Obsession with twngan

I have been eyeing for an espresso machine for quite a while. Usually pretty expensive, they easily go over $100. Not the kind of money I'd like to spend, even on a machine I'm going to use at least daily.

I finally nabbed this Krups Coffee and Espresso machine for less than $60 (no sales tax too, thanks to Amazon; it is much harder to avoid sales tax, now that I'm in California). But once I had this, I needed to keep buying. Espresso beans. Syrups. Frothing pitcher. But very soon, I would have saved much more than I spent; I didn't even want to go into a Starbucks the other day when I walked pass one.

The only things I need to worry about now are the caffeine and my gout...

My "household" items are finally here, 3 weeks after they moved out from my Houston apartment. Now I'm starring at the boxes not knowing what to do, as I barely have enough space to put them here in a tiny apartment in L.A...

My last week was mostly spent on waiting for furniture deliveries and then assembling them. While a bit exhausting, assembling wasn't that bad, particularly as I have bought this cordless drill/driver at Costco for less than $40.

What's horrible, though, is the delivery service from Ikea. They don't have their own delivery team (probably too cheap to have one), so they hire another company to do the delivery. I bet they got the cheapest company they could. When the delivery company is ready to deliver, they'll use a machine to call you, and then, out of the blue, very quickly tell you to call a number to schedule the delivery. Without any preparation, you would have no way to write it down (particularly when both times I was out). They do offer an option to talk to a customer representative, but then you get to wait on hold, and one time they even cut me off while waiting.

It gets worse for the actual delivery service. It is done by a large truck. The driver has no clue on how to deliver to apartment complex. He tried to park on the fire lane, only to discover that the loft of the 2nd floor is not high enough for his huge truck. That's right, his truck hit our building, damaging the loft while making a hole on the top corner of the truck. But the worst part is, he asked me to come down to give him direction and made me see the whole mess...

In La-La Land, people do crazy stuff. So do I. The law requires that I get my California driver license shortly after I arrive, and for that I would have to take a written test. I did. In Chinese.

It's fun taking a test in Chinese. I think this was the first Chinese test, other than Chinese language and Chinese history classes, that I have taken since junior high school. I did it because I was told that the Chinese test is always the same, and you can find the exact same questions in Chinese yellow pages (!). Well, I was a bit surprised to find out it is not true. The questions are also badly translated, so you need to read them a few times before you get them.

Regardless of the language, the questions are dumb anyway. They suggest you not to drink before you drive; but if that's the case, why should I need to memorize the maximum blood alcohol level allowed by law?

I had been very busy and feeling tired buying furnitures and electronics. Proof? I had three consecutive lunches in Ikea and Costco. Granted, Ikea has great meatball plates and Costco has its famous pizzas, they are not the ideal places for food when you are in L.A. with so many choices for Chinese food. Particularly when I stayed in Hilton San Gabriel, located at the heart of Chinatown area. I did have some great Hong Kong-style and Chinese breakfasts, dinners, and snacks.

Another interesting thing you can do in L.A. is to look at the people around – you never know if some Hollywood celebrity just walked by. I was in Century City Mall the other day on my way to admire Mac Pro when I saw one (70% certainty): Holly Marie Combs (it might help you to remember who she is if I told you she's the eldest sister in the Charmed)...

Labels: LA

The biggest reason for me being so tired after arriving to L.A. is the traffic. Moving from one place to another looks easy on maps; in fact, if you check with Google Maps or Mapquest, they'd tell you that you can arrive pretty much all places within half an hour or so via highway. Not even close. While L.A. has one of the most complicated highway system, it always has traffic jams and you can barely move. Plus the trucks are much more aggressive than in other places, so you need to be more careful.

Speaking of traffic, I should also talk about my GPS. While it generally still works really well, there are three problems I wish were fixed.

1. It is sometimes annoying. When there are changes in the route (construction or road moved), it keeps saying "recalculating" and nagging you until it gets its way.
2. It is too talkative. In all highway intersections, it tells you which way to go. This becomes a problem when you are in places like L.A., where there are plenty of highway intersections. So every two minute, you would hear something like "In .2 mile, keep left on I-10, then keep left."
3. It doesn't give priority to large roads. Sometimes it directs you to small neighborhood and asks you to go through a dead-end.

Despite these, it is still a great product, and I couldn't image how my last few days would be without it.

Yes, I'm still alive. Just too tired for updating you folks on how I've been doing.

In order not to overload you with information, I'll first talk about the road trip in this entry; what happened in the last few days will be added as two more separate entries momentarily.

I stayed at my sister's house in Austin as my first stop. This makes the trip pretty short. So unlike last year, I arrived at the hotels in mid-afternoon instead of after midnight. The trip is pretty boring, as it was mostly desert areas. The only thing I can talk about is the night I spent in Tucson, Arizona.

That night I stayed at a 4-star Hilton Hotel, El Conquistador Golf & Tennis Resort. But it is still nothing comparing to my dinner at Yama, a fine Japanese dinning. There, I ordered a Kobe Ribeye Dinner at a menu price of $65. They use real, authentic Kobe ribeye with light sauce, cooked to perfection. It was so yummy that I have already forgot what else they put on the dish...

Even though I have used a coupon for my dinner, and saved most of the per-diem I got from Symantec for meals, I still need to chip in a bit. But certainly, it is worth every dime I need to pay.

Labels: road trip

I was going to use Cable for both my TV and Internet service. But sometimes their service, even for signing up, is unbelievable.

According to my leasing manager, the service is provided by Adelphia. So I tried to sign up through their web site. I was then redirected to this page. Apparently, Time Warner is the "new" service provider. This web page talks about the transition and how the service is not going to be interrupted because of the change. Sounds great, but how about new users?

No sweat, I went directly to Time Warner Cable. They have a link to "order online... and save even more!" Sounds exactly like what I want. So I clicked the link, only to be asked to give them a call.

Fine, I give up "saving even more" and call. The only thing I could hear through the phone is, "the number you have dialed cannot be reached from your calling area," followed by an error code like "2AF." So effectively, they are banning people outside their service area to even order for their service. Genius!

No need to mention, I need to consider DSL now, just to make sure I can still work when I get to L.A...

Ready or not, my road trip is starting tomorrow (well, tomorrow is just a 3-hour trip to Austin to my sister's house, but I still consider it as a "start"). Since I am being reimbursed for the actual mileages, it might be an ideal time given the recent gas prices.


Another instance of shameless stealing from GasBuddy.com.

Labels: road trip

Since Symantec pays for my relocation, I use their relocation company, and they are coming to pack my stuff and move them to L.A. for me on Thursday. Despite that, I still pack most of the stuff myself, as I am taking this as a chance to decide what to keep and move to my tiny apartment in L.A. It is probably a good thing to move once in a while, just for the opportunity to reorganize your stuff and throw away your crap. I think it is probably normal that you don't know how much crap you want to throw away until you move.

After road trip maintenance, another thing I'm going to do on my car before leaving is tinting. This is probably going to save me quite some on gas through the desert area on the route. I already start to dislike California a bit though, as it has a very restrictive law on the level of tinting you can do. Let's see if my impression is going to improve once a get there.