Recent pix

I love this tank top from Target! Only $7.99! This has the cover of the Queen album, "Hot Space" (1983) which spawned the lone hit, "Under Pressure". Deemed a "mistake" by Brian May himself, this was the album that had most diehard Queen fans shaking their heads and wondering, "WTF happened to Queen?" Never wanting to be static, this album was Queen's foray into early 80's r&b/funk/dance music, which had mixed results. Most fans hated this album and I, too, thought it wasn't their best compared to their previous albums (a la "Night at the Opera", "Jazz", etc). In retrospect, however, I appreciate the album more now and how willing Queen were to venture out of their musical boundaries and experiment with new musical styles. I especially liked Freddie Mercury's falsetto on "Cool Cat" and the Lennon tribute, "Life is Real". Here's that Chicken Tinola I made for my friend last weekend.
Here's a nice chicken wing...mmm...skin...
We bought this a couple of weekends ago at the World Market Cost Plus in Grossmont Center. Last summer when we were in Vancouver, BC, we bought one of these at a mini-mart store, but it was the regular chocolate flavor. We haven't opened this yet but we plan to really soon. Read more about the Aero Bar here and here . Here's my first attempt ever at Lite Brite, which was one of TC's recent birthday gifts. I took this photo in the downstairs bathroom. When I was a small kid, I never had cool toys like this. I remember always wanting to have the "Spirograph" and the "Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine" (it was shaped like his dog house and it had a crank to crush the ice). Here's a few pix of my hair cut...Thank goodness I don't have a double chin. Please, gravity...be kind to me!
I'm glad I didn't have any snots hangin' out here...
My new bangs...
I wish my hair was choppier looking. You can't tell from this photo...
Here's a shirt I bought this summer in Hawaii while were were at the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) Conference. It's by a company called Archipelago (get it? because the Philippines are an archipelago??? Yada, yada). I really liked the carabao design, plus I thought it was funny because my mom would actually say this to my brother whenever she was mad because he came home late or whatever. "Ay nako (Oh child), you are always out gallivanting! You are a vagabond!" (must be screamed in a heavy accent). I remember looking up those words in the dictionary and cracking up. My mom has a way with words. Lastly, this was a drink we bought at Seafood City a few weeks ago. I was attracted by the can's design. So colorful! The drink was all right, but fresh lychees taste much better.

Snip snip

I got a haircut this morning at my stylist's home. Since she sold her salon, she started working out of her home which has a three car garage. The "third car" portion of the garage was converted to a mini salon. My last haircut was in early June. So, it's shorter, but not by much. My bangs are over my eyebrows again and the back is still long, but cut in a slight V-shape. Not so mullety. My hair seems to grow faster when it's shorter for some reason. When it was long, no one really noticed if it was cut or not.

After my haircut which lasted 1 and 1/2 hours (yikes), I went to Henry's to pick up ingredients for a soup I was going to make. They did not have fresh chicken wings, so I went to Ralph's to get it (grumble). I also made a quick stop to Pinoy Foodmart near Henry's to get some bok choy as a greens substitute for the Tinolang Manok (Chicken Tinola or chicken ginger soup) I planned to make for a friend recovering from surgery today. Unfortunately, when I called her house, she wasn't home, so I will try again later. . Because of the E.Coli/Spinach scare that's happening right now in California, no stores are carrying bagged spinach, although I did see fresh spinach at Henry's.

I plan to post some random photos later.

Yesterday afternoon, I was a sucker. While at Wal-Mart buying pitstick and sensitive toothpaste for Bert (and pads and eye makeup remover for myself), I bought the individual re-releases of the original Star Wars Trilogy. Damn you George Lucas!

These are 2-disc sets that include the shitty bastardized versions released a few years ago by Lucas along with a "bonus" disc that includes the original Theatrical version (the ones we actually saw in a theatre as kids and young teens, sans the extraneous CGI effects Lucas added in '97 and beyond). Each DVD set came with a graphic novel of the movie, which were originally published by Marvel and Dark Horse comics which I thought was a great plus. Yes, I do plan to read those and Bert does too. The DVD's (plus the graphic novels) were $13.72, the same price they were selling the individual DVD without the graphic novel.

