2011

Playing: She's So Lovely-Scouting For Girls
Reading: The 9 Lives of Carine Roitfeld by Eric Wilson
Hello everyone! How is 2012 treating you so far? No apocalyptic occurrences yet other than the Japan earthquake, right? I've seen other people doing this and I thought it'd be a great way to wrap up 2011 and say hello to 2012. So much has changed for me this year and all for the better I think other than my increased school work load.

January-I spent the first day of 2011 with my friends, Tiffany, Tina, and Jackie, at Tina's house for a fun-filled sleepover that you can read about here. I spent the first hours of 2011 singing along to My Chemical Romance with some of my best friends watching me, while My Chemical Romance performed in Times Square.

February-I realized that getting kicked off the lacrosse team was a good thing because it transferred me to regular PE, where I met some new friends, bonded with old friends, and climbed lockers with all of them. During the month of February, my friends and I decided to make our school a playground for our adventures.

From Left to Right: Tina, Me, and Hyeajoon (who is hiding from the camera)

March-March was a great month for me. I celebrated making it to state for History Day, made a bunch of bows for St. Patrick's Day to pass out to friends, shoved my friends and myself into lockers, and let loose for Tina's birthday by playing a food version of Russian Roulette.

April-I visited the Winchester Mystery House, while I was up in San Jose to compete in History Day. I ended up not making it to Nationals for History Day, but I had a great time running around San Jose and San Francisco.

From Left to Right: Me, Tina, and Tiffany

May-I introduced myself to all of my blog readers for the first time. Probably not a big deal to any of you, but it was a step in my life to start posting photos of myself on this blog. Does it make me more real? In terms of what was going on at school, the only major thing I did was go to this asinine Academic Team Banquet. It was basically all these teachers saying their extracurricular academic activity was the best and that you should honor the students that participated. By honoring, they meant scolding the students whenever the students tried to talk to one another to make the banquet less boring.

June-I started to hang out with Sophie more and went to an art gallery opening with her. I also went thrifting and cooked with her, Aadil, and Austin that month. Plus, this month had to be great, it was the start of my summer break!

July-I returned to Hawaii for my grandparents' 50th anniversary and visited a lot of relatives I haven't seen in years. My dad took me to all the places I had seen and eaten at, when I was little, and to all of the places he hung out at as a teenager.

I also went to the FIDM workshop with my friends, Jessy and Mindy, and made some new friends named Ali and Alex. We all got to meet Nick Verreos from Project Runway and I decided to cover up my face because I looked derpy in the photo. Five points for Gryffindor if someone can figure out where the face is from!

I also got to meet Peter S. Beagle, the author of The Last Unicorn, at Anime Expo. When I was little I would watch The Last Unicorn over and over again. We rented it from Blockbuster every time we went and my parents bought the VHS tape for me and then I never watched it again...

August-I visited Istanbul with my family and experienced a whole new culture filled with bright colors, friendly people, and fresh, delicious food.

September-I spent my last days of summer exploring my town with my friends. Just tried not to think about school and enjoyed the time I had left. I also visited the Tim Burton exhibit and went up to Northern California to drop my brother off.

October-Seeing My Chemical Romance for the first time was great and I loved them so much that I want to buy some more tickets to see them again. Celebrating Halloween with Sophie, Aadil, Austin, and Adam was equally fun.

November-I celebrated my birthday to the extreme this month going to Long Beach, seeing Andrew McMahon, and with my family at home. I also attended the Sweet Streets art gallery opening as seen in part one and two!

December-Seeing New York during Christmas time was amazing and all the decorations looked extremely festive. New York definitely has a different feel to it during the holidays and I hope to go back soon!

How was your 2011?

What I Ate in Hawaii

Playing: All Across Virginia-Cities and Clouds
Reading: Can't Buy Me Love by Jonathon Gould
Most of the places I ate at in Hawaii were places my dad went to as a child or spur of the moment decisions, so I cannot give a thorough review of what the whole island had to offer. While in Hawaii, my family always tries to go to the same places we go to year after year. Next time I go, I will try the Egyptian place and more of the Japanese places.

Zippy's is a chain fast food restaurant in Hawaii that I always go to. I usually get the saimon or the Zip Pack! The food is a good price and great for a picnic at the beach. The saimon is standard, but the Zip Pack is delicious. It includes fried chicken, BBQ beef, and other delicious meats.

Gulick's Delicatessen is my dad's favorite place on the whole island. We always grab some food from there before we go the beach. I got garlic chicken, spam musubi, shrimp tempura with teriyaki sauce, and some sort of chicken noodle. I highly recommend the noodles and shrimp tempura. The musubi is standard, but it still tastes good. The garlic chicken was a tad too tough for me, but the flavor was delicious!

