breath.
Meanwhile, there's birth classes and hospital tours to schedule, names to ponder, decisions like disposables vs. cloth and what would make a good family car to replace the Saturn (thanks Consumer Reports), what color to paint the nursery. Every time I find a new website or talk to someone new about my delicate condition, there are more considerations to take into account and decide on. I suppose I don't have to figure it all out now. Suffice to say that this June birthday (or May) takes a whole lot more energy than all my January ones combined.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Garrus: The Making Of
Chris posted his making-of-video a few days ago. He's made some minor improvements to Garrus, primarily in the comfort of his shoes.
I made a cleaner set of Tali belt buckles, which sadly didn't make it into any decent full body picture shots from Halloween so I'll post them on their own. I also tried to improve the shape of my boots by caving in the calf portion to try and streamline them a bit more. Not so sure I was totally successful.
I'll post Chris' Tali props video when he has it up.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Halloween Costume #2: Ninjette
Happy Halloween!
I've been reading Adam Warren's Empowered comic series and two weeks before Halloween, decided to make the costume for Empowered's best gal pal, Ninjette.
She's a beer-drinking ninja princess from New Jersey, hiding out from her clan. Aside from the beer drinking and actual ninja skills, I thought it would be a straight-forward costume for me to make and wear in two weeks.
It turns out that I only had one week to actually complete the costume since work sent me to China the week before Halloween. Compared to my Tali costume, Ninjette was almost a sleepwalk. The patterns were based off of a mish-mash of various pieces of clothing I owned. I did have to make my shorts twice because I assumed a stretch factor on the stretch vinyl that wasn't quite true. Thankfully, I was only off by a seam allowance width. I used the same kind of fabric paint for Tali's hexagons to make the Ninjette logo.
The arm and leg wraps were just long strips of the stretch vinyl. After this photo shoot, I ended up getting some black gloves and thigh-high socks to put on underneath the wraps so that when they slipped, it wouldn't look so obvious. There's still some refinement to do with that process, but when I went out to the club, I carried black electric tape for emergency repairs. I wore black toe shoes (not shown here) to complete the outfit.
The long ponytail is not mine, it's a wig from the Halloween store. I bought some nail polish pens and painted my nails while I was hanging out and waiting during my China trip.
I'm a bit bummed I ended up assembling the necklace in reverse order. But the comic rearranges the order frequently enough that maybe it's not that big a deal (except to my sense of detail). I also should have taken some darting into account for my halter top, but I didn't have time to adjust it. It still works but isn't as correctly fitted as I would like.
While Tali was showcased at work during the day Friday, I ended up wearing Ninjette to both parties we went to for Halloween. No costume contest for me. I figured anyone who didn't recognize the Ninjette character would just assume I'm wearing a generic ninja girl costume which isn't remarkable enough to warrant a stage performance. It was still a fun costume to make and wear. I especially liked the fact that 1) I could see clearly, 2) I wore the most comfy shoes I remember wearing for a costume and 3) I could dance.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Post PAX + Press
We're back from PAX and still absorbing all the awesomeness of the experience. Friday was our Normandy crew day when we got a taste of traffic-stopping fame. We didn't get to the convention center until 4pm after getting ourselves outfitted up. We deliberately got a late start to the day because Chris and I didn't know how long we would last in our costumes and we knew we wanted to catch up with fellow Mass Effect cosplayer and awesome all-around girl, Holly Conrad at her evening PAX panel, From CG to Reality.
Little did we realize that as soon as we rounded the corner towards the last two blocks on the approach to PAX that our progress would be severely impeded by picture posing. Every few feet or so, we would be stopped by people wanting to take pictures of us or with us. Luckily, it was pretty easy to just ask the people asking for our pictures where Holly was and where the Bioware booth was. It just took a really long time to get there. We could only really move forward when security would tell us that we would need to keep moving to prevent blocking up the aisles. Then we would move another few steps and start it all over again.
The picture above was taken at the Bioware booth. We were a bit anachronistic standing in front of a huge poster of their fantasy game rather than Mass Effect, but we were loved up with flash photography all the same.
I didn't actually see much of PAX until Saturday when I had no helmet on my head. Chris switched to his Daft Punk (below) costume where he was wearing a helmet. He got stopped for plenty of pictures and interviews but we could still walk around and see the booths we wanted to see.
