Front Page Jamaican Grille

A bunch of us from work headed up to Manchester today for a spicy Jamaican lunch. I haven't had lunch outside the office in a while, let alone with co-workers, so I thought this was a good way to break up the work day and try some new food. Front Page Jamaican Grille is in a little nondescript strip mall on Manchester Blvd.



And it was AMAZING. I had the jerk oxtail which was served with rice and fried plantains and a side of vegetables. She also gave us a sample of the homemade ginger beer which was a little too strong for me so I opted for the fresh watermelon juice. We all shared a reggae chicken wings appetizer which was way too spicy for me. I loved the home-cooking atmosphere of the place and the owner's wife who served us was very laid back and friendly. She even gave us some bread pudding and rum cake to finish off our meal. Needless to say I was stuffed after eating every last bite of food on my plate.

And now my cube neighbor Phil is playing spa music from his cubicle and it is slowly putting me into a deep food coma...

Where have I been the last 5 years?

I found an old post that mapped out all of the states I've traveled to. Very sad map indeed, as it showed only 7 states including the state I live in currently. So, I decided to do a new one.



I'm happy to say I've done a little better in the last 5 years, almost doubling my states visited to a whopping 12. This includes a visit to my mom's place in Indiana, a short trip to Chicago and New York, and two business trips to the east coast. I'm feeling more cultured already.

Old map from September 2004:

G'day Mate!

So, before today, I thought that no one read this blog. You see, this blog was always meant to be a private, personal blog, appearing only those who knew the super-secret URL. I started it a long, long time ago as an online journal and it morphed into a weekly log of activities for the purpose of updating my sisters when we all lived in different corners of the world. I've carefully set all of my settings to avoid search engines, crawlers and the like and I'm careful not to disclose the URL or alias to anyone other than my sisters.

So imagine my surprise when I see that it has collected 57 absolute unique visitors (according to Google analytics). This is a lot considering I've only published this blog at its new domain for about 2 weeks now. Also considering that my target audience is 4 people.

So who are you? I may never know, but at least I know where you are.



So, g'day mates, selamat datang and zdrastvooyte, I hope you enjoy your time here.

Quiet

Funny. I don't ever notice how much I like to talk, or how much I have to say, until there is no one around to talk to. Max left for Ireland at 5AM on Monday morning and Vina has been staying in LA for school/work. So for a full 2.5 days I had the house to myself. And Lulu and Cora (who make pretty good listeners, actually). It's embarrassing to admit but I end up going about my day with a mental checklist in mind. "I have to tell Max this. I have to e-mail him this. I have to text Yona now. I better tweet this. Oooh, I'll e-mail this to Aai and Vina. I better text Aai so she'll open my e-mail. Oh this and this is interesting, but my family will think I'm stupid for e-mailing it to them, I'll blog it instead."

Do I have that much to say? Or is it out of habit that I have to share everything I experience with someone? I mean, it's not out of coincidence that when I have less people to talk to, I tend to blog more. Which is actually interesting to note about the years when I started both of my blogs. I must have had nobody around to really talk to. So am I replacing human contact and attention with my online soapbox where I can freely communicate the thoughts in my head that are directed towards no one?

The concept of blogging, tweeting and Facebook statuses is interesting. Everybody dubs it as "social media" or "social networking" which implies that there is an exchange of communications or a two-sided interaction but if you think about it, it's actually a one-way communication. It is not any different than broadcasting. You expel information outwards, but just provide a feedback loop in case (1) someone reads it and (2) someone finds it compelling enough to reply.

So if this one-way broadcasting has taken over the way people socialize online and real-life (I know some of you have tweeted or read tweets while in the company of another tweeter) then how does that change the way we look at socialization? In theory one could live in isolation, void of any real-world human contact, but still remain perfectly sociable through these online networks. And no one would know the difference.

