merkurie's Xanga

i have been eating well

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:01:17 GMT

yeesh requested that i write about food. so, after my long, long abstinence from xanga (i'm sorry!) here is my f'log. ha ha!

runner's food:
last sunday, rachel dragged bor and me out to run a race in santa monica. she did the 10k (crazy woman is gearing up for a marathon) and bor and i did the 5k. this was my very first race! i felt like i should have been wearing a bib and diapers for the event. bor did ridiculously well, ran it in under 22 minutes. and boy, do i have respect for rachel, cuz she pulled her ass out of bed after 2 nights of drinking and little sleep and still ran that 10k with energy to spare. phew. you hear that rachel? at least those little sins buy you my respect!
anyway, on to the food part of it - after the race they had a bunch of healthy stuff like bananas, apples... and pancakes doused in butter mmmmmmmm. i have to say though, some energy drinks are really, really bad. yuck! go gatorade. instead of filling up on free post-race food, rachel took us to cafe buna in santa monica, which was really damn delicious, and a fun place to come to eat. bor and i shared an omelette with sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and feta cheese, which was really good (not too bland, not too salty), but i have to be honest, i was eyeing rachel's giganto burger the entire time. yum. if i hadn't been so full from silly free food, i would have helped her finish. instead, i had to quiet my desire to run after the waiter and beg to put the rest of the burger in a box to take home...

japanese barbeque:
i had this great idea of taking the climbing crew out to have japanese bbq after a hard session of climbing on wednesday. =) yum yum. manpuku (i hate the name) in costa mesa is just down the street from rockreation, so after devant and do clocked out, 6 of us headed over there to chow down.
- ninniku (garlic cloves set on the grill to stew in sesame oil)
- salt-marinated short ribs, beef tongue, pork short rib with lettuce wraps
(this was the first time i tried the pork, and it was awesome. the lettuce wraps also had some fried shallots in them, so add the pork and you had one mean bite of goodness.)
- ponzu marinated cube cut rib-eye, short ribs
(i love ponzu anything. we grilled the steak so it was just almost rare, and put that with ponzu....)
- assorted mushrooms
(these were class! we put the enoki mushrooms in the sesame oil with the garlic, and those came out so good...)
- garlic rice
(i would have loved any rice with the rest of this meal, but the garlic rice just has a great texture and warmth because it comes cooked in its own stone pot)
- rei-men morioka style (like japanese style korean cold noodles)
and for dessert! i really like their black sesame ice cream, and the panna cotta was reportedly delicious.
i think it came out to about $23/person.

climbing food:
on thursdays we go to karl strauss in south coast. i went there for the first time last week, so last night i had a better idea of what i wanted: the grilled portobello pizza. it's all good stuff: tomatoes, basil, olives, and some balsamic. thursdays after 10 is happy hour, which is perfect for us because the gym closes at 10. no matter how full i am, i can't ever get enough of the fries, be it cajun or garlic or whatever. yum...

faking spanish

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 07:02:53 GMT

we had dinner with an indian family tonight. (i am ridiculously bloated >_<... probably from stuffing face with the dessert) it was interesting because we don't actually know the family. but whatever. here's to meeting new people, right?

one story the father told didn't really make me think twice until just now. as a little bit of background, he (i'll call him mr. d) was rather proud of his ability to easily make friends, find the good in people, and avoid dealing with bad people. to demonstrate, mr. d said that he had never lost money to anyone, even though he had loaned out money on numerous occasions, or given people (customers) a chance to pay him after buying something. basically, relied on the goodness of a person to ensure that he or she would not cheat him. the story i wanted to recount, though, is one that a lot of people can probably relate to. he was standing in line for the bus in LA once, and some black gang-types came up to him and started verbally harassing him. he said that his method of avoiding conflict was by simply shrugging and repeating "no hablo ingles" or "no se". i feel like i've been in situations like that before, where people start talking to me, and i just don't want to deal with it, but i have to cuz, well, they're there, talking to me! anyway, i was just now wondering, how come he chose to speak spanish? why not hindi, a language that his harassors would be less likely to speak?

the reason is probably simple, but i wonder if he really thought about it that much before he did it. i think spanish would be better received than hindi, which to some might have been akin to marking him as a terrorist at the time. but i regret not having had the opportunity to ask him what he was thinking then, when he made the decision to respond in spanish rather than another foreign language...

aw aw aw!!

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 18:22:16 GMT

just had to save this photo before it got deleted!

swiped from http://nirvanamusing.blogspot.com/2007/08/friendship-and-love-defined-in-one.html

bloat bloat bleat

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 05:41:23 GMT

another reminder -- no more greenfields! oy chica, but that $35 can be better spent on avoiding a stomach ache... *groan* but the dilemma is whether or not to go to greenfields when friends are going to celebrate another friend? i guess that means i just gotta go and control myself.

gotta learn to say no...

climbing! gotta go climbing! javi, when are you coming to visit so we can go to stoney point? =)

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 08:31:22 GMT

things i must remember:
- be honest with myself
- be honest with others
- make the decisions that have to be made
- put more effort into things that i actually want than into things i'm not interested in, not vice versa
- that my family loves me
- that my family is not flawless

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:13:09 GMT

that's happiness! =)

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:04:35 GMT

what do muslims and people of non-christian faiths do in court? do they still do the "nothing but the truth, so help me God" thing?

what in the fk?

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 16:32:41 GMT

while researching the nokia 5300 (i want a new phone, by the way =P), i ran into this quality review.

i already bought tis hp ne..
n its quite gud..
bt sumting tat nt tat gud..
hav to charge for many hours..!
i ask the shop d..
nt batery problem..its like tat 1..
samsung E530 also no nit so many hours ne..
yaya...i also wan to noe hw to lower the back light..
any1 noe?

wow! i just have to wonder where this person came from. anyway. good news: i started talking to myself today! i went to a local tennis court with my blades, gloves, puck and hockey stick this morning and started shooting at the fence - self 'punishment' for not waking up early enough to make it to hockey for the last 3 friggin months. then, i turned around and starting trying to regularly get the puck over the tennis net. and failed miserably! =( but i noticed that my right hand (since i'm a righty, the right hand goes in the middle of the stick, left hand on the top end of the stick) was pretty loose, and the stick kind of flailed around at the end of my shot. i've always known (since the first season of hockey like what... 5 years ago?) that in order to get the puck to go in a specific direction, you should finish up your shot with the stick pointing in that same direction... but i realize now that i've NEVER actually applied it. what the hell? so instead of relying on my brain to automatically send my hands the command to keep the stick steady and have a firm grip, i told myself out loud. so weird, so weird, but it actually worked...

guess i'm gonna be talking to myself more regularly from now on. =P

visual studio linking errors

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 16:57:23 GMT

how to resolve linking errors:
1) Project > Settings > C/C++ > Preprocessor > include folders (based at project file location)
2) Make sure the referenced project is a library (not an executable w/ a main)
3) Make sure the project is checked as a dependency of the main project (Project > Dependencies)
...?

Monday, February 26, 2007

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 06:50:43 GMT

blech. the black dahlia. what a horrible movie. why do people like the taste of grime? blech. i want something nice and sweet to watch after that. ah. arrested development! =)

besides the awful movie, i had a good weekend. family, snowboarding, learning taiwanese, macaroni grill, rock climbing, reconnecting w/ an old hs acquaintance. and lots of talking w/ javi! ^_^