Snapshot Stories

Snapshot Stories – Open the first photo album you can find – real or virtual, your call – and stop at the first picture of yourself you see there. Tell us the story of that photo.

Tamago Sushi Shirt
Tamago Sushi Shirt

For this Daily Prompt I opened up my Flickr stream (which hasn’t seen a whole lot of activity these days, and found this photo I took of myself wearing a sushi shirt. The shirt was a gift from my oldest brother, who visited Japan recently with his son. It’s pretty cool, isn’t it? If you are not familiar with sushi, this one is called Tamago, which means Egg. It’s a good kids’ sushi actually, but my wife and I also enjoy it, usually towards the end of a sushi meal since it is sweet.

I don’t have a lot of photos of myself since I am usually behind the camera and I don’t particularly like selfies. So… when I do take photos of myself, my face is usually hidden!

You can learn more about Tamagoyaki at Wikipedia.

This post was prompted by The Daily Post from WordPress.

Climate Control

Climate Control – The idea that the weather and people’s moods are connected is quite old. Do you agree? If yes, how does the weather affect your mood?

Yes, I do believe weather affects people’s moods. For myself it is very simple: the sun cheers me up, and the lack of sun brings me down a bit. The perfect weather for me would be sunny, with some clouds to make the sky interesting, and the temperature hovering around 90°F. It’s probably a bit warm for most people, but I love it. On the flipside, I really dislike cold weather. Maybe a day is okay, but any more than that and I am missing summer!

This post was prompted by The Daily Post from WordPress.

What I Wanted to be When I Grew Up

Futures Past – As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? How close or far are you from that vision?

My earliest memory of what I wanted to be when I grew up isn’t really a memory, but something I wrote down in my “My Book About Me” that I (and my Mom) worked on when I was probably about seven years old. I wrote that I wanted to be a Football Player, but I had first written down Astronaut first before crossing that out.

As an older kid (when I was in High School), I started getting into art and design and decided I wanted to go into a field related to that. I remember meeting my guidance counselor and we decided that I should apply to colleges that had good art departments. Then in art school at the university I decided I wanted to work in a museum as a curator. I eventually got a degree in Studio Art (painting) and a minor in Art History, but I really am not into Fine Art. Funny huh? I did work at a museum for a while, as a “Preparator” doing stuff like moving paintings in and out of storage, dusting the sculptures, and getting the galleries ready for opening. I got exposed to that culture, but found out that it really wasn’t for me.

Fast-forward a bit (a lot!) through a few jobs which involved computers, and I was finding myself applying my design/art skills to multimedia presentations and learning and teaching Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Now I am a full-time designer, working with web and print. So I guess I have kept the path I wanted to keep since High School, and I am pretty happy about that.

This post was prompted by The Daily Post from WordPress.

First Sight (Love at)

Print Club circa 1996
Print Club circa 1996

First Sight – Whether a person, a pet, an object, or a place, write about something or someone you connected with from the very first second.

This is an easy one! The person I connected with from the very first second is my wife, Mariko. We met in 1996 in Japan and within 2 months we were married and on our honeymoon. It really was love at first sight! After 17 years we are still going strong and I am looking forward to our future. There’s a lot more to the story, but I will save that for another time.

This post was prompted by The Daily Post from WordPress.

Diverse Family

Modern Families – If one of your late ancestors were to come back from the dead and join you for dinner, what things about your family would this person find the most shocking?

For me, this is a difficult question to answer. I imagined us sitting around the dinner table, and my first thought would be that he/she would be surprised that our family is mixed from several different races and nationalities. But then it got me thinking that no, there’s probably a good chance that one of my ancestors would not think that is shocking. One thing about my family is that so many of us have moved around the world and/or married outside our races/nationalities. We really are a diverse family (and I think it’s wonderful)! I have to believe that this is in our blood. I know (from Facebook) that a lot of my high school friends still live in our hometown and are quite content there. But of my immediate family, none of us live in the same town we grew up in. My father was born and raised in Hawai’i, and my mom was born and raised in Jamaica. They raised my brothers and I in Torrance, California but only my parents still live there.

My grandparents also are travelers. They ended up living in countries that are different from where they were born. How far back this goes, I don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes back many generations. But perhaps this is common? I’m not sure, but I do know that for myself I can’t imagine not wanting to live in different places during my life. In fact, I am looking forward to moving again when the kids are on their own!

This post was prompted by The Daily Post from WordPress.