half food blog. half tech blog. half george blog.
life
23 Days of Words
Feb 21st
Well, that was short-lived.
After 23 days, I realized that I completely forgot about 101 Days of Words and in turn skipped the previous two days. This is after I skipped another day in the middle somewhere. Honestly, it’s just too much for my little brain to handle to write something creative every day. In fact, none of the 23 minus 3 days were really creative at all. Maybe there was a random short story and a random poem, but I think I’ve come to face defeat regarding my declining creativity.
After all, I finish all my statements with a semi-colon instead of a period now. How much creativity can that even surmount to?
I think I prefer the random postings here better. No pressure to do it every day, and I can save up some creative juices to unleash all at once so at least it will be more entertaining.
0 more days. :)
101 Days of Words
Jan 27th
I’m trying an experiment, a la The Julie/Julia Project.
Instead of an endeavor to cook 536 recipes in 365 days, I’m starting smaller. Much much smaller.
Also, the likelihood of my experiment being turned into a book/movie is far less likely. If somehow American cinema reaches a new low and every movie idea on earth has been officially been exhausted, I reserve the right to pick who gets to play me in the film adaptation.
Anyways, the premise of the experiment is simple. 101 days of writing. That’s it. I just have to make it through 101 days. I might follow a specific topic. Maybe several. Maybe none. Who knows. I just have to write, largely to retain whatever creative capacity I have remaining in this dull logic-processing brain of mine.
Want to follow along? You’ll find me for the next 101 days here:
http://101daysofwords.wordpress.com
I’ll try to do some guest spots on this blog in the next 101 days, but if I’m MIA, you’ll know where to find me.
Till then, take good care of this place for me.
The Cycle of Fatness
Jan 24th
My life experience has brought me face to face with one of life’s greatest dilemmas.
I shall call it, for a lack of better terms, the cycle of fatness.
You see, this is how the cycle begins. First, you eat. This is simple enough. I am actually a certified professional in this field. If you need professional advice on what you should be eating, you should be coming to me. Surgeon General’s Warning: Strictly following my advice can result in obesity, diabetes, unpopularity, and in most cases, death.
After a period of such eating, there will be the need to counteract all the deliciousness. This can stem from a variety of reasons – body image consciousness, a significant other, health issues, or just plain difficulty getting from the bed to the couch to watch TV without being complete exasperated. Let’s not even discuss any kind of side route to the kitchen for a snack.
So, in order to fulfill such need, you decide to hit the gym. A noble decision indeed! You throw on some exercise clothes, grab your iPod or an alternative non-Communism-supporting portable media device, strap on some running shoes, and you feel like you’re ready to take on the world and pare down your collection of stretchy pants.
At this juncture, one of three things will happen.
1) You will go to the gym, walk inside, and be completely intimidated by all these crazy medieval torture devices.
2) You will go to the gym, only to find that the place you pay an exorbitant amount of money for on a monthly basis has been rented out for something ridiculous like a high school swim meet leaving you with nowhere to park and excessively high blood pressure from your wasted dollars. In your fury, you head home and/or your nearest cheeseburger purveyor and eat away the anger. (note: this has only happened to me twice.)
3) Someone calls you to see if you’re ready to throw down all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue. Federal law dictates that it is a felony not to comply.
It becomes obvious that the cycle comes around full circle if situations #2 or #3 were to occur. That was easy.
But what if you find yourself in situation #1?
You feel like your very presence in this mausoleum of calories is already the victory that you came to reach. You stroll through the gym convincing yourself that you totally belong there with your unwaivering confidence. Any fear is masked under a guise of looking at no direction in particular, yet avoiding eye contact with anyone and everyone. You hope and pray that something – anything – looks even vaguely similar to the gym equipment you have in your prized virtual mansion as a result of countless hours of The Sims 3. Finally, out of the corner of your eye, you see something that is both recognizable and not so daunting..
A bike! It looks bolted down pretty well, so there’s really not much risk in finding yourself careening uncontrollably at that somewhat cute girl/guy that you tried not to stare at as you walked in. Besides, you learned how to ride a bike when you were a kid, and you never forget, right? RIGHT?!
Hop on that familiar machine, you fitness guru you. What’s this? Buttons and screens and lights? While unlike the Huffy you used to cruise the mean neighborhood streets with, you leverage your adept logical reasoning skills to master this technological behemoth in front of you.
