Sierra at Tahoe

Went to Sierra for a day trip with Ben, Flo, and Alan. Lots of fun. 8 hours round trip driving. 8 hours of boarding. Not bad~ I like Sierra better than NorthStar. :) Unfortunately it is a small mountain so it is fairly crowded, especially in the lifts for Tahoe King and Grandview Express.
West Bowl is my favorite place in Sierra. The wait is shorter and the runs more tailored to my level.

Hard Blue:
- Powderhorn (Upper + lower)
- DogWood

Fun Blue:
- Beaver (My favorite so far)
- Pyramid (Real fun if you can survive Powderhorn x_X)

Ok Blue:
- Marmot (I am sure this one is a real cool one if I didn't face plant on it)

Ok Green:
- Corckscrew (Twisties~ Need I say more? The only reason why I wouldn't go back to this one is that it there are way too many people on it, and I almost got run into a couple of times)

For the price and location I would definitely go back to this mountain again. :D
Can't wait to be better so I can tackle Powderhorn and Dogwood without braking so much. :X need to find my balance and be more fearless.

Other notes, tried the deluxe breakfast at McDees for the first time. Pretty good. :) Also, tried the double double for dinner. A double double is a cheeseburger with an extra patty. So worth it. (since it is the same price as the cheeseburger).

Other random cool things I learned today:
- Face planting with braces hurt more than usual. I cut my lips when I face planted in Marmot. Maybe this is why I am not stoked about that run as Ben. I was so relieved that I didn't lose any brackets. ;)
- A kids meal is so much more worth it than a hot dog combo for lunch
- Instant ramen as a snack is awesome. I am so bringing this in my future trips, especially since people at the lodge are pretty cool at providing hot water. Miam. :)
I felt like such a fob tho, eating instant ramen in the middle of the slopes. Hahaha
- Walkie talkies are damn useful to find people on the slopes, need to get one for future trips. Srpint sucks, since I get no reception in the mountain at all... nada...silch... If I had broken a leg somewhere, I would have been helpless. :x
- A McDee's cheeseburger has 300 calories 110 from fat. eeps. XD I had 3 of these... =.='
- A McMuffin has 300 calories 200 from fat. XD I dare not find out how many calories my deluxe breakfast had, with all those pancakes (or hot cakes as they are called) with the hashbrowns and crumpet. XD
- The 5 hour energy drink is actually pretty good. Tasted like concentrated Red Bull. Kept Ben and me awake after we drank it, but ended up with a headache after a few hours. Good thing I had some advils handy.
- Snowboarding with a camelback rocks! :) Get to drink and not slowdown. Carry snacks and other goodies. Give me better balance carving down the slopes... or so I think. Heh.

Cooking niku-jaga (Japanese braised beef and potatoes)

So, I finally got the itch to cook again. I get it once in a while, when I see a dish I want to eat. :) Today I tried out niku-jaga, a Japanese dish. I saw this recipe when I went to the Nijiya Japanese Market in San Mateo. They had this rack with lots of recipes and this one seemed delicious and easy enough that I decided to get it. :)

Ingredients:
200g of sliced beef (the fattier the better ^^)
2 potatoes (~400g)
1 onion (~200g)
1/2 table spoon of cooking oil
2 cups of dashi stock or water
3 table spoon of sake
3 table spoon of sugar
2 table spoon of mirin
3 table spoon of soy sauce

Directions:

1. Peel and cut potatoes into slightly larger than bite size ( each potato into 8 sizes is a good benchmark).
2. Skin onions and remove the heart. Then cut the onion in half slices.
3. Slice the beef in bite sizes.
4. Heat the oil in a pan and then take it out of the heat.
5. Coat the slices of beef with the oil.

6. Put the pan back to medium heat and stir fry the beef. Make sure the pieces don't stick to each other with chopsticks.
7. When the beef changes color, add onions and potatoes and stir fry.

8. Add dashi stock (or water) , basically enough to cover everything.
9. Bring everything to a boil and remove any scums that floats to the surface.
10. Add the sake, sugar, mirin and soy sauce in that order.

11. Bring everything to a boil, reduce the heat slightly and cover it.
12. When the liquid is reduced to one third, and flip everything (so that everything is coated).
13. Tilt the pan to a size and reduce all the sauce.
14. Spread everything on a pan to cool.
15. Serve with rice. :)

Cooking wasn't too hard, eating it was even easier. ^^ A few comments, mirin sauce is a sweet cooking sauce used in teriyaki. It has a nice taste to it, make sure not to add too much, or it will over power everything. Dashi stock is the base flavor in miso soup. :) I substituted sake with Chinese cooking rice wine and it turned out not bad.

