It’s another cold night here in Vegas. Of course, I shouldn’t be complaining about weather in the mid 50s, but most of you guys reading this are in Hawaii, so I think we’re good.

I knew before I left that I wasn’t looking forward to coming back to the cold. And I’m still feeling a little weird. I’m still wearing shorts and a t shirt, just like I have been for the past month. I even walked out to the mailboxes like this yesterday. I’m not sure if I was imagining things, but the puffy-jacket-wearing-lady that I passed and said hello to looked at me like I was on crack.

It’s a cold, quiet night here tonight. Kerri’s already asleep after a long day at work. I’m sitting in the living room, TV off, and thinking I’ll probably just be reading tonight. I was pretty excited a few minutes ago when I saw this link that lets you play Super Mario Brothers:

http://www.nintendo8.com/game/629/super_mario_brothers/

It made me think of this time when I was a kid back at a church dinner. For the kids’ section, they’d set up an NES with this game playing. Remember how it was a two player game, and the second guy would take his turn after the first guy died? Well I was Luigi, and after the kid on controller 1 died (which took maybe 6 minutes), I went on to pass the entire game in one go. Yeah, I used the warp zones and all, but I just didn’t die. About half an hour later, there was an audience watching me pass the game (only half an hour because I used the world 1 and 4 warp zones). I distinctly remember this one guy behind me saying “He’s going to do it. The korean kid” (I’m Chinese).

Yeah dude, I used to rock Super Mario Bros like that. Thinking about it now though, poor kid on first controller only got less than 10 minutes of playtime and had to spend the rest of his turn waiting in vain for me to die.

Fast forward to tonight. I’m trying to play it on my keyboard and I died literally 4 seconds into the game.

You can’t go home again.

There’s a metaphor to life here somewhere. One that even relates to me this very night. I’m just not sure what it is…or if I even want to realize it. So I’ll stop here.

The ‘past’ does not truly exist. Neither does the ‘future’. They are only memories and expectations. The only real thing is the fleeting present.

What was once “Friday night” is now a blur of random memories. Here are some of them.

