Unexpected visit from my relatives.
Took them around Singapore, felt like I was a local!
Watched them win $950 at the casino.
Convinced them to cash out and bail.
They did!
At the end of the day, they took ME somewhere I’ve never been to.
So much for feeling like a “local”, right?
Was spoiled silly by them, a rather nice feeling I’m not quite used to.

Dyed my hair to a light coppery brown color last weekend.
It was an impulsive decision.
Was horrified that the color was a lot lighter than expected.
However, a week later I’m loving my new hair color.
They’ve turned to be a warmer brown since then.

Lots of farewells at work this month.
Sometimes I complain, but
I’m convinced I’m very lucky to be a part of this place.

Spent a lot more time on skype ever since we discovered the special effects.
Which never fail to make us laugh and laugh and laugh.

It’s been over a year since I’ve been back in Asia.
While I still miss Los Angeles a lot, every single day
I think I’m slowly accepting this place to be my new home.

Following the multitudes of accolades and Emmy nominations this show has received, I became more and more curious. Finally I started watching Mad Men early September and finished the first season just a couple days ago. I’m happy to report that they really do live up to their hype, though I can see how it’s not for everyone since it isn’t as action-packed and full of twists like most other TV shows these days. Mad Men was instead subtle, almost mundane, surreal and very otherworldly.

One of the things that stood out from this show is that it was set in Manhattan of 1960′s. They’ve been given a lot of credit for portraying life very accurately during that era, and while I don’t know exactly what that means, they introduce each element naturally as the story progresses. Throughout the show we were reminded how women receives different treatment, how smoking was very common and widely accepted, and how driving under the influence wasn’t looked down upon. A lot certainly have happened over 50 years…

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days

My Nintendo DS has been sitting there collecting dust ever since I got my new lover (the blackberry), but I picked it back up when the long awaited release of this game finally arrived! and I have to say, it’s pretty impressive so far. The graphic is one of the best (and smoothest!) I’ve seen in DS games so far, and more importantly it stayed true to the other Kingdom Hearts games in terms of game play and the general “feel” of the story. Very pleased with Square for being consistent!

Mae – Suspension

Kat introduced me to this song a few months ago, and it has really grown on me. Definitely song of the moment!

Food!

You’d think I should be bored of taking pictures of food by now, but nope! I love food-pics ;) don’t read my blog when you’re hungry! you have been warned.

Bakmi GM, a popular noodle franchise here in Jakarta. I’m not too fond of this type of noodles but they are good, I suppose. I got the chicken noodle with special GM sauce.

Ordered a rice dish from Sushi Groove, instead of… you know, sushi. I think this one was burger with egg over rice. It was just ok. I should have gone with Sushi.

One of the things we ordered during a late night culinary adventure with my friends. So good!

went to eat at Duck King at Pondok Indah Mall with a bunch of people. very good food. my favorite is the tofu dish on the lower right corner!

close up of the tofu… omg, it was SO GOOD! i absolutely LOVE this type of tofu!

one of the many trips to Sour Sally. This one was right after I collected my adsense payment, so I thought I’d treat my mom to some frozen yogurt. she chose pinkilicious with pink mochi which i think makes a really cute (and yummy) combo!! such delicate colors :)

Other Random Non-Food Related Pics

Went to Pacific Place with friends.. took pics with the current decoration (their mall decoration changes every so often). it was her idea I swear!!

You are probably wondering, “wtf are those people doing on top of a MOVING BUS in the middle of MOVING traffic??”. yeah, exactly. I don’t know either… but it happens a lot here.

Introducing… my new lover, the Bold. Ain’t he a beauty?

I finally downloaded a few wallpapers today! I absolutely love this wallpaper. In fact, I’ve been using the same one for my desktop :) It’s called “Bokeh” by Kol, and available for download at deviant art. For my blackberry I increased the saturation a little because I like the colors to pop more.

