i fail at blogging

Gazebo in the park

2010-03-09T12:25:00.000-06:00

Really, my first idea for a wedding location was a gazebo in a public park. (Not this specific park.) Those are free by definition, right? My main concern is whether we shall have to weather the weather, but maybe the ever-changing Houston weather will actually benefit us. We could always postpone the ceremony for 15 minutes while we wait for the weather to change. =P
That's all for my walk. I also took a picture of a dead bird out of morbid curiosity, but I'll just delete that and let you continue on with your cheerful day. =)

The park!

2010-03-09T12:16:00.000-06:00

This park had a lot of monuments and flags, so I'm assuming it was some kind of memorial. By the time I got there, I was too cold to want to read any of the signs. Wearing shorts had not been a smart decision. Oh well, I'll be back! (But maybe not for a couple of months... I can be pretty lazy.)

On the way to the park

2010-03-09T12:12:00.000-06:00

I snapped these two pictures as I continued past the playground to the park. I almost got run over by a car as I stopped in the middle of the road to try to get a good angle on the V-shaped clouds. And that house still has Christmas decorations up in March. I wanted to snap a closer picture, but the set of individuals who leave Christmas decorations up year-round closely intersects with the set of individuals who would shoot someone for taking pictures of said decorations, so I tried to stay out of line of sight.

Dinosaurs!

2010-03-09T12:06:00.000-06:00

Sadly, I didn't ride them because I was pretty sure they couldn't support my weight, and I didn't want to cause another mass extinction.

Swings!

2010-03-09T12:05:00.000-06:00

Llama asked if there was a swingset, and here's my answer: sort of. There's one standard swing and one of those weird swings that looks like a giant diaper and is probably designed for babies, but I've never seen anyone put a baby into one of those diaper swings. It's probably just a trap for small teenagers whose friends (?) stuff them into the swing and laugh as they spend half an hour trying to escape. >.<
Also, there is a mural of the Puerto Rican flag dwarfing the US flag. The Massachusetts flag is apparently unimportant or (more likely) way too hard to draw.

Water... Stuff

2010-03-09T11:57:00.000-06:00

I'm guessing these things spray water like in water parks. Thankfully they weren't turned on today, because it's rather chilly outside (though sunny).

The Walk

2010-03-09T11:54:00.000-06:00

There are many reasons I hate jogging: I suck at it, there's so much scenery that you just speed past, I dislike the concept of exercising for exercise's sake, and oh yeah, I suck at it. But I do enjoy walks very much. Maybe the worst part of jogging is that it takes something I love and makes it into something I hate?
Anyway, the weather's been nice for the past few days, and my laptop has been non-functional, so I've been walking to the library to use their computers. I bet the other patrons love when I sneeze and sniffle. >.<
I noticed that there was a playground on the way to the library yesterday, so I paid it a visit today and took some pictures. Thankfully there weren't any kids, or their parents might have called the police on me. =/

Dun Morogh

2010-01-05T17:26:00.000-06:00

Actually the beautiful view from on top of the Born Free run at Vail.

Simba

2009-12-27T09:06:00.000-06:00

Found this in my room. It is all sorts of awesome! ^.^

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T09:42:00.000-06:00

Dear North Korea...

2009-12-13T10:48:00.000-06:00

Next time you kidnap US journalists, I suggest you make sure that they are white and blonde. You'll get more attention that way. The media doesn't care about Asian-Americans... Heck, they probably think we all belong in North Korea anyway.

Earth man's burden

2009-11-16T17:12:00.003-06:00

*Warning: This post may contain spoilers for District 9!*

I remember the days when movie aliens were always evil, and the hero's job was to save the planet by defeating the alien invaders. Things are a little different these days. The summer movie District 9 and the upcoming Avatar (the James Cameron movie, not the other one) show aliens in a slightly more sympathetic, albeit still problematic, light.

It's easy to see that the conflict between these aliens and humans resembles the racial conflicts. The South Africa portrayed in District 9 has "Humans Only" signs and aliens living in squalid ghettos. In Avatar, humans who are prospecting for a rare ore land on a moon named Pandora that is inhabited with "savage" natives. If these scenarios don't remind you of apartheid and the arrival of the European settlers in the Americas, you need to go back and read your history books.

Now, it's nice to see the aliens portrayed as sympathetic, sentient beings, and it's nice to see the aliens win (although we're still waiting for their real-life counterparts to "win"), but why does it always take an Earthling to lead them to success? A white, male Earthling at that. A white, male Earthling that somehow transforms into one of the aliens.

