Astron's Notebook

Hello, Friends!

As the Airport Express approached Kowloon Station, I cast my boyfriend, Chris, a nervous look. We had just arrived back from Beijing and I was to jump right into the Mr. Gay Hong Kong pictorials at the W Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. I had butterflies in my stomach - a mixture of excitement and nervous anticipation.

Would the candidates get along? Would we have more dropouts? Will pictorials go smoothly?

Noel wasn't picking his phone up, which made me even more nervous. He must just be busy, I thought, deciding to ring Joe, instead. Joe Lam, publisher of Dim Sum Magazine, is Mr. Gay Hong Kong's resident stylist.

"Hi, Joe. It's James," I greet him.

"James Gabbana!" Joe greeted me back boisterously, referring to the butchered pronunciation of my family name at the recent Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival fundraiser.

I sigh with relief and laugh at the inside joke. Joe sounded like he was in good spirits, so the pictorials must be going well.

"I'm almost at the W Hotel," I say.

"OK, I'll send someone to come down and pick you up," he promised.

After about three minutes of waiting in the lobby, my attention is caught by the pinging of the lift. I turn around and see Noel coming out of the lift with a big smile. I am instantly reassured.

"We're almost done," he beams, "ahead of schedule. We're finished with the pool shots and the bedroom photos. We've only got the head shots left to do, and then we're done."

We share a hug, after which he quickly gives me a briefing on the elevator ride up to the suite where pictorials were being held.

"One boy has quit," Noel says matter-of-factly.

"What?!" I exclaim.

"He had issues with the pictorial. We had a good conversation about it. He doesn't feel as though he's ready for it."

"Wow..." I exhale. "We've got nothing to say to that...."

As the doors open to the suite, I am greeted by a beautiful sight. The suite was huge, and I see that W's staff had graciously prepared a snack trolley for the team - replete with water, orange juice, coffee and some fresh cut fruits. Later, more coffee and cookies would be sent up to us.

"Hi guys!" I greet everyone. All the candidates looked very good. Robin Lomas, Senior Stylist at Paul Gerrard Hair+Beauty, was trimming 's Rick's hair. Van Tengga, our young photographer, was taking Jason's head shot. Gilbert was sprawled on a beanie, reading a magazine. Billy was by the window, also reading. Joe and a friend were playing a game of checkers. In the adjacent room, Lata Pamnani, our make-up expert, was finishing up on Ziggy, who held up two shirts. "Black or white?"

"Black," I reply without much hesitation. "I like the sequins on the shirt. Nice texture."

Noel immediately drew my attention to the sheaf of papers he was holding up. "Jamesy, have a look at my designs for the Grand Finale."

While we went over Noel's drafts, I my eyes are drawn towards the handsome young man playing checkers with Joe. "That's him," Noel nodded quietly towards the boy's direction. Noel showed me some of the boy's photos from the poolside pictorial earlier in the day (the boys wore sexy swimming trunks from Private Structure), and they were, indeed, stunning.

"What a waste that he has quit," I thought to myself. Still, joining Mr. Gay Hong Kong takes extraordinary commitment - a decision that must be well-formed within each individual candidate. "Maybe next year, or the year after," I shrug with a smile towards Noel. We're not giving up on that boy.

"Staff photos," Van yelled.

I groaned, checking my appearance in the mirror. I had "airplane travel" written all over me - a frumpy sweatshirt, unstyled hair, face unshaven, and dry skin from a premature winter in Beijing. Nonetheless, I jumped in front of Van's camera. Meanwhile, Noel asked Lata to dust some make-up on his face. "Not fair," I yell. Still, Van clicked away. He got my shot within five frames.

The final shot Van had to take was the candidates' group photo. Decked in stylish Spy Henry Lau shirts and black H&M trousers, the boys looked like real gentlemen - stars. I was beaming with pride. After Van got his shot, Joe announced: "That's a wrap!"