• The plan is to meet up downtown around 7. I get there at 6 so I could go look at some art. Turns out all the galleries are closed except for one.
• I wander around a bit trying to figure out how to kill an entire hour. I make my way down to Indigo for a few beers.
• I’m at Indigo sitting at the bar. Barback tells me that they may have moved “First Friday” to the month’s second Friday, but wasn’t sure. Bartender chimes in and tells me that tonight is the first time in 16 years they are open on Jan1 because of First Friday. Everyone seems confused, and pissed to have to work on New Years.
• Big white lady comes to the bar right next to me and leans in to ask the bartender for a drink suggestions for her friend. She wants something sweet and creamy or light.
• I suggest the Colorado Bulldog to big white lady. She’s never heard of the drink before but likes the suggestion as her friend is originally from Colorado. I never did find out what her friend thought.
• An asshole Euro guy (or maybe Australian I’m not sure) comes up and asks if they use “fresh cream in their chi chi’s”. He is unhappy with the drinks they got and says the cream tasted like it was curdling (does coconut cream even curdle?).
• Bartender is pissed at Euro guy’s attitude (she and I exchanged the “is this guy for real?” look as he complained). Bartender offers to re-make the drink, or suggests margaritas. Euro guy says it’s for his kids, orders fruit punch as replacement, and returns to his table.
• Bartender is even more pissed now at whatever waiter took the order because the original ticket wasn’t for virgin drinks.
• I leave Indigo shortly after, thank the bartender and barback, and say “Hey. Your year will get better.”
• I make my way to Bar 35.
• I get a text from my friend. They are running late. My 1 hour to kill becomes 3.
• Sitting at the bar of Bar35, I order a PBR. My first bottlecap is the Ace of Hearts. “A good way to start off the night” says the bartender.
• A couple sitting next to me is trying new beers. They get red seal ale per the bartender’s suggestion. I just drank that for the first time a few days prior. I ask them if they like it. They do.
• Two white girls come to order drinks. A few minutes of conversation later I’m asking them “How do you not know what PBR is?” Turns out they were born and raised in Hawaii (Kailua). I totally forgot there are white people born on this island, too.
• White girls (actually I found out one was hapa) and I are trying to decide who’s older. They say “We’re pretty old” and I look at them and reply “I’m probably older”. Turns out I was right (yay me!) They invite me to meet their friends who are all in the back but I’m still waiting for mine so I tell them maybe later.
• My friends come. I’ve had about six or seven drinks by then.
• The rest is a little more blurry.
• At some point, white girls from a few lines up leave the club with their friends (who are more white girls). One of them sees me on the way out and gives a friendly wave. I wave back but don’t talk to them again. They are the first people I met in 2010.
• There’s some dancing, and a lot of bad music.
• Cool Haole girl comes up dancing to one of the girls in our group.
• Uncool Haole girl starts saying stupid shit. A fight nearly happens.
• Very uncool Haole girl and her boyfriend are kicked out by security.
• More bad music. Less dancing on my part.
• More bad music, now combined with bad DJ’ing. We leave.
• We all cram in and take a cab over to Bar7. Cab driver is a pervy old dude who uses too much cologne.
• At Bar7 I am standing around surrounded by little kids and feeling really old.
• At Bar7 I run out of steam and bail out on my friends early (to my credit, it should be noted again that I DID start my night about three hours earlier than everyone else did). But sorry friends!
• I walk about two blocks before finding a cab to hail on Keamoku Street.
• Cab driver is looking like a total terrorist, with the cheap long sleeved shirt and all. Nice guy though. He tells me he’s originally from Bangladesh.
• Cab driver begins rants about how he’s got no customers all night and a family to support, which is why he has to work on the night of New Years. “First Friday?! Is bullshit this month!” he says. “Downtown! What a joke!” I tell him I agree. (Cab driver giving off a little more terrorist vibe now).
• As taxi enters freeway, driver puts on a cassette of Islamic Prayer.
• Cab driver asks me if I know what this is. “The Holy Quaran” he says and goes on about how it’s a beautiful history. Not sure if he’s trying to freak me out. (terrorist vibe goes up a notch)

• I tell cab driver that my parents are originally from Malaysia and I’m vaguely familiar with Muslim prayer ritual. “Five times a day, right?” I ask.
• Cab driver is now significantly nicer to me. Terrorist vibe goes back down and now we’re just two dudes talking about life. I realize that cab driver may have been inadvertently been giving me the terrorist vibe in response to me inadvertently giving him the gelled-hair drunk douchebag vibe earlier on. The rest of the trip is pleasant.
• Fare is $15.60. I give cab driver a 20 and tell him to keep the change.
• It is 3am and my night is now over. Before hitting the sack, I have enough energy to change clothes and brush my teeth, which is a lot better than some nights.

I’m sitting around right now watching TV and I just saw that stupid commercial for the Chase Sapphire card, where a spoiled wife walks in wearing a new dress, and her pussy husband starts suggesting they trade their points in for all these awesome looking vacations. Only to find out that the wife already blew the points for said dress. The husband’s reaction isn’t anger, but glee. What an idiotic commercial!

Apparently there are a lot of other people who take issue with the commercial. Check out this vid, which shows the commercial but with an ending that makes more sense.

Here’s Orochon Ramen. I found out about the place on Man vs. Food and even though I think Adam Richman is a total douchebag, I still enjoy watching the show from time to time. And after seeing the episode at Orochon Ramen, I really wanted to check the place out.

A lot of the reviews on Yelp said that the place was overrated, and not very good. I believed them, but still had to try it for myself.

When we got there, we had to wait about 15 minutes. After that, we ended up sitting outdoors in the sun, and shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers.

Anyway, in the pic above, you see all the people standing outside? All the white people, in particular? Yep that many white people in front of an ethnic restaurant usually means the food’s not that great.

