Seo recommended me to her photographer friend Veronica to help her shoot a wedding. When I got there, it turns out I knew the bride from UT and a few of her bridesmaids as well. Small world.

Anyway, the wedding was a great learning experience- I don't have anyone to really learn from and Veronica showed me the ropes on weddings and lighting (lighting is critical and I haven't had time to just sit down and learn it) and it helps to be thrown into the fray and just do your best.

The groom.

The weather was ideal for shooting outdoors that day- overcast and not too hot, considering it was May in Houston.

A group of guys surrounding you while you lay on the ground and then having them simultaneously jumping mere inches from your body is cause for concern.

The groom hand painted these.

And, as a bonus, you can see how ridiculously hard it is to get an entire wedding party to jump off the bleachers and then jump back on and repeat it continuously.

Jumping, always jumping.

Pepper straddling the couch.

Ok, that was completely unrelated to this post.

Anyway, Tu and Tramanh have been nice enough to invite me to their family events and so this past Sunday they asked if I wanted to go to Tramanh's little brother's grad party. Both their familes are pretty warm, friendly and entertaining, so off I was to Sugarland once again.

The dogs are always especially excited to go.

Uno looking more gross than usual.

Like father like son.

Giving his grad speech

Anyway, it was a nice party with plenty of good food. My family is quite a bit older than theirs, so it's nice to see the differences between what a more "americanized" first generation family is like and mine, despite both being enormous.

Take one fairly innocuous KFC Double Down: 2 chicken breasts sandwiched with cheese and bacon...

Add your typical run-of-the-mill McDonald's Big Mac...

... and you get the double down big mac. A bit tough/messy to eat because you can compress a burger, but you can't compress a chicken. The lettuce helps to keep you from getting sick of eating so much meat, and the big mac sauce serves to add a little bit of flavor and lubrication to this monstrosity. Overall verdict? Not bad- the chicken is not as dry as many had proclaimed it to be, though I probably could have taken out the meat patties as I didn't even really taste them.

No food photos here, it's just cool to say you ate at a Big Red Cock for dinner.

Next adventure: Petrol Station.

Of course, you have to get the Rancor.

Service that night was atrocious. For a table of 5 with maybe only ten other patrons at this bar, it took AN HOUR to get our food. The verdict? Terrible. A thick patty, but overly done and somewhat dry. The thing is difficult to eat and you end up with grease all over your fingers and face. F- Would not do business with again.

I had been hearing about the much discussed Frenchy's (well, mainly from Tu) for quite some time. I shot Ting's graduation at UH and decided to finally check it out.

It's not bad- a bit different than KFC/Popeye's as it doesn't have a thick batter, but tastes more like a home-fried chicken, so good, but in a different way. The new creole boudin I could have done without though.

Tina bought me a bacon bacon bacon cupcake from Chicago. She had no interest in eating it whatsoever. I don't know why.

On the top is bacon brittle- pretty much tiny bits of bacon encased similar to peanut brittle. It was a bit much for my taste, but the cupcake itself wasn't that bacony- it had some small pieces interspersed throughout, but thankfully the bacon taste was subtle and was more like a vanilla cupcake.

I dragged Yen to Ikea's Baby back ribs night on Wednesdays. I made a big baby fuss when they told me they were out because I had been looking forward to it all week, then they made some more for me. I was quite pleased.

The verdict? Nowhere near as good as bbq places like Pappa's or Rudy's, but at $7.99 for a full rack at Ikea with 2 sides, it was decent. The ribs had a slightly sweet sauce to it but the amount of meat on the ribs was ample.

Of course, it goes without saying we accompanied that with their meatballs. Mixed with lingonberry sauce, I never get tired of it.

Andy was joking that I never told them about my blog because I was writing about them the whole time. And he's right.

We were all thrown together through our old job and though we've all gone our separate ways, I still consider them practically family. You don't just see people every day for 2 or even 4+ years and not develop a bond of some sort. Through the years and countless beers, terrible jokes, non-work anecdotes, opinionated viewpoints and just caring for each other's well being in tough times, this is what I still consider my family at work. I've worked plenty of jobs in my life, but I doubt I'll ever find as good-natured, diverse, well-rounded and intelligent a group as these folks.