Noel gathered the candidates and the production team around for a meeting. His first order of business was explaining one candidates' departure, which Noel did very frankly. "You're all here out of your own will and we're very happy to welcome yo to the fold. However, now that we have begun this journey, perhaps you realize how serious it is. Next week will be our Press Party. A lot of attention will be focused on you guys."

"Which makes your commitment to join this pageant even more remarkable," I rejoin. "There's a lot of time involved in the preparations, and we'll need an extraordinary amount of patience from you."

"The shoot went very well today," Joe shared. "No drama."

"Which is a big kudos to you, guys. You did a terrific job," Robin stressed.

On that note, we ended the day. We tidied up the suite and said our Thank You to Ms. Ellen So, W's superb Duty Manager. Noel, Joe, Van and myself piled into a cab back to Central, carrying shopping bags overflowing with clothes from the day's shoot. More light and laughter ensue inside the taxi until we all get dropped off on Queen's Road.

Two days later, I receive an e-mail from CNN requesting for the candidates' photos for a special Mr. Gay Hong Kong article on CNNGo.com.

This flight has departed. There's no turning back.



With Affection,
Astron

Take a picture, it will last longer
Originally uploaded by wring

Bitch was staring at me. Should i kick her chola ass, y/n?

Dreads
Originally uploaded by wring

Lookit this fucking hipster of last friday. Adalbertos taqueria.

• 15:58 Search for Productivity: wp.me/pGTq0-qX #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Just got done watching Rudy Y Cursi, with my old boyfrehz Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. It's your typical third world sports movie. This is the funniest part:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-vF8mrP4mk

I can't get over it. Hilarious.

Kyleturday
Originally uploaded by wring

Kyle is not a turd btw

After finding that his lead on finding his runaway niece is a dead end, Mageta, the shifter ex- then realizes that he has spent all of his money traveling to Sharn. His hosts, Kitty Killraven and Osiris told him of opportunities for adventurers in Q'Barra's frontier. Having no leads, to find Kitten, he agrees to travel with the two to Q'barra,



They find themselves in the city of Newthrone , penniless and dirty. While walking the streets asking if anyone had seen a shifter that fits his niece's description, Mageta was asked by a gruff voice to empty his purse at the threat of knifepoint. Mageta jokingly replied that only is he broke, and that he was also far away from home and unemployed. He is asked, by his mugger no less, if he would like to get a job. Surprised, he takes a peek around, and his would be mugger was no one other than his neighbor from the Reaches and friend during the days of the Last war, Kavinas. Kavinas had aged the twenty six years that Mageta was petrified but the two friends still recognized each other. Kavinas proposed that they group take on a job in the hamlet town of Jebal'zag in exchange for a tenth of the pay. Mageta was glad to take the job offer to his comrades.



They were advised that they are to go to the town and observe



Kitty Killraven and Osiris agree to travel to Jebal'zag for the job and they do so immediately. They talk about the weather casually, finding the approaching storm a reprieve for their tired muscles. Walking the eastbound dirt road to the Jebal'zag, the three notice the flight of carrion crows to their north. They investigate and find a large mass of flesh that seemed to look similar to a body that has housed a slaad's egg after the slaad had made its grisly escape.



Mageta suggested they take their find to Newthrone, to consult with someone more learned than they are of slaads. Kitty disagreed saying that this find may be the fate of the victims in Jebal'zag, making their arrival there more pressing. Before Osiris could decide the outcome of the argument, the noise of thrashing creatures was heard from behind them. From the south, emerged four trolls like they have ever seen before, their skins were marked by pulsing veins and the flesh underneath bulged and pulsed with malignance. Mageta engaged the monsters; Kitty retreated to the trees to snipe at them while Osiris melded with the shadows where his decisive blows could fell the beats quicker. Then, torrentuous rain started falling, limiting visibility for the combatants.



When all trolls where down, they realize that the rain kept them from lighting torches to burn the trolls and they had no alchemical or magical means to start a fire either. Cursing their own amateur oversight, they flee the bodies and hurry to Jebal'zag before the trolls could regenerate.



