Birthday Post #04: Did You Know It Was My Birthday?

Yesterday, I woke up at the crack of dawn to go play tennis at 7AM. Normally, I am still in Neverland at that hour, but I'm borderline hard-core when it comes to tennis. As a result, last night, I passed out at about 10PM and slept till 10AM this morning (sssshhhh! Don't tell work!). Right now I feel confident, happy and not at all uncomfortable with my sexuality (the last one would probably be funnier if I were straight). If this is what normal, relaxed people feel on a daily basis, I may have to give up blogging, and become a prescription drug addict. Short of that happening, the delusions of grandeur will be gone by tomorrow and I'll be back to my normal, albeit now-31-year old self.

Oh yeah, did I mention that today is my birthday? I wasn't sure if everyone knew that it was coming up because I forgot whether I told anyone here. Just wanted to make sure.

Last year on the day of my birthday, I actually had to work late that night of all nights. I complained to a co-worker of mine, and was like, "Oh man, I can't believe I have to work tonight on the night of my birthday." He replied, "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I proposed to my girlfriend today and was going to take the day off." Um, nooooooo. Why the hell would that make me feel any better?

When I woke up this morning, I actually got a slew of birthday wishes emails, some from people who I haven't heard from in years. Uh, where were these people last year for my 30th? Oh and these weird messages on some "wall" that I have on Facebook. (I succumbed to pressure and created a Facebook profile, but I still have no idea how that site works.) And this morning, I also got many birthday IMs. It got to a point where I left my apartment this morning, expecting everyone I passed on the street to not only know it was my birthday, but also to stop me, shake my hand and offer their original rendition of the Happy Birthday song. Needless to say, I was a little depressed when I got to the office and all I got was a ho-hum "Hey." Also the pics of the awful earthquake in China and the cyclone in Myanmar really bummed me out. Not to put a serious downer all of a sudden on this special occasion, but it's really horrific. This is also depressing to read.

If that's not enough of a birthday buzz kill, according to the Farmers Almanac, today, my birthday, is a great day "to go to the Dentist" and "harvest above ground vegetables." Mmmmm....pain and manual labor are always fun to experience on your birthday. Unfortunately, it's not a good time to "castrate animals", "set chicken eggs" or "make sauerkraut, can or pickle." Not that I was planning to set some chicken eggs today, but obviously I wanted to do some castrating and canning today. Way to ruin a good party, Farmer. This is why the government is taking away your land.

And to finish this birthday exercise before getting back to normal, I'll return to the History Channel and other sources for some other less important (less important than my birthday in case you didn't know what that meant):

In 1944, filmaker George Lucas was born in Modesto, CA. I know I
mentioned this event last year, but it is worth repeating in honor of the new
Indiana Jones. Sorry, George, I think Harrison is too old. You
should have done this movie 10 years ago.

In 1796, Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccine to 8-year-old James Phipps. Last year, I was on Roosevelt Island, which is one of the weirdest places in Manhattan by the way, and stopped in the island historical office. The woman there mentioned that they were trying to raise funds to restore an old smallpox hospital. I was thinking, "Uh...WHY? Tear that shit down and build a condo."

In 1864, Eleanor "Women can write opera too" Freer was born. I'm sure she wrote something famously important but everyone remembers Wagner and Verdi.

On May 14, 1881, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about the high price of gas. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

In 1904, the first Olympic Games in the U.S. opened in St. Louis. Seriously, guys. St. Louis? Have you been there?

In 1853, Gail Borden patents his (yes, HIS) process for condensed milk. Thai Iced Tea drinkers can rejoice!

In 1969, Cate Blanchett was born. In addition to Padma, Nigella and Cameron D, I'd turn straight for her.

In 1845, the Utrecht-Arnhem Railway opens. Well, FINALLY! Finally I can travel across canals and tulip fields to get to Arnhem. I've been waiting for so long!

In addition to the last episode of Seinfeld, the last episode of Family Ties aired on this day in 1989. I kind of still wonder what happened to Scott Valentine.

And just last year, DiamlerChrysler said it was selling almost all of Chrysler to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management for $7.4 billion. Now the Germans can stop being embarrassed.

Back tomorrow with some ideas for gifts and where to send them.

Birthday Post #03: Apparently I'm Not The Only One Celebrating Life

This past weekend, I had to work on a big project, and unfortunately I had to ask some data analysts from our San Francisco office to also work. I was very grateful, because our client was happy, which meant my boss was happy, which meant I was happy.

But I felt bad for asking for weekend work. These analyst had worked all week on other projects of mine and were just overworked and exhausted. So of course I told them how grateful I was and how sorry I was to ask them to work on a weekend:

Me: "Thanks so much for working this weekend. I hope I haven't ruined your weekend."