And as good as it looks, it really wasn’t that great. The noodles kind of tasted like cheap chinese egg noodles. I ordered the #2 spicy bowl (#1 being the hottest) and it wasn’t anything special. Just go to any ramen place, dump chili powder in it, and that’s pretty much what you get.

If you’re curious, the “challenge” on Man vs. Food is to eat the whole thing, soup and all, in half an hour. I don’t remember if I’ve ever drank all the soup in Ramen. (Don’t people in Japan think you’re weird if you do that?) I didn’t even want to bother trying, either, since we were sitting out in the sun on a relatively hot day.

Anyway, I thought the place sucked, but it was still something I had to do. Thanks for nothing, Man vs. Food!

To add to the irony, we were seated next to a non-asian family who apparently also heard about the place from the TV show. I overheard them talking about how good the noodles were, and how the soup was among the best that the dad’s ever had at a restaurant. They obviously don’t eat Ramen very often, because I put the food at Orochon slightly below the stuff you get at Ezogiku back home — the one near University, not the one in Waikiki.

I really miss Tenkaippen now.

..And again, if you wanna see all the pics from the trip, here they are.

This damn commercial is one of the most annoying I’ve ever seen. I just saw it on TV while watching Jimmy Fallon. I’ve seen it before, but never realized how much I hate it.

Did Apple put this commercial out? Because the parts where they both yell out “BLU RAAAY!!” and where the mom goes “WHAAAT?!” make me want to never buy a PC.

That, and I don’t really take what an 11-year old thinks very seriously, either.

After waiting one week to get a shipping label and then finally sending it out yesterday, UPS says that the expected delivery date that MS will get my redringed 360 will be another 5 days to cross three states.

That’s about two weeks before they even get to repair the thing.

Looks like Microsoft is skimping as much on delivering their failed product back to their repair center as they did building the thing in the first place. Thanks, guys!

Badasia time: Sat 6/27, 12:15am

After an awesome five weeks, it comes to an end.

We fly out in about 14 hours. It’d midnight here and I’m debating on whether or not I should stay up so that I can pass out in the plane through the first leg of our flight back home.

These past five weeks have been an eye opening experience. Like I mentioned before, the last time I was here was the summer of 1999. A lot has changed since then. More importantly, a lot has changed with me.

This time around, I’ve been able to look at things with a new appreciation (that goes beyond being able to put durian in my mouth for the first time in over 15 years). I’ve felt a deeper connection to my family here than in any previous visits. I learned a little more about my dad from different peoples’ stories of him.

Over dinner one night in Singapore, I also listened to my uncle’s stories about some place in China called Eng Choon, where both my parents’ families were originally from. As he told these stories, I saw his face light up with pride, like someone rooting for their home town’s team.

I’ve been here maybe a dozen times throughout my life, but I think this is the first time I’m sad to be going back home.

Get this - Matthew Perry hurt his hand playing Fallout 3. Should’a used a stimpak.

Seriously though, who the hell hurts their hand playing Fallout 3? Did he never use VATS? The instant-warp to previously visited areas? Or even the pause button? The game’s awesome, but I don’t know how you could hurt your hand playing it.. unless you don’t know how to hold the controller.

I can’t help but wonder how many achievement points he unlocked on that game. I’m guessing it’s not too many. Anyone know his gamertag?

(To Chandler’s credit, though: I know firsthand how you can end up playing too much video games when you don’t have a job)

This is the first in a multi-part series documenting my consumer experience as a seller with a bad-Ebay (ie: Ebay after their new b.s. revised seller policies) and a bad Ebay’er.

Two weeks ago, I put up an auction for a blu ray disc we had lying around. The auction ended at around 10 bucks last Sunday. Usually, winning bidders make payment that same day, or within a few days, but this buyer never got back to me. I tried contacting him again several days later, but still no response.

After nearly a week, I looked at his feedback history (which was small and meant he was a new user) and found out that the dude bought the same exact disc from another auction that had a buy-it-now option (mine didn’t).

