today i ate at osteria mozza.

i've eaten at mozza pizzeria many times, but never the neighboring osteria mozza. we went in for a late new year's eve dinner. the food is absolutely amazing. i had a squid ink and jalapeno pasta with crab and uni - it was served cold and insanely delicious. i also had their striped bass. dan had their gnocci duck ragu and the beef brasato, both also amazing and melt-in-your-mouth good. they even handed out bells for us to "ring" in the new year with.

today i experienced a bomb scare.

a suspicious package arrived at dreamworks' mailroom today, which is located in the same building that my office is located in. the cops and bomb squad were called in, and the building evacuated. eventually we were told we could just go home, as they wouldn't be letting us back in the building for several hours. in the end, it was neither a bomb nor a prank, and all is well, but it was definitely a first.

today i had cake monkey!

cake monkey bakery sells its goods at various places in LA, such as intelligentsia, silverlake wine and umami burger. i've seen it many times before, but after dinnering at umami tonight, i finally had one of their red velvet cakewiches (red velvet cake sandwich coated in chocolate). so good!

today i ate lunch with just a knife.

for some reason, i grabbed a plastic knife instead of a fork from the lunch line today. i didn't realize this until i was too far (and too lazy) to go grab a fork, so i just dealt with it. and i managed to eat everything by either balancing it or stabbing it. however, it did make me think that perhaps i should just start carrying chopsticks with me everywhere..

today i went on the simpsons ride.

we went to Universal Studios today. it was my first time inside the park in years, so obviously my first time going on the new simpsons ride, which is a revamp of the old back to the future ride. i think i preferred the old ride to the new one.. then again, i've never been a fan of the simpsons.

today i got a mani-pedi.

cat and i had a "girl's day" today.. really it was more of an afternoon. we started off getting manicures and pedicures in santa monica. i've gotten a manicure before, but never a pedicure (i'm not exactly comfortable with people touching my feet..) but it was quite the pampering experience. and my feet are so clean, smooth and de-calloused now! perhaps that's too much information..

today i saw the imaginarium of dr. parnassus.

it's a cool, funky, wacky movie with strange visuals and not everything is explained or made clear by the end. i enjoyed it though, even if i was a bit perplexed about some things in the end.

today i made a christmas goose!

mike and i hosted christmas eve dinner at our apartment in west LA. my parents, dan and gerhard attended. it was a great dinner! and the centerpiece of the dinner was the goose. originally, i was going to do a goose from scratch, but we found out that suzanne goin's tavern was selling a stuffed and trussed oven-ready goose! so, we got that instead - i still had to do all the roasting and brining though! it came out absolutely deeeelicious.. so much better than turkey in my opinion!

today i got my nook!

i ordered the barnes & noble's nook back in early november and didn't get it until today - but it's just in time for christmas!. it's my very first e-reader and so far i'm really digging it. the first book i purchased was tokyo vice (which i've mentioned before) and am really enjoying the whole reading experience on it. it's nice too that it has both wireless and 3G access, and each book i've downloaded took under 2 minutes over the 3G network. pretty awesome.

today i learned "steampunk".

the word steampunk can refer to many things, mainly a subgenre of fiction that "denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy." however, i learned of the term with regards to fashion and design, which is related in the sense that it would fit into that world. it involves incorporating lots of vintage things into high fashion or futuristic pieces, a sort of retro-futurism. i especially like the prominent use of interesting metallic objects like skeleton keys and the gears inside old-fashioned watches and clocks. it's worth a google image search if you ask me.

today i watched Major League.

dan and i watched the classic baseball movie major league tonight. i vaguely remember having seen parts of the movie before, but i also have an awful memory and can watch a movie as if for the first time after about a year or so.. so perhaps it doesn't quite qualify as an entirely "new" thing, but it sure felt new. and it was, for the first time, i was truly able to appreciate a lot of it - what chin music means, for example.

today i got a blackbird, fly!

the blackbird, fly is a snazzy little plastic TLR camera that takes 35mm film. dan got it for me as my christmas present! i've wanted one for quite awhile and it's my first TLR, so i'm tres excited and already took a few pictures with it down at the venice beach skate park.

here is a flickr group for people who have the same camera.

[ photo courtesy of : blackbirdflycamera ]

today i made taiwanese lo ba.

it's a very traditional taiwanese dish of stewed ground pork. it's served over rice but a good accompaniment to anything really (but that might just be the taiwanese in me). i decided to try my hand at it and it came out really good! even tastes pretty authentic to me! i served it over blanched A-choy (or goose weed, as i like to call it).

here's the recipe i used:

ingredients
1/2 - 3/4 lb ground pork (preferably with lots of fat)
1/3 cup sliced shallot
2 tbsp minced garlic
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup chinese rice wine
6 cups water
1/4 cup cooking oil
2 tbsp sugar
2 star anise
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder (or more to suit your taste)

_heat oil, saute chopped shallot and garlic until fragrant
_add star anise and ground cinnamon, stir well
_add in ground pork and stir quickly to break the meat into small bits
_add soy sauce, sugar and rice wine once the meat has changed color
_pour six cups of water and cover the pan
_let it simmer for 2-3 hours

today i had ludobites.