I survived the first two weeks of "work" at school. The year has just begun. College application season will be next along with requests for letters of recommendation (many asked at the last minute), Financial aid night, classroom visits, and the like. I'm wishing graduation was around the corner again! Can I rewind my summer?

Buga for Bert's B-Day

Yesterday was Bert's birthday so we decided to go to where we were ALL supposed to go last week, Buga, located right off the lovely 805 freeway and Clairemont Mesa (west) exit. It's right by a Motel 6 so you can't miss it. If you recall, Bert was sidelined by a work-related call last Saturday night so he stayed home to help the customer while we trekked up for Korean food. See the circular area? That's a hidden garden. There are overhead exhaust fans for nearly every table which all have gas grills.
Since Bert had already tried "OB" (a Korean beer) in the past, he went for the other beer the waitress recommended, "Hite". D'oh! It was a huge 40 ouncer! We ordererd one Bulgogi, one Jumulrook (aka ribeye which was inspired by Ronin last week) and one Chapchae (Korean potato starch noodle dish). This is the ribeye. Our service was exceptionally good that night. We were seated promptly by a waiter, then attended to by no less than three different female workers who took over on the grill. One time (at band camp), one of the women saw me "attempt" to turn over some of the meat. She rushed over quickly and took over... I was grateful actually because I probably let it sit too long. She was probably thinking, "Dumb-ass non Korean!" You could see the multitude of panchan dishes in the background; in the foreground is the dipping sauce for the meat (chili and some sort of sweet but mega salty sauce).
We had quite a bit of panchan that night. The waiter was quite helpful in identifying them for us. I had asked him what one particular dish was (since I had never seen it before), then he proceeded to describe all of them (which I already knew, but what the hell, I wasn't going to interrupt his spiel). This one below are anchovies.
A close up of the anchovies. They were dry and kind of chewy. One was all I had. These reminded me of a Filipino fish snack, called "dilis", but dilis are crispier.
Here's what I originally asked the waiter about...This panchan was "steamed egg". I wasn't too crazy about this because it had a mushy/soft texture. Our other panchan included the ubiquitous kim chi, sea weed with fernbrake (aka fernbracken or fiddlehead fern), spinach seasoned with sesame oil and garnished with sesame seeds, spicy hot daikon rounds, rectangular rice wrappers (for the bulgogi), fish cake, julienned potato and one or two more that I can't remember.
Here's the platter of the thinly sliced, marinated beef bulgogi...Look at that marbling. Mmmm...fat...
Chapchae noodles with pink and white fish cake, julienned carrots, green onions, and wood ear mushrooms (not pictured, but they're in there).
Here's the ribeye that we enjoyed...we actually had leftovers, unlike last week when we demolished everything that night.
Here I am turning over the bulgogi. You could see the separated slices of onion on the grill. They rub the (non-separated) rings on the grill before firing it up.
The aftermath...
Earlier that afternoon, I went to Eduard's - A Taste of Europe (a bakery in Otay Ranch) to buy a trio of mini cakes for Bert. This bakery is a hidden treasure and I'm glad it's there. I bought my brother's white chocolate strawberry cheesecake there and Bert's birthday strudel (last year), and many more fattening treats in the recent past. Eduard's is currently owned and operated by the second owner, Edwin Real and his wife Sara. The original Eduard sold it about a year or so ago...