If we were to relate this back to real-life scenarios, these movies are sending the message that minority communities fighting for their rights need to be led by a white, male "savior". And that couldn't be further from the truth. Gandhi, MLK Jr., Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Cori Aquino, William Kamkwamba - it takes a cultural insider to lead people and make a change. A random white American or European would not have been able to do so.

Yes, I understand that this is Hollywood, and these movies are fictional and not direct allegories. But can we please stop with the white savior trope? It's overdone, it detracts from credibility, and worst of all, it sends the false message that POCs need "saving" by whites.

Hi, little bug

2009-11-11T08:56:00.000-06:00

My school at night

2009-11-03T16:12:00.000-06:00

Isn't it beautiful?

Free food is win!

2009-10-15T16:28:00.000-05:00

Since the start of this semester, I've been living off campus, which means I'm no longer on the meal plan. While this allows me a lot of flexibility in eating (the school dining hall closes pretty early, especially on weekends), it means I have to worry about how much I'm spending on food. My new favorite food is free food! ^.^
So far, I've gotten hot dogs and watermelon that were left over from a picnic, rice and pasta from an unknown donor, canned beans and mushrooms left over from Resident Resource training, apples from when students went apple picking, and eggs left over from Korean Thanksgiving. In fact, I've eaten lunch at school twice a week since the semester began, entirely for free!
Last night, I went to a recruiting event and ate free pizza. Today's free items were a root beer and a cup of chili from my friends. ^.^
I'm still fairly hungry most of the time, but free food has been a huge help!

adventures in doing my laundry

2009-09-14T14:46:00.002-05:00

Clothesline failed. Apparently paperclips were not meant to hold that much weight. Will have to think of a better way to make a clothesline. Or just cough up $1 for the dryer (in quarters, which is the hard part). Right now I have wet clothes hanging up all over my room. Guess we'll see how well that works.

Should probably head to the pet store to look for a job soon. The liquor store isn't hiring.

Multimedia message

2009-07-04T13:36:00.000-05:00

Gotta get some pictures off my phone, since I haven't blogged (blug?) in a while. Basically, I'm in St. Louis for the summer. Here's some pictures of the Gateway Arch and the view from inside it. The watery side is where Missouri merges into Illinois. They've got fireworks going on at the arch tonight. I imagine it must be cool to watch them from inside the arch, but I'll settle for watching from my bed in my room. =P

I might be immature...

2009-05-30T11:23:00.000-05:00

But srsly? >.< Good job, rural Missouri. =P

Fat fish

2009-05-30T11:15:00.000-05:00

This picture doesn't do justice to how fat these fish are. They are round. >.<

This is a franc

2009-05-29T13:47:00.000-05:00

Not that special, except it's the first one I've seen. Also, I don't know how it got into our washateria because we're nowhere near France. *shrug*

Claire's is full of weird stuff

2009-05-26T16:47:00.000-05:00

Moar parking fail

2009-05-26T16:44:00.000-05:00

I was tempted to give this guy a pass, since his bad parking didn't really affect anyone else. But really? The parking spot is so big and your car is so small! And the parking lot was mostly empty too, so I doubt he had to wedge it into the only space left. Come on, dude. Get your act together.

sunburn update

2009-05-25T21:48:00.000-05:00

It's finally starting to peel! Yay! *peels sunburn*

Parking FAIL

2009-05-25T13:34:00.001-05:00

I hate people who can't park.

Is this food?

2009-05-25T13:28:00.000-05:00

I pondered for a bit on whether to put this picture on the Foodtographer blog, but finally decided that, since I haven't eaten it yet, it doesn't count. Those are new bamboo shoots, by the way, which I helped dig out of our backyard. When my grandma cooks them, those pictures will end up on the food blog.

Foodtographer blog active again

2009-05-25T10:53:00.003-05:00

Food-related posts will now be posted on http://foodtographer.blogspot.com. Also, apparently I started a family trend of taking pictures of food, so the blogroll has been expanded to include a few more members of my family. Enjoy!

