Category: thisnthat

It’s the 10th! Go wish him well! www.brian1.net.

dude, this is a really boring blog.

it’s not for lack of material, oh no. it’s mostly that it’s a lack of *appropriate* material, whatever the hell that means. i can’t just talk trash like i used to cuz people can find me nowadays! dude, i was able to google my name and find this site! aaah!

so i’d like to talk about this REALLY ANNOYING coworker of mine, who’s young and stupid (just like I was… er.. am…) but i can’t.

and i’d like to talk about what a fun time i’m having at work, and how it’s totally the perfect job for me at this point in my life, but i can’t.

i’d love to talk about the cool people i’m meeting at work and how much fun i’m having with them and how they’re such fantastic people who inspire me to be creative and whimsical and childish and strong, but i can’t.

so what the hell am i supposed to talk about then? all i do nowadays is play World of Warcraft (I’m a 51 Night Elf Rogue on Cenarius), read trashy and/or pseudo-intellectual magazines (Radar and the New Yorker) and listen to the same music i listened to 4 years ago (neutral milk hotel, low, sondre lerche, microphones).

i’m a relic, a shell of my old self. boy i gotta get me interesting again!

so about six months ago (wow, yea, it really was that long now…), i decided that i should quit getting gouged by my webhost and switch to a new plan with more s-p-a-c-e. i’m on canaca right now, which has been ok so far, except i’ve had to reinstall movable type and gallery all over again. and with the moving, the traveling, the changing jobs, world of warcraft and my whiny procrastinatory ways, getting everything up and running just didn’t really happen.

until now.

well, sort of.

archives still aren’t back yet, and probably won’t be back for another week or so (if i’m lucky). the gallery is back up, although the pictures will need to be reuploaded, especially the ones from the wedding. and speaking of wedding pictures, i’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to put up pictures you don’t really like, or else relatives will wrap their hands on what they perceive to be a well-composed picture and go into 8×10 madness. and for some reason, *all* our relatives have picked the SAME CRAPPY PICTURE with the SAME AWFUL SMILES to print out and FRAME and PLACE ON THEIR MANTLES. it’s really quite depressing. 0_o

so anyway, posting will return. i think.

$8 orange juice Originally uploaded by jadepearli.

While Jer and I are now back in the bay area (permanently), my phone is still in Taiwan, the land of $7 Florida’s Natural orange juice. Why the citizens of Taiwan feel the need or desire to import fruit products, considering the huge variety and quality of fruit in the island country, is beyond me, but then people in general tend to be impressed with the exotic. Especially when you put that exotic looking carton in a posh-looking Whole Foods-style market in the basement of a major upscale mall.

Anyway, I have no phone, so please don’t get mad at me for not calling back! I’m supposed to be getting it back “soon,” as it’s at my grandparents house, but i’m starting to get a little restless and needy. Poor wussy me.

Things are finally slowing down a little bit, so hit me up if you want to hang out! But email, don’t call. =P

Flower Originally uploaded by jadepearli.

so i’m 25. how does that work?! i could wax (un)eloquent about what it means to celebrate my silver anniversary on this planet, but it’s the same drivel you might read on any other mediocre blog… about being older in years but not feeling much different, about feeling young and stupid yet technically being older/wiser/married. And so on and so forth. Or maybe i’m just hitting a cynical rut. Yea, maybe it’s just a cynical rut.

But it’s amazing how near death situations can cut through all that nihilistic crap and give you a good whupping of sense. I won’t go into too much detail, but I’ll say that tonight my car participated in a brief ballet dance on the slick of highway of 24 in the heavy rains of this evening. While my car stuck to its cues and only strayed a little from its lane to avoid collision, its partner, a silver mustang in the lane to our right, was not so lucky, going so far as to careen within six inches in front of me, slowly spinning into the third lane, the fourth, and then slamming into the center divider. I have no idea how we didn’t collide, and how my car didn’t hydroplane as well when i tapped on the brakes. We could see the passengers in the car as it slid past us…. I didn’t hear the thud of their cease-slide, but jer did… I almost started crying as soon as jer said he heard it…. I really hope they’re ok…..

and then i started thinking about what could have happened if they had started hydroplaning just a little bit sooner…. of if we had been going just a little bit faster… or if there were other cars in the lanes to our left… or i had lost control of my car after i saw the mustang…. and if another car could have hit that car while it lay stopped in the middle of the freeway. so many what ifs, so many maybes. my knees started shaking; they’re still shaking now.

