Steamers

Went out on Saturday night for the first time in a long while. A couple of my friends wanted to go to a jazz bar, and invited a group of us to go. And so we did.

One Car, Three Stooges, taken after the fact

We met up at a restaurant in Anaheim, K'ya (pronounced KAI-YA, supposedly Hawaiian). The theme of the food there is street food from around the world. The fare was simple, but delicious, and cheaper than you might expect, considering the ambiance and location. A good place for a date.

I commented that the restaurant must save a bundle on washing dishes, since the victuals were all served on paper, like real street food.

Images:
Left, Top: Jamaican Jerk
Left, Center: Grilled Scallops and Shooms

Right: Loco Moco

After our meal, we headed out to the jazz club. This is the moment where a (somewhat) monumental event took place: I used the compass on my iPhone practically for the first time. I was told to go North on Harbor Blvd, and had a bit of trouble figuring out north without being able to see near by landmarks, so I whipped out the iPhone and promptly made a U-turn. Another car was not so lucky; they were tardy by a half hour.


When we arrived at Steamers, located in downtown Fullerton, we(as in, our car) was unsure as to where to park, I was sure that there was much parking available, but nowhere as close as we wished it to be, being that Steamers was located in the popular SOCO night district. So we found a place in a back alley to park, hoping to whatever deities were out there that the car would be safe.

We entered Steamers, which was packed to the gills. Thankfully, we had a reservation(under the name Lazarus(spelling?), really.) and we had a space for ten prepared close to the stage. 

The theme for the night was Latin Jazz. The band(the name of which I don't recall) was good, and got better after I got a couple drinks into me. I had the house's Blue Note Martini(strong, sweet, recommended) and a Jack an' Coke(what's there to say, it's a Jack an' Coke). The rule I have for bars is to always try the house special first. The said, after comparing everyone's drinks, the Sangria sucked, but the appletini was candy-liciousness, but not at all manly.

There was no dance floor, but two of our friends managed to find a space and had a coupla steps. The space looks bigger than it really is, mostly just a strip two feet across and five feet long. They made what they could of it.

I really enjoyed music, just closing my eyes and letting the sounds invade my head, reverberating inside my skull. Of course, the same could not be said of others in our party, whom bore quickly(the youth of today...sigh).

Of course, everything must come to a balance, and our check came.
My charge was:
$8 cover charge
$7.5 Blue Note
$7 Jack an' Coke
$2 IRS
$4 Gratuity            

$28.5 Total

Please note I had the minimum two item requirement per person/per set. Also note that the cheapest thing on the menu was a Coke at $3 a can +glass&ice, no refills. They have an excellent espresso bar, I heard.

I also covered a friend, who's birthday I had missed last week for the Thanksgiving get together(see Good Night post). His tab was $40. For the entire night, including dinner for myself, I spent around $90USD. Not cheap. I only planned to spend half of that, and would have, if birthdays and guilt didn't come into play.

The night was fun, and new experiences are always welcome. Hopefully, they won't always be so overpriced.

Now pondering the feasibility of opening a jazz club.

Gummi Bears, Serious Business

I'm a salty kinda guy.

After running that through your head and coming to all the wrong conclusions, I'll rephrase that statement.

I'm a guy who prefer salty snacks over sweet. As a general rule, I avoid candy, as anything too sweet literally makes my teeth hurt. And no, it's not because I have cavities. I'll eat sweets, but not in large quantities and mostly out of politeness or for curiosities' sake.

I suppose it's more a "growing up in a Asian house" thing, as Asians did not traditionally have the gratuitous amounts of sugar that the Westerners did, and their snacks and foods are representative of that. I grew up eating nori(seaweed) rice crackers and pickled plums. My mother did the grocery shopping for most of my life, and I eat whatever she hands me. Like most mothers, Mother didn't hand out candy without prompting, so I never got into the habit of eating sweet things. The situation has not changed much over the years, even as I grew up and encountered more Halloweens. I never did develop the taste for chocolate bars and fruit flavored candy rolls.

