Photos of Old

Ken and I had our pictures taken by the lovely wMac Photography way back in September of last year. It is now the first of April, and I'm just now getting around to choosing prints. This is proving to be a far more difficult task than I imagined it would be. We love a lot of these photos for different reasons, so which ones should we choose to hang on our wall? I don't know, and it's starting to stress me out a teensy bit.

 Here are a few of the favorites I've narrowed it down to so far (nearly seven months after the fact): 

 

 

Knowing Ken and myself, we'll probably get overwhelmed by this decision (as small and insignificant as it may seem) and it could very well be another seven months before these things finally make it to print. (Family, friends, and anyone: Feel free to email any photo-choosing suggestions to me.... We need help! More can be viewed on wMac's website here.)

Randoms: Brought To You By...

Instagram!
(They didn't ask me to do this.)

I'm not lying when I say the only reason I wanted an iPhone in the first place was so I could have access to the Instagram app. I also realize that's a horrible reason to buy a brand new phone, which is why I didn't buy one for quite a while.  But when my cheap ol' flip-phone finally died and sweet ol' Ken gave me an iPhone for Christmas, the first thing I did with it as soon as I removed it from its packaging was download Instagram.

I love Instagram. And I use it a lot. So much, in fact, that I've started deleting a lot of my Instagram photos as soon as I take them, that way they automatically save to my phone and I'm not constantly bombarding my "Instagram friends" (all five of them!) with pictures of restaurants and (mostly) of Bubba. Not that it stops me from bombarding my blog with them.... 

Here are a few recents:

The above photos are the only ones I have to show from our friends, Jared and Alisha's wedding back in February. (My battery died twenty minutes into the reception -- what luck!)

See the above righthand photo? This is a classic example of how Bubba orders me to refill his Kong. (He's such an alpha.)

Bubba's new squeaky frog is also his new bestie. He plucked it out of a toy-filled bin in the pet store when we were there to buy dog food last week and he looked so crestfallen when I took it away from him that I caved and bought it. He carried it the whole way home and they've been inseparable ever since!

(More pictures of Bubba being Bubba.) 

For some reason I've taken dozens of food-related pictures since getting my iPhone. (It would seem that I get as excited about eating as Ken gets about having his picture taken right before he eats.) 

And that's all the randomness I have for now. More Instagram posts will surely follow in the future, as I've taken enough pictures to fill a book. (I should be their spokesperson!) 

Couple Photos!

Ken and I travelled up to Huntsville last weekend to have our pictures professionally taken for the first time in our little marriage. We had the privilege of working with this lovely and talented photographer. 

Today she posted the preview of our pictures here. 

{It may go without saying that we are very excited about these.} 

2011

Happy New Year!

We've just wrapped up a lovely, long holiday week of visiting both sides of our fam: Ken's side on Christmas and Boxing Day and my side for the remainder of the week, with a couple of travel days squeezed in there. It was a really great time but it was also pretty busy and we were eager to get back home yesterday to chill out for a bit before heading back to work next week (if cool kids are still allowed to say "chill out"). When we got home last night we realized it was New Year's Eve and we felt like we should do something to mark the occasion, but we were feeling pretty pooped and the idea of attending a party seemed out of the question after seven hours of being cooped up in a car. We nearly jumped at the opportunity when our friends, Jared and Alisha, invited us over to their house for a quiet-ish night of board games and Wheel of Fortune on Nintendo Wii. It was purrrrrfect.

And it presented the perfect opportunity for me to bring my early birthday present out for its first event! Which leads me to my New Year's resolution(s):

1. Take more pictures

...the only resolution worth mentioning for now because (a) I'm using it as an excuse to brag shamelessly and (b) I got a Pentax K-x camera for my birthday! <--Bragging.

So we're obviously not used to using it yet (and we're clearly putting it's shake-resistance to the test), but I'm sure having fun playing around with this new Stormtrooper camera of mine.

 

(The camera was shipped to my parents' house, so I found some willing/not-so-willing models to practice on while we were there.)

Anyhoo, all that to say, we had a nice little New Year's (and a fantastic Christmas) and I'm optimistically looking forward to the year ahead. Now I need to add a few more resolutions to my list-of-one before the day is over (I've got approximately five minutes). Happy New Year to you all! I hope to see more of your lovely faces in 2011. 

