Anyway, I’ve been God-awful about blogging, and I really do apologize; I have so many venues for different things, and then when I finally give meaning to this place, another avenue appears that hadn’t previously been in my consciousness, an avenue of usefulness that, alas, would replace whatever functionality this place had to offer.

But, I’m not going to make more excuses, and I’m also not going to give you up, either. I just have to get back into the habit of just logging in, at least, to spur some sort of writing out of me

A shortlist of stuff that’s been going on:

• Moved from WeHo/Beverly Hills to West LA. Love it 100x more than where we were. Robertson Blvd’s expensive boutiques and restaurants do not agree with my income (with the exception of Gyu-Kaku–I LOVE THAT PLACE FOREVER and it was great to be able to walk to it and come back home responsibly inebriated!); however, West LA Santa Monica Blvd’s food offerings do!
• Working full-time for the summer. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to work full-time! Luckily, I have a decently fast computer set-up at work, and all the coffee I can drink (and a decent Italian deli, as well as an excellent coffee shop right around the corner, too), so I suppose I can’t complain!
• I’ve been playing a lot of TF2 … again. I took a very long break from the game (about a year?), and back then all I would play was either Medic or Sniper. Now I’m sort of a whore for Demoman. It’s been fun, though, and I still can’t get enough of Payload >_<

For breakfast I know, I’m so Asian, but soy sauce/Maggi sauce is so
gooood with eggs!

Posted via email from Hau Incredible! Haha … ha … ha.

Posted via email from Hau Incredible! Haha … ha … ha.

Much has happened since my last update:

• I completed my vegetarianism, without too much difficulty toward the end. I even continued editing myself, out of habit. Heck, I still don’t feel like I really need to eat meat (much to the chagrin of my friends), but I’ll do what I do!
• I went to Las Vegas during the last weekend of February to celebrate a friend’s birthday!
• I played a lot of board games the weekend before that!
• I started preparing a (new) character for D&D 4E with my friends!
• I finished school today! Turned in my final project and had my portfolio critiqued by my peers!

And I ate a little too well, throughout it all. Easing back into eating meat has been an interesting experience; it started out very strangely (I couldn’t believe I was eating meat! It seemed wrong!), and then I got used to it, again. But the fact that I got used to it tells me that it’s something that I could easily negate in my diet. But, I did rather miss bacon + sushi (Long parenthetical aside ahead: So I’ve been having some moral issue with sushi, especially in light of the recent whale meat incident with that restaurant in Santa Monica. It’s not so much the idea of not knowing whether or not a restaurant I’m currently patronizing is serving whale meat, though, so much as it is the simple fact that fishing contributes so much environmental damage. Restaurants definitely don’t have to disclose where their fish come from, and the supposedly very best Japanese restaurants have their fish imported specifically from Tsukiji Fish Market in Japan, once a week or more–an incredible amount of carbon footprint to cover. Where is the comfort in eating sushi when you know that not only is the fishing methods for it harmful for the ocean and its ecosystems, but also the fact that many of the beloved sushi meats have trace levels of mercury that could be unhealthy if consumed frequently? I guess it’s all in the end product: how damn good sushi is! I haven’t really fully developed my feelings/stance toward the subject, but for now, I suppose I will be eating such things in moderation. By moderation, I mean once or twice a month )

Anyway, more updates will come, as I am (a little bit) freer to do so this week

On Superbowl Sunday, my roommate , her friend, Justin and I wanted to go somewhere to watch the Superbowl, especially since her friend was out of town. After doing a bit of research (we are, after all, still LA newbies), we decided to visit Library Alehouse in Santa Monica. It has since become one of my favorite places to go to in LA (even though Santa Monica is not technically in LA, but that’s a minor detail )

Pictures abundant, along with details, underneath the cut

Two things that made me fall in love with Library Alehouse: extensive selection of beer on tap, and a surprising number of vegetarian offerings for an alehouse/pub. The latter feature wouldn’t normally be a make-or-break feature, but being that I’m still on my vegetarian stint, it’s certainly a convenience.

