Day Seventy-Eight through Eighty-One: The Social Habits Of The Filipino Mother (How I Almost Kidnapped Sam)

9/4/15, 11:20 PM PDT

So for the past three days, I have essentially been nonstop editing for the next VFX weekly. I wanted to try some compositing with 3D elements, so I decided to try and animate some Star Fox vehicles into my neighborhood.

Thankfully, to save me a ton of modeling time, I managed to find a 3D model of an Arwing, a Landmaster, and a Wolfen online. Bless whoever took those from Brawl, because if I had to model this thing...

...then this weekly would probably have become a monthly. I've only been playing with 3DS Max for about two months and modeling is still ridiculously hard for me. Thankfully, animating is still basically the same as it is in After Effects, so I had no trouble doing that. The only thing that was super difficult about this project was rendering. It took EIGHT HOURS to render, and it basically overworked my laptop in the process.

But I am very happy with the outcome. Take a look.

More importantly, however, let me tell you about the socializing habits of the rare and elusive Filipino mother. Upon the retrieval of their child at another Filipino family's house, such as Samantha's house, the two mothers partake in an elaborate social ritual. In the native Philippine tongue, it is called "wag ka tatahimic" but its closest English translation is "conversation." Though conversation, in the Western sense, is nothing compared to this.

The two Filipino mothers initiate the ritual by first gesturing to the other what appears to be a goodbye wave at first glance. However, between the two women, it is actually a signal that says "I want us to talk for an indefinite period of time in order to delay the work that both of our children have to do for as long as possible." From that point, the two women quickly jump from conversation topic to conversation topic while their children wait awkwardly outside of the car for them to finish. Which is what Sam and I did.

Eventually, when their conversation hit the 45 minute mark, we tried to play a trick on them. Sam snuck into my mom's car (my mom stayed in her car the entire time she was talking to Sam's mom) and she hid in the backseat while we waited for them to finish talking.

We ended up waiting an additional forty minutes, meaning their entire "farewell" conversation lasted an hour and a half. But eventually, my mom drove off.

She didn't notice that crouching in the backseat in the fetal position was Samantha, hidden from view by the back of the passenger seat, her occasional chuckles covered up by the hum of the engine and the guttural hyena-like roars of laughter that my sister was screaming out.

My mom immediately started saying that she could talk to Samantha's mom forever, and I just put myself into autopilot, saying "yeah" to whatever she said. At one point, my mom said

"Samantha's mom talks a lot though, huh?"

She asked that question at an incredible time, right at the point where we reached a stop sign and the sound of my sister laughing stopped for a few seconds. And, with equally perfect timing, in a perfectly silent car, Samantha said

"Yeah, she does."

My mom immediately looks in the backseat, notices that Samantha was still in the car with us, and IMMEDIATELY turns back around to Samantha's house, right as Sam's mom exits the house in panic mode, searching for her daughter.

We explained the situation and even though the entire car was laughing, Sam's mom was panicking. Upon exiting, Sam gave out this weird chimpanzee "WOOO!" howl and raised her arms in the air like Donkey Kong about to throw an invisible barrel.

Her mom threatened to smack us, but it was totally worth it.

RFotD: I feel bad that our little joke made Sam's brother panic too. Her brother's cool, he didn't deserve that kind of fear.

Day Sixty-Three: The Zoo Zquad

8/17/15, 11;37 PM PDT

Today, Angela, Kayla, Nick, and I decided to go to the zoo in order to visit Christina's family just to hang out.

Hey, you can see Christina on top of the sign!

Somewhere in this park, there's a beautiful and elusive animal. Natively found in Africa, we San Diegans are lucky enough to have one grace us with its presence in our very own zoo. Hailed as a divine being in some cultures, it is the epitome of elegance.

It calls itself the "Dik-Dik." And I was on the hunt to find it today.

The first thing we did was take the skytram to the other side of the park. The first animal we saw was unfortunately, not the Dik-Dik, but this guy:

It looks like a living kiwi.

