meet george

he's my bamboo plant. i bought him in chinatown and i think he's grown a lot since i brought him back to LA. i've been giving him water and trying to get him in the sun (it's hard because if i put him on the windowsill behind the blinds to get some sun, i forget he's there...). i'm excited to watch him grow. i think it's better for me to have a low-maintenance plant. i still remember the vegetable garden fiasco of 2007.

even with george's low-maintenance, i still wanted to make sure i was taking good care of him, so i looked up how to take care of a bamboo plant on ehow.com:

Step One

Water the bamboo plant with filtered water or rain water to avoid the chemicals in tap water. For an even healthier plant, use soiled water from a fish tank or bowl.

Step Two

Keep the water level in the container high. It should never be less than half-filled. The roots of the plants must be completely submerged.

Step Three

Empty the water, and refill about once a week.

Step Four

Allow the bamboo plants indirect light at a moderate level. Bamboo grows in thick, shady forests. Too much light will kill the plant. The plant will turn yellow if it is too dry.

Step Five

Feed the bamboo plant a few drops of aquarium plant food about once a month. Do this by changing the water.

Step Six If the bamboo plant is kept in a soil pot instead of water, make sure the soil is constantly damp, but not over soaked. If the top inch of soil is dry then it’s time to wate

my first red carpet affair

in the four years i've lived in LA, i've never gone to a red carpet premiere. so what did i do? i went to one: the transformers 2 premiere!




celebrities were going to start coming around 6 pm. when my friends and i got there around 3:30 pm, lots of the prime spots were already filled. so we found a good one right where the celebrities got out of their cars and before they hit the paparazzi line. let me set the scene:

now the only thing that is missing is the celebrities! there were some D-listers...like random playboy bunnies, a couple singers, a couple athletes and then the big names: megan fox, shia labeouf, and josh duhamel.

tyrese actually came up to us and talked to us to get us more pumped.

shia labeouf didn't come over, but i guess he's a pretty big name, he head straight for the photographers.
yeah that's right. josh duhamel was waving to me.

this is the best one i could get of megan fox. EVERYONE was all over her.

shawn johnson, the US olympic gymnast. she was really sweet and signed autographs and let people take lots of pictures of her.

michael bay, the director of transformers. he actually went all the way around the red carpet and then came back around!

an SC representative: reggie bush! we screamed "fight on" to him but he didn't acknolwedge his fellow trojans. oh yeah, kim kardashian is beside him too.

chester bennington, leader singer of linkin park. i saw the rest of the band but wasn't fast enough to grab a picture of them.ciara coming over to where we were to sign autographs. she was pretty cool, she stepped over the barrier to come over to us.

the premiere was pretty awesome. it was a lot of waiting, a lot of being pushed and shoved around when celebrities came over. but i mean, i don't really do this kind of thing often so it was really cool. i didn't get great pictures of the celebrities but this is probably the closest i'll ever get to some of them. and even though i'm not a super movie person or celebrity know-it-all, i still got a little starstruck. i think everybody, no matter what they say, gets starstruck.

the LA film festival

i've always wanted to go to the LA film festival so i decided this summer to volunteer there so i could experience the festival. the movie business is definitely not my industry but i've always been curious about it. it's like learning a whole new world.

my volunteer shifts have been very uneventful. i spent one shift taking tickets at a theatre from movie watchers and then collecting ballots for the viewer's choice award. i spent another shift at the movie lounge where filmmakers and producers and high up movie business gurus get to chill. the lounge has live music and art on the wall...it's a very artsy environment where people can mingle (and enjoy an open bar).

basically there were too many volunteers and not enough things to do so i ended up meeting some pretty cool people. there was the security guard who has "secured" some pretty high up celebrities and worked lots of premieres. there was the irish woman who is a screenwriter who i ended up having one of the best and most stimulating conversations with - we talked about art, movies, school, and personal life stuff. and then there was the korean producer who offered me free tickets to the screening of "my dear enemy", a korean movie opening at the festival.

i think it's the people who make any type of festival interesting. and i think especially in the entertainment/movie business, there are lots of interesting people. these people are very different from most of the friends i've made at school because they are in the arts and humanities. with arts and humanities people, you can end up talking to them about almost anything (world issues, art, films, culture)...and i love it! i feel like i've been so mentally stimulated these past few days because of the interesting people i've met who are so passionate about the festival and because of the films i've seen and will be going to see.

the stoning of soraya m

i saw a free screening of this movie at usc the other day. now i know i'm pretty dramatic so i use the word "intense" a lot...but THIS movie was really intense.

i don't mean intense like, omigosh look at that car crash or dude look at all the fire and bombs. it was mentally intense. the movie, based on a true story, is about this woman named soraya whose husband wants to divorce her. she doesn't want to because she doesn't want her kids to end up on the streets. so in the end, he concocts this false story about how she is having an affair with another man. he manages to convince the religious leaders of their town that this lie is actually true. he even gets the accused man to go along with his story.