At Shimazu Store, they offer up some delicious shaved ice that's so finely shaved, it feels like powder. They thoroughly soak your shaved ice in syrup, so every bite is fruity and delicious. What you see above is a small guava and passion fruit shaved ice with creamy hapia on top. The small is huge and I highly recommend paying extra for the bowl otherwise your shaved ice will tip over.

If you're tired of Asian food, then head to Good to Grill. I got the Garlic Ahi, which was very tender and delicious. The fries were good and were served with a wasabi mayonnaise. The mashed potatoes I can't really remember, so they must've been average...

At Chibo Okanimiyaki, you get to create your own Japanese pancake with whatever you like and it's the same price no matter what. I got mine with scallop and prawn, while my mum got her's with scallop, mochi, and cheese. Both were delicious and there was actually a lot of seafood in both of them. It's definitely aimed at people from Japan because both of the waiters we had could only speak ok English and most of the other diners were Japanese. The menu was easy to use, but half of it was in Japanese.

Outside Leonard's looks like a dump, but the food is really good. My dad has been going there, since he was little. The Portuguese donuts are extra dense and chewy. There's so much sugar on them that my fingers looked crystallized by the end of eating them.

Tsukiji offers a Japanese/seafood buffet. My grandparents think the food is "classier and fresher" than the food at Todai, but I beg to differ. I thought the food was only ok and a lot of the food didn't taste all that fresh to me. The sushi had so much mayo sauce on it that you couldn't really taste the fish in it and the udon (pictured above) was not freshly made. The fish cake was dried out. However, it is a family place and you could see little kids there and grandparents too. At night, it becomes a nightclub for all you crazy party animals.
I just got back from Istanbul, Turkey and I loved it. At the moment, I'm suffering from jetlag. I woke up at 5:00 AM and in Turkey it would've been 3:00 PM, so I woke up starving. I need to organize my photos, but I'm probably going to do a lot of posts on it because I loved Istanbul!

Oahu's Chinatown

Playing: Miss You-The Feeling
Reading: Time Vol. 178, No. 5 2011 (August 8, 2011)
I go to all the Chinatowns that I can find because I like to compare and contrast. I've been to the San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, London, and now the Oahu Chinatown. This one was actually really nice compared to the New York City and Los Angeles ones, which are kind of gross...San Francisco's Chinatown has nicer buildings and feels more like China than all of them and the one in London, I can barely remember anything because I was so little.

This is probably the most popular building in this Chinatown because it's one of the few with Chinese architecture. According to my dad, this is where all the tour buses drop people off.Overall, this Chinatown was very clean and neat. It was fairly big and expanded over a large area of land.

My family grabbed some Chinese BBQ pork from Fong's Meat Market. The meat was very juicy and tender compared to most Chinese BBQ pork that I've had. However, it was chopped into cubes, while most of the pork I've had has been cut in slices. I don't think that really makes a difference, though.

Poke is a raw fish salad served as an appetizer in Hawaii. At Ishimoto, you can get it in many variations, such as Spicy Tuna or Kimchi. While you're in Hawaii, I highly recommend trying poke because it tastes great and Hawaii is the only place that sells it. Think of it as a sashimi salad.

My dad would always get me a lei, when we came to Hawaii from  Cindy's Lei and Flower Shoppe. You can actually watch the girls make it in front of you and all of the flowers are fresh, so it smells great. There's a wide variety of leis for both men and women. If you want one that'll last forever, they have ones made out of Kukui Nuts.

At Ohana Market, you can buy fresh lichi  and dragon eye along with other fresh fruits. They sell drinks and smoothies there too, including boba. My family got pineapple coconut water instead and some lichi. Both were absolutely delicious and refreshing in the humid weather.

I Love Country Cafe/Bakery serves up interesting flavored mochis, such as banana and guava. I bought the guava and it was delicious, although a tad too sweet after awhile. They aren't that big, but for $1, what do you expect? Since it's so sweet, I doubt you'll want more than one mochi roll. Even though, I only showcased the food in Chinatown, there is much more such as the typical red paper lanterns and the good luck charms that every Chinatown has. There are tons of touristy things too like paper parasols and Buddha statues. If you're looking for nice jade jewelry, then there are stores for that too. Hope this made a decent guide for you, should you decide to go to Hawaii!

Which Chinatowns have you been to? How'd you like them?

