See the rest in Painting with Light @ Space Needle photo set. Enjoy!

changing colors of U.S. politics

It’s election day. Here’s my prediction: a mandate for Obama. I’m being ballsy but still somewhat conservative with my guesstimate. Out of my remaining respect for McCain I didn’t give Arizona to Obama. But even that is still up in the air.

Once the election is over, we have a lot of work to do. As we head our way to the climax of this historic election, I’m deeply filled with gratitude to have been a part of this great experiment. This has been a gaint leap in American democracy.  It makes me proud to call myself a Filipino-American and then some.

UPDATE: 11/04/2008, 6:40PM PST – w00t! Obama wins Ohio! That’s it. Hello, President Obama! Hello, Vice President Biden!

UPDATE: 11/04/2008, 9:05PM PST – And here’s the historic acceptance speech (see transcript).

UPDATE: 11/05/2008, 7:57AM PST – It’s an awesome feeling to wake up in the morning knowing that the world loves our President. Here’s to President v44.

Just got back from the Gaia gathering here in the Seattle area (more
accurately, Kirkland WA where I live). There were five of us in the
group. As you can see in the photo we had a cozy and fun gathering
(even if we’re camera shy).

You might be wondering what those books in the photo were for. Here’s what happened.

Prior to the meetup I asked the attendees to bring one of their favorite books — a book that had changed their lives or had shifted their thinking. During the meet up each of us gave away our favorite book to other attendees. Here’s where the “magic” comes in. We did it by intuition.

We didn’t have pre-agreed upon instructions on how to do the book swapping. It all happened spontaneously. I just started out by presenting my favorite book (The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood, see my review here), talked about why the book was important to me, and then I gave the book to the person whom I felt could use the book.

For instance, I just had a feeling that Alana would benefit greatly from the book so I just followed my intuition and handed it to her. Don’t ask me to explain it. It just felt right. I think the feeling was the same with the other attendees. I’ll let them tell the story from their point of view. Hopefully, they blog about it

Another purpose of the book swapping is paying it forward and letting go of attachment. The book swap is not temporary; we gave our books away. It’s easy to give away something that has no value. It’s a lot more challenging to part with something that has a special meaning to us.

We concluded our meetup by watching a short inspirational film courtesy of Spiritual Cinema Circle. (Disclosure: I work for Gaia. Same as Gaia Community, Spiritual Cinema Circle is also part of the GAIAM
family. I’ve requested a bunch of sample DVDs from our head office and gave it away as thank you gifts to all who attended our small gathering.) All in all we had a fun and meaningful afternoon.

So that’s how our meet up went. It was cozy, insightful, and serendipitous.

Thanks to O.M. Bastet, Marianna, and Alana for attending the Gaia gathering. Special thanks to my wife (a.k.a. ~myDakini) for preparing a delicious Filipino meal. Our meet up wouldn’t have been as enjoyable without an abundance of food

If you’re planning to have a Gaia gathering in your community, I suggest that you give the intuitive book swapping a try. Or, maybe have a DVD house party with a meaningful movie and discuss how each of you relate with the theme of the film. That’s sure to bring up a lot of interesting conversations.

Looking forward to our next gathering.

P.S. Check out how other Gaia Community members had celebrated our 2008 Global Gaia Gathering. Keep watching this link to see who are blogging about it: http://www.gaia.com/blog/tags/ggg2008

I finally got my iPhone 3G today. I can’t believe that there was still a long line! We stood in line for a couple of hours just to buy one. Gah, I should’ve gotten one during launch. Thanks to AT&T I had to wait for another two weeks. Ah well, at least I’ve got one now.

I’m currently setting it up and playing with its features. Very neat. It’s like a laptop in my hands. My first phone call was an overseas call to my parents. Very crisp. The web is now literally in the palm of my hand. I have access to the web every waking moment. Whether that’s good or bad, only time will tell.

Thanks to my wife for this very special gift!

UPDATE: I love ringtones but I’m too cheap to buy them from Apple. So I created my own ringtones from my bluesy guitar riffs using Audiko. You can download my ringtones for free. Enjoy!

There are about 200 people here in line already at Bellevue Square mall waiting for their iPhone 3G. Good thing we got here early. There are lines at both the Apple store and AT&T but we’re sticking with Apple because of the geeky crowd and the free coffee

My wife promised to buy me an iPhone 3G for my birthday but now she wants to have a white iPhone 3G too. Ah, well.

UPDATE: AT&T, I wanna cut your nuts off!

Here are some photos I took during the 4th of July celebration. See slideshow.

Will go out tonight and take photos of fireworks by the lake. In the meantime, here’s a photo of Jimi playing the Star Spangled Banner on the big screen at Experience Music Project (EMP).

For those who haven’t heard or seen it yet, here’s Jimi remixing the national anthem from a different angle.

Happy 4th of July, everyone! Stay positive. Change is one its way.

Top Pot – a doughnut and coffee shop with lotsa books. Yep, those books are all real. The store is surrounded by high shelves of books. A lot of them are classics, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and some children’s books. Very classy. They smell old too. Nice. As a bonus, the doughnuts are fresh and taste awesome!

See more Top Pot photos on Flickr.