Back to the roots... or leaves and stems... whatever

So, I have been waking up and going to bed earlier and earlier for some weird reason. Maybe I am slipping into my EST time zone. To stay somewhat operational I have resorted to drinking Yerba Mate. Which is this awesome but bitter Argentinian drink made from the stems and leaves of some sort of plant. A good substitute for coffee, since I am way sensitive to that delicious but makes me jittery like mad drink. :)
I am hooked to mate. On the plus side, mate is supposed to lower your blood pressure and has a higher amount of antioxidants when compared to tea.

Travel logs - Taiwan Day 11

It is strange how I get to spend the most time online when I am at my Grandpa's place. I guess it has to do with the fact that there is nothing else to do here. I have a love-hate relationship with this internet cafe. I love the fact that it is so convenient and cheap (20 yuen/hour which is about 67 USD cents/hour). I hate it because a lot of the computer are old and decripit. Some of the equipment works half of the time including the internet. Also, people smoke like chimneys in here. Urh... I havent experience second hand smoke this bad since high school.

Since my last entry, I have spent some more time in Hsin Chu and Taipei; mainly Taipei. I ended doing all the touristy stuff. :) My friend Yen yu took me to see the Gu Gong Museum in Taipei. They have on display a large amount of ancient Chinese artifacts. I regret not knowing much about the history, because I don't think I appreciated the whole point of the exposition.

On one of the off days, my cousin took me to the top of Taipei 101 (tallest building of the world with the fastest elevator, as of today) and I got a crash geography lesson on the layout of Taipei.
I got to say that shopping inside 101 is kind of boring, most stores are either European or American, which makes it really pointless. Also, the price for most stuff in there was a lot higher than in Canada or the States. I got a chance to meet up with Annie and do some catching up. :)

As a more cultureal experience, my aunt took me to a Joshua Bell's violin recital at the National Concert Hall in Taipei which is next to Chang Kai Shek's Memorial. Listening to Bell play so well made me regret not taking my violin lessons more seriously. That guy played some mad fiddle. I
never knew human fingers could move that fast. My aunt is taking me back to the Concert Hall to listen to my cousin's concert. She is going to be singing and playing some chinese concert/musical. I can't wait. :)

Among other things, my sis took me to the night markets and I finally got to shop. I got to say that going shopping with a local makes it so much easier. My sis did all the haggling and I did the looking. :) It was awesome to finally meet up with her after two years. Funny thing about the night market, yesterday I went to another night market with my friend Yuen Yu and we got conned. It pissed me off at first, but then I laughed caused I finally eperienced something I never expereienced before. :) What happened was, the sales lady was trying to convince us to buy more from the store and we said we would if she could give us a deal. We try haggling with her, but she said she couldnt lower the price any longer, but could give us a gift for each person. However, after we paid, all she did was give us a VIP card. Totally useless for me since I was never going back to that store. haha. I guess the fact that I told her I was from out of the country made it easier for her to trick me. XD

Oh.., I almost forgot to mention the food I ate. How can I forget about the food? Taiwan is all about the food. I had some delicious Hunan cuisine, Grilled shrimp, veggies and ribs in spicy sauces. Really good. I also had a bunch of food at the night markets. Most memorable among them are: stinky tofu, lamb in medicinal stew, Pepper Cake. The stinky tofu was not bad, it tasted like fried spicy tofu. It didnt stink once I put it in my mouth. :) As for the lamb in medicinal stew, it was a lot better than I expected. My mom used to make me drink some weird medicinal stuff as a kid to make me stronger or something. I used to hate it. However, the lamb I tried out was delicious. Totally different from the stuff my mom used to force me to eat. Finally, my favorite new discovery in this trip was the pepper cakes I tried at the night market. It was so delicious. It tasted like a fried baozhi. :) MIAM

Travel logs - Taiwan Day 2

I am currently in my Grandpa's little town, in the middle of nowhere. I arrived to Taiwan last night and spent the day in Hsin chu. My friend drove me down to see my grandpa. I barely spent one hour with my grandpa before I decided to drive to the town to get access to internet. I am an addict, I know. XD I am getting new pictures uploaded as soon as I find some time. :) One thing I found interesting so far is that how easily I can blend in. I kind of blend in until I open my mouth that is. XD haha.
So far my trip has been uneventful. I went to the Temple Night Eatery place in Hsinchu and had some Meat balls soup and also some fried meatballs in sticky rice. It is actually yummier than it sounds. I have been drinking a lot of different drinks, especially tea. It seems that everywhere I go, I end up drinking tea.