A very rare shot of quiet streets in Jakarta. This is taken in front of Pacific Place, a popular mall at 6PM, during the holiday I mentioned in the previous entry. Trust me, you won’t see this on any other normal day!

the internet being down proved to be a good thing as i finally made a new layout for this blog. and, get this, i even made a comment template… yes, finally! people could leave comments again! not that anyone would cause I have no friends (really), but I quite like the comment template I made so I hope someone would.

today I finished the 3rd sequel of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which means I am almost finished with the entire series! I actually played the series out of order – 4th, 2nd, 3rd, and now the 1st. i liked them all, but i have to say, so far i like the 4th sequel the most. although, i’m not sure if it is considered a sequel or a spin-off since the main character for the 4th sequel is no longer Phoenix Wright.

anyway, this game rocks. i’ve been playing all day and I haven’t been able to peel myself away from it. I finished episode 4 today. each episode so far has its own crazy twist and entertaining stories. i have to say though, figuring out the bad guy from the very start isn’t that hard (there usually aren’t that many characters to begin with). building your way to the final court and finding evidence to do so is what’s taking up most of your time. however i have to say, it’s worth it.

i’ll blog more about this game once i’m finished with it, but i can easily see why this game was rated high by many out there.

oh, and i was also mistaken on my last entry. apparently you CAN save at any time during the game. just press the “start” button :P

The concept of ninjatown is pretty simple. you are playing on the side of the cutesy little ninjas, defending your secret ninja cookie recipe from the evil monster. the dialogue are funny and cute. not really what you would expect in a traditional ninja characters. i’ll miss this game.

I also tried playing Ace of Justice, but the lack of save point bores me. it’s actually not a save point per se like final fantasy games, but the game only lets you save after certain points of the story. it’s annoying to me because most of the time i can’t afford to play 45 minutes straight before i lose interest or have to tend to other things. the in-game dialogue are a also bit verbose, but i guess they had to since some of the dialogue contains clues that you will need to beat the game.

aside of that, the game is really worth playing. you play the part of Justice, a rookie defense attorney. throughout the game you analyze testimonies, find inconsistencies and present evidence to prove these inconsistencies. sometimes the clues are straightforward but it can be pretty challenging. i also find the story pretty intriguing so far… so i’ll give this game another try and see if it really deserve being named one of the best DS games in 2008.

I spent some time last night getting used to the game. pretty addictive i have to say.. plus the ninjas are just SO cute!! I’ve just beat the NTSE plaza with a C, which discourages me but I later googled it and found out it was a pretty tough map to beat.

anyway, that’s all i wanted to share :)

Anyway, the concert was awesome. I was previously not a fan of Sarah Brightman (not a hater either, i was just not very aware) but N keeps talking about her. So when we found out she’s going to be in SoCal, we had to go!

The concert was held at inglewood, at the great western forum. when we got to the venue, someone scanned our tickets and told us to go see another ticket person. i was a bit nervous but it turns out we had our seat upgraded to the FLOOR section! it was front and center too! (okay, not THAT front but it was definitely center). I was able to get pretty decent pictures with my regular point and shoot camera as you will see below.

The concert was amazing. Sarah is really a great performer and the whole theme of the concert was just so.. whimsical, fairy-tale like. lots of ballet and delicate movements. also, her costumes were AWESOME!

anyway, without further ado, here are some pics.

this part was SO breath taking! the stage had this huge mirror / projector screen hovering over it, and in this performance she was actually laying down on part of the stage. the picture above is the projection of her and the dancers, creating the illusion of them floating above the stage. i think they are supposed to be mermaids in this song. soooo pretty!

she was getting ready to be lifted up for the next song. this part was also awesome, but my pics came out blurry :(

the alice in wonderland bit in between performances.

anyway, random pics i found on my camera:

i was craving for a quiche, and we passed by Champagne french bakery cafe while shopping at South Coast Plaza. i got a ham, spinach and cheese quiche with a side of caesar salad. it was delicious! i love quiche!!

randomly went on a trip to Rodeo Dr with N, my mom and my sister after we had dinner one day.

this is our xmas lunch. N’s mom made these. very yummy!! loved it :) there was also corn with the meal but i took pics before we got them.

I’ve been playing Rockband most of the day today. N’s brother got the whole set as a xmas gift from his girlfriend. on top of that, he has a huuuuge HDTV (i think about 50″?) so that made it even more awesome! i’ve been getting used to it.. i can only play medium so far

i didn’t bring my SLR since i thought it would be unnecessary bulk.. and i was right. i was still a bit sad since there were so many people carrying their SLRs and snapping pics away…

but anyway:

Day 0 – Getting to NYC

We spent about 15 hours trying to get to NYC. Our flight was scheduled to leave on 6:45AM. However, we completely missed that flight. we woke up at 5:50AM and N lives about 15-20 mins away from the airport. by the time we got there they would not even let us check in.. so we had to switch to a later flight that day. we spent about six hours waiting around in the airport (thankfully i had episodes of Californication on my laptop, so we watched that).

at about 11:30, we finally boarded the plane :D we had a layover at Minneapolis, which was so cool because it was snowing! and then we almost missed the flight again because they were delayed, but we didn’t know that when a flight is delayed they can still change the time around. so we thought we were supposed to leave at 8PM, but it turns out the plane was ready to go by 7:30PM.. we were eating at the time and completely missed the call. thank god we still made it :x

FINALLY we got to NYC at 1AM. got to the hotel (we stayed at the Hilton at Rockefeller center). i unloaded my DS and laptop to charge, tried to find free internet to no avail, then crashed for the day.

