DC ILLING

Conversation with a bus driver

2010-06-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated this in quite a while but I just had the coolest chat with a bus driver that I really wanted to write about.

It was about 8:50pm at the bus stop on Q and Connecticut. I was sitting in the shelter/overhang area next to one of the bus drivers on her lunch break. She was a tall black woman probably in her early thirties and we just sorta started talking. I really like talking with strangers but I really need to be in the right mood to do it and I guess today was one of those days. She sorta made it easier cause these British tourists were asking her how to get to Georgetown and then what would be a good place to meet somebody. She turned and asked me, and being a person who's been to georgetown twice I had no idea so I said "iunno, wisonsin and M?" which is a relatively major intersection. She agreed and the brits were on there way.

Once you sort of have an opening with someone it's much easier to start a conversation so I noted that I never really go to Georgetown because i'd have to ride my bike there and I'm too lazy to do that. Then from there we had a conversation going and she explained to me how the DC bus system is run really well and that people who need to get their lunch break are dispatched relief drivers and that as a result no one ever misses their lunch. Then I was able to ask her about if buses were slower in the summer and she told me they definetely were because of all the toursits, either asking for directions, or even just the amount of jaywalking builds up. Not to mention the delays from the presidential/diplomatic convoys which freeze Connecticut Avenue regularly. She told me that when a bus passes you it's probably cause a bus behind them caught up and that when the buses run on time the schedule makes it so less standing crowds form.

I think by this point we were cool and she ended up telling me that she used to be a dean at a college and got laid off so she was driving buses. She'd majored in English as an undergrad and had two masters degrees in organizational management and some other business admin related field. She used to teach classes at her school in VA and was in the process of studying for her PhD in organizational management. She lamented that people treated bus drivers like they were dumb and lacked education without knowing the whole story.

I told her that her story was super indicative of 2010. Well educated folks, working to get even more well educated, stuck working random jobs to make ends meet and that she should really consider writing a book or something about her experiences. She got kind of excited and started saying how there were a lot of parralels with her education and her current work because "management is getting people to do what you want for your goals" and that as a bus driver she still has to do this with her passengers. I said something like "yeah you have to be, ok you have to get off the bus... cause it's the end of the line" and she found it hilarious and said now she really does want to start writing about it. I really hope she does and I'm gonna keep an eye out for it.

Woo talking to strangers!

I should update this more

2010-03-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

I'm in a coffee shop in greenwhich village and i haven't been able to use the bathroom because the toilet was clogged and the girl working here was like i can't fix it cause i'm the only one here. So i plunged it for her and after wards realized they were out of toilet paper. Now i have to go somewhere else and i'm not even done with my coffee. FML

2010-03-09T20:03:00.001-08:00

LA is great if you know the right people. The Bay Area is great even if you don't.

REVELATIONS

Random Encounters of the Last Few Days

2010-02-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

So in the last 4 days these random things have happened to me.

Chilling at a crosswalk with my ipod on and this sorta crazy looking homeless dude starts talkin to me. He mumbled (in a friendly way for a while) and then told me I should power my ipod with a potato. So on one hand it's true that potatoes can make electricity I wonder how many it would take for this to really work. Anyways he was nice.

Walking back from a bar me and two of my house mates say this shorter latino dude down accross the street carrying a big knife. He started to threaten us. It was awkward so we started running and saw a cop and told him what was up. I'm sad it made me take a detour from doing to Don Juan's for some drunk munchie pupusas but at least i didn't get stabbed.

Waiting for Mable and Gloria on 16th and U I was standing in a bus stop for shelter (this was during Snowpocalypse II) and there was this dude in like a german airforce flight suit. We chatted for a while over some ciggarettes he offered me and discussed his previous deployment as a Marine in Iraq and the difficulty of securing the Afghan/Pakistani border. We were in agreement that predator drones would not win the war. He was cool. His name was fred and he was on his way to law school eventually but was just looking for a bar.

Walking around last night I saw some kids throwing ice blocks at cars. They totally broke a cabbie's windshield. The cab driver was furious. When i went to CVS it looked like the cops had caught them but at the same time I thought the kids who did it were wearing all black so iunno.

Just now, at the starbucks I'm sitting in, a guy comes up to me and hes like if you let me use your computer for 10 mintues i'll give you 20 bucks. I was like what are yuo gonna do? and he was like check my email to get some numbers. So I told him i'd do it if he let me type. So he dropped 20 on my laptop and I was like ok lets do this. I was sorta worried he was like a terrorist or something but when we logged on to his hotmail it was all facebook and amazon updates. Anyways we found an email with some phone numbers and it took like 5 minutes and then he left. Easiest 20 I ever made.

merry fishmas! SNOWPOCALYPSE II

2010-02-07T23:55:00.000-08:00

I must apologize i've gotten really terrible at updating this, which i'm sure is sort of the way all blogs go. a big part of it is i think my daily life is getting more routine and mundane so there's less and less where i'm like AWESOME I NEED TO BLOG ABOUT THIS. anyways let's see what i can remember from the past week or is it two weeks now?

lesse

monday i had lunch with the girl from the cap event and we were supposed to meet at 1 at union station food court but i got confused and went at noon. excellent. On the plus side i found another taco bell in dc! i've got half a mind to go there during my lunch breaks since the ride is only like 8 minutes but it feels sort of silly to pay the 2 buck fare for the bell. As I was waiting for her I walked around the food court and felt like Don Fannuci from the Godfather part 2 cause everyone was offering me samples of food. For some reason no matter what the food stall it was always bbq chicken?

i think tuesday i went to watch gtown play university of southern florida at verizon center. random i know, but scott (ignats friend) had tix for $4 and that's pretty good four dollar entertainment. it was a big upset too not that i really care. the gtown crowd was really lackluster but their mascot jack, the bulldog, did wear a fetching rugby polo. one of my coworkers is a gtown alum and a pretty hardcore fan and she told me the story of the hoyas and their cheer hoya saxa which means "what stones!" like "what stones our defense are, not allowing a single yard!" what makes it extra geeky is that it's not just latin or greek, it's both.

This weekend was also SNOWPOCALYPSE II which was pretty rad. ESPECIALLY CAUSE I HAVE A 3 DAY FUCKING WEEKEND! but on a more annoying note when i went to buy groceries on thursday (mind you this is only a 2 day storm) fucking everyone panics and stocks up like it's the end of the world. This means no produce, no meat, and waiting at least an hour in line. It's not like when they're snow out you can't go anywhere. Fucking redic. really. mcdonalds is open, so is your beloved chipotle, now stop over reacting and buy a sensible amount. It doesn't help that the cashiers at grocery stores, or stores in general are all at least 4 times slower than in CA. This really makes me wish everyone just did everything on commission. incentive to work faster cause i swear they make a point of not trying and just chatting with their friends like you haven't been waiting for over an hour.

FRIDAY - it started snowing at like 12 so i got to leave work early! man seh! i went to this place called "so's your mom" which is a deli which used to be owned by some new yorker but now by what appears to be a semi fobby korean family. The girl that works there is pretty cute so i might try to eat there more. i'm just sayin. I also felt like it was finally time to buy some booze. I went to this liquor store on the way back to my place since in DC you can't buy liquor in grocery stores. I saw these two very obvious 15 year olds with 1 fake id between the two of them buy a handle of sky, a 5th of smirnoff, and some cranberry juice. I even commented ot the dude working there after they left that there was no way those kids were 21. he said the ID was good so i guess there it goes. Anyways I was feeling mcnulty-y so i wanted to get some Jameson. And i did. and it came with 2 free tumblers. i rule. That night Cynthia from ucla/seng and mables friend had a party. it was like 90's themed and they played all the songs that made me wish i was older in middle school. Those songs were way more fun to dance to. they were still club bangers but they felt like they had more soul. perhaps too much because the speakers got blown out. Either way they had a half keg, some spiced cider, and gratuitous bottles of beer. The wind going there and back was insane. literally had an umbrelly completely horizontal cause thats how the snow was blowing. straight man vs wild.

Saturday was also just madness. The district was pretty much completely covered in snow and there were enourmous snowball fights going on at meridian hill/malcolm x park and dupont circle. Early in the morning I realized that all 3 of our toilets were out of TP so I suited up and made my first brief foray into the madness. Luckily I survived and made it back with 6 rolls. Pete, one of my housemates, let me borrow his spare boots for the trek into the great arctic wilderness. As we ventured out you would see all sorts of cool stuff. The sort of hilly street near my house had a guy skiing on it. That's pretty cool. DCSKI should be like a thing ppl do (maybe SKIDC is better?) I think in cities where it snows a lot people don't all go outside and play but this was essentially record setting snow for DC (twice this winter!) and was really like an awesome public event. Like literally just tons of people walking around outside. It was pretty cool since the snow really flattened out the difference between the sidewalk and the road which is sort of symbolic of how these two spaces are designated for different things (vehicles v ppl) but since this line was covered in ice everyone just walked in the street. The occasional car would go by but this felt really old school in that the road was for pedestrians and the odd vehicle which i guess would have been a horse drawn carriage back in the day.

It really speaks to the isolating effect of cars. You dont' really see the people in your community, you just drive your enclosed metal shell, listening to your own music, and doing your best not to make eye contact with others cause it's awkward.

Meridian Hill/Malcolm X park was pretty sweet. Lots of dogs, people playing football, making snowmen, and at the end there was at least a 400 person snowball fight ongoing. The steps at the end of the park had iced over and people were sledding/skiing/ snowboarding down them. It was pretty amazing, there were lines and people cheering. Def some empty beer cans cause this was essentially the snowpocalypse and the rule of law had been weakened. Pete and I did see this one guy just slide down like 6 steps without losing his footing, while talking on the phone, as if nothing happened. It was amazing. we wondered if he'd been practicing it all day waiting for someone to be around to see him.

There was also this awesome dog that was really into digging and rubbing herself on this one patch of snow. Like it was cute and awesome cause when dogs dig they get really into it and she was just rolling in it in such a omgimsohappyway. I'm pretty sure it was yellow snow though because you could see the color difference and dogs do that kinda shit. I didn't want to tell the owner cause she was too amused and my worry whethere thats normal dog behavior or if her dog was just deviant and in to rolling in pissy snow.

dupont circle was even crazier. There was an estimated 3-4k people there and they were engaging in like old school snowball warfare. dupont circle has 3 rings, the inner one is the park area with the fountain, then there's one lane, a sidewalk, and another lane. On the northern edge/connecticut ave you had those three rings with the two inside being the most intense. People were just yelling and throwing snowballs at each other. It was largely the two outer rings vs the inner one. Once in a while someone woudl just scream and charge and it would lead to a battle in the lane until they'd had enough and would go back to their lines to throw. I bet this is what neadrathal warfare was like. Before language all you could do was yell. I bet this is what it looked like when one tribe tried to take over anothers camp. Lots of yelling and throwing and disorginazation. Cars would drive through and everyone would just go nuts and throw hella snowballs at them. This looked like it shocked some people while you could tell others were driving through for that reason exactly. Neither fire trucks nor police cars were spared. It was like innocuous civil unrest. One SUV had these dudes that were opening their windows and egging people on. One other angry asian dude opened his window and this girl pegged him. He got mad and got out to retaliate but she was really owning him and like dodged, pegged him back, and when he got back in his car threw and even bigger piece of snow that got throw the window. It was awkward cause you could tell this man felt like his pride and maniless were being super challenged but he was just getting owned and couldn't assert his dominance. There was also this accord driving by and had a hardcore looking cholo dude in there. After his car got snowballed he rolled down his window slowly, revealing the teardrop tattoos under his eye and made a slow look around of "who the fuck was that?" i was pretty scared cause i was only 5 ft away and he looked like he meant bidness.

Pete and I met up with Valerie and then Alex and went to Z-Burger in Tenleytown which was quite a trek but they were doing a promotion where if there was more than a foot of snow burgers were only a dollar. Sadly pete and val paid full price cause this didn't apply to the veggie burgers. They wer dank and shit and tasted almost like in and out. Afterwards we went back to the house and watched the BBC documentary clever monkeys which was pretty badass then the men who stare at goats which sucked.

God this is long.

Yesterday was superbowl sunday!!! WHO DAT? WHO DAY? WHO DAT SAY DEY GON BEAT DEM SAINTS?! America's underdog won!!! I dont' understand how so many ucla girls can love reggie bush. He's the fucking enemy. He went to u$c and i'll never cheer for him. I still wanted the saints to win so i was happy. We went to Scott's friend's house and I ate insane amounts of chips and wings. The superbowl for me is cheeto day. I fucking love cheetos but rarely eat them. On the superbowl I go all out. Cheetos, nachoes, bean dip, cheese dip, and salsa. That and beer. Lots and lots of beer. Good folks there but there was def a diff group dynamic to hanigng out with a group of middle/upper middle class white kids who aren't hipsters. I'm gonna write an entry on it in a bit but this one has gone on too long.

WHO DAT?

2010-01-28T22:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apyL9wBWvIk

Goobelygook

2010-01-25T21:13:00.000-08:00

Yes yes ya'll gonna continue with the blog ya'll...

hmm I'm not exactly sure where i left off so if i forget something it may simply not be worth remembering. Let's see:

The greek deli makes crazy ass beef stroganoff. One "small order" is easily two meals MADNESS. It was amazing. I want some right now.

There's these tents that sell food across from the safeway here. It's mostly Salvadoran food cause the empanadas and tacos i had sort of sucked but the pupusas were awesome. I think i ordered the gringo ass options. I saw everyone else got the chicharron and yuca so i guess i'll get that next time.

So I finally got to hang out with the girl i met a month ago at the center for american progress thing. It was chill, she drove me around MD which is her home area. The geography of everything is just so diff. Like it's all brick and the houses are far apart. University of Maryland is really spread out. Not UCSC spread out but here you can see it all where Santa Cruz is sort of islands in a forest so it's not as noticable. We ate at a Fuddruckers cause she was suprised I'd never been to one. She's pretty cool, sorta goofy, sings a lot and appreciated R Kelly's masterpiece "Real Talk." Afterwards we went to this bar/restaurant to meet some of her friends. They weren't there yet so we were kicking it and she told me how her dad was like some super badass back in El Salvador and had some really cool nicknames that I'm forgetting. One of her friends did come and he was sort of standoffish at first but after I threw in some sort of funny jokes he seemed to come around. The DJ played a lot of 80's including "Nothing but Flowers" by the Talking Heads. Great Song. The beer there was ok, they tried to reproduce a lot of western beers but couldn't really nail it.

