weekend in review..

saturday: went to a party with lori's fellow teachers. first time ever that i felt old, being one of the adults compared to one of the screaming kids. validated my video game "hobby" by revealing that some of the other guys there also play video games and have LAN parties to boot :D cooked: blueberry cream cheese squares and teri meatballs

sunday: went to Prince Court brunch for Jon's bday. i thought the food was pretty good. the spread had a big veriety. too bad Jon didn't make much use of the "free" part. got him Guild Wars which should be a pretty fun game. When they restock the shelves i'll probably pick a copy up to play with him.

later on we had an impulse buy at Niketown. We tried on and moments later bought pairs of Nike.free they are so comfortable feeling like you aren't wearing shoes. so light and flexible... maybe this will be a good excuse to convice myself to excerise more.

monday: cleaned house and ran errands.

megatokyo: whats happen with the eyes in megatokyo, kimiko's has been getting bigger each strip :(

snippet news

Went to see Episode III RTS on Friday. Interesting enough there were no lines since Dole was playing it every 30 minutes. The theater when the lights dimmed was moderately full. like say 1/2 full. The movie was good. it did a great job tying everything together. it also showed how subtle the shift in power really was. how it changed from protecting the republic to subdueing the dissitants. the movie explained a lot about how/why things were.


I finally got to play with the new mixer this weekend :P i made me a banana cream pie and a batch of chocolate chip cookies. which was a lot more practical then mixing cereal, which i was plannig on doing the day i got it. both came out good. the custard a bit more soft then my liking and the cookies a bunch more hard. oh well they still tasted good because of my new mixer!

also in the cooking department... i [hopefully] will be learning more Japanese recipes to add to the books. Started with mochiko chicken [which i think i'm pretty good at now] and recently did a teriyaki chicken. i want to start working with some beef and pork and some veggies.


In work news.... i'm working on completing the new website. if you wanna take a look at it, its here. the current one on the web is here here . its amazing how if you do something for work you don't want to do it in your free time. this shows brilliantly in the fact that i don't even have a website and i'm on version two for work. bleh


trip news...

airline tickets [O]
expo tickets [O]
sumo tickets [O]
tokyo hotel [O]
rail pass [X]
cell phone [X]
nagoya hotel [X]

its getting closer. i've only now realized that this trip is going to cost me a pretty penny, or about 200000 of them :P but i'm very excited to be going. i still need to let work know about it :P also i found out that studio ghibli has a museum that i want to check out but i was told i need to buy advanced tickets or soemthing hrmm...


current condition... hungry and tired and bored. one good thing about mondays is that so is everyone else so i feel its the least productive day of the week, runner up is wednesday [which i'll blog about later]


hawaii news... just found out that Romano's Macaroni Grill will be opening in November where JCPenny's was in Ala Moana. Yummy!

interpersonal skills

well dealing with people can be frustrating. for example, the lady at travel agency.

" oh we have this package that should be a better deal then China Air." [devil agent]
"oh, ok. what is it?" [me]
"[blah blah blah... cheaper and more convient]"[devil]
"wow that sounds good. let me talk it over with my girlfriend"[me]
[we talk about it and agree this is the way to go.]
[5 minutes on hold]
"hi, i'd like to reserve the package we were talking about"[me]
"ok"[devil]
[type type type]
"hmm... it seems that there are no seats availible..."
"....ok...."
"i can put you on the wait list"
"ummm... i guess so"
"ok. i put you on standby and reserved the hotel"
"how long does it usually take to find out about the wait list thing?"
"there is no set timeframe"
"ic... you think maybe in a couple of days?"
"well i will add you to the list and when it opens up i'll give you a call."
"great..."
[monday]
"hi i'm calling to check on the waiting list"
"well they didn't get back yet... oh and the nagoya hotels are all booked so the best they can do is a hotel in {another city} about an hour by train away"
"ic. i have a booking deadline for the other tickets. should i re-reserve
them to extend the booking deadline? in case this package cannot be done."
"well that's up to you... you might want to talk to the person you book it with"