it's a "guerilla style pop-up restaurant event" by chef ludo lefebvre. currently, it is in it's final days at royal/t in culver city, and we managed to snag reservations. the food is absolutely amazing - definitely the most successful at being different and unique yet delicious since my first trip to jose andres's the bazaar. the fist-sized fois gras beignet had real whole chunks of liver inside! and probably most insane and insanely delicious was the tuna sashimi with sushi rice ice cream and soy sauce gelee.. whew! it was definitely an experience.

more images here.

today i learned "bokeh".

i've seen and heard that word tossed about a bunch when on flickr and other photog sites, but for some reason never looked it up. it comes from the japanese word boke which means blur, and it refers to the out-of-focus parts (or the quality of those parts) in an image. this was a particular fun word to learn especially since there is a lot of bokeh in the photos i take.

today i had chi chi dango.

they're like little cubes of lightly flavored mochi. saw and bought some at mikawaya in little tokyo after having my usual post-wurstkuche red bean mochi ice cream.

today i saw two toilets..

..sitting outdoors on a sidewalk-adjacent grass patch. they looked to be happily confiding in each other, like old friends sharing a secret. but they're two toilets. and that's just weird.

today i learned about the "carpet cloak".

as annoying as i find the daily loh down on science on NPR, it does provide me with interesting new findings and happenings in science. today's was about an invisibility carpet that works in the infrared.

The carpet is composed of a unique silicon material. The material's structure allows it to actually steer light in a two-dimensional plane around any object it encounters.

So, when light shines on an object swept under this particular rug, it goes around the bulge. No shadow is left. Result - a completely flat appearance.

So far, Zhang's invisibility cloak only operates at near-infrared frequencies. But the team says it's only a matter of time before the carpet works with visible light as well. Meaning true invisibility to the naked eye.

today i made cucumber kimchi.

it's my first time trying to make any sort of kimchee - i got the recipe from momofuku. hopefully it turns out good.

today i wrapped and shipped all xmas presents.

this is the first year i've gotten ALL my christmas shopping done early, AND i was able to wrap all of it today, and ship what needed to be shipped. i'm patting myself on my back.

today i saw prep + landing.

disney put out a super awesome holiday special called prep + landing, about an elite group of elves that prep houses to make sure everything is ready for santa. it's very original and had some great references to christmas-y things.

today i saw the jasper dickson revue.

i had previously done a photoshoot with the jasper dickson revue, but this was the first show of theirs i was able to attend (and photograph!). they're quite good live, with a very awesome energy.  plus they're just funny beer-drinking, music-loving good peoples.

 

 

more photos can be found here.

today i found out that wolf is leaving.

randy wolf, one of the dodgers most solid and consistent pitchers this past season, has signed a three-year contract with the brewers. i am quite sad. no more wolfpack in LA.

today i heard about the number 33.

overheard at work: "thirty-three is an age, not a temperature."

it has been pretty darn cold by los angeles standards the past couple days. people have had a lot to say about it.

today i saw a trailer for deathly hallows.

however, warner brothers keeps taking the trailer off of websites, which is a bummer. looks great even though it's split into two movies.. but it's the last "chapter" of harry potter, so i can't wait.

today i saw fantastic mr. fox.

went to see wes anderson's latest, based on the book by roald dahl. true to form it was dry yet witty. i loved the rough stop motion, especially with the fur (i had my doubts before seeing it) and the refined yet still wildly animalistic characters.

today i tasted future goodies.

mike, juney and lucy are looking into a little food venture in the future. i won't reveal any details here, but they had their first tasting today and we were invited! suffice to say everything was really freaking good!

today i saw the cirque.

we went to cirque du soleil's kooza in santa monica. it was an almost-three-hour show, though it had a half hour intermission. that stuff is pretty insane and extremely impressive.

today i played wii sports.

so i got dan a wii for christmas, and it arrived yesterday and we set it up tonight. not only have i not played anything on a wii before, but this is also the first time i've owned a video game console at all. yes, technically it's dan's, but it's still the closest i've ever had to owning one. kind of exciting.. and fun, and weird, but i kinda like it. the interactivity and feedback of the controllers is very cool. most excitingly, we have the new super mario bros game on the way (it's one of about 3 games i ever got to play growing up when i visited my cousins in taiwan).

today i experienced holiday season disneyland!

the surfacing department on how to train your dragon is quite small now, and we were approved to take a field trip to disneyland - so we did! the weather was nice and cool, and the lines were nice and short. and everything was decked out for the holiday season, the best of which was the haunted mansion being decorated nightmare-before-christmas-style. with the lines short, we were able to do a lot more in one day than i've ever in the past. we stayed until closing - which meant we got to see the fireworks show and "snow" (little soap suds really, but still pretty nonetheless). it was also my first time on it's a small world since they renovated it - it was also holiday'ed out so they were also singing jingle bells inside. fun freaking times. best part? i still got paid. weee..!

[ photo courtesy of : disneyfrontierblog ]

today i learned "eschatology".

it's the study of the end of the world. seems like people of all creeds have been pretty obsessed with this stuff, long before that 2012 movie came out. neat stuff.