We got a new legal intern at work so I'm no longer alone in the hallway. He's cool. we're def less productive as a tandem cause we talk too much.

Saturday night I hung out with CatMan's friend Arlene. First we went to the Heights and I got the gumbo which was way better than the chum they fed me, andy and wayne. Afterwards I went home to shower cause I'd just gone to the gym. Arlene told me to text her when I was done getting manpretty which I thought was funny. I met back up with her and we went to her friends house. They were def super hipsterish but nice people. One of them, named Aurora or something totally lives in the apt behind my house and apparently went to Paly. We hung out there and polished off a bottle of jameson jimmy mcnulty style (not really, we used pepsi). They had a cat who's pretty skittish. I was able to pet him a few times but he was overall not down for the petting. We went from there to this super hipster party. Let me stop and say that it's been a while since a real Hipster party for me. between the ucla radio stuff and a few scattered ucsc ones I've kind of been to a lot of these now. They can be characterized by a few things in my mind: 1. obviously lots of hipsters 2. a crowded as talking room. 3. semi empty dance floor. 4. Music is never top 40 but is usually a mix between popular hip hop, michael jackson, 90's r&b and maybe a few actual hipster songs. I think since everyone hates on everyone else's music the safe choices end up being the ones everyone their age listens too, whether it's as a "isn't this ironic we like this too" mood or more direct enjoyment. They did have a keg tho and i still like people even if they're hipsters if they're good people. They wouldn't play anything besides slow carribean dance music tho so it got sort of old. On the way home I stopped at this place called Don Juans. Another Salvadoran(while saying it's also Mexican place). For $7 I got a combo with a chicken burrito, pupusa and enchilada. Kinda madness. I chatted with the kid who worked there for a while and then went home ate it and watched commando.

commando deserves it's own paragraph really. shit is 25 years old. Straight up 1985 release. This was way before anyone ever imagined that Arnold (john matrix [really it was matrix wtf]) could ever be governor. All his lines are terrible and there is zero character development. His villian is just some random guy who was apparently a former member of arnold's unit and holds a grudge for some reason. Arnold shoots like 60 ppl, all while shooting from the hip with various fully automatic weapons. It's crazy how much more we demand from our action movies now. There just has to be way more complex cinematography and at least an attempt at character development to really make it today.

Sunday was chill. One of the guys who lives here's parents were in town from houston. They bought us Dominos which, btw the commercials are not lying about, it is waaay better (still not like great but it's totally edible) and boxed wine. They also made root beer floats which I was unable to partake in. We played Wario Ware with his parents which was pretty funny. After they left we got pretty buzzed and watched the emperor's new groove. not a bad movie, it's got the guy who does Brock from the venture bros, john goodman, and david spade. The football games were pretty nuts too.

I had to use the eggs i had left over cause they were gonna go bad so I made a scramble. It was orignally intended to be an omlette but when you use half an onion, 4 pieces of brocolli, and two pieces of turkey balogna, 3 eggs aren't enough. It came out really good and reminded me of the Hobo Omlette at Teddy's Cafe in West LA. Sigh. Halcyon days to be sure.

Did anyone notice how long the mass effect 2 commercial was? it was like a fucking minute long. swear. they muse have spent hella money on that spot. I know it's not the superbowl but this has to be one of the most watched games of the year anyways.

I finally uploaded all the dc/nyc pics. Dogs in Sweaters in New York was a big success!

This entry is getting way too long but 1 more event! I went to a Yelp Elite event today on U st. It was pretty cool. Open bar, oysters, beef puffs, creamy cheese eggrolls, hummus, and belly dancer. It was pretty awkward being by myself at first. I eventually just went up to a table and introduced myself and said I didn't know anyone here. The girl I was standing next to pretended to fain. I sorta just stared the first time, then she was like"you were supposed to catch me" so she did it again and I awkwardly caught her. It was awkward. She introduced me to some other folks then dissapeared. I met two ppl who were like consultants for software architecture, which to me sounds pretty fancy but they insisted it wasn't. They funny thing about yelp event is you know you can talk to all the strangers about food cause they're gonna be into it, otherwise they wouldn't be there. I met these other two girls, one of whom was going to LA for a friends wedding and I got excited and told her to check out some places. I had to write my name on her hand so she could friend me on yelp and get the downlow. It was funny cause her friend totally whispered to someone in that "I think he can't see me whispering" way that girls do. One of the girls that works for yelp is a UCSC senior and doing UCDC which was super random. We're going to hang out at some point which should be chill. Woo yelp in a new town

anyways i leave you with this vid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lbtR-Vm6nQ&feature=player_embedded

2010-01-19T20:57:00.000-08:00

interesting thought of the day - You only eat ketchup with hot foods.

The Boys are Back in Town (for the first time ever? can they really be back then? no)

2010-01-19T20:10:00.000-08:00

This weekend I was graced with Weezy, Andy, and Caleb. Wayne is one of my friends from my UCSC days, Andy is part of the OG crew known at the G-Unit, and Caleb is 1/2 of the dynamic native duo of ucla.

On a crazy note this is the first time i've seen Caleb since he was in ICU after breaking his femur, shoulder, wrist, skull(?), and just generally broken up since he was pushed down those stairs and found by the police in westwood. Last time I saw him it had only been like 4 days since the incident and he was pretty heavily medicated. Good to see him out and about now.

So in no particular order this weekend consisted of:

National Treasure 1/2. To commemorate our love of Nick Cage's awesome "acting" and being in DC, we watched Cage steal the Declaration of Independence, find the templar treasure, kidnap POTUS (pres of US), and find the hidden city of gold. Sadly part two didn't really have much of Cage being ridiculous.

Air and Space Museum. The space stuff is super cool. I'd love to be an astronaut but I would def crap my pants during lift off and reentry. No joke. But to be weightless and just do that would be so incredibly cool. I would trade a kidney possibly for the chance. I like looking at the space suits and comparing the differences between the Russian and US ones. The museum's treatment of Gagarin is pretty good, I expected more flag thumping but they really just treated it as another awesome human achievement. It's awesome that the smithsonians are free.

Football. lots of playoff football. and beer. and bar food. really too much. We didn't drink that much when we went out cause me and andy were sick but still over the course of the weekend kind of a lot. We went to a variety of bars and the best was Ben's next door which is next door (shocking!) to the famous Ben's Chili Bowl. Good vibe there, good beer, nice staff. Ben's CHili Bowl was pretty solid too. Nothing revolutionary but really there's nothing wrong with it. It's all quality but when you stick to a classic recipe these days it just won't cut it with the standards of modern cuisine.

We took some very silly pictures too at the washington monument. look out for them on fb!

Not gonna lie, the room got pretty stuffy with everyone.

Anyways now it's back on the grind but I'm somewhat inspired from the retreat last week. My inner competitiveness wants me to outshine my peers at the other affiliates so let's see if I can really step it up.

The Right Amount of Mayo

2010-01-19T00:37:00.000-08:00

Ready for some truth? Some knowledge?

We like mayo. more than we'd like to admit. It's the most direct way of adding creaminess and richness to food short of straight up butter. Basically mayo adds fat which is why mayo adds tastiness.

But the thing with mayo is when we make ourselves sandwiches we never use enough to really make the sandwich as good as we can. At least taste-wise. I think there's a latent desire to eat healthy, perhaps subconsciously understanding that this is bad for you, maybe because it's so instinctively good for you. You might even put more than you think you should but it still won't be as much as the restaurant or the deli.

The truth is the real amount of mayo they put is a pretty horrific amount, more than you think you could ever want. But when you eat it, despite it being so rich and creamy as to be a little gross, you love it. It's better than you could have done cause you'd never let yourself have that much mayo.

The right amount of mayo is just a bit more than what you want.

home is where the comfy bed is

2010-01-18T00:20:00.000-08:00

sorry to those of you who read this since i've been slow on the updating bidness..

anyways! i got to go home this week! WOOO!!! The east coast really makes me feel significantly more homesick than LA did. Part of it is not having one of my best friends from home as a roommate but really it's just different out here, plus no car, no hdtv, no video games, no tkd/shorinji and my crappy dc bed really make home seem so appealing.

The place where I work (the Asian American Justice Center) has yearly retreats with it's affiliates in SF (ALC), LA (APALC), and Chicago (AAI). For those of you that have done organizing you know that retreat is really just code for 2 day meeting. And that it was. But really it was awesome. I got to go home tuesday morning, have the day to chill with friends and fam, go to tae kwon do, and then do the retreat things from 8:30-5ish on wed and thurs. This meant I got to sleep at home which was fucking awesome because i'm pretty sick of twin beds, shitty comforters, and crappy pillows. Every minute of sleep i got in my own bed felt like it was worth 3 minutes on my DC one. At home we watched some movies, Old Boy on blu-ray, the princess bride, and a failed attempt at seeing avatar which was sold out despite being a 10pm showing on a thursday after it'd already been out for like 2 weeks...

The retreat was cool. It was really nice meeting the folks I work with but only hear on conference calls. Everyone was pretty nice and we mostly talked about things that didn't really pertain to me. I got to facilitate one of the activities which was neat cause I felt like it was really something that let me use the skills i gained in college. We were also given pretty good food. It was interesting seeing how the different offices have different cultures and specialties. At AAJC we don't do direct service and the other offices do a lot. I sort of wish I got to do more of that kind of stuff but AAJC is good experience. Maybe after a little while I can try to move to one of the diff affiliates so i get a more rounded view of the API legal scene. Awkwardly i think i met the person who got the job in sf i wanted. o well, turns out i knew her, she's cool and stuff so w/e.

During one of the lunch breaks we went to the ferry building which has all these cool little shops and had a couple of oysters. I also got the chance to try this place that my dad told me about which is only open on thursdays at lunch called 4505 meats and had this awesome thing called the zilla dog. it was basically a hot dog with hot sauce, kimchee and chicarrones. Yea. It was awesome.

In other news virgin airlines is pretty sweet. wifi and power outlets. chipotle in dulles has breakfast burritos that arent' very good. i miss my bed.

Weezy and Andy are over this weekend, i'll write about it later but its late so yeaaa

I call shenanigans on the taco bell commercial

2010-01-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

I'm calling shenanigans on the taco bell commercial with the guy looking for the "inside deal" on some burrito. When was the last time you saw a group of pretty young white girls working at a taco bell? fucking never is the answer. I'm just sayin...

In other news...

Friday i went out at night with Sarah for her roomie's bday and met scott who is one of ignat's friends. I drunkenly got his number from tori before I left. Raaaandom. It was chill very collegy/top40/etc. Somehow despite being sober on the way home I yakked in the morning... But during my hangover i watched invictus, had pupusas, chorizo and eggs, and the such. I watched the cartoon movie 9 at night which was mad meh status. Invictus wasn't bad but some of the music choice was terrible.

Today I went to watch the Wizards play the Hornets at Verizon Center with Scott and Mable. It was pretty cool, boring first half but it got good in the 2nd. In other news it was a chance for me to wear my ridiculous CP3 mardi gras jersey and I wasn't actually the only person there wearing one. A lot of CP3 fans in general. They had to take down all the gilbert stuff and the team store doesn't even sell his jersey any more. A lot of the folks wearing his jersey had duct tape over his name. No love for gil? I chatted with one of the girls working in the team store and we both felt it wasn't a big deal but i guess David Stern disagrees with us.

The biggest sad thing of the weekend was going to the one legit looking chinese restaurant I've seen in DC. It was terrible. Worst XLB ever. sigh...

Ready for a long rambly entry?!

2010-01-07T20:44:00.000-08:00

haven't updated this in a while but here we go:

Last night in NYC there was a dinner at Thuy's sisters house. Her roomate Carol is a straight master chef. She made ribs, giant meatballs with shrimp in them, and this awesome shrimpy yellow ricey thing. Dinner was off the hook. I also got my first fix of call of duty in a while. Carol is a pretty legit gamer and has a 360 and an ps3. I'm positive she'd own me in MW2 and from her description gears of war too. It was a really chill night. Susan has a cool dog named butter who was quite the plump pup after staying with a friend. Friends usually overfeed dogs they're taking care of because it's more fun. Butter is actually the mom of Jael which is Thuy and Van's dog. The ride back to DC and the first day were pretty uneventful. It felt good to sleep on a bed again after 2 weeks on a couch.
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Now for some less chronological stuff.

You know that John Derulo Imogen heap song? the message is pretty funny if you listen to it. Basically he says "I'm sorry for cheating on you but I'm gonna be rich one day so don't leave me. How romantic. Anyways I like the idea of him being in a house and having the roof cave in and him panic and yell "I cheated on you!"

I love getting haircuts from Mexican barbers. Compared to the places I'd been getting my hair cut, they always take hella time lining you up and making all the fades straight and even. I really like the attention to detail. I got my hair cut on columbia rd at Victors hair salon. The man himself cut my hair and did the whole straight blade and like rubbing alcohol thing. That's def gonna be my DC spot.

Tried to make chicken and broccoli the other day. Massive fail. Soggy broc. Overdone and flavorless chicken. BBQ sauce to the rescue. Sweet Baby Ray's makes it ok!

After my 5 meals a day pace in NYC I came back and joined a gym. On the plus side they're new years promotions so i get January free. I'm gonna try to be hardcore and wake up at 6:30 and go in the morning. My rationale is the following: when I come home from work I'm tired and lazy, esp after I cook. If I were to go before cooking I'd be too hungry. Shit's always packed at that time too. Supposedly your metabolism is higher when you work out earlier in the day. (according to Dennis) I like shooting around and there's always people playing full court at night. I joined monday. went tuesday night, wed morning, thurs morning, maybe tomm morning. Might take it off tho because I'm pretty sore everywhere.