This cute little guy is called a peccary, a member of the pig family with prickly-looking fur surrounding his entire family. He deserves special recognition for being the unofficial welcoming animal for the first annual Kamichan zoo trip. Good on you, friend!

Congratulations!

Of course, with the 3,700 different species in the zoo, I couldn't afford to photoshop top hats on all of them nor can I upload pictures of all of them, so I'll post the highlights.

There was this snow leopard that happened to be standing on a walkway that connects the two leopard cages that I got a pretty okay silhouette picture of.

"I'm Batman."

Not to be outdone, this peacock (which is allowed to roam the park freely!) also did his best Batman impression by climbing on top of a roof.

"I am the night. Err, the dusk."

And there was this guy, star of the bestselling novel "The Poisonwood Bible."

Half giraffe, half horse, half zebra, it's a Gizebrorse! Also I'm bad with fractions.

We also saw a real Angry Bird! Look at how fat it is!

They had to surround it in sand because if it hits anything wooden, glass, or
pig-like, it instantly explodes.

Actually, I believe the title of "real life Angry Bird" belongs to this guy, where he's so angry that it's in his actual name.

Of course it's not threatened, it won't even allow poachers
to step on its lawn, let alone get close enough to kill it.

This animal quickly became one of my favorites when it let out its incredibly cry. My camera glitched when I recorded its song, so instead, have this YouTube video that I found:

Isn't it adorable? Also adorable was this plaque that we found.

We're not sure if Poseidon the leopard dog is an animal or the full legal name
of whatever rich philanthropist donated to the zoo.

We also found Christina's family!

With my estimates, her fist should come flying through my window and into
my face right about n-

Seriously though, hippos are pretty damn cool. Key club  D21 definitely chose a good mascot, they're adorable.

We caught a video of one of these guys submerging...

Love me my underwater transition shots.

And we noticed a neat little symbiosis happening between these fish and the hippo:

Much like the symbiosis between Will Smith and those whales in a
particular Dreamworks animated film.

The highlight of the day though? THE ORANGUTANS. We luckily came to their exhibit right as they were starting up their daily Cirque du Soleape show, so we got some pretty good footage:

(Ignore how obnoxious I am on camera, I don't know what the hell is wrong with me)

I especially loved this little guy:

I really regret not bringing Joby to meet his family, but on the other hand, with how active some of the other animals were, it might have been a good thing not to bring him, lest he get mauled to death by these guys:

Oh and I also had a face to face encounter with a koala!

"It's like looking into a mirror." -Christina
(Pic via Kayla)

We stayed at the zoo until it was pretty late. Late enough to see the golden hour...

It's pointing up because if koalas touch the ground to cross the street,
they go straight to heaven.

And to see when the zoo was nothing but golden light.

The beauty of incandescent lighting.

We got that picture when we were on the skytram at night. And since we took it near the entrance of the park and it was near closing, we would have to walk back to the entrance from the other side of the park. At night. Pitch black night. And although it gave rise to a particularly cool picture of Kayla...

Looks like she's about to perform on stage but she has stage fright or something.

It also gave us some very creepy, horror-game worthy moments. It was inevitable that we had to pass through some of the animal enclosures to get back, and even though the zoo was essentially closed at that time, the ambient jungle-esque noise that played near each enclosure kept playing. And though it might give the exhibits a bit more realism during the day, at night it only served to hide the sound of footsteps from murderers that were walking right behind us. 

After sprinting the last 40 miles of the zoo when we though we heard breathing behind us, we made it to the gift shop and decided to distract ourselves from the fact that the San Diego Slayer was definitely real and definitely almost murdered us with his dirty, bear-like paws by looking at the stuff they had for sale.

They of course had cute stuffed animals...

Reminds me of the look I had when I was first told
that girls and boys had different parts.

Some "cute" baby children's shirts...