They arrive at the city after the rain had let out, and it was still early into the evening. They try locate the Sheriff who Kavinas had advised them to search out and are met with Fordrinn. Fordrinn welcomes the three and tell them that the sick people have been jailed because of the threat they pose not only with infection but with presumed acts of violence. Fordrinn recounts that any healers that have been sent to look after the victims were found dead the following day, brutally murdered, and the sick missing with no traces to be found. Mageta tells Fordrinn that he has learned some healing arts from his time in the Audair Army and asked to look at the sick people. Fordrinn tells ushers them to the dirt dugout jail, warning them to keep their weapons at hand. At the door of the cell they find three people lying feverishly on dirty cots. As Mageta was about to unlock the door to examine the sick, one of the three victims start coughing volumes of blood, at which Fordrinn shrinks away from. The man stands up from his cot and rips the door out of its hinges and out of Mageta's hands. Hoping that no injury would come to the man unnecessarily, Mageta trips him with a slap of his zulaat on the legs. At this opportunity Osiris deals a brutal cut to the man. To their surprise, the wounded man explodes and from it emerges a creature that a man-sized vessel could not have contained. Large and sinuous the creature attacks ferociously but was cut down by the experienced warriors. Mageta having seen similar creatures during the war tells them that the corpse in front of them belonged to a foulspawn, adding that the foulspawn he fought never did not emerge like that from humans nor did they have the wiry, bulging veins that this one did. Osiris pointed out that these same mutations appeared on the trolls they fought off in the forest. Kitty said that the mound of flesh they found was probably a victim, from which a mutant foulspawn had burst from.



Osiris then confronts the sheriff Fordrinn of the hazards that face them if they keep the two other victims alive. He suggested that they be euthanized for their own relief and the safety of the remainder of the population.



They exit the jail and entertain questions from the curious townsfolk. Mageta had questions of his own and they traded answers. Mageta learns that a week previous to the slew of infections, there was a streak of light across the sky followed by a small tremor and a fireball that lit up the north-eastern sky. They were also advised east of the town was a limestone formation where the towns water supply comes from. People had started getting sick a week after the spectacle in the sky; and people have stopped getting sick when they stopped drinking the towns water and started porting in water from Newthrone.



At this point, they are met with a hedge wizard from Jebal'zag, who is curious of the sky spectacle and knowledgeable of abominations: the deva Sarek. He joins the group and one of the townsfolk points out that all four had strange skin: Mageta's cracks from being a statue, Osiris marks of passage, Kitty's pock-marks and burns from the day of mourning and Sarek's deva skin patterns. The four consider it briefly before brushing it off to coincidence.

The four immediately headed into the night forest to locate the source of the fireball that the villagers described. Meanwhile Mageta was inspecting his wounds for telltale signs of the infection he saw on the man who burst into a foulspawn and indeed he found them. He secreted this away from his friends for the meantime.* upon arriving there, they say a great white boll that seemed to glow with its own radiance. Rainwater had accumulated where the rock skidded into the land. In the water there seemed to swim ghostly figures that whispered faintly, "Join us." And when the campaigners set eyes upon the rock they were moved to approach it. As they stepped into the water it seared into their flesh with a holy fire. They immediately saw the danger were in, they fought against the impulse to approach the rock any further. However, there emerged two spirits, a ghostly elf woman of unspeakable beauty and a creature of pure water from the waters. They too whispered join us and pulled at the Osiris and Kitty with their own means: The elf ghost seemed to posses some command of space and blinked Kitty between worlds and back closer to the rock while the gentleman made of water spiraled rush of water and washed Osiris into the glowing waters. The four fought against the creatures and when they were quelled, Osiris was left too wounded to fend for himself, helpless before the glowing rock. Mageta tied a rope about his waste and tried to rescue his friend. But he was drawn into the water just as sure as a moth into flame. Sarek then advised him that he should close his eyes and let Osiris’s voice guide him. This successfully brought Osiris back into safety where his wounds were tended. Mageta noticed though, that the infected wounds from the encounter with the mutated trolls had healed completely. They then decided to get a sample of the water, as this may save any further victims of the infection. Sarek, whose divine nature protected him from the holy fire that swirled and glowed within the water, emptied and tied water skins to his waist and the rope to a tree; when the skins were filled, he also thought it wise to take a sample of the rock itself. He shot at it with arcane bolts. Shards of the rock splintered off but this also revived or awakened the elven ghost and the water creature and they proceeded to attack again. Kitty, Osiris and Sarek made haste to run away. Mageta tried to ask for the guardian spirits help in the pandemic but his pleas fell upon deaf ears. He too was forced to retreat.