Merry Christmas!

Every Christmas we spent in (or around) Korea, we took cheesy Christmas pictures of ourselves to send home to our families. Last night we decided to do a 2010 Christmas photo-shoot for the sake of tradition (even though our families will be seeing our lovely faces in the flesh this year). 

It didn't go well. 

Things were a little out of focus...

A little too dark...

A little off-kilter...

Or a little awkward...

We gave up before throwing our darn camera out the window...

(The tradition has died in Korea.) 

Regardless, merry merry Christmas from the McMundays!

Forgotten Pictures

Ken and I were going to go here today for a much-needed break from city life but, sadly, we woke up to pouring rain this morning. And, yes, it's still raining cats and dogs at 2:30 in the afternoon, with no signs of stopping. (The little picture to the left is Toronto's weather as predicted by Google... for the whole day. *sigh*)

As a result of the crappy weather, I've been forced to kill time inside all day; first making a heart-stopping breakfast of eggs and greasy bacon (so much for becoming vegetarian), then putting the finishing touches on my useless resume (it won't be useful until I can legally work in July), then cleaning already-clean parts of the apartment, and, finally, sorting through picture albums on my computer and organizing them simply for organization's sake.

Which leads me to this post, of course. I found some pictures I had neglected to post online before, so I've decided to rectify that sad little fact. (I'm bored and have little responsibility at the moment, so why the heck not?)

Here it goes!

1) Our Korean boss's daughter's wedding. 

Yu-Jin's wedding occurred only a week or two before Ken and I bid Korea adieu at the beginning of March, so these pictures got lost in the mayhem of moving from one side of the planet to the other.

(Her dress was by none other than Vera Wang.) 

The overall wedding was rumored to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this was the precise reason cited when we asked our boss why she hadn't paid us on time before our contracts were finished. (We were eventually paid in full, but not before putting up a huge, stinking fuss.)

The above picture (taken at the extravagant wedding reception) may have been posted during Facebook-days-gone-by, but I think it's cute enough to post again for posterity.

2) Our Centum Star apartment. 

Our apartment in Busan may go down in history as my favorite. Of course, it didn't occur to either of us to take many pictures of it before we left, so I only have a few grainy shots I snapped a few moments before our couch and table were hauled away by their new owners. 

Ugh, my heart hurts a little bit every time I think of that amazing window. I miss waking up to its view of Jangsan Mountain every morning. As it stands, we're waking up every morning to a view of everyone in the condo across from us waking up. (Money sure buys you a lot more in Korea.)

3) A weird wedding present. 

Our sweet school principle in Ulsan made a little wedding present for Ken and me shortly after we were married:

Cute idea, but they wouldn't fit in either of our suitcases before we left, so they ended up in the recycling bin. *Guilty cringe*

4) My Valentine's Day present.

(My sweet tooth was over the moon.)

5) The picture from Hawaii that didn't make the Flickr cut...

...for perhaps obvious reasons. But I'm posting it because you can't help but smile a little bit when you look at it, right?

And that's all for now, folks. I'm off to go read the most boring book I've read in awhile:

I'm determined to finish it, if for no other reason than principle. (It was a winner of the Nobel Prize, so I figure it has to get interesting at some point, right?)

More Pics on Flickr!

I've slowly started moving all of my old Facebook photo albums over to Flickr.com.

I finished the Malaysia set a couple of weeks ago, but I just uploaded pictures from Indonesia today. In case anyone is interested....

Click here for Malaysia:

Click here for Indonesia: 

Hawaii

I've just finished uploading our photos from Hawaii onto Flickr. You can view them here.

A synopsis of our Hawaiian adventure: 

We spent two lovely weeks on the island of Kauai. (This much-needed vacation came right after a couple incredibly stressful months of working and packing up our lives in Korea, and right before our much-anticipated return to North America.)

The weather on Kauai was iffy, at best, but we enjoyed our lazy days there and would go back again in a heartbeat. 

