A series of unprecedented storms swept us in San Francisco in January and February. Dark clouds and gloomy skies are not your typical fare here. I felt just as gloomy, but also thankful for the rain’s impact on California’s drought situation.

Soon, the sky started becoming bluer and bluer. Sometimes pink too.

And now we’re back to blue, and I’m happy again.

Chinatown photo taken with Olympus XA2. The rest with Nikon L35TWAD. All on Fuji Superia 400. All developed and scanned by Underdog Film Lab, Oakland.

Photo taken on Leica M3, 50mm Summilux, Ektar 100. Developed and scanned by The Darkroom.

When you think of bakeries in San Francisco, perhaps you think of sourdough. Certainly, there are some well known bakeries in the city known for their sourdough, but that’s not a style or type of bread I enjoy at all.

I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I like Chinese and Japanese bakeries. I like soft, pillowy breads that straddle the line between savory and sweet. I like hot dogs in my buns. I like ham in my bread. I like scallions in them, too. Barbecue pork. Eggs. All of it. My palate leans heavily on the savory side of things, and I also prefer my breads that way. Salty. Savory. I opine on that, and more, in this video.

As part of my increasing frustration at the perennial sour-ness of bread in the city I now live in, I seek out Chinese bakeries. Here are a few of my favorites.

Mee Mee bakery in Chinatown (pictured), is known for its ‘cow ear cookies’ or ‘pig ear cookies’, a savory spiral biscuit that’s really more salty than sweet. I love that shit.

I also like Yummy Bakery for Hong Kong style ‘paper cup cakes’, which are fluffier and softer than American cupcakes; almost like a souffle, but like paper. If that makes sense. Also try their egg white tarts and wife cakes.

In the Outer Mission, Princess Bakery is an old school favorite. Try the coconut buns and the hot dog scallion buns. In the same neighborhood, Hong Kong Bakery is a classic. Don’t sleep on the Excelsior: I think it has the highest density of my favorite Chinese food in the city, more than Chinatown and more than the Sunset or Richmond.

Lastly, Pineapple King Bakery, like I recommend in the YouTube show. Try literally anything there, and definitely don’t skip the milk tea. I wish there were more Japanese bakeries in the city, but there are not. I’m glad people enjoy the sourdough of San Francisco, but I’m overjoyed that I have these alternatives here. I’m trying to take the perspective of “it’s okay to not like things”, but it is so goddamn hard when it’s so hard to find good bread in this city that isn’t surprisingly sour. (Recently, I bought a bag of bagels, and it was made of sourdough. Without warning. Sour simply isn’t a flavor I enjoy: I also feel that way about American hot sauce.)

This is one of the photos that made me very glad I had a film camera in my pocket. I was able to jog alongside these friends, who were having so much fun on a Segway tour of San Francisco’s Crissy Fields area near the Golden Gate Bridge, and they were very kind to pose for a photo for me.

Ever since I got my Olympus XA2, I’ve had a capable film camera in my pocket at all times, including when I’m out running. It’s not my favorite camera, but it is very capable. It certainly fits the bill for ‘everyday camera’. I did not have any issues zone focusing with it as I used to own one.

It was my first time using the Fuji Acros 100 II film, though. It’s very sharp, very dark, very contrasty. I probably prefer the Tri-X and HP5 look in general, but it was fun to have tried something new. I don’t think I would shoot the outdoors in black and white again; a big part of why I love this part of San Francisco is the sunshine and blue skies. Even when it’s extremely foggy out, it still tends to be quite colorful. I’ll probably end up shooting this area regularly with different types of film stock, and see what we end up with. I think I spend most of my time outdoors in the city in this area, at least four times a week.

More photos:

Yachts outside Fort Mason.

Which way? Near the Palace of Fine Arts.

All photos in this post taken with Olympus XA2, Fuji Acros 100 II, developed and scanned at Underdog Film Lab

Photo taken on Olympus XA2 on Fuji Superia 400, developed and scanned by Underdog Film Lab.

Mention the Tenderloin and a certain type of San Francisco resident will definitely scrunch up their faces. “Homeless people”, “poop”, “crime”; look behind all of those terms and I believe the fear and condescension is “class”.

