monkey nonsense

ramen and pork buns at momofuku – i didn’t get pictures at this place… i think either tim or tina (or both) have pictures of the food. but maaaaan, that was some good pork bun! it was so tender and greasy (i mean that in a good, tasty way). i wasn’t even hungry, but i finished all my food!

brunch at 202 cafe – waffles with bacon! pancakes with raspberries! a ham, cheese, and egg muffin… and the egg was so light and fluffy, i actually enjoyed it! the first time i heard of an old english breakfast! all quite delicious. jie – take daddy here… i think he’d love it.

pancakes with raspberries

almost all eaten french toast with bacon!

japanese wings from a takeout place – first time i ever had japanese wings. they had a very unique taste, i liked! goes really well with beer.

shake shack – outdoor burger place… when we got there a little past noon, there was already a line! after we placed our order, we had to wait anothe 30 minutes or so for the food. by that time, the line had more than doubled in length! the burgers were really good… i don’t know what makes a good burger… i think it’s a combination of the patty and the bun. but i thoroughly enjoyed my burger here. we uh… ate the food before i remembered to take a picture, so here is a picture of our trash…

pinkberry – frozen yogurt with fruit! perfect for a sunny, hot day like the day we went. the yogurt wasn’t too sweet, just right. perfectly complementing the strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries.

Contrary to popular belief (and what this blog entry may portray it)… i did NOT go to new york just to eat. i give you… HUMANS!

julie and isaac playing guitar hero in their entertainment/game room of their tiny one-bedroom apartment. note the expansive hallway in the background… that goes to their bathroom

simon and rosella playing ping pong. julie and isaac’s kitchen is in the background. ok ok… this was at google. unfortunately, i didn’t get to try any of their food there…

isaac, julie, rosella, and simon outside of google

finally….

the burger king of new jersey!!!

warning: it’s nasty… but if it weren’t my toe and if it didn’t hurt so much and mean that my toe would be messed up for awhile, i’d actually think it’d be quite cool.

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i pulled a “talida” (she was the first person to do it) and opened a metal door onto my toe. i wasn’t even wearing open toed shoes. it ended up ripping more than half my toenail up to form a 90 degree angle. unfortunately, it hurts A LOT and i don’t want to cut the nail off because it hurts so much (and because i don’t want ingrown toenails).

i took another picture of the toe from another angle, but it’s nastier because u can see the ripped up part of my toe and its bloodiness… it’s here for those that are interested tho i probably just disgusted anyone who’d ever read this. but i like the other picture because u can better see the angle the nail got bent.

oh yea… and my shoes and sock, not a single rip or a drop of blood on them.  i’m that good.

a bunch of random things to blog about…

1. parents love wii. so last weekend when i was home, i told my parents to reserve at least 2 hours on mother’s day because we were going to do something! my family rarely does anything besides eat meals together. after each meal, my mom will go into the basement to watch her chinese soaps. my dad will go to the family room to read his chinese newspaper and/or watch tv. so i brought the wii home so that we’d do something together. big hits with the parents – bowling (wii sports), tanks (wii play), shooting (wii play). my dad really liked billiards (wii play). my mom was really getting into bowling… i wonder if her arm is sore today. she was throwing REALLY hard. haha, parents didn’t really like boxing… but it was sure funny watching them play! i ended up leaving the wii at their place so they could play with it during the week.

2. my monkey is out of control… www.xanga.com/curious__george. i fear his ego will be more out of control after spending a few months with chubacca.

3. so you know those automated voicemails you get… like from your car dealership saying your car needs its XX,XXX mile maintenance or from the library saying that your reservation for “Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose” by Paris Hilton is ready at the library for pick up… how do those work? i was thinking about it on one of my drives home… it somehow knows when to start to play the message – it knows to start talking immediately if you pick up the call, but whenever you miss the call, it knows to let your voicemail message finish speaking before playing the message… how does it recognize that? especially since people can be quite deceptive with their voicemail messages, i.e. recording themselves as if they were actually picking up the phone and leading you on for a few minutes of conversation before suddenly saying “oh actually… i’m not available right now, please leave a message!” other people could probably pick up the phone somewhat mechanically, thereby tricking that phone system into thinking it was the voicemail picking up! is there something in our voices that give away we’re human, even if we try to mimic voicemail machines? but then, for those that try to mimic themselves as their voicemail message, wouldn’t that confuse the calling machine? i was thinking is there some secret machine code (like a “dog whistle” that only voicemail machines can hear from each other) that tells the calling machine to wait because its going through its voicemail message?? i dunno! that’s the only thing i could think of! how does it work?!