I guess this guy decided that he’d pay nearly twice as much so that he could have his stupid John Mayer disc a few days sooner, and screw me over in the process.

Yeah, yeah, the auction was for a disc of a live John Mayer concert. Don’t laugh. I got it as a free hand-out at the CES. And no, I never even opened it because we don’t have a blu ray player…err I mean, I’m not a huge John Mayer fan (AND don’t have a blu ray player).

I tried leaving him negative feedback but this is when I remembered/realized that Ebay’s newest policies do not allow sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers, which of course, is b.s.

On hearing that, I was always curious about how sellers on Ebay would thus be protected. Ebay has a whole bunch of “buyer protection” measures, but not as much for sellers. Or do they? It looks like I’ll get to find out first hand. And I’ll be sharing the experience with you.

I’m not too bothered about the money, since it’s only a matter of ten bucks or so. I’m more upset with the principle.

Anyway.

I found out that I was able to place some sort of “non payment report” on the seller. This is only an option after seven days have passed. I’ve been wanting to do this for two days now, but rules are rules (thanks, Ebay). I was finally able to place the report this morning, though.

Placing the nonpayment report was easy. When you revisit the auction page, there’s a link that allows you to file the report. From there, you fill out two dropdown lists. No chance to type anything else out or offer any kind of explanation. So far it looks like the seller really IS more protected.

Supposedly, Ebay will contact the seller directly and get back to me in seven days. We’ll see if anything happens.

I’ll keep you all posted.

Yeah, I know. Don’t laugh.

This is going to be a looo-ong story (or posting):

So I’ve been reading a bunch of books with long paragraphs and small typeface. Among my last four:

• Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things, by Laurence Gonzales (this one was a BIG WASTE OF TIME, but more on that later)
• Why Choose This Book, by Read Montague
• Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, by Sam Gosling
• Don’t Stop Believin - How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed my Life, by Brian Raftery.

All good books - EXCEPT for “Everyday Survival” - that book was a total waste of time! It was interesting for the first few chapters, but the author suddenly started going severely off-topic, rambling about the environment and getting really preachy, while bragging about travels that he’s gone on. Toward the end of the book, he offers some half-assed explanation about how he’s still on topic (I didn’t buy it).

When I checked out user reviews on amazon.com for his book, I found that most everyone else felt the same way about the book. I kind of wish I knew about that sooner, but I guess that’s the risk you run when you randomly pick a book off the shelf. (an interesting aside - when I looked back at the blurbs on the back of the book jacket, they were all praises for one of the author’s OTHER books!).

Anyway, so I read such a crappy book and follow it up with the three other books, which were way better, but I still had that bad taste in my mouth. I was going to start up on a book I’ve been eager to read ever since I heard about it on NPR last year - The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. It’s a hypothetical situation about how the nature would recover the earth if all human beings suddenly disappeared overnight.

I was on one of the early chapters, about how most modern houses would probably fall apart in 50 to 100 years without maintenance, starting near the chimneys and nails (where there are holes or punctures in the materials). And I realized that I still had that bad taste from “Everyday Survival” on my mind (I only finished that book last Saturday - I finished the other three all this week. Yes, that’s how much time one has to read when one has no job).

(I’m totally ruining my own paragraphs with all these parenthetical notes).

Anyway, realizing I still had to get my mind off of last week’s book, I put down the one I was reading this morning and was going to play video games, but lying on the coffee table was that copy of Twilight that Kerri checked out from the library. I picked it up, wondering what all the hype was about.

The book’s pages have a narrow text area, the typeface is large(r), and the paragraphs are short. Man it was such easy reading - now wonder all the little girls liked it so much! I just kept going through it.

I started reading it this afternoon. I just finished all 499 pages about an hour ago. What the heck just happened?! I somehow feel guilty and ashamed about this…. but what the hell, I’ll just categorize this one as a fail AND a win, and click “publish” anyway.

HERE IT GOES! WOOO!!!!