(This blog will still be used for non-food posts. I swear I sometimes don't think about food. >.<)

Johns Hopkins graduation

2009-05-22T03:22:00.000-05:00

I had to stand for 4 hours and fight crowds of overeager families. My feet hurt until I finally decided to take off my shoes. I'm also terribly sunburned. But Johns Hopkins graduation was worth attending. Not only did I get to watch my cousin walk across the stage (well, I technically missed it because I was trying to get a picture of the big screen), I got to hear an awesome commencement address by Nancy Pelosi, and I ran into some old friends. ^.^ Sunburns fade, but memories are a lifetime. Well... Skin cancer is forever, and alzheimer's makes you forget everything... Oh well. Still fun. =)

Dinner took 4 hours >.<

2009-05-20T21:54:00.000-05:00

Dinner at McCormick & Schmick's in Baltimore. The food took forever to get to our table, but it was excellent. We had a bunch of appetizers, such as crab cake, shrimp, and calamari. For my entree, I had the lobster, which turned out to be an excellent choice. We finished up with some delicious creme brulee. ^.^ All in all, a wonderful meal. The restaurant was located on the waterfront too, so the view was great. My only complaint is that all but one of the bathroom stalls were out of toilet paper. =P

Lab mice

2009-05-20T13:21:00.000-05:00

They're cute, they have cancer, and they eat each other when they die. Yum. =P

Johns Hopkins medical center is crazy

2009-05-20T13:17:00.000-05:00

We started at Johns Hopkins main campus, with its green lawns, charming brick buildings, and matching brick walkways (that were paid for by a donation from Bloomberg). Then, we drove through downtown Baltimore for 10 minutes, past boarded up rowhouses with broken windows. Suddenly, we passed the perimeter into the medical center, and everything was new and well-maintained again. Seriously, we went from a few black people walking into corner stores to mostly white people crowding the sidewalks in just one street. The line was jarring. >.< My cousin explained that med school emergency rooms are located in poor urban centers because of the violence. I don't know what to make of this all. I guess it's good that the poor people are close to a hospital... But the huge difference in affluence leaves me feeling unsettled and wondering what can and should be done.

Pictures of Johns Hopkins

2009-05-20T12:10:00.000-05:00

I'm currently at Johns Hopkins. My cousin is graduating tomorrow, but today was his induction ceremony into a medical society. (Hence the guy by the plaque.) The campus is really pretty, plus the weather is nice. We stumbled upon a statue that apparently some students received a $2k innovation grant to move from the city to campus. >.< I'm not sure what exactly is so innovative about moving a statue, unless they moved it themselves. =P My cousin suggests that they should have hired a moving company and pocketed the difference. Now that's innovation! XD

Fuzzy things must be cuddled

2009-05-19T23:35:00.000-05:00

My biggest weakness is cute fuzzy things. Prior to move out day, my school had a donation table where you could leave things that you didn't want but were still in good condition. This year, I "rescued" a total of 4 stuffed animals: a lobster, a sheep, a giraffe, and a lion cub. The weird thing is, the lobster was the exact same as the one I found on the donation table 2 years ago. The picture is of the 2 lobsters with the sheep. I named the lion cub Ashley after my friend Ashley, who figured out how to turn it on with a switch in her tummy. She purrs, growls, blinks, and generally responds to being petted. I was cuddling her the other day, and I randomly said "I love you"... And I meant it. My friends made fun of me, saying that my mothering instinct had messed up in terms of species. >.< Is it sad that I wish I could have puppies instead of kids? =P This is (part of) why I want to end up with a werewolf! Lol.

John Harvard's

2009-05-19T23:22:00.000-05:00

Beer and nachos at John Harvard's. I think the beer was called Providence ale... Or something else with a p. >.< Bad memories ftl. The nachos are enormous!I also got a burger, but I ate it too quickly to take a picture. Rest assured that it was delicious too. ^.^ The fries were so good that they were still good cold one day later.

Bubble tea

2009-05-19T23:13:00.000-05:00

We had a bubble tea study break. ^.^ My favorite flavor is Thai tea. Actually, in New York, I got some yogurt green tea, which may be my new favorite, but New York is its own long story. This picture is Thai tea though.

Carnival!

2009-05-19T23:10:00.000-05:00

Carnival consisted of a bunch of fun events like a bouncy castle, a human foosball court, grilling sausage and steak, a live band, ice cream, and a dunk tank. The pictures show the airbrush tattoo (my friend CaR got turtles) and polymer wrestling. Again, mostly it was fun hanging out with my friends. I'm gonna miss them. T.T

Melting pot

2009-05-19T23:01:00.000-05:00

A bunch of us went to The Melting Pot for Girls Night Out. Our meal consisted of 3 courses: appetizers with melted cheese, entree that was cooked in oil or soup, and dessert dipped in melted chocolate. For those of you who haven't gone, you stab food with skewers, dip or cook them in the pots, and eat! I also got a yin yang drink. I'm pretty sure they accidentally forgot to put alcohol in it, but they refused to admit mistake, so whatever. All in all, the experience was fun, and I enjoyed hanging out with friends. Melting Pot also seems like a great place to take a date. ~.^ Now for pictures!

