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.  :)

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.

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.

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?

“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.

So here we go (in no particular order):

Westside:

• Miller Union
• JCT Kitchen and Bar
• Yeah! Burger
• Bocado
• West Egg Cafe (for dinner)
• The Real Chow Baby
• Crazy Cuban

Midtown:

• The Vortex (it’s been a while)
• South City Kitchen
• Noon
• Empire State South
• Steamhouse Lounge
• Papi’s (also been a while)

Old Fourth Ward:

• 4th and Swift
• Miso Izakaya
• Fuze Burger

Decatur:

• Sawicki’s
• Cakes and Ale
• Watershed (fried chicken!)

Elsewhere:

• One Midtown Kitchen
• Lunacy Black Market
• Nuevo Laredo

As of this update, we’re up to 104 different places.

This list covers 688 days – 8/23/2008 to 7/12/2010

We eat at a new place approximately once every 6.6 days.

We’ve eaten in 7 different states: GA, CA, PA, IL, TX, FL, NY

22 of 26 letters have been covered – missing letters: Q, V, X, Z

So, here’s a quick round-up of where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing.  This should really be cross-posted to georgeandlinda.com, but that means I actually at some point need to revamp it to make it applicable to post-wedding life (we’re over 9 months now!).

May 28-31 – Memorial Day Weekend.  We were down in Jacksonville, FL for the conference.  It was disgusting hot.  Not Heatpocalypse kind of hot, but uncomfortably warm for the end of May.

June 5-6 – Dallas.  Out there to see my dear grandmother, as well as caught up with some kids that I’ve been completely MIA/out of touch with, not unlike this blog.

June 12-13 – Birmingham.  Took a little road trip out to be with the migration training there.

June 25 – July 5 – California.  Summer training and hanging with the fam and stuffing our faces with more food than should be legally allowable, even in the most liberal of states like California.

So for those of you keeping score at home, that’s right; 5 different states in 6 weeks.  Foursquare was struggling to keep up with my massive number of check ins, and probably at one point thought I was cheating – I mean, does anyone really get boba 7 times in one week?  Yes.  This guy.  *points to self*  And his wife.  *points to wife*

So yeah, once again, here’s my empty promise that is destined to be unfulfilled, which largely explains my lack of readership: I’m going to write more, I promise.  More as in quantity and in quality.  You will be so entertained that you will do nothing but continuously hit refresh until something new comes up.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for warn out keyboards or mouse buttons.

I think I’m hitting my limit.

All these weekends away are starting to take a toll on me.  I feel like I can go into hibernation mode for a few weeks with no problem.

To give you perspective, I’ve been in 3 different states the past 3 weekends.  One of those states is not Georgia.  We’re staying put this coming weekend, and then we’re off to the semi-annual training.  5 of 6 weekends not in Georgia.  Add in the 40+ hour work weeks of stress sandwiched between these weekends and you’ve got a inevitable mental revolt on your hands.

I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining (though it’s probably coming out that way) – I’ve enjoyed all my trips for their corresponding reasons.  I like my job, even though it makes my brain explode sometimes.  I’m just tired, that’s all.

It doesn’t look like I’m going to get a bona fide vacation this year either.  One day I’ll get enough vacation days (and salary!) to account for conferences and trainings AND a real actual vacation.

This means that I need to find myself an office away from the office.  The real office is just too far of a drive – and too quiet, if there was such a thing, and working at home is far too distracting with all my little toys and whatnot.  No, what I need is a chair, a table, some ambient noise, preferably coffee, and a subtle distraction every now and again.

My ex-go-to-places have started to get overrun by…outsiders.  White Windmill, Maum as a desperate second, even Library Coffee despite them having all of 4 outlets for the entire place.

What I need is a new hidden gem.  Somewhere where I can hide that no one else really knows about.  Somewhere like White Windmill a year or two ago.

Anyone want to share their secret place with me?

Or do I really need to go open one up for myself?