Start! The only button you really needed to press, because let’s face it, you totally lied on your weight for calorie calculations and maybe even your age if you got that desperate. You take off pedaling, reliving both your bicycle-based adventure-seeking youth and your equally blissful dream of donning the yellow jersey at the Tour de France.
Wiping sweat off your brow, you take a big swig of water from your newly purchased “This may be overpriced but it proves I really work out a lot” water bottle. The intensity is so high at this point that you wonder if it’s bad form to just pop open the top and douse yourself with the rest of the water. You glance over at fellow cyclers near you, giving them a sly grin as your imagination visualizes them as competitors on a winding mountain road. You know you have to keep pressing on as they’re neck and neck with you, though that probably has a lot to do with how the gym sets these machines side-by-side in a line.
Muscles aching, you look forward to the end of this strenuous workout, thinking about the washboard abs you’ll have to show off once you get off this devil-possessed machine. Eventually, your legs give out from under you and you collapse onto that blinking, taunting screen, with the following blurry text scrolling across your now-somehow-tired eyeballs.
Elapsed Time: 2:30
Remaining Time: 27:30
Calories: 14
Average Heart Rate: 184
Awesome. Simply awesome. Your hard work can now be rewarded. No, MUST be rewarded. You drag your tired body back to the car, thinking about what to reward yourself with. A new TV? Hmm, no. A new car? Eh. A new water bottle?! Maybe.
Then suddenly, it comes to you.
As you shout your order through that drive-thru speaker box, you sense that sweet gratification that this double cheeseburger is going to be 14 less calories than usual.
It’s 2011!
Jan 19th
It’s a new year. 2011. Just when you think you couldn’t make it through 2010, all of the sudden, it’s 2011. We made it guys.
2010 was kind of weird. On the upside, it was the first full year of being married. On the downside, it’s the last year I got to spend with my grandmother.
I realize that there has not been a lot of literary genius gracing this page in the past year, though every year I’m swearing to “post more, write more, express more, etc etc etc”. It would be so much easier to just let this go completely, but this blog is my labor of love. It’s my outlet. It’s the virtual antithesis of my Chinese upbringing for me to say what’s on my brain and unload what’s on my heart. The best part is, the more controversial or judgmental my rants are, the more random readers tend to respond. They may not be the greatest of responses, but at least it gives the warm fuzzy feeling that someone out there is reading this.
In fact, this is the outlet that has caused the rift between me and the woman who birthed me. I don’t regret it for a second. Some people have asked, “Well, do you ever wish that you never wrote that stuff and published it online?” No, I really never have. On one hand, it may seem terrible that she’s disowned me and expressed her hatred towards me. On the other hand, this has really exposed what the real situation is in my family – not just to the public, but also to me. I was just as blind to everything as the next person, and I’m the oldest son. How terrible is that? Besides, knowing my temper, something like this would have exploded at some point in the past 5 years anyways.
Anyways, here’s to 2011. Who knows what will happen this year?
George and Linda’s “Where Should We Go For Dinner?” List
Oct 14th
If you haven’t heard, we moved! We’re now deep in the heart of Midtown, in a quaint (by quaint I mean small) rented 3/2 right along Atlantic Station.
“But George, what does that mean?”, you might ask.
Well, I’m glad you asked. Not only does this mean our house is filled with kids multiple times a week, which I love (so does the Wii, it finally gets some use), it also means we have an entire new and extensively growing neighborhood of food to discover.
When we were in the apartment, our proximity to Buford Highway generally made food a no-brainer – to this day, there are still a number of places there that we never ate at but have always wanted to (ahem El Rey del Taco). But it was easy to default to old favorites, especially for someone like me who gravitates towards the familiar and the dependable.
But now things are different. We’re bordered on one side by the rapidly developing Westside and White Provisions area and on the other with the cosmopolitan Midtown, where a number of excellent (and non-Asian/Mexican) dining outlets await us. We’ve tried a few, but we’re always discovering a new place en route or reading about a new place in a magazine. We’re also fairly close to the Va-Hi/Inman Park/Old Fourth Ward area as well, which has even more stuff. Don’t even get me started on Decatur.
Yet, with all this, we still have a hard time deciding where to go for dinner sometimes on the rare occasion that we do go out and eat. Maybe it’s because there are too many choices and it becomes daunting. Or maybe I just forget all the places that are nearby as a result of a subconscious mental block stemming from my penchant for familiarity. Regardless, I decided that listing some of these places out would help the next time something like this happens.
List after the jump.