"All gave some and some gave all"

Vietnam War veteran Hank Van Laarhoven watches as volunteers help him find each name of all those he served with. Van Laarhoven was one of the squad leaders of the 2nd Battalion 1st Marines during the Vietnam War.

On Saturday, November 9, 2013, Van Laarhoven visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the first time in his life. This was also his first time seeing many of those whom he served with since 1967.
When asked to describe some of his emotions, he solemnly said, "Deep sadness. It's overwhelming. It's not just a single name on the wall...we know too many here. They need to be remembered."
He stayed at the memorial for more than an hour, searching for every single name of those he served with.

Online News Association Conference 2012

Let's do some time traveling. (Which we're going to have to do a lot with film posts)

Back in September, I packed up my bags and left for San Francisco to attend the Online News Association's San Francisco conference (aka #ONA12) with hopes and dreams of meeting great online journalists and maybe performing some magical networking. I think I ended up just having more fun than anything though, visiting Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, getting to know some cool people, and getting a private tour of the Industrial Light & Magic office of Lucas Film by dad's old friend who works there. I also got to spend some time with cousins that I see maybe once every 3-4 years, so that was nice. 

But back to my film prints! I made a pretty bold move, in my standards, by taking only the iPhone and a film camera - the Nikon FM10. Now, I've always had pretty good experiences with the FM10 if and only when I actually latch on the negatives right inside the camera. I remember those painful days as a sophomore in college when I'd cry about my time and money gone to waste because I got a blank film at the end of the development. Making sure the film is loaded correctly is very, very important for a film amateur like myself, especially because the FM10 is completely manual.

I knew San Francisco was going to be beautiful no matter what - but I fought off the temptation to bring on the DSLR and stuck with this old and dinky camera for some authentic shots of the bay area. Turns out it wasn't a bad idea at all.   

The following photos were taken at the #socjourn #wjchat Meet Up at Sens restaurant in Embarcadero.  

So. Remember when I said I met some cool people? I may not have had the chance to talk to people like Marks Luckie (Twitter / 10,000 words blog), or Kim Bui (co-founder of #wjchat) or all the other remarkable people who probably attended, but I unexpectedly befriended a Canadian journalist from a no-name town when she walked up to me asking a question that I can't recall now.

We became fast buddies and walked to the Port market to grab lunch together, sat outside with the ocean view and talked about life, photography, journalism, gluten-free foods, boyfriends, etc. That was a quite weird yet refreshing experience. We exchanged business cards, Twitter accounts then headed different directions.

Meet my friend Liz :) Hope we could meet again, someday! Also taken on the FM10, but with the Tri-X 400.