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2006-10-28

 

Best Buffet in LA?

I have heard from multiple sources that the Hilton LA/Universal City's Cafe Sierra has the best buffet in LA. Quoted from their homepage, "This restaurant offers Chinese, continental and California cuisine in a light and breezy setting. A seafood buffet is featured Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings."

The place was pretty crowded, and tables are put very close to each other. The selection is unbelievable, particularly on fish dishes and desserts. For Chinese food, they have American Chinese dishes, but also things like shrimp dumpling. They even have shark fin soup, if you don't care about its controversy (though I doubt its authenticity anyway). The general quality is pretty good, although the sushi and sashimi could be more fresh (maybe that's why the whole place is so dim.)

The price is not low (more than $40 with tips per head), but you can argue its location (Hollywood) and that it is inside Hilton. I consider this as a poor location, being so close to Universal Studios Hollywood. Bad traffic aside (16 miles on freeway = more than an hour driving), when I was leaving, long lines of cars on the outside heading to Universal Studio forced me to go inside too. Luckily, it must be the norm, the people at the gate know and would like you to just make a U-turn to leave without paying.

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2006-10-27

 

Food and Drink

Working in Santa Monica is pretty nice. There are plenty of well-known businesses here. We share a building with HBO. Yahoo! is right next to us. We have a park and a pretty good cafeteria at a reasonable price. Get bored with the cafeteria? No problem, just walk down a block and you can find a better and cheaper cafeteria for MTV. Of course, the traffic in this area is not too good, and I'm glad that we're going to move to our own building later.

Another interesting thing is that I have a Tully's Coffee right next to my building, just like when I was working in Seattle, which is the only one within 5 miles. It is my favorite coffee shop, and now they have pretty much rendered my Starbucks card useless...

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2006-10-24

 

Weather

If you didn't have the chance the experience it, it is hard to believe the difference in weather between Los Angeles and Houston, despite their closeness in latitude. Whatever I say, you'd think that I'm exaggerating, so let's see what someone else would say. Let's introduce Casey Jacobsen, a new Houston Rockets player who grew up in L.A., and stayed in Bay Area and Spain (emphasis mine). An extract from his journal:
I'm trying to enjoy Houston more and more. The weather is unlike anything I have ever seen in my entire life. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, which is one of the best weather cities in all of the U.S. and then I went to school in Northern California at Stanford. So I was spoiled. When I walk out of my apartment in Houston, it just feels like no one has opened any windows. I immediately start sweating. My shirts stick to me constantly when I get out my car and I'm constantly wiping sweat off my face. The weather out here is 20 percent chance of good weather and 80 percent chance of me losing five pounds.

2006-10-22

 

Konichiwa (Hello)

Five years ago, I was asked if I'm a Vietnamese in Rice's campus.

Today, someone tried to talk to me in Japanese...

2006-10-19

 

Selling Crap is More Fun

I had so much fun selling crap before leaving Houston, I couldn't stop but to sell more since coming to L.A. Particularly when I still have so much crap remaining unsold and moved to California.

Since I'm no longer in school, it is more convenient to sell crap through outside channel. That comes Amazon. I have already sold 3 books and 3 DVDs. Funny thing is, I bought many of those crap from Amazon before. My most brilliant transaction has to be selling Office Space. I bought it with There's Something About Mary for only $12.43 (after coupon and with free shipping) half a year ago, and sold it for a net income of $11.78 (after packing materials, shipping, and Amazon fee). This means at the end I only paid for 65 cents to buy a DVD and rent one for half a year...

Anyway, I still have too much crap. Like this picture frame. Buy it if you want to support my craziness!

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2006-10-18

 

Graduate Student Life

Academic talk. Free pizzas. I feel like I'm still a graduate student.

The only difference? Pizzas are no longer from Gattis, aka, the worst pizza in the world.

2006-10-17

 

Loving Little

I really love my Little Blue Card. After using it for one week, I find out that I was only charged for slightly higher than $5, meaning about 50 cents per trip. Compare this to the $0.75 cash fare or the supposed $0.70 discounted fare for using the card.

There are more than one reasons for that. Probably because I look young. Because sometimes the drivers pressed the wrong button. But also because their system is so mixed up. I think when the passenger before me failed to pay exact fare, the system would simply consider that I'm still the same passenger, using the card to pay the difference.

Anyway, no complain here for paying less. And the convenience rocks, too.

2006-10-14

 

Free International Calls!

Who could guess that International calls are finally free?

