Eric’s Blog

Today we went to San Francisco for some good food at Cheesecake Factory and some good ballet at The Nutcracker in War Memorial Opera House. We had to wait for an hour for the seats at the Union Square Cheesecake Factory, so we shopped for some Christmas decorations in Macy’s and we took some pictures in Union Square.

We got outdoor seats today, and the weather was not bad. There were very few pigeons, though, which is weird, because pigeons used to take over the leftovers whenever outdoor guests finished their food. Maybe it’s because of the weather or maybe it’s because Cheesecake Factory or the City has been cracking down on pigeons? Either way, it was pretty pleasant. I ordered the Hibachi Steak, which was basically steak with teriyaki sauce with wasabi mashed potatoes. Initially, I thought the wasabi was going to be mixed in with mashed potatoes, but they actually just poured some over it. The steak was actually quite good, despite being a little bit too sweet and little-portioned for my taste. Mom had meatloaf, even though Ellen and I both recommended against it, and then she complained afterwards that it wasn’t good. I forgot what Ellen had. For the Cheesecake, Ellen had her Brownie Sundae Cheesecake, I think I had the Chocolate Mouse Cheesecake, and I think Mom had the Red Velvet Cheesecake. They were all pretty good, but Ellen’s was the best. I think three cheesecakes was too much, though, we should have ordered only two.

Afterwards, since we had enough time, we shopped for some more in Macy’s. It was crazy because lots of people were there trying to pick up cheap Christmas decorations. When we finished, we decided to walk from Union Square to the War Memorial Opera House on Van Ness and Grove. Initially, my plan was to order a taxi from Union Square to War Memorial Opera House, especially since it started drizzling a bit when we were in Union Square. However, the drizzling stopped, and we were able to successfully walk from Union Square to the opera house. The store owners selling umbrellas must be pissed. Before we made it to the opera house, however, we stopped by DSW Shoes on Powell, because Ellen wanted to see some boots that she wanted to buy. Mom said she had too many boots. As we walked on Market outbound (I’ll never get used to SF Muni directions), we saw that as we passed the more touristy areas, SF actually becomes very similar to LA in terms of how run-down it seemed. It wasn’t until the opera house and civic center that it became nice again.

Finally we arrived at the opera house. We arrived a bit earlier, at 6pm, and the show is starting at 7pm. So we walked around to see what there is to be seen. There were some merchandise for sale, but nothing that really caught our eyes. It seemed like a very historical building, and it was apparently where the first Nutcracker performance in the US was held. The performance was very enjoyable, I liked how they set everything in SF so that we could relate more. Mom and Ellen understood more than me, of course, beause I’m just a Philistine, but I still enjoyed the show. The San Francisco Ballet Orchestra was amazing, it sounded as if the sound was straight out of a CD player. The dancers were good, too, but not nearly as flawless. I think it was a bad idea for me to eat so much before watching something, because I almost fell asleep. It wasn’t because the performance was bad, perhaps it was because I’m not so intuned into the ballet world. It’s amazing what these people can do with their bodies, though. I especially liked the part with the snowflakes and where the different countries danced. I thought the audience clapped too much, but I guess that’s just the American way.

Today was Christmas. I don’t have any money, so I could only get Mom and Ellen cards from Ralph’s. I got them pretty creative cards, though. Ellen received a fuzzy bear card from me, and Mom received a card where the front had three 3D lightbulbs (they don’t actually light up, they’re just images printed on a piece of wood).

On the other hand, I got Indiana Jones DVD collection and a Stoudemire Knicks shirt from Ellen. From Mom, I received a $25 Cheesecake Factory certificate and a ticket to see The Nutcracker in San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House. Of course, I was really excited for gifts from both Ellen and Mom. I won’t have much time to watch Indiana Jones, but I’ll try to watch a Knicks-Warriors game or a Knicks-Clippers game while wearing the Stoudemire shirt. I’ve never seen The Nutcracker before, so I don’t know what to expect, but I think it’ll be good.

My Teradata pen ran out of ink today in csl lab at ucla. 🙁 sad. I guess that means I’ve been writing too much, should switch to typing stuff on the computer.