I went to a Brazilian place with Mable, Seng, and Yan. Got my fejoada on. I should learn to make that.

Yesterday was super sports day! WARRIORS WON. UCLA WON. FAKERS LOST. U$C LOST.
It really doesn't get any better than that.

On woot.com I bought these ridiculous tripod flashlights. Kinda cool. Kinda too much. Woot is truly the site of impulse shopping. It's cheap and forgetable and when it comes you're like "why the hell did I buy this... oh well it's only $10?" It's the closest thing you can do to buying yourself a surprise present

I was listening to THE FINAL COUNTDOWN on the bus today and it's such a ridiculous song. Especially for the bus where everyone is trying their best to look at the least boring and at worst slightly hostile. I kinda wished they could all hear it but on the other hand the contrast might have been funnier. Something about the bus in motion even feels sort of spaceship like. We're heading to venus!

Just got my Arrested Development on. It's still just as funny.

I'm super sad because I finished the Wire. It was just so good you wanted it to never end.

I was at work for 10 hours today trying to get package of 100 folders for a conference ready so we can mail it to florida tomorrow. woooo

BTW I'm going home on tuesady! The annual affiliate retreat (two day long meeting) between my office, apalc, alc, and aai is in SF! So Tuesday morning I'm flying home. Got the whole day, then retreat from 8-5 on wed and thurs but the nights are mine! I'm actually pretty excited as I'm more homesick than I thought I'd be, I'm def further away and not with as food friends as say LA or SC. Not to rag on my friends here but it's not the homeboys.

Finally early front runner for video of the year is andy roddick at a zoo with koala's having intense tree sex behind him. When VH1 does their "I love 2010" show this will be on there.

10 years ago I was 12 - musings and retrospections on the decade of my adolsence and the cusp of young adulthood

2010-01-02T02:01:00.000-08:00

10 Years ago I was 12 years old and a 7th grader at Bowditch middle school in Foster City answering a question about what I was gonna do on Y2K (remember calling it that?) I told the yearbook people that I was going to go looting. I'm still pretty proud of that smartass comment but they censored me and wrote that I planned on "running to the bank." Kinda lacks the edge of the looting broken glass everywhere people pissing in the streets like they just don't care but it got printed anyways.

10 years ago I had just started Tae Kwon Do, my favorite bands were Limp Bizkit, Korn and Metallica. Rap rock/nu-metal was the shit and I was too cool to listen to hip hop. Besides Outkast, whose Stankonia album was my guilty hidden pleasure. Around that time I had green hair, BFD and Not So Silent Night were the highlights of the year and girls were terrifying. My dog Emma was barely out of her puppy years and my Grandpa was still alive.

10 years later I had started the experiment of "finding myself." First in high school when I stopped listening to the radio and went on a hardcore classic rock binge. I started to love doing tech crew at the theatre (rail FTW), and Tae Kwon Do essentially dominated my life. Despite my complete sobriety my long hair and constant sleeping in class made people think I smoked a ton and was sort of a punk? During this time I started to do student government, first mostly because I thought running was fun. I got the chance to make ridiculous posters like "in the land of the whopper, the misha is king" and I would make 40 and they'd all be different and equally ridiculous. It sucks I can't remember more of them. I got the chance to grow and make friendships that I expect to last the duration of my life. From the G-Unit to my teammates ate TKD this really sort of laid the foundation for me. Somehow I ended up being SB Treasurer and some other stuff and I also discovered that I love cars.

"Finding Myself" pt 2 was college, 2 years at UCSC, 2 years at UCLA. It seems too soon to really reflect on it but this was the time for partying. A lot. And traveling, more than I thought I would by this age. Making new friends that I also suspect will be with me for the long run, mostly from ucsc but there's def some LA folks there too. From Wednesday night MESH parties, to my stint in the fraternity world, to the crackin 120 Mountain View days to the 645 Midvale best backyard of your life times college was awesome. From Thailand, Hong Kong, most of Western Europe, to Japan, to Hawai'i, to Shanghai I really got to see a lot. I started to get passionate about history and figuring out the context to our modern lives and what social justice meant. From David Henry Anthony III's lectures on privelege and sacrifice to the 30 plus gray hairs from my tenure as APC Director big shit was poppin.

Here I am today. 22. Interning in DC, lying on a friends couch in NYC, thinking about the places I'll go with my head full of brains and my Jordan XI Space Jams full of feet and I can't help but feel excited for the next ten years.

Ten years from now I will be 32. Hopefully healthy. Possibly Married. Possibly with kids (twins named GreatestEver and ElFuego). Hopefully with several pugs. Hopefully some sort of amazing lawyer who has found a way to reconcile his desires for material pleasures and his beliefs in social justice. But really it's hard to say. If you asked me ten years ago what I'd be doing when I was 22 I'd tell you to shove it and throw out some monty python quote. I might still do that today. But at least my arsenal of quotes is populated my more simpsons and arrested development and for that I am grateful. I'm fairly satisfied with the last decade. Not to say that I don't have regrets, long hair, not going for it, etc but I'm still pretty happy with the last decade. Hopefully when 2020 (barbara walters voice!) rolls around I'll be able to stay the same.

The Avatar Post

2010-01-02T01:23:00.000-08:00

Ok first off let's make something clear, it is ok to enjoy a movie and still have issues with it. Just because you enjoyed the movie doesn't mean you should ignore what was, in my opinion, problematic with some of the underlying themes. I personally really enjoyed the film despite my issues with the "going native" undertone to the whole thing and would definitely recommend it to all of my friends. In I-Max, in 3D.

What I liked:
The movie is extremely immersive, the theatre I was in had the AC broken so it was 80 degrees but I was so lost in the movie I didn't care once it got underway. The storytelling for a big hollywood movie is top notch and Cameron deserves accolades for it. The characters were pretty good basic archetype characters that didn't have too much depth to make it difficult to imagine yourself as the main character. The 3D aspects of the film were really well done. A lot of the time 3D just adds tackiness to a movie but in Avatar they didn't overdo it and it really helped draw you in.

What I thought was overhyped:
The world design which everyone raves about wasn't as impressive to me since I was essentially weaned on fantasy, sci-fi, and manga where this sort of "damn that's a creative new world! thing is a prerequisite. Maybe I haven't seen it in awesome 3D before, I had a good imagination before TV whittled it away and I used to be able to imagine shit like this all day errday. I think when people are talking about how this is going to change movies forever I think what it's really doing is catching movies up to what decent authors have been building for years. Flying mountains were in fucking Sonic the Hedgehog for god's sake.

What I have Issues With:
The main characters main arc involves not only "going native" but being the chosen one and leading the natives to victory, eventually fully discarding his human body for that of the natives. Along the way he get's their princess, who was already betrothed, and is at the same time able to connect with the land in a way that the West has longed for since Judeo-Christian religions told them that it was to pagany and that some vengeful god wasn't down with feeling one with the earth. Once again, as in so many stories before this, (pocahantas, last samurai) a white man (who despite america's change to a more minority majority country is still the defualt blank slate i can project myself on to him character) comes to live with the natives, realizes what his culture has lost in it's materialism and modernity and decides to throw away his old life in favor of a newer more spiritually fulfilling society. So I ask, why even have Sully? Why not just let us watch the natives and come to this conclusion ourselves? Why do the natives always need outside assistance to be saved? Is it too much to have a film where they save themselves? Certainly sully's effort is appreciated but he is, within 3 months better than all the natives at everything. He is also able to get the girl who was previously engaged to the next chief in line. Why can't it be a female human who gets with a male native? Cause that would still make people uncomfortable.

Avatar is still a great movie. Go see it if you haven't already. I liked it so much I'm probably gonna buy it and if I can get myself to a real Imax and not the shoddy impersonation of the one I saw it on tonight I might even go see it again. But just because I had a grand ol' time doesn't mean I'm totally cool with everything. And you don't have to be either.

new yeared

2010-01-02T01:09:00.000-08:00

picking up from before!

went to go meet poochie at st marks area. It's where Oh! Taisho was and sort of reminded me of adams morgan in dc. We went to this korean place that did the bonchon fried chicken so we got some of that, some soondooboo (sp?) and a "korean ocean pancake" It was all hella good. Poochie is hella a waitress, bartender, and intern right now which is pretty heavy metal. We parted ways and I sort of planned to try to meet up after the movie but it got out at 3...

From there I met up with Karri, Sophia, and Robert and we hung a bit at some irish pub downtown which was sort of w/e, I had a glass of old speckeled hen which the bartender was shockingly incapable of pouring. After we left I walked to the theater and on my way totally saw a dude playing bagpipes on the corner of 34th and 6th. Random.

I got to the theatre an hour early and there was still a long ass line. What made it even better was their AC must have been broken because it was literally 80 degrees. I checked. I got some people to hold my spot in line while I tried to get some popped corn. They somehow had 2 people working a sell out crowd and they were in fact perhaps the two least competent people they employ judging by the pace. When I finally got to the movie the heat was still pretty stifling and the popcorn was largely too salty to eat. I had maybe 20% of it... I'm gonna give Avatar it's own separate entry so that'll be next. Anyways the ride back and the overall experience of watching a movie on your own is pretty lonely I must say and I don't really want to do it again. And one of the best things about movies it talking about them on the way home. Ipods don't replace good conversation with friends. I'm glad I saw it in 3D though, shit was mad immersive.

New Yrss

2010-01-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

woke up late feeling like the couch I've been living on was about as comfortable as I've been since I've left home. Me and Karri went to go meet up with Sophia from our Hawai'i program and her husband Rob.

We went to among what is probably the shishier places in nyc at Jean George in the Trump builing. It's one of the few Michelin 3 star restaurants in the states. I think the only one on the west coast is the French Laundry if that means anything to you. Anyways it's 3/3 stars for them so it should be pretty damn good, and it was. They had a $29 two course winter thing so it wasn't like mind-bogglingly expensive. If you're curious about the food peep my yelp review here (http://www.yelp.com/biz/jean-georges-new-york#hrid:Eg790-CMNQBa0kk5QhnmaA/src:self) I was also the only person there wearing a shirt without a collar. I had my "the city" hoodie on so it was sorta awk but u gotta represent!

After lunch we went to walk around Central Park which I actually haven't done yet. Central Park is pretty awesome. It's absolutely huge and has like a variety of ponds and a mini lake or two. One of which is named after Jackie O, random. Rob works for apple as an engineer so he wanted to check out the mac store here which is like the biggest in the world or something. It's on 5th ave and has a cool class cylindrical elevator too. The new imacs a pretty fucking sweet and he got me a deal on the new mighty mouse which I'd check out. I'm pretty happy with it so far. There's no scroll wheel you just move ur finger on it and it scrolls up down left right. Pretty cool.

Later that night I went to meet up with team VSU at Susan's apt in Harlem. Susan is Thuy and Van's older sister and it's kinda funny because they all look like sisters and say a lot of the same stuff in the same way. they told me to come at 6 and i got there at 6:30 making me still the first one there by like an hour. They made fried rolls, spring rolls, and curry and I ate entirely too much. I got a pretty good buzz going which I was sadly unable to recapture for the rest of the night.

The journey to the club in brooklyn was sort of epic. It's pretty far from harlem and the streets in brooklyn aren't all salted like the ones in downtown manhattan so it was pretty slippery. Thuy actually fell and the battery cover popped of Layhannara's camera. I think Van found it and I was able to reattach it and it worked just fine after.

The club - Here's my yelp review:
OH HOW YOU SUCK. LET ME COUNT THE WAYS.

1. YOU HAVE 4 TOILETS. If you have over 100 patrons and 4 toilets the bath breaks down pretty quickly. Not to mention they're not divided into men's and women's toilets so I'm basically wasting my NYE to girls doing makeup because that's what takes so damn long most of the time.

2. YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH RACKS FOR COATCHECK. When half of your customers have to throw their coats into the giant pile, hoping beyond hope that their black wool coat, which looks just like everyone else's black wool coat will come back to them you are a poorly run business.

3. YOUR BOUNCERS SUCK. If I wait 25 minutes in line only to be told I'm not in line when the person in front of me was just served makes no sense. Do you not want my money? That's fine with me. BTW if you're the owner and you're reading this figure out who the bouncer was on the right side of the bar around 12;30 and fire him because he's costing you money. Money I would gladly spend because I'm at a club but am being prevented from doing so due to the prick you hired.

4. YOUR DJ SUCKS. Notice all those people sitting? Yea that's not what's up.

From what I heard the cops that showed up were their because apparently they don't have a liquor license. I Sincerely hope this is true and that the Old American Can Factory will survive only in our memories of it's crappiness.
----------

I had more fun than that review would indicate but i'll blame that on the a-a-a-a-alcohol. It was kinda funny this asian girl from la was in front of me while we were in line for the bathroom. She was cute and clearly quite the drunk and was sort of trying to dance with me in line but I had to pee way too much and wasn't really having it. Anyways the impunity with which people were lighting up at the club was pretty redic too.

Aferwards we tried to find some other bar to go too but even at 2:30 they still wanted us to pay cover so we ended up having some pretty bad pizza and headed home. I had to transfer trains so I did half the journey on my own and I was afraid I'd fall asleep since it was already 4am and I was pooped, luckily I made it back but it was pretty touch and go.

Today was more chill. So far I've woken up at noon, had a slice of ridiculously huge pizza (i couldn't even finish it) and I just sorta went for a couple hour walk in central park. I'm gonna meet my friend Jen from ucsc, Poochie, for dinner and I'm watching avatar in 3d imax at midnight possibly myself haha. Buuut i need to see it before i go back to dc cause we got no imax there.

Good lawddd!!! two entries in one day?!?!?!

2009-12-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

Picking up from the starbucks I was at 5 hours ago...

