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| (note: this is the THIRD FUCKING TIME i'm typing this whole thing out. stupid geocities. pardon any typos, which are most likely caused by my haste as i am PISSED OFF.) 6 may 2002 "-hey look! there are army men there! we should go there and meet them. -um, you don't want to go out with one of those. -*pause* what about people from NASA?" four pictures! so here's the pork chop story (first picture). at lunch, four of my ex-teralogic coworkers and i hit this place called golden island or something. one of the guys recommended it, but i have to say, this place sucks. i ordered this "shrimp and egg" thing, expecting it to be the kind of egg where it's kind of steamy and slippery and saucy. i mean, that's what the CHINESE characters said (hua dan). but, it turned out to be a pile of scrambled eggs with a few token of nuggets of shrimp. *frown* and then, another guy ordered some deep-fried pork chops. i mean, how can you messed that up? you just throw it in the fryer, right? i was the first to take a bite, and i just stopped chewing. it tasted FUNKY. really funky. i thought about it for a few seconds, and i realized... the pork chop tasted like CHOCOLATE. i didn't want to say anything, because i figured my friends would think i was on crack or something, but when i finally broke up with my chocolate assessment, they each tried a piece. and they all agreed. one guy even took a bite and spit the rest out on the table. what kind of FUCKED UP pork chops are these? sheesh weekend update! this was a pretty good one. so friday, i was itching to get out of work, so i called up ting. she invited me to have dinner with her and three other friends. so i eagerly bounced from work and headed over to rains. after much indecision, we wound up at queen house on castro. i was vacillating really hard on getting this pork-fat rice bowl, and i finally decided to hop on a gastronomical carpe diem kick and got it. damn. i mean, there were CUBES of pure fat! i kind of got sick, and in the end, i stranded a few chunks in the bowl. couldn't take it. after that, we watched _kissing jessica stein_. yup. my second friday in a row watching that movie. and i decided that i'm in love with jessica. i can kick myself later, but i want someone as neurotic as her. she's fucking adorable. the movie reminded me of my theory that everybody has the capacity to be bisexual and there have been a few times when i wondered if i could have a relationship with a guy. i mean, there are definitely guys that i know who would make great boyfriends. and we get along, we have good conversations, etc. but i decided that in the end, i couldn't do it personally... because the guy and i would simply be best friends or roommates; there'd be no sex. romping with a guy just doesn't interest me. i love women too much. i love the softness, the curves, the moisture, the voice, the touch... let's see... saturday i had nothing on my plate except for dinner plans, so i had some doubts about the day. i thought jay was on call that day, but i was pleased to find out that he was in his room when i woke up. he, i, and margaret headed out to lunch. jay was hankering for some shanghai "steamed juicy buns" as he calls them. one of his food magazines recommended a place in san mateo called "happy cafe," and i just happened to know where it was since i had met up with mark in that neighborhood two days earlier. the place was a hole in the wall, but the good sign was that everyone there was chinese. healthy omen. the food was actually pretty good and cheap, but my big beef with it was that there was way too little food on each plate. it was like shanghai-ese dimsum... deceptively expensive. i wanted to order more food, but it was like 3pm, and we had a dinner appointment at 6:30. ----- after we got home, i called up mike, and we did our PEARL MILK TEA TASTE TEST. so. aside from lucy's and verde, there have been two new tea house openings on castro: tapioca express and tea era. so mike and i decided to review their offerings: just the basic black tea with pearls. we met up at 3:20, and i got there early, so i played with my camera and took a self-portrait (2nd picture). the shirt i'm wearing is one of my new hilfiger items that i bought last week. it's this mesh-y shirt that feels like i'm wearing nothing when the wind blows. i dig the white double stripes on the shoulders. but anyways, back to the tea verdicts: tapioca express was the first place we hit. the place was rather basic, with a counter and maybe one table. the menu has a handful items of hot food, and mike said that the chicken steak was rumored to be good. the black pearl tea was $2.50 ($2.71 after tax). the cup was rather small, and by far one of the smallest doses i've ever seen. and, the bottom of the cup was ribbed, so it'd be a great pleasure toy for a woman with a huge vagina. like most new places, the cup is hermetically sealed, and shaking is done by hand after the sealing process. now, on to the taste. FUCKING CRAP IT'S GROSS. keep in mind that tapioca express is a chain, so the one near you may taste different. it tasted like fucking CHOCOLATE. what is up with my luck, with the nasty pork chop, and now the tea? i thought it was the pearls that were chocolatey, and after raising the straw to test just the tea, i think i was right. and the pearls were really bad. from the picture you can see they look mushy and varied and misshapen. some of them were not totally cooked, so it was like sticky month-old booger mass. and there was this black gelatinous debris all over the bottom. overall: 2/10 next up was tea era. i felt a little sheepish walking in there with another pearl tea in hand, but what the hell... i'm a journalist, right? the place was rather swanky, with herbal art hanging on the right wall. there was a bar (similar to verde) and a few tables. price was also $2.71, but it was broken down to $2 for the tea and $0.50 for the pearls. although it was also hermetically sealed, the tea was shaken not by hand but by one of those mechanical shaking machines before sealing. the dude took quite a long time to make each one, which made me wonder about how they would handle heavy customer traffic. oh, and the the girl there was cuter than the ones at tapicoa express. not hot, but a little cute. what we got was the ceylon black tea. i think ceylon is some kind of place; madagascar comes to mind, but i think i'm wroing. the cute girl recommended the barley tea, but seeing as how we were going to