I started off my meal with an Old Rasputin, a stout with notes of coffee and cream. Delectable!

I ordered the portobello sandwich, which consists of (as stated on their website): a marinated and grilled portobello mushroom with fontina cheese, red onion, tomato, arugula and basil aioli on rosemary bread). It was quite tasty, and a great reminder of how effective mushroom can be in replacing the texture and mouthfeel of meat. The proportion of aioli was just right, and I have to say that I love arugula (it’s probably one of my favorite leafy greens!).

Justin’s usual go-to is fish and chips, so it’s no surprise that he decided on that, here, with cod fish. He says it was delicious. The amazing part about it is the bed of fries it comes with–that whole basket is filled with them! It took us all evening to finish the fries, and even then, we had to take some to-go. They were well-seasoned, though, and remind me of curly fries from Jack-in-the-Box

After the game (hooray for the Saints!), we decided to get some dessert. Initially I wanted to try Jin Patisserie, but it was closed by the time we got there, so instead we went to N’iceCream on Abbot Kinney. It’s been awhile since I’ve had gelato (the last time was probably in the Bay Area, a year ago!), and personally, I like gelato more than frozen yogurt. Perhaps it’s because it’s been awhile, but it was quite tasty at N’iceCream!

We ordered one scoop of the stand-by stracciatella, and one scoop of chocolate and hazelnut in vanilla. Superb!

All in all, a wonderful way to spend Superbowl Sunday. For me, it couldn’t really get any better than good food, good beer, good dessert, and especially good company ♥

Yes, meatless bacon.

I know they sell a number of imitation things—and one particular brand doesn’t really do it very well, in my opinion—but, to find something like this in an Asian grocery store? Furthermore, manufactured by a Taiwanese vegetarian product company?

Maybe I should backtrack here.

As a tradition of sorts, I’ve decided to go vegetarian for a month every year. It was so hectic last year, though, that I wasn’t able to do my vegetarian stint, so I decided, as a part of my 2010 resolutions, I would be vegetarian for the first two months. I guess it’s a little bit like cheating, since there are only 28 days in February, but that was something I realized after the fact

Anyway, after hearing this, most people would frown and gasp, as if it were the end of the world, and ask, “Dear God, why oh why would you do that?”

And then, smugly, with a certain kind of smile, I would reply, “Because I can.”

Nothing drives a person crazier than the thought of someone going temporarily vegetarian. They can accept it when someone goes full-time vegetarian, but short-term? They think I’ve entered the 9th-ring of Hell, or something. They secretly pray for me.

Well, really, it just goes to show how little will power people have, doesn’t it? I’m not Catholic, but I do know that Lent exists in order to challenge people to abstain from something for 40 days, to practice will power (or so I think—I could be wrong). Coming from a Buddhist family, I’ve gone to temple and thoroughly enjoyed the vegetarian meals I’ve received (for free, no less). A vegetarian meal is nothing short of normal, for me and my family. My mom has gone through phases where she would be vegetarian for years, and I would always enjoy having parts of her meal. It was never guilt-driven, it was never something I did to prove a point—I simply enjoyed it, a concept that people seem unable to grasp.

So, the short of it is: I do it because I can. I do it because I can prove a point that I don’t have to rely on meat. I do it because I like it. I stopped craving meat after awhile, and it was nice.

On to the real point of this post:

Tee hee, “black papper.”

There is a nice, large, conspicuous sign in Hawaii Supermarket that says, “Vegetarian Food” in the freezer area of the store. I didn’t notice it until now—not sure why—but I peered over one of the open freezers, and saw what I thought was normal bacon. A weird item to have in an Asian grocery store, sure—but wait! It was meatless bacon! Well, then! For $3.49, I figured this would be an interesting venture.

It says to keep frozen, but it also says it’s fully cooked, so it can be served hot or cold (haha, who eats bacon cold?!). I decided to go down the hot route, and popped the brick in the microwave to let it thaw. Then, I sliced them as bacon-thin as I could, fried it until it was a little brown, and served it with my breakfast this morning.