The past few weeks...

2009-05-19T22:49:00.000-05:00

Whew! School is finally out, and I have a couple of weeks to relax until my internship. Basically just finals, food, carnival, and the best trip to New York ever. Right now I'm in Maryland for my cousin's graduation, and the hotel charges for internet access, so I guess I'll just use phone internet. There's a midget couple on TV... Moar pictures coming up next! (Of the last few weeks, not the midgets.)

this makes my blood run cold

2009-05-05T10:39:00.002-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/02/pa.immigrant.beating/

Almost a year ago, a man was brutally beaten and killed in rural Pennsylvania. A couple of days ago, his killers were acquitted of everything but simple assault. Of course, after reading up on the details, I can't say that it isn't what I expect of America.

The victim: a 25 year old immigrant from Mexico
The perpetrators: white high school football players
The crime: beating the guy to death while yelling racial slurs
The jury: all white

I was going to take a nap, until I read this story. Now I doubt I'll be able to sleep. Is this what we mean when we say "liberty and justice for all"? >.<

2009-04-24T22:38:00.001-05:00

Two guys just walked across the chapel floor on their hands while a flamboyantly loud white boy video recorded it. My ch

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Multimedia message

2009-04-24T18:34:00.000-05:00

Ben made this out of apples and donuts. Pure awesome. ^.^

Multimedia message

2009-04-24T18:27:00.000-05:00

Pile of mashed potatoes and pile of macaroni. They retained the shapes of their containers disturbingly well. =P

Multimedia message

2009-04-24T18:01:00.000-05:00

So I obviously meant "roast" instead of "smart" in the title. Here's a picture of the cucumbers, which Kevin and I cut. They were squishy, but general consensus was that they were okay and only looked like that because they'd been frozen. >.< Hopefully they'll be okay, or I guess we can drown them in salad dressing. =P

ICF senior smart

2009-04-24T17:45:00.001-05:00

My church is doing senior roast tonight, which seems to consist mostly
of food and making fun of the graduating seniors. As of now, the
non-seniors are frantically preparing dinner and decorations.
Supposedly the dress code is semi-formal, so I wore a dress (I never
wear dresses), and I'm the only person dressed up. >.< I'm starting to
wonder if the whole semi-formal thing is just a prank on me. Stay
tuned for pictures of food and general silliness!

legos!

2009-04-23T17:41:00.002-05:00

You're never too old to play with Legos. That's a dog, a guy sitting in a chair, a cactus, and... um... some sort of table with items on it? (That was supposed to be the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but Jim turned it sideways and symmetrized it. Pretty sure "symmetrize" is not a word. >.< It's weird that the majority of this blog post is within parentheses.)

sign fail

2009-04-17T23:07:00.004-05:00

The part that really bothers me is that I've walked past this sign every day for almost a week, and I only noticed today that it is hilariously misspelled. >.<

mullet

2009-04-15T10:57:00.004-05:00

I have a mullet:

The thing about mullets is that you can't hide them with a hat. It only makes the mullet more mullet-y. So I need a haircut. Does anyone know of good hair cutting places nearby that aren't overly expensive? I'd really prefer an Asian place, since I haven't had good experiences with white hair salons. (Turns out Asian hair *is* different.)

Alternatively, if anyone cuts hair and wants to try chopping off my mullet tail, I'd be up for that as well. And I won't even complain if it turns out badly, since I've had a number of ridiculous and/or bad haircuts before. Besides, I could always just buzz it all off. I've wanted to do that for a while too, but I get the feeling that wouldn't look very good to employers. >.< Gender norms can be so ridiculous.

Good thing is, my hair without the tail already resembles Posh Spice's haircut, so it should be easy to fix:

2009-04-15T10:56:00.001-05:00

Testing to see if mobile posting is working.

this should just be the dumpling blog

2009-04-10T09:35:00.002-05:00

After living for 22 years without ever having attended a dumpling party, I somehow managed to attend two in a span of three weeks. At least my dumpling-making skills are improving. I estimate that I make dumplings at 50% the average speed (up from 25%), and my dumplings only rupture upon cooking 50% of the time (down from 80%). =P Given the choice, however, my plan is still to stick with pre-made frozen dumplings.

