Triscribe

Category: Los Angeles – Orange County

  • Memorial Day Weekend

    So, not only was Queen Elizabeth the one who received an iPod from Barack Obama (which made Obama the worst gift-giver as a Head of State, since… in all likelihood, from what I’ve read about the queen, she probably already had an iPod), she has also gotten herself a totally special Wii. Man, if Queen Elizabeth also has a Kindle, then she really is a 21st Century person.

    Ok, May’s flying by so quickly and I have to do some APA coverage while it’s still APA Heritage Month. Some items for consideration:

    So, in California, the election to re-fill former Congresswoman Solis’ seat (because Solis is now US Secretary of Labor) will be a Chu v. Chu election. Either way, there’s going to be an Asian-American congresswoman for that district. In fact, this is likely something of a soap opera kind of election, since Betty and Judy Chu are cousins-in-law – not close and pretty much starting their own family feud. Betty’s a lawyer/city councilperson, Judy was a psychologist/state legislator; Betty’s married to Judy’s cousin; Judy’s the Democrat, Betty’s the Republican; and… yadda, yadda, yadda.

    As much as Chu v. Chu election seems like a fascinating political thing, I’m kind of glad I don’t live in California.

    Congratulations to the Jih siblings for winning Amazing Race. A fascinating Q&A with these attractive Asian-Americans lawyers (which, understandably, we of Triscribe may find particularly interesting, since… hey, they’re one of us!).

    Although, really, it is tad unfair that Victor Jih is a partner of a law firm, alumnus of Harvard Law, AND won Amazing Race. At least his sister Tammy is still only an associate.

    Anoop Desai did not last long on “American Idol,” leading to his own Q&A with Entertainment Weekly – so I guess APA’s still haven’t quite made it all the way yet with “American Idol.” But, the winner is Kris Allen won; Adam Lambert is only a runner up (probably a better thing for him in the long run).

    NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley reviews the finale of “American Idol” from the tv critic perspective, while Jon Caramanica provide the music critic analysis. Confession: I really haven’t followed much of the whole season, although I did kind of watched Adam’s cover of “Mad World.” (primarily because I was waiting for “Fringe” – but it was an excellent cover – he does have quite a voice).

    NY1 covering APA Heritage topics (for a week) – with Lewis Dodley on Asian pop – seriously, Lewis Dodley? He’s been the stiff one in the local news media (even back when he was on Channel 13 – I always thought he was a bit waxy – very anchorman-like). Maybe Dodley likes music in real life or Asian culture; or maybe he was assigned to cover this; all in all, interesting stuff.

    Last but not least: Pres. Obama selected the new US Attorneys for Southern District of NY (to you non-lawyers: jurisdiction of Bronx, Manhattan, and downstate upstate) and District of NJ. Bonus for APA Heritage Month: an Asian US Attorney for NY, Preet Bharara.

  • Gloomy Monday

    Saturday – 9/29/07 – went to Shea Stadium with my siblings. Was pretty dejected over the Mets’ Friday night performance, so didn’t want to go; they won, with John Maine with an one-hitter game; 13-0. However, left the stadium feeling that the job’s not done; pins and needles for Sunday’s game.

    Sunday – 9/30/07 – watched the game more or less on the big screen HDTV. In only 20 minutes, the game imploded. Mets’ season collapsed in a stunning fashion. Tom Glavine, the Hall-of-Famer, gave up 7 runs; the rest of the team left 10 people on base. We’re all pretty depressed over this. On the one hand, what is wrong with the Mets – got to blame the whole team. You give us a terrific outing on Saturday, and then blew it. On the other hand – well, I had my feeling about how far we were going to go with this season. But, really, how much more heartbreakers are we going to get around here?

    Final thoughts on my SoCal vacation:

    Kind of funny that California considers the HOV lane to cover cars with 2 or more people in it. Saw too many cars with only one person in it. And, was that smog, fog, or smoke from the wildfires in the air?

