It's Dai Time

Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Tag: chinese food

Day 339: things that happened

January 17, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I beat Uncharted 2 last night. It was a non-stop thrill ride, even if I’m still not entirely sold on the treasure collecting part of the game. I played a bit of multiplayer today, where I was mainly manhandled by skeletons with shotguns who sounded like British people.

We made decent headway on the vine infestation in our backyard, despite strong resistance and being completely outnumbered. We will continue our quest to prevent our walls and the tree back there from being choked to death by these evil vines tomorrow if the rain doesn’t make the prospect completely miserable.

We ate at a small Chinese restaurant in San Leandro tonight named Little Namking. While we were there, Katie asked me where Namking is. I wasn’t sure. After returning home and looking it up, there actually is no Namking. It probably is a bad transliteration of Nanjing, which is actually close to Shanghai. Either way, the food was pretty good and very cheap. I can’t wait to go back another and try their signature beef chow fun. There’s nothing that compares to a good chow fun.

Then we watched the scandalous second episode of The Bachelor on a laptop in bed. I tried to log in through Facebook Connect so that I could create a text commentary for the episode with all of the snarky things Katie and I spouted but technology was not on my side tonight. I hope, however, that my attempts did not – as Katie suggested – post to my wall that I was watching The Bachelor a dozen times. I only watched it once, and that’s shameful enough.

I also played a bit of the Saboteur today, where I eliminated an entire Nazi radar station single-handed, but accidentally shot a nun in the process.

Day 302: stinky tofu

December 10, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Today, a group of co-workers and I went to a place called China Bee.

There, we ordered a variety of dishes in an attempt to simulate a trip to Taiwan. One of the signature dishes of Taiwanese cuisine is stinky tofu. So, of course, we ordered some stinky tofu.

I haven’t eaten stinky tofu in a while, but I do remember eating some of it back in my youth and at various times when visiting restaurants with my parents. But, I suppose that gives me some kind of advantage.

Of the four other people I went to lunch with, three attempted to eat one piece each but failed. The last person was too intimidated to even try. I then shouldered the responsibility of eating the rest of the plate – around 6 pieces or so.

I don’t take any particular pride in eating something that other’s couldn’t. I would have preferred that everyone liked the dish. But, it made me curious: are there foods out there that I couldn’t stomach? Does everyone have their stinky tofu? In recent memory, I don’t remember anything that I actually could not finish eating, but I think that’s a very similar attitude to what my co-workers had before that stinky tofu got into their mouths.

Food is such a delicate topic when it comes to taste. Different cultural dishes have such different tastes and so many are acquired tastes that it would be completely unsurprising to one day find my stinky tofu.

That’s not an invitation to try and find such a food for me, though.

Day 170: shanghai east and funktastic gameplays

July 31, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Two good things happened today:

Thing the first – a co-worker of mine introduced me to a small restaurant that I would have never seen or eaten at in San Mateo called Shanghai East.  It was a completely affordable and delicious lunch and someplace I’d like to visit again.

I’m not an expert on Chinese food in the area, and it’s always nice to find new places to get some Chinese food, especially if they have some Shanghainese menu options not available everywhere.

There’s a dim sum place within walking distance of our house, but we only go there occasionally because it’s often packed during weekends.

Thing the second – a different co-worker pointed me to the EarthBound Funktastic Gameplay, which is an event that happens yearly among the EarthBound fan community and started this evening.  During the 24-day “camp,” everyone in the community plays EarthBound (often for the nth time) while sharing their experiences, joys, and sorrows with others online.

It’s a great idea because it means that many people will be in the same rough place in a particular video game that you’re all collectively playing on your own.  There isn’t too much communal discussion about video games whilst in the middle of them.  Most discussion comes after you’ve finished the game or after different amounts of time with the game.

The EBFGP is not only a great way for fans to share something they love, but to go through a shared experience that is the closest a non-MMO game can come to all being in the same places doing the same things.

It echoes an idea I’ve tossed around my head for a while, which is having a “game club” that’s similar to a book club.  We’d all decide on a game to play, all play overnight to the same rough plot points, then meet up and discuss our thoughts on the game: where it was designed well/poorly, what we thought of the plot and characters, and where we’d like to see it go or what we expected in our next sessions.  It’d be a fun shared experience, as well as a learning opportunity as game designers.  The difficulty is finding a game that’s easily accessible to all of us and being able to divide such a game into appropriate chunks over a week or month.

Still, I think it has promise.

Day 27: random thoughts before a meeting

March 10, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I got double-cooked pork from the Chinese place across the street today because I had checks to deposit.  I’m not sure how double-cooked pork is prepared, precisely, but I like the idea of it because it leads me to believe that the cooks spend twice as much time on my meal because it has to be cooked, and then cooked again.  What a deal!

I watched the Woody Allen film Vicky Christina Barcelona last night and looked on IMDB to see who the narrator in the film was.  It’s Christopher Evan Welch, who I had never heard of.  But, Mr. Welch was the voice behind Tails in the 1993 TV show “The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” so that’s something.

I think I’ve gotten over Scarlett Johansson.  I’m not sure what happened, but I used to think she was really hot and now she just doesn’t really do it for me.  I still think she’s a good actress.

A great way to waste time is to find a movie that you don’t feel too passionately about and read some message board posts about it on IMDB.  For example, take jjjj’s initial assertion that Voiceover narration = lazy filmmaking and follow it down the sordid path of 77 replies.  (The thread is still active, so it may be more than 77 now.)

You should pick a movie that you don’t feel too passionately about though, because you don’t want to be the person who actually posts to IMDB message boards.  Do you?

While going to IMDB, I’m reminded of the little things that make Google Chrome a really slick browser.  I like being able to type “imdb<tab>” and be rewarded with the ability to search IMDB directly from my location bar.

The statuette I have on my desk of a young me is about the same height as two soda cans stacked on top of each other.  A little taller, maybe.

Neither is as tall as my Outstanding Student Award for Excellence in Mathematics from the Mathematics Council of Western Pennsylvania.  I wonder what life would be like if I was on the Mathematics Council of Western Pennsylvania.

I certainly wouldn’t be going to a meeting now where I talked about how to create the best experience for new players when they first fire up Sims 3.  I’d probably be solving differential equations or joking about Fermat’s last theorem.  More than I do.  Just, you know, in my free time.

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