So then that raises the question, what does it mean to be popular these days? Is it the person with (a) a lot of Facebook friends, (b) a lot of twitter followers or (c) the person with a lot of comments/wall postings? In other words, the person with the most consented friendships, the most admirers or the one that engages more people in conversation?

Sigh. I need someone to talk to.

Oh, puppy shenanigans.

Spent the morning with the pups today. And by morning, I mean 5:30AM to 7:30AM. Who knew that I could be up and about in the wee hours of the morning? I haven't slept in since... well, since we got Cora.

Lulu is definitely warming up to Cora now. She lets Cora snuggle up next to her and is pretty tolerant when Cora climbs on her to chew on her ear. Also they playbite for a good 30 minutes straight in the mornings. I've even caught her wagging her tail a couple of times! It's interesting to see that Lulu uses a soft bite when playing with Cora -- I put my hand in between the "my mouth is bigger than yours" biting exchange once and noticed that Lulu is very gentle whereas Cora's bites are super sharp.

Japanese Daniel Radcliffe Interview

A Japanese Harry Potter fan won a contest to be one out of 10,000 to come to the Deathly Hallows set to interview Daniel Radcliffe about Harry Potter 6. Hilarious.



I'd like to know what type of yogurt they serve at MoMA.

I love the narration.

Sally's Spa

Sally's Spa has to be the best 99 cents I've ever spent in the iPhone app store. I have literally spent hours and hours (with Lulu perched on my shoulder, hehe) on this game. I completed all of the levels within the first few days of downloading the game but now I'm taking my time going through each stage and replaying it for a perfect score.



I'm trying to figure out why it is I like this game so much. It's a time management game so I guess it naturally piques the interest of my "project manager" side. Or maybe there is something soothing about looking at a spa for so long, makes me feel like I'm in the spa? Or is it the cute, bubbly graphics?

Whatever it is, my left wrist is starting to hurt from resting my head on it as I play for up to an hour before bed every night.

West LA Outing

Today was my first "LA" outing since we moved out of LA. I have to say -- didn't feel much different from when we were living in LA, but I did notice traffic and inconsiderate parallel-parkers a lot more today than I did before.

First stop was Century City mall to pick up some towels I bought on presale about a month ago. They are the super, softest towels you can ever imagine. To save an additional 15% off, I prepaid for them during the Bloomingdale's presale and haven't been back since to pick them up.

After spending hours at the mall (unintentional; bringing a puppy that stops all foot traffic really slows you down in a mall) we headed to the Barrington Dog Park to kill time before picking up Aai from her work. This was Cora's first time at the dog park and she did pretty well! We went into the small dog area only and woke Cora from a nap to let her play. At first she was a little groggy and reluctant to play with the other dogs. After walking around for 10 minutes she started being more interested in the other dogs, quickly learning to sniff butts.

When it was clear she wasn't going to go potty, we headed out towards Santa Monica to pick up Aai at her work, Bergamot Station.



This was my first time in the paper store and I have to say I was taken aback at the variety of traditional/hand-made Japanese papers. There were so many different kinds, colors, textures and more. I was most intrigued by the natural papers made out of thinly sliced fruit.

After Joanna closed up the register, we headed to Fritto Misto in Santa Monica for a quick dinner. I had the jumbo ravioli for the first time -- prosciutto ravioli in a garlic cream sauce tossed with sundried tomatoes, caramelized onions and bacon. Max had the garlic shrimp black and white pasta (as good as I remembered it!) and Aai had the plain jain spaghettini in marinara sauce. This place never disappoints!

We saved just enough room for the creamy Tiramisu -- I'd say the best I've had in Southern California! (My fave ever is Steps of Rome in San Francisco)

I love this face!

Just heard a slight whimper from downstairs as I am sitting here writing in my blog and I walked downstairs to find Cora next to the screen door, whimpering to go pee! Just a minute ago she was knocked out under the couch but at 10 weeks she can already walk down to the door when she needs to go.