Day 1 – Times Square, NY Public Library, Empire State Building, Ground Zero, NYU, Sushi Yasuda

view from the hotel!

I woke up around 9AM (6AM Los Angeles time) and woke N up so we can hurry and explore. We had no plan / itinerary, so we just grabbed a map from the concierge and rolled out.

the city were full of holiday decorations, such as the nut cracker statues above

caught a quick breakfast at a nearby cafe. nothing to write home about, but more importantly… they messed up my HOT CHOCOLATE! how can anyone mess that up?!

we walked a view streets down and came across the national debt calculator. according to N, they had to add another number (recently?)

deciding where to go first…

walked a few blocks down to our first destination.. the Times Square!!

good morning america studio!

then we walked a couple MORE blocks down to… 41st street! this is where Carrie and Big’s limousine met after he ditched her at the big wedding, then she threw her bouquet at him and drove away. I’m talking about the Sex and The City movie, of course.

i took pics at the very street where it was filmed, but the pic didn’t come out very good :(

just around the block from that is the New York public library where the Big and Carrie wedding was supposed to be

inside was a bit plain. it looks like a bigger version of UCLA’s powell library. however! there was a handwritten / hand illustrated copy of JK Rowling’s Tales of Beedle the Bard! I believe it was the 4th copy? I didn’t take pics as i assumed it wasn’t allowed, but i don’t remember seeing any signs that says you can’t take pics. oh well…

then we walked down to empire state building. notice how we kept walking? this is before we discovered the wonder of the subway system in NYC.

we waited in line for about 40 mins to get to the top. BEAUTIFUL view from the top of empire state, but it was also ICY COLD!!

after empire state, we picked a random pizza place to have lunch. it turned out to be a good choice since the pizza was YUMMY!

my tomato and chicken pizza. so crispy and juicy at the same time

then finally (to my delight) we got on the subway downtown to visit ground zero. however, N spotted THE wall street as one of the subway stops, and got excited so we decided to stop there first

it was a lot quieter than i had expected. then again, the actual trading floor is indoors and away from the street (i think?)

we took the subway to ground zero but there wasn’t much to see now. the area is closed to public since they are reconstructing another building on the site… so we just walked around the area and tried to imagine the chaos that ensues when 9/11 happened. honestly, i can’t imagine how crazy it must have been… :(

by the time we were done, it was already 4:30 and not much time left since we have dinner reservations at Sushi Yasuda at 6:30. so we decided to just take the subway uptown and stop by NYU on the way

I came across this on the way to NYU! Waverly place does exist!! aka Wizards of Waverly place :D (a disney tv show for those who don’t know)

NYU itself was really nothing to write home about. it blended really well with the city that when we got to the campus, we didn’t realize we were already ON the campus! to be frank, it was pretty damn ugly. it looked like a bunch of office buildings. i’m glad i went to a university with much much prettier campus like UCLA :P anyway, we stopped by the student store and i bought a shirt since it was cheap and i LOVE the school color (royal purple and silver)

we made it on time to Sushi Yasuda for our dinner reservation. it was my xmas gift to N. i couldn’t get a seat at the sushi bar (*tear*), but the sushi itself was SO YUMMY! and the service was amazing. i seriously think the waiter stalked us to see if it was time to bring the next dish (we ordered omakase so the dishes come periodically).

i fell in love with Blue Fin Tuna. it melts in your mouth and so flavorful! i recommend this place to anyone who loves sushi and happen to be in NYC :D just reserve a couple days ahead so you can sit at the bar

after dinner, it was cold and dark so we decided to stop by Rockefeller center and make that our final stop for the day. i got to see my big tree! the reason why we were in NYC in the first place :)

yayyyy i love christmas trees! :D

we then made our way back to the hotel, which thankfully is just around the corner. i was really tired and frozen by this time. so we got home, showered and crashed. well… i tried to but my body was still in LA time (which means it was still only 9PM). i ended up sleeping at 2-3AM NY time.