Dinner with Edlyn was cool. Good catching up with her and the such. She was a poli sci/classics major at Wellesley and is now doing investment banking to spite an ex who said she could never do it. Excellent. Haha but yea she isn't feeling the industry too much and it seems she's on call all day errday so I can see why. We were at this Italian place with fancy panini's. I got the goat cheese one which might have been a mistake since my love for goat cheese, despite my initial excitement is usually sated after a few bites and after that the pungency is a bit too real. Anyways good catching up talking about the good ol days. On an amusing note despite my lack of career ambitions in high school, which in the SMHS honors track was tantamount to heresy, Edlyn and her mother still thought I'd make something of myself so there's a nice vote of confidence.

Afterwards I was just going to go to Karri's but I figured I out to try the famous chicken and rice cart on 53rd and 6th and continue my travels. After getting reasonably lost I eventually found it and the line was at least 60ft long so either it must be good or we got 60ft of suckers here. And I ain't no sucka!!! I got in line and started chatting with the two dudes in front of me. They were two black guys from North Jersey named Steve and Amir and we talked for like an hour straight. They drove all the way from jersey just for this cart so I was pretty excited. Steve was still a student and Amir was a history teacher. Amir, who was Muslim, told me that there were actually a lot of Muslims in Jersey and that the jersey shore show was def a misrepresentation. I knew that had to be true but it's always good to hear confirmation. Among other topics were Amir, recently divorced, told me to get married since we were commiserating about coming home from work and still having to prepare food. We talked about the R Kelly tape, I told them the Marcy peeing story and we discussed other matters lavatorial. Steve who used to do maintenance somewhere had some pretty bad horror stories of how bad public restrooms get. It's pretty amazing how many interesting people I've met completely randomly in NYC so far. I feel damn near Mr Jensen status just talking to random people. I think what I've gotten better at is understanding what i want people to know and not know about me and not tell stories that might make other people uncomfortable.

The food was fucking amazing. Chicken, lamb, rice, and yogurt sauce were worth the hour long wait and subsequent being cold eating. If you're in NYC go there. Bundle up as much as you have to it'll be worth it. I bought a plate for Karri and headed back. On the train back I randomly ran into Thuy and co who I had just gotten off the phone with. It's midnight and they might go back out. Now that I've sat down I think I'm done for the night. Still of all the trains in NYC running into people you know still shows how small of a world it is. Sort of like seeing Yoko. Madness.

Groundhogs day on Fulton St in Brooklyn

2009-12-30T14:49:00.000-08:00

Slow day today but I'm getting sort of tired so mehhh. Samf left today and I kept Karri's keys for the day but will be meeting up with Edlyn who you might know went to school with my from 1st to 12th grade which is madness so I had to go to Brooklyn to drop off the keys.

After doing so I walked down fulton st. which I guess is one of the main shopping streets in Brooklyn. It's pretty weird but the whole street basically has the same 5 stores on repeat. For like 5 blocks. There's at least 6 foot lockers/action (it's really the same store) fast food, mom and pop shops that sell sneakers and jewelry, video games stores, and jacket/urban streetwear shops. And every block has 1-3 of everything I just mentioned. It feels like straight up groundhogs day walking down the street because it just repeats itself over and over. I guess there must be enough of a market for it but I really don't see how like half the amount of these shops wouldn't suffice. How could you possibly need 6 foot lockers on the same street in like 4 blocks. Really one would work, after all your customers can presumably walk if they're buying so many damn shoes. In another note I want to buy shoes but lack of money/difficulty of getting them back to DC and eventually CA makes it a bad idea.

I did pic up a cool t-shirt today at the house of hoops in harlem tho! it's a picture of jordan and it says 23 feet high and rising with flowers made of shoes. If you're a De La Soul fan you'll get it, if not don't worry about it.

I may actually be getting tired of eating?! no but i need to eat lighter foods nyc is getting heavy!

2009-12-29T22:40:00.000-08:00

It was fucking really cold today. High of 20, low of 16, and I was outside for entirely too much of it. Woke up nice and late since I wasn't in any real rush to go out. Ended up leaving at 1pm to go meet Thuy, Van, Layhanz, and Nancy at Joe's Shanghai in ctown. Got there a bit early and burned some time first in a duane reade (CVS) where I bought my first issue of GQ. It's a combination of maybe wanting to grow up and Rihanna being incredibly hot. After that I went to quickly's and had some chicken while waiting. I gave this awk teenage guy an extra chair so he could sit with the girls he was awkwardly lingering around. He didn't say thanks or anything which I'm not gonna lie, pissed me off but w/e.

On an unrelated note one of the pockets in my coat already tore! i don't know if i wanna bother going back to BCF to return it since the line was like an hour long... but still on the first day?

Anyways the girls eventually came and we had hella XLB which the restaurant did quite well. It was good catching up with them. Thuy and Van's sis lives in harlem like 20 blocks from me which is neat. While we were waiting outside this random old white guy came in and asked me in good enough chinese how long the line was. I sort of stared at him for a while, answered in chinese, then told him in english that I can speak english too but he went on in chinese. Sort of annoying since i'm not sure if he was assuming i couldn't speak english or if he was just proud he could speak chinese relatively well. I probably should have Samuel L Jackson style kicked him in the chest and yelled "English motherfucker! do you speak it?!"

Moving on, we parted ways after eating and I went to go seek a sports bare to watch the eaglebank bowl which ucla was playing in. I got pretty lost which in 18 degree weather is no leisurly detour. First i ended up in this pub but I couldn't get audio since they wanted to play music for the other patrons. At halftime I walked to another actual sports bar about half a mile away that was super divey and cold but they had lots of tv's, blasted the audio feed and a good beer selection. I shot the shit with the bartender and UCLA won. GO BRUINS. After the game I figured I should go give carnegie deli a try since sam and karri clearly weren't that interested in it. On my way i stopped at one of the many unrelated to each other ray's pizzas and had a slice. It had roasted chicken and pepperoni and sounded much better than it tasted. Not up to nyc pizza standards in my opinion. After that I got to a subway and then walked the final half mile to my destination.

Carnegie deli is pretty famous, not as good as katz's despite being name dropped in the Adam Sandler Hanukah song. I ordered a potato pancake which was meh and a "woody alan" which was this monstrous half pastrami half corned beef sandwich. It was literally like 7 inches tall. utter madness. I didn't get through much of it before tapping out. As I was finishing a man and his daughter sat next to me. It's pretty crowded so you're pretty much just put at tables with strangers. She was cute so when the dad left to go to the atm I tried to chat with her a bit. It wasn't hard starting a convo, i learned that her dad lived in nyc and she was from conn and i got to surprise her saying I wanted to come here to celebrate my jewish roots and the such. Anyways her dad came before I could do anything else and the waiter had already brought my food wrapped up with the check so i had to bow out gracefully and leave. lolz.

Watched the warriors fight the lakers till the end. I think a huge part of why everyone hates kobe is he's such a damn trump card. No matter what is going on he's good enough to take over a game and just will it into submission. What hurts the most is LA is really a terrible sports town. Not to rag on some of my friends, ie Cat, Ryan, who are real and great fans but most ppl in LA just like winning having their name out there. Staples center is about being seen not love of the game. And who the fuck boos you're own team while throwing shit on the court? Fakers fans did it after the celtics xmas day loss and after the warriors were up 10 after the 1st quarter. Where's the support for the team that just one you a championship. That's why angelinos call it the lake show, because for them it might as well be jersey shore. It's all about love and appreciation for the game and I would argue the vast majority of LA sports fans don't really love the game. LA doesn't deserve Kobe and the lakers who are really the best team in the league right now and everyone in the country knows it. That, I believe is one of the main reasons everyone hates the lakers, they just help amplify the hyper image conscious status obsessed culture that Hollywood breeds. I enjoyed my time in LA and a lot of my best friends are from there but the LA that is represented in the phrase lake show is what makes me know I could never settle down there.

Wintertime Madness

2009-12-28T23:03:00.000-08:00

Today was more less absolute madness. Sort of.

Disclaimer: if this blog seems more incoherent than usual i came back from a bar semi-recently and am less than articulate at the moment.

1st Sam and I went to this cathedral which was actually within like half a mile of here and it's supposedly the largest cathedral in the world. Bigger than notre dame, or the one in mardid, or w/e. It was pretty cool and really coould comapre ot either fo them in terms of crazy spectacle ness.

After tha we went too Greenwich village and ate at Joe's Pizza again. It was still pretty bomb and lef to some walking around Greenwich village. We got to washinton square park and I was def hit up to buy some bud from a random guy. Wooo. The park had a bunch of dogs too including a lady with 3 dachshunds. Awesome. They were barking at some other dog and it was basically 3 angry sausages.

Afterwards we went to check out the public library here. We saw this outdoor market which seemed worth wandering through. There was this sweet tent that sold beanies that were animal themed. Sam got a porpoise and shark one and I made many puns with the word porpoise. The library itself was awesome and made me miss school and the feeling of being scholarly. There was a Guttenberg bible there that was printed in 1455 which was supposed to be one of the oldest extant western texts around. Madness.

Afterwards Sam went to go meet up with Karri to go to Serendipity which wasn't really something I was all that interested in so i figured I'd go find the burlington coat factory to get myself a nice coat. The directions I found were for the corperate office. Wop. So I took a totally sweet detour. On the plus side i stumbled upon this place called go go curry whihc was a japanese curry joint with a gorilla as the mascot. I stopped for some katsu curry which was a bit salty but otherwise good and went on my way. A solid 40 minutes later I made it to BCF and got myself a coat. After that I went to the NBA store which on one hand was really cool and on the other hand had no warriors stuff because they suck so much. (they did just beat both the suns and the celtics!) Anyways I ended up getting this pretty cool Chris Paul Mardi Gras Jersey. (http://www.hornetsnestonline.com/product.php?productid=16674&cat=0&page=1)

I went to go to meet Sam and Karri afterwards but they were at this Japanese Restaurant which they didn't want me to show up to for whatever reason. I went and met them and they left so I went to the sushi bar myself. This was a pretty expensive place with all the waitresses in kimono and they were apparently the first restaurant in the US to serve fugu. I got an order of ten zaru (cold soba noodles and tempura) as well as some sushi. It was mad expensive but the butteriness of my one order of toro was incredible. They also brought dashi at the end for me to mix with the zaru soba sauce which was a pretty cool touch.

So here's the crazy part. I was sitting next to this random older man who looked a bit like the old man in Jurassic Park and he basically just started talking to me. He ended up being this big time architecht and the "H" in http://www.shca.com/ He told me about his company which has offices all over the world including NYC, London, Paris, Istambul, and Shanghai. He told me his library has over 3000 books, that he was a syracuse grad, and that his favorite project was always the one he's building next. BTW HE DESIGNED THE RESTAURANT WE WERE IN. That's crazy. the staff, already attentive was def making sure he was taken care of even more. We spoke on a variety of topics including the new book on google that i'd heard about on NPR, which btw his friend was the author of, as well as the over all job climate and the 5 recessions he'd weathered. He spoke to his daughters, one a business woman married to an ABC and the other biologist. He also talked about how he always tried to hire local talent at his offices and that he did little of the details today but was still something of a clearing house for all the projects. BTW His most famous project was restoring the statue of fucking liberty. DAMN.

We talked about how with design, and art in general you're essentially putting your ego out to be critiqued and that nobody, no matter their skill is truly successful unless they can defend and sell their ideas. he also noted that though they hired local talent most clients didn't actually want him to design stuff fitting the local aesthetic but rather wanted something that symbolized their modernity and readiness to work in the world.

At the end when we left he introduced me to the owner of the restaurant who must have assumed we were friends and gave me his business card. Mr. Hayden said I'd be going to law school in ny and that i'd eat there a lot. I wish I had a card to give back but it was still a pretty awesome experience.

Finally I met the girls back at karri's apt but she doesn't get cable so I went to a neighborhood bar to watch monday night football. Neat place, epic game, and when it went into overtime the bar tender gave me a free glass of stella. After the game I went to Karri's and ate leftover bbq while watching the Warriors beat the celtics. Today was a good day.

The Cheese Stands Alone

2009-12-28T08:07:00.000-08:00

I'm not really sure where I left off but I'll try to do a recap:

X-Mas with Christina's Family! If you didn't know Christina's mom invited me to their xmas dinner in MD which was super nice of them but also sorta awk cause Christina was actually in Pasedena with her Dad. Woooo so i hung out with her mom, bro, stepdad, and stepdads mom. It was cool tho, I've met her brother Hansel (HANSEL SO HOT RIGHT NOWwillferrelvoice) before so it wasn't like total strangers. They made some pretty bomb ass food including a rack of ribs tied in a circle with stuffing in the middle and the such. We also played some marvel vs capcom 2 and watched some basketball. On an amusing note, the stepdads mom thought Sonia, which is Christina's mom's name was a Korean name. How silly.

Anyways there wasn't much to do in DC with everyone being gone, I did manage to get my new mattress in (YAYYYY) and I figured w/e and got a bus ticket back to NYC.

Upon arriving I went to go meet up with Karri and Sam at some tapas bar. It sorta sucked tho because it was raining pretty good and I didn't have an umbrella. I must have looked fairly hoboish because I had a backpack, hoodie, pea coat, and big duffel bag over my shoulder as I trudged through the rain. Anyways the tapas place was ok, pretty pricey but they gave unlimited bread and the oysters made for great dipping. Because the girls were being girls and refusing to eat a lot of things I had to do some dump trucking which involved more goat cheese than i'm really down for. I like goat cheese but it has to be one of those limited quantities type foods.

Afterwards they wanted to walk to the empire state building which I told them was stupid since it was raining and we wouldn't be able to see anything. They wanted to go anyways so off we went, them with umbrellas and me being soaked for about a mile till we got there, they told us it was closed due to rain, and we walked to the metro after. This was one of those "I told you so moments" where the only person who really lost out was me because I was sopping wet. Excellent.

Yesterday luckily it did not rain so we were able to hit the road and do some stuff. We woke up pretty early to go check out the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Long as lines and people buying their shit in advance meant that we couldn't even go in the statue only walk the grounds around it. Less than ideal but it was still pretty cool. Afterwards we went to Ellis Island which was pretty cool with their immigration museum and all but once we went in to their movie theater all three of us fell asleep through the whole thing. A combination of the woman who does the intro sucking, us waking up too early, and the warmth of the room knocked us out. After we woke up we were then too lazy to see the rest of the museum (we'd seen like 1/3 maybe) so we ended up leaving to manhattan to go get lunch.