after she is tried and found guilty of having an affair, she gets tied up and placed in a hole, buried up to her waist. and she is stoned.

the last 10 minutes of this movie are of her stoning. and the director doesn't hold back. it's 10 minutes of very uncomfortable moments. you can see the stoning from her point of view as rocks are thrown in her face and blood drips down her face. you can see the stoning from the men, including her father and sons, who are throwing the rocks at her and how fast the stones are going.

it was difficult for me to watch. it was very, very uncomfortable because you could see her pain and her helplessness.

there were so many thoughts that ran through my head: people shouldn't be able to get away with this, some people take their religion to an irrational extreme, women have no rights or freedoms (the movie was set in iran). these were just a couple of my thoughts.

then i started to wonder, i was so impacted by this movie because soraya's death was so graphic. but what about the types of execution the US does? just because a man dies by lethal injection doesn't make the way he died any less heinous than a stoning.

the US always turns the looking glass on other countries, other people, other religions and points fingers at what they are doing wrong. but in this country, there are so many problems: healthcare, the economy, homelessness...the US needs to stop looking around and just look into a mirror to see what it is doing wrong to its own people.

baking adventures

after many episodes of the food network, i decided it was time to stop watching delicious desserts being made and instead make them myself. now i can't take all the credit...since a lot of my baking is thanks to betty crocker. HOWEVER, i still try to add my own twists, decorations, etc.

this is a raspberry filling i made for a berry crumble. it's two packs of fresh raspberries, a couple teaspoons of water, about a cup of sugar, and a teaspoon of baking powder (now these measurements are very lax because, well frankly, i don't remember the exact measurements, but just more or less these amounts should be fine).

then i put a crumble mixture on top, poured a quarter of a stick of melted butter on top and baked for 40 minutes at 325F. the final product is above. the filling was a little runny, maybe next time i won't put in the berry filling in the box. but other than that, it was berry-licious!

now this was my attempt at a strawberry shortcake. the cake was made from a shortcake mixture and i cut it in half, covered in whip cream and put sliced up strawberries on top. it was good BUT next time i know to cut off the tops of the cakes so they are flat.

i kept them with their natural baked dome-ness and after the first 30 seconds, the whipped cream and strawberries were falling down the sides *tear* a lesson for next time...layered cakes shouldn't be round!

quali-TEA

a random walk through the SF chinatown brought me and two friends to a tea shop. really, the only thing we saw before we walked in was the "free tea tasting" sign. i thought the guy would just pour us a cup and that would be it.

WRONG. this master tea man made us 10 PLUS cups of tea...all ranging in price from $60/pound to $1500/pound. i've never had tea that expensive before!


the picture below shows the master tea man making one type of tea...first pouring hot water, straining the tea then serving us. we tried ginseng oolong, green needle, peurh, and rose tea amongst others...i had never really thought that much about the different tastes in tea...tea can be bitter, hard, coarse, sweet, strong, weak...i feel like i learned so much from this master tea man! he told us which types give energy, which types are good for the skin (important for every asian female...or so our mothers tell us), which types were weaker in caffeine and thereby good to drink before bed...


we ended up spending a lot of time in the tea shop, chatting with the tea master about teas and the bar he owns at night (such an interesting man!). we all left empty handed...oh well...at least now, i know how to be a tea connoisseur.

from socal to norcal

one of the best things about living in socal...is taking a roadtrip up to norcal. so that's what i did this past weekend. it was hard to adjust to SF at first because i'm so used to the open space, need-to-drive, living in the ghetto-ness of LA. SF was crowded, there were buses and trolleys and a MUNI system (i kept pronouncing it moon-y) and the BART, everything was dense and compact...it was like hong kong but with more diversity.

i didn't really know how to react at first. it wasn't my first time there but it was the first time i lived smack in the middle of SF...but after the first night, i loved it. i miss public transportation, i miss easy access to things, i miss walking around for food and just walking around in general and taking in different neighbourhoods.

here are some pictures i took of SF:

pork chop-y

one of the most famous things from macau is its pork chop bun. it's pretty much a big pork chop inside a hamburger-esque bun. it's simple and tasty. yummm...

so how does this relate to the above picture? look at item E...pork chop porky bun.

i love chinese to english translations.

the disney concert hall

the walt disney concert hall is an interesting building. i first heard about it because frank gehry designed it and he's a master architect. then i heard the curves of the building were reflecting light into the buildings around it and it was over-heating them. hmm frank, not good.

they managed to fix that problem by buffing down the contours that were reflecting light, so that's good for the suits that work downtown and don't want to be cooked while they work.

i just really like the building because it's so different from everything around it. it's fluid and has personality. lots of buildings downtown just seem to be rigid and bland. but the walt disney concert hall has pi-zzaz. here are some pictures i took:


the main thing i wanted to see when i toured it was the auditorium. i had read a lot about how the acoustics inside were amazing and how every seat in the house could get the same musical experience because of the auditorium's design.