<#$!@$@#!%^%**(^%T#$!%^4351@##@$!>

i hate her and the fact that if i was to buy these tickets i'm giving her a commission. i mean the way it sounds is like

"well i don't really fucken care if your plans get all fucked up by me. I'll call you sometime when i feel like it, probably the day before you're scheduled to leave and tell you that the plane is full so sorry[fake emotion] you are fucked now"

i was talking to a great agent before but when i called back to book it was a different girl [the devil girl] so now the nice lady won't talk to me because the reservation is booked by another agent. grr!

oh well whatever...
two nice travel agents of three isn't bad. but if you think about it in a business based on knowledge and customer service. she is lacking in both. but if you think of the industry in general, with the advent of internet travel places like travelocity.com where people can search the web-agencies and airlines/hotel websites to find a good deal, what it is that local places have to offer? understanding that international travel is still pretty limited on the online stuff but still, what do local travel agents offer. a helpful REAL person that has knowledge and makes you feel they "got your back" through the process of making travel arrangements.



this blog has no set style of writing it can be brain-vomit to nice structured arguments and summeries of events. if you haven't noticed i am not correcting my typing much at all. so please excuse the bad grammar and spelling.

Happy Friday the 13th!!!!

for those that may not know. this is one of my lucky day. The reason behind it is my birthday is on the 13th and since everyone says friday the 13th is bad i'm making it a good thing for me. specially since fridays are always good in my books. today is my dads birthday actually and i think i'll take him out for a good sandwich at the new New York deli in kaimuki. They have such a great pastrami reuben.

not sure whats happening this weekend but i hope its good!!!

eigo o hanashimasu ka?

we are planning on taking a trip to Japan in the summer and doing the necessary homework is just so tiring. if we left in may we could have got flights for about $550 but now just a couple months later the standard fare is 1000 and it doesn't look like JAL will be having a July sale :( oh well... that coupled with some deals posted on the internet made me even more frustrated. united and northwest HAD fares for 550 BUT i waited too long. sonofabitch!!! i hate that. the united one even tempted me further by including a free ticket to the EXPO 2005 [the reason we are going to Japan]grr i hate them all!!! the one thing that’s keeping me mildly pleased is that we did find a cheapish fare for 660 but being on China Airlines. places claim its a fine airlines with better service then American ones but I’m still skeptical. yes i don't know if i trust the people of my ethnic background :P maybe I need to embrace my Chinese background. [Which accidentally leads in nicely to...]

[sorry this may be boring..]
so i bought myself a new Kitchenaid stand mixer. I have had my eye on this one since yesterday but have wanted one for a long long time. I just found out the color i want was discontinued. So i figure i need to get it soon before i can never get one. On ebay some guy was putting them out once a day for 1-day auctions with a final price avg about 130 + 43s/h. but being greedy that sucker only accepts bidpay no paypal. so i look at bidpay.com and find that what they do is transfer the money from a credit card to a money order and mail it to the seller BUT charge you with their service fee. so with the service fee its a total of 183 for a remanufactured one from some guy on the internet BLEH so i check amazon and they have new ones for 250 and only white ones remanufactured for 170. sigh... well after some more rooting around and finding that there are two colors for the color i thought i wanted.

glacier blue AND lavendar
so i try checking amazon for a lavender one since i thought the color was glacier blue the whole time. and what do i find a re-man lavender one for 170 with discount of 25 and and and FREE SHIPPING!!! total price 144.99

***for those that don't understand the greatest of free shipping probably means you don't shop online. my advice to you is shop the internet and feel the "grab your ankles" burn when you purchase something i find it doubles in price because of shipping. [i think i should devote a rant just to the shipping situation]***

so i whip out the credit card and 144.99 later i own a new blue mixer *cry* I win!!! cheaper and more trustworthy then ebay and with free shipping w007 w007!!! i just checked ebay to see what the final price of that one was. 121.03 + 42.99s/h + 8.64 = 172.66

i have come to realize that i have a problem with shopping. its sort of like compulsive shopping but not. if these arguments fit i will be taking one home.