The Tenderloin is a working class neighborhood with a largely Southeast Asian, trans, Mexican, Arab, queer, and Black population. It is also home to many of the city’s unhoused population. We also need far more toilets. And housing. Problems aside (as a board member of the Tenderlon Community Benefit District, I am working to improve things in this neighborhood!), I live here because it immerses me deeply in my communities. It is Southeast Asian, and queer, at the same time. I am also far more comfortable around working class people than around the types of people who live across Van Ness. It has the food that I want to eat, and the groceries that I need.

The freedom to run downstairs and get the types of tofu, lemongrass, galangal, many rice types, noodle varieties that I use without having to go to a ‘special store’, or the ‘ethnic aisle’, is what makes me feel connected. I know that living in a ‘nice neighborhod’ where my food lives in the ethnic aisle will be extremely alienating. Not to mention inconvenient.

So here I am, and I am always giddy with joy when I get to grab the freshly made tofu, and the nice stalks of lemongrass, from a Cambodian grocer in the Tenderloin. The lady and her son speak my native language, even though we come from different countries. We have the same conversation daily. “What are you cooking today?”

Tofu is often my answer. The answer is always tofu.

There’s a curious shop on a street I walk past daily, that makes it look like we’re in the ’60s. It sells vintage magazines and other memorabilia. It also has vintage theatrical programs and erotica.

I thought it would be a nice shot to take photo of a retro magazine store with my retro camera. So here’s a shot of The Magazine, taken with my 60 year old camera.

Leica M3, 50mm Summilux, Ektar 100. Processed by the Darkroom in San Clemente, Orange County.

As I previously mentioned, I’ve had my Nikon L35TWAD for some time but was not able to turn it on until now. I’m glad I managed to do that, because it’s been such a joy to use! The idea that you can have two very good lenses: a wide and a telephoto one, in such a tiny package, is wonderful to me.

Here’s a test shot at dusk with Fuji Superia 400 film, handheld: I like it a lot. I’m going to take it out for a few more rolls.

Nikon L35TWAD point and shoot camera, Fuji Superia 400, developed at Underdog Film Lab in Oakland.

I was having a horrible day in August 2020, feeling shut in and defeated. There was no Covid-19 vaccine yet, and we had been sheltering in place in our tiny studio apartment for around 6 months by that time. Going out for a walk with my camera was something that helped me find the little joys of life.

I hadn’t used my Leica in a while, and this was one of the moments that brought a smile to my face. I’m glad I managed to stand there and hear them play for a few minutes. It lifted my spirits. I’m also glad that I have a photograph to remind me of that time.

Photograph taken on a Leica M3 with 50mm Summilux, Kodacolor 200.

In my last year of university I started dating a person who lived 250 miles away from me. It was my first serious relationship, and my last long(ish) distance one.

Before we found a living arrangement (that involved me moving to her city), we met sometimes in the middle. Luckily, her country was full of fun towns and cities with delicious food, so I didn’t mind.

That relationship eventually fizzled out after several years, but I got from it: Cookie, a deep love for that country, and many years of happy food and travel memories.

A black and white photo taken in Melaka around 2007. Probably with a Leica M3 and 50mm Summilux, unsure which film stock (I’m guessing it’s Tri-X).

Getting to see Sana’a in 2009 was an honor. It was one of my favorite cities: ever. Anywhere. I stayed with a friend and I got to wander around sometimes with him and his family, but sometimes alone. It was the weight of history and the air of what was about to happen: I frequently described Yemen as ‘better than a set from the Passion of Christ’. It felt old, dusty, but also warm and familiar.

At the time, I made some videos of my trip. You can see me talk about spending time with some local aunties, and how they fed me. I also have a stack of photos from that trip that I never looked at. What’s happening in that country is truly horrid and makes me feel sick to my stomach. (My friend managed to leave, but his family remains in Sana’a.)

You hear about the hospitality of that part of the world but you never truly understand it until you’ve been a guest. Then it’s a memory that you’ll never lose.

As a child, my parents would put us on a bus or train to Kuala Lumpur to see friends, visit people, or just have a weekend break.

One of my strongest memories of KL: getting out of the overnight train at the old railway station, and strolling to Chinatown (Petaling Street) for breakfast. Air mata kucing (literally translated to ‘cat eye water’), is a sweet drink with ice, rock sugar and longans. This stall in Petaling St is extremely famous, and probably still there today. I loved drinking it out of the little steel bowls they used to have, the ice cooling me down in the ever present Malaysian heat.

This photograph was probably taken in 2005 with a Yashica Electro 35. I can’t wait to go back there and have it again.

