Month: August 2013

“Natural Selection” Trailer

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UPDATE (18 August 2013): I forgot to mention, this short film will be screening in Portland early this October at Zompire: The Undead Film Festival. In fact, it was the first film mentioned among those that got “early selection” for the festival, and I couldn’t be prouder of Mrs. Jiwaku, who directed the film. Original Post: The Korean title is “Natural Selection” (well, the Korean equivalent: <자연선택설>) but the English title isn’t, though Mrs. Jiwaku and I both call the film by that working title. (The English title is “Environmental Pressures & Species Adaptation” which, okay, whatever…) Anyway, we finally …

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Easy Recipes to Blow Your Mind, #1: Omija Bacon

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A post in response to the request of a friend. Omija is an interesting berry: its Latin nomenclature is Schisandra chinensis, the latter portion of the name being a hint that it is native to Asia–particularly Northeast Asia. Back in Korea, I first experienced the stuff as tea, but got curious about what it would do to a beer. The one experiment I managed before leaving, I didn’t add enough berries, so it was nice, but a very restrained effect. But I had some berries left over, and decided on a very different experiment: adding them to so bacon cure. …

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Coursera Jazz Improv Class, Week 2 Homework

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It’s probably silly of me to start with a caveat, but: this weeks’ homework could have been easy if I’d let it be. It’s basically playing six scales or modes, then improvising freely on them. This is the kind of thing I do for warm-ups every day, no particularly challenging in itself, even if some of the scales and modes are ones I haven’t practiced in a decade or two. But I believe that creative people grow by pushing their boundaries, so I decided that if I was going to do the assignment, I’d do it in a way that …

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Music From a Vietnamese Funeral

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Back in June, a funeral was held in our alley here in Saigon. At least, we think  it was a funeral. It involved tables and chairs out in the alley, and a band that was playing music from early in the morning until very late at night. I recorded some of the music, because it was pretty interesting. I most enjoyed the guitar solos, and the semi-atonal lines played by the double-reed player. (I’m not sure of the name of that oboe-like instrument, but I call it “shawm”–the old European name for it–in the track titles.) I posted this to my own …

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Culinary Madness…

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I’m too busy for a proper post, but I thought I’d update on last time with more pictures of all the nice stuff we’ve been cooking up here in Saigon. The nice thing about having a fair amount of time, and about food being relatively inexpensive, is that you can experiment with cooking. Mrs. Jiwaku’s been mostly baking, while I’ve mostly been making new foods… well, new to me, I mean. The range is pretty wide. Here’s a look at (almost) everything we’ve done so far: It’s not a complete log — I’ve made a lot of pasta, especially with …

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