    Getty Villa, as beautiful as it was, kind of was still a rich man’s re-creation – an artificial feeling to me – which only became more real when you look at the real stuff – guess the Getty had to return a lot more items to Italy than I thought – but at least there’s culture in LA after all?… Oh well.

    Liked the sun a lot; should have bought sun tan lotion, but figured that since I wasn’t a beachgoer I should have been fine; wore a hat more than I usually ever have.

    Oh, and pandas! … otherwise, I don’t think I care for zoos anymore…

    So would have liked seeing Chinatown, Koreantown, Little Tokyo, but time ran out.

    Ah, First Monday at the US Supreme Ct., with all the previews to go with it.

    I’ll soon put up a post on my fall tv thoughts…

  • Post-Vacation Summary

    So, I’m back in Brooklyn. Many things to catch up on; the desire for a vacation from vacation is also very much on the mind.

    Anyway, where was I? My brief Thursday to Saturday summary wasn’t done nearly with enough justice!

    Saturday:

    Legoland was fun – clearly for the younger set, but we old people actually enjoyed seeing the sculptures (as FC noted in his trip there last year). My goodness – mini-NYC looked bizarre. The Legoland people did a replica of the Freedom Tower (not yet built, and using the schematic from whatever year(s) ago) – and informed us on the little boat tour that they never got around to doing a replica of World Trade Center’s Twin Towers – to me, that doesn’t mean you have to build the mini-maybe Freedom Tower. Oh well. Otherwise, the Lego versions of Las Vegas and Washington DC and everything else were pretty cool.

    Off-on showers that morning/early afternoon – odd, since we kept thinking rain just doesn’t happen there.

    When we made it to San Diego that afternoon, we checked into a hotel in Little Italy and had dinner at Buon Appetito, which Fodor’s describes as “this charmer serving old world-style cooking in a casual but decidedly sophisticated environment…” I went with Fodor’s recommendation and ordered a baked eggplant all’amalfitana dish as appetizer – baked eggplant topped with mozzerella in a zesty fresh tomato sauce – tasty, indeed. For entree, I had a spinach and cheese ravioli, if I recall correctly. Delicious.

    San Diego’s Petco Stadium – weird architecture. People kept doing the wave at inopportune times. No wonder the Padres lost the game; the team was distracted by their fans’ silliness.

    The San Diego trolley/tram thing was an interesting ride to and from the stadium.

    Sunday – morning one-hour tour of the north bay harbor. Saw such sights as the USS Ronald Reagan, being cleaned up at San Diego. Scary to think that nuclear powered subs are in San Diego bay. After the boat ride, we did a drive and walked by the Hotel Del Coronado. Such a sunny and beautiful location!

    We meant to do more of Balboa Park, but ended up just doing the zoo that afternoon. Pandas! So cute!

    Dinner in Del Mar, at the Poseidon, with my law school classmate RF and his wife G, who are now in the west coast. Beautiful seaside sunset. Had crab cakes (never can resist those) and clam chowder, as it got windy.

    Drive back to Anaheim.

    Monday – Morning at Disneyland’s California Adventure, which is where you view the Pixar stuff and see Disney’s re-creation of California without visiting real California. Well, I so love Disney – it really is the Happiest Place on Earth ™. We just didn’t do enough, as far as I was concerned, since we were back on the road. We just did our run-through for the morning and then it was off to LA. Parked the car in Universal City (near Universal Studios), to take the subway. Figuring we’d make a good trip of using the subway, we headed to Union Station, did a walk through of the civic center, took the subway from Pershing Square to Hollywood. Graumann’s Chinese Theatre. Kodak Theatre. Highland and Hollywood (Mall). Cool stuff, in an artificial kind of way? Oh well. My real question is who doesn’t have a Hollywood star by now?

    Then, it was back to the car in Universal City, and driving off to Santa Monica. Walked to the end of the Pier; stared into the dark abyss, where ocean and night sky met. Creepy. Had dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp at the Pier (silly me – I haven’t done Bubba Gump Shrimp at Times Sq). Then some walking in the Third Avenue Promenade. Then driving off to visit my brother’s friend, who attends one of the Claremont schools; we ambled a bit around that campus. A late night, I can tell you.

