Photographically, this Christmas has been very female and very maternal.
Happy Holidays!
Photographed in Pui O, Lantau, Hong Kong.

The Methuselah Generation is a new documentary by David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg. It is a very impressive subject to capture: The science of living forever. The moment you say “forever” naysayers jump out of the woodwork. So, let’s just pretend the forever part is a long way away, but living much longer in a much healthier state is relatively close, like 2045 (the date Ray Kurzweil anticipates for the Singularity). The documentary will talk about implications of this change and the change itself in terms of science, family, faith etcetera.

One of the Filmmakers, David Alvarado, I have know very well from our time at the University of North Texas in the film program. He recently flew into Hong Kong from New York to film Aubrey de Grey, who was a keynote speaker at TEDx Hong Kong as well as Hong Kong’s first Humanity+ conference. For the filming, I did location scouting and helped ensure the shoot and other logistics went smoothly. Impressively, about $40,000usd has been raised for the film. Well, that’s impressive for fundraising for regular sorts of things but for an independent documentary film it’s just over half way there. They’re also doing a campaign on Kickstarter, where they’re already over 100 donations and $18,000usd. Check out their campaign here and donate. The last project I blogged about, Hildegunn Gjedrem’s new album, was fully funded on kickstarter!

The Methuselah Generation; The Science of Living Forever from David Anthony Alvarado on Vimeo.

Production stills and a portrait of David Alvarado:

From the film Another Earth, here is the beautiful story of the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin – the first human in space. It’s embellished greatly, but still amazing. See video below, and the cosmonaut’s portrait. Read more about Yuri Gagarin here.

I recently received a card and cool designs from Donathon of Diskgrunt and he told me I was the inspiration for his limited run of “Awesome Sauce” T-shirts and posters. I’m honored!
Check him out here and at his new facebook fanpage here.

DP is an epic rock band in Hong Kong, popular on the local scene and cool enough to be part of festivals like SXSW in Austin, Texas. Short for David & Paul, they have released a new album featuring my photography. Their album release was a raucous night of metal in the relatively new, and already-realizing-its-potential XXX Gallery in Sheung Wan. What a night!
You can read more about them here, and look below for our collaboration (larger version on my site)

I visited Cheung Chau Island with my friend Louisa this weekend and captured this varied colorful moments.
Enjoy!

Cheung Chau through Rose colored glasses

I’m going to be part of this big concert in Hong Kong: Chris Polanco & Friends Unforgettable Night featuring yours truly, Justin Lo, Rubberband, Ted Lo, Grectchell Yaneza and Jun Kung. It’s all going down at the Hong Kong Jockey Club Auditorium. Tickets available starting August 1 from Cityline and at Parson’s Music locations throughout Hong Kong.

The actual concert is September 27, 2011 at 7:45pm

I’m training for the Oxfam Trailwalker race, a 100km race through the New Territories of Hong Kong. That’s about the distance of two marathons. Our target time is about 22 hours. The fun thing about technology and social media today is that I can show you graphs, charts and fancy numbers related to our training this weekend. To plow through all the data, basically we did a 25km trail in 7 hours on probably the hottest and most humid day of the summer in Hong Kong. I was a different person after taking a dip in a cool mountain stream. It’s amazing how much energy the sun takes out of you.

I had the pleasure a while back of interviewing and photographing Budoy Marabiles, leader of Junior Kilat, one of the Philippines most popular Reggae Bands. For this podcast, I’ve narrowed the interview down to spoken word versions of Junior Kilat songs with details below:

Enrique De Malacca – song about the man considered the first circumnavigator of the world. He was a translator for Magellan among other things:

Original Sigbin – song about a shape-shifting mythical creature of the Visayas, part of the Philippines. Hunted by Europeans at a time and thought to be the cure to AIDS

Spiderman – song about gambling culture surrounding spider fighting in the Philippines

Budoy on Junior Kilat by michalgarcia

Email me at michalgarcia@gmail.com or just call me +852 9154 4837 if you want to talk or meet up. I am going to spend less time online and more time connecting with people in real life. I will do this by using mostly Gmail and to a lesser extent, Google+ for my communications. Facebook will be reference only. Email me if you want a Google+ invite.

This isn’t really an endorsement for Google+, I just need to spend less time online so I can work more effectively and live my life.

PS – I will also be using Soundcloud, so watch out for me there