One of those things is not like the other. And no, I didn't just put the shirt
there for a photo, you can see the stack of kids size snake shirts on the right.

And a kaleidoscope, which I used to simulate what you'd see when Kayla knocks your lights out when she finally snaps and becomes the San Diego Slayer.

Look closely at it.

RFotD: We never found the Dik-Dik enclosure, unfortunately :(

Day Sixty-Two: The Gwend

8/16/15, 10:57 PM PDT

Today, unfortunately, is the last day that we will see Gwen living in San Diego. Gwen, our surrogate white mother who enjoys white motherly things like reading books on her Kindle at the beach, drawing birds, and threatening us with physical violence if we're the wrong Zodiac sign, will unfortunately be in Utah for the next four years to continue her studies into becoming a park ranger/bird drawer/white mother.

God, it sounds like I'm writing an obituary.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

In order to cherish the last moments we had with her, we decided to have a last supper with her at TPOP. We ordered a big ol' ice cream hot pot, which is basically six scoops of ice cream with some awesome dry ice smoke coming out of the center.

Woah.

We also ordered honey brick toast...

Huh.

And a 150 gram rock of pure, Columbia-grade crack cocaine.

And we snorted it right in the restaurant too.

Just kidding, that giant block of chalk right there was Gwen's birthday gift. It's a dinosaur excavation toy, where you have to manually chisel out all the parts of a dinosaur skeleton and assemble the bones like a real life version of Indiana Jones!

As mentioned before, we did this right in the middle of TPOP.

They didn't appreciate the mess,

We got pretty excited when we successfully extracted our first limb.

But then later moved to the rec center to finish the job, fearing that the people at TPOP would throw us out. Here's a few pictures of our entire paleontologic process.

Check out that ribcage imprint on the top.

Making progress.

Things got especially exciting when we removed and assembled the head.

"Hello ladies."

And by "we," I mostly mean me. I got excited. So excited that I filmed this:

Eventually, we managed to assemble the entire skeleton. And we witnessed it in its full, bony glory.

Steven Spielberg would be proud.

We were so happy. And then we had to put it down.

God, so much death today. On a much lighter note, check out this family portrait that Phoenix drew of us!

They're creepy and they're kooky...

Lets go ahead and do roll call. There's Gwen...

You can also see her life goals in the top right.

Kayla...

She looks happy, sure, but inside, she wants your head
on a pike.

Aaliyah...

Tiny, armless, ridiculously happy, yepyep.

Christina...

Or maybe it's Genocider Shou from Danganronpa.

Angela...

Yep, she looks like a boy. Just like in 8th grade.

Me...

Me? Mi Ly? Haaaaah. That joke is dead.

Ken...

It's so accurate that Phoenix Ken't have drawn it better.

And of course, Phoenix.

She almost looks like she wants to play a game...

Later, we decided to end the day with a trip to Rita's and some fun talking about our Zodiac signs. I'm not really a big believer in horoscopes, but it's kinda impressive how accurate the description of a Taurus is to my personality. And yeah, yeah, I know it's not real and they spin it in such a way that the same traits applies to a lot of people, but I mean if you really know me as a person and you read some of these traits, you'd see some pretty true things.

The last thing we did was read this post on which Zodiac signs you should and shouldn't fight, and it is HILARIOUS, especially when Gwen read it in her really loud, super-dramatic way. We were just LOSING it in Rita's, we probably drove away all the other customers from how boisterous we were, but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

To get a slice of our fun, imagine these people when you read their respective paragraphs in that link above:

• Aaliyah: Leo
• Me: Taurus
• Christina: Pisces
• Angela: Scorpio
• Kayla: Gemini
• Ken: Sagittarius
• Gwen: Capricorn
• Phoenix: Virgo

Then imagine that it was being read by this woman:

And you would have a very rough estimation of how much of a good time we had at that Rita's at six in the afternoon, over Zodiac signs and frozen drinks.

