This week’s photo challenge from the Daily Post was to pick the best photos to tell the story of your year. Looking back, I actually had a pretty eventful year, starting with the birth of Kuya’s Notebook in January (Chinese New Year) and ending with a white Christmas with lots in between!
The photos below are a quick glance at what my 2012 was like. What was your year like? Continue reading
This is my brother Jude, and it’s a miracle he’s here today.
My brother, Jude, was a sickly child, constantly being taken out of school for medical reasons — what we believed was asthma. Jude going to kindergarten was such a huge moment — the two of us would be at the same school, he’d actually be going to school, and I’d be able to see him there every day.
Seventh grade was the first year I tried to stay extremely optimistic for the future. I started writing in a journal I bought, making sure to include even the mundane details of the first days of school. As I was rereading it, something caught my eye — Jude had a stomachache one morning, and we were almost late to school.
It was August 19, 2010, Jude’s fourth day of kindergarten and my fourth day of seventh grade. He cried for so long that day about losing a game in his gym class. He screamed about how they cheated him and how unfair the game was, as we told him that “it was just a game” and that it wasn’t worth crying over.
His cheeks were bright red, which I thought was my mom’s lipstick. Later that night, we found out he had a 105 degree fever, and we brought him to the emergency room. I’ll never forget the flashing lights of the ambulance that whisked my only brother away from the emergency room to the large hospital, Children’s Medical Center, in downtown Dallas.
The next morning, my friend A-’s dad brought me to the hospital to see Jude. I kept my sunglasses on for the ride home, trying to hide the tears.
When I made it home, I started packing up my things to take with me back to my friend’s house. My journal was exactly where I left it. I opened it, turned it to the next blank page, and wrote three words.
“Jude has leukemia.” Continue reading
Note: Mesa Grill’s New York location is closed. As of posting, the only open locations are in Las Vegas and the Bahamas
On Day Two in New York, the lunch destination was Mesa Grill, one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants.
I’m from Texas, land of beef and all things meat. I was actually quite surprised that a restaurant owned by a man well-known for grilling (and Mexican food, which is something else I’m used to) excited me.
There are a few things that made my time at Mesa Grill very significant in my New York journey — first, Mesa Grill was the only restaurant where we, rather my mom, actually ordered from the Restaurant Week menu (which took place between July 16 through August 10, 2012). Second, Mesa Grill had the best service out of any restaurant I went to in New York. I’ll never forget the wonderful waiter we had — he was so personal and friendly, it was great!
On the restaurant week menu was a spicy salmon tartare as an appetizer, wild striped bass as the entrée, and a vanilla bean custard for dessert. I ordered the Mesa Burger — which had the usual lettuce, tomato, and cheese, but also included grilled Vidalia onion, horseradish mustard, and Southwestern fries.
Back when I was younger, Naruto used to play on Cartoon Network. Every Monday and Tuesday night, I’d watch the show, obsessed with the ninjas’ many powers. I think Naruto started my ninja phase — the show made being a ninja look so fun! I think I hit my ninja peak in second or third grade, with my Halloween costume being a ninja for two years in a row.
Naruto, a twelve-year-old ninja and star of the show, had one recurring obsession: ramen. Especially in the earlier episodes, Naruto would be taken to a ramen-ya very frequently by one of his ninja instructors. I’d watch them sit in the ramen shop, slurping down their ramen as Naruto would keep going on about how good it tasted.
Whenever I saw them do that on TV, I’d suddenly want to have ramen too. I had no idea what ramen tasted like — was it salty? Sweet? Did it taste like udon noodles, or was it closer to a chicken noodle soup? By seventh grade, I was buying instant ramen from a Japanese specialty store. The ramen helped my reputation as the kid who brings foreign (i.e. non-American) lunches all the time. Even though I was eating “ramen,” it didn’t feel the same. Continue reading
“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to EATING.”
http://instagram.com/p/P5gNs-H1IC/
Back on September 22, ten food trucks rolled into the Dallas suburbs as a part of the first annual Haute Wheels Food Truck Fest. I am a big fan of food — in case the foodie trip to New York didn’t make you realize that — so naturally I showed up at the hour it opened. My best friend since preschool, Alessia, came with me and we tackled the food trucks together! Thanks for joining me in my goal to eat at all ten food trucks, even if that didn’t work out for obvious reasons!
Alessia didn’t actually join me until I hit Good Karma Kitchen, although she and her parents ended up eating at most of the same trucks, and our families went back to Coolhaus for a group dessert.
The Ten Food Trucks:
* indicates that I ate here Continue reading
Everyone has that thing that they really like — that “thing” could be anything: video games, notebooks, vintage clothes, cars, Starbucks mugs, music, television, and so forth. For me, that “thing” would be Apple products. From my first iPod touch four years ago to the iPhone 4 that I got two years ago, Apple has always been “that thing” in my life.