They returned to Jebal'zag to report their discoveries to Fordrinn. they concluded that although the rock may not have been the the direct cause of the illness, the rocks impact may have loosened the earth and revealed an unknown evil. however, the rock also held the answer to healing the land that its arrival may have inadvertantly afflicted. Fordrinn convinced them to spend the night in Jebal'zag and head off in the morning, which the four found wise.



*The DM withheld this information from Mageta’s player until after he was healed. Mageta’s player would not have otherwise “withheld” any information had he known about it sooner.

I am a Tashana Tundra Recruit for the reidran army and I was sent to Khorvaire as an escort.
Instead of being trapped under a landslide, Mageta was petrified during a random encounter with a gorgon, only to be left behind by the survivors. A hundred years later, a wandering healer recognized the town's statue as a petrified creature as what it was and freed me.

Mageta incorporates the concept of reincarnation from the Reidran belief system with the altruistic notion of the Sovereign Host of Khorwaire to create his personal belief that by contemplating the name and nature of god, a soul transcends mortal fetters and is freed of the pains of rebirth and suffering. In one's search for freedom, it is also one's task to free others of their mortal fetters, and if they are incapable of doing so, freeing them of their mortal shell so as they can be reborn with better chance at salvation.

I don't know much of geography, I am in the Eldeen Reaches and both of you are in Sharn. LOLz. Ang ashteeg, so you're a gnome and a goliath inside a revenant goliath?

Mageta's revised origin:

During the Last War, Mageta wwas a Reacher farmer that was recruited into the Audair army. His parents were refugees from Sarlona and he grew up with his father's mostly uninformed interpretation of the teachings of the Inspired of Reidra. As laymen in the reaches, their belief systems are also greatly influenced by the druidic traditions.

During an inopportune attack by boths the armies or Droamm and Breland, the defenders of the reach found themselves abandoned by the armies of Aundair. This would eventually lead to The Eldeen Reaches seeking autonomy from Aundair after the war but Mageta would know none of this as he was petrified by a medusa from Droamm during the attack and his body lost to logistical issues and bureaucratic negligence. His little brother, Lynx, was too young to join the Last War but grew up to be druid and found his statue 26 years after. Although, he hasn't aged in the last 26 years, he is missing his tips: the tip of his nose, ears, elbows, fingers-- where weathering and erosion touched his statue his flesh ends in angular planes; and his skin is also marked my striations where water had seeped in and rhythmically froze and thawed during the passage of years.

Now Mageta is a farmer again, as young as he was almost three decades ago but with anachronisms that reveal his missing years. He lives with his now middle aged younger brother and his family.

One day, an Orien Horseless wagon passed by our town. Which thoroughly excited my niece, Kitten. She vowed to one day ride not only a horseless caravan but also the lightning rail and an airship. I laughed at her and told her they don't let shifters on board those things, especially runty girl shifters like her.