We're still looking for pictures and Chris' aforementioned interviews so if anyone's got links, please let me know!
Now for the pictures that we did find. I think my favorite mention of us came from Joystiq.com where they used our picture to lead the article and wrote that we were "quite possibly the best Tali and Garrus we've ever seen". Yay us!
We were included in Kotaku's gallery (picture 17).
Game Informer also had us in their gallery of PAX
About 56s into this video Daft Punk makes an appearance.
And then a random video where I desperately dodge the camera.
Saturday night, we had a blast attending the Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton concert. On Sunday we unexpectedly ran into them at their merchandise booth so I got Jonathan Coulton to sign my pass.
We had so much fun! I have some repairs to make on the costume and perhaps some redesign, but I'll give myself a week or so of down time before I tackle those so long as they're in time for Halloween.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Full Mass Effect
Did a full dress rehearsal yesterday and recruited our friends Kati and Eric as our photographers. I jammed out some pretty late nights this past week trying to get all the accessories I needed, but failed to get the boot knife in before our photo shoot.
Of course, there's lights on everyone's costumes and we had to defend a dark lab from danger just to see it.
I have some fixes to do to the various attachments: hood keeps falling off from the wind, my leg and arm bands don't stay where I want them to. Nothing a liberal use of velcro can't fix. Chris and Lee have various cracks in their armor that needs patching up, but overall I think we're ready to hit the road with this Normandy crew.
I'll leave you with some photoshopping in honor of the Penny Arcade Expo we're going to. The original comic was from Penny Arcade.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Head, Hand, Legs and Feet
Shepard first: Lee is almost done with his costume. Had a mild setback on schedule due to some mysterious illness, but he's feeling better now (and playing Borderlands) so he'll be back to finishing up the arm stripe tomorrow. His costume saga hasn't changed from the dremel and paint routine for a bit, but the details are really coming out nicely.
Chris is a genius. He finished my Tali helmet and the Omni-tool. It looks like I'm wearing a hologram in that shot. The helmet is the aforementioned vacuum-formed dome with purple tint and Nite Shades black spray to pull it darker. The frame is made of some more bent plastic (PET-G), EVA foam. We put a brimless baseball cap inside so that I can actually wear the thing. He's also built in a voice-activated mouth light and some UV LEDs in the hopes that the UV contacts I bought will glow inside the helmet.
The Omni-tool is a thing of beauty made of the same plastic, some mylar sheeting, rivets, bits of a keyboard's circuitry pattern and a bunch of tiny amber LEDs meticulously wired together.
Lest it sound like I'm not doing any work on my own costume, I've finished my Tali jacket and hood with the exception of a couple of snaps to attach the body scarves to my leg bands and belt attachment points. And the thing the holds my hood closed. The Tali boots above are made of shoes (they're in there, I promise) that aren't terribly comfortable, some upholstery foam to shape the toes, black Duck tape, and EVA foam. Ahh foam, is there anything you can't do?
I'm almost done with sewing. Just some gloves and a neck bib for the hood I'm wearing under the helmet. Then it's belts, arm packs and boot knife.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tali Helmet
Chris is making my helmet since he's got bandwidth, being finished with his Garrus costume and all. I made a model of what would fit around my head in Tali helmet fashion out of armature wire, wire mesh and a couple layers of duct tape on the outside. Then he filled it in with three layers of plaster, two on the inside, one on the outside and sanded the heck out of the outside to smooth it. Naturally, that required some Bondo to fill in a gaping chasm of an air bubble and we ended up with a Rorschach-looking helmet model. 
Took some PETG plastic, vacuum-formed six or so helmet candidates, one of which will be the lucky recipient of paint, sanding, painted helmet frame, and overall Tali awesomeness. The picture below actually has the clear plastic over the mold, but it's a bit hard to see.
I keep forgetting to take a picture of the more finished version of the helmet at work, but I'll update that as soon as I remember. As for me, I'm working on my Tali legs. I have my squishy foam Tali toes and tonight will hopefully be making my boots.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Shepard Armor Update
Lee has all of his main armor pieces formed and is moving onto detail work. The picture above is before doing some size adjustments and strapping everything together.