For my 25th birthday, I was given (yet another) second chance. Good gracious, i really better do something with it. =P

jer, the family and i have been in taiwan for the past couple of weeks, visiting family, seeing sights and whatnot. haven’t had much chance to post much as internet access has been a bit spotty and we’ve been having quite long days. i’ve updated my flickr photoblog with some pics from my new canon sd200 digicam in case anyone’s curious. it’s quite a few days behind, but i’ll try to catch it up a little bit…

commenting has been turned on again, so nospam away. hopefully the new MT nofollow link will do a little bit of good…

I just realized that i have not posted for almost two months. so here’s a post.

“post.”

up n coming:

U2
Coachella
Taiwan

(though not necessarily in that order. stay tuned.)

Shin Sen Gumi ramen Originally uploaded by jadepearli.

So i finally got my camera attachment for my phone to start working, and of course the most interesting subjects to me are food and edibles. So let the food-blogging begin!

Here’s my lunch from the middle of last week, a savory bowl of ramen from Hakata Ramen (aka Shin Sen Gumi). Hands down, this place has the best ramen i’ve ever ever ever had. To compare, a couple of weeks prior I had gone back to another place ramen place i used to frequent many moons ago, near Mitsuwa in Torrance, and ordered a bowl of shiro ramen, just for old time’s sake.

I could barely get through it. Their noodles were hard, with a terrible chew consistency, and their broth was pure MSG. I went through three glasses of water while trying to eat my noodles. In the end I was more full from the water than from the noodles.

I hadn’t remembered the place being so bad! But I guess the truth was that I really had no comparison at the time.

Shin Sen Gumi is a small chain of restaurants dedicated to bringing the ‘best of Japanese cuisine’ to audiences here in the LA area. They have one ramen house (Hakata), a yakitori place, and a couple of other ones I haven’t really come across yet. However, the ramen place is probably their biggest success.

Now what makes Hakata Ramen special? First of all, the noodles are amazingly soft and pliant, and their chew texture is pure bliss. It’s essentially al dente for ramen. Like them a little harder or softer? Just check the box on the order sheet. Personally, I like them a little softer than normal.

Secondly, the soup is a perfect compliment to the pork-flavored noodles. It is a special dark (and slightly creamy) pork-flavored broth, which can be adjusted in strength and thickness to suit your tastes. Want a little more flavor? Ask for extra soup base. More essence of pork? Extra oil! My preference is extra soup base and standard thickness, but Jer prefers light oil and standard strength broth. But that’s just us. :)

It’s located near the corner of Redondo Beach Blvd and Western, right by the Hanmi Bank and Target. It is well worth the trip. I’m going back later this week, for my combo A, with the little baby mini dumplings pictured. mm tasty.

you end up running a really boring blog.

~-~-~ random updates ~-~-~

stuff in the changer/on the ipod:
killers
interpol
postal service (yea, still… and needless to say i’m glad the USPS settled)
death cab for cutie

haven’t listened to the new modest mouse all the way through yet, nor the mirah album i’d been looking forward to so. shame on me!

i got a camera attachment for my siemens s56 phone. now i’m just waiting for the bluetooth usb dongle to swap the images off. hopefully pictures will be coming soon.

saw ‘national treasure’ with kipp and jer this past weekend. fun flick! can’t believe right-wingers are saying it got such negative reviews because the reviewers were ‘unpatriotic.’ geeze.. it wasn’t a terrible movie, but it’s not great just because it has some patriotic themes.

saw ‘the incredibles’ twice in the week before. loved it loved it loved it. edna is my new wallpaper.

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | The magic Christian