The next day, Kitten was missing along with some of her belongings. She has run away. Feeling responsible for my niece, I volunteer to track her down and bring her home. My travels take me to Sharn, where I hear that there a wild looking girl named Kitten is known to have settled. I am hopeful that this Kitten is my niece who has run away.

oh yeah? well kitty's been moochin offa youz for the past coupla weeks
now.
we met at a dive called "Rick's Cafe' Kaarna'thian". its where the
secret agent types, who are down on their luck, drown their woes and
wait for the next lead on their lifequest. the place also attracts a
mixed clientele of Vichy French and Nazi officials, refugees and
thieves - who sometimes employ aforementioned down on their luck
secret agent types to perform simple albeit non-kosher tasks. its also
conveniently located in sharn's welcome - red light district of the
cliffside ward - pretteh pretteh near kitty's shack in the mud caves.
i owes ya buster! *hack*ptui*


Neo Brute Strike X yung military codename nya - kasong nga M.I.A. sha
- so nagtatago sha under pseudonym: Kitty Killraven. lolz.

-anywaiz neo brute strike x was a field sergeant from the crimson tide
commando force of the valenar war host.
classified as missing in action - believed to have been lost on the
day of mourning along with his squad during a small-scale combat
mission at the west cyrian border - vicinity of stonefeather spire.

-the subject is a grizzled and embittered veteran of countless wars
and operations.
-the subject tries to remain incognito - despite military affectations
occasionally surfacing - old habits
-the subject is currently penniless and tries to get by as a soldier-
of-fortune / security consultant.

Phineas "Finn" Whizklack and Ebenezer Coalbender were two of the best
field agents of the Trust – the gnomish police force of Zilargo and
reputed to be the most secretive organization in all Khorvaire. For
months they had been tracking down Doctor Jebediah Spoone, a brilliant
gnomish engineer who had gone down the path of necromancy and had fled
Pylas Pyrial after one of his experiments ran amok and killed a few
bystanders. The duo's search had led them to Sharn, where Spoone was
said to have set up a laboratory near the undercity warrens.

Meaning to confront Spoone and quietly bring him in, Finn and Ebenezer
were instead rushed by his two goliath bodyguards and a barrage of
Spoone’s necromantic spells. The encounter left one goliath torn to
shreds and the other choked to death by Ebenezer's shadow noose.
Spoone had fled, but not before Finn had torn out an eye with a well-
placed wand blast. Ebenezer, though, was fatally wounded.

Desperate to save his partner's life, Finn ransacked Spoone's lab and
found in his research manuscripts a scroll titled Project Osiris, a
transfer ritual that used a technique not unlike the ones gnomes use
for binding elementals to things, but this one bound souls instead.
Quickly, Finn shifted Ebenezer's spirit to the goliath they had slain,
with the authorities arriving, tipped off by Spoone, no doubt, just as
the ritual completed.

Found to have practiced forbidden necromancy, Finn was hanged the next
day, while Ebenezer was thrown back to the streets of Sharn with
merely a warning. Displaced by his new body and, more distrubingly,
with resurfacing memories of its former occupant, Ebenezer allowed
himself to be carried off by the crowd, his shadow flitting faster and
faster from one person to the next. He vowed to continue his hunt for
the now one-eyed Spoone – the strange marks on his goliath body his
only clue to finding the necromancer. This, he felt, he had to do
before he returned to the Trust and his uncertain future there. Until
then, he thought, he would take on another identity – Osiris – after
the spell Finn used to save him. "Yes," whispered another voice inside
him. "Oz. That will be our name."


- by vincent coscolluela

My heart is like a jigsaw puzzle
Originally uploaded by wring

I haz a Lady Sovereign shirt

i hate it. amanda won. i hate it. dapat justine.

tapos nakita niyo yung truck driver from season 1 in the audience, may bading na nakaakbay sa kanya. lolz bumaliktad na si kuya.

anyway. i can't believe justine lost. she's so awesome.

At sino itong nakita kong ad sa sidebar ng facebook?



Bongga ka talaga James! :D

Artists' proceeds from today's teefury shirt will benefit victims of typhoon Ondoy/Ketsana.



Buy one. Or ten!

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Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

gst - harry potter edition
Originally uploaded by wring

yes, I'm the only 31 year old who shops at hot topic.

Spoiled child is spoiled
Originally uploaded by wring

Four page xmas list. No she is not getting any of these from me. Ok maybe
the skelanimals.

sauce

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.