It’s going to get cold on Wednesday. Something about winds blowing in from the north. I’m not sure whether to look forward to it or be kind of scared.

Holy crap there was a black widow in our garage. Kerri called me from the garage when she pulled in and said there was a big black spider on the ceiling. I came down, smashed it with a broom and turned it over. It had a red hourglass on it’s abdomen. Yep, black widow.

Then it started running toward us, I screamed like a little girl, and smashed it a little too hard with my slipper. It was too mangled for pictures. Fail!

In other news, ODST’s pretty good times.

Uncle Mike in Penang apparently makes a super good claypot chicken, but we never got to try it while we were in Malaysia. He did give me a short rundown on how to make it, and I gave it a try tonight, but used a rice cooker instead. Here it is:

Good times. An entire dinner done in the rice cooker!

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.

This past week was pretty busy. We had a bunch of guests come in. Kerri’s brother and his girlfriend came in on Saturday, and she was busy showing them around while I hung out with BT and Nicole, who flew down on Sunday.

Good times all around. I drank lots of beer (I discovered they sell four of their Microbrews at the Main Street Casino for only $1.50), watched open-mouth as my friends risked several months’ worth of rent in order to win big (Nicole hit a pretty nice jackpot on day 2), and we went to the Hoover Dam, where a bunch of white people asked me if I could take their photo for them.

I also got a room at the Golden Nugget during one of the nights, and for some reason they upgrade me to a suite when I checked in. I was thinking “all right, a slightly larger bed” but when I got to the room, there was a sign on the door that said “Scarlet Suite” and the entire room was red and black. It was two rooms, actually - a big bedroom, and a living room with a leather couch and wet bar. I don’t have my camera, but the living room part kind of looked like this:

(I drew that while watching news the following morning before checkout.)

It was nice to have guests; it’s always a good excuse to go out. Everyone’s left though, which is too bad, because the UH v. UNLV game is tonight. Kerri and I walked through Main Street and the California last night and the place was completely packed with UH fans (again, no camera though. Sorry!). I think every fifth person was wearing a UH Warriors shirt. There was a group of people playing the uke and singing on the mezzanine at the California, and all the blackjack and craps tables were completely full. It kind of felt like being back in Hawaii, except minus any negativity. While we were there, Kerri also bought a new UH shirt and a few stickers for her car…. and I should really get a camera.

I got carded twice yesterday morning in Downtown. Once at the Main Street cage, and then again at the craps table at the California. Then at the Hoover Dam later in the afternoon, four different people asked me if I could take photos for them. What do I look like, Long Duc Dong?

Some years ago, I took a job with a mortgage company that will remain nameless. (Here’s a hint, though: They were one of the prime contributors to subprime meltdown.) When I first joined, it seemed like an impressive company; they were all over the place, and sent their new employees over to California for a week for training.

I had my training in an obscure city near LA called Rosemead which I had never heard of, and seemed to have very few white people. I stayed at a Doubletree hotel which was right across the street from a shopping mall that had a decent food court, and a Japanese restaurant that, according to our training instructor, got blamed for giving trainees ‘food poisoning’ when they were hung over and/or got in late to training.

I thought training was going to involve a lot of financial stuff. It ended up being four days of sales training, and a half day of “oh by the way, here’s how mortages work”.

I was still impressed. I was at a new job, and sent across the pond for training in a large building bearing the company logo, and fully occupied by it’s employees.

It didn’t really take long to lose it’s luster, though. For various reasons, I ended up leaving the company after about two months. Though I didn’t stay long, I still thought the whole thing was an interesting experience.

Anyway, during our trip to California last weekend, I thought to re-visit Rosemead again, just for kicks. We GPS’ed our way down there, and then remembering the shuttle ride from the hotel to the building every morning, I found the old building:

Yep, that’s a huge “FOR LEASE” sign right in the front. I knew the company was in a lot of trouble (and a lot of Federal investigation, for that matter), but a part of me wasn’t expecting to see an entire building completely empty. When we were there, the place was full of people. They even had their own cafeteria, satellite parking lots, and shuttle buses to accommodate all the people who worked there.

And now the place is empty.

I wasn’t sure how to feel. A little sad, and a little happy. But I guess a little more happy. Like I said, those guys had a huge hand with the economic cluster we’re in now!

I smash you!

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.

Took a while, but I finally got around to posting the photos from our trip to California last weekend. Here are a couple of em:

Joel(s), this one’s for you. OOOOOO BOY!

Our room at the Homewood Suites. The place was nice; there was a kitchen, 2 LCD TV’s, a bedroom, and a living room with a foldout sofa.

On our first day there, we had lunch at The Boiling Crab. We ate there once before, about a year ago when we first moved from Hawaii. It was one of the best things I ever ate. So when we came back to California this time around, we made it a point to eat there.

We got half a dozen oysters, a pound of shrimp, and a pound of crawfish. Man that was good eats. I wasn’t sure if we were going to finish it all, but somehow we did. And in doing so, I got about a year’s worth of sodium intake, and crossed off a few years of my life. It was worth it, though.

Hollywood Blvd:

California Science Center. The place was fun; like that kids’ section at Bishop Museum, but, as Joel put it, without the Kalihi:

Here’s Orochon Ramen, which we heard about from Man vs. Food. It was one of the things I wanted to check out, and ended up being a disappointment. More on that later.

Hollywood in the daytime:

Anyway, there’s a lot more I need to tell you, so stay tuned! In the mean time, wanna see more pics? Here you go!

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.