August 2005 Archives

Whew, that was a long 6 hours! But land line is back now. Means DSL is back now. Yay.

No dial up!

My land line went down today. No dial tone. Nothing.

Phone company says "it may be fixed between now and friday".

Funny how they want to be paid IMMEDIATELY but when they have to do something, you get fuzzy time...

Grrrrr.

Sooo, some people here ask me, "what's the big deal about top ramen"? That question usually comes after they view pictures in the blog or gallery and see steaming bowls of ramen with the perfect soft boiled egg and tender cha siu...

Mmmm. Getting hungry and it's 00:40 right now!

Anyhoo, after I beat them senseless with their own top ramen packages, I try to explain (briefly) the different styles and broths and it's not instant noodles (which call themselves "ramen", sacrilege!), but a category of noodle along with soba and udon. Then they run away right after I swoon over how smooth kyushu ramen is over shoyu.

Here's a page that explains the whole ramen thing in Japan. (from QuirkyJapan).

Now if I could only find a good ramen shop in San Francisco! We have three for the entire city, all clustered within a block of each other and not that terrific...

Yup, that IS the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in "summer". I went out on a Sunday ride and saw that I was heading into that, so it was worth a snap.

Summer here means bone chilling wind and the sun disappearing around noon. That ain't haze or smoke (for all of you in SE Asia), it's just plain fog!

I live IN that fogbank, BTW...

Took a tad more work this AM, but got the NetPBM module to generate thumbnails of pictures with a little help from IPC Run!

I know, waaay too much geek speek this early in the day...

Here's a lion from a fren's wedding.

There's a tradition during the lion dance that you throw oranges for good luck. At this wedding, an orange, hurled from one end of the room, hit a waiter square on the head on the other side of the room. He cursed up a blue streak in Guangdongwa, despite the fact that he probably is more familiar with some of the obscure traditions than anyone else in the room!

Six Apart has released the latest version of Movable Type, 3.2, a long overdue overhaul of its blogging software. With lots of anti-spam goodness. And because this goodness is built in, it should make leaving comments easier!

The upgrade instructions seem simple enough.

Replace files in your installation with the files in the upgrade package. Make sure permissions are correct. Then log in as you usually do and blammo, it upgrades itself. Sounds easy, right? Not by a long shot!

There's a new train line in Tokyo!

The Tsukuba Express begins in Akihabara and ends in the college town of Tsukuba, some 35 miles northeast of Tokyo. Here's some english info.

Why is this important? Well, one of the stops it makes is Minami-Senju, the JR/Subway stop where the Juyoh, the New Koyo and other low-cost lodgings are clustered around. That means convenience!

But what's really cool is that the train cars and five of the stations have Wi-Fi! It's on a trial basis for now and I'm not sure how much this will cost, but it demonstrates that it is possible.

Of course, in San Francisco, this technology will probably be implemented after we get cell phone coverage in the trains and stations.

Maybe in the year 2100. How "progressive"!

at Harbor Village. They're closing. Something about rent going up and not being able to get a new lease.

There seems to be a lot of that going around.

Harbor Village was in Embarcadero Four for close to 20 years and was one of the few downtown yum cha places that was worth the money cuz of the food and the view.

And even though many tong-yahn dismissed Harbor Village as being too "gwai" because of the location, every time I've been there, it was 90% Chinese inside. More so than other places here link Ton Kiang or Yank Sing(which is horribly expensive).

Guess I gotta find another yum cha house. Or at least until Harbor Village's chef opens up a new place.

You know the asinine movies that they show on long haul flights?

The ones that usually suck rocks or are just yeeech? Like, erm, Like Mike, Hitch, The Ya-Ya Spinsterhood, Cheaper by the Dozen, Beautyshop (but they never showed Barbershop, wonder why?), ad nauseum. Movies you normally wouldn't accept money to watch because they're bland, simplistic, inoffensive and politically correct (which is bad bad bad).

Well, guess what? That's EXACTLY why they show them!

Maybe it's to lull you into a coma so you don't notice that the sausage that came with your "breakfast" tastes suspiciously like soy...and the service you're experiencing is crap! =P

Of course, the best cure for this if you're on a US flag airline is to bring your own snacks (Costco trail mix and Shin Cup come to mind), The Scorpion King on DVD and something to play it on.

Once upon a time, many years ago, traveling was considered a whole experience. It wasn't just the experience of actually being somewhere else; getting there was part of the experience too. Nowadays, the journey to wherever you're going to is considered a hindrance (or a necessary evil), hopefully disposed of as quickly as possible.

I was asked recently about my travel addiction and the discussion turned to airlines.

So my favourite daan taat place, the Tai Cheong Bakery, has a new home! And the irony is: It's across the street from their old location!

From the unlinkable South China Morning Post:

While the $60,000-plus rent is much higher than the $38,000 the bakery had paid, it is considerably lower than the $80,000 the former landlord demanded.

"We treasure our loyal customers and they can expect to find the same Tai Cheong - down to the shop's old decoration - up and running again next month."

That's still a pretty steep rent increase (US$2831 vs. the US$5400 a month that they wanted in the old place), but they will be back in business.

They're going to have to sell a LOT of coffee/tea. But I'm glad that they are.