We finally made our way to Lombardi's pizza which was supposed to be the 1st pizzaria in the US. We waited 40 minutes while i conversed with random middle aged women from Phoenix and North Carolina (cougar hunting?) until we were finally seated. The food was pretty good, not mind blowing and perhaps not worth the wait but it was still good. They whole damn place has a hot two bathrooms so it takes for ever and when I was waiting a waitress came in and went in to change into her work clothes which took literally 15 minutes. Awesome. Afterwards we went to this place called rice to riches that sells 7 dollar things of rice pudding. It wasn't bad but rice pudding by nature can only be so good. The decor was clearly meant for the faux girl power ness and was the visual equivalent of that "you're hot and you're cold" song on repeat.

After that we doddled for a while before going to soho so the girls could shop. Me being not much of a shopper and simply not slim fit enough for soho (my shoulders don't even fit most of the coats..." meant it was a pretty w/e experience for me. Afterwards there was some contention about where we wanted to eat where It got pretty annoying because I would suggest somewhere like shake shack or carnegie deli but the girls, feeling too guilty over their pizza lunch would just remain silent. Then when we finally settled on the second momofuku location where since you had the option of smaller portions they were more down for. In the end they ate a bunch of cookies so the final calorie/fat count probably would not have been any lower and the places I wanted to go. But it gave them the illusion of eating less. Oh girls and the mind games you play with yourselves...

After that we made our way to the Empire State Building where Karri had to leave to go finish some stuff before work today. Sam and I went up which took the better part of two hours. They ingenously split it into a bunch of small lines so you always have this feeling of progress despite it actually taking forever. Once we were finally up the view was fucking amazing. Since it had rained the day before it was super clear and really in the end totally worth it. I busted out my ipod and listened to empire state of mind and new york, new york. I know that's silly but who says my life can't have a soundtrack.

So that pretty much brings me to today. Lets see what happens. Besides that I got some sort of sad news on FB that I wont' go into. All I can say is I coulda been a contender ::punches the air""

omtegoz too much to write...

2009-12-24T20:46:00.000-08:00

So much food...

Yesterday night Karri and I went to this place called the Momofuku Noodle Bar which is this sorta trendy bigdealinNYC type places that I honestly expected to sort of suck. The yelp reviews all raved about really awesome steamed pork buns and to someone who grew up eating pork buns and the like couldn't really imagine any pork bun being really that good. I mean they can be good but to be like a leading attraction? Also when i got in there no one working was Asian which I hate to say is a pretty standard barometer for how good Asian food is supposed to be. Well I was proved wrong and they were legit as fuck. Had some crazy pickles where they used pears, the ramen was pretty good, the pork buns weren't so much buns but folded dough with bork belly in them(and they were really awesome) and their hamachi kama was probably the best I've ever had. Afterwards were were pretty beat and had to go pick up Samf at the airport at 6 am so I passed out pretty easily at midnight.

Waking up to pick up sam at JFK was pretty hardcore. Totally woke up at 4:45 and took the 6 to the airport. On an amusing note the 6 goes from the Bronx to JFK and in J-Lo's breakout album "On the 6" it references that subway line. Let's be real, she is Jenny from the block. Def slept like the whole way there. Anyways JFK sucks, you get out of the subway and basically pay another $5 to take the JFK airtrain... then when you leave, you have to pay $5 again. So it basically costs you $10 to go get someone at the airport on top of the $2.25 that the subway costs. In an amusing note I bet I was one of the first people in the country to see the breaking news that the Senate passed a health care bill. Makes me wonder if they went all night or showed up at 6 to vote.

When we got back to Karri's we were all pretty beat, Sam included since she took a redeye flight. So we all ended up napping till 12:30. I had like 5 totally bizarre dreams since it was all REM sleep. Not the most restful but better than nothing. Our first stop of the day was literally named "The Hummus Place" and as you can imagine their main deal was hummus. They were owned by some israelis that were pretty nice. When we got in there was three of us and they asked a couple at a three person table to move. The guy was cool with it but the girl was fairly indignant but i was like YEA WATEVA. Anyways I bet they were slightly annoyed because the three of us split a lunch special of mushroom hummus and fallafels. We added on an order of the labone yogurt that i really like and I also had some turkish coffee which was bombtastic.

Next stop was the brooklyn bridge. It's a pretty good bridge, no Golden Gate mind you but it might be tied with the bay bridge in my bridge power rankings. We took some fairly silly photos that i'll post this weekend. We also got to explore parts of (b)Crooklyn. I already feel more like Jay-Z. At least a little. The sign at the end of the bridge says "how sweet it is, welcome to Brooklyn" which is pretty tight. The borough of Brooklyn feels a lot more like SF in that it's big but not as fast. Like you can kinda stroll around there. If i ever do manage to make it into a ny law school i think i'd want to live in manhattan my first year but maybe 2nd or 3rd go to brooklyn.

Afterwards we attempted to go to Lombardi's PIzzaria which is supposed to be the first pizzaria ever in the world. They were closed. I cried. Inky binky bonky.

Instead we went to this awesome izakaya called Oh! Taisho. The food wasn't necc better than some of the places I've had in LA or say Izakaya Mai in san mateo but the atmosphere really felt like the izakayas i japan. Izakaya mai feels too family and most of the LA ones are too shi shi. Izakayas in japan are all about getting trashed and eating a lot. Oh! Taisho really lets you do that. We ate entirely too much and I got a solid buzz going so wooooo. Our saba shioyaki didn't really come till way too late and we ended up taking it to go. I actually told them to cancel it but w/e, we took it with us and I asked karri to put it in her purse. This ended up making all her stuff smell like fish. Whoops!

Afterwards we went to the Momofuku milk bar because girls like dessert. I'm not huge on it but they owed me some stuff since I sneakily paid for Oh! Taisho so we went. They got a slice of carrot cake, some coffee milk, some steamed pork buns for sam, a cookie and some cornflake flavored soft serve. I'm not huge on carrot cake, the coffee milk was hella good but was sorta rich for me. The cookie was good and the soft serve, despite sounding really weird was pretty good. If i went back I'd probably just get that.

Finally despite being stupid full we still went to this oyster bar in union station. luckily it was a two mile walk and we burned some time at a street market to let the food move it's way through us. Union station is crazy looking. Really old school fancy. In my dogs with sweaters quest i met a fantastic pug named pilgrim wearing a fine coat who was so excited to have his picture taken he wagged and howled and put is front legs on my knee while snorting gleefully. The oyster bar was super packed and we were so full we only had 3 oysters each and really just barely. The oysters were from long island (meh) oregon (decent - from a place called kumamoto so some JA fishers?), and these fucking amazing oysters from maine. I could have eaten 10. Well really three because I was so full but 10 otherwise.

Finally we made it back to karri's and watched up. and now my achilles tendons hurt like hell from all the walking.

Tomorrow it's the morning bus at 7:30 outta penn station to DC to have an x-mas meal with my friend Christina's mom and brother (she's in Pas with her dad...) so it'll be sorta awk but I can dig it. New mattress on sat! then I'm deciding between staying in DC till the bowl game or coming back to NYC to kick it more with Karri and Sam. Thuy and co. are also coming in on sat so I might end up in NYC by saturday night haha.

In new yoooork conrete jungle where dreams are made offfff. (i want to live here fairly badly)

Space Jammin' bagel slammin, hot dog crammin

2009-12-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

So first off i'm writing from Rudy's Pizzaria on the edge of little italy and chinatown (is it me or do those two always border each other?) I stopped cause I was tired from the cold and wanted to use the comp and lo and behold i'm able to steal internet from one of the neighbors!

Anyways camping out for the space jams sucked. It really sucked. 22-26 degree weather with a pretty solid wind blowing through. For two hours. Oh boy. I guess what really grinds my goat (is that even an expression? probably not) is that they sold them online. I probably didn't even have to camp. But i did. I suffered. And now i've got a pair. It was nuts though because there was this mom out there with her teenage son who had her wait most of it while he was inside somewhere warmer. My mom would never do that. She would probably smack me for suggesting it. Then tell my I was crazy for camping and then paying that much. I told her i'd hold her spot if she wanted to wait out part of it inside the bank next to us but she declined. I told her that her kid better get her the best xmas present ever haha.

Today I started off the day going to the famous H&H bagel shop which is supposed to be the best ever. They don't do shit like cut/toast/ add shit to your bagel for you, you gotta buy the stuff and go somewhere to do it yourself since there aren't even tables. Honestly the bagel was pretty good but i didn't see what the big deal was. I went to the starbucks across the street, got some orang juice and made my bagels. I bought two since the minimum size for lox and cream cheese was about right for two bagels. I ate one and put the other in my bag for later.

After that I went to Grays papaya dog where you get a hot dog and a small cup of papaya juice for $2.75!!! Their sign outside even says recession specials! After that I walked over to Soho to reaffirm my unwillingness to pay a lot of money for fashion I don't really understand. I went to the billionaire boys club/ice cream shirt where the girl working was super cute. Didn't buy anything. Went to the bape store where the only thing i really liked was a $225 dollar jacket. damn. After that I sort of wandered soho, ended up in this pizza joint to kill time and am on my way to katz's deli. The pizza wasn't very good and I'm sad I gave up prime stomach real estate to it.

On another note, i've decided my quest for this break will be to get as many pics of dogs in sweaters. So far 5 ppl have been cool with it and one guy was like no cause i don't want it posted. Iunno what his problem is...
dog sweaters

NYC Chinatown, home away from home

2009-12-22T18:58:00.000-08:00

NYC has a real chinatown. None of that DC, 4 blocks of white folks, bed baths and beyonds, and sports bars. Chinatown in nyc is full of chinese people and chinese businesses. In the way that in DC i think i'm at least 40 miles from a roast duck in NYC there's at least 100 in chinatown at any one time and it does my heart well. It makes me happy to hear mandarin, which a surprisingly large amount of people there spoke. In LA there were just so many chinese people that even if i didn't go to SGV for over a month i knew it was there whenever i needed it to be. DC feels isolating in that respect.

Anyways I was gonna go to Lombardi's pizza for a slice. It's supposed to be the 1st pizzaria maybe ever, like in the entire history of the world. You'd think it'd be in italy but maybe pizza in the way we think of it is essentially an american thing in the way that what most ppl think is chow mein which was invented in SF. But alas it's not sold by the slice so i'll be back.

I actually wandered into chinatown on accident and just sort of strolled marveling at all the things i'd missed. Like quickly's. Roast ducks everywhere, Chinese people, lolz. But in all honesty it felt really good. I made plans to meet up with Karri at this place called the NY great noodle house which seems like it'd be a total guai lo place but they have duck tongue by the pound so despite the complexion of some of the patrons they know what's up. Though i did get more suspicious when a young white kid told me it was the best chinese food in dc. not to make assumptions but i question his qualifications and breadth of experience to make that call. Anyways Karri said she'd meet me at 6:30 but ended up not really being able to get there till 7:50 ish. So around 7 when i wasn't sure if she was coming I ordered some frog porridge to go. (legit cause it has frog btw) and started to go look for a quickly's that would let me eat inside After 10 minutes Karri called me saying she got held up at work but that she could meet me there. I wasn't sure how long it would take so i went back and watied outside for about 50 min and in my boredom I ate my porridge. It was pretty damn cold out but the porridge, which i filled with prodigeous amounts of pepper (how i like it!) kept me more less warm. I felt sorta hardcore standing in 30 degree weather eating porridge, which wasn't that easy cause i had to hold the bowl the whole time. I def looked at least semi-vagrant but i'm still wearing jordans so i figure ppl didn't tihnk i was totally homeless. Anyways i felt like a fuckin triad spitting the frog bones into the trashcan on the corner.

Eventually Karri did show so I ate a bowl of noodles also. They used egg wrappers for the wontons so they were a strange yellow but were overall pretty decent, though not the best i've had by a longshot. I've been craving duck since i left home so it really made my day to have some. I might buy one and take it to dc with me. Haven't decided yet because it would be pretty bad for me to eat a whole duck. But hey ducks are rare bidness in the district.

So in other news the Jordan XI Space Jams come out tonight. If you know me you know I like shoes but with jordans i'm really only into IVs and XIs so the space jams are my fav XI's. Luckily in NYC there's a lot of places that carry them. First I went to a footlocker where the line was mad disorganized. I knew there was a footaction on the next block (i swear they're the same store) so I got a guy to hold my place so i could check it out. I got his phone number and went to the foot action where you just got a number and didn't have to wait out till 11pm for the midnight release. This was clearly the better option since you dont' have to wait as long and your spot in line is guranteed as opposed to the disorganized line at footlocker where sneaky/scary ppl could easily cut you. Now i'm chilling in borders across the street till 11 then I'll only have to wait an hour. Well met Foot Action, well met.

30 Rock it out

2009-12-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

It's not colder than DC but it sure is noticeably windier. Boo.

Anyways woke up today and went to go check out Harlem. Saw the apollo theatre and had WHITE CASTLE for lunch. It was pretty good. Not mind-blowing but so cheap that for what you pay it's solid. They have a house of hoops there too which had some really cool stuff. I need to not be buying shit though cause it's gonna be a real hassle when I do make my triumphant return out west. Harlem seems like such an alive place despite being tuesday.

After that I figured I'd go check out Rockfeller center. Got my ass on the subway and rode over. It's pretty cool, they have an entire store titled "the NBC experience" where they sell stuff for the office, 30 rock, house, SNL etc. If u want something from there holla at me and maybe i'll get you an xmas present. I took a picture by the 30 Rockefeller Center sign for my 30 rock nerdiness. That show really grows on you. The ice skating in the middle is smaller than i pictured. I think there's a another big rink somewhere.

