The following was typed on the 28th but didn't get posted till later. Keeping it as an entry on the 28th though...
Haven't updated in a while because I've been back in Orange County for the holidays. A lot of eating good food since I've been down. I've had "che-yah-mien" which is one of my favorite taiwanese foods. I had shabu shabu...korean soon doo bu...Koto Sunday All You Can Eat Sunday Brunch...dinner at a really nice Chinese place...dinner at a not so great place. All in all a satisfying food tour of OC.
This was my first dinner that I treated my extended family to (this was at the crappier place). I dropped two bills here and here was the menu.
I'm actually typing this on the plane so I'll be stopping now and then to sip my cranberry juice. :-)
Soup with crab and fish nest
Shrimp with asparagus
Pea sprouts with garlic
Lightly fried Sea Bass
Peking duck with buns
Clams with spicy sauce
Sea Cucumber stew with something like Abalone
Lobster with noodles
Sweet Bean soup
It was ok but hopefully next year it'll be at a better place. This place was really annoying because they brought out the food faster than we could consume it. I mean it wasn't just slightly faster, they wanted to put a plate halfway on top of the lobster because they couldn't fit all the plates on the lazy susan.
Remember how I got the $12 from the McDonald's/Best Buy promotion? Well I had to go Best Buy in Costa Mesa twice because I couldn't decide on what to get with it. The first time I thought I could get away with just getting a gift card cause they don't have expiration dates but the manager of the store said No. The second time I looked harder and got the Charlie's Angel: Full Throttle DVD. I haven't seen it and supposedly there is a lot of eye candy to make it a worthwhile buy.
On the subject of DVDs, everyone is far ahead o me at this point. It seems everyone has a DVD burner now. I used to be on the forefront of most things. Cellphone, cd burner, digital camera. Well, when I finally make a decision it'll be a good one. Then I'll catch up.
Know what I dislike about sharks? Sharks don't "play". They seem to only have a killing intent. You want to play with sharks, they have them at the aquarium over in Long Beach. You can see a whole lot of them at Sea World too. They have this tunnel you walk in that's made of plexiglass so you can look at the sharks swimming around you.
Yesterday night was fun. At around 9, I was dropped off by my parents at Dave and Busters to meet up with Eric, Fred, and others. Since it was pretty crazy we all moved to bowling in Irvine. We had a group of 10. Me, Eric, Fred, Colin, Reggie, DeeJay, Algernon, Andrew, Chirag, and Chris. It was a pretty bad night for me but I did manage to get at least one strike. I'm pretty consistant as far as knocking down at least 7 pins but I don't pick up spares as often as I need to be.
After an hour of that, we went to Little Saigon for some $3.95 pho at this 24 hour place. There were so many funny things that happened there but I can't seem to remember all of it. We did find out where Dim Sum came from, the Bikini Cafe located at Chris'apartment, and that Fred likes breaking out his Cantonese learned from watching movies at weird moments (which Chu pointed out should be closed off by saying the name of the person who said it...hehehe). Ah.... Intrigued by Bikini Cafe, we stopped by but alas, it was not open. We all stopped at Chris' apartment in Cypress and saw some Xbox FIFA action as well as an episode from the Family Guy Season 3 Disc (the jewish one I saw on Comedy Central that aparently wasn't aired before). Didn't get home till almost 4AM but thanks to my sleeping schedule, I was ready to go at 11AM today.
My dad burned me a copy of his really good pictures from Japan and Taiwan, as well as a DVD of some 7 cello/1 piano music concert which should be pretty cool. Hopefully, that trip to China that we're planning for next year will happen. Uncle Peter is interested in driving around in Alaska so that would be interesting as well.
Yesterday after work, went back to the apartment and broiled me some lamb steaks. Went down to Union City and met up with Chris to see Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. OMFG!!! That was one crazy movie. So many cool parts...and yes, Cathy, the Legolas part was pretty amazing. The CG work was really top notch. I have to say that I think this film blew away the final Matrix in terms of content and just plain, I need a freakin big TV when this dvd comes out. Oh yeah, time for a boxset dude. It's Costco time. Aiyahhhh! The swarming ghosts were soooo cool!!!
