Thursday 24 January 2008

La La La


Yen had a work conference in Long Beach, which is south of LA, so I tagged along for the free hotel toiletries. Woo!

I had high hopes for LB. It's apparently often used for a lot of shooting (like for the O.C.) to stand in for other parts of the world, because it's close enough to LA but in a cheaper zone to film. Maybe I was there in the off-season but on first glance: meh. Great Art Deco architecture, but everything downtown was a bit too pretty. Gentrified out of all character.

So I braved the more ghetto-looking streets to find something less bland. One of the cute finds was the accurately monikered secondhand bookshop, Bertrand Smith's Acres and Acres of Books.


Ol Bert wasn't foolin'

With one gigantic room each for fiction and non-fiction it's a veritable time-swamp in there. I nearly didn't even go to Nordstrom's Rack because of it! (nearly is good as not right?)

Best bookshelf ever

With the maze of shelves and the musty smell, looking for a book isn't so much a bibliographical search as an archaeological expedition. So. awesome.

Two other things I didn't know about LB:
1) It's home to the second largest Cambodian population outside Cambodia.
2) It's also home to Ferris Bueller's house (so rad!)

Then came the trip to LA proper. It went like this, but less fun-looking.

On our first proper day in LA, I was eager to see some of this beach culture everyone keeps talking about, so of we went to Santa Monica. It took bloody ages to get there of course and parking is a nightmare. And there's a lot of panhandlers. Even more so I think than SF. Why did we come here again?? Oh yeah, we saw the skate-boarding dog of Youtube fame being filmed by a Japanese crew at Venice Beach. Excite!



Now I know no one reads this, y'all only wait for the food pix, so here ya go.

Heart-attack-in-a-bun from Pink's the legendary hotdog stand:


Fantastic pub-style Korean food from a restaurant with entirely Korean signs and menu. I love that I have no idea what we ate! it was goood.


Then, some culture at the Getty Center. It's a massive white structure atop a hill that's more akin to a fortress from the front, but inside has lovely home decorating ideas for me:


I wish!

Things we didn't get to:
• Hollywood sign
• the Chinese Theatre
• Sidewalk of fame
• any kind of star (being the weekend of the Sundance Festival everyone was in Utah) :(
• a Bitten(Sarah Jessica Parker's real cheap line of cute clothes) store that wasn't ravaged already. I am STILL bitter about this one :p

Sunday 13 January 2008

Cleaning Machine




Knackered! The Slave Driver (aka big sister) decided to get her money's worth before I leave by getting some spring cleaning in today. Chinese New Year is a big thing for our fam, so all home turf has to be given a top-to-toe before Feb 7 this year. Any cleaning on new year's day will mean you'll be mired in muck for the rest of the year. wtf! Xmas prep involves picking trees, putting up decorations and, if you're lucky, lavish amounts of baking. What kind of holiday practices did the Chinese come up with? Cleaning-related ones!! Seriously.

Well, the way we do it here is wake up with the first rays of noon. Watch the food channel for awhile. This is mandatory. Then, from under the covers on the couch, Slave Driver says "Ready to start?"

So ensues a good couple hours of getting our hot soapy water on. Then, someone will get hungry (not saying who. hint: not me). When the snacks come out, the TV comes on, and somehow we're making more progress on our Netflix DVDs of cheesy movies than the kitchen clean-out.

Cheesy movie comes to an end sooner than later thankfully and we get the rest of the job done in time for dinner. Finally benefiting from living in an apartment the size of 3 international postage stamps put together!

Saturday 5 January 2008

Suck it, Monster!!

Damn straight

Dear Monster,

You may have noticed I disabled my account on your site. That's because I have new plans now, for my career and my life. Fulfilling, inspired, outrageous plans. Plans that I didn't get from you. The only opportunities you provide people is a lengthy one-way trip to Sucksville, with free tickets to Spamapalooza.

Your contribution to my jobsearch thus far has been a relentless barrage of "updates"which were consistently the most pathetic, anaemic collection of outdated, unrelated, unappealing positions. For the last time, I DON'T want to do PR for the Navy. The US armed forces is going to need much more than a professional lipstick applier anyway, to remedy what ails them.

That position was on there for at least 6 months. Which begs the question, has anyone EVER got a job from your site?? I am wont to think your business plan goes more like this:
Revenue from ads for grad schools and selling contacts to spam companies-90%
Revenue from employers-10%


So, good riddance from my Inbox, Monster updates, I am off to a better life, free from the humiliation of being part of your ginormous UNsuccess stats. Don't let the application hit you on the ass when it closes!

Best Regards,
customer #567890163228

P.S. I know you don't care, but I disabled my portfolio blog too. Hah!

Tuesday 1 January 2008

Adios '07

Finally got to pop my bottle of Dom at a friend's place tonight. We counted down to the delayed telecast of the traditional Times Square festivities. A first! Which is a good way to start the year.

Not to get all feng-shui on you, but I have a good feeling about 2008. It'll be an exciting time. I've got lots to share, but I don't want to jinx it, so watch this space!