From there I walked to Times Square which was pretty close. I've never really felt small-town before but nyc really is insanely enormous. Times square is full of tourists and the sensory overload there is pretty real. There's several screens that are multiple stories high and tons of ppl trying to sell you tickets to shit. I figured there wasn't much there for me so I figured Greenwich Village would be my next destination. I don't know what's there but I've heard of it so I figured it would be a good next step. I got of on Houston St (which they pronounce Howston for some reason) saw this place called Joe's Pizza which was apparently in spiderman so i had a slice. pretty tasty, sauces tasted more like they do in italy. After that saw a place called papaya dog that Dennis told me about so i got a hot dog and a cup of papaya juice. also good and cheap. I'm liable to gain a tremendous amount of weight in this city. No joke.

Soon i'll be off to explore more of this side of town. I somehow ended up by NYU and figure I should explore the area.

wooooo!!!!!

EMPIRESTATEOFMIND

2009-12-21T22:44:00.000-08:00

I'm in New York, apparently some sort of concrete jungle where dreams are made of?

but first some news from the district:
Had over Mable, Seng (who had to leave), Meagan, Tara, and Sarah for dinner. Made steaks, chicken suprise, green beans, and broccoli. Everything seemed pretty edible. I mean ppl finished all of it so it couldn't be that bad right? We watched anchorman after and due to the way i get excited with that movie i pretty much had a bottle of wine to myself...

Anyways. Showed up for work today on time at 9:30 am and did some stuff and at 10:30 one of the ppl there came and was like why are you here? we're off today. Since the feds got the day off due to the snow apparently non profits run of their schedule so i got a day off too. I finally got me a mattress and a tuna gyro and was talking to my mom on the phone and she was like you should go to nyc since u have so much time off.

I thought about it and couldn't think of a good reason not to go so I talked to my friend Karri who's other two roomates were out of town so she said I could totally crash at her place. And here I am. I took the boltbus which took about 4 hours but has power outlets and slow internet so I really just watched the wire the whole time.

nyc is pretty nuts. I've never felt that small-town before but here you feel it. this city is fucking huge and it's full of so many people it's kind of nuts. DC feels like FC in comparison. I got off the bus by penn station and walked into a pizza shop got myself a slice (it was pretty damn good) walked out and got a hot dog (not very good) and went to the take the subway to Columbia University where Karri lives. The subway here is way more rickity than the DC metro. It squeaks. It's dirty. It's confusing. But hey, it got me here!

Karri lives in columbia grad student housing so its a full on apt, her roomates are from cairo and have lots of really cool posters and blown up photos they took around. Karri is way into baking, no joke tonight we made 24 cupcakes that look like cookie monster (marshmallow/m&m eyes, oreo mouth, blue sprinkles and shit), some pound cake, and banana bread. It's 2 and she's still baking. I had to go to the market at 11:15 to get some more eggs and sugar and not only was the market open, it was super nice, had leffe, and the deli was still open too! Got myself a sandwich, ate half of it and also copped some Jordan IV's of CL. The guy drove here from queens and i got them for 90 which is pretty good.

So far this city is pretty cool, lets hope the next few days are similarly awesome.

new yooooork concrete jungle where dreams are maaaaadeeee ooofffffff!!!!

AWWWWW YEA PICS

2009-12-20T22:23:00.000-08:00

pre DC - SF BABY
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spnsprt/sets/72157623041365074/

DC ILLING
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spnsprt/sets/72157622916730345/

BOOM

Roughing it. sort of

2009-12-20T22:13:00.001-08:00

so i cooked a bunch of food today and watch anchorman (GOAT- greatest of all time) and got sorta drunk so when i went back to my room to drop off my laptop i locked myself out of my own room for no reason.

I was basically gathering fire wood and setting alarms at two hour intervals so i could continuously set alarms so I would stay warm. luckily he let me in but still i would have been improperly clothed for work and the such.

fuckin a. roughin it.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT IT'S SNOWING

2009-12-19T22:36:00.000-08:00

So starting last night to tonight the DC area experienced a record setting snow storm where like 20" of snow fell in about a day. So a translation of that would be IT'S FUCKING NUTS OUTSIDE. As someone who's never lived around real snow it's been pretty cool. Like there's all these little things like you can't really walk around if ppl's footsteps or cars haven't sort of cleared the path. Otherwise the snow is up to your knees and my jeans and dunks aren't really all-weather. The snow also forces you to walk with really good posture because you can't really push off it with your feet you instead essentially have to step straight up. It really works your calves and posture since you're sort of marching around.

I had to walk to Mable's house which is a little over a mile away and I got sort of lost and had to go through a street that hadn't been driven through in hours so it was pretty insane. You sort of wading really. Straight Man vs. Wild shit really. I'm Bear fucking Gryllis. You also realize how fucking hardcore pea coats are. They look badass, keep you warmer than you'd think, and they're pretty damn waterproof too. A peacoat and hoodie are totally sufficient for the weather. They also try suprisingly quickly. Straight up battle armor.

Another funny thing about these big ass snow storms is everyone mostly walks in the middle of the road since there's barely any cars out and the tire tracks are the easiest places to walk in the whole city right now. But it really makes DC look like a city of vagrants or like there was some sort of zombie apocalypse/nuclear fallout/mad max road warrior shit. It's really sort of surreal and awesome.

Anyways enough about snow and on to some updates:

Yesterday after work I met up with Dro's friend Suhad who is super nice. We went to this bar that has a thing called the ham and cheeseburger. Basically a cheeseburger with ham on top of it. Super strange. I had a bleu cheese burger that was good and fine conversation was had by all. I hope i get to chill with her more because she seems really cool and the such.

Later in the evening I met up with Mable and co at a house party. It was pretty cool but I ended up waiting in the snow for a while outside because i wasn't sure if they'd arrived yet and you can't really show up to a party unless your friends are there if the host doesn't know you. There were these three sisters there from NYC that were funny cause all they did was hate on each other. In another cool note, when it's snowing and you leave the keg outside you don't need ice in the bucket cause it's colder than your fridge outside.

Today was a neat slow day, I pretty much woke up at noon, watched the wire, took some photos, got my marinade on, at at mables, chilled there, then came back and took more pictures for another hour. The marinade i looked up online sounds pretty good but i sort of didn't pay attention to how many servings it made so apparently I have enough for 20 steaks. Awesome cause I have four. Mable and Seng are great chefs so dinner there is always great. They made cookies and brownies and shit too. Makes me feel like more of an adult eating meals cooked by your friends. Iunno why cause we sort of cook at home but we don't all sit to eat it together it's more of a standing around or playing video games or something. We played some games after like this sort of charades type one where it was team UCLA vs Trinity. Me, Mable, Seng, Chalita and Cynthia were all from ucla and amusingly also all APC affiliated.

Some quick random hits:
Dro and I were talking and came up with this fucking amazing idea. You know post secret? I'm gonna start one called Pug Secret where it's all gonna be stuff pugs would confess to. Here's what I got so far:
"Sometimes I wish I were a collie." "I can't believe I ate the whole slice of pizza when nobody's looking." "I don't like it when people try to straighten my tail, I know it looks funny so leave me alone." I think the site may be worth paying for the domain name.

Next week I only have work on monday then I'm off until the 4th of January. I'm not going home though so I might try to go to NYC or Boston or something so if you're there and will let me crash at your place I'll feed you!!! Christina's mom and brother invited me over for x-mas lunch which is super nice of them. I'm pretty excited for it.

BTW THEY ARE SHOWING THE ROOM IN DC ON JAN 22 WHO WANTS TO GO I WILL BE THERE IT'S TEARING ME APPPAAARTTTT

Hopefully they'll menage before i hit my garage

2009-12-17T22:51:00.000-08:00

Chyea chyea chyea ain't no love in the heart of the cityyyy ain't no love in the heart of the townnnn

Heart of the City is straight up my favorite Jay-Z song I think. Some of the rhymes and just the beat is so damn good. If you haven't heard the song it samples "Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City" by Bobby "Blue" Band. Shit is fiyahhh

Anyways on to some updates.

Yesterday for work I got to go to this thing at the Center for American Progress where they had Sect of Labor Hilda Solis and Sect of Commerce Gary Locke do a talk about how immigration is legit and how comprehensive immigration reform is the shit. It was pretty cool. I've met Locke once at an API policy summit thing in sac. Pretty cool he was the first asian american governor. CAP also has mad money so they had amazing sandwiches. I had part of a roast beef croisantwich, a salmon sandwich, and I managed to take a chicken one with me for later. What can I say, everyday i'm hustlin. Well not really but I'm trying to save some cash so whatcha say? I met a cute girl there, got to chat with her a bit and walked with her to the metro. I got her email rather than her number so it's hardly ideal but it could be worse. Thats DC for ya.

I got off work early so I figured I'd check out the futon store i always saw on the bus going to work. Turns out it was out of business but I was a qtr of the way home so I figured I'd walk. It was cold but it's not like i had shit else to do and I wanted to check out some of the restaurants along the way. Stopped by this place called Granja de Oro which had Peruvian roasted chicken and it was legittt. paid $5.50 for a qtr chicken, some salad and some yucca fries. I wasn't huge on the yucca fries, i guess it's an acquired taste and I figured it'd leave me some room for dinner pt 2. I am clearly a slovenly man for having two dinners. fuck you man don't judge me.

As I continued my walk around the area I checked out 18th street which is the Adams Morgan bar street. There was a legit looking kebab place and what was, according to my ethiopian cab driver the best ethiopian place in dc, called merkat or something? iunno i'm def gonna check it out cause my cabbie was tight. We talked about Haila Sellase and Michael Jordan. That's wassup. There was also a Louisiana style joint too that looked good, esp for breakfast or brunch.

Anyways back on to columbia rd I went to check out the three mexican places that i'd been scoping out from the bus. Mixtec was like 12 bucks a person. They also have a campaign to make tortas popular here. how funny, we in cali have always known the glory of the torta. EL Super Taco in LA called it the toasted sandwich on the grilled. That isn't necc wrong but I wouldn't say it's right either. There were two other places called Super Taco and Combinacion which had Salvadoran food too. I went to Combinacion to get some pupusas as sort of a small ish dinner part two. The waitress def spoke no english and I'm too embarrassed to even attempt spanish so we sorta did a pointing thing for a while before the guy who owned the joint came out and was like u want two pupusas right? It was pretty good, spicier than I'm used to but it makes you feel alive. and thirsty. On the tv there looked like the best mexican soap opera ever. It was totally the normal crap but about luchadores. How great is that?

Today was another day of the grind at work. Nothing too exciting but w/e. Three ppl are leaving so we had a going away thing at Mai Tai. Drinking with the office ppl is weird. We got there sorta late so there was that everyone is done we're getting started. And I def still drink with the abandon of a college student. Glass of beer in 3-4 swigs I guess isn't the norm past a certain age. Not to say that my coworkers are old but i'm the youngest by at least 5-6 years. Afterwards me, one of my bosses, the communications lady and the intern i replaced went to a diff bar.

This next bar was considered, according to Nicole (the comm lady), a senate bar. meaning that the senate side staffers all go there. It was called Johnny on the Halfshell. Apparently they had a midnight vote so there was actually a senator from NJ killing time at the bar. Nicole said that the diff between Senate and House bars is largely age. Since senators are there longer they tend to have adult staffs while the house is so big that they have armies of interns around my age. Apparently there are pretty partisan bars too, so some are known as gop or dem bars, though nicole said that whichever group is in the majority still sort of dominates the bar scene as well. Makes sense since if you lose a bunch of seats your interns lose jobs.

Anyways was too tired and broke to go out with Mable and Co so I went home for a somewhat early night.

I'm gonna meet up with Suhad, one of Dro's friends tomorrow so that should be cool. Besides it's friday! and not just any friday, CASUAL FRIDAY

i want a fucking torta cubana too

Few more things

2009-12-15T22:34:00.000-08:00

Working a white collar job is weird because I don't wear normal clothes that much, pretty much just on weekends so my laundry looks so different from before. One the plus side i feel like i look pretty clean in my grown man shirt, slacks, and pea coat.

People in DC fucking love chipotle. they just opened one in my neighborhood and it's always packed. the one by my work is always packed. all the other ones i've seen are always packed. given the sad state of DC mexican food it's not that much of a surprise but it's still sort of wacky.

Also the one of the quieter guys in the house sent out an angry ass email cussing us out for not doing the dishes. straight up this guy reminds me of the couch dude in half baked so it was pretty weird.

Whoops neglecting the blog for a few days

2009-12-12T09:43:00.001-08:00

Awww yeaaaa So if there's anyone actually reading this I apologize for the last few days of absence so get ready for some football!!! er updates!!!

Thursday!

9500 Liberty Ave - good documentary about immigration that I went to go see with Mable, Meagan and Lara. It was about a county in Virginia that was experiencing a high influx of Latino residents, documented or otherwise, and were blaming every single social ill ever on them. Lots of xenophobia and just really ridiculous accusations like that zapatistas were going to take over the county and crap. Also featured some very heroic individuals who fought to overturn an ordinance that essentially completely allowed racial profiling. I used to really enjoy watching ignorant ass people hate on immigrants. If used to give me so much fire. My inability to relate with them just made me hungry to do work. Strangely enough I now no longer enjoy it as much. I think now that I'm older I realize how much work there really is to do to create the sort of change I think society deserves and seeing these wackos (plus birthers plus Glenn Beck plus tea parties) really just makes me realize the insane magnitude of work this sort of change will require. I believe in really changing the way people think. Though we like to think that Obama's election has heralded in a new more progressive America, he only won 53% of the popular vote. 47% of the country still said no to change and hope. This is hardly a mandate from the masses and is why moving this country forward has been such a deadlock in congress. Seeing the morons in 9500 Liberty Ave scared shitless of Latinos for no reason just makes me tired because I know those are people who just never might change and that I'm going to have to try with them anyways. But really that's an inconceivable amount of work.

Anyways on to funner things! After the movie we got to meet the folks who made it, the main person was a Korean woman from LA who said I looked familiar. It might be the whole mixed thing cause I get that a lot but LA API artsy types all go to Tuesday Nights at the Cafe so it totally might have been there. There was an after party at this club called Lima. It sucked pretty hard because the music was so whack but there is some silver lining there.