Analyst: "It's ok. You helped out a lot. Thank you for saving my life."

Ok, whoa. That's a bit dramatic. I wish everyone I knew was that easy to please.

Birthday Post #02: First Day Of Festivities

Last night, I went to get some Korean Fried Chicken with some of my fellow gay asian bloggers at everyone's favorite Korean German Beerhof (like there are so many to choose from), Baden Baden. I hadn't been there in a while, and the first thing I noticed was that gone were the vaguely Hitler-youth type uniforms and replaced with just regular dark shirts and pants.

We all enjoyed our chicken. Oh and we had traditional orders of sliced pig's feet and spicy octopus (and fries too), just like you can find at Popeye's.

It was a very nice way to start my 31st birthday week long festivities.

As I left the place though, I realized though that since I'm Korean, I probably should just call it "fried chicken."

P.S., This guy's hair cut puts Javier Bardem to shame. The funniest thing is that this Korean Dorothy Ha-male actually looks happy with it.

Birthday Post #01: Start The Violins

Now that Mother's Day is over, we can all celebrate (wait for it, while I turn on my echo sound effect) Four Days Until My Birthday-day, day, day....

In the past year since my last birthday post, when I entered my THIRTIES, I've felt a bit older and a bit wiser. Indeed, the year 2007 will go down as the year TCho chilled out. These days, as an old man, I don't think I'm quite as high strung or chewed to the bit as I used to be. I mean, sure, I still make my trademark snap and willful judgements, but being in my wisdomous thirties, that just means they're true.

Anyhow, I probably can't top last year's birthday blogging series, (and actually I've been a terrible blogger, well, for the last 8 months), but hopefully I can convince some folks to stick around to the big day. Maybe I'll scare the crap out of everyone in my birthday suit.

Fame By Cleaning Ladies

So you know how people announce their special bond with celebrities by saying something like, "Oh I shop where Sarah Jessica Parker shops"? Or "I see the same optomitrist as Julia Roberts" (which is true.) Or "Alec Baldwin goes to my dry cleaner" (which is also true.)

Well, I found out the other day that my cleaning lady cleans supermodel Ling's apartment! I'm not sure why this is so exciting to me, considering that I have yet to meet anyone who has any idea who I'm talking about (I need more gay asian fashionistas in my social circle.) Or the person who I tell this news to thinks I'm talking about Bai Ling ("you mean that crazy Thai prostitute from Lost who just got arrested for shoplifting?") But I just think to myself, "wow, my I'm eating off of dishes cleaned by the cleaning lady who washes Ling's dishes." How's that for circuituitous?

The Loaf Cake Curse

A weird thing has been happening in my latest cooking exploits. I've really gotten into making loaf cakes. For some reason, making loaf cakes is so much more satisfying to me. I think it's the nature of the pan. I like putting all the ingredients for the batter together, especially now that I understand the chemistry behind the mixture of the wet and dry ingredients. And then when I get the magical batter ready, there's something about pouring it into a loaf pan that makes me feel like a true baker. The heftiness and girth of a loaf cake just give me a much more satisfying sense of accomplishment.

So far I've made a chocolate loaf cake, a lemon cake, a sour cream pound cake, banana bread and zucchini bread. All have been delicious. But the weirdest thing has been happening. I've made each of these cakes twice, and the first time I make one of them, they turn out great and taste and look like something you'd get at a bakery. The second time, however, the cake is TERRIBLE. Something always turns out wrong, like the cake hasn't risen enough or it has a weird texture or it just tastes like crap. I've always had to throw out at least half of the second version of all of my loaf cakes.

Something strange is going on. Maybe my loaf pan is to be picky and well, kind of high maintenance. Maybe even more high maintenance than me.

Dinner At Lucques

One of my favorite past judges from Top Chef is Suzanne Goin. I loved her lesson on "tough love" when she was all "Are you saying that people cheated?"

So of course I had to visit her restaurant, and I also got to meet jozjozjoz! I had a great meal, starting with a white bean and stinging nettle brodo, followed by a nice portion of suckling swine with some black truffle butter. It's funny. I actually think this is the type of food that sounds kind of boring when you read the description, probably kind of like this post.

Someday I'll Have A Villa

One of my side trips while I was in LA was a drive up to the Getty Villa in Malibu, CA. For those of you who don't know, the Getty Villa is one of those places only some wealthier-than-thou, eccentric guy, who clearly has too much time on his hands, could think of. J. Paul Getty replicated an actual real villa from the ruins of Herculaneum, which is the next town over from Pompeii. the craziest thing is that Getty never actually visited his faux-Roman house before he died!

I had a nice day there. Not only are the buildings modeled after a real Roman villa, but so are the grounds. The Getty Center employs all sorts of botanists, gardeners, climatologists and other researchers who have researched the soil and weather patterns in Italy to figure out what plants could grow in the climate and soils of sunny Malibu.