    Then it was back to Anaheim, where we had to pack up for our Tuesday flight back to NYC. Well, we did a little drive around the vicinity of LAX before checking in for the flight – curiously interesting look of a bilingual neighborhood indeed.

    Observation: GPS is a cool device for places you don’t know. Whether it’s for everyone is something else.

    Getting back to Brooklyn and seeing how humid it was Tuesday night – eww. I thought summer was over?

    Meanwhile, I missed the whole drama over what was going on at my Undergraduate Alma Mater. Oh well.

    Will likely make more observations on my vacation in another post. Catching up, after all, is hard to do.

  • Stuff in Summary

    Still in CA. In summary:

    Thursday – late plane; check in to hotel across the street from Disneyland; Millie’s Restaurant and Bakery, near the hotel; Downtown Disneyland (which was evidently inspired by (new) Times Sq., which was inspired by Disneyland (kind of head-scratching there); Anaheim Angels game (I’d still call them “Anaheim Angels,” ’cause they’re in Anaheim).

    Friday – IHOP for breakfast; Disneyland; Getty Villa; UCLA women’s volleyball game (rather serependipitous); California Pizza Kitchen. Rain in SoCal, quite a soaker for an area that obviously didn’t have rain in too long.

    Saturday – McDonald’s for breakfast; trip to Legoland;In-N-Out; San Diego Padres game.

    More later.

    Plus – the passing of Marcel Marceau.

  • Crash

    This is a catch-up post for the past week, because I was so sick coming back from my trip. Yesterday was P and I’s anniversary, so we went to the local favorite sushi restaurant where we were welcomed warmly (it was a dark and stormy night, there were not a lot of people there, and they could use an Asian couple in the window table to draw customers).

    My dad’s old office was on 73rd and York, so I spent a lot of summers growing up in the area where the plane crash occured Wednesday afternoon. There are ususally a lot of people walking around, especially connected with all of the hospitals in the area. It was a very sad way to go.

    Last Thursday through Sunday I was in Las Vegas for my friend’s bachelor party. All I have to say is what happened in Vegas is staying in Vegas. What happened afterwards? I drove with 3 hours of sleep and 3 days of clubbing and I was really suffering. After dropping one of the people at the airport, I drove 300 miles back to Orange County to meet up with Pei. Stopped once at Alien Jerkey in Baker, CA – the best thing going was a very clean bathroom and easy access to Gatorade. Barfed just before picking up gas. Made it back to Orange County at noon and spent the rest of the day sleeping, then awoke to a bowl of homemade pho. P and I made it to the plane finally and came back at 6. Overslept a lot this week. Probably will need this weekend as well to catch up from jet lag.

  • Tuesday – Wednesday recap

    Stayed at the Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf. I wish it had a minifridge, but otherwise it was comfortable and well situated. Valet parking was $38; kind of steep. Will keep it in mind for my next trip.

    Across the street is a Barnes & Noble – quiet, low traffic, high selection. Trader Joe’s and a Safeway make it really cheap to buy supplies.

    Took the Powell-Market cable car to Chinatown where we immediately went to the Golden Gate Bakery on Grant for moon cakes and egg custart tarts fresh out of the oven. I’ve had plenty of moon cakes in my life, but I’ve never had a fresh one – we get them all prepackaged in New York. The “dan tat” were huge – one inch deep custard and perfectly flaky crust. The line was out the door and down the street – it was really popular. We went to Ten Ren Tea to wash it down with tea.

    Down the street is the more touristy Eastern Bakery. They had good roast port buns, but they didn’t really have any line. The had this $400 100 yolk mooncake in the window, which no one seems to be interested in.

    Next door was the Wok Store, which had an extensive collection of seasoned woks. Pei was tempted to get one. Just outside we were chatting with two women and a baby about East/West coast stuff.

    We walked down Market Street to Yank Sing. Absolutely perfect dim sum at expense account prices. We ended up with 4 stamps in the “bonus zone” oun our ticket.