We spent most of our time taking road trips around the amazingly beautiful island (no exaggeration), hiking in between rain showers, watching the biggest ocean waves we've ever seen (while remaining safely perched on the beach), rafting and getting pukey in said ocean waves, watching whales swim lazily near the pier by the airport, building our muscles by kayaking in fiercely strong rivers (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration), and, finally, getting re-accustomed to the taste of good ol', fast American food. 

Mostly, we were lazy and slept off a lot of jet-lag while on Kauai. Call it a waste, but it was our vacation, after all. 

Shanghai

We are back from Shanghai, after 19 hours spent in crappy Chinese airports and traveling by plane and by car in what should have been a 2-hour journey. It should be noted that cheap tickets are not always the way to go when traveling, especially when the amount of money you're saving falls under the hundred-dollar mark due to the extra time spent traveling. And, yes, I'm still tired and grumpy from yesterday's ridiculousness. Why am I updating my blog in such a mood? Because I made a New Year's resolution to blog more, just for the sake of blogging more. So, here I go....

Shanghai is a lovely city with lots of people, lots of culture, lots of great architecture, lots of great shopping, and lots of amazing food. I think it's fair to say that if one were to set foot in only Shanghai, they would never believe China is a Communist country. (Of course, China's ban on Facebook was a bit of a reminder of where I was all week.) After this trip in particular, I've resolved to learn more about Communism, as Shanghai seems to be bustling with Capitalism these days (seemingly even more so than when I was there a few years ago) and I've failed to see how the two can go hand-in-hand. Anyway, I've strayed off topic a bit. Let's talk about the highlights of Shanghai, shall we?

The food:

We found some little hole-in-the-wall places in Shanghai that were dingy and gross-looking but that had some of the best Chinese food I've ever eaten. The best part? Each meal came out to around $2 for each person! Exhibits A and B:

The places that weren't considered all that cheap still came out to less than $8 a person and therefore couldn't be passed up. We found a Vietnamese/Chinese fusion restaurant that fell into this category and the food was am.a.zing. Here's a picture of Ken eating his share of that particular meal:

Note: My part of the meal is the little dish in the lefthand corner. I would say Ken's eyes are bigger than his stomach, but dude ate his entire share (and, yes, he almost threw up when he was finished).

The street food in Shanghai was also really good. The steamed dumplings and the fried flat bread in particular were so good and they were only a few cents for each! Unfortunately, they didn't make it onto the camera before they made it into our stomachs.

The hidden nooks and crannies:

One area I fell in love with in Shanghai was a little area called Taikang Road in the French Concession. The road itself looked pretty dull, but when we turned down a little alleyway, a hidden little town was unlocked! It was an old-school Chinese area that has become tourist-friendly with its art galleries and cafes without losing its authenticity (for the time being, anyway). Ken and I wandered around the maze-like area for hours, finding new little alleys and shops that seemed to get cuter the further in we went.

The shopping:

I didn't actually do a lot of shopping while in Shanghai, but it's a great place to at least window shop. (I could only afford to look!) I think the name of their main shopping district is Nanjing Road and it is exceptionally pricey and exceptionally busy. Ken said he read somewhere that Nanjing Road is one of the busiest shopping districts in the world and I definitely believe it. We were there on a Monday afternoon (a non-busy time), and this is what we saw:

Our friends went down there again on Friday night and this is what they saw:

(Picture stolen without permission from Kevin Smith's Facebook.)

Yikes! Anyway, there are lots of not-so-expensive markets around Shanghai that were entertaining to go through, and the shops in the afore-mentioned Taikang Road area had so many fun little gadgets. (Some of my family members scored in belated Christmas presents from around there, but I'm giving no hints!)

The city skyline:

The Bund area was under construction for the upcoming World Expo all week, so our view of the city skyline was a bit skewed. We did find a bridge that offered some good picture-taking opportunities, though:

(Our couple-shot was ugly, so you get to see the individual photos.)

The smog was unbelievably thick all week and even our extensive photo-doctoring couldn't get rid of it. Regardless, the Shanghai skyline (or this part of it, anyway) is pretty impressive.

There are a few more pictures and a few more stories from our Shanghai excursion, but I have to unpack now and do a bazillion loads of laundry before tomorrow. I'll conclude this little post of mine by saying that, all in all, our trip was a good one. Maybe I'll post a few more pictures later. Maybe not.

Happy New Year!