The whole place is pretty amazing and I spent a lot more time there than I had intended. The weather was great, and I asked one of the nice gardener guys to take my picture:

I know I'm wearing shorts and a short-sleeve shirt in this picture, but I was actually freezing my ass off. The Pacific Ocean breeze was freaking cold that day. I almost got a "Getty Villa" sweatshirt, but I'm not a Japanese tourist.

Gangsters in OC and Some Pate

On my second day in the OC, I drove to Little Saigon, which is about 15 minutes away from Disneyland. I was craving good Vietnamese food and wanted to explore.

"Little" is a misnomer for this place.  This place is freaking huge!  I felt like I had actually traveled TO Vietnam.  Every sign all over the place is in Vietnamese there's nary a white person in sight.  I expected the normal "Saigon Grill"-type restaurants and your average crazy Asian grocery store, with shoppers in their own world and don't realize the existence of other foods outside of their dimension.  I saw all those and also Vietnamese fabric stores, travel agents, banks, vacuum repair shops, candy stores, upholsters...you name it, I saw it.  I also heard later on that I was driving through prime Asian gangland territory and that there are regular fights between the Cambodians and Vietnamese.  "Fearless" should be my middle name.

In addition to eating some tasty Vietnamese Pho and Banh sandwiches, I also was on a quest to find some Vietnamese pate.  For those of you have never experienced the ethereal delight known as a Banh-Mi sandwich, what's keeping you?!?  It's the most delicious hoagie sandwich you've ever had with either pork or chicken or beef as the main ingredient or a crispy baguette, and dressed with cucumber, pickled daikon or carrots, cilantro, some hot sauce and Asian mayonnaise and finally pate.  If they changed every sandwich shop in NYC into a Vietnamese gangsta deli, I couldn't be happier.

It was the pate that I was on a quest for.  I've been wanting to make my own Banh-Mi forever, but couldn't find the special Vietnamese pate.  When I got to Little Saigon that day, I had my list of five or six Vietnamese grocery stores to find this magical substance.  One by one, I crossed the stores off my list without luck.  Finding this stuff is like trying to find oil in Texas.  You know it should be there, but where the hell is it?

At the last store, I finally asked some random woman.  I asked, "Excuse me.  Do you know the pate that's used in Vietnamese Banh?  Do you know where I can buy some?"  I thought she was going to point to me some hidden store in a dark alley.  Maybe this was black market stuff (sold by those Asian gangs).  

The woman was very nice and told me, "Oh sandwich pate?  We just use the American one.  Even in Vietnam, they just use the American one."

So much for my efforts at being authentic.

American Idol: I Need To Fix My Make-up Now

Scene: I was sitting on my couch, and had just finished watching the American Idol performances and then the Results show when the following IM conversation ensued:

Friend: "How are you?"
Me: "Sad. :-("
Friend: "What's wrong?"
Me: "American Idol is tearing me up. Haha."

Ok, so this week American Idol, the emotions on Idol bordered on maudlin, but I'm a softie and am not ashamed to say that American Idol really tugged at my heart strings this week like a musical version of Terms of Endearment.

David Cook got me started with his rock treatment of "Always Be My Baby" (the guest mentor this week was Mariah Carey.) I was transfixed. His performance definitely goes on to my list of favorite Idol performances ever. It was earthy, original and a shining moment for David Cook. But what got me was when the camera panned to his brother, Adam, who is battling brain cancer. His brother had tears in his eyes. I heard later that during the commercial break, David Cook went down into the audience to give his brother a big hug, and everyone, including the judges stood up and was cheering. Wish I could have seen that.

The next night Elliott Yamin sang during the first half of the Results show, looking ten times better than he ever has before. He is living proof that having a good dentist will do wonders for your looks. Anyway, he sang "Free" from his new album. Afterwards, he dedicated his performance to his mom, who had passed away, just a few days before. He pointed out that this was his first performance ever that his mom wasn't at. It was all the more touching since Elliott looked so great.

Then Mariah Carey came out and sang "Bye Bye" from her new album. Mariah wrote this song about her deceased father, and the song is all about missing your lost loved ones. My path towards a train wreck started by Elliott Yamin continued. Despite her idiotic hand gestures, her inability to quite hit the glass-breaking high notes and her spandex dress that pushed up her breasts to her neck, I ate the maudlinness of the night all up.

FINALLY, Kristy Lee Cook mentioned that she can't get her beloved horse back. She had sold her favorite horse to afford her trip to the auditions. Last night, she mentioned that the buyer won't sell him back. All her fans should petition to get her horse back.

I'm pathetic.

(Sidebar: sorry for the lack of American Idol posts this year. I've been a little late in watching the episodes this year. I'm finally catching up now.)