After 5 whole days apart, HuaHua was happy to be back home being her wild puppy self, and being with her favorite LouLou. Lots of chasing and ‘boxing’ matches between the two of them. At the end of the day they cuddled happily together. Thank you LouLou, for being so kind to HuaHua

Lisa, the wildest flower child in the history of western civilization demonstrating her pasta making technique:

Hurting from laughter, I am flat on the floor…

p.s. she wears it better than me — the faux fur apron from Celine…

Have been making tofu at home since, haven’t mastered the texture just quite yet, but don’t make me show you all the tools and different kinds of tofu coagulators I have… Sometimes I think my quest for the ultimate truth in everything is quite insane but I can’t tell you what fun it is in the process

The additional bonus is the puppy shop across the street, where I often linger and fantasize about going home with a pug. A few weeks ago, my attention was taken away from a pug puppy by a couple beautiful looking tiny creatures, they were Long Hair Chihuahuas, I was told. Found myself reading about them on internet for the days to come, can’t quite get over them.

Went into the shop again this afternoon before my lunch, this time the shopkeeper VERY wisely let out a new puppy for me to hold in the tiny secluded area for a very long while… I left the place mesmerized… no, I can’t have a dog, the second I start performing again, I will not be able to take care of a dog… I repeated saying that to myself…

Googgling everything about the breed on my iPhone the whole time I was having my usual at Kyotofu… Left the restaurant, involuntarily walked back to the shop, home with this gorgeous Long Hair Chihuahua wrapped in my sweater in this craziest windy cold day.

There, I officially ended my unofficial affair with the pugs…

I name her HuaHua — she is a Chi-HuaHua, and she is a DOLL (what huahua happens to mean in Chinese )

HuaHua, Long Hair Chihuahua, born 12/20/2007, weighing 1.5 pound, endearingly fit in my small palm. She is calm, happy, and secure. She looks like a tiny alien chasing my 14 pounds big blue boys around

Planted Monday February 18th, 5 p.m. in my homemade aeroponic system

February 28, 2008 (11 days)

picture: Left to Right, and Top Down

Purple String Bean
Cucumber
Patty Pan Zucchini
Yellow Baby Bellpepper
White Tomato
Chili Pepper

March 5, 2008 Update (17 days)

To give you a sense of the reality, Purple String Bean stalk is actually 10 inches tall!

very healthy plants and roots, roots picture taken while the fogger is going wild

March 6, 2008 Update (18 days)

A few major details:

1. The Metal Halide Light has to be hang at least 10 inches from the plants (otherwise, the plants get burned, I actually learn it the hard way…)

2. I give the plants 8 hours light a day so far, they seem to do fine with it.

3. I hook the fogger and air pump to the same timer, that goes on for 15 minutes, rest 15 minutes while the strong Metal Halide Light is on. And goes on only every 3 hours for 15 minutes, when the plants are sleeping. (and they do go to sleep! The leaves go downward, and close up, it is quite a sight!)

This so far works, I am not sure if this is how it is supposed to be, but through lots of observation and experiment in the past 18 days, this somehow makes the plants look very happy

March 9, 2008 Update (21 days, exactly 3 weeks)

The Purple String Bean is 15 inches tall now, it grew 5 inches in the past 4 days!

I have created a monster of a garden

March 15, 2008 Update (27 days)

Was going to wait until full 4 weeks to post pictures, but can’t wait any longer… there are flower buds everywhere right after I post last update! BTW, the Purple String Bean stalk is now 28 inches tall.

Purple String Bean flower bud

Patty Pan Zucchini flower buds

Cucumber flower bud

March 21, 2008 Update (33 days)

Female Flower (with an ovary!) of the Patty Pan Zucchini plant, first showed up about 5 days ago, now is finally large enough to be photographed.

Female flower??? I was very surprised when I found out that zucchini, along with cucumber, melon, pumpkin, luffas and squash…, are "monoecious." These plants have unisexual flowers where the male and female flowers occur separately on the same plant. Now that my "shaking the plant vigorously" technique will not work any longer, I was seriously thinking about bringing in a bee hive… nope, not that insane yet…

A funny article on how to pollinate zucchini flowers could be found on http://www.pumpkinnook.com/howto/pollen.htm

After reading Jason’s Guide to Indoor Organic and Hydroponics Gardening, I searched every store around my area, couldn’t find the most beneficial 35% hydrogen peroxide anywhere. A few sites carry them but the price is quite high or you have to pick up in store somewhere in CA… Finally found the one and only seller on eBay, selling the food grade 35% hydrogen peroxide, she is a fantastic seller also. If you like what you read on Jason’s Guide, look her up