Mae Salong is one of the most interesting little towns I’ve ever been to. It is said that many of the town’s folks are descended from the southern Kuomintang army during the Chinese civil war. They went south through to Thailand with instructions to wait there in case Generalissimo Chiang wanted to mount a southern attack against the Communists. That day never came.

My mother and I went to spend a week here together once (she also likes adventurous and historical vacations), and I wound up meeting so many people because she’s so good at talking to people. She speaks many languages, including the several languages spoken by this community.

We went to the market every day for fresh soy milk and you tiao. It’s a memory I will cherish, and I think I have my mum to thank for why I am really interested in people, adventure, food and stories.

In 2018, my wife and I moved to San Francisco. We love the Mission district and try to spend as much time there as we can, especially for groceries and tacos. (La Oaxaqueña is our favorite.)

I’m especially interested in the less gentrified bits of it that remain. A few steps away from Valencia Street, there are still pockets of the Mission that are gritty and edgy. Those are the parts of the Mission that tend to have the food and groceries that I want to have.

Sometimes, I admire the old department store signs for shops long gone, in buildings still vacant and abandoned. I like grit, real people, and greasy tacos. I like these parts of the Mission.

Photo taken on Leica M3 with 50mm Summilux, Kodacolor 200, processed by Underdog Film Lab in Oakland and lightly edited by me for color and contrast.

Sometimes you have a bad photography day where there is no light or poor light, you don’t get any of the shots you want because you haven’t had coffee, or you just don’t know your equipment very well.

In this case, I had a borrowed Fujifilm XT-30 and telephoto lenses and.. boy, I did not have fun. I’m still not sure the Fuji digital cameras are for me, though many people love them, but I did come out with this one shot I love.

I had a wonderful trip to the Farallon islands just off San Francisco. We got on a boat with a birding crew from Half Moon Bay and, many, many seasick hours later, got close to the islands. We saw pelagic birds, porpoises, and even puffins. We got to hover near the rocks full of spectactular marine life, where the deafening chaos of thousands of sea lions and birds overwhelmed us with the sounds of life, thriving.

If you ever visit, it’s well worth trying to join a trip to the Farallons. We had a good time with Alvaro’s group, where we had some scientists onboard including a scientist who was previously stationed at the Farallon Islands himself, so he had a lot to share. Remember to pack the Dramamine, though.

Beirut’s Gemmayzeh is one of the most popular neighborhoods for nightlife. It’s full of bars and galleries and when I am in town, I do tend to be there quite regularly. The Torino Express is one of my favorite cafes in the world. I don’t have much opportunity to go there anymore, which saddens me. A lot has changed since I was there last, half a decade ago.

Singapore is technically a secular country. A large number of its ethnic Chinese population practices traditional Taoist rituals, though evangelical Christianity is encroaching quickly. As an ethnic Chinese person raised in Christian traditions, I felt surgically removed from these practices and I wanted to document them and learn about them whenever I could.

You’ll find signs of faith everywhere you go. Outside local ‘coffee shops’ (kopitiams), inside wet markets and hawker centres, under trees, in a street corner somewhere. At various Taoist festivals. At ‘void decks’ (the ground floor of a public housing building), especially during funerals.

From my archives, some photos of how faith is professed in black and white. First photo is a film photograph, the rest are digital (some kind of Sony Nex camera from 2012).

Here’s a link to an interesting story about how some of these deities are made by craftsmen.

Taiwan’s Taroko Gorge near Hualien is a place of great beauty.

I spent a fun day here in 2006 with my family, with my Leica M3 and some black and white film (I am guessing it is Tri-X 400, which would have been what I was using a lot back then).

I don’t photograph nature or landscapes very much, so am very out of my depth here, but I do like the way these photos turned out. Taiwan is a place of great natural beauty, and I don’t feel like I’ve seen enough of it even though I’ve been many times. (I haven’t had enough of the food either, which is in my opinion one of the best in the world.)

In 2023, I am far more into being outdoors in nature than I was at the time. I will take more photos of the Californian outdoors shortly.

Photos taken on Leica M3, 50mm Summilux, probably Tri-X 400, probably processed at Ruby Photo in Singapore

As you may know from elsewhere, I love food. I am obsessed with it. I love eating, I love food stories, I love writing about food, I love writing about people who make and eat food.