Of course, this post is useless without pictures, so here they are.

Pan-fried:

Boiled (I don't know any cooking terms, so please correct me if that's inaccurate):

For some reason, these dumplings stuck together and resemble a brain:

The sauce that Judy made (contains soy sauce and green onions, again correct me if I'm wrong):

Everyone was pretty full after the dumplings, but then Judy brought out a tray of cupcakes. There were 5 different types, but I only remembered to take a picture after most of them were gone. The two in the picture are something with walnuts that Judy made (top), and neapolitan (bottom). The other three were lemon, banana (made with root beer instead of water!), and something with a thick layer of caramel on the bottom. Kevin was my tasting buddy, and we split one of each flavor, despite being very very full. At one point, we almost stopped, but that's what the buddy system is for! (That, and shooting polar bears while you're pooping. >.<)

Cupcakes:

We then played a round of Taboo, during which I correctly guessed "hangover", and my pastor remarked that I sure seemed to know about that. I referenced my "sin list", and getting drunk isn't on there, so I guess it's okay, but it's still embarrassing. >.<

Yesterday, Joan (who threw the first dumpling party) suggested having another one this weekend. Maybe this blog should just be the dumpling blog. =P

school has eaten my life

2009-04-09T14:15:00.004-05:00

It's been a while since my last blog post. I've been very busy with school lately - the end of the semester is always rough. For example, this week I gave a presentation earlier today, I have a design packet due in about half an hour, and I've been working extensively on the rough draft of a paper and yet another presentation that's due on Monday. Adding to all that, I'm still searching for a summer internship. Most of the extra time is taken out of eating and sleeping. I'm down to roughly 1 meal a day and maybe 5 hours of sleep. On the bright side, apparently calorie restriction can lead to a longer life span.

Anyway, slightly more interesting than my whining is this comic that I doodled last week:
If I ever get the time, I actually have a plot for this story, and it would be interesting to complete. Hopefully tonight I'll get the chance to upload some pictures of a dumpling wrapping party that I attended this past weekend. I gotta say, I'm definitely improving at making dumplings. ^.^

the end of epic adventuring

2009-03-29T20:19:00.008-05:00

It all started two summers ago when I saw Superbad. After watching a comedy about two high schoolers and their quest for booze and girls, I realized what was missing in my life (or so I thought). I had never gone on an epic adventure.

My first epic adventure took me into the heart of Manhattan sometime in the fall of 2007. I had intended to watch a screening of Finishing the Game and immediately hop on the bus back to Boston. Instead, I realized that the Fung Wah bus doesn't run in the middle of the night, and my then-boyfriend wasn't about to allow me to spend a night wandering the streets of Manhattan alone, so he called a cute young couple from his WoW guild, who happened to live nearby, to take care of me. Enter John and Kai, who have given me a place to crash throughout my adventuring for the past year and a half.

From overstaying my welcome (somehow one night turned into three), to showing up at 3 am demanding a place to sleep (I missed the last train), to getting poop all over their bathroom (the toilet clogged up - this one wasn't entirely my fault), to having ridiculous relationship drama (they've offered to let me marry their newborn son when I'm 40 - that's how sure they are that I'll never settle down), John and Kai have put up with quite a bit of crap from me (no pun intended).

This weekend I headed over to their apartment to see their newborn son Ethan and attend a huge dinner being thrown in his honor. Unfortunately, my cell phone ran out of battery before most of the food arrived (in my defense, we had to wait 2 hours), so I mostly just have pictures of the long wait.

Not gonna lie, I'm not really a cat person or a baby person, but there is something extremely hilarious about Ethan using their cat Donna as a pillow. Perhaps because I've tried it before, and Donna didn't let me. >.< This is Ethan in his very, very red outfit that he wore for dinner. He screamed the entire time that John was dressing him, but once we were at the restaurant, we didn't hear a peep out of him. For 5 hours. He's barely a month old and already has more cojones than his father. =P

This is the restaurant. Apparently there were 80+ guests, most of whom were Kai's relatives. I felt a little out of place because I was the only person there who wasn't related to anyone else, and I also don't understand Cantonese. I mostly sat in my little corner, texted Llama, and gorged myself on food and drink.

This is Remy. I'd never had cognac before, so I decided to try some. I ended up eating a little bit of the cork that fell into the glass and spent a good amount of time trying to fish out the remaining pieces of cork. Oh well, anything to pass the time.