My garden is truly a jungle now…

After researching for a more advanced aeroponic (vegetation grows in 100% humidity air) system, was quite put off by all the high price tags, I decided to construct one from scratch. This is what I came up with:

*Growing Chamber (a black file tote from Staples for 13.99)

*FLOATING FOGGER (19.99 on eBay)
provides the humidity in the growing chamber

*AIRSTONE, AIR PUMP, & AIRLINE TUBING (2.99 + 9.99 + 1.99 from 3rd party seller on Amazon)
provides more oxygen to the roots for faster growth

*DIGITAL POWER CENTER WITH TIMER (24.99 from 3rd party seller on Amazon)

*HYDROTON & 3″ GROW BASKETS (9.95 on eBay)

HYDROTON®Growing MediaHydroton is the “expanded clay,” a lightweight gravel which is manufactured specifically for hydroponic cultivation. This media is the first choice for many commercial Dutch growers specializing in flower and vegetable cultivation. Not to be confused with many other kinds of expanded clay which look similar but which are often toxic, Hydroton is pH stabilized and releases practically no minerals into the nutrient stream; in other words Hydroton is almost completely inert - except for offering excellent moisture and oxygen capacity to stimulate healthy root development.

*GROW LIGHT

I got a high output 400w grow light system that uses both METAL HALIDE (blue light for seeding and cutting) and HIGH PRESSURE SODIUM (orange light for flowering and fruiting) light bulbs. There are lots of much cheaper lighting systems out there, Aerogarden uses only 32w fluorescent light bulbs, and things grow just fine. But I really want my vegetables to grow faster, I decided to invest on a good light.

update: These Metal Halide lights are really much better than the fluorescent lights, the plants don’t strech their neck toward the light like they do in Aerogarden — in Aerogarden, even when the lights are set very very close to the plants, they still move toward the light bulb itself, quite an unhappy sight…

These are all the parts you need!

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NOW, COMES TO CONSTRUCTING THE AEROPONIC SYSTEM:

1. draw six, 2.8 inch circles on the cover of the file tote, cut them out with a box cutter (the only hard part… needs some elbow grease )

2. cut a little gap on the side of the file tote to allow airline and wire of the fogger to go through.

3. fill the grow chamber with 3 gallon of filtered water.

4. close the the chamber with lid, fit the baskets in the circles, fill in the hydroton with seed filled foam in the center. Plug everything, and grow away

I use General Hydroponic Maxi Series and FloraMato (Dry Concentrated Nutrient) for plant food.

My seeds from Burpee will arrive tomorrow, will keep you updated on the growth of my vegetables

Notice at the end of Andrew’s performance of the Chopin’ Aeolian Harp Etude, BooBoo jumped on the piano? It is because BooBoo knows the piece by heart since I was working on it day and night along with Godowsky’s transcription of it back in 2004

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timing: 22 minutes 39 seconds

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For my students:
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Pictures I took at the Blue Note, he sounded Schumann-esque that day…

Started digging into all Almodóva’s films back in 1999 when I saw “All About My Mother”. Intrigued, and went on with “Dark Habits”, “The Flower of My Secret”, “Live Flesh”, “Talk to Her”, “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” (still waiting for a few more of his older film to be released on DVD). For a while I felt he was a bit tided up with his very unique but aiming for shock effect formula. Volver, turned out to be much more refreshing, and I think it is far more successful than his last film “Bad Education”.

I have been obsessed with film since I saw “The Genealogies of a Crime” by Raoul Ruiz at MOMA years ago before the new construction of the museum. Ever since I’ve watched and studied many actors, film makers, to a total of almost 700 foreign/art films in the past 3 years (thanks to Netflix!) Can’t believe I never blog about it, there is just too much going on everyday…

I have tried making little documentaries since the pro-sumer high def camcorders were made possible, I think this one is so far the much better one. Endless editing with 2 camera work (having only 1 wireless mic, I had to do so much audio editing since the level of the two audio sources were so different… and did I mention the lighting at Juilliard where this was filmed was horrendeous… just to fixed the image and get the color right took f-o-r-e-v-e-r… btw, ordered a million stage lighting fixtures as an end result…) As an amateur film maker, I am quite proud of it. Take a look here:

David Dubal Interviews Wim Statius Muller

It is available for download on David’s Podcast too!