Little Heaven in my backyard

It's been 3 weeks since I've moved to LA. Different place, different flavor, different people, everything here is different. I realized now, I wasn't quite prepared for this sudden change. First week, I spent at my host family's house. Very nice people, I had a hard time eating & sleeping though.

I just got a place on Westwood near UCLA campus. I'm living at the Rugby house with bunch of Rugby players. It's a great time, we are always having a good time. I still miss my friends in Ks a lot. I've been thinking about visiting them sometime next month for few days, but then again I'm not so sure. Some of my favorite places in LA are: Point Dome, Malibu Beach, UCLA track, Chipotle in Beverly Hills, Nike Town, and few other places. I went to checkout the UCLA main library yesterday and it was OK. Westwood is not that different than Lawrence. Except there's only two bar in this college town & no pool table. Not a single one. That really sucks.

I am always used to running on dirt, like when I used to run on the levee by the Kansas River. I've been having a hard time running here on sidewalks. It has affected my training & my overall performance. Few days ago, I went out for a run as usual, but this time instead of going left I went right. Lo behold, there sidewalks are all dirt. It was an amazing feeling being able to run on dirt again, my feet was enjoying each strides. I was really happy. This is essentially a circle around campus, it's great except you can only go downhill or uphill. It's hardly ever flat & that really sucks.

Oh well, something is better than nothing, I guess.

Never...not on a Snickers bar

Lately, I've been sleeping a lot. Just today I slept through the whole day. And that's not normal for me. Ever since as a kid usually I can't sleep more than 5 hours a night. So, sleeping all day took it's toll this evening when I went for a run. On my way, I was feeling really hungry. Quick stop at the Advance Auto for some engine oil (haven't changed my engine oil yet) and since there wasn't any energy drink, I bought a snickers bar. Bad Idea.

My plan was to eat only half of it, save the rest and eat it later. Once I started, it's as if I couldn't stop. I finished the whole bar. Went to the levee for a 4 mile run after eating the snickers. After the 1st half mile, I'm not feeling so well. Red flag. I was like, well maybe I will just run 3 miles instead of 4 miles. Which is what I did, I only ran 3 miles, but with many small breaks along the run.

I was feeling really fatigue, as if my body was still tired. My legs felt heavy. I think the reason is pretty clear as to why: 1) sleeping through out the whole day, and
2) eating a snickers just before the run.

Well, enough on that. My all time favorite runner is John Landy, but since there's hardly any thing on the internet of him here's something to enjoy, very inspiring:

Trip to chicago, PT Cruiser & PVD

Friday morning I come in to work as usual. Around 10am check my gmail & I got an email about Paul Van Dyke playing at the Vision club in Chicago. By then I'm going nuts. This is my one chance to see him live. I call up Andrei & break the news. He's pretty excited & he's like lets do it.

So, we rent a car. I wish if we had gotten something better than a PT Cruiser. Me and Andrei, we both agreed, that car sucks. The gas mileage is bad, really bad. The seats are very uncomfortable, and the response is really bad. I would hit the gas expecting a quick pickup, but it would take ages for the car to pick up some speed.

Around 12.30am that night we leave Lawrence for Chicago. Andrei was so excited he throws my direction away & just starts driving. After driving for an hour, in MO we see a bunch of cops, firetrucks & ambulance in one exit. For no freaking reason, Andrei takes the exit. The firetruck are blocking the other way so now we can't even get back on the highway except to turn around. It turned out a FedEx truck was on fire on that exit. I had a feeling that Andrei doesn't have a clue on how to get to Chicago. So, I made him pull over at the Sheraton hotel, went inside & got directions from the desk clerk.

We arrive in Chicago around 9.30am on Saturday. Andrei suppose to have a hotel reserved, but he didn't do it & he didn't tell me about it either. I got really pissed this time. So, I suggested we check out the club, parking's in that area first. After checking those out, we had a huge launch. After the launch Andrei is tired. But remember I'm pissed?! So, we drove around from one place to another, went to the Public Library for next two hours trying to find a cheaper hotel & he's ass was getting more & more tired.

