My Birthday day

I'm back.
After weeks of craziness I finally have a moment of stillness. I'm sitting at my desk at my office listening to the internet radio KCRW. A lovely blues song is playing. The perfect musical score as the sun is setting behind me. Why am I at the office on a Sunday. Well as many of you know I had my big birthday bash last night/early this morning. Came in to do some cleaning so I can transform the office from party central back to a regular office. Well regular with a killer view.

A lot has happend so I'll break it down in a few entries.

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BEFORE NOV 17TH.
Days leading to my birthday I was incredibly busy. Besides trying to plan this party, I was working, volunteering and trying to put together my photo portfolio. The last item took the most time and stress. I decided to announcing my decision to pursue photography as my career at my birthday party. Yes, it's official. I've finally come out of the closet. It's scary but exhilarating at the same time. Of course having only recently decided to do this I didn't have much of a portfolio. So I was scrambling to print as many recent works as possible and find some good images from old films. Amazingly enough I did find a few. This also prove to me that photography was always there in my life. Signs were everywhere but I was definitely playing dumb.(You can ask Nam how stupid I've been about this.) Once I decided it was full steam ahead. I was meeting other photographers and learning how much I have to "catch-up." Turns out it's ten years to be exact.

November 17, 2005 - My Birthday
It started out great. My friend Dennis who lives in the building next to me slipped a birthday card under my door before I left for work. It put a smile on my face. At the office no one was in except the office cleaning guy Robert. Robert is very cool and sweet. He brings me plants for my desk. Turns out his birthday was the day before mine. Then like clockwork Jae calls me to wish me a happy birthday. He never fails to call on birthdays and holidays. Cool. So I settled into work waiting for the rest of the crew to show up. One by one they did. No one said anything. Turns out no one remembered. It was only later in the day did they realized that it was my birthday and wished me lame wishes. No cake. No present. No nothing. Totally sucks. I hate my work. This only proves how stupid I have been for staying as long as I have. I'm so done here.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my slideshow. I put it all together days before but failed to preview it until that day. Good thing cause some of the images did not translate well on the computer. So I had to rescan a few prints. Stress. Then my friend Ken emails me about the website. It was suppose to have launched on my birthday. I thought he was going to tell me to it was up but instead he was sending me concepts. I guess it wasn't going to happen. Disappointed but not a big deal. I was content with having the slideshow at the party. The whole point was to come out to my good friend first anyway. The slideshow does that. But like a good friend Ken promised to have something in time for the party. Cool.

The birthday day is looking sad. The day was gone and I felt pretty alone. My plans to go shopping, lounge at a cafe and get a facial, manicure and pedicure was lost. Well almost. I did schedule a facial for 6:30 which thankfully I couldn't cancel. So I went and it was good. I had a 75 min facial followed by a 30 min manicure. I was feeling better.

The evening proved to be a better part of the birthday. My wonderful friend Nam had invited me for drinks a few days before. I agreed. To my delight she invited Donna, Linda and Winnie. The drinks became dinner and drinks in the East Village. Bought my drinks and dinner and made me laugh all night. I was not alone. I was spending my birthday the best way I know, with good friends.


to be continued...