As you may know, the iPhone 5 was released yesterday in the United States, as well as countries such as Canada, Japan, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. For weeks, I’ve been ready to just go out and ditch my old iPhone 4 for the new iPhone 5. Since I didn’t have school yesterday, I thought “why not?” and convinced my mom that we should get the iPhone 5 on the release date.
Fine, I wasn’t really thinking “let’s wait in a line on my day off!” I’ll admit that I really just wanted to walk into school on Monday and be the coolest person with the shiny new iPhone 5. (If it means anything, my old phone’s home button wasn’t working, and it was deteriorating rather quickly.)
My morning started off at 5:20 AM with an alarm I forgot I set. Like most days, I turned off the alarm and rolled over to the other side of the bed. Did I really want to get up? Is it really worth it? Most of the time, I’d just answer my inner dialogue with “No, I’m going back to sleep” but today was different.
I trudged out of my bed, got dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt (I assumed it would be cold), and dragged myself downstairs. I filled my Manila travel mug with green tea before my mom and I left the house.
We made it to the mall at about 6 o’clock in the morning. My mom called the Apple Store on Thursday afternoon and she was told that the lines form outside the mall at around 9 PM the day before the release. They open the mall up at 6 AM and the Apple Store itself opens at 8 AM. Personally, I think it’s crazy to be waiting all night outside of a mall, but I guess there are people who want that iPhone 5 a lot more than I do.
After attempting to through a locked door, my mom and I found the correct entrance on the floor below us. I’m not sure how many people were in front of us, but it really seemed like a lot. You couldn’t even see the Apple Store from where we were standing.
I’ve never really been a big fan of coffee. My dad says it’s an “acquired taste,” but I think I like tea more. My first day in New York was definitely a crazy day, filled with walking, eating, and jaywalking. The weirdest part was that it started raining. I’ve always been a fan of the rain, but I really did not want it to show up in my incredibly short trip to New York. My mom and I decided to go to Harney & Sons SoHo for tea, even though that meant running down the streets of SoHo in the rain.
Harney & Sons is a tea company based in Connecticut with tasting rooms in New York City and Millerton (a small town in New York on the border of Connecticut). The New York City location is placed in the trendy SoHo area, surrounded by cast-ironarchitecture, artists’ lofts, and art galleries.
There’s just something so delicious about Italian food.
I’ll admit that I’ve been spoiled very much when it comes to food, especially Italian food. A lot — most — of the Italian restaurants in the Dallas suburbs aren’t really that great. They’re not authentic. Italian food is so easy to mess up, and these “imperfect attempts” ruined Italian food for me.
That was until Eataly.
You know what I don’t do in Dallas very much? Cross the street.
Dallas and its suburbs are deprived of one very important thing: people who walk. The city itself isn’t very friendly to walkers, and nearly everyone has a car and uses it. Personally, I don’t know anyone who uses the train here… yet.
New York, on the other hand, is a walker’s paradise. The first day of my three-day, mini-foodie adventure involved a lot of walking. And I mean a lot. I think I walked about thirty blocks just hours after arriving into the city.
There’s one really easy way to tell if someone is a tourist or a local — all you have to do is watch them walk.
For the last week, I’ve been constantly thinking of what to write. There’s so much that happened in California that I have no idea how to cover — how would I talk about spending time with relatives? As fun as it was, I can’t just write a synopsis of our conversation without the risk of boring everyone (including me) to death. What about New York? I have to get to that sooner or later!
That’s when I realized something: I’m not here to write a diary of my encounters in Los Angeles or San Francisco or northern California! If I wanted to write a diary, then I should’ve done that immediately after each day in California, not nearly a month after returning home!
If I wanted to write about San Francisco or New York for so long, then what should stop me? This is my blog after all, this is my virtual notebook! If I feel that I want to talk about my time in San Francisco and then jump over to New York, who should say I need to write about the not-as-fun-to-write-about parts?
I guess the number one reason I wanted to avoid skipping parts of my journey were because I didn’t feel it was fair to the people, mostly family, I had met during my trip. Is it wrong to purposely cut out my recollection of the time I spent with them? I’ve come to the conclusion that no, it’s not.
That’s why I’m going to just jump right in to one of my favorite cities: San Francisco.
Day 1There’s something I really love about San Francisco. I love the long, curvy streets and the heavy Asian influence. I love the cold, breezy weather and I love walking around in a jacket in July!
The hotel had fortune cookies inside a glass container for their guests. Jude and I each took one — I got 500 points and Jude got a free room upgrade!
The first place we went to was Chinatown. Personally, I think Chinatown is really cool. Jude and I even got those touristy squished pennies from the machines dotted around the area.
In Chinatown, we met with the AADP (Asian American Donor Program) and talked about some of our ideas for getting Asian-Americans to join the bone marrow donor registry while eating really tasty Vietnamese sandwiches from Saigon Sandwich Shop.
Kuya's Notebook 