But like all things in this world, there are exceptions. I do, occasionally(maybe once every three months or so), seek out candy.


I love gummies. Gummy bears especially. Specifically the tiny ones.

The large neon green one in the center is the standard size bear, for scale.

I've tried every gummy bear I've ever run across, from small confectioners to factory produced 5lb bags. Nothings ever beat the taste of these cute little things dissolving on my tongue.

The sense of satisfaction I get when I eat them is similar to what I'd imagine I'd feel if I were to rid the world of a thousand idiots(related note: watch the movie Idiocracy, or at least the intro), except the murders that are actually happening leave very little evidence and are accompanied by slight sugar high.

You can find these things at your local Sweet Factory(like the one in Brea Mall).

SkiFree

So I was reading xkcd today, and the strip was about that old game SkiFree. Everyone my age and older who ever interacted with a old Windows PC has played SkiFree. In fact, I do believe it was the first computer game I ever played. Now, the first computer game I ever bought was Command&Conquer, but the first game I ever played was SkiFree.

And it was awesome.

But the xkcd strip told me something I never knew about. Apparently, if you press the [F] key, you can ski faster than the yeti and escape death! So I promptly went online and downloaded the 32bit(the original SkiFree was 16bit) version of SkiFree here and tried it.

It worked.

Imagine that.

When Technology Fails, Book Review

I'm fond of living. Really. Sometimes, I do things that really risk said life, but I really am fond of it.

And because I'm so fond of my life, I try to learn things that allow me to keep it. Survivalist, I am.

There are a number of books and online media available(not all true) for any survival minded person, but never have I seen such a comprehensive and in-depth collection of knowledge in one place.

Everyone who cares about their life enough to learn how to keep it during a disaster should have this book. Keep it next to your copies of the Survival Guide(both the SAS and Zombie editions) and whatever maps you might have.

This book has everything you may need to know during an emergency or disaster, but goes further to give you instructions and suggestions on making yourself self reliant and sustainable. The topics it covers includes the basic bushcraft topics, but also includes simple chemistry and metal working. There is also a section on energy and power, as modern civilizations would not be modern without the electricity to keep it running. I can see anyone with a working mind and enough willpower would be able to survive years with the knowledge in this book.

Get it at Amazon here.

Good Night

Yesterday, I had two planned activities. And I did both. One was enjoyable, the other left me somewhat unbalanced inside.

Yesterday morning, my internal alarm clock woke me up at 0700 because I was supposedly to meet up BWI(see Carbon Footprint post) at 0845. Not really wanting to go to whatever nonsensical event they had planned this week, I made an agreement with my club president the night before. If she woke me up in time for me to make it to the event, I would go. Otherwise....well. I figured that having a cute girl wake me up in the morning was payment enough for me to do whatever it was they were doing for a coupla hours.

I rolled over and went back to sleep. 45 minutes later, my phone rang.

That morning, we(BWI) were to head off in support of UCLA BWI(seems they need a lot of support) and help them with the restoration of some creek that ran thorough the UCLA campus.

So there we were, three cars, 15 people driving some 50 miles across Los Angeles County to help the few UCLA BWI members that deigned to show(some 4-5). When we reached UCLA, we spent a half hour trying to find the parking structure we were directed to park at, and paid 10USD a car for that same privilege(that's two hours of work after taxes for most people). UCLA is clearly not lacking in funds, seeing as they have some 20 parking areas, all at 10USD/car and all having at least a hundred cars in them.

Already, a unsettling feeling had grown in the pit of my stomach. We came to volunteer, and it's already cost us 10USD not counting time and gas money to do so, paid directly to UCLA.

So we meet up with the UCLA BWI members and were handed tools (after signing the ever present non-liability waiver) and given an explanation as to what we were to do that morning. Apparently, we were to remove some invasive plant life from the creek area make room for the native flora to grow back in. Basically, we were weeding, for free, because someone at UCLA was smart enough to slant it as volunteer work so they wouldn't have to pay people to do their weeding for them.

