The iPhone 5 and My Love Affair with Apple

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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.

IMG_1650Fine, 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.

IMG_1654After 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.

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Harney & Sons SoHo

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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.

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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.

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Eataly: Where Italy Meets Its Match

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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.

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Jaywalking Across New York City

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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.

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Two Days in San Francisco

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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.

San Francisco

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There’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!

Chinatown

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.

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Disneyland, A Photo Blog

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To me, Disneyland truly is the happiest place on Earth. I don’t like Disneyland for the rides (I’m still afraid of roller coasters…), but for the experience.

My dream has always been to collect every character’s autograph. While I feel like I’m too old to really try and fulfill it, I realized the only sensible thing to do was pass the torch on to Jude.

Jude searched for characters with a fervor. It was a very familiar eagerness though — it was the same eagerness I had when I searched for characters or tried to go to every country in Epcot!

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Disneyland Hotel and Downtown Disney

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There’s something truly magical about Disney. I’ve always loved that breathtaking way Disney can make you feel like you’re in a different world — their world — whenever you step into any of their Disney properties. I’ve always been (and still am) a huge fan of the Epcot theme park in Disney World. Being someone who loves to travel and experience other cultures, the Epcot World Showcase always felt like a thrilling departure into eleven different countries, even though I wasn’t a fan of the Colonial America area at all.

Honestly, I was skeptical about returning to Disneyland. After all, this was just the Magic Kingdom that I had experienced so many times. After all, I’ve been to every Disney theme park — Anaheim, Orlando, Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo — on the planet, except for the unopened Shanghai Disneyland. (It’ll give me a reason to visit mainland China one day.)

Day 3, part 3: The Disneyland Hotel

Stepping into the Disneyland Hotel brought back those feelings I used to experience when I’d step into a Disney themed location. Honestly, how would you not be happy about a lobby filled with teacups instead of couches?

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Our room was in the Adventure Tower — there is also a Frontier Tower and a Fantasy Tower. I won’t go into too much detail about the room, but I noticed that there was a quote spread across the two beds:

“A dream is a wish your heart makes when you’re fast asleep.” 

My dad and Jude wanted to go to the pool. As I’ve said many times throughout this blog, I’m not a huge fan of swimming (probably because I tend to sink, not float). After some initial prodding, I went to the pool area with them.

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Because we arrived in the evening, the pools were quite cold. I wanted to turn back — swimming in cold water just isn’t enjoyable — but Jude wanted to go to the water slides. Continue reading

Orochon Ramen (and more J-Town)

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Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York all have something in common: each of these three cities fooled me into believing that I had somehow left the country and I was actually traveling abroad.

J-Town was when it started.

I’ve always been a big fan of Japan and many things Japanese. I definitely wouldn’t consider myself as part of that awkward obsessed-with-Japan-because-of-anime crowd that seems to be growing (“Japanophilia”). From less-than-a-year old to three-and-a-half, I lived in Tokyo — my dad worked there for about six years altogether — so naturally, I’m curious about the country I spent my infanthood in.

When my Tita Giselle, who was at the mini-reunion in La Puente, offered us a choice between J-Town (Japantown, or Little Tokyo) and K-Town (Koreatown), I naturally chose J-Town as my go-to place. Not only that, but my dad prefers Japanese food over Korean food.

We went to the Weller Court Shopping Area, a multi-level outdoor shopping center. In the parking lot, Tita Giselle gave us the infamous, small box of donuts she promised me we’d get.

As we looked for a restaurant, there were three main contenders: a curry restaurant, a Japanese barbecue restaurant, and a ramen restaurant. The ramen place, Orochon Ramen, was featured on Man v. Food, so I thought we might as well go there! Besides, I haven’t really had any good ramen; I’ve only had the instant ramen that you can buy at the Asian supermarket.

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Becoming a Dual Citizen

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There’s something I have to admit. I’d been looking forward to this part of my trip to Los Angeles the most. (Well, it was second only to Disneyland, so close enough.)

That sounds completely crazy, I know. Who in their right mind would look forward to going to a consulate of the Philippines for a half day? Why, that would be me of course!

Why was I at the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles? To become a dual citizen!

Prior to 2003, the Philippines didn’t recognize dual citizenship. When my mom was naturalized, she had to give up her Filipino citizenship to become an American. As a result, I was born as an American citizen.

Because of the Citizenship Retention and Re-Acquisition Act of 2003 (Republic Act No. 9225) signed on 29 August 2003, natural-born citizens of the Philippines who lost their citizenship because of naturalization in a foreign country are now able to re-acquire their Filipino citizenship and become dual citizens. Not only that, but the unmarried children (under 18) of a Filipino who re-acquires their citizenship can also become dual citizens.