4. i got new socks at dick’s this weekend. yay! now i can throw away my old socks and people won’t make fun of my socks. but one question, does anyone’s socks ever fall off due to floppiness? my socks aren’t excessively large or anything, but they seem to come off rather easily. i’ve had them fall off due to playing with one of those exercise balls and just from sliding around too much on hardwood floor with them. also, they seem to twist around a lot, such that the little bend (where your ankle is) gets turned around and sits on the top of my foot.

5. my coworker got engaged. her boyfriend also works at the same company. they just walked out of here to get the ring adjusted. hehe, they’re both glowing! such a cute couple.

6. how much do you expect a person to change? there’s a delicate balance between helping someone improve themselves vs. accepting them as they are. some things about them just won’t ever change. i bring this up because a friend recently pointed out something about me (using the nerdy term “black box” to describe me)… that i want to say is my personality. whether or not it is a flaw or not, i don’t know that i can change myself and actually, i don’t know whether i want to change. i can’t tell whether i’m being stubborn, defensive, and unwilling to change for the better or whether it’s reasonable to not want to change. when i was talking to my friend, i did thank her for pointing out what was upsetting her since there’s no way i would be able to know what was bugging her unless she told me, but after ending the conversation, i felt as if there wasn’t anything i could do. and then i started to feel kind of crappy… like i wasn’t being accepted for who i was. how do you distinguish between the two?

i usually post rants about my frustrating commute home.  today, i thought i’d post just because it went so well!

at 5:26, i entered the station.  a train to vienna was due to arrive in 2 minutes.  not a bad wait at all!

at 5:28, i got on the train.  it was an 8 car train!  weee!!  there was plenty of seats still available, no one was standing!  the air conditioning was cool.  it was great.

approximately 25 minutes later, as scheduled, at 5:53… i exited the metro.  EXACT 25 minutes!  as the metro webpage says!  like clockwork!

now if only every day was like this…

tim and talida got me freakonomics for christmas this year. it had already started reading the book on some of my visits to barnes and nobles but had been too cheap to buy it myself.

i liked it. i liked the weird relationships that the author of freakonomics investigated. it almost made me want to be an economist. some of the stuff seem so far fetched at first i felt like he might have just been manipulating data to make up such relationships. but i also liked the way he was able to explain why it would seem likely. the explanations really make the book that much more interesting.

much more so than the tipping point (a book i got on sale at borders and am almost done with… but just can’t seem to make it past the last few pages). it’s interesting that both the tipping point and freakonomics bring up rudy giuliani and his policy for reducing crime in NYC (fixing up broken windows, going after the little stuff). but tipping point seemed more boring to me. perhaps i just don’t care about how “epidemics” and trends start.

one thing i didn’t really like about freakonomics was the “extras” it put in the latest edition. it included the original article written by stephen dubner about steven leavitt. that was pretty interesting. and then it included posts from the freakonomics blog. that part, i didn’t find as interesting and i felt like it was just eh… tacked onto the original book but not giving any more value. but then julie just sent me this link… and i found this freakonomics post at least interesting: http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/05/07/incentivized-potter-ing-amazon-runs-harry-potter-pre-order-contest/

overall, i thought freakonomics was really interesting. the tipping point, still a good point, but not as interesting as freakonomics. oo oo, maybe read the tipping point first, and then freakonomics. perhaps that was my problem.

this weekend, derek was in town visiting old friends.  i ended up meeting him, nancy, and one of his old high school friends, amelia, at teaism in dupont.

the place was pretty cute with unique decor.  a small little tea house (seating upstairs) right next door to a starbucks, hahaha.  they served both breakfast and lunch foods.  the menu included items that seemed somewhat indian, somewhat thai, with a heavy emphasis on tea.  not being a big fan of eggs, i went with lunch.  nancy, derek, and amelia ordered breakfast food.  nancy and amelia got this tea-cured salmon with naan dish which was pretty interesting (i helped myself to a bite ).  the salmon flavor overwhelmed any tea-curing flavor.  derek got some omelet which looked pretty good.  i think also with the tea-cured salmon.  i got some thai curry which was pretty good, but later on, i regretted not trying some of their more unique items on the menu.  but eh, i was hungry and the thai curry was filling

the place had a wide variety of tea… i ended up trying their bubble tea.  the tea flavor was good, but i felt like their bubbles were too mushy.  derek got the mango juice, which i saw a couple more orders of… it looked pretty good.  nancy got the iced green tea which also looked good.  i’m not sure what hot tea amelia got, but it was kind of nice because they gave her her own little tea pot.