On the way to the club some guy was trying to spit game at the girls and was like "how you doing?" they ignored him but I turned to him and told him that I was doing alright. His expression showed how unamused he was by it. I wasn't really trying to make fun of him either, that's just sort of my first reaction.

On the way out I was standing with Meagan and waiting for Lara and this older guy walks by and assumes were together and is like "Damn! you da man! I wanna be you when I grow up!" He was at least in his mid thirties so that made it pretty funny.

Anyways a few quick food hits from my lunch breaks:

king of kebab - all u can eat indian for 9 bucks. but it's so bland. I didn't know tandoori chicken despite still being red can taste like literally nothing. Same with the curry. How do you even make bland curry?

The "well dressed burrito" - my coworkers raved about it. It was the worst burrito I've ever had. I was so mad that despite being full after I had a hot dog from a cart just to get the taste out of my mouth. read my review here because If i think about it again I'm just going to get pissed off. (http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-well-dressed-burrito-washington#hrid:nF1fZmFEAI7WVnjaix3RMA/src:self)

Catman called me out on it but I feel a bit of that America is In the Heart young man on the road romaticism about my house in DC just because so many people live here it makes it seem like this romantic journey of youth. Now that I've been working for a week that has fast faded since I now realize how much of your day a full time job soaks up. It's incredibly depressing that this may be life until old age... or depending on JET and law school and travelling maybe not ;)

Anyways pretty cool weekend Cat Manabat from ucla days was visiting her friend Arlene who lives mad close so we chilled a good deal this weekend. We met up at this place called Busboys and Poets which one one hand is sort of a cool restaurant, it's got good food, a bookstore with "progressive" books and good beer. On the other hand it came off as pretty pretentious too. Gandhi was on the menu and there were poems by langston hughes on the inside of it. There was also a light bar that spit out statistics on the war in Iraq. All that stuff in a way is cool but it also commodifies things that are greater than a trendy business and in a sort of self assured preachy way. I can't hate on it too much because my food was good and there were interesting books in the bookstore but that's not a business that is going to engage anyone who isn't already behind all that stuff. It's easy to run a business that only focuses on niche appeal. Running a joint with broader appeal that can actually change the way someone feels about something is the real challenge.

Anyways afterwards we went to Chinatown to this super BRO bar called rocket bar to meet up with two more of Cat's friends, one visiting and one that lives in VA, both went to UCLA (go bruins) and did some good drinking. They played the most random music. Songs similar to the "i don't wanna wait for this life to be over" one from the old WB teen shows and shit. They also had hard cider on tap which was pretty cool. In the bathroom a guy def asked/announced "so who's getting laid tonight?" everyone just grumbled. Tough scene at the bro er Rocket Bar.

After that we went to this place that has "Party Bowling" where you can eat bar food, drink, watch sports and bowl. They even have vip packages that are all you can drink/bowl for two hours and come with a ton of food. Bizarroville to be sure. After that we went to the third and final bar of the night, Bar Louie where I had some more great beer (dead guy on tap) and they are apparently the bar that the UCLA DC Alumni use during their meets!

Next day we all went to the Natural and US History Museums. The Smithonian is fucking tight cause it's free. I saw that actual Star Spangled Banner there which was pretty tight. It's enormous, like 30' by 30'. There was also 'bring history alive' thing where they reenacted a lunch counter sit in to let some real white guilt flow.

Later that night we went to a super hipster club. I'm just gonna paste in my yelp review of it:

I like hipster clubs because all the kids that are "too cool" to listen to pop music, chase women, and bump and grind like the rest of society are shown to enjoy essentially the same things even if they're pretending that it's ironic that they like the same music as people they consider below them.

Anyways the dj was cool and they have legitimately good beer there. Delerium and Leffe are fantastic beers and finding Leffe on tap is alwas a challenge.

Oh hipsters you so silly

Basically yea. Leffe on tap!

Sunday we went monumenting and saw the Jefferson, Lincoln, and WWII memorials. The Lincoln and Jefferson ones are great, good austere and thought provoking. the WWII one is ok, one of my coworkers described it as sort of facist looking, and compared to the Linc and TJ ones I'd have to agree though the thought didn't cross my mind when I was there. The Korean War memorial really does chill you a bit. The expressions of fear and trepidation on the faces of the statues is as real as it gets. Compared to the WWII one which sort of glorifies and aggrandizes war the Korean War Memorial really sort of checks that.

For dinner we went to this place called afterword and feasted. Something about gnawing on the bones of lambchops is immensely satisfying. I also love crabcake and wish it were cheaper.

The bookstore had some cool looking history books. I really want to learn more about south/central america, the middle east and india because those are all places I didn't really study in school. It's so hard to find a good history book though because so many really push and agenda. Thats what I miss about school. Most professors were pretty good about choosing books that didn't at least overtly push an agenda. Or if it did they taught you to see through it in class. I might just email some profs for recommendations on what i should be reading.

We also went to this jazz club after that was byob and were classy and listened to some jazz. I'm probably not classy enough though because though I was enjoying it I was sorta falling asleep. I like jazz but not enough to just sit and listen to it. Part of it was the whole day of walking plus food coma plus wine but I'm not going to make too many excuses for myself.

Monday: back on the grind and boy did I make some rookie mistakes, like not BCCing ppl, forgetting attachments and the like. I expect a lot more from myself in terms of being detail oriented and though my bosses were cool I was pretty ashamed of my work on monday.

I went to this "do you really wanna be a lawyer" panel at GW. DC is an intense town. People here are aggressive and driven by the handful rather than the rare border sociopath you encounter at home. Not a single attendee was a lost undergrad. I was prob one of the youngest there and the news I got wasn't awesomely reassuring. Apparently if you don't go to Yale, Harvard, Columbia, or Stanford your law school experience isn't nearly as academic as it is technical. I'd like to think of myself as somewhat of a scholar and that if I don't go to one of those schools my legal education won't really be as academic as I'm really hoping. Their main point was only go to LS if you wanna be a lawyer, don't go if you just wanna work in gov't or be a politician. That let a lot of people down but as good as Senator Tsukerman sounds I can't say it's the phrase that is driving me.

At night I made some chicken using random stuff and it actually came out pretty good. I used chicken, ginger, onions, red onions, soy sauce, cooking wine, pepper, and paprika. I got quite a few comments about how good it smelled. Much better than my attempted encebollado!

Tuesday: Did better at work for the most part, still a few stupid mistakes but I got a lot done today and am feeling a bit better about it all. I've been trying to really work hard, get there first, leave late, take 20-25 minute lunches. I've earned my spot in places before and I'm going to do it again. It's sort of tough tho from being used to being the top dog in my work to being the bottom of the ladder. My opinions are still listened to but when we do conference calls and I see so many parallels with my experience it's annoying to know that I can't really participate in the same way. I might be young but when it comes to working with people I really do think I know what I'm talking about. It'll come tho, just gotta work hard and earn my voice.

I'm realizing how different the 9-5 life is. On one hand it's sort of nice because when I was a student, though i wasn't in class that much (i didn't skip, class just doesn't take that much out of your day) i was still busy as shit with apc. Like all day errday until at least midnight. But so much of it is unsupervised and on your own schedule. Here there is a period of time where I can't go anywhere else just gotta work. And it's sorta cool cause some of the work I do is similar and it's nice having a set period of the day to work on it it's still not the same at all. No going to the gym in the middle of the day or waking up at 10 everyday. It really makes you value the weekends in a way that you couldn't in high school since you couldn't really go out then. But that's growing up. And at least I get to do a job that really conforms to my values, not that many people can really say that.

First Day at work: I can dig it!+The Pollo Encebollado Adventure!

2009-12-09T19:06:00.000-08:00

W00t first day at work dwagggg! I woke up hella early and had breakfast which I guess I should start doing now that I'm a grown man. Took the bus to work, which drops me off like 30 ft from the door and takes like 8 minutes. That is some convenience. Anyways I got there super early because when ever I have a first day of something it's generally how I roll. Thanks to the tour de force film Drumline I know that you're late if you're on time, you're on time if you're 5 minuter early. Yea I just dropped some drumline knowledge on you. Feel the power. Anyways burned some time at starbucks, their tea sucks, but I got to read some more of on the road which is starting to sort of suck me in in the way that that books of that era really were able to romanticize the vagabond life.

First day was good, basically one of the interns was leaving the day I was starting so she transitioned me. There was a ton of stuff to learn but it's all interesting in that it relates to comprehensive immigration reform which is something I'm all about. They took my to lunch at this peruvian Chicken joint called Nando's which was pretty good. Spicy and teh suchez. Anyways they want me to be like a consultant and streamline their outreach since I'm supposed to be the grassroots organizer while they're the lawyers. It should be something I can do so I'm pretty excited. I don't know if they were supposed to tell me but they said I could basically stay as long as I wanted, so I guess it's like I sort of have a real job? Maybe they'll take that back if I start fucking up but I'm pretty down for it either way. They even gave me a fancy wine bottle opener which was their holiday party gift. It's missing the foil cutter but hey, it was a gift!

Got home and took my first stab at pollo encebollado and it was a stab. I bought all these chicken legs because they're cheaper and thought it would be better to take the meat off the bones. It proved to be much more of a task than I'd anticipated.

EPIC PART: IF YOU READ ANY OF THIS ENTRY READ THIS

Weezy sent me "Hearts on Fire" from the Rocky IV soundtrack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPbLzu83Ato&feature=fvst) and I was chopping onions and since I'm a weeny I was totally crying. To hearts on fire. Yea. EPIC. picture it. Have a hearty laugh on my behalf.

Anyways the chicken came out ok but it wasn't anything super great. I think the way I had it in the restaurant was totally different but the way I made it looked like the google images pictures so iunno.

yeaaaa

some kinda somethingful

2009-12-08T19:58:00.001-08:00

The new house is tight, hella crazy posters and stuff and I've met almost everyone here now. Folks are from all over the place. One Bay guy from San Leandro, 3 guys from Washington/Oregon, 1 from Miami, 1 from Houston, and I forget the rest. The house kinda reminds me of those old timey Mississippi river boats that people used to gamble on. There's a fireplace where one of the guys, John, burns cedar sticks which makes the house smell like BBQ. I'm the only person on my floor so I'm pretty much the only person it seems that uses the bathroom which seems good but on the other hand it is by far the coldest and not wanted to let the heat out is making me keep the door closed which feels sorta anti-social but this isn't freshman year so it's really not the same sorta issue I guess.

My bed has these two foam pads as mattresses which really sort of suck. they are by far my biggest complaint with the place. Yesterday they had a mad lean to the right. I switched up which one was on top and now there's sort of a canyon in the middle. Tomorrow I'm gonna take one of them off and see how that is. I tried it today and you can totally feel the wood under but that might be preferable in the end.

I wasn't sure whether it was cool to leave my room heater on all night. Luckily due to the power of facebook folks told me it was the norm in colder environs. My mom always told me it would catch on fire but I'm nearly positive that was a lie to get me to save electricity. Oh mom... I don't know how well that heater works but my room is a warm enough 60-63, though not the balmy 70-75 I prefer. Probably not worth buying my own heater unless winter gets way colder.

I'm super stoked for my neighborhood which is pleasantly called Mt. Pleasant. It looks like a predominantly latino neighborhood cause if you walk down 16th it's all Mexican and Salvadoran restaurants. If you know me you know how excited I am to eat at all 12 of them. I'm going to make a concerted effort to cook more but with so many delicious looking places I don't know how well that's really going to go.

I went to get a haircut today on that street. Luckily my barber understood almost no English and I'm too embarrassed to even attempt my gringo ass middle school Spanish. I told her tomorrow was my first day at work and asked her what she thought would look good. She said something to the effect of "no dice" which I think means I don't understand what you are saying. So she showed me a big poster of angry looking latino and black men sporting various fades. I chose #10 (1 on the sides 2-3 on the top) and off we were. She really spent a while getting it all even and lining it up including using a straight blade like my buddy down on Venice in LA. I have this dilemma, I personally like my hair long enough to gel the front but it's so cold that I want to wear beanies. If i have gel in then i can't really wear a beanie. What to do? Does my vanity outweigh my dislike of being cold? Only time will tell.

I'm trying to buy a cheap bike right now (max $120) and went to see the first one today. It was at the end of the metro line in Greenbelt Maryland. Awesome. I get there at 2:30 thinking I'll grab a bite to eat before I was supposed to check out the first one at 3:30. Turns out there is literally nothing walkable in Greenbelt. And it was 40 out. Excellent. I started to read On The Road which would have been enjoyable if it wasn't so damn cold and I wasn't so damn hungry. Anyways one of the ppl with one of the bikes I was interested in happened to live near by so he brought his bike which was chill. Turns out the original guy I went to meet basically stood me though and I left fed up with the cold at 4 I WAS THERE FOR 1.5 HOURS!!! He called me when I was already back at Columbia Heights but I wasn't down to pay the far to go back out to meet him. BOoooooo

Mable invited me to go with her and some friends to this Korean fried chicken place called Bonchon but her friends bailed so her and Seng cooked everyone dinner instead which was insanely nice of them. They made fried tofu, tofu and bok choy (i miss bok choy), and Beef fried rice. All three dishes were awesome. We had wine with dinner which really makes me feel like a college graduate. Seems like adults drink wine with meals. I'm still a beer connoisseur which I guess is more of a guy thing? Def doesn't seem as classy. The two girls from friday were there as well as Mable's other roomate Seng who went to UCLA and did APC also. Super randomly there was a girl from the party on saturday who was there. She was the only other Asian person at the party and I didn't talk to her cause she looked sorta angry that night. Turns out she also went to UCLA. Small world. Go Bruins. We watched this show called salon takeover or something like that where this angry brit or ausie goes to dysfunctional salons, yells at everyone, then remodels it. Meh.

I'm debating wether to sign up for a zip car. I wanna check out parts of VA and MD cause there's Asian markets and com tam out there. As well as probably some sort of legit dim sum which dc has none of. It's $75 to sign up then 10 bucks an hour or 70 a day after that but there's no monthly fee. It also includes gas which is pretty cool. I don't know how much I would use it but I like driving too much to not do it for 4 months.