Chapter 198 in Naruto Manga...NEJIIIIIIIIIIII!!!
Apparently there is this oyster farm in a town called Marshall, just a bit north of Point Reyes. The oyster there are supposed to be really sweet due to conditions of the water in which they grow. It's only an hour away so it seems like something fun to go to. It's almost the end of oyster season so I better get my craving over with. The even have BBQ grills for people to use. I'll need my shucker for sure. Apparently, companies use a high-powered water jet which loosens the big connecting muscle allowing for easy shucking without damaging the meat. I'll going to try to go in a few weekends.
There was an electrical fire in SF that caused huge problems in downtown SF. This weekend was pretty crazy but I managed to get everything back in time for business. Since they kept on delaying the timeline for the power to come back on, I went to the San Francisco Costco for food. That Costco is CRAZY!!! So many people. It's like everyone in Chinatown goes to Costco on Sundays. People getting big tvs... People shouting at people pushing them with their carts. People complaining about other people. Kids happily eating. And there was so much free stuff to eat. Grilled lamb, crackers with brie, Fuji apples, Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake, Chicken Shao Mai, Croissants, Orange Juice. You could walk the entire floor and come away full. Hahaha.
Saturday was DDR/XBOX madness. So was Sunday night actually. Rainbow Six 3 is crazy cause you can issue voice commands to the AI!!! And it works too!!! Ahhhhh....Happy Happy Happy. On Saturday, went down to San Jose (almost never go down that far) and met up with Chris and Lori. Supposed to eat at Spaghetti Factory(I hate that place...limp wet noodles) which thankfully changed to this place called Chicken Coop which had really good gourmet chicken for Safeway type prices. Went to Fry's too that day, geez every store has a lot of people. On Sunday, after the whole Costco/CMR server issue, Chris and Lori came over. Me and Chris got our DDR on. I haven't played online against anyone (too embarrassed) but eventually that'll be something cool to do. Went to play pool but the Clipper Club has been using it as a storage for all the packages coming in so no pool till January. The pool pool looked really cool though cause the steam was visible as it's been pretty cold in the Bay Area for a while now. Played ping pong instead. Almost had Chris beat with 14-11 but I ended up having to play him in deuce which I lost eventually. :-P I need to stop trying to do crazy things.
Lord of the Rings on Tuesday!!! hopefully...
Yesterday was the company Christmas Potluck. Leroy's mom made this excellent cold noodle dish and Anjee's mom made this curry that was really similar to Kabana's. It was funny cause I asked Leroy how he made it and he goes,"My mom made it." Hahaha. There were 3 birthdays in December, so we got this huge apricot cake with a thick layer of frosting. It was the physical embodiment of the word "sugar-high". I tried not to eat too much to make sure my stomach was ready for shabu shabu.
I went on the Ikea website and the leather slipcover for my Klippan is like $200. Ehhhhh.... I'm just gonna skin me a cow. It's started raining again. I just know that the snow is going to be great. Traffic has gotten worse though.
The 401(k) guy came today. Turns out if I want to live the high-roller lifestyle when I retire, I'm going to need 1.5 million taking inflation into account. That's a whole lot of money. Apparently, if I save $600 each month till I'm 60, I'll have that much in the 401(k). Time is on my side my friends. Now I just have to save up my downpayment for a house. The 401(k) guy was really funny. He did magic tricks with a disappearing scarf and this thing about THE I.R.S. (theirs) and about how we need to decide what our retirements will be like (steak or Alpo). Heh heh.
Shabu Shabu was again a blast. Jeff's roommates are really cool. We had so much fun talking about stuff. Later this guy who's in law and his girlfriend came along. She was nice but it was painfully obvious that she was kinda embarassing to her boyfriend since she did come off as a bit airheaded. Not in a mean way but in a very nice way. Like happy with no worries kinda. Still she'd be going on and on (could drink a lot, in fact that's all she did, never had the shabu shabu...). Soo Yang was like doing the sake bottle chugging imitation while she was going off in the back. Hahaha. One of the funniest times were when Nick and Soo Yang took out their IDs for comparison. Soo Yang looked like a regular OG with his beanie on and Nick looked like the American Taliban. Hahaha. Man, half of the table was all talking about work and stuff. It was like that the last time. They definitely bring their work home with them.