I did that more actively in the past where I wrote a few travel guidebooks and cookbooks, and also published a few articles about Asian food culture and chefs in various publications around the world.

From my archives, photos of two true artisans. One in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the other in Roses, in Spain’s Costa Brava coastal region.

Photos shot on Canon 350D and 50D, with a 17-40L lens, probably one of my all time favorite lenses.

The Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco frequently gets a bad rep, but I could not live anywhere else in this city. I live on a block where I get to speak my first language, the Teochew / Chiu Chow dialect of Chaoshan, with all of the Southeast Asian Chinese people here who own restaurants, grocery stores, and who mostly settled here after the Vietnam War.

Being in community and surrounded by the intimacy of language and culture has given me a different perspective on this part of town.

My photographs will often reflect this, and here I really like these half frame photos I took around here with my Kodak H35 toy camera.

Photos shot on a Kodak H35 half frame toy camera and processed at Photo Plus, San Francisco, then lightly edited by me for color and contrast

Happy holidays! We’re having weather here in San Francisco, which is a bit of an event. My plan for the next couple of weeks is to stay inside. This city is not made for weather, since we so rarely have any.

The best thing that happened to me over Christmas 2022 is that I started shooting film again.

Funny story: I was so mad at how my last few rolls of film turned out that I stopped using my film cameras for a few years. Turns out I have poor eyesight in my right eye, and I can’t really focus rangefinders very well. I’m getting that fixed. So thank you, rangefinder focus, for letting me know to check my eyesight.

Some Santa-related photos from the last couple of weeks. I think this was Kodacolor 200, but I can never remember.

Photos shot on Leica M3 with 50mm Summilux, processed by Underdog Film Lab in Oakland, then lightly edited for color and contrast in Photoshop.

Between 2013 and 2016, I went to Colombo quite frequently for work and relaxation. An old friend of mine from school lived there, and it was such an easy flight from Singapore that I found every excuse to go there, really. The scuba diving is phenomenal, too.

This past year, Sri Lanka has been in my thoughts. The troubled island continues to have a difficult time economically and politically. I highly recommend my friend Rohini Mohan’s book, The Seasons of Trouble, for a gripping read of the civil war era.

It’s a beautiful country, and I hope to return some day.

I don’t remember what camera I used here, but it’s quite likely.. an iPhone 5S definitely a Sony Nex-5 with 16mm lens!

My friend Javad Tizmaghz, an excellent photographer and even better woodworker, took our photos for our wedding.

It’s important to note that queer marriage is not recognized in our home countries.

We took these photos, and then we went to Auckland, New Zealand, for the actual ceremony.

It was only fitting that these photos were taken in the woods near Bukit Timah, where the old railway line connected both of our cities. It was also a place of refuge and safety for me, as I frequently went there as a child to walk and spend time in nature. Even today, when I go home, I still try to go to that area frequently.

Which one looks like film and which one looks digital?

In my mid-20s I was involved in the production of several cookbooks behind the scenes. That helped start a love for food. I helped to write and photograph a cookbook for an international hotel chain’s Dubai restaurants, which had all types of cuisines (their Thai chef also taught me how to cook the Thai food I now love cooking). Later, I helped a Thai-Punjabi restauranteur publish a cookbook for their restaurant in Pattaya.

These were the outtakes from some of these projects.

When I was 19 years old I had the opportunity to spend a month in Kolkata, India.

Someone bought me a Nikon F-601 with some kind of kit lens for my trip. This was the first roll of film I ever shot. I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve since lost the negatives, but I am glad I still have some scans, no matter how low quality they are.

We stayed in the Narendrapur neighborhood quite a long way away from the parts of old Kolkata I would later love. In many ways, this trip was the start of a long affair with many, many things that are now huge parts of my life: with India, especially West Bengal, to which I would return repeatedly for the decades after. (Until Covid-19 in Jan 2020, I spent 2-3 months in India each year between 2004 and 2020, on multiple trips and visits of varying lengths) With film photography. With parts of my creative career (I met many early collaborators during this period). Most of all, with the food of South Asia.

At the time, I was not used to the fully vegetarian meals served by my hosts. So in the evenings, I would wander out to get either a chicken kathi roll or a tandoori tangdi kebab. These photographs were taken on those walks.

In many ways, every time I shoot a roll of film, I’m still chasing that high: a high of doing something fun for the first time, and getting to meet people and try new things all at once.