This was the first dish, and the only one I managed to take a photo of. It's lobster salad. The giant lobster was just for decoration. Next to it was a concoction of fruit, vegetables, and lobster, all drenched in a sauce that resembled mayonnaise. Despite being terrified of it at first, I thought it was quite delicious.

The other food that I really wish I had gotten a photo of was the octopus. It was a tiny little thing about the length of my middle finger, but neither John nor Kai wanted to eat it, so it got passed to me. It tasted like BBQ. =) All in all, I ate about 5 octopi, and I mocked my wussy friends by occasionally sticking tentacles out of my mouth while chewing. Yes, I'm exactly the type of person you want around your newborn baby.

All in all, there were 10 courses. The last three or so just got packed up and taken home because none of the guests were hungry by then. At the end, our table got a plate of orange slices, as is apparently customary in most Chinese restaurants in America. I ate about 2/3 of the orange slices on that plate while waiting for the guests to clear out so that we could leave. >.< At least I don't have to worry about scurvy.

While John and Kai took turns being crankily awake and taking care of a screaming Ethan throughout the night (don't ask me why he behaves in public and not at home - no one knows), I played the latest Sims expansion on Kai's computer. I created goth version of John, a cowgirl version of Kai, and named their baby Adolf (it was funny at the time because we'd contemplated making a black family with the last name Hitler). Then, I made myself and Llama into their pet dogs, because ever since meeting John and Kai, I've wanted to be one of their pets. =) Unfortunately, there was a glitch when bathing the dogs - they'd get stuck in the bathtub. I didn't want to watch my canine self slowly starve to death, so I deleted that game and created human versions of myself and Llama. Did you know, The Sims is soooo much easier when you don't have pets or a baby? Who'd've thunk? =P Anyway, The Sims ate my night, and I eventually went to sleep a little before 9 am.

This morning we went out to dim sum in Flushing with a few of Kai's relatives whom I'd met last night. Afterwards, I drove down to Long Island to visit a friend who used to go to my college, and I forced her to help me study for my biology exam, which is tomorrow. My ingenious idea of the day was to record myself reading out key concepts in the chapters and burn it onto a CD that I could listen to in my car (I never joined the mp3 player revolution). So I spent the majority of my drive back to Boston listening to myself mispronounce words like "auxotrophy" and "topoisomerase".

Sadly, the proudest moment of my journey this weekend was at the end, when I made it back to campus in time to pee in the bathroom instead of wetting myself. Also, I managed to drive almost 10 miles after my "fuel empty" light came on, but that's probably my car's equivalent of holding it in, so it's not really my accomplishment to be proud of.

If this all doesn't sound very epic to you, keep in mind that I spend most of my time sitting in front of my laptop in the dark, so it's all relative. After a year and a half of actively seeking out epic adventures, I finally realized that I completely missed the point of Superbad. The best part of epic adventures is having someone to share them with. So, a big thank you to John and Kai for all your support, and hopefully I'll find someone before Ethan starts forming memories, because it would be very weird for him to grow up with his parents joking about him marrying his "Uncle Ike". And yes, I do plan on making him call me that. =)

dumplings!

2009-03-25T15:33:00.003-05:00

Yesterday my friend Joan threw a dumpling party. This involved a bunch of people getting together to make dumplings, cook them, and eat them.

Here are some of the dumplings after we made them but before they were cooked:

We made 2 types of dumplings, meat and veggie. I wish I had remembered to take pictures when we were making the filling. It was really complex, and a lot of time was spent making sure that the dumpling filling was as dry as possible. The meat dumplings contained ground pork (was it pork? I can never tell with ground meat), cabbage, and carrots. The veggie dumplings had tofu, cabbage, and carrots.

The finished meat dumplings:

We dipped the dumplings in a concoction of soy sauce, vinegar, chopped up leeks, and chopped up garlic. They were amazingly delicious. =) The veggie dumplings looked a little worse. According to Joan, something in the meat helps to hold the dumpling together. According to me, I'm terrible at making dumplings, and I made the veggie dumplings, hence, they fell apart.

They were still good, but most of us were carnivores, so we offered our leftovers to the vegans and vegetarians down in Hippie Suite. They were thrilled and loved it. =)

To make things even better, the food cost was about $4 per person. We really should do this more often! I give the whole event two thumbs up.

gmail mobile app, why must you torture me so?

