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

Turkey Day 07

Hot on the heels of the Halloween shenanigans, came Thanksgiving dinner–another American tradition I shamelesly pulled out of the freezer and reheated for a quick cultural snack. Also, Yen's away and I get the kitchen to myself. w00t! Unfortunately, she also took the camera with her *booo* so I had to rely on a late-coming guest's camera :(

The guests:

I hosted a bunch of Thanksgiving orphans for this–all manner of foreigners, away-from-homers and such.

The menu:
Most of the traditional things–turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, roast vegetable medley, stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy, I was fine with. I drew the line though, at the really "traditional" things like green bean casserole, which looks like this:

And can be made with these:

That's canned green beans, canned mushroom soup and packaged fried onions, kids. Sounds delicious, huh?? It's not entirely bizarre because America is one of the few places where the food tradition was still being created during the industrial era. Either that, or the pilgrims have really, really bad taste.

I can be such a food snob because I'm on my moral high ground, from being such an eco-shopper. The turkey was petite and organic, and most of the vegetables and fruits were from the farmer's market. Most everything else I got from Safeways, but organic. How much do I love California??

Due to the sad state of affairs with the camera though, not many pix to choose from. But, here's the view of my two, yes, TWO homemade pies! Sweet potato to the left, was ..*meh*..(though it got the thumbs-up from the locals) and my trusty apple pie already demolished in front.

No one died or even spat into their napkins, so am declaring it a huge success. Hoorah!

The post that nearly got away:

Here's a bit of a round-up of the things that I've been up to as of (kind of) recently:

Took a trip out to the Google Campus in Mountain View to partake in some top-secret paid user study for Blogger. OK the study isn't so top secret, but what they asked me is, so my lips are sealed there. Suffice to say there's heaps of cool things going down for Blogger. Woooo. Also I scored two juices and some snacks from the waiting room. Booya! Every trip to Google is delicious. Pictured is the seating area servicing some of the 14 free restaurants on-site.

Took a trip to Palo Alto, near Stanford to get some dinner. Ended up at Cafe Del Dogge a home, nay headquarters, for coffee snobs. It's part of an Italian chain, so things are pretty damn...Italian..inside. The baristas for one (good) the menu for another (bad). I'm no good with coffee after dinner so I got a hot chocolate. Even my friend the ardent coffee snob and Italophile, who's been there heaps, managed to get confused amongst the three kinds of hot chocolate and ordered the above. Looks good right? Tasted like...well, gooey 70% dark chocolate. Looks a LOT better than it tastes. Call me an infidel, but dark chocolate is a culinary deal breaker for me.


Other strange but more potent drinks to be found at RoHan Lounge, where we went for some birthday drinks. What it lacks in curb appeal it makes up for in atmosphere inside. The music is a nice level for conversation and the bartender was cute (OK not so much an objective view, but still). Being a fusion kind bar, the drinks are Asian-themed. I can't fault them cos they had a drink named after me, which was nice of them to do. The Ming totally kicked my butt though, so I guess I should be proud that even as a mixture of beverages I am strong.


And finally, here are some banana crumb muffins I made. They kicked ass if I do say so myself. The crumbs on top are basically sugar, butter and cinnamon, so deliciousness is guaranteed. A few steps to fatty-boombah-ness is probably also guaranteed, but what's life without some luxurious baked goods.

Happy (belated) Anzac Day

Oh man. Just got net back after the whooole of yesterday and most today in the wilderness. The horrors! Here's what was meant for yesterday:

With biscuits, just like with primary school kids, the goody-two-shoes are always up front

When we first got to Australia, Sis and I were the only Asian kids at school and ANZAC day befuddled us somewhat (Anzac biscuits, on the other hand, were a far easier sell). As far as we knew, there was a big concert on the bitumen (paved courtyard), the flag was raised and then all of us had our memories sorely tested when we got to the second chorus of the national anthem. Possibly because it had only become the official anthem two years before.

On further inspection, it seemed to be a day marking a great military defeat. I was no expert on war (I double-majored in My Little Pony and Kylie), but thought it kind of weird that Australians honoured losing. It was only later I realised it was more about honouring trying your best, no matter the consequence. I can't claim to have learnt much from Attadale Primary, but I can still nail that second chorus.

You know you're in San Francisco when...

...your cute welcome cake says "Welcome to the Bay Area", because REAL San Franciscans know that "San Francisco" only means the city bit and does not include all the bits around it. OK, geography lesson over, unless that's the kind of thing you're really into.

What a difference a month makes

Bugger me. I've been here for a month already.

I know, I know. What the hell have I been up to that I couldn't be arsed to put up a few pictures and some smart aleck comments about the Americans. What could be easier!

It's been, shall we say, fantastic. Other people, when they leave one country for another, they may just take a direct plane there. Those people have no imagination and probably do sudoku for fun.

Here's how I did it:

First, after finishing work at Chinese New Year, was the farewells. They were fun, bittersweet, but mostly, immensely calorific. Coming on the back of CNY celebrations there was a fair bit of gorging on everything in sight.

Then, there was Sydney, where I got to hang with my fave little guy David and my aunt and uncle. Then I did some bbq-eating with my old roommate and met up a uni friend.

Then, home to Perth and more Aussie goodness–catching up with all my favourite Perthians. Can't get more Aussie than this pic. Also I had an interview at the US Consulate for a visa. I just about gave myself an ulcer over the interview, which, as is my luck, turned out to be nothing at all.

Then, back to Singapore to look one last time at this godforsaken chair that style forgot, and poof! Just like that, a chapter in my life over.

I spent a few days in Tokyo to break up the trip, staying in hip Shinjuku with my ex-colleague and his gf. We went to bars that baffle me still–one involved ping pong balls. My host mum, who recovered from serious illness just one month before, came to town to take me round. She out-walked me at the Imperial gardens (above) which, really, goes to show how useless I've become fitness-wise.

..and I made an entirely useless trip to Odaiba, an island off Tokyo. Useless cos I didn't know in order to get home I had to leave exactly 30 min from getting off. I did get to see Puppy *the World, though, which is a shop where you can rent dogs to walk around the island. I would have gone with Pups for Pounds as a name, but that's just me.

And finally, hoorah, hoorah. Home in SF, where I've taken up my position as house elf for Big Sis. The cherry blossoms were kind enough to come out to welcome me.

We've been on one road trip since I got here. No points for guessing where :p It's not something you really do in Singapore, and I've got quite the appetite for it now.

Other than that, it's been a buffet of day-to-day fun things. I've met all of Big Sis' SF 'family'. They're a great bunch and a big part of feeling settled here. I was Miss Apprehension about the move, but I think it works out for the best. It's perhaps been a tad tooo fun cos the jobsearch only just got started, heh.

The time wasn't mis-spent. Now that I've had some time for things to roll around in my head, something has clicked over and I'm sure what I want/don't want to do. Which, for me, is nothing short of a bloody miracle.

Some housekeeping:
I'm not feeling the design at the moment, but don't want the plain white, so I'm gonna leave it first, k?