Appetite for China’s 100 Chinese Foods to Try Before You Die

1. Almond milk
2. Ants Climbing a Tree (poetic, not literal, name)
3. Asian pear
4. Baby bok choy
5. Baijiu
6. Beef brisket
7. Beggar’s Chicken
8. Bingtang hulu
9. Bitter melon
10. Bubble tea
11. Buddha’s Delight
12. Cantonese roast duck
13. Century egg, or thousand-year egg
14. Cha siu (Cantonese roast pork)
15. Char kway teow
16. Chicken feet
17. Chinese sausage
18. Chow mein
19. Chrysanthemum tea
20. Claypot rice
21. Congee
22. Conpoy (dried scallops)
23. Crab rangoon
24. Dan Dan noodles
25. Dragonfruit
26. Dragon’s Beard candy
27. Dried cuttlefish
28. Drunken chicken
29. Dry-fried green beans
30. Egg drop soup
31. Egg rolls
32. Egg tart, Cantonese or Macanese
33. Fresh bamboo shoots
34. Fortune cookies
35. Fried milk
36. Fried rice
37. Gai lan (Chinese broccoli)
38. General Tso’s Chicken
39. Gobi Manchurian
40. Goji berries (Chinese wolfberries)
41. Grass jelly
42. Hainan chicken rice
43. Hand-pulled noodles
44. Har gau (steamed shrimp dumplings in translucent wrappers)
45. Haw flakes
46. Hibiscus tea
47. Hong Kong-style Milk Tea
48. Hot and sour soup
49. Hot Coca-Cola with Ginger
50. Hot Pot
51. Iron Goddess tea (Tieguanyin)
52. Jellyfish
53. Kosher Chinese food
    
54. Kung Pao Chicken
55. Lamb skewers (yangrou chua’r)
56. Lion’s Head meatballs
57. Lomo Saltado
58. Longan fruit
59. Lychee
60. Macaroni in soup with Spam
61. Malatang
62. Mantou, especially if fried and dipped in sweetened condensed milk
63. Mapo Tofu
64. Mock meat
65. Mooncake (bonus points for the snow-skin variety)
66. Nor mai gai (chicken and sticky rice in lotus leaf)
67. Pan-fried jiaozi
68. Peking duck
69. Pineapple bun
70. Prawn crackers
71. Pu’er tea
72. Rambutan
73. Red bean in dessert form
74. Red bayberry
75. Red cooked pork
76. Roast pigeon
77. Rose tea
78. Roujiamo
79. Scallion pancake
80. Shaved ice dessert
81. Sesame chicken
82. Sichuan pepper in any dish
83. Sichuan preserved vegetable (zhacai)
84. Silken tofu
85. Soy milk, freshly made
86. Steamed egg custard
87. Stinky tofu
88. Sugar cane juice
89. Sweet and sour pork, chicken, or shrimp
90. Taro
91. Tea eggs
92. Tea-smoked duck
93. Turnip cake (law bok gau)
94. Twice-cooked pork
95. Water chestnut cake (mati gau)
96. Wonton noodle soup
97. Wood ear
98. Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings)
99. Yuanyang (half coffee, half tea, Hong Kong style)
100. Yunnan goat cheese

85/100.  That’s a little more like it.

Taken from here:

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Only 55.  Somewhat disappointing.

Hi George!

We’re the creators of the site Thisiswhyyourefat.com –
we celebrate over the top food on our site (and have been
covered by The New York Times, CNN, The Today Show and
more!).

We are currently writing the book version of our site for
Harper Collins and would like to feature your amazing Krispy
Kreme Milkshake images and recipe with credit given to you.

Is this something we could get your okay on?

All contributors to the book will be named and have their
creations in print, and it will likely bring even more
attention to you or your blog or Flickr account!

If you’d like to be a part of the book version of our
site, we would need images to be as hi-res as possible, so
could you send us images as large as possible? That and a
recipe/ingredient list (if there is one) would be amazing!

Hope we can work with you and feature this killer thing in
our book!

Talk soon,

Jessica Amason & Richard Blakeley

Wow.  I got in contact with them and sent them full-res copies of the photo.  If they DO decide to use it, it’ll be kinda cool to see a picture that I took in a published book!  It’s actually kind of exciting.  Though, I’ll be first to admit, it’s not one of my best food pictures.  But at least this validates all those times I pull out the camera when sitting down to eat.