2009-03-24T15:06:00.002-05:00

Gmail's mobile app is great - except for one thing. It consistently shows the wrong time on all messages in my inbox. It's 4 hours ahead, so I have e-mails that say I received them at 8 PM when it's only 4 PM here. I tried to go online and find the solution on Google's help forums, but all I found was a lot of other people who have the same problem, and no answers from anyone at Google.

Gmail shows the correct time on messages in my web browser on both my computer and my phone. It's only the Java mobile app that shows the incorrect time. I tried multiple things:

turned off a few Google Labs toys (like Gmail offline),
changed the time detection on my phone from "Automatic" to "Manual",
logged out of Gmail on my computer before logging back in on my phone app.

None of these things have worked, and my Gmail mobile app still happily displays the time 4 hours ahead. I'm sick of living in the future. It sucks. =P Does anyone know how to fix this issue?

FYI: I use a Samsung A737, which I'm fairly sure is supported.

another phone issue

2009-03-23T15:05:00.002-05:00

Why don't cell phones have the option to set silent or normal mode
based on time? I'm sure more hardcore phones have it, but it seems
like a pretty basic and helpful function. So far, none of my phones
have had this function, so I tend to leave my phone on silent (so it
doesn't accidentally ring in class), but then I miss calls when I'm
not in class because I can't hear my phone ringing.

live blogging armageddon

2009-03-22T16:01:00.004-05:00

I got back to my suite just as Berto was finishing up Armageddon, so I sat in his room and watched the ending. Here's my attempt at live-blogging, except I was doing it on AIM:

Me (3:10:21 PM): watching the end of armageddon
Me (3:13:22 PM): yay rednecks saving the world
Me (3:21:22 PM): so many rednecks dying in space!
Me (3:23:58 PM): angry hot redneck girl!
Me (3:24:02 PM): played by liv tyler
Me (3:26:57 PM): rednecks drilling on flaming asteroids!
Me (3:27:40 PM): man i'm glad i'm not live blogging this movie... it would be ridiculous
Llama (3:29:54 PM): Haha
Llama (3:29:57 PM): Yeah :P
Llama (3:30:09 PM): I haven't seen that movie in years D}:
Me (3:30:24 PM): um... lots of rocks randomly exploding and rednecks getting spiked or crushed
Me (3:30:50 PM): come to think of it, i might post a transcript on my blog
Me (3:33:04 PM): also, all the rednecks wanted to die, so they had to draw straws
Me (3:34:55 PM): awww the redneck dad is sacrificing himself for his daughter's boyfriend, how ridiculously sweet
Llama (3:35:25 PM): :}O!!
Me (3:37:07 PM): touching moment between bruce willis and liv tyler right before he's about to die
Llama (3:37:19 PM): :'c!!
Me (3:37:45 PM): this is gonna make it all the worse when ben affleck and liv tyler get divorced after 5 years of marriage
Me (3:38:01 PM): she's gonna be all "my dad DIED for you, and all you do is drink and beat the kids"
Llama (3:38:17 PM): Haha yeah
Llama (3:38:45 PM): That'll be in Armageddon 2 8'c
Me (3:39:14 PM): a family romantic comedy
Me (3:40:45 PM): this would be a fun drinking movie - take a shot every time someone says "yeehaw"
Me (3:40:59 PM): or other stereotypical redneck stuff
Me (3:42:33 PM): wooo the asteroid blowing up looks like a windows media player visualizer
Llama (3:43:09 PM): Hehe, nice special effects... probably cost thousands for that D}:
Me (3:43:36 PM): or they just played windows media player =P
Me (3:45:04 PM): wheeeee they took the slide off the shuttle
Me (3:45:29 PM): and somewhere in there, liv tyler found the time to shower and change so she could look hot for her man
Me (3:46:57 PM): /sigh... i'll never be an astronaut
Me (3:47:10 PM): ugh! and the annoying theme song by aerosmith
Llama (3:47:35 PM): Hehe
Me (3:47:41 PM): um... is the thing at the end a joint funeral/wedding?
Me (3:48:23 PM): there's pictures of the dead guys, while the girl is in a wedding dress...
Llama (3:48:47 PM): Heh interesting wedding there... :}O

So any parts that don't make sense are due to me splicing out the parts of the conversation that weren't about the movie. I can't believe the 90's were that long ago! Also, I can't believe I just spent an hour formatting this crap. Note: Llama is not watching the movie - he's just the unfortunate soul that I chose to chat with on AIM.

unexpected foodtography

2009-03-21T21:05:00.005-05:00

Whenever I get a new phone, I spend an inordinate amount of time playing with the camera. This morning, I took about 10 artsy black+white pictures of our (messy) bathroom. Those were deleted immediately and will not be posted. However, tonight we unexpectedly had takeout fake Chinese food, so I took some pictures:

The above picture is lemon chicken. Apparently it's just fried chicken dipped in a lemony sauce. It started out all right, but the sauce is one of those things you can't eat too much of, or you'll start to get sick of it. Maybe I should have just eaten the chicken by itself.