So proud. ~.~

Maximum Level Reached

I've spent countless hours the last several weeks playing Restaurant City on Facebook. During work, while watching TV, before dinner, after dinner, during dinner, at night... all hours of the day spent monitoring and managing my restaurant.





Finally, I've reached Level 27 -- the maximum level possible in this game. Not sure all that time spent was worth the miniscule wave of achievement felt as I earned my last $300 cash bonus for leveling up.

But what makes a game addicting? What makes it so powerfully engaging you remember to play 2-3 times a day? That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out as I design a Facebook game for one of our unsaid clients. Hint: it's for a product that just launched into the marketplace and by product I mean car. :P

This is the first time I've ever designed or strategically planned for a game, especially one that will have so much exposure. It took us several rounds of presentations to get the idea sold to the clients and so far I've built experience maps, prototypes, content plans and design specs for it. We are scheduled to release the design assets over to the developers next week and the game will hopefully launch sometime next month. Eek!

Good Morning

This is what I wake up to in the mornings. Super cute, but super annoying when by morning I actually mean 4:30am.

Ooopsie

After a nap, I groggily walked downstairs to start heating up some food for dinner. My mom left an array of cooked Indonesian food on the kitchen counter and I just started mindlessly putting stuff in the microwave and the stove for reheating.

A minute later I notice that the flames under the soup pot were much higher than normal -- I've never seen the flame go up the side of the pot like that before. In fact, it smelled a little like burning.



Turns out genius little me accidentally left the cork pot stand stuck to the bottom of the pot before putting it on the burner. Ooopsie.

Please let me sleep!

I can't believe it's been about 3 weeks with the new puppy and I haven't had the chance to write a single thing about her! Exactly 3 weeks ago we went to Sandra's co-worker's house in Lawndale to look at her 7-week-old puppies. There were 10 total but only 6 survived.

Max immediately fell in love with the runt of the litter, who they called Pookie. She was the smallest of the group but had the cutest face. Jo-Anne met with us and picked up the largest of the group, Tiger.



We weren't fully prepared for a puppy so our first stop was Centinela Pet Feed. We named her "Cora" in the car -- short for Coraline. Her skinny body and long tail reminds me of the rats in the movie. She knocked out in the car and didn't do much. She looked so frail for a 7-week old puppy. I remembered Lulu as meatier and more playful at this age but I thought maybe it's because she was the runt and was malnourished.



Jo-Anne called her puppy Lady and the next week was puppy week at Rapp. We took turns watching the pups while we both worked/had meetings but most of the time they played or slept in my cube. Lady seemed to be twice Cora's size. They were very feisty when they played together. After that first week, Lady stayed with us for the next 10 days while Jo-Anne was on vacation. Luckily, I also had quite a few days off between my summer flex days and 4th of July holiday.



We always had to keep a close eye on Lady because she would steal Lulu and Cora's food when we were not watching. She was always so hungry! She seemed to be about a week ahead in development and did things like bark, jump, run up and down the stairs a full week ahead of Cora. She was also more playful and rambunctious.

After two weeks of puppy terror Lady went back home with Jo-Anne and Cora was stuck with Lulu. Lulu is a lot more tolerant of Cora without Lady around and even lets her play with her face in the mornings. The other day I completely stepped on Cora's leg and she cried for about 30 seconds during which Lulu came quickly to see what was the matter. I'm hoping these two get to become best buds so they can keep each other company while we're at work.





So the biggest difference in my life so far is that I have not had a good solid 6 hours of sleep in 3 weeks! Cora wakes up every morning at 4-4:30AM to ask to go outside, and then wakes up again at 6am to play. No matter how much we try to tire her out in the evening, she always wakes up at the same time. At first I was worried that she was unable to hold "it" longer than 4 hours but during the day she's shown that she can. Not sure why she seems to have an internal alarm clock that likes waking me at the crack of dawn.