Anyway, we checked into Carlton Hotel. We both slept for 3 hours. Around 5pm, we went out to do some site seeing. We check out few areas around downtown. Come back to the hotel, take another quick nap & then get ready for the party. We went to the Vision club around 10pm. All I can say is it was simply awesome. That's all I can say. We got home around 6am in the morning.

We checked out around 1pm on Sunday, visit the Field Museum, then head back to Lawrence, Ks. The Field Museum is absolutely a great place. It's a 3 story building. We got there around 2pm & they closed at 5pm since it was Sunday. We only had the chance to see half of the 1st floor only. I definitely plan on going back to that museum again sometime.

This time, I had the hotel print out the direction back to Ks. I drove for the most part, except Andrei took over from KC to Lawrence. I would've drove that too, except remember what I said about the PT Cruiser sits. My back was hurting, going numb.



The gas price in Chicago was outrageous. The whole time we were there, we never filled up our tank all the way. Still we paid $3.65 per gallon. Nuts.

A Builder or a Solver?

Last night over dinner, my brother made a comment. I didn't thought about then until much later in the night. This is how the conversation went:

"You know the difference between you and me?"

me: I just looked at him like what? What is the difference?

"You like Sci-fi and I like Thrillers."

Well, I know that already so, what's new about it? Well, he loves loud rock music, choice of movie: action & thriller. He also takes things at its face value without putting too much thought into it.

Whereas, I love trance, classical music also, and choice of movie: Sci-fi. Also, I question things, everything. I will also analyze things in my mind over & over before accepting it. This of course, brings us back to what I had mentioned on a previous post.

State of Trance & restaurant Menus

I think, usually people who's more into sci-fi movies can be categorized as builders. Meaning, from a Video Game perspective, they like to create the actual game. Create puzzle by asking more questions, through their imagination pushing the limit.

Whereas, people who likes Thrillers can be categorized as solvers. Meaning, again from a video game perspective, they are more concern with the aftermath. They like to play the game, trying on different paths.

So, which one are you? A Builder or a Solver?

Up late, FedEx Kinko's sucks, & Porsche

It's 4am on Saturday & I'm up trying to figure out what to do after I'm done writing this post. Probably study Managerial Accounting a little. The plan was to sleep for few hours, get up, run 4/5 miles, then study. But I guess change of plan. Well, enough on that.

Last Thursday I needed to scan about 43 pages of document into pdf format so, I can email someone all the documents. First trip to FedEx Kinko's. My options?!

Option 1. Pay .40 cents a minute to use one of their computer and scan each (remind you again 43 pages of documents) page and then save it.

Option 2. Pay the clerk $6.00 dollar per page to have all the pages scanned & he will save it as a pdf. WOW

I asked him about the Scan option in one of their copier, but he said that can't be done. Since the copies isn't hooked up to any computer to store the files. And all this time I'm thinking this is FedEx. With this kinds of inefficiency how on earth are they still in business?! Of course, I opted for the 3rd option.

And that is, visit Copy Co, the local shop in town. Since I needed so many pages scanned, the clerk was nice enough to charge me only $20.00 dollars. Again I paid $20.00 dollars to get 43 pages scanned that he saved himself on my jump drive twice as a pdf and once more as a jpeg file. Just in case.So, what was the $20.00 dollars for?!

It would have cost about the same to get all those documents copied. So he was nice enough to just scan it for me but charge me less.

And that's why FedEx Kinko's sucks for being inefficient, wasting my time in their store.

Porsche: Between Ferrari & Porsche, I am not a very big fan of Porsche. But one of their recent commercial deserves some applaud. I love the commercial. For two reasons: First, the song in that commercial, and I think you can guess the second one =)



If you loved the song as I did, it's by "2raumwohnung" & the song title is "weil es liebe ist." I've looked all over the Internet trying to find the whole song, so far no luck. I love the song a lot, I might just get the whole album from Amazon.