Want to see the picture?  Go here:

Granted, working in the field, technical support is the equivalency of fry-o-lator operator at McDonald’s in our world.

But even the fry-o-lator operators get paid their wages.

You can call me selfish, you can call me greedy, you can call me a lover of money – but the I stand behind every word of the following rant.

I get selflessly volunteered a lot by people to fix their computers.  Many people I know.  Some people I don’t.

When I was in college, I used to do IT-related stuff for this rich Jewish guy.  I no longer remember his name, but I do remember he owned all kinds of beachfront properties and he was Jewish.  Hence, he was affectionately titled “Rich Jewish Guy”.  The best part of RJG was that I felt like part of his little Jewish mafia when I worked for him.  I’d get this call – sometimes from him, sometimes from one of his “people” – to meet him at his house (read: mansion) or his office.  I’d show up, I’d get my instructions, I’d do my job, and then he’d pay me – always in a sealed envelope, despite it being check or cash.  I was never disappointed when I opened the envelope.  It always averaged to about $40-$50/hour, which is ridiculous for a college student.

I’d also get volunteered for people I know.  Those were done out of favor – there were never any sealed envelopes on my way out the door.  A requisite comment of gratitude and I was out, anxious to get home to try to salvage the 3 hours of my evening I just donated.  Sometimes meals were given for “payment”, but I really didn’t consider them as payment as I was usually sharing that meal with 5 other people; people who didn’t spend hours trying to rescue their computers from the deep unknown.

I was actually pretty okay with this through college, and even some into the training.  Today, I’m working in the industry.  I’m no longer trying to rescue people’s computers from the evil clutches of malware and spyware and the like, but the people who do that don’t sit too far away.  This is my job, my making of a living, my livelihood.

We all have our jobs.  We have our skills.  We’ve been blessed with something that we’re good at, or learning to be better at.  In my eyes, my job is no different than a doctor, a chef, or a janitor.  Even if what we do for a job isn’t always our first choice, we’re only still doing what we’re doing because we’re good enough at it not to get fired.

So after all this, here’s the conundrum: Why is it that people don’t expect doctors to come and treat them for free just because they’re good at it?  Why is it that it’s awkward if I asked a chef to come cook for me as a favor because they know how?  Why would it be offensive if you called your janitor friend over to clean your mess because he has the skill and ability to do it well?

Think about that for a second.

Now think about this:

Why would it be okay for you to call me over to fix your computer?

6am : out the door en route to poll location

6:12am – 7am : waiting in line at the Heritage Educational Center, Nintendo DS probable

7am – 8am : fighting through the old decrepit Republican-types who would let Sarah Palin within the District of Columbia limits to place my vote for whoever Barack Obama is voting for

8:09am : trying to get out of the parking lot without getting hit by some blind old lady who voted for McCain because they “like Sarah Palin for her personality”

8:43am : at a Starbucks claiming my free election day coffee

8:58am : hopefully at the office

11:48am : Shane’s Rib Shack on Perimeter Center Dr, claiming my free chicken tender meal

12:25pm : Krispy Kreme in Roswell for my free donut

1:32pm : food coma from lunch kicking in

2:56pm : random baseless political debate amongst coworkers – “yeah, but Tina Fey played Sarah Palin and Tina Fey is kinda hot”

5:02pm : Ben and Jerry’s on Windward Pkwy. getting my free ice cream

5:48pm : Shane’s Rib Shack on Windward Pkwy, getting another free chicken tender meal

6:54pm : home, flipping through channels looking for an unbiased report on election results

7:21pm : giving up on finding an unbiased report and America as a society in general, off to another Starbucks for another free cup of coffee

7:58pm : back at home, watching networks spend tons of money on pretty displays merely to color in different parts of the country a deep blue.

sometime later : asleep, while Barack Obama keeps Sarah Palin back in Alaska, where she can continue to keep an eye on those Russians to further her foreign policy experience.

Yeah, it never got done.

You know how I had mentioned before about new things coming down the pipeline?

Yeah, it never got done.

You know how I had mentioned before about writing more?

Yeah, it never got done.

You know how I had mentioned before about not being a slacker?

Yeah.  It really really never got done.