Another Bridge shot!

A panorama from Frederic Larson.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/photoblogfl/detailnc?entry_id=11115

Nanowrimo again!

Okay, I'm doing it again. But this time I will not put pressure on myself. It's sufficient that I actually write something.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Another skyline shot with moon

'Nuff said.

from Fred Larson's photo blog at Sfgate.com.




http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/photoblogfl/detailnc?entry_id=10459

Taichi short form

This is the short form Yang style I copied from a video I downloaded from the internet. I believe they call it the 24 move form. Of course I can't help but insert a little Hsing-i and Chang in it. Papa recorded it this morning at about 10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weK6G6UNWkk

The Shape of the Glass

Here's an article why the shape of the wine glass matters. I don't consider myself a wine snob, but I will refuse wine served in a beer stein.



Near the beginning of the article:

"Indeed, just as all wines are not created equal, all wineglasses are not the same. That's why there are two glasses placed at the table settings of most fine restaurants -- one for white wine and the other for red. And depending on which wine you order, the other glass is taken away as being inappropriate. "

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/20/WIG9GLQBSI1.DTL

Akashan'te

A friend, Vicky Burkholder, is having her first novel published in February '07. Having read her previous ebooks, I would be surprised if this one isn't stupendously delicious also.

" Rowyn of Cotswold is a young woman with hair as pale as bleached bones, eyes as dark as deepest space and a power beyond anything her world has seen in centuries. Chased by mindless assassins and forced to flee the only home she has ever known, she must reach the mythological city of Akashan'te before the conjunction of the six sister stars or the evil that is Jeros will rule the world."


Visit her blog: http://vickyburkholder.blogspot.com/

Hydrogen Steel

A friend, Adrian Bedford just published his third novel.
I haven't read it yet, but if it approaches his two previous ones by a mile, it is damn good. So far it is available only through direct order from the publisher.

Visit his blog, that's Modem Noise in the Links, for
further details.





From the publisher's web site:

"When retired top homicide inspector Zette McGee, late of Winter City, Ganymede, gets called out of her mysterious retirement to help Kell Fallow, a desperate former android accused unjustly of murdering his wife and children, she knows she has to help him, for Zette has a secret she is desperate to keep, and Fallow knows all about it.

With the help of her best friend, the elderly but very suave former secret agent Gideon Smith, and his ridiculously impressive personal starship, the Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Zette sets out (a) to help the accused man, but also (b) to keep Gideon from finding out her own awful secret, even as everything they learn in the investigation keeps pointing to it.

But when Kell Fallow is killed by a bomb he didn't know was buried in his guts, and when a homebrew android identical to Zette destroys her home on the luxurious Serendipity habitat, Gideon and Zette go on the run, only to run afoul of sabotage, spies, nasty infections, and bad guys galore and ordinary machines come to relentless, murderous life.

The case will take Zette and Gideon on a terrifying journey into the darkest reaches of human space, in pursuit of an ancient truth -- and will bring her into deadly contact with that truth's keeper, the awesomely powerful firemind, Hydrogen Steel, an artificial consciousness evolved far beyond its original design, and which is utterly determined to keep that same truth from getting out, at any cost."

Ghost Joggers

The early morning ghost joggers of Crissy Field

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/photoblogfl/detailnc?entry_id=9737

October Birthdays

October 8th we celebrated the birthdays
of my brother Mario, my father Rudy and my steady Eva who have theirs the week following.
I came up with the idea of one cake number. Actually I have another sister, an estranged one, who's also celebrating hers on the 10th.
The number should have been 217.

The cake was my favorite, Mango! Guess who
took the remaining third home!







A nice surprise was the presence of a second cousin from Galveston Linda. She happened to be staying for a while at a Buddhist retreat in Marin. We had a good time. As usual we had it at Tam's in Pacifica.







My sister Catalina was amused as she witnessed the adventure those chopsticks had just been through. Fe, my father's wife, couldn't contain herself. Alas, the world can see only half of Eva, the half with the Coke.

Ego Boost for the Common Computer Enthusiast

Click on the link below and then type in your first name..

Click here: Automatic Flatterer

Flash Fiction Maven

A friend, Pam Casto, is undoubtedly the internet's
number one authority on Flash Fiction. If you have
the propensity for writing really short items, check
out her article and her forums. You may just feel
validated.

Early on in her article,

"Defining or stating exactly what flash fiction is would be comparable to defining or stating exactly what a poem or novel is. It just cannot be done to anyone's satisfaction. The main thing about flash fiction, however, is that it is short. Randall Jarrell once pointed out that a story can be as short as a sentence. And there are some fine flash fiction examples where stories, one or two pages long, are comprised of just one or two (sometimes quite long) sentences. But the number of sentences such work contains will not get us very far in defining or describing it."

http://www.geocities.com/kavitayan/flash01.html

This is her blog.

http://www.flashfictionblog.blogspot.com/

91 year old Masseur

Here's an article about a massage
therapist who's been at it since
1938. Makes me feel utterly
omnipotent. Being 51 years old, I
now expect to be able to rub people for
another 40 years.



http://tinyurl.com/rxgt7

Procrastination cure?