Gwen, if you're reading this, I would like to say thank you for being a great mother and a great friend. Senior year would not have been as fun as it was if you hadn't been there to call me a bitch-ass pussy in class, or show me the beauty that is the giant Speed ride in the Del Mar Fair, or gouged out your eyes with us in some horrifying cultist blood pact. It's been awesome knowing you, but it's not gonna be goodbye because I know someday, the squad and I are gonna get lost in Utah looking for salty lakes and suddenly hordes of Mormons will attack us and right when we're closest to death, you'll descend from the sky and save us from their bicycles. And then you're gonna call us bitch-ass pussies and tell us to suck your ass as you fly back up, above the clouds, cackling the whole way.

Until then, we'll miss you, Gwen.

RFotD: I am actually not sure if she is going to Utah or not.

Day Sixty-One: An Old Dog

8/15/15, 11:20 PM PDT

After a month of traveling in Europe and getting used to either speaking in French, Tagalog (to shit-talk the people near us with no risk of them understanding us) or very simplified English, suddenly switching back to a country that only speaks English is very very strange. Awkward, almost. Like you know when you don't write anything by hand in awhile, your handwriting turns to trash? Sort of like that for me, but instead of mini Parkinsons moments with graphite and cellulose, they're little stutters and a general inability to find words.

I met up with Angela and Kayla today at Chipotle and just ordering my burrito (from our friends, Jonah M and Michael P as well) was DIFFICULT. It felt uncomfotrable to find the right words to say, which was weiiiiiiiird. I felt very awkward, it's just an inexplicable thing.

Damn it, I might have to relearn English again.

"All this reading is required? And there's a test tomorrow?!"

Luckily, a few days with my friends ought to fix that really quickly.

We went to Petco after gorging ourselves in a Chipotle. Kayla and Angela were both really surprised that the male mice available in Petco had some junk in their trunk.

I had to google search "Mouse balls" for this
picture, so the least you could do is appreciate it.

And later, we found these squeaky hedgehogs that sounded less like "Gotta Go Fast!" and more like the anti-smoking ads they run on TV starring tracheotomy victims.

Now, the following story I am about to tell will be a moment in my life that I will never forget. 

So at one point, we were looking at dog toys near the front of the store when a frail, elderly woman entered the pet shop while pushing around a small shopping cart with an equally frail, equally elderly dog sitting in the cart's basket. It was brown, a bit shaggy, and shivered slightly, much like an old person on the verge of collapsing from skeletal failure.

Of course, me being the moron that I am, didn't initially notice the dog in the cart, I just noticed the old woman. So after I saw the lady and returned my attention to the dog toys we were looking at, Angela innocently said "Hey look at that old dog!"

And I immediately thought she was talking about the woman. And I said, in a very loud voice,

"Angela! You can't call her that!"

Right as said old woman and her dog passed me. I saw her look at me. Her and her old dog.

I escaped. No way was I gonna live down that shame if she ever got a clear look at my face, so I hid behind an aisle selling dog training supplies and used ALL my willpower to prevent howling in laughter. Eventually, Kayla followed me to the aisle and she was basically crying from laughter after she realized what I did.

I avoided that woman's gaze the rest of the time we were in the store. Should I have apologized for calling her an old dog through proxy? Maybe.

Nah.

RFotD: It took way too long to rotate that video of us squeezing the hedgehogs back to the correct orientation. Editing some thing like that should be way easier, I swear.

Day Sixty: The Great Room Cleaning Initiative

8/14/15, 11:20 PM PDT

Today, I spent the bulk of the day cleaning my room. And for good reason. When I left, my room looked kinda like this:

I mean it's not bad, but it's not fantastic either...

(Psst, that's not my real bedroom, it's a representation since I didn't have a before picture)

But when I got back, it somehow ended up looking like this:

"HOW DID I GET A DRUMSET IN MY ROOM?"

I'm not entirely sure how, but when I got back, somehow the spiders must have interfered and made it like a MILLION times more messy or something because when I stepped into my room, I was DISGUSTED. Literally disgusted.