    We walked to the Embarcadero to Sur la Table and Ferry Market where we purchased a few ketchy items and a bit of wine. Then we took the F trolley car line to the Hard Rock Café to get P’s requisite pins, then walked down Fisherman’s Wharf to the Hotel.

    Our next excursion was to Trader Joe’s where we got lots of drinks and became jealous of what we don’t get in New York. Then we met up with my bro for dinner at Sushi on North Beach, where we got the omakase – lots of food. We treked to The Cannery, but most everything was closed. We abused our Muni passes by riding on all of the Cable cars – including the California line, which we had not ridden before. In the Financial district, we took the F line back to the hotel.

    The next day we loaded up on supplies at the Safeway, then drove back to Orange County. We only made a 20 minute pit stop to refuel and change drivers – highway gas was $3.02. We made it to the Costco in Laguna Negil, and bought cheap $2.52 gas there. We made it back to San Juan Capistrano at 7:30 and had a BBQ – ribs and steak — mmmm!

    Next ride to Las Vegas this afternoon!

  • 450 miles to Poke’

    Made our road trip from Orange County to San Francisco Tuesday. I was in charge of getting in and out of cities, and P handled driving the long wastelands between the north and south. At about the 100 mile mark, we stopped at Carl’s Jr. – I got the Buffalo Chicken sandwich, she got the $6 Angus Burger. Super bloat – they were huge! Good thing that we stopped – right afterwards was the smoke from the Day forest fire that was smoking since Labor Day. After about 100 more miles, we were able to get out of it. 400 miles later, made it to Costco to refuel (2.55 is a lot cheaper than 2.99 at the one place we passed on I-5). We’re staying at the Sheraton Fishermans Wharf – huge place, comfy king sized bed, wi-fi. Wished that they had a fridge, but otherwise it is a very comfortable place in a fantastic location. But $39 a day for parking – jeezus!

    Pacific Catch for dinner – we had Poke bowl and it was so awesome!!! Just think the best chirashi bowl, and multiply by 10. Absolutely recommended. Wandered around North Beach and got pasteries from Maria’s Bakery, then crashed watching a recording of Desparate Housewives.

  • Blocks

    Quick entry today. Sunday went to services at the Mission Basilica of San Juan Capistrano, which is a 20 year old recreation of the original Spanish mission church that was built at a nearby site and collapsed in an earthquake. A basilica is sort of half way between a regular church and a cathedral in size and prominance. Awesome artwork, and the place was packed.

    LegoLand! Every childhood playtime fantasy can be relived! It’s the one amusement park where the parents can have just as much fun as the kids. I think I had more fun here than at Disneyworld. P bumped into an old co-worker from when she worked for the City. Visited the Carlsbad Premium Outlets in search of a replacement safety blanket for the baby, but no luck – the discriminating tastes of the baby easily discerned the difference between the real thing and fakes. Dinner at Ruby’s, a 50’s diner recreation that had American Kobe beef on the menu. Go figure.

    On the road to San Francisco, hopefully getting there by the end of the day today.

  • In the OC

    Got into LAX way early Friday morning – like 3 am. We had a mechanical on the ground at JFK and they needed to replace a valve on the AC. We got free champagne and headphones. Once they did that we were able to have a relatively smooth flight and a pretty good 3 point landing.

    We’re staying for the weekend with my law school friend BV from my study abroad in Hong Kong, her husband M, also an attorney, and their 19 month son. He’s mostly well behaved and a bundle of fun, even though his sentences are only about 3 words long and are usually monosyllabic abbreviations of words.

    During the day we went to the farm to do some organic veggie shopping, and checked out downtown San Juan Capistrano. We then vegged on the patio for lunch. Later, we hiked up a trail overlooking the city with M. That night we went to BV’s twin nieces’ sweet 16 party, which was a luau pool party theme. BV’s sister catered the entire feast by herself, which was just amazing.

    Saturday, we’re doing LegoLand and Sunday it will be a BBQ in downtown LA. Then Monday we will head up north to visit my bro.