Last Thursday I went to the Vitamin Express
on Irving street to purchase Clematis essence
by the Bach Centre.

http://www.bachcentre.com/centre/38/clematis.htm


This is essentially what's in the web page:

Clematis...
...is for people whose minds drift away from the present into fantasies of the future, or into alternative versions of the present. Often their dreams are of great future success, creative endeavour and achievement, but the danger for people in this state is that their dreams will remain fantasies because the Clematis person is not sufficiently anchored in reality to make them happen.
The remedy helps to bring these people back to earth and back to themselves so that they can build castles in life instead of in the air.

To me fantastic fantasies that seem all too real are the root of all procrastination.
We'll see... the nanowrimo starts in a month.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

a bit of heaven

My current wallpaper

from http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/photoblogfl/detailnc?entry_id=9196

taichi

Papa used his new Sony Cybershot WS50 to record my long form. It is he who says 'finished' at the end. That's the new M.H. de Young museum in the background.

As is evident, my form is basically yang style with lots of Hsing-i and bits of Pakua and Chen and Wing Chun. I usually do the form in 12 to 15 minutes.

The picture here has the old Museum in
the background, from 2000.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsP3ytfAOAk

Prime directive

I think this a good maxim to live by...


PRIME DIRECTIVE
As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes the introduction of superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moralobligation.

from http://www.70disco.com/startrek/primedir.htm

email 9/1/06

For the first time in my life I did something political.
Last Monday, I emailed the State Assembly voicing
my opposition to the Bill that was supposed to
license massage in California. It was the third hearing;
During the first hearing it passed by a sizeable
majority.
So anyway, they 'refused passage' of the bill.
This is the 3rd time in three years that it has been
refused.
I don't know if my email had anything to do with this;
I'm elated is all that's important to me.
This bill would not have affected me since I would be
grandfathered easily. But if this 'licensing' had beenenforced 9 years ago, there was no way for me to
have been interested in the profession at all.
This bill is the spawn of the massage schools who
want to sell their more expensive programs.

I don't use the word happy haphazardly.
Today is one those days.
And tonight we will be using a 10 dollar off
coupon at Hungry Hunter. Cajun Shrimp and
Black and Bleu Ribeye, and pecan torte
ala mode.

Happy Labor Day Weekend!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s. I happen to see at the tv at the gym yesterday
while I was doing my hour and 15 cardio, Emeril
doing some decadent things to hot dogs!
I'm gonna get me some this weekend!!!!!!!!!!

email 8/28/06

email I sent to the California Assembly 8/28/06

Dear Sirs and madams:

I am a massage therapist, have been so for nine years.I did not intend to be a massage therapist, I happenedto be studying to be a personal trainer and wonderedif the knowledge I can acquire if I become a massagetherapist can help me with the personal training. To cutthe story short I fell in love with massage afterreceiving a dozen of them in a week's time. I decidedto pursue massage therapy fully. I am not now a personal trainer. I have been working at the OlympicClub in downtown San Francisco for five years.

I would not have been a massage therapist if Californiarequired more than a hundred hours education. Of courselike any graduate it quickly became apparent that I needed to know more if I want my client base to grow.I've since taken courses in Neuromuscular Therapy whichhelped a great deal in dealing with my athlete clients.I have many regular clients who benefit from my work.

I am writing to oppose this legislation.This legislation will prevent many people who havethe proper compassion for this work to enter theprofession. I have a nephew who was inspired by me and withoutasking for my opinion went to massage school and wassold by the school one of their more expensiveprograms. He worked for two months as a massagetherapist but had to quit so he can get a better payingjob to pay the school loan he had to shoulder. He thenproceeded to hurt his shoulder and the last I heardhe was on disability. He was 19 years old when he entered massage school.

I got into massage at age 40.

This is an old argument but it is true that the onlywinner if this legislation passes are the massageschools. They can charge 25 thousand dollars and morefor someone to graduate their programs. For somethingthat is so natural, anybody does it. Everybody has givensomebody a neck rub. Mothers have always massage theirbabies without studying 'Infant Massage'. I insist thatI can teach anybody to give a SAFE and EFFECTIVEmassage in a couple of hours. And anybody can give afoot rub.

Massage insurance is so cheap because the risk is so little.But the people behind this legislation will have youbelieve like we're out there eager to dislocate everybone in everyone's body. Anyone who have had a massagecan attest to the perception that all the therapist intendedto do was to make them feel good.

You can not legislate intention.

Please do not prevent the people who want to make peoplefeel good from doing so. Encourage them to do so byrejecting this bill.

Thank you.

Ike Agustin