it was really cool! i could completely hear our tour guide when we went inside and mind you, she was a small little japanese woman with a quiet voice. it was awesome...i bet it sounds even better when there is a full orchestra playing inside.

korean pizza really hits the spot

there is a restaurant in koreatown called mr. pizza factory. i first wanted to go there because i thought the name sounded cute. then i yelp-ed them and found they have sweet potato crust on their pizza! it was fate, i had to go.


the service was really good. the parking sucked. but the sweet potato pizza was amazing! i thought the toppings (nacho chips, sour cream, potato, bacon, cheese) were weird at first but upon first bite, i melted because it was that good. and when i got to the crust, it just blew my mind. sweet potato filling?! in the crust?! who ever needs to eat cheesy crust pizza?!

mr. pizza factory. i wonder if i could be mrs. pizza factory?

Ribs vs ribs

versus

gus's bbq ribs (from gus's barbecue restaurant in pasadena) versus my baked barbecued ribs...one's pro, the other is not. *sigh* oh well, i tried...and now i need to get a grill! i'm inspired by gus's ribs as well as the food network's grilling week! freaking bobby flay making ribs every hour.

in case you DID think my ribs were the winner:
1) thank you!!
2) it's a pretty simple recipe: just marinate overnight with one part bbq sauce with honey and one part ketchup. then bake for 40 minutes at 375F. then eat!

the tar pits

so for four years, i passed by the tar pits on the bus. just a big pool of tar, i thought to myself, not a big deal.


but it is!

it's a big pool of tar in the middle of a city...and before the city was built, it was a big pool of tar that trapped thousands of animals! wolves, saber-tooth cats, woolly mammoths, unnecessarily large ground sloths...it's really sad when you think about all the animal lives that were lost because they unknowingly wandered into tar. here is a re-creation at the tar pits:


the even weirder thing is that they lived in los angeles. it's just hard to imagine them here because when i think about LA, i think about hollywood and beaches...i can't imagine a woolly mammoth living in the city. what if i looked outside my window and saw one? i would probably feed it something, then ask if i could sit on its back. imagine riding on a woolly mammoth...that would be pretty sweet...


sorry that was a tangent. but anyway, the tar pits were pretty awesome. we walked around the tar pits, took a look inside the museum (free for SC students!) and then explored the grounds...and soon discovered that the tar is still very much alive and bubbling!

wanna hike?

the hollywood sign is a fixture of los angeles. everyone wants to see it. everyone knows it's there. and sometimes you just take it for granted that it's there. so i decided to pull myself out of this "hollywood sign complacency" and do something about it. i decided we needed to hike to the hollywood sign.


i went with a couple friends and this is at the start of our hike, at the bottom of the hill...when we were extremely energetic and ready to hike. i wish i could have said we kept up this attitude for the entire hike...

a view of the los angeles basin from the hill of the hollywood sign. yup, LA is really that smoggy.


this is when the hike took a turn for the worse...but it made it a fun adventure. as we were walking, we saw a couple guys take this shortcut...and being educated college graduates, we decided we would follow them no questions asked because maybe we could get to the sign faster.

wrong. shortcut = longcut. at least we got this great view of burbank out of it.


as we continued to look at this scene, i kept on thinking to myself that some buildings look really familiar. that's when i realized i was looking out at the ABC and NBC buildings! i saw them everyday when i worked at NBC last summer so i'm pretty sure my guess is spot on. if you want a nice view of the NBC lot, take a hike to the hollywood sign!

and this is when we made it to the top! one of the most photographed places in the world and we were there. behind it. hey, the back is just as important as the front, though not as attractive i have to say.

i'm just glad we made it to the top. our shortcut could have been disastrous. one wrong turn and we would have ended up at griffith park. i'm saving that for another day.

strawberries galore

i went to a strawberry festival last week! we don't have strawberry festivals in canada (at least not to my knowledge) so i was really excited. and more so excited about the wonderful strawberry treats i was going to encounter! the best thing there hands-down was the strawberry supreme, which can be seem below.


a layer of poundcake + layer of ice cream + wonderful scoop of strawberries + whipped cream = the most amazing strawberry dessert you will ever have!


i know festivals are normally very kiddish and they're just out to get your money...but when you put strawberries on top of things, it's very easy to get people like me to pay up! the strawberry cupcake in itself was $2.00, and the extra strawberry on top cost me an extra $0.50. it was worth it though...the strawberry was just the right sweetness.

the beginning of the rest of my life

tuition: $30,000 x 4 years
cap and gown: $40
graduating from usc: priceless

a little cheesy i know...but in a weird way, it really sums up a lot of things from these past four years. when i first got to usc, i didn't really know what was going to happen to me. these last couple years have been filled with ups and downs, losing fights and overcoming obstacles, good food and bad food...and while i hated graduating because i didn't know what was going to happen to me afterward, it's not as painful as i thought it would be.

life doesn't end with graduation. gosh, that would really suck. i guess i'm only just realizing life begins after graduation. it's the beginning of the rest of my life. let the adventures begin!