This is the Royale Cake with Strawberries (I keep thinking, "Royale with cheese..." in my head) that I bought specifically for TC. All three of the cakes originally had a strip of plastic taped around the circumference, but I removed it for the photos. I'm sure the cakes would have looked prettier swimming in fruit coulis and chocolate sauce, but they sure do look nice on our (rarely used, but should be used more often) wedding china!
This was the Spicy Mayan Cake, which used chocolate from local company Chuao Chocolatier .This particular cake had cinnamon and pasilla chili infused chocolate. Actually, you could barely taste any spice in it, but it had a very interesting flavor. The ganache topping was so rich and thick.
This is what they call the Opera Cake. I wish I remembered what it was made of, but it shared the same delectable ganache topping that the Spicy Mayan cake had. I think the cake layer had walnut in it as well.
Cross section of the Opera cake...
We each sampled a bit of each other's cakes and saved the rest for the next day. The cakes were too dense and rich to unceremoniously chow down in one sitting, especially after our heavy meal earlier that evening. I'm happy to say that Bert enjoyed his first (and certainly not his last) visit to Buga. TC enjoyed using her wooden chopsticks to laboriously eat her rice, bulgogi and chapchae. What really impressed us was the really attentive service because it was pretty busy after we arrived (6 pm). Despite their many customers, we got checked on several times and of course, the waitresses made sure that we were not burning our food.

Knick knacks in my library

A small clay figurine of a man holding bread on a donkey. Given to me as a gift about six or seven years ago by my foreign exchange student from Uzbekistan. The infamous Barrel Man, which every Filipino American home should have. This is one of smaller ones (yes, we have a small collection), courtesy of Bert's dad, who gave this to us in the late '90s. History Lesson: Those framed patches are from the 1st and 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiments of the U.S. Army in World War II, which I got on ebay a few years ago. More info about the regiments here :
The patch you see in the bottom right corner of the frame is for the 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army in WWII. The mini comics behind it are the "Dang!" series by Filipino American comic artist Martin Cendreda, whose work is frequently seen in 'Giant Robot' magazine. He's also published by Drawn and Quarterly (D & Q to you comic geeks out there), the same publisher as my fave, Adrian Tomine, creator of the comic "Optic Nerve" .
SCHWINGGGGG!!!!

The Barrel Man is not complete without the Barrel Woman...

Check out those jugs. Hey, the right one hangs lower...
Mighty Blue Justice! It's The Tick! The Good Doers(from left to right):
Arthur, the Tick's sidekick, the Tick, the Human Bullet, American Maid, Crusading Chameleon (correction - it's the Caped Chameleon/correction 9/12 - he is really the Crusading Chameleon;I checked my fact book. He is referred to as the Caped Chameleon in the first episode, but the name didn't stick), and Sewer Urchin...The only one missing is Die Fledermaus, a lazy bat-like superhero. We got these mini PVC figurins about 10 years ago on clearance at a toy store in Horton Plaza. The Tick was still being shown on TV. That show was so hilarious. I'm still waiting for my Season 1 DVD to arrive in the mail.

Next up, the Evil-Doers...
(from left to right) Dyna-Mole, El Seed, Chairface Chippendale (who once tried, unsuccessfully, to laser write his name on the Moon), and Dean. We were unable to get all of the villains, like Dinosaur Neil and the Man Eating Cow who are both pretty rare.

Yeah, we're nerds.

Post Script - Lest you think we leave the Barrel Man & Woman out for TC to explore, those are actually placed on a very high ledge (not pictured) along with our other Barrel Men. I just took those pics for this blog.

Rocketship Restaurant

Here is TC's "Rocketship". This is the box for our 5-drawer high dresser that we bought for our bedroom last month. It was downstairs for a few weeks, then Bert put it upstairs in our loft/library. Bert cut in a door and two side windows for fun. Two years ago, we bought a club chair for the family room. We had that box for almost a year! My nephews and niece loved it! So did many other friends' kids. They would hide in there and pretend they were going through space or on safari. That particular box was much roomier than this one, which is quite narrow.
Fk toys and other electronic crap...cardboard boxes are way better for the imagination! This rocketship is also....

a restaurant! Don't you just love TC's spelling? This is the "drive through window". We hardly ever go to fast food places, much less drive through windows, so I thought it was funny she included one. So deprived, eh. I asked her how she knew how to spell "Philippine" correctly. TC told me that she saw the spine on several of my books in the loft/library and copied it. My nephews were over recently for her birthday dinner and they played "restaurant" and made paper menus. Who wants to order a "slime drink" or a "worm sandwich?" I loved the "Tip's wellcome" sign. TC remembered seeing a plastic cup or bowl at a restaurant counter and that's why she wrote it.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Superman!