The dish on the left is broccoli with... beef? Or maybe just broccoli in beef-ish sauce. I only ever got broccoli out of that dish. The one on the right is, oddly enough, shrimp with broccoli. I didn't even know those two foods went together - and they really don't. Plus, the sauce was, again, sickeningly sweet. At least the shrimp were shelled, and their tails were pulled off. =) I'm lazy like that.

The one above is fish with walnuts or pecans. Never could tell the difference between them. My family agreed that this was the best dish out of what we got for dinner. It was seasoned with pepper and not drowned in extremely sweet sauce, so I guess that's what made the difference.

We got all this for about $45 at a place called Dong Ting, which is apparently just down the street, next door to the Radio Shack, even though I'd never heard of it. The verdict? Next time, if I have a choice, I'll just drive the extra 10 minutes to Chinatown and get better food for cheaper. On a scale from two thumbs down to two thumbs up, I give it one thumb down. I actually started to feel a little sick after a while, so I stopped eating. Maybe it's a personal thing, but fake Asian food tends to unsettle my whiny (but somehow still sizeable) stomach.

Edit: The place is apparently called Chef Ding now. I saw the takeout menu on our table before I left for the airport this morning.

testing

2009-03-21T16:41:00.001-05:00

Blogger Mobile isn't working on my phone. When I send messages to go.blogger.com, I get nothing in response. It might be because I registered my phone earlier today and immediately deleted the new blog they gave me (at the time, I didn't know that I could merge it with my current blog). Maybe I should wait a bit. In the meantime, I'm searching for internships (boooooo) and testing out e-mail blogging.

new phone

2009-03-21T13:28:00.003-05:00

This is my new phone (except the real color is closer to yellow than green, so I've dubbed it the Bananaphone):

It's a Samsung A737. So far, it's been okay. I'm not really a hardXcore phone user, and after all, the phone did come free with our new contract, so my expectations are not super high.

The good:

Plenty of storage space for pics, ringtones, etc. At least compared with my old phone, which was a Nokia 6133.
Clear call and music quality - so far. (I'm wary of the phone honeymoon period, because it's all downhill from there.)
Slider design is simple - no need to lock/unlock phone, just need to open/close it.
3G web browser isn't *fast* per se, but substantially better than my old phone again.
A lot of cool display options for dialing numbers. Too bad I rarely dial numbers, because I save them all on my phone.
Although I had to download this, at least the phone supports Gmail's app. Makes checking my e-mail way easier.

What annoys the hell out of me:

The keys are hard to press if you haven't cut your nails in a while. Which reminds me, I need to do that.
You can't re-order the options menu, you can only delete and replace the options, so if I wanted to move one option to the bottom, I'd have to redo my entire list.
It took me forever to figure out how to use T9 typing in the web browser, because the manual was wrong. You don't press the globe key. Press and hold *.
There's no voice activated dialing.
The battery gets really hot whenever I use the internet. Doesn't matter if I'm on for just 30 seconds - once I hit the globe key, my hand instantly catches on fire.
Battery life isn't that great. It will stay charged forever if you don't use the phone, but who the hell gets a phone to just sit around and not use? It can withstand maybe 3 hours of web browsing before it goes to low battery.
The "Tasks" tool is completely separate from the "Calendar" tool, and afaik there's no way to import between the two.

Oh well, all I wanted was a phone that 1. works and 2. (optional) connects to the internet, and that's what I have, so I can't complain too much. Next step: getting a bluetooth dongle (that's such a funny word) for my laptop, so it can "talk" with my phone. Btw, my dad got an iPhone, and my mom and sister got Samsung Propels.

i fail at blogging

2009-03-21T12:35:00.001-05:00

So I've tried 3 theme blogs, each of which I gave up after a few posts. This one is unthemed - it's just going to be whatever is on my mind, so hopefully it will keep my interest longer. Also, I just got a new cell phone with an internet plan, so there's a possibility that I'll update when I'm, say, stuck in an airport or on a train.