In the past 2 1/2 years since we'd split from our old job that brought us all together, we sadly meet only once a year or so now, but when we catch up, it's exactly as though we had just got off one of our mandatory work-til-8 PM crazy weeks and we blow off steam and relate our personal lives like nothing had ever changed.

Things that fill up my time: examining same photos printed from different companies for quality/color differences. Looking at various paper types and samples (fabric/canvas/metallic/lustres/etc) and products you can print photos from from different companies.

Just so you know, this is the difference between what I see on my monitor (with calibration equipment applied) and what everyone else sees as ultra-bright blown out photos. Obviously for the longest time, I could only edit according to what I saw on my main monitor, but now I try to pop the finished photos up on my netbook just to check and compensate accordingly.

left: netbook monitor- blue-ish/cold color cast, overblown highlights, lack of detail (what everyone sees). right: my calibrated monitor- all detail intact. I think I just need a new monitor.

4 1/3 years overdue. Sorry the audio is so terrible- this is from a 5 year old Canon S80, and I had to reconvert the video format before I could even edit it. Not so much a trip video, more the LilBro adding commentary than anything. Bonus: if you still remember spanish like I do, you can watch a salesman and some Spanish tv!

Nguyen Family Vacation: Barcelona New Year's 2006 from Andrew Nguyen on Vimeo.

So I had a dream where I honestly thought I won the lottery and then I realized that the numbers didn't quite match up and my excitement with winning was brought to an abrupt halt. Dreams aren't supposed to be like real life, are they? And aside from my once-every-few-months zombie apocalypse survival dream/nightmares (really, most people dream their teeth are falling out and here I am fighting/dying against zombies) I had the most vividly absurd dream yet.

Most of the time, when I come home for my weekly dinner with the parents, my dad will ask if I have met a girl yet. My mom stopped asking that question a while back. I will usually laugh it off and ask him if he has met a girl for me yet and that ends the conversation. The other night, I dreamt that he had "set me up" with someone and I was in a church and I had never met this girl but I was supposed to be married to her in a few minutes. The scenario was absurd (not in an arranged marriage sense, but in a I-found-you-a-girl-now-marry-her sense) and here I was automatically dressing myself for this unforeseen marriage.

But in my head, my thoughts raced more along the lines of "is this girl intelligent?" "can I hold an intelligent conversation with her?" "good lord, she's not materialistic, is she?" "is she funny?" "does she like to do things?" I guess even in my subconscious, these are the things that I look for. As time wore on, I decided, no, I don't think I will be marrying her since I have never met her and began taking off my suit. It struck me as odd because in dreams, a lot of the times (at least for me), anything goes and it makes sense, but this time I would not stand for it.

I woke up shortly after, which appears to be impeccable timing with most of my dreams- astoundingly vivid and ending in a somewhat timely fashion.

Sorry I haven't had time to post much (though I'm sure most of you are probably relieved to not get the flood of photos in your inbox), I've been working on various projects like the road trip video and now, finally, my cousin Tini & Ed's Beijing wedding video. I made it for the family, so it's long and drawn out like a director who loves the idea so much that he can't bear to part with scenes he was so involved in. It indeed runs long, at nearly half an hour, and it was a monstrous undertaking to export and finally upload.

Due to date of the wedding, the fact that it was across the ocean, and in the fall when kids were in school and no one could take off that much time, I was the only cousin (there are twenty-something of us) on Tini's side who could make it, and there was one other aunt who was able to attend. I was determined to try to capture as much of Beijing- and China- for my family back stateside in hopes that they might feel as though they were there as well.

In any case, if you have the time or are merely curious:

Tini & Ed's Beijing Wedding from Andrew Nguyen on Vimeo.

When nature calls, I pick up the phone (but only if it has T-mobile because I'm out of minutes again this month- then if it could just text me, that'd be great).

Grab a drink, sit down, turn up the speakers, and watch what it's like to drive halfway around the U.S. in a little over 16 minutes.

The Great American Road Trip: Now available on Blu-Ray and DVD. from Andrew Nguyen on Vimeo. (Click the link for a higher res version)

Well, that's it, there you have it- what it feels like to drive around the U.S. for three solid weeks. Thanks for sticking by for this tale, and see you next adventure!

(The book was better anyway)