Just call 712-858-8883, followed by standard International call number sequence (011...). No sign-up and unlimited calls to many places all around the world, including Hong Kong and Mainland China. This service is provided by Future Phone. Full of disbelief, I tried their service, and it worked, exactly as they advertised! Now I just need to hope that they'll keep up to their promise, providing this free service until 2010.

Of course, not knowing much about this company, it is a good idea to play safe and not to use your own phone number. So calling them through Skype is probably better.

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2006-10-12

 

First pay check

My first pay check is coming tomorrow. Probably I didn't fill the tax withholding form in the best way I could, and I didn't submit the California State tax withhold form, my tax withhold is a bit higher than it should be. For instance, I only got about half of my signing bonus...

2006-10-10

 

CS page

Bored with work, I aimlessly browsed the CS web page in Rice. Guess what I found? Me!!!

Yes, the shorter guy with white T-shirt and blue shorts. Apparently I was trying to block a shot from the very tall Prof. Rudolf Riedi, aka, Rolf (who by the way speaks more languages than the number of fingers I have on one hand), despite the huge height difference. While it is certain that I couldn't stop his shot, at least I forced him to make a bad shot. Or not. What's truly obvious, though, is that my teammate (the one in black T-shirt) was, as he has admitted after seeing the photo, in a very bad defense position...

Turns out, it is part of the rotating images they display on their front page. A snapshot is taken below as a proof.

Noticed the description? It says, "Student blowing off steam outside of Duncan Hall"...

 

Meeting Time

Usually I don't mind staying late for meetings, but 8pm? C'mon, that's ridiculous!

Damn those in Pune, India. How dare they be 12 hours away?

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2006-10-09

 

Little Blue Card

Symantec has a policy for employees in Santa Monica that if they don't drive to work, they get $40 each month. Sounds like a good deal for me.

Here comes Big Blue Bus. They have a store value card with a very cute name, Little Blue Card. It saves me an additional 5 cents per trip.

When I used my Little Blue Card today, the driver asked me a question that I could hardly imagine being asked. She asked if I'm paying the adult fare. Since I believe that I didn't look disabled or as old as 62, the only possible fare is the one for college students up to 20. No doubt, I look young, particularly with my backpack, but saying that I look like 20...

I was so thrilled that I missed my stop, ended up walking 20 minutes to my home.

2006-10-08

 

Why Express Delivery is Expensive

I just found out, when I used FedEx 2 day to send an envelope to Symantec's attorney office in Bay Area. Sending from Southern to Northern California, one would expect a pretty direct route, with the envelope not leaving California. Well, one is wrong. It actually went through Memphis, Tennessee. Here is the route.



This no doubt greatly contributes to the cost. So ultimately, I am paying for the additional wasteful route. Why can't they work out a better route to save everyone some money and, more importantly, save some energy for our children?

2006-10-06

 

Job Started

I'm so excited about my new job. Why? Because finally, I have my own office!

In my office, I have a nice U-shaped table. Besides standard stuff like individual flat panel for my desktop and ThinkPad, I also have 2 guest chairs and a whole set of stationary (including stapler and staple remover). It really makes me feel like someone important.

Another nice thing in the office is the soda machine. Unlike some other companies that made me an offer, we don't have free soda, but they are sold for $0.25 each. I think this is better than free, because for this price it is not cheap enough that would cause me to drink much more than I should. Moreover, it is a nice way for me to collect quarters for buses.

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2006-10-04

 

Life in L.A., II

It wasn't hard for me to imagine it would be expensive living in L.A. The question is how. And how much more.

Different people have different ideas. Some say everything is so much more expensive. Some say that only housings are more expensive. Some say everything is more expensive, except for eating out.

The truth? Well, everything is expensive here. But comparing to the living standard here, the restaurants are very reasonably priced. And you can't beat the variety. Living very far away from the Chinatown area, I can still find plenty of average to good Chinese restaurants within 15 minutes walking distance.

Apart from eating out, however, the prices are really insane here. For example, milk and frozen food are 30% more expensive. And I still haven't found a cheap grocery store (other than Chinese groceries that are at least half an hour away). I really miss HEB, where I could buy enough bread for breakfasts and lunches for 1.5 weeks for only 59 cents.

All these make me understand why Costco is so much more successful in California than in Texas. If you can find cheap retail stores like HEB, you wouldn't need to buy from wholesale places like Costco. Now that I'm in California and not having a huge family, I need to plan what I can buy in large quantity in Costco and what I need to buy from nearby grocery stores...

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