449?

This morning when I was checking my blog, I checked the # of profile views. It was 405. Then 30 minutes later, it was 426! WTF? Who the hell reads my blog besides my small circle of friends? Curious, I checked it again an hour or so and it was (and is currently) up to 449.

I was trying to think of an explanation. I normally don't comment on other's people's blogs (people that aren't on my sidebar basically). I remember one time I did, and I noticed that the # of profile views went up. Perhaps the blog owners and/or readers clicked on my name to see who I was. Well, I thought it was interesting that I had that "many" when my ramblings here are so boring.

Buga #3

This past Saturday night, Bert and I decided to go to Buga since he had never been there before. I had only been there twice, with Lotus, Shogun and TC. So...we, along with Ronin and HotFudge were to meet there at 7 pm. Unfortunately, Bert had a work related call and was not able to make it which was ironic because he was the reason we wanted to eat there in the first place. He stayed home to work on the problem on our computer.

In any case, we (sans Bert) made it there on time and had a table reserved for us, courtesy of Shogun. We were seated at a booth with a huge marble-topped table with a grill in the middle. We ordered two orders of beef bulgogi, one order of pork belly, two orders of chapchae noodles, one order of sliced ribeye (Ronin) and one order of spicy pork (HotFudge). All items except for the noodles and pork were cooked on the grill.

Because I did not bring my camera, you'll have to see our food vicariously through this other blog's photos . This guy and his friends got the kalbi (he spells it as 'galbi' which is also correct) and chicken. There's a good picture of the Daeji Bulgogi (spicy pork) dish that HotFudge ordered. When the waitress took her order, she told her, "You know that's spicy". HotFudge said, "I know, that's why I want it". She's had it before many times, but I thought it was cute how the waitress wanted to make sure HotFudge knew what she was getting into.

Bert called us around 7:30 to tell us he wouldn't be making it and asked if I could save some food for him. When I repeated his request to our friends, they laughed and said there wouldn't be ANY food left, so I ordered the spicy pork dish to go. It came with a styrofoam bowl of soup, rice, and about four types of panchan (side dishes), which consisted of spinach leaves with sesame seeds, toasted (and sugared) seaweed, spicy marinated bean sprouts, and kim chee. I dumped TC's leftover chapchae noodles on top of the pork.

I really liked the pork belly. Good choice Lotus! It looked like bacon, but was cut thicker and softer (not crunchy). The dipping sauces that were supposed to accompany this were great: one was quite salty and the other was a red chili sauce. Shogun and I liked the salty sauce better. The panchan we got was varied (acorn gelatin, julienned daikon, crunchy seaweed, soft seaweed, the ubiquitous kim chee, marinated bean sprouts, etc). You can see in that guy's blog (in the photo quadrant) the sliced green radish panchan which was both sweet and hot (think wasabi). I gave mine to Shogun and took his rice wrappers instead so I could use them for my bulgogi. So, their prediction was right. Nearly all of the food, save for HotFudge's spicy pork, because it was a gigantic portion, was gone. We were too stuffed to even contemplate dessert.

Buga was pretty crowded that night so it was good that we had reservations. The crowd was predominantly Korean (or at least Asian), and we were seated next to a big dinner party (two table's worth). I caught snippets of Taglish (Tagalog and English) here and there, so I'm pretty sure those folks were Filipino. They were pretty damn loud. Our service was really attentive. The waitress came by several times to check on us and to turn our meat on the grill, although we did some of the grilling ourselves. It was pretty busy so I was impressed by the waitress' attention to us. I mean,we're all adults and we can handle it right? But maybe she wanted to make sure we didn't burn our food? Good service, I say. In any case, next time we go, we'll have to make sure that Bert is included so he can enjoy the Buga experience as well!