So there we were, squatting on our haunches in the dirt, digging and pulling up grass and weeds. With our group and the fraternity that had also showed up to fill their volunteer quota for the quarter, we had some 40-50 people weeding in the creek bed.

That's not me, BTW. I'm more hardcore.

This is me, jumping on the shovel handle.

I immediately figured that someone at UCLA was extremely clever. Not only does UCLA get their weeding done for free, but they also get the income from the parking fees of the people that came to help UCLA during their time of "need."

Honestly though, UCLA is clearly a well off school. Compared to all the other BWI chapter campus', UCLA's campus was by far the most posh, for the lack of a better word. Having us go there was like asking the poor to help the needy rich. It really was a case of the rich getting richer, at the expense of the unwitting poor.

I suppose it wasn't all bad. I got to meet some new people and explore the UCLA campus a bit.

I still want my 10 bucks back though.

After I left that den of (insert something not nice here) and the group of obliviously naive volunteers(who were happy with their day of "good deeds"), I went to meet with my usual crew of friends.

It was an early Thanksgiving get together, with a small footnote: it was also a birthday(I got him some nun chucks I looted from work). It took place in the apartment of our friend's girlfriend, who made dinner for us with her roommates. Beyond the chauvinistic connotations, the gathering brought a warm, fuzzy feeling into my cold heart.

We had good food, good company, and good conversation.

Never mind the facts, that most, if not all, of us were college students living off our parent/guardian's dime.
Never mind the fact that most of us would graduate next year and have to scrabble desperately to find jobs.

We were all together, without a care in the world. It was a good night.

I wished nights like these could last forever.


In other news, I met a cat today. It was pretty.

Another Friend

It's amazing how many people I know blog, but I never knew until I started blogging myself.

Here's another one: tiffanytai.blogspot.com. It's really random, just like her. She can literally change subject mid-sentence. If you aren't used to her, you'd quickly be lost.

Trance Around the World

Goddamn, this is hot shit: http://www.trancearoundtheworld.com/ Internet Radio.

Also, gotta love the Groove Salad at http://somafm.com/.

Recently can't get Fireflies by Owl City out of my head.

Too busy with Harvest Moon for a longer post, just wanted to deculture.

Distant, yet closer

Just like everyone else in this world, I have two genetic donors: my father and my mother. From each of these two donors, I have additional groups of people with whom I share genetic coding, groups consisting of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, not to mention the in-laws. Although both sides of the family are from Taiwan(Taipei area, specifically), only my father's side of the family has since emigrated into the United States. The entirety of my mother's side of the family, excluding my mother, still remains in Taiwan, and shows no sign of wanting to move to this day.

For the longest time, I had no sense of family beyond my mother and father, and with only two people to worry about(and seeing as they could more than take care of themselves), I lacked a sense of belonging to anything greater. That is, till I visited Taiwan for the first time.

We(Father, Mother, Yours Truly) do not get along well with my father's side of the family. Although their proximity to us is about 1/270 of the proximity of my mother's side of the family, we are far closer to Mother's family than Fathers. While my father may feel different, seeing as he grew up with his side of the family, I do not feel any familial bonds that connect me to my father's brothers and sister. My cousins seem more like casual friends than anything else. For many reasons, this side is broken.

All my sense of family outside of the nuclear come from my mother's side. I am always eager to visit them in Taiwan when vacation comes along. Interacting with my mother's family truly gives me the feeling of familial bonds. When I am with them, I can understand why people go to such distances for family. My father is closer to my mother's mother than he is to his own. They are the people I willingly invite to stay at our house for months at a time if they could. In their eyes, I can see their openness and welcoming thoughts towards me. I return home(for that is where I consider my home, with my family) as often as I can, willingly shelling out thousands of dollars for airplane tickets every time.

I feel the same as I do with a select few of my closest friends, who I now consider part of my family.
MY family is growing, even though some have passed on.


I understand what family is now, and I will say this:

To keep my family safe, I would destroy the world.