Day 2 – Staten Island, Liberty Island, Dinner w/ Jenny and a bit of NY shopping

we woke up a bit late… did not go out of the hotel until around 11:30 NY time. we quickly made our way to the south ferry via the subway again and (mistakenly) took the ferry to the Staten island instead of the Liberty island.

i snapped this pic while we were on the ferry. once on Staten island, we quickly took the next ferry back to Manhattan and went to the correct ferry that takes you to liberty island. we waited in line for the ferry for about 30 mins, and finally…

THE liberty island! the trees were very pretty :)

grabbed a quick lunch at the cafe there. we had to eat outside since it became quickly packed inside and could not find a table. my hands were FROZEN and we had to fend off the birds from stealing our foods! thankfully we later found a table inside after and stayed there. i de-froze my hands in bathroom.

us and the statue of liberty herself! i had no idea the statue were a gift from France. shows how much i paid attention during high school, right? :x here’s my attempt at semi-panoramic pic. i should have taken more pics!

when we took the ferry back to Manhattan, it was already sunset. the battery park is where the ferry took us back. i took the quick snapshots above before jumping back into the subway for Coney island. little did we know that the pier at coney island was already closed! i kinda had an inkling it would be, but decided to go anyway. however, i had no clue it would take so long to get to Coney from manhattan. it was 50 mins each way on the subway!!

I started texting my friend Jenny since i made plans to have dinner with her at 7. i thought i was going to make it back to manhattan at 730, but i made it back at around 710 instead. thank god :x. jenny took us to this korean place and we had a nice dinner and convo. i noticed korean food in NY is sweeter and less spicy than LA! :o

then after dinner, Jenny showed us the seven story Macy’s building. I was excited at the prospect of shopping at first, but was quickly turned off due to the crowded-ness and the cold… and having to shed more layers of clothing than i’m used to every time i try something on -_-. i did stop by H&M and got a shimmery silver shrug though :D and happy to report that i fit in a smaller size coat now! :D

we walked around the herald square a little bit before deciding to go back to the hotel since i was cold and we were both tired.

stopped by this street vendor right next to our hotel. it had lines despite the cold weather, so we figured it must be good! turns out it was Halal Cart (i was later informed that they are THE famous chicken and rice cart). the food was really good and the portion was HUGE for $6 a plate! I did not finish the entire thing, so i brought it back with me to LA.. haha. we’ll see if it’s still good.

Day 3 – Journey back to LA

N had to force me to wake up at 9AM since we had a flight at 12:40 and we did not want to miss this one. i took some shots as we were leaving…

not an LV fan, but this was amusing!

our flight back were straightforward without much time in between flights. we stopped by Minneapolis airport again though, and it was snowing again! the flight was delayed for 40 mins and they had to de-ice the plane before we took off.

snowy minneapolis airport…

other that that, everything went smoothly this time! :) i played Chrono Trigger the entire way back, and the whole time i kept thinking "heyyy this is where I left off last time!" and then played some more.. "wait no.. THIS is where i left off!" and then, finally i think i am truly at a point where i haven’t played before! exciting.

we landed back in LA around 7:40, then N took me back home.

and now.. i’m back in LA and I MISS NYC ALREADY!! :( i loved everything about the city (minus the cold temperature), especially the subway system. getting around everywhere is soooo easy! it was truly an experience to be there, and i am definitely going back some day. THANKS NICO-SENSEI! :)

On thursday night, Nico came up to LA for a few celebrations and to watch X-Files with me :)

First stop: SUSHI at Sushi Zo! we’ve been trying to go to this place for the loooongest time but something always came up. finally we got to go that night :D

my personal favorites were the butter fish, baby tuna, yellow tail and the albacore (none of which are pictured above. i was too busy eating)

I watched The X-Files movie three times within the span of 24 hours. ummm, yea that’s a new record for me. I still have an $8.50 credit that I got from buying the DVD, so I’m watching it again sometime next week. I’m just so glad to see my agents back again!

anyway, other than that, my life has been preoccupied by FFIV. finally a new RPG to play!! :D :D my character is around lvl 25ish right now. i need to level up because the upcoming dungeon is going to be pretty tough

The other day Kat and I randomly went to Manhattan Beach and ended up at Rock’N Fish, which was pretty rock’n if you ask me. glad we tried out a new place cause their food was good :D i got wild king salmon for the first time. i think they taste pretty much the same as atlantic salmon = yummy! for the sides, i was contemplating on getting mashed potatoes AND baked potatoes but decided that would be too much carbs even for me… so i got spinach instead. their garlic mashed potatoes though… diiiiivine! so creamy and so flavorful :9