Zion Marketplace

After Bert's company picnic last Saturday, we made the trip to Zion Marketplace on the corner of Mercury and Balboa in Kearny Mesa. This is the front of the store. We usually park in the back, near the trash dumpsters because we usually catch someone leaving and take their parking space.

Our purpose for visiting Zion was to get some kalbi ribs to grill for TC's birthday dinner. I had invited my side of the family for dinner (mom, bro + kids, sis + kids). Bert's side was in Hawaii for a wedding, otherwise they would have been there too. Once you enter the back entrance of Zion, there are huge bags of rice to your left, along with some shops, You immediately see the rows of cashiers in front of you. The main store is to your right after you pass the bakery. The first aise on your left is the snack aisle. Across from the snacks is the meat/seafood department. Of course, along the snack wall, TC gravitated toward this Hello Kitty item, which we did not buy. I'm sure it tastes like air anyways. We bought her an item from the bakery which you will see later in this post.
After getting the ribs from the meat department, we headed towards another corner of the store to get some radish kim chee for Lotus. I apologize for the crappy picture quality. The Kim Chee section is "L" shaped (if the "L" was reversed and rotated). These are just the SMALL jars of Kim Chee on the short side of the "L".

The longer side had the BIG-ASS jars. Those were some industrial size jars folks. Anyways, I called Lotus twice to ask her what I was supposed to buy for her. She wanted the white daikon radish kim chee cut in quarters not in chunks. It was hard to tell the shapes of the cut up radish because they were covered with napa cabbage leaves, plus I couldn't read Korean. Since she wanted me to buy radish, I ended up choosing a medium sized jar that said in English, "White Radish Kim Chee" and hoped it was the right one. Turned out that it was. Here are some photos from the packaged noodle aisle.

We bought three packages of "Chacharon" brand noodles that day (not pictured). Their soup base for beef is really thick, dark, and mega-salty! The noodles taste good with sliced boiled egg and sliced green onion tops. Near the checkout stand, TC showed us a package of gum that she thought was attractive. I don't know what the other items were in the background, but I guess these are Korean impulse purchase items. Gum? Mints?
More "impulse" purchase items found in two bins next to our checkout line. Looks like some sort of snack.
Before we left, we went to the in-house bakery to buy this:
It's bread studded with sliced hot dogs AND drizzled with ketchup (I believe it's $1.75). Lotus thinks it's gross, but TC loves it and I kind of like it too. What's funny about the plastic wrapper for this, is that they use that same wrapper for all of their pastries. The ingredient list is the SAME no matter what it is, whether it's sugar cookies, puff pastries, banana shaped bread (see below)...
or cute tiny creatures....
They're ALL made of "flour, butter, sugar, and eggs" (there's a few more common ingredients but I can't think of them all right now)! Why bother using different wrappers for different items, right? Some of their pastries are pretty dense and feel quite heavy. I once bought what looked like a muffin (but I knew it wasn't) with fruit in it. It felt as heavy as a softball. I can imagine these sitting in your stomach like a rock.

Here's that hot dog thing after I took a bite out of it before surrendering it to my daughter. It's on my lap in the car. Mmmmm....sliced Korean hot dog thingy with ketchup...
Bert got a snack too. It's called....
Tonk?
They're rolled wafers made of rice/wheat and filled with a sparse chocolate filling. These were devoured within minutes on the drive home.

The short ribs, by the way, were $3.99 a pound. I bought them unmarinated since I already had a jar of the marinade at home. I bought $15 worth which made for some nice leftovers the next day. I also bought the bulgogi (thinly sliced beef) and marinate that as well the next morning. I took Lotus' example and served the bulgogi with white rice, washed red leaf lettuce leaves and kojuchang paste.