If you didn’t, you might want to read part 1.
Angela (who went to Rodney’s high school in South Carolina as well as MIT and is also now living in SF) joined us at Urban Outfitters, which was convenient since she was right outside the store when she called Rodney to see what he was up to. We all went back to Rodney’s place, where we pondered dinner options. Looking at Yelp reviews, all I could figure out was that I wanted to go to Coco Bang, which had gotten okay reviews for soju and was only 0.2 miles away from Rodney’s place. The only reason the place hadn’t gotten better reviews was because people had expected it to be a restaurant too, since it has “Korean BBQ” on it’s sign. Apparently, the place doesn’t have much of a dinner selection and is more of a drinking hangout… at least according to Yelp people. We couldn’t decide on a place to eat, so we just walked in the general direction of Coco Bang and hoped we saw some place that looked promising. After walking around a bit with more indecision, Angela made the final decision of going to a Thai restaurant called Ar Roi.