have to stomach two pearls each already, we decided to hold off on getting that. the taste was much better (i.e. no chocolate), but it was kind of bland for me. mike said that there was something weird about it. maybe the "ceylon" aspect of it, perhaps? the volume was a little more than tapioca express, but still smaller than sweetheart and ten ren (my favorites). the straws were longer than tapioca express, too. the pearls were very consistent, and at least they were cooked. overall, decent, average, and i give it a 5/10. if i were on castro, though, i'd stil go to verde. by the way, i give ten ren a 7/10 and sweetheart an 8/10. mike digs fantasia. oh, and both places (express/era) have buy 10 / get 1 free cards. and you have to puncture your own tea, which might cause some accidents, not to mention germs (fecal matter, ewww) all over the communal straw bin. ----- after chilling with mike some more, i headed up to mallory's with jay and margaret, where her mom proceeded to cook an amazing home-cooked meal with cold hand-pulled-with-love noodles. and spicy toppings! for the next few hours, though, the three of them doctors just spouted out about medical issues galore, leaving me completely bereft of any contribution to the dialogue. after a while, i got up and talked to mallory's mom, who was just sitting in the back listening to the other three talk. i mean, one of the things i was looking forward to the most that night was getting the chance to speak some mandarin. i have decided that keeping the language ability in my family for one more generation is really important to me. and since i don't get to speak it very often, i was craving the chance to use it again. but anyways, i had a nice chat with her mom. i definitely had to think, though, because i had to dig out some old vocabulary i hadn't used recently, and at the same time search my memory banks for some phrases that she used (some which i simply couldn't comprehend). the mom's daily vocab is at a much higher level than what i'm used to when i'm speaking with my own family, but anyways, i was really pleased... as american as i am, my first language will always be mandarin, and speaking it or listening to it (as long as i can understand, of course) just feels like home. the mom seemed concerned about my lack of passion for my job. mallory told me that her family has a strong work ethic, and i might have detected some disapproval from the mom when i said that i was really bored and jaded at such a young age. *shrug* parents will always be parents, right? ----- sunday i woke up late (but i did go to bed at 4am), and i went shopping with ting. valley fair, baby! what surprised me was that despite being there a week before, i still found stuff i wanted to buy. and i venture to say that this week's shopping loot was more satisfactory than last week's even! what's stranger is that i bought stuff at stores that i dislike. i got this spring khaki jacket at j. crew, which is usually pretty lame. and i got a red belt at american eagle, which i HATE because they're total abercrombie wannabes. the best deal of my life was scored at aeropostale. i was looking at hats, and i got this yellow one. the tag said $14.50. when the cashier rang it up, the register said "blah blah blah SANDWICH, 0.99." what the fuck? then he told me that my hat was on clearance, and that i was going to get another 30% off. so the tab was... $0.69 + tax = SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS. and then, WHAM-O! i emphatically smacked down a dollar bill on the counter. dude, i have never bought an article of clothing for a dollar bill before. it felt fucking sweet. ting is a really good shopping buddy. i think i like shopping with girls because they have a better fashion sense than guys. i think what i would really dig is finding a gay shopping buddy. but anyways, it was fun with ting; there was the right mix of separating in a store to look at our own stuff, and getting back together to check out what we got and offer our own opinions. we pretty much roamed the entire mall, spending most of our time in the new expanded north wing. i didn't have lunch, so we stopped by the food court, where ting witnessed me inhale a big mac in 2 minutes and 3 seconds. oh, and we were both wearing red shoes yesterday. ----- after dropping ting off, i headed over to the ex-vivacers' cinco de mayo party. it was a weird concept: a party for people who *used* to work together. anyways, it was good to see some of the people again... i mean, we had a really good team at vivace, and it only reminds me how sad it is that we all got laid off. seeing as it was already 6pm, and i only had a big mac up until then, i proceeded to eat about a POUND of cheese. yup. half a dozen mozarella sticks and just as many quesadillas. i felt really sick. the fabulous HR girl, jessica, apparently reads my journal (seems like a lot of people at vivace did), and she was totally gushing about how i should become a writer. she said it was my "true calling." i wonder. i kind of want to write a novel, but... what would i write about? hm. i think it would be fun to do, and very satisfying, too! we'll see if i get the inspiration one day. but i definitely know that i can't write a novel in its classic form; there has to be some gimmick or innovation that i have to come up with to make it fit my scatterbrained tangential thought patterns. yup. that was about it. after i got home, jay cooked up some mean pork chops (no chocolate this time), and the three of us watched _joy ride_. i was particularly interested in this movie because it's directed by john dahl, who did _red rock west_ and one of my favorite movies, _the last seduction_. (linda fiorentino is amazing.) the movie was fucking freaky. luckily, i didn't have any nightmares, but there's sometihng about the spraypaint sign sequence that scares the living shit out of me. it's like the "redrum" thing in _the shining_... menacing morbid phrases appearing out of nowhere on mundane objects that just tap into my psyche and start shredding it. *shiver* ok. this is getting hella long. i have a lot of stuff to cover, but i'll save it for tomorrow. oh, i forgot to mention: the last picture is of the ceiling lights at the bilevel banana republic at valley fair. if you've noticed, i've started cropping my pictures. i really don't know how to do it in the optimal way, but i guess a lot of it will come with practice, no? [ok. i've spent two hours on this entry. my right hand is cramping up. fucking geocities...] |