Well... maybe not literally. I kinda just saw it and thought the fact that my desk and floor was unnavigable was mildly inconvenient. But regardless of my motive, I decided to DEEP CLEAN MY ROOM. I removed everything that wasn't essentially an immovable part of my room, moved it to my hallway, sorted out the stuff I needed and didn't need, reorganized everything, redecorated so everything would look aesthetically pleasing, and BOOM. After about six hours of work, this is what it looks like now:

If you look carefully, you can find a few interesting little things in my room.

It may not look like much, but this is MARVELOUS compared to the previous iterations of my room. YOU CAN ACTUALLY FIND STUFF WITHOUT LOOKING THROUGH MOUNTAINS OF BOOKS! And I have 500% MORE DESK SPACE. ENOUGH TO FIT MY LAPTOP AGAIN!

Yeah, I'm very happy.

And then I realized that Samantha's going to LA tomorrow for a week and I could have spent those six hours with her instead of with the crap in my room.

But fear not! I got to see her today anyway, for two hours too! So I'm still very happy.

RFotD: She threatened to leave me because I just got back from a month-long trip and I decided to spend my first day back with my room instead of with my bae.

Day Fifty-Nine: A Fun Flight, A Not-So-Fun Landing

8/13/15, 9:23 AM PDT

Today, we finally leave Europe. It's a bittersweet sort of feeling. On one hand, Europe has been an AMAZING experience with a lot of sights, food, experiences, and especially food, so I'm definitely gonna miss it. But on the other hand, I can't wait to hang out with my friends again, so I'm pretty glad that I'm leaving.

It was a nine-hour flight from Barcelona to our first transfer, which was Atlanta, Georgia. There were a few things notable about the flight. One, their in-flight safety video was pretty funny.

(This next one wasn't the one we had on our flight, but I found it while looking for the one we had and it is also very funny)

And two, their in-flight film library was ENORMOUS. I decided to watch three films, which were The Imitation Game, Slumdog Millionaire, and, my favorite, Assassination Classroom.

Just reading the synopsis makes me excited.

I'm not gonna lie, Assassination Classroom has a VERY weird concept. Basically it's about a yellow octopus-like creature with ridiculous superpowers that decides to teach a classroom of middle school failures how to become assassins before destroying the earth at the end of the school year if they don't kill him by then.

Yeah, it's weird. But I absolutely LOVED it. It was really funny, had surprisingly decent CGI, was over the top, and ended with the promise that there would be a SEQUEL, which I am very excited for. You can take a look at the trailer here, if you like:

Now, on a different note, let me tell you about the migraine that is the Atlanta International Airport. We were only here to wait for a transfer, but for some stupid reason, we had to get the luggages we checked in to the flight from the airport just to recheck them in after we got them. Why do we have to do this? Why can't they just take the bags themselves and put it on our transfer flight, like every other airport does automatically?

And before you say "Oh, Michael! You're overreacting, it's only one tiny baggage recheck, that's not a brain hemorrhage waiting to happen!"

Except we never got our luggage from the carousel. So we couldn't recheck in our bags because WE NEVER GOT THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. And the airport staff were absolutely no help either, whenever we asked them they would interrupt us by saying "Oh, just wait for them at the carousel, they'll show up eventually." EXCEPT THE CONVEYOR BELT ISN'T MOVING FOR OUR CAROUSEL ANYMORE. So when we got that message through, they'd say "Okay, then just go to LAX without your bags and they'll probably be there when you arrive."

Probably. Probably. Oh so if we do go and they don't end up being there, we're just dead, huh? The bags are stuck in Atlanta forever.

We asked several other people and NONE OF THEIR ANSWERS WERE THE SAME. Some people suggested looking at other carousels to see if they got mixed up, which we did, in vain. Some recommended going to our airline at this airport and filing a baggage claim, which we couldn't do because our connecting flight was leaving in 20 minutes and the line looked like it was moving slower than the earth's tectonic plates. And some just gave us a "Sorry, but I don't know what else to tell you" which I guess was the best thing they could have said because at least they were being honest.

