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It's Friday again, going to chill a bit tonight with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc with my new best friends Mulder and Scully to talk about some foreign invasion sh*#. Speaking about alien sovereignty, on the radio today a guy compared the US now to the UK in 1956, when it was no longer the financial superpower of the world, and was forced by the new-rich-kid-on-the-block US of A to cease the attacks on Egypt. With China now owning ~3 trillion of our debts I wonder what would happen if suddenly China attacks Taiwan and uses its financial powers as leverage? Hmmm.

1) Have we really lost our status as the #1 Economic Superpower of the World?
2) Once China doesn't need us as the #1 importer of their goods, would it flex its economic muscles on us?

Too complex scenario for me to contemplate on a Friday afternoon. Gonna go pour my glass of wine now. Have a happy weekend everyone!

Picture of San Diego Padre's Petco Stadium taken from my hotel room this past week :)

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Woke up this morning to take some HDR photos, and walked around the Silver Lake a bit - even at 9 a.m the area was quite busy - had a latte here and had a nice croissant, reminding me of mornings a few months ago in France... $10 and a parking ticket (a extra $63) later, I was on my merry way and took a few more photos.

On the way back I stopped near The San Rafael Bridge to snap this picture above. I've driven past the bridge hundreds of times, but never seen the view while walking on it.. Here is another view. I like the way these shots looked, and hope you do too.

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What a way to start the morning... finally got all packed up for my early morning flight, set my alarm on my Blackberry for 6am, and went to bed by midnight...

Zzzzz

Suddenly I woke up, realizing that someone called me on my home number... but NO ONE CALLS ME ON MY HOME NUMBER (except people trying to sell me newspaper subscriptions)... looked at the clock, and OH MY LORD IT WAS 6:25am! Julia had been trying to ring my cell since 6am and my ringer seems to be broken.

WHAT THE &^#@*. WTF. ^#%@.

Quick shower, threw all my last-minute-items into the suitcase, and off I went. Rebooted the phone and the ringer seems to be working again. Set vibrate to ON for my alarm, just in case if it breaks while I am asleep in the future. RIM gets the big MEH from me.

I will NEVER BUY ANOTHER BLACKBERRY. EVER. AGAIN.

Arrived in Phoenix where I experienced 115 degrees F (46 C) for the first time. Oh my lord - it was so hot that even MAX BLAST on my rental car's air conditioning didn't do a thing to cool me down.

Fast forward a few hours... it is now 9:30pm, and I am poolside, forgetting all the crap that happened today. Tomorrow is a new day, and I'm going to cool off the natural way, in the water :)

Oh yeah guess why I love HDR so much? There is no other way to get the effect from the photo, taken in almost-completely-darkness!

One from New York

One from Montana

One from Korea

The secret will be revealed tomorrow - hint: new toy that I don't have time to play with tonight - too much work to do for a big presentation tomorrow!

after tinkering with photography since 1999 with a borrowed Fujifilm 1.2Mpix camera (thanks Anita!) I finally got my first interchangeable lens camera this past week - Olympus E-P3. Wanting the camera to still be PORTABLE (hence the reason why I didn't go for a much 'better', but MUCH BULKIER camera, Canon 5DMKII or Nikon D7000).

I also bought a shorter lens: Panasonic Lumix 20mm f1.7 'pancake'.

Not wanting to look like an Asian Tourist with a camera around their neck, I also got a nice compact Gariz hand strap

Too much to do @ work today. Hopefully I will get to play with later tonight!