By the way, I probably won't be posting because I'm going to be out of the country soon. The hotel I'm staying at says they have free Wi-Fi, but I'm not sure how well it'll work, so I doubt I'll be able to post for a week or so. I'll try to write a few posts before I go and post them throughout the week. Even if I do post, I probably will not have time to reply back to comments.

Valley of the Temples

Playing: Your Song-Elton John
Reading: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Whenever I'm in Hawaii, I always visit Valley of the Temples to see the wonderful Buddhist temple they have there. Even if you're not Buddhist, you should go because everything is so well thought out. Even the gift shop is nice. In no way does it feel touristy there because well, not many tourists think to visit a cemetery for a Buddhist temple. When you drive up to Valley of the Temples, it is a cemetery, but keep on driving towards the back, where the temple is.

It costs $1-$3 to get in and you walk down a beautiful, red bridge and while on the bridge, you get to see all of Hawaii's natural, tropical plants. The thin trees that look like anorexic palm trees are actually papaya trees. My dad grew up on Hawaii and he told me that, so I'm assuming that's true.

Behind the temple, you can see Hawaii's famous mountains that you may have seen on Lost. The temple itself is quite impressive and is very peaceful. Perfectly tranquil, very fitting for a temple.

The temple houses a large Buddha in the middle and like most Buddhist temples, you must take off your shoes before entering. This is the main thing people come to see, but there's much more.

If you go into the gift shop, you can buy a bag of koi food for $1 and feed the koi. There aren't just koi there. I believe there are some sort of tilapia in there too. My little cousin, Kenji, enjoyed feeding the kois, but he enjoyed feeding the birds even more. If you hold your hand out to the blue-grey birds and stay still, they'll eat the koi food right out of your hand.

There are several wild black swans that live there. They're beautiful creatures and I haven't seen these in awhile, so I had to grab a photo. So many people were trying to get photos with the swan, but I don't suggest that because it'll run away. Once you've looked around the temple and fed the koi, you can still walk on the trails and look at the huge bell there. I hope you liked this post. I'm trying to make my blog a tad more informational and helpful. Maybe interest you in some travel, eh?

A Note to All Shopper: Visit Waikiki and Alo Moana

Playing: Nature Boy-David Bowie
Reading: The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories by Tim Burton
From the night of July 6th to the early morning of July 10th, I was in Hawaii on Oahu. I have so many relatives on Oahu, probably hundreds of them! It's been around 5-6 years, since I've visited Hawaii. Whenever I visit Hawaii, it's for family reunions and family problems. The only time I go is when there's a huge party or a disaster. Contrast, much? Luckily, this visit was for a happy occasion, my Grandparent's 50th Wedding Anniversary. I might do a post on that later on. I'm not sure yet. However, I took pictures at the DFS Galleria and at the Alo Moana mall for all my readers because I think you'll all value the cuteness of it all.

Oh my goodness, look at that! I love Marc Jacobs and he is one of my three favorite designers in the whole wide world. He's a genius. What can I say? I was so ecstatic to find both a Marc Jacobs store and a Marc by Marc Jacobs store because there's none close to me or within driving distance.  I can't believe they have one in Waikiki's DFS Galleria.

However, I didn't buy anything from the store because everything I wanted was winter clothing and my mum was not willing to buy winter clothing for me, when it's over 80 degrees outside. The one thing I was thinking about getting was this necklace that says MARC, but then my mum pointed out to me that everyone will think I'm dating a guy named Marc. Silly kids at school think every guy's name on your clothing is your boyfriend. I had to explain one time that, "No, Andrew McMahon is a singer, not my boyfriend. Just because I wrote his name on my arm doesn't mean he's my boyfriend."

I had to go to the Sanrio store at the Alo Moana store. In fact, that was one of my main goals to get done, while in Hawaii. This cute mosaic welcomes you into the store.

The inside is just as cute with the Sanrio logo and a tanned Hello Kitty. Is there anything more cute than Hello Kitty?

Here's a note to travelers, Sanrio sells adorable postcards. In fact, I had to buy a few for my friends. I hope they got them and they didn't get lost in the mail...

I bought some stuff for myself and a small gift for Rebecca.  The deco stuff was such a good price, so I couldn't pass on that and I love omusubi, so I couldn't pass on the little Hello Kitty charm. Yes, it does look like sushi, but the pink stuff on top is really Spam. Then the stationary pads were adorable, so I bought one for Rebecca and one for me. Both Waikiki and Alo Moana have tons of designer stores, so if you're a heavy duty shopper, visit these two places. In fact, I'll join you, when you go.

Who's your favorite Sanrio character?