Whatever happened to Christmas slowdown? It seems like I'm getting piled with more work than usual. I bet its the end-of-season feeling that everyone gets. It's like, "Oh $hit, we forgot that we needed this be the end of the year!!!"
I'm so far ahead in the Naruto manga it's scary. I'm in the midst of the Leaf-genin vs Sound-nin battles and I'm just waiting for an upcoming Naruto vs Sasuke battle. In the anime, its all the way to just before the Gaara vs Sasuke battle. That's like 50 chapters ago!!!
I know its sacrilegious but...
I think I almost died laughing at this new Penny Arcade strip. So FUNNY!!!
And here I was thinking about getting an H2. Hahhaah. 10 mpg? uh no thank you, I don't live in Kuwait and have my own oilfield. Here's just how much people are hating it. Zoom Zoom Zoom!!!
A crazy Japanese programmer decided that excel would be the perfect gaming platform...geez...Take a look!!!
If you know me, I love food and all kinds of cuisine. I've been in the air a lot so this totally appealed to me. Bam!!!
At the House of Prime Rib, I said that I had a dog that would love the prime rib bone. Actually, I don't have a dog and the bone is for soup broth. :-P I do love those extra slices they give out though.
Forgot to mention that a couple weeks ago, the window washers came. Pretty freaky cause they were banging against my window. It was weird seeing these guys dangle outside my window on the 14th floor.
My birthday went well. I ended up treating everyone to a teppanyaki dinner at my place. I only spent $30 worth of stuff but everyone came away full. Granted, 5 people couldn't come due to this flu that's been going around. Still...more food for me right? Afterwards, we watched Friday the 13th and Gattaca. Don't ask.
Was going to shabu shabu last Friday but couldn't get enough interest. This friday though we have another group rounded up. Yummy. This time I'm going to prepare myself. I think the duck wonton noodle soup I had for lunch that day hindered my abilities.
Learn exercises from a chicken. Looks suspiciously like Para Para to me.
I saw this artsy IFC French film called "Thomas In Love". It's an interesting film about a agoraphobic who interacts with the futuristic world via videophone. It had this CG sex scene in the beginning that only the French could pull off.
Ever wonder where that latin "filler" text came from? I was looking to use some filler text in my code and remembered this text. Useful for padding.
This is a cool page that took some imagination.
Some crazy japanese guy made a video of himself beating Super Mario 3 in
11 min.
Of course, he didn't play ALL the levels.
Used warps and such still this guy is pretty impressive especially during
the final levels.
All that hopping around and "knowing" where and when things would show up
is freaky.
Download it here
I got a bluetooth usb dongle to hotsync wirelessly. It's great but the range is so bad in the office. Even with the 100m version I can only travel maybe 5 meters outside my office. I'm probably going to return it because it doesn't fulfill my needs at this point.
Love paying bills online. I don't like paying bills but not having to stamp and write out addresses is so great.
It's not everyday you ride to work in a Mercedes E-class which I did today. Apparently, the thing that I do is called "casual carpooling" in the bay area but in some other areas its called "slugging". Here are some horror stories.
So I got Yahoo SBC DSL working!!! Yay!!! Xbox LIVE works again!!! AND much better speeds too. Connection is GREAT!!! I spent some time just updating all of my LIVE games. Crimson Skies multiplayer is right on.
I'm really into yogurt these days. I usually have one in the morning. The last time this was usual for me was when I was 7 so....
Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday to Me!!!
I'm now 24 years old. Really ojiisan now. Supposedly people are going to come over and help me celebrate. I don't know who's coming though. Guess that's the surprise. Nor what people are bringing for food. I'll probably go the market and get some stuff just in case. wink wink
My friend Victor got a job at DT in LA. Yay!!! Congratulations!!!
