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So after having to move my appointment twice, I finally got my tattoo today. My cousin Cyrene did the original artwork and I asked my tattoo artist Orly to interpret how it should look on my arm. With such an incredible piece of art from my cousin and Orly’s interpretation of the design, I am totally STOKED with the final result. For those of you who haven’t kept up, the design is the the Filipino star and sun, with my grandmother and mom’s Filipino nicknames in Baybayin (we removed Melanie’s name at that last minute, due to a tattoo taboo associated with tattooing your wife’s name onto your body).
For those of you who haven’t had a tattoo, I’m pretty good with pain, but the first 15 – 20 min is more pain then I expected. After that the area gets a bit numb and it’s tolerable. The sitting was 2 hours and I only had to have 1 session. I may have to go back for some touch-ups, but this is the final design. Below is my tattoo, click on the picture to see all my pics, which shows Orly inking me and pictures of the studio in San Jose, Humble Beginnings. Also there’s a video in my flickr set if you want to see the action of getting a tattoo.
So I reminded Melanie I’m getting my tattoo tomorrow and she goes crazy on me. Her crazy friend’s that she does ceramics with every month (yes, Stephanie, Stacy, and Randall, you’re all CrAzY!) filled her head with a curse that if I got Melanie’s name tattoo’d on me, it means we’ll end up divorcing.
As you can tell, I think her and her friend’s are all CrAZy, but I asked my cool cousin Cyrene to make the modifcations to take out Melanie’s name from her tattoo design. Both Cyrene and I laugh at the superstition, but I know Melanie’s happier now.
Here’s the tattoo that’s going onto my arm tomorrow!
So yesterday Melanie and I found out the sex of our baby, Melanie’s wish came true! I’m just thrilled to see that the baby is on schedule, we’ll find out the evaluation of the ultrasound pics next week. Click on the image below to see the set of pictures and try your luck to find out if we’re having a boy or a girl. It’s like “Where’s Waldo?” with private parts.
Took this recording last week.
My picture was pointed out to me today on this stuff animal company. Pretty funny…
Click on the cow squishable or picture below.
My friend Jen at work was listening to the my first clip and asked, “Isn’t that kind of slow?” Which was the reason for the previous entry where I actually counted the heartbeat.
I think the first recording wasn’t getting the in-between heartbeats, so for you listening pleasure, here’s one with all heartbeats taken Saturday
Counted around 116 per minute on the Baby’s heartbeat tonight. I’m sure my counting wasn’t perfect since it should be around 120 or higher, but it’s fun to hear 
Take a listen by clicking on the link below…
Yes, I’m getting a tattoo and I’ve been wanting this for a while now, so here’s my story…
First and foremost I need to give a BIG shout out and Salamat (Thank you in tagalog) to my cousin Cyrene Mary. She’s an incredible graphic artist and came up with the tattoo design, check out her portfolio website:
Cyrene designed the tattoo I will be getting inked from a Baybayin translation from pinoytattoos.com. I asked her to integrate the Filipino sun and stars from our country flag with the Baybayin text. Check it out at the end of my blog.
Last night I was fortunate enough to scheduled my tattoo appt at Humble Beginnings Tattoo Studio in San Jose, CA by a fellow Filipino artist Orly Locquiao. I get it on Friday 8/28. I love Yelp.com and it’s how I found the studio and was fortunate enough to find a talented Filipino artist to ink my design right down the road. Here’s their website:
If you google Orly and tattoo, you find a lot of incredible art pieces done by him and some say he’s the best Filipino tattoo artist in the bay area.
So what does the tattoo represent? Well some close friends that I camp with every year (Jonn and Skip) have some incredible tattoos and I’ve always been interested in them. I’d say about 3 years ago I decided I wanted to get a tattoo that was dedicated to my Grandmother. As many of you know, she passed in December 2008 and I started doing the research.
It started as a simple translation of my Grandmother’s name in the original Filipino tribal characters called Baybayin, but then I decided to integrate all the women that are important in my life, so I included my Grandma, Mother, and my wife Melanie. You can read about Baybayin here as well as get it translated, like I did:
http://www.pinoytattoos.com/translations/
It’s a total of 4 Bababyin characters, which are Filipino nicknames:
Peday (Grandmother): Pe-da
Sa (Mom): Sa
May (Wife and another nickname for my mom): Ma
Below is the translation:
Here’s the image of the final design that Cyrene created that will be inked on my left arm:
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