It's kinda weird here but I'm usually ultra polite to people who work at restaurants and stores, or really just strangers in general. A lot of the folks here look at me like I'm crazy when I'm nice to them or try to make some conversation. At home when I asked folks if they were having a long day and when they got off they usually enjoyed the company. Here people kind of just stare at me. My have a good one parting remark is often unreciprocated. Sorta weird.

It's my first day at work tomorrow! Gonna get my grown man on!

yeaaaa got a place!!!!

2009-12-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

Wooooo I got a place and won't be homeless tomorrow!!!

It's in Columbia Heights ish and is a giant 12 person group house type deal thats almost more of a hostel/dorm/frathouse enviroment in that theres 1 kitchen, 12 rooms, no one has a private bathroom, and all that. But the house is nuts. This older dude Ron owns it and he makes art out of old tv's and computers and theres tons of posters on like every available surface. It's pretty nutty. I'm moving in tomorrow so I'll post some pics. That pic is from the CL ad

One of the ppl at one of the houses I almost lived in was cool and told me she watriessed at a bar in Dupont that has $2 high lifes on sunday. Madness. There's a trivia night there tomorrow too that I might hit up.

Also checked out this place in Dupont before I found out i got the big house. The dude who showed it was this friendly but hardcore seeming colombian guy. The residents there talked to me for a while and seemed really cool. It'd be legit if I could find some way to contact them to chill since they seemed like good ppl.

Last thing I forgot to mention but what's crazy about the time change is that you can go to a bar and watch sports till 1:30 at night. When I was at tom tom i could see the tv so when we were dancing and the such if the song wasn't my style i could sorta just bob and watch the game. That's pretty cool i think.

Just as cold but at least it's not snowing!

2009-12-06T00:27:00.000-08:00

Some quick things I forgot to mention:

I met a pug in Dupont, and as you know I love my puggy wuggies so I stopped to pet him. His name was Mazel as in Mazeltov. That's a pretty great name of a pug.

I watched an episode of Ugly Betty with Mables. That show is pretty entertaining. It's weird because Betty is so different from her "sister" who is supposed to be a "saucy latina woman" of sorts. My cousin works on that show as a production assistant and she's been telling me to watch it.

Anyways, yesterday at this bagel shop i was eating lunch at I saw this random dude in a UCLA hat. So I was like "Hey, did you go to ucla?" and he told me he did then gave me his card cause he said he knew it was rough being in a new town. He invited me to a party that I ended up going to last night. Getting there was a pain tho. DC is divided into four areas, NW, NE, SW, SE. 3rd and H street in NW is diff than 3rd and H street in NE. I went to the address at NW which is a soid 20 minute walk from the one in NE. I called the guy and we did the whole, you can't be at the corner cause I'm at the corner thing. I even yelled MARCO twice to no avail.

After we figured it out I walked there and went to the party which was pretty chill. It was interesting cause when you're in California everyone is from California too but the ppl I talked to were from Pittsburgh, Cincinatti, North Penn, Arkansas and Chicago. Nice folks. Very college feel but everyone is dressed better. Played some flip cup like a champ and tried to teach them my cool runnings start of chant: "Feel the rythym! Feel the Ride! C'mon everybody it's flip cup time!!!"

It didn't really catch on.

Anyways some quick hits -
Texans all think their Mexican food is better.
Chicagans are into meat.
There are apparently a lot of Desi folks in Arkansas.
They played the Danger Zone song from Top Gun.

Now for something completely different!
Found a pretty good Salvadoran place called Glorias. I'm positive this isn't the first Salvadoran place called Gloria's I've been to. Had some pupusas and they had a tv show on with my homeboy Vicente Fernandez on. Pretty sweet stuff.

The place with supposedly the best tacos in DC still aren't very good. Sigh.

Finally on to the housing hunt. It's a pain in the ass. I've walked so much. It's cold. Pretty much everyone has been nice though so it really could be a lot worse. I went back to one of the houses I checked out yesterday to meet the roomie that wasn't home then. She was pretty cool, from the OC and though she just started playing fantasy football she was clearly the real deal about it. They had a pretty cool cat named Asian Jack Bauer. Don't ask me why.

Another really cool place today too down in Shaw. It was another group house where everyone was prob late twenties and really cool. The woman who owns it is vietnamese and apparently her parents come almost every weekend to work on the house then make a big as banquet status dinner. I'd be pretty stoked to live there.

So at noon tomm when I check out of the Sheraton I'm homeless so wish me luck!

Snowwwwwowwwwowwoooowwwooow

2009-12-05T16:39:00.000-08:00

Last Night:

Met up with Mablerrrssss!!! we went to this thai place (http://www.yelp.com/biz/thai-chef-sushi-bar-restuarant-washington - u can read my review there!) it was quite the tasty. Afterwards we went to her place, met up with some of her friends who were all really nice and hit up the bars.

We went to this place called tom tom on 18th street in Adams Morgan which is the closest thing to a party street i've ever been on since La Rambla in Barcelona. The bar we went to, Tom Tom, was chill. They play more east coast bad boys stuff here. On an interesting note they also played tell me when to go by E40 and quite a bit of reggaeton. YOU NEVER ESCAPE REGGAETON

The guy in the bathroom who hands you the towels and stuff was from Togo in West Africa. Since my bladder isn't that big I had to use the bathroom like 5 times so i really got to talk to him quite a bit. Nice guy, you could tell he missed home a lot.

Afterwards we hit up Amsterdam Fallafel (http://www.yelp.com/biz/amsterdam-falafelshop-washington - read my yelp review there for the deal on it) and had fallafels and fries. Like amsterdam you can have mayo on your fries there. It's not bad, i'm not sure if their "dutch mayo" was really different but i told myself it was to feel less grossed out by the idea of mayo and fries. They also have this thign here called jumbo slice where the slice of pizza is so big it comes on two paper plates. The crust side of the slice was atleast a foot long. Madness. I'm totally going there next time.

The metro here is fucking awesome. Mabalays friend Yuan dropped me off at the station at like 2:45 and i still caught a train home. Thats wassup.

Today:

Epic Madness because it snowed. My delicate bay/la/santacruz life has illprepared me for snow. I've decided I like it more than rain though because you don't get nearly as wet. You still get wet but the clumps are bigger and less numerous than raindrops so i feel like less of them hit you. It's also a lot cooler looking. Like against a street light it's straight picturesque.

Apt hunting has been pretty tiring. One place in van ness was nice, 900 and sorta sterile and unfurnished. the neighborhood seems really safe and boring. I also checked out a place I really liked in Shaw, the folks were all around my age and stuff and I really would have wanted to move in there but they gave it to someone else. FIE. anyways it was awkward because me and one of the other prospective tenants showed up at the same time. There was def some tension and awkwardness because we both wanted the place but you got to do as Sjax says and make love to pressure. Apparently i didn't make love to it well enough cause i didn't get the place. Teh Lolz.

One of the other places near union station was cool. Big ass house but it was def a guy house. sorta run down and dirty. woooo. the neighborhood looks too empty also/there isn't a grocery store near by. Finally the last place i went to was west of columbia heights. the guy there was really nice and gave me a good breakdown of the diff neighborhoods. Him and his gf, a taiwanese woman with two cute kids would be in the basement. The kids tho stay at their dads place cause apparently you don't wanna be in the DC public schools. It's a nice house but I would feel sorta weird coming home trashed. Anyways I'm about to go check out another place, hopefully this is the one cause i don't really have anywhere to sleep tomorrow as of right now...

woooooooo

in an amusing note, i bought a compass from target because whenever i walk out of a metro i'm really confused.

Day 2. (Sean Connery Voice) And the Hunt Ish On

2009-12-04T15:08:00.000-08:00

Awww yeaa second day in DC (really the first full day if you wanna be picky) and the hunt for an apartment has started.

First off, the metro seems legit as fuck. Getting around has been way chill. I just need to figure out how to get a pass or something.

So on to the hunt!

1st place: In Columbia Heights which I read was an "area in transition" ie in the process of being gentrified. It's more less really nice with random sketchy looking houses and stuff. So the place I go to is more of the latter variety. I talked to the guy on the phone and he already sounded sorta crazy. I show up and I am correct. Picture a cross between Snoop and Willie Nelson. He was this little pale guy with cornrows and an American flag bandanna who said he had lived in the house for 62 years and that his family had owned it since 1927. The guy mumbled a lot and the room was unusual looking to say the least. The bed was white and gold and pink. On the plus side the room had a fridge, sink, microwave, and he said the last guy stole the foreman grill but that he'd get me another one if i moved in. I can't imagine sharing a place with just that guy. I feel like i'd hear the deliverance theme in the background or something. Bizzaro.

2nd place: Petworth, also a community "in transition". I walked there which took the better part of half and hour. On the way I saw a lot of taquerias and other stuff like that. There was a statue that looked like the king of the universe in the katamari damacy games too. Lotta West Indian food in the area also. There's at least 6 places that serve jerk chicken within a mile of the place. Anyways I get there and the lady who runs it is pretty young. It's a group house with this sorta bizarre mix of victorian trappings and just normal stuff. The lady was an interior designer so I would assume thats why. The decorations and stuff struck me as very southern/east coast in that anyone who did interior design in california wouldn't have those sort of couches with the wooden backs and swoopy (http://www.uship.com/listing/show_listingImage.aspx?maxwidth=270&maxheight=210&filename=/static/955a887c-0c9f-4669-8.jpg) and the such. Anyways she was really nice and the place was only 600 bucks and not too far from stuff to do. The room was mad small but of the two places I've seen it is clearly infinitely preferable to the Snoop Nelson house.

Talking to one of my friends who did the UCDC thing I realized the sad reality that if I wanted to live somewhere not terribly sketch the $600-800 range doesn't appear to have much to offer. It seems like if I wanna live downtown ish/Dupont/Adams Morgan or w/e it's gonna be at least a G a month. So essentially my entire stipend! woooooooo....

In any event some quick hits and pics

1. This will be the first time I've lived in a city with more black folks than asian folks. nothing wrong or right with that but I went to Chinatown today to see what was up and saw a whopping 4 asian people. In four blocks or walking only 1 chinese restaurant didn't look like it was intended for the gwailo so I might either eat there a lot or really miss Chinese food. Chinatown here didn't even smell like Chinatown and there was a Texas Chinese BBQ place whatever that means...

2. Beer for lunch! in my depression over lack of Chinese food/people I stopped at a bar which boasted a wide beer selection. 2 Beers in I was pretty buzzed and ended up skipping lunch. Now that is healthy.

3. DC xmas street fair had a fallafel hut staffed by 3 Chinese ladies and an Egyptian man. Sadly their fallafel sandwhich was not very good.

4. Thai restaurants in DC have silly ass names. I've passed one called the Thaitanic and one called Thaiphoon. Awesome.

5. A lot of local DC restaurants (or at least i think they're local) look like Chain stores. Think Panera/Chipotle/Corner Bakery. Not necc bad but just looking at them from the outside I don't expect much really.

Anyways about about to grab some dinner with Mablerrs so stay tuned for more heart pounding action. And pictures!

leavingonajetplane/1st Nighttt

2009-12-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

Hollaaaaa!!! Are you ready for the first post on the soon to be tour de force and btw only exclusive blog about Misha's DC days? Well you better be cause here it comes, duh duh duhhhh!!!!

Quick thoughts on the flight: What the fuck is up with the whole United Airlines doesn't give you food anymore? 6 bucks for plane food? no dice. It was pretty cool that they showed up though. The dog, Doug, really cracks me up because if your dog could talk that is totally what they would say.

Anyways on to DC.

Dulles airport is fucking far from DC, the cab ride (no shuttle... damn crystal city Sheraton) took atleast half an hour and cost me like 60 bucks. How much do you tip normally for a cab? I don't really know the whole scale for it all since I don't regurlarly cab it places, especially sober. Anyways the cab driver was this Ethiopian guy. He was pretty chill we chatted for about half the ride since he was on the phone for the first half. I told him I took an Ethiopian history class and he told me that though he has family there he's only been back once in 21 years and won't go back again till the government gets less corrupt. He was saying how if you wanna be honest you'll either starve, get arrested or be forced to leave the country. He clearly chose the latter. He told me I should live in a basement to save money. I've literally only seen once basement my whole life so that is a surprisingly intriguinig idea. We were comisserating about the economy and he told me that he used to have a professional job but he got laid off and now has to support his family and play his mortgage driving cabs. Sign of the times.

Sheraton hotel si chill, it's weird having a hotel room to myself. I figure in the professional world this is sorta the norm but I can see the appeal of hotel bars when you're by yourself. Other weird news but since there is the time change or 3 hours ahead sports are super late here. it's 11:15 and the 3rd quarter in the oregon game and the 2nd quarter of the warriors game. Which I am watching on my slingbox. w00t web 2.0

Down the street from my hotel theres hella restaurants like two blocks away. I ate at the Kabob Place (http://www.yelp.com/biz/kabob-palace-arlington - read my review on yelp!) It's a pakistani kabob/curry ish joint. Pretty good. The place is 24 hours and was pretty packed even at 10pm. I was sitting at a table myself and offered some guy to sit with me. He was pakistani in his 40's and we bullshitted over food. He told me how he used to live in DC but had to move to North Carolina. I didn't ask why but the guy was chill. He told me how he came here on a student visa and owns his own business now. Go American Dream and all that. So far everyone here has been mad nice.

Stopped at a SevEl on the way back where 16oz Heinekens were 2 for $3. So I bought two. Now I gotta watch this game, settle a bit and respond to the responses I got on the housing search. Wish me luck cause I need to find a place by sunday!!!

This is a bizarre first night. It just feels so much like my first few days of freshman year where i didn't really know anyone and I was in a room, albeit comfortable, by myself. It's not that I don't know anyone in DC but I don't have my crew here and it's just bizzarely parrallel to those days 4 years ago at Merrill.

Anyways stay tuned for the illest blog about Misha in DC there is. DC illing!