Perhaps I should’ve let it brown more in the pan, and perhaps I should’ve eaten it while it was piping hot, but all things considered, it wasn’t so bad. I certainly wouldn’t call it bacon, but it was at least a decent-tasting … vegetarian meat thing. Even the boyfriend approves!

Before I dive into the deep end, I just wonder: when people think of board games, do they think of games like Monopoly and Scrabble? And if so, are those considered casual board games? Furthermore, are games like Settles of Catan and Battlestar Galactica and Arkham Horror considered “hardcore” board games? We play a variety of both, but (much) more often than not, we’re playing some kind of insane board game that takes ~6 hours to beat–and no, it’s not Monopoly.

Anyway, all questions aside …

We arrived at Paul’s a little late, so they’d started on a game of Pandemic–which, predictably and unfortunately, they lost. That game is so well-designed that it makes you believe you can win within a turn or two, only for you to draw an epidemic card and either have you max out on your Outbreak counter, or spend all the cubes for one disease. Alas!

Then, we set up and played Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights. Prior to this, Justin and I had only ever played Settlers of Catan, sans expansion. It was a generally mediocre time had with the game, so I didn’t feel that strongly about it, but after being told that Cities and Knights is a different game, I was intrigued, and ultimately impressed by it! Cities and Knights offers a dimension of competition that makes it more fierce than the standby SoC does. It’s pretty cutthroat, I would say, but also quite fun, when you finally know what you’re doing and have a goal. In the end, I was a turn away from winning, but Justin spied on my progress cards and took out the one card I needed the most to win–the Merchant card! Oh, that cunning bastard. Because of that, Paul won. Haha.

Then, we played Citadels. They hadn’t realized that I’d progressed so quickly, until it was too late. Oakley was trying his best to accumulate as many points as he could, but failed, because he did not get to 8 districts (didn’t have enough money to build another district). Good thing I thieved him as much as I did hahaha.

On Saturday, we went to Alhambra for lunch, then to USC-area to attend a book club meeting with Evan, Quyen and a couple of other people. It was a productive meeting, and we decided to get Orochon Ramen for dinner, afterward.

When I got home, I played a little Bioshock (thanks again, Tae!), AI War, and Psychonauts. Bioshock was getting a little stressful to play (hah ), but Paul had IMed me and asked if I wanted to play AI War, so we played that for about half an hour. We started, then, to realize that 10 planets is not a very good number of planets to play. We eliminated one planet but still had another one to go through, and it was a Core/MarkV planet, and we did not have enough knowledge or progress to penetrate them, so we decided to call it quits

Then, because I could, I decided to start on Psychonauts, which was on sale on Steam this weekend for $2! I didn’t know what to expect (I’d just bought it because Isaac recommended it), but I was in for a pleasant surprise. It’s a very well-made, creative game, and $2 is really quite a steal for such. I’m looking forward to continuing it!

The Sandman begins with an ancient magic society trying to capture Death, but instead receives the Sandman (called many different names and titles throughout the book). They decide to trap him anyway, trying to bargain with him, stealing his tools and clothing. However, for the duration of his imprisonment, he witnesses two generations of human lives pass, and is finally free–but, not without dire consequences. People all over the world have suffered from a sleeping sickness, in which they are unable to wake up. Full lifetimes have passed for some, who are only awake for a few dazed moments, before falling back asleep. Additionally, his kingdom has fallen apart. The King sets on a quest to find the three tools he needs in order to restore his power, and consequently, the world.

We meet all sorts of characters, and witness all sorts of horrors, as other Vertigo characters make their cameos. It’s a dark series, yet there is still a sense of hope in humanity. Gaiman has somehow sculpted the perfect character for The King of Dreams. He is an incredibly likable character.

Anyway, this is only Preludes & Nocturnes. I highly recommend it, though, and will continue to read the series!