pretty nice place.  i’d like to try a few more items off their menu before deciding whether i like it or not.

so one of my coworkers heard about this fancy hot dog place near adams morgan (a little over a mile away from my office)… we decided to make the trek a couple of wednesdays ago.

the place is owned/started by the same people who run the late night falafel shop in adams morgan too.  my coworker had heard good things about the place, but also that it’s a bit pricey.  $5 hot dogs?  and there’s even a $20 special kobe beef hot dog!

one of my coworkers ordered the spicy DC halfsmoke.  another ordered beef & pork NJ ripper; it was deep fried which is the first time i’ve ever seen a hot dog deep fried.  one coworker and i both ordered the andouille which wasn’t too spicy.  we split an order of fries, which were nice and crispy and most importantly, saltly .  i got the $1 “uptown” fixing bar which was pretty impressive.  a lot of different toppings, but i honestly didn’t use that many of them.  it was kind of annoying because i pretty much paid that $1 so that i could get sauerkraut on my hotdog… i think that should’ve been part of the free fixing bar.  oh well, i ended up adding bacon to my hot dog to maximize my $1.

overall, the hot dog was good.  but i also didn’t seem too special.  perhaps i should’ve tried the deep fried hot dog or the $20 kobe beef hot dog (my coworker was regretting not trying it) so that it would’ve been a more unique experience.  i don’t think it’s a place i’d frequent often (because of distance, but also because of cost)

so this morning, my stomach was upset. majorly upset. the lesson to learn here… eat less. i had 2 dinners last night (albeit one of them was really small, just taste testing someone else’s cooking and no, i don’t think it was that dinner that upset my stomach. i think it was the pho.) i decided not to risk going into the office today as my stomach still had not settled by early morning. i thought about requesting to work from home today… after all, i wasn’t feel that bad… i just wanted the comforts of my home bathroom and well, not to get any weird looks if i went to the bathroom 2-3 times in a row.

in the end, i decided to take the day off. i decided to also go for my car’s scheduled maintenance… i dread car maintenance as much as i dread the dentist. why? because both end up being much longer visits (either one really only extended visit in the case of my car or multiple broken up visits in the case of the dentist) than initially anticipated.

this time, they told me to drop the car off at 10:15 and that it was tenatively scheduled for pickup by noon. first bit of bad news, as i was dropping off the car, the guy says 1pm. fine. i decide to ask them to drop me off at the mall to kill the time. i was a bit worried about this. because my stomach, while settled, was still kind of upset so i was afraid to be a public place with an upset stomach. my worries proved unwarranted as my stomach pretty much calmed down by 11am.

so i walked around the mall… picked up a mother’s day present before i realized i had told my parents i was being cheap and after buying them a really nice and expensive bbq grill for christmas last year they weren’t getting presents foorrrever (ok, at least for awhile). oops, i forgot my own threat….

on a whim, i went into eb games. they always have wiis (empty boxes) on display but rarely are they in stock. i asked the salesman not expecting anything. then he tells me you’re 3rd in line if u want a wii! we’re expecting a shipment today, but i don’t know how many wiis will be in it, if any! hrmm… after asking him when the shipment is to arrive (he says soon) i decide that maybe i’ll leave and come back right before my car is ready… when the delivery guy shows up with the delivery!

eh! why not, right?? minimal effort, might as well pick one up and decide later if i should return it or not! so i bought one.

then i get a phone call from the dealership… seems my car has a bunch of other repairs they’re recommending – initial estimate $600+. BAH! i pick and choose what i think are the essentials, but the total is still $300 for the repairs. THEN, because like myself at the dentist, my car always needs more repair than expected, the dealership takes another hour on my car! 2pm! it went from noon, to 1pm, to 2pm to get my car repaired! it was a good thing i took the day off. and an even better thing that my stomach started to calm down! when i initially scheduled the maintenance i thought, hrm… even if my stomach were to get upset, i’d only have to manage for 2 hours. anyhoo..

so now i have a wii… but i also spent $300 on my car. it’s a lot of expenses for such a short amount of time*… should i keep the wii and get rid of the car? keep the wii, keep the car? … or return the wii and keep the car?  … OR sell the wii online and try to get it to pay off my car expenses?
* so i also got a fraud alert phone call almost immediately after i purchased the wii! hahha, i did this before when i purchased my used ps2 and taiko drum master! citicards seems to always suspect fraud whenever i purchase ~$200 worth of merchandise from eb games! i guess that does seem like a large amount…