Lunch at Hongdae

Last friday, I met up with Ken for an overdue catch up session in Hongdae (홍대). This was my first time back in this neighborhood again and it certainly felt good to back in a familiar place. If you visit Hongdae frequent enough, you'll eventually noticed that there are certain spots that are very popular for meeting point. Exit 8 and 9 are those spots for Hongdae subway station. Whether you come in the morning or in the afternoon, there will always be people standing or sitting around those exits, looking at their cell phones waiting for the people who they're gonna meet to come up from the steps.

So, following the popular choice, Ken and I decided to meet up at exit 8. It's just easier that way to find each other. We haven't seen each other for almost half a year and it was nice to feel that almost nothing has changed since our last meet when he showed up and greeted me like we just hung out yesterday. We made our way to the lunch place, Gaemi (개미), around Sangsu (상수) area and the food there was delicious and cheap. We had the Steak Rice Bowl (스테이크 덮밥), the Cube Steak Rice Bowl (큐브스테이크 덮밥), and the Salmon Rice Bowl (연어 덮밥) to share. And each menu was under ₩10,000. A pretty good place for a solid lunch I would say. We walked around the area for a bit to shoot some stuff before moving on to the next place. It was a successful lunch outing overall. 

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Hog Island Oyster Co.

I've been to San Francisco Ferry Building so many times but this was my first time trying out Hog Island Oyster Co. with my mom during one of our lunch outings. The place seems to be always packed every time I passed by. This time was no difference. We had to wait for 30 min or so for our table. Not too bad I guess since we came right during the lunch hour rush. We were seated right in front of the guys who are shucking the oysters. It was really interesting to see them opening one after the other. Their food was overall great. I'm no foodie so I can't really describe each of the items we ordered in great details, but they all tasted fresh and delicious, each with different distinct flavors. My favorite was their clam chowder. The clam chowder has a nice tasty broth and they are pretty generous with the amounts of clams and other ingredients in the soup. It was a really fulfilling and satisfying bowl of chowder. Can't go wrong with ordering their clam chowder at this place.

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Kanekin Community Photowalk

This past weekend, I had the chance to join the first photowalk hosted by Kanekin for their Kanekin Community members. The venue of choice was Kota Tua, also known as Old Batavia, a neighborhood where old historic buildings of Jakarta are located at. It's a pretty popular tourist (and photo) spot for tourists as well as the locals. We arrived at the place around 9 AM on a Saturday morning and the square was already packed with people. Families with children, students who are on some kind of group trips, couples who are on their dating outings, and of course all the people who are selling their goods and performing arts were spread all across the complex. We managed to walked around the area, visited the Bank Indonesia Museum and found couple of cool spots for shooting. 

Colorful grungy walls with interesting textures was probably the one thing that attracted my attention the most from this area. I ended up taking mostly portraits on this trip, recruiting help from my friends and some of the new people I met from the meet. So sharing with you some of my favorite shots from the day, here they are.

And if you happen to live in Jakarta, interested in the art & design community and want to join the next photowalk, you can join the Kanekin Community by signing up on their website. Who knows, maybe we can bump into each other on their next meet up! :)

Hope everybody had a great weekend! 

Special thanks to everybody who made these shots happened:
(in order of appearance) @gilbertrhezap @joshuasudihman @ellenwinarta @lydiaoey @luckyaldry @jochristian @cindy.octaviany

p.s: click on vertical images to see full-size/larger version.

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Royal Guard Changing Ceremony

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this ceremony was "the royal guards sure have a really cool uniform". My eyes were feasting on the colors of fabrics that the guards were wearing. I mean, how can you not, really? Plus they have really cool hats, flags, weapons, and musical instruments too. There are two royal guard changing ceremonies that you see in Seoul, one in Gyeongbokgung Palace (경복궁), and the other one at Deoksugung Palace (덕수궁), which is the one I went to. The ceremony itself took about 20 minutes or so, consisting of the guards marching out of the gate bearing flags and playing traditional musical instruments, the exchange of guards, and the final march accompanied by the traditional musical instruments once again. I would probably recommend checking this ceremony out at least once because it's pretty interesting. Since it's a scheduled ceremony, you can check out the time to see it here before coming to Deoksugung Palace.

Fun fact: I had to get pretty close to the guards to get the low-angle shot and when the head guard saw me squatting in front of him, he stared directly at my camera for a good minute without blinking. He's so cool for being a good sport about it. 

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Welcoming Fall

When the summer heat has finally left the city and you constantly hearing the crisp sounds of those stepped on fall leaves on the pavements, you'll realize that fall is finally here (that and the time it takes you to get out of the house became longer cos you have to put on layers now :P). Seeing the leaves changing colors in Seoul is one of my favorite moments that I think I'll be always looking forward to. I've been to Olympic park (올림픽공원) in spring before and I can definitely say that coming to this place in Fall is like visiting a whole different place. The moment I arrived on this street, I was amazed by the colors of the lined ginko trees (은행 나무) that are neatly standing on both sides of the sidewalk. Maybe it's the change of scenery, or maybe I've just never lived in a city where I can enjoy as much fall foliage, but this view was quite something to me. All I wanna do was just threw a blanket, have a picnic with some friends right in the middle of this side walk, and enjoy this view. Maybe for my next visit ;)

p.s: things have been pretty crazy this past few weeks (and still are), so I'll try my best to post new posts. bear with me :)