Random scenes in Chicago

I finally got to go eat at Kuni's today. It was delicious as usual. I had hamachi ( yellow tail), toro(tuna), o toro(fatty tuna, very yummy), chu toro( lean tuna), aji(horse mackerel), tamago(sweet egg), uni(sea urchin), spicy lobster roll, and tuna roll. Wow... now that I think about it, that was a lot of food. It was very very good. Too bad we got there late, and could only get one piece of hamachi. XD I love hamachi the best. I tried aji for the first time today and it tasted really really buttery, the whole fish just melted in my mouth and there was none of that fishy taste.

I also got to drive my aunt's new car, an Audi A8. Nice car, reminds me of her old Mercedes, big boat and smooth drive. Very roomy and handles a lot better than expected. Cool things about the car is that it has motion sensors around the car, so in case you are about to bump into something or someone it will warn you and tell u where it is on the on board lcd screen (there is one on the dash as well as on the dials). It also has a set of cameras installed in the rear, so when you back up it shows you exactly what is behind of you. This is very useful when you have really tall passengers. :p The backing up screen even shows you the predicted path of the car, very cool. Not as cool as Lexus' self-park system, but still very cool. The other cool and sometimes annoying thing about the car is its key system, or rather the lack of it. You just carry a badge, which I think is an RF Id tag, but I am not sure. You get close to the car and it allows you to open the door without using your keys. You can even start the car without inserting the key, which in my opinion pretty convenient. Now for the drawbacks, since the door always unlocks in the vicinity of the tag, you can never test out if the car is properly locked, because as soon as you get near it, it unlocks. Also, even to lock the car, you need to have the badge, which is just stupid, cause it unlocks when you get near it. So I failed to see the point. Also, it raises the question of what happens when the driver moves away from the car and someone moves in and opens the door and starts the car and drives away. Once you start the car, you can drive without the key being in the vicinity. Seems to me that this makes car jacking a lot easier. My other pet peeve with the car is the on board GPS system, which was crap. The directions it gave were very confusing and were longer than just going straight. I mean shortest time does not mean shortest distance, you have to make a couple of left turns instead of going straight, it will take longer. Also, the navigation of the system is counter intuitive, you have to use this knob and a couple of buttons. I personally would have just implemented the system with a touch screen. I originally thought it was one and was surprised when I pressed the screen and it didn't work. My aunt actually looked confused when I kept touching the screen, my dad had to tell me that I had to use the dial. How embarrassing. XD Also, if you turn on the radio or the entertainment system, the voice navigation turns off. Sometimes, I like to listen to music while I drive lost. It keeps me calm. :p hahaha Anyways, still very nice car, but I would never get one. Mainly, because I lack the dough.

I also watched a movie last night, called "The shooter". It is about a navy sniper who was betrayed by the government he swore to protect. Very entertaining action movie, sort of like the Bourne Identity; highly trained dark ops guy getting even and exacting justice. I did however spot a very funny scene. There is this part in the movie, where the main protagonist is shopping for supplies in a hardware store, you know, to kill the bad guys. I noticed that except for the main dude and his sidekick, the other clients in that hardware store are actually very hot girls in their miniskirts and high heels. I don't want to sound sexist or biased, but I really would like to know what kind of hardware store that is. Last time I went to a hardware store, the only cute girls in miniskirts and heels were the one sitting behind the cashiers office. XD Ah, Hollywood and its subliminal scenes. :p

Immigration woes

Can't seem to get my SSN. Something to do with my I94 form or something. Urgh..
On other news, I am getting a Canon Powershot A570 IS. Woot!!!
So bored here in Chicago, and plus I got food poisoning. Not cool. :(

Mario Kart did not prepare me for this

I went go carting yesterday with a couple of friends. It was fun, but too short. We did 10 laps of 2km. Also it wasn't as fast as I would have liked it, but it does not matter. :) I kicked Clement's ass a couple of times. But he got back at me by bumping me all the way.

We also went to eat at this Japanese BBQ place near Pacific mall. Not too bad, but I think I ate too much again.