Kat's Notebook

Once upon a gorgeous Friday afternoon, I travelled to San Francisco city to be part of the show View From the Bay. I was ecstatic to receive free studio tickets from the show weeks prior to the taping. Now I was headed towards the studio building located at Green St. corner Front St. near the Embarcadero. I was by myself since my mom was working that day. View from the Bay is a family-oriented talk show that tackles issues catering to the Bay Area families/residents. Think of Martha Stewart and Rachel Ray show combined. That day was the last day of taping for the show. After 900plus episodes, the show has come to an end. I was lucky to be part of their last episode. It wasn’t live unfortunately but taped. And my 2 seconds to fame will be shown on Sept 10th at 4pm.

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Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to complete my course on Community emergency response training (CERT). In my previous blog I’ve mentioned that I had started this course but was unable to attend the 3rd session which was field day! I was most excited for the field training so I really decided to attend the last session when this CERT course was re-installed.

The day started with lectures regarding terrorism, disaster psychology and search and rescue. I was most interested with the terrorism topic. Of course in the US it’s very much real. And terrorism wasn’t equated immediately to muslim faction but according to the lecture it could be anyone – from a religious sect, or a political group, and of any race. At 2009 alone, US had 12 terrorism attack.

Since I was looking forward to the field work, the lectures kind of bored me. They were really informative though. For our field work we get to do

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There are 2 kinds of format for the 35mm film: negative or C-41 and the slide E-6. These films are processed by the studio lab with different chemicals. Most photo labs, that of in the drugstores, can only process C-41 films. Slide films need to be processed in a special lab to get a normal picture. With the special chemical, it is more expensive to process E-6 films.

For the lomographers, we don’t have problems with E-6 films because we are fond of the procedure called, “Cross-processing”. To cross process a film simply means to process the film in other chemicals than those originally intended by the manufacturer. So different types of cross processing are: e6 in c41, c41 in e6, c41 or e6 in black and white chemicals, films that were made for discontinued processes processed in c-41 or e-6. E-6 in C-41 is the most conventional one. A cross-processed E-6 will give out a saturated, sometimes very washed out, low or strong contrast pictures.

There are many kinds of slide films. To immediately identify them from a c-41 film, slide films usually have “chrome” in the brand name. These films will give different effect. Tip of an x-proer: While shooting, underexpose the film rather than overexpose. When developing, ask the lab to push 2-3 stops. Here are observations from lomographers who have cross-processed their E-6 films:

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I love nature or outdoorsy activities. Thanks to my stint as a girl scout back in high school, I was able to appreciate the beauty of nature when my group hiked Mt. Makiling during a summer camp; and once again at a medical-dental mission that had us hiking through the mountains to find that elusive waterfall. Those hiking trips were maybe half a mile long and it was exhilarating and very intimate because it’s just me and the nature.

Two years ago, I joined a hiking group in our community. We went to Big Basin Creek at Half Moon Bay. It was more than 10 miles hike. That experience ruined my love for hiking. It was long, the pace was hard, and I wasn’t wearing proper hiking shoes. My feet just died. So for the next year or so, I didn’t join any of their hiking trip. Then came my Yosemite trip which hiking was part of the itinerary. Even though the Mist Trail was 3 miles long, the elevation was so ridiculous! It was uphill all the way and I was left trailing behind my group for  good 45 minutes before I could catch up with them.

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Lomography hobby is an expensive one when compared to digital photography (with exception of dslr). But for me I enjoy taking pictures with my lomo cams better. What makes this hobby expensive are: films, processing of films, scanning it into cd, and buying the lomo cams. So before you take up this hobby, consider the expense of lomography. Anyway, to unburden some of that financial expense, here are some tips:

1. Research the camera before buying.

There are different types of film cameras but the most important to note is the film type it uses. Most popular and cheap to use is a camera with 35mm film formats. Cameras like Holga uses 120 or 135 format while the Instax cameras use polaroid film. With these different film formats, it will be more expensive to buy the film and have it processed.

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I grew up watching Asian dramas/movies. First it was Mexican telenovela popularized by Thalia. Then when the Meteor Garden or F4 series exploded in TV and in the Asian culture, my watching preference extended to Taiwanese, then Korean, then Japanese dramas and movies. Lately, I’ve been disappointed that I’m not finding any new, cute or impressive Asian dramas/movies, particularly the Korean ones. Same story formulas are recycled again and again in the newer shows. The novelty of My Sassy Girl or Autumn’s Tale which left quite an impression was not reproduced again.

If you have watched a lot of Korean movies and dramas, you’ll find that their stories revolved from ongoing themes and getting out of the box seems difficult to do. Here are my observations with Korean shows:

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Ever since we bought a 10lb box of strawberries from Costco, a thought came to mind: I want to make a strawberry cake! However before I moved into action I brainstormed what kind of strawberry cake I wanted. I researched recipes, pictures, and videos. I finally settled for a 2 layer chiffon cake with buttercream frosting. This was such a huge undertaking for an amateur baker like me.

So here goes my Strawberry Cake project.

Strawberry Chiffon Cake

For the Chiffon cake:

1. Lightly spray a 3-by-8-inch or 2-by 10-inch cake pan with canola oil spray. Line with parchment and flour the sides of the pan.
2. In a bowl, whip the canola oil and egg yolks until combined. Add the strawberry puree and vanilla extract.
3. In a mixer bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Place the bowl on the electric mixer.
4. Add the egg yolk mixture and beat gently just to combine. Scrape down the bowl.

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