State of Trance & restaurant Menus

Most of my friends know very well, I'm a trance addict. Mostly that's really all I listen to everyday, of course every now & then I will listen to some classical music. But mostly trance.

For me trance is more than music, it takes me to another state of mind. When I am listening to trance, I can just wander off into a different world, interpret the music in my way, associate it with something pleasant. Rather than someone screaming about how love, life and just about everything else sucks in life.

I am more relaxed when I am listening to Trance. Of Course, I am crazy about DJ Tiesto, but there's also Kyau vs. Albert, Armin Van Burren and the list just goes on and on...When I go out for run, I listen to trance. I let the music dictate my pace. I know most of you are like what's so special about this one? Trust me, there's something different listening to trance while running. The music gives a different meaning to the whole run, sometimes I am running slow, sometimes I feel the air around me as I run fast. It's almost as if I can see myself running. If you are a runner, you want that kind of relaxation. You want to be in sync with your run. Anyway, so the question I've been asking myself, Why do I love trance so much? What does trance means to me?

Before I answering the questions, I would like to mention Dyske Suematsu did a really great job on his site DYSKE.COM talking about something along the same line. Dyske talks about why Americans don't like Jazz, I thought the article did a great job laying out his ideas on it. I don't want to spoil the fun so if you are interested here's the article link: "Why Americans Don't Like Jazz."

As I said before, to me trance is more than music, It's an innovation. Innovation?!!! How?!!! Well, trance is where a DJ comes in, takes a great piece of music and makes it even better. Evanescene's "Hello" is a great song, but The Trafictor vs. Gabriel and Dresden mix is even better, the mix took the whole song to a completely different level. And that's what trance is about, it's about taking something that already exist and make it better, more appealing to the mass. That's why within the trance community you find the same beat or piece of music played by many different DJs, but incorporating it with other musics or songs. The difference is, very good DJs also produces their own music along the line. I am surprise more people don't look at it that way or doesn't realize it. Well, maybe some day they will, again Dyske did a great job elaborating on this issue.

Now on the restaurant menus section. Last weekend, we were in Overland Park, Ks. It was past midnight and we were really hungry. Option 1: drive another 13 miles & go to Westport for some late night fun & food. Option 2: go to the Denny's restaurant few blocks from my Friend's apartment. Since I was the driver, I didn't wanted to drive another 13 miles, we went to Denny's. The food on the menu (i.e. the pictures of the foods) looked so good, we ordered some food. Since everyone was really hungry, I also ordered the mini burger & fries appetizer for everyone. The fries were OK, the burger's were rather dry. After finishing our appetizer we kinda lost our appetite to eat. The disgusts of the whole place & the food started to kind of sink in. One of my friend ended up boxing his food, it just wasn't that good.

Few days later, I am thinking about it & that's when it hit me. My hypothesis is, usually restaurants that has good, flashy menus will have lower quality foods served, whereas restaurants with a simple menu will have something more delicious to enjoy. The question is why? Well, I would say because since

1) Restaurant A has good, flashy menus, that cost x amount. The restaurant must allocate cost for that x amount. While allocation cost for menus, the food quality is low. Here restaurant A must constantly allocate money on making their menu look good since they have to keep up that image

2) Restaurant B has a simple menu and serves great quality, tasty dishes. Well since restaurant B doesn't have to allocate much on menu printing & so forth, thus giving them the flexibility to prepare something more appealing to the consumers in terms of taste.

Now, the quest for answer begins. From now, for the next six months, I will begin to document every restaurant I visit, and let's see where this hypothesis ends.

Any ideas or thoughts?!

credits:

1st Photo: ayu trance

2nd Photo: Overland Park, Ks

Science vs. Faith

Thanks to wellingtongrey.net for this cool flowchart. It relates to one of my older post. In case you missed it, here's the link to my old post:

Difference between Science & Religion