Filipinos who re-acquire their citizenship would have the right to vote in Philippine national elections, the right to own land and property in the Philippines, the right to engage in business or commerce as a Filipino, the right to travel bearing a Filipino passport, and other rights and privileges enjoyed by Filipino citizens.

Applications for dual citizenship were from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM and oath-taking is scheduled at 12:00 noon. “I want to get there right at 9 AM so we can get the paperwork done quickly,” my mom said.

We arrived at the Philippine Consulate shortly after 9:00 AM, just missing the targeted time by about 10 minutes. There was a window with the words “Dual Citizenship” in the back of the room, and a line was forming behind the window.

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A-Frame and Uncle Steve

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After driving from La Puente, we stayed with my mom’s college friend (Uncle Steve) who lives in Torrance.

For dinner, he brought us to a place in Culver City called A-Frame — a trendy Asian-fusion restaurant created by Roy Choi, the creator and chef behind the wildly-popular Korean-style Kogi food trucks. A-Frame serves what could be considered “modern picnic food,” with menu items such as furikake kettle corn, baby back ribs, beer can chicken, and pandesal.

A few of my favorites from our order were the kitchen fries, the baby back ribs, and a whole beer can chicken.

The kitchen fries weren’t what the average person would consider “fries.” Instead, they were better. The kitchen fries were slices of purple Okinawan potato, yam, and Korean sweet potato topped with sea salt and served with a kimchi sour cream sauce. The purple Okinawan potato was surprisingly addictive. Unfortunately, I probably won’t be having them for a long time.

The baby back ribs were delicious! I’ve never had better ones in my life! Personally, I’m not a huge fan of barbecue — ribs included — which is ridiculous since I live in Texas. Texans eat barbecue, and it makes it incredibly awkward for me whenever I go to someone’s house or some social gathering and they serve barbecue. Even the high school I’m attending this fall wanted to have a new student barbecue! (It ended up raining so I didn’t go.)

These ribs, on the other hand, tasted good. I didn’t have that feeling like I wanted to throw up after taking my first bite! The baby back ribs served at A-Frame were glazed in hoisin-chili sauce — hoisin is used in char siu (Chinese-flavored barbecued meat) — and had a much more Korean flavor.

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The beer can chicken was also surprisingly good. The chicken was served with kimchi, century egg, and salsa roja, and salsa verde. However, both sauces had flavors much more reminiscent to Indian cuisine — the red sauce was stronger and spicier while the green sauce had a cooler, mintier taste.

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For dessert, Uncle Steve tried to bring us to an ice cream place near Venice Beach. Unfortunately, the place’s generator broke so they were closed for the night. We decided to walk through Venice Beach since we were so close — I wanted to get a picture of the beach while the sun was setting — and I was in for a big surprise.

Venice Beach is full of people with diverse lifestyles and interests. It’s absolutely crazy! Walk through the boardwalk at night and you’ll find palm readings, people singing and playing guitars, flashing lights, people on skateboards flying past you, street food, and so much more! Venice Beach, while beautiful in the daytime and probably more “normal,” is a prime location for great people watching (if you’re not afraid to see a few startling types of people).

My dad pointed out that the guy with the turban who was playing music had been there since he was in college. My dad’s been out of college for a very long time. In the end, we decided to ditch Venice Beach and go somewhere else. (Unfortunately, the sun set before we could get out to the beach itself.)

Just a little side note, but the MasterChef episode that aired on July 2 (“Top 12 Compete”) took place in Venice Beach. The episode involved three teams in a food truck battle. Each team was assigned a different cuisine (Mexican, American, and Indian) and competed to see which truck would make the most money. I thought that was interesting since I also happened to spot a food truck, albeit it was parked and closed, in Venice Beach.

Uncle Steve ended up bringing us to a shaved ice place, since he wanted us to see what shaved ice is. It’s such an interesting concept, and I think it would sell really well in Dallas. (Hear that entrepreneurs?)

The shaved ice place he brought us to sold a regular sized bowl for $3.50 with 50¢ for each topping and 25¢ for an extra drizzled sauce. Not only that, but the place was cash only.

Fun Fact: The total cost per bowl (including the cost for spoons) for shaved ice comes out to only 27 cents!

In the morning, I woke up to a very good breakfast consisting of toast, eggs, bacon, strawberries, blueberries, and orange juice prepared by Uncle Steve. It tasted delicious! Honestly, I didn’t expect for him to be good at making breakfast!

After eating breakfast, we rushed out of the house to get to the Philippine Consulate.