Just finished ep 62 of Naruto. I already knew what happened after reading the manga (which is wayyyyyyyy farther) but I still got chills watching this pivotal episode.
I recently watched Marisa Tomie in "Happy Accidents". It's an IFC (I watch it more and more now...) movie involving a psycho person played convincingly by Vincent D'Onofrio and an over-dependant woman played by Tomie. Good movie. I was telling Leah about it when the guy at the Trader Joe's says "I know that movie!".
Feel kinda guilty cause I massaged my House of Prime Rib ache recently. It's been about 2 years since I've gone. Crazy huh? Back then I took pictures with my camcorder. This time around I took lots of quality pictures which I will share soon.
Anyways, I have more to add but not time. In the meantime, take English lessons! Right click on window, and select "PLAY" to start the lesson.
I was watching some PBS the other night and they had a show on how kids in India connected to the Internet. Some villages have kiosks in the town piazza (well it's not called a piazza but same idea) and these kiosks contain computer inside. Instead of a mouse, they have these push buttons that are connected to the computer inside. Try to play quake using those things. Hahahaha. I think that if I didn't have a job I may have applied for the Peace Corp. I really liked working with kids this summer.
Went to Tin's at dinner time once. Big mistake. Bad food and I could have gone across the street to D&A and gotten much better food.
Watched Samurai I again on Bravo I think. I watched this a long time ago when I was a kid. Couldn't stay up long enough to watch the last 2 though.
Just noticed that the permit in the elevator at Watergate has a section where it says for that the permit to operate is for. One of them is sidewalk. SIDEWALK. You need a permit to operate a sidewalk? Everything else made sense, elevator, escalator, but SIDEWALK?!!!
I'm probably going to use google's free site search somewhere on this page soon. Incredibly easy to implement.
Hmm, I've watched Naruto up to episode 61. Now stuck watching them come out week by week. Sux. I should start on some anime that Fred recommended. Ep 3 of that new Macross epic is out. Got it, watched it, yumm.
My klippan is settling in nicely.
I had an oil change recently. They tried to push all this extra stuff on me. I just did the better oil cause they car does have 100,000+ miles on it. They wanted to charge me like $50 for the air filter, $40 to clean transmission, $40 to clear the coolant intake, $15 to REALLY clear out the engine. I watched them to do the entire thing. Doesn't look that hard. Just need to know where to poke and pull.
As I was eating at the Korean place this kid ran in out of breath. Apparently, some kids were trying to beat him up and he ran into the restaurant to avoid them. At first we didn't see his pursuers but sure enough 3 min later they came around looking at all the stores in the plaza. About to cry, the poor guy. He called his mom and said that he was at a Chinese place, whereupon the hostess immediately said,"No Not Chinese, Korean!" Hahaha.
On Friday, I tried to do some holiday shopping after work but didn't see anything special. Afterwards though, I met up with Lih-Chern and Jeff and 6 of his friends for some good shabu shabu. Man, that place was awesome. All you can eat on Friday nights. We had reservations at 8:45 but didn't eat till 10 cause the party before us got $10 all-you-can-drink sooooo.... Anyways, I got to meet some really interesting people (almost all from Hawaii). One guy is moving down to CalPoly for grad school. We totally connected with our food obsessions. Both of us knew what we were talking about. House of Prime Rib...Uni. Hahahaha We're planning a visit to HOPR at a future time. It was just plate after plate of GREAT beef. We're not talking flank meat here. Really well marbelized stuff. And they weren't stingy either. We asked, we got a min later. No wonder we had to wait that long. Vegetables were great too and the waitresses were nice and not giving us looks every time we asked for more plates of meat (all told, I think we asked for 16 big plates for the entire group). I need to hang out with Jeff more. Even though I easily overmatched everyone there, you need to have people like that around or else you'll be the only one eating. Afterwards, ÿÿÿðE-ñw7Ç` |v <ÿÿà ÿÿü € ÿÿþ @ 7È 7Ç` € ÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿ 6ø«Á ÿ ÿ \ ` T of the cool things for me was figuring out what the rules were. Try figuring them out yourself.