Petty Crimes

So my buddy, Alun (blog The Suburban Dwellers Almanac) had his car broken into 4 days ago. It happened in Tustin while we were visiting a friend. My Emotions post was about the drive back from that event. His back window was smashed in, and some of his drum equipment was stolen(not the drums themselves, he left those at home, thank God). I actually parked my car two spaces down the side street we were situated in, but I left 2 hours before in order to give my other friend, Wolf, a ride home early. I don't really know how angry Alun is, but there's an anger inside of me knowing that someone would dare rob from my friend. Not to say that we're special and should not be robbed from, far from it. It's just the fact that it happened and I couldn't do anything about it.

I'm no stranger to thievery, being the victim of such several times in my life. My first memory of being robbed was when I was 7, when my family returned from a day at work to find the patio door smashed in and everything in a mess, especially in the bonus room, which we had converted into the office for the family business. I don't want to say exactly how much the thief/ves made off with, but I will say the first number was not one(1) and it was a five(5) digit figure. After that event, that house truly became a castle. We had iron workers come by and install steel doors and window grills on everything, upstairs and down. We had a security system installed, one with a specific device to detect glass breaking. Also, we got a pair of Rottweilers(Allison and Rambo, though they were more likely to lick a thief than attack him).

That house was never burglarized again.

While I was in high school, I had a car window smashed in and the car ransacked. I didn't have much inside, the thief ran off with my emergency overnight bag full of clothes. No big loss.
Around the same time, I was mugged twice and and held up once. It was the nature of the family business that I usually had to go to the shadier parts of LA county. I suppose back then I acted and dressed like a walking target. But after making some friends in the area, and getting a little smarter, I started thinking about things differently. The world isn't the happy peaceful place that school taught me to believe. I've been stabbed(not so deeply that some fishing line, a lighter, and a needle couldn't fix), and I had buckshot in my leg. These aren't the signs of a peaceful and safe society.

I took off the rose colored glasses the liberal world never wishes to remove. It's not the guns that kill people, it's the one that pulls the trigger. And they do it for any reason they want. It's a war on the mind. Do you run, hid behind words and avoid the bad areas? Do you shake your head at the people who are robbed, stabbed, shot, raped, and killed everyday, saying they deserved it for being in the bad part of town? Or do you go out there, and show them that not everyone is helpless against those predations, that there are dogs among the sheep?

I changed myself. It's made me a colder and more cynical person, but I felt it necessary. You who believe that bad men are inherently good and are forced to do violence, do not forget that they still do violence, and it hurts you the same no matter how good the bad men are inside.

Now I never leave the house unarmed. I dress like I have what I have and I'm keeping what I have. My driver side door has scratches from when I smashed it into the side of a would be car jacker. The last time someone pulled a knife on me, I pulled my own. He tagged me, but his knife was a dull piece of shit he probably never maintained in his life. It barely made it through my jacket. He ran, after I showed him the importance of having good equipment, knowing how to use it, and taking care of said equipment.

If someone ever finds me dead in an alley, they won't label me a victim.

Victims don't fight back.

Watch Over Me

(Introspection Warning, reaffirmation of existence below)

No, this post isn't about Big Brother, or The Man. While I am suspicious about those kinds of activities by the government, I don't believe that I have reached the point where my own government is interested in my activities(except maybe the IRS, but they're interested in everyone).

I'm talking about the older me's. By older, I mean the ones that came before, the me from last year, the year before, the one from grade school. The one without all the experiences that I have now. The one free of heartache and bloodshed. The innocent me.

I wonder what they would think of what I am now. What I've done, what I've become. The man I am today.

Would they think that I'm cool? Would they be proud that they would one day become the current me?

Or would they be horrified, and shake their heads at how my mindset is now?

But this post isn't just about myself. It's also about the others that I believe are watching over me from the sky, or from the depths of the underworld. These "spirits," for the lack of a better word, are all those that are no longer present here with us in the material world, with only the memories ever reminding us of their existence.

Friends, Ancestors, and those brothers in all but blood. Those who I will join when my own time comes.

Watch over me, all of you.

I will make you proud.