1. i want it
2. i feel i'm getting a really good deal AND/OR item becomes discontinued or sold out.

it makes me feel like i beat the system. either because i got it cheap or because i have one when everyone said its sold-out. its not that i need to use it right now its just that i NEEDED it. sigh... capitalist brianwashing and my chinese blood ;P

mother's day weekend

me, lori and candice started out the weekend going to "first friday" in downtown. its a "artsy fartsy" event put on by all the galleries in the area. art-types+free food/wine+late night+chinatown=some interesting moments.

top momories include:
an angel flutest came in and started playing with wings and all.
a comment from a girl near me "oh i modeled for that". that being a sketch of a reclined nude.
an older haole man wearing a super long chinese style overcoat and huge glasses. like those big name fashoin designers.
a street clown on the corner
a crazy guy laughing, talking and pointing at someone/thing thats wasn't there.
and a big roach on the wall of maria bonitas, a mexican resturant.

interesting works:
slumped glass in iron frame. alla stained glass.
picture in picture photography
multiple wooden panels
folded inked cityscape

we were planning on eating at indigo but as they put it they were "fully spoken for" whatever...

this weekend only some shaolin monks were putting on a performance at hawaii theatre. i wanted to go but couldn't part with 35-75 bucks to watch them so, we did the next best thing and went to see kungfu hustle. what a great funny film. great story telling,fighting and effects.

mother's day was difficult because of the fact that it was my job to find a "special present" for my mom since i am soo good at picking something because i actually try. so i figured the best thing that my mom liked to do was go to vegas so the 3 of us chipped in 100 each and helped pay for a trip.

mother's day at my grandma's house involved some good korean take-out supplementing the good chinese food there. man did i reget eating that stuff. can you say EM ESS GEE man i was peeing like the girls when they are clubbing. i even had to run out of the movie :P

i also just started to sketch again. after reading some of the finest from megatokyo, powerpuff doujinshi, alita, and negi i really had the urge to draw more often. i really wanna work on faces and clothes.

also we ate at mcdonalds for lunch and tried all their new stuff. the fish bited were like mini fille-o-fish and the sauce was like the bottle of sweet chili. the fruit salad was a bit expensive and a cross between their parfait and the apple wedges. but was pretty good. the fried taro pie was decent too. lots of purple goo inside and had a mild sweet flavor.

craving:
kitchenaid artisan, glacier blue. [just found out its a discontinued color]

cooking:
marinara sauce
white cream sauce
pasta salad
pan roasted potatos

reading:
alita's newest book
negi's new one

dump:
okidoki
the greater good
tastes like purple
need better work music

ants

this past sunday i was preparing to go to the autox and was cleaning out the car because a couple days before i noticed a few ants inside my car. i figured that it was nothing and was probably from the sitting in the garage. So on sunday morning i pull the car into the sun to get a better look. nothing. after scouring the surface of the car and the interior i notice an ant on the door. "they must be hiding in there" 15 minute later and the door panel on the ground i look inside to find... nothing. great... after this the car is starting to warmup in the sun and i see another ant this time on the roof and watched it as it disappeared into the rubber weatherstriping. so i pop the t-top and pry back the rubber to find... a trail of ants WTF!?! i follow it toward the middle of the roof. wAH! a whole mess of ants. i ran in the house to get a bottle of rubbing alcohol and started to douse to bastards. [notice i didn't light it and my hand on fire ;P] so after using up the bottle i start removing things to get a better idea of where the ants are. weather stripping, little wing-thingy, and metal weather shields gone. i kill all ants i find. "lather rinse repeat" for the passener side. found that the majority where in that middle area. bleh 3 hours after the start of the crusade started i was done. tired and sweaty i start to put everything back together after a water break. i then put the car on the sun to bake and because of previous success i use a couple of CO2 tanks to "fog" the interior. i figured that the high temps and the CO2 will kill any of the stragglers.

i also took a pic of this riddulous event.
"why of all places do ants want to make a home in my car" *shakes head*
notice the "wintergreen" flavored alochol :P