So we eventually flew to LAX, landed at 9PM, waited in their luggage carousel, and lo and behold, our bags weren't there. So we filed a baggage claim and after the hour long line, you know what happened to our bags?

They got put on a DIFFERENT FLIGHT. So Delta promised us that they'd fly them over to San Diego's airport and deliver them to our door tomorrow morning.

Hopefully they follow up on that promise.




RFotD: Yes, they did deliver on that promise, thankfully.

Day Fifty-Eight: Fucking Grass

8/12/15, 8:12 PM CET

Today, we ran out of swipes for our public transport card, so we couldn't explore the city further. However, we felt like we covered a TON of the city anyway, so we were very happy to take today as a rest day.

We did walk around our hotel to see what was nearby though. And apparently, this whole time we had a hotel that was RIGHT NEXT TO FC BARCELONA'S FOOTBALL STADIUM.

Hmm... their stadium looks a little bit... messi. Heh.

So of course, we went in. Or at least, we went into the only thing accessible on non-sports days, which was the gift shop. And, as expected from one of the most valuable, popular sports teams in the world, the interior of the FC Barcelona Megastore was incredible.

If you stand in the correct place, those things hanging from the ceiling
look like Messi's kicking foot. This is true.

Remember my trip to FC Bayern's stadium and how I said the level of fandom there was ridiculous? Turns out, fandom bordering on creepy obsession is common in European sports teams. Especially when they sell this:

Grass. FUCKING GRASS. Seriously, I mean what would you even do with it? Plant it in your backyard? Shit, maybe if you cultivate it enough, you'll grow your own Suarez, right?

And if it's not crazy enough, they also have miniature versions in magnets that you can stick right on your fridge.

Then again, if you think this is a good purchase, your
fridge is probably already shaped like Messi's face.

Ridiculous.






RFotD: I'm not actually angry, I think this stuff is hilarious, truthfully.

Day Fifty-Five: Paella, Tibidabo, And A Soylent Snack

8/9/15, 11:20 PM CET

If you asked me what a "Tibidabo" is prior to today, I would have thought it was a kind of Japanese snack, or a Filipino meat covered in vinegar and soy sauce. But nope, neither are correct. Tibidabo is actually the name of a HUGE amusement park, situated at the top of one of Barcelona's mountains.

Pretty, huh?

This place is AMAZING. They had some pretty awesome rides, including this little spinning plane ride that goes OVER THE MOUNTAINSIDE. You can see it on the right side of the picture above. 

They also had a Ferris Wheel...

Wonder if it ever takes a day off.

And, strangely, the entire thing was right next to a very large church called the Sagrat Cor, or the Sacred Heart.

The big thing on the left.

Later on in the day, we also tasted a Spanish staple: paella! Essentially, it's fried rice mixed with sauce and a BUNCH of seafood, and it is DELICIOUS.

It took 20 minutes to prepare, which sounds like a long time until you actually see it:

The rice is hidden beneath the layer of sauce around the seafood.

Yes, it was the most amazing thing I've eaten. The bowl that it came on was MASSIVE, but my entire family still managed to finish it.

Well, most of it, at least.

\
We also visited Park Guell today. It's a relatively large park, with some more nice architecture from the very creative Antoni Gaudi, which you saw in yesterday's post. Here's a few pictures that I grabbed!

I especially loved the look of that tower over there, so of course...

Golden Hour Joby looks amazing. Or it might be incorrect white balance
Joby, I'm not sure.

And to end today, here's a pretty disturbing candy bar that I found in a shop on the way home.

Manufacutured by the Soylent Corporation, Philippines Division.

RFotD: Filipinos also come in milk and dark chocolate flavors. Allegedly, they are named because they have a brown outer layer and a white inner layer.