Today my iPod crashed, for a couple of minutes. This has never happened before. It just became unresponsive for some reason, even though the music was still playing. I tried the power button and hard-quitting it by holding the menu button. It came back a couple of minutes after. I was going to look up how to reset the ipod. Hope it doesn’t happen again.

Did laundry today. It was raining pretty hard. I was so disappointed today when I found out that India’s Oven’s buffet doesn’t open on Sunday. I specifically asked the lady in the restaurant last week about them opening on the weekends, but I guess she assumed that I read the open hours. They open on Saturday regular hours, but on Sunday they open aat 4pm, which means there’s no buffet, because the buffet is from 11:30-2. When I was coming back, the line 12 bus driver had his AC on very strong. In fact, as I stepped off the bus, I noticed that the outside (it was still raining) was significantly warmer than the inside of the bus. I don’t know what the bus driver was trying to pull, was he trying to keep people off the bus?

Went to sleep at around 11pm last night. someone came in at 2:30am and woke me up. I felt hungry and had to go to the restroom. So I ate a slice of ham and a slice of cheese, but I couldn’t really fell asleep. When I checked my cell phone, it was 5am already :-(. Ended up waking up at 11:30am, tried to go to gym, but then I found out that I forgot my gym stuff and had to go back to get it. Wasted a lot of time, wish I had my bike.

Downloaded and played Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky. These two games came free with a gog.com account. Should have never signed up for an account and waste time on more games. Fortunately, I used a strategy guide for the whole thing, meaning it didn’t take as long as it would if I played it without using one. There was a third game, Teen Agent, that was also given free with the gog.com account. I didn’t play that because it had the same ratings as Lure of the Temptress and that game was below average. I wasted the entire night playing these two games. I woke up in the afternoon the next day, and I was so tired that I basically couldn’t work for the next day.

Lure of the Temptress was not very good. It was Revolution Software’s first game, so I’ll cut them some slack. There were many failures. Firstly, the protagonist walked too slow, so it was a chore simply moving around. Also, some of the locations were too similar to each other, leading to confusion as to where you are. In addition, even though the game was mouse-driven, it feels like they basically based the interface on a text-based adventure game. There were dialogue boxes where one has to choose from subjects, verbs, and objects, to form a sentence to tell other people what to do. I would have stopped playing in the middle, but then I got a potion to turn into the eponymous Temptress temporarily, which was pretty cool, so I continued. There was a bug at the end of the game, leading to an impasse until I downloaded a newer version of the ScummVM emulator. The ending was pretty blah, you don’t even fight the Temptress. I thought when she turned into a tiger that you would have to fight her, but the main character just threw the stone to destroy the demon in the temptress and the fight was over.

The second game was better. Beneath a Steel Sky is probably Revolution Software’s most famous game. They took away the subject,verb,object interface and replaced it with a more sensible one, where you choose from different pre-constructed sentences, just like modern games. I liked how good the voice acting in this game was. Overall, this was a much more enjoyable experience than Lure of the Temptress, and I could recommend it to even people who don’t play point-and-click adventure games. I don’t play point-and-click games and even I loved it. The graphic quality is pretty good, too, and there was a real sense of immersion when playing this game.

Found a restaurant next to Westwood Coin Laundry that has all you can eat. It’s called India’s Oven. I’m planning to do my laundry next week while eating all-you-can-eat here.

Accidentally sat down on someone on my favorite couch in EGSA Lounge yesterday because I didn’t check to see if anyone was on the couch. Good thing I didn’t sit on the face side, that would be pretty embarassing :-/. He didn’t wake up, though, so I guess I didn’t disturb him that much. Too bad it wasn’t a hot girl.

Today I went with Robert to De Neve. He swiped me in with his card because I don’t even have a working Bruin Card. The food is pretty good there. I would have to say that it is better than Crossroads at Berkeley, for sure, but I don’t know if I would say it’s better than I-House or Clark Kerr. I would say that the food is equal in quality but there is a lot more at De Neve, so of course I had to try them all. I got pretty much everything they had, which included pizza, bbq chicken, mixed salad, fruits, rice bowl, various types of meats, and drinks. Pretty much everything I tried was good, and there were no sub-par food. We ate from 12-2. Well, actually, I ate from 12-2 and Robert ate in the first half-hour and last half-hour.