Tagged as: Food, Seen-Around
Jun
11
Ever eat or hang out with someone who has bad manners? Ever even notice?
I have, and I’m sure that I will. But really I wonder about myself sometimes. That is, I will often wonder whether I am that person. Am I the one eating too much? Am I the one who acts like a slob? Am I the one doing something that everyone else talks about behind my back?
Yes manners are a social construct that simply ensures that there are people who can look down on others that don’t know the rules. As if life is a big game where someone always has to win. So on the one hand I don’t want to mind them because there is no absolute reality to it.
But on the other hand, while I am a part of society, society is also a part of me. I’ve seen people without manners, and let me tell you, it isn’t a pretty sight.
So I’ll do what I can and hope that I am not ever that guy.
Tagged as: Food, Humor, Seen-Around
Apr
07
Beware the fortune cookie that says
Your luck is just not there. Attend to practical matters today.
Tagged as: Food, Review, Useful
Mar
03
One thing that the Internet is an amazing tool for is the ability to draw on collective knowledge. By being so easy to reach more people, we are able to better understand things. We can, as a society, collaborate and pool our individual pieces of the puzzle to form a more completely picture. I’m getting away from myself with the metaphors. Anyways, I think that one of the more useful applications of this for me is yelp.com.
Basically I like to eat, and yelp helps me do that well.
So yelp isn’t at all a new website, and I kind of think that a lot of people have already heard of and/or used it before. But it doesn’t matter because you know what? I get to post whatever I want to since this is my site. 
I meant to post this quite some time back, but I’ve been sitting on this post for a really long time. And the only reason is because I wanted to upload a picture before I posted a link to my yelp page. How lame is that? How hard is it to get a profile picture nowadays? It took me all of 2 minutes to accomplish that strenuous task.
Personally I’ve found this site to be pretty helpful, and I think that it’s worthwhile to me to be involved with it. The premise is that reviews will be made by people that actually go to different establishments. While I use the site mainly for food, they do have reviews of everything from shopping to entertainment to health centers.
The most useful thing to me seems to be that you can limit your search by location and see a map of where these places are in relation to where you are. Because even though I might be looking for some amazing food, I’m not exactly willing to drive 50 miles to get said amazing food into my mouth. But 5 miles for some pretty reasonably tasty food? Yeah I could go for that. You can also further filter the results based on more specific criteria such as food ethnicity.
Running off of a 5-star system, it’s easy to quickly see how popular a restaurant is. For more in depth (and often rather interesting) reviews, there are the user comments. These usually range from the short and not-too-helpful to the long and exceedingly useful. Many reviewers will describe their entire meal experience, and it helps you get a feel for what a restaurant is like without actually having been there. Sometimes you can find very useful menu suggestions in the comments as well. To reward reviewers, you can designate their comment as one that you thought was either cool, useful, or funny.
There is even a social aspect to this site as you can add friends on it. I’m not sure if that’s something that I’m really going for. According to yelp, I currently have no friends. Haha let’s hope that’s only on yelp!
My own page, with my reviews and info, is derekwong.yelp.com. Check out some places that I’ve been to, but more importantly let’s all help each other out by supporting quality establishments. You’ll be thankful that next time you’re looking for a place to go to on your hot date. Because we all know that the key to the hot date is the food. Personality? Eh. Charm? Blah. Looks? Well you can’t help that anyways.
Tagged as: Food, Rant, Seen-Around
Feb
07
I don’t like how it’s impossible to get every last bit of semi-liquid type substances out of their container. Even more than that, though, it disappoints me that this slight irritation happens so often!
So as you probably know (or at least can guess from my blog’s name) that I’m Chinese. The stereotype is that Chinese people specifically (and Asian people in general) are a little bit stingy. Now, there are quite a lot of times that I can heartily agree that this stereotype has roots in reality. Maybe it’s because in China everyone has to fight for their own rights and properties since there are so many people vying for the limited resources. Ah communism at its best.
But another thing that you should know is that I’m, in general, not very Chinese. Now what does that mean? Well I don’t even speak the language, let alone act out the whole stereotype. I am, for all intents and purposes, completely American. Nevertheless, I do have a frugal side to me. (I mean, I did share 3 Little Tips To Save before.) And that frugal Chinese side of me doesn’t like that products are placed into packages that don’t allow me to utilize all that I’ve paid for!
There are just so many of these items that we use! Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well what about:
- yogurt
- mayonnaise
- toothpaste
- shampoo
- lotion
And that’s just to name a few! There are obviously many other things that could fall into this category. One would think that after so many years of production and perfecting the whole process, a better solution would have been reached. But no. All we get are cheap gadgets like the toothpaste clip that will ensure that as much paste as possible is pushed towards the opening. Ah!
What’s a society to do? It’s time for a change. It’s time for a revolution.
Tagged as: Food, Gross, Humor
Jul
25
As part of Harry Potter-mania, Jelly Belly held a special promotion of Bertie Bott’s Jelly Beans. My co-worker brought some a couple of bags of them in to work recently and we got the special privilege of getting to try them.
These are a special release and as such they have special flavors. Everything from grass to pickle to black pepper and booger. However, none of that can compare to a couple of the ones that I tried.
I’d like to think that I’m willing to try many things. I have no desire to try everything once, mind you. I have no desire to try things that might necessarily place my life/freedom/health in jeopardy. But I still fancy myself a bit adventurous, and I’d like to think that I’m willing to try many things.
So I tried some especially fun flavors such as vomit and sardine. However, by and far the worst flavor that I tried was rotten egg. Rotten egg. Who thinks of such things?
So my co-workers and I were trying different flavors in the mindset of doing them together. Nobody likes to things alone, and just as I wrote in I’m Willing If You Are doing things side by side with another peson is an effective psychological tool. So after taking turns at trying different flavors and meeting with relative disgust, we decided to all try the rotten egg flavored jelly bean at once. We each picked out jelly beans according to the guide, but when we tried it we all discovered that we had in fact chosen the much better lemon drop flavor. Then I decided that I only live an earthly life once, so I still tried it even while my co-workers tried other things. And as I slowly chewed and let the saliva transmit the flavor to my taste buds, I began to become quite disgusted. The flavor and the stench conspired to cause me to gag. I coughed a few times, and I must say that I really felt a couple of moments of almost wanting to puke. It was so gross. It’s amusing that it was in fact grosser than the vomit taste itself.
Other thoughts:
- In any case, I’ve tried it and I don’t intend on trying it ever again. But please, I would be more than happy to have you try it. It’s not as if you have been there and done it.
- I’m really really really really really glad they did not choose to make a jelly bean that was flavored as sour milk. I think that would have guaranteed puking from many adventurous souls.
- I think that flavor tester for these nasty Bertie Bott’s Jelly Beans has got to be on the list of the worst jobs. Imagine tasting vomit every single day at work. And not just everyday, but constantly. Oh man.
- That morning of trying nasty tastes was filled with hilarity. Paramount was when an unsuspecting co-worker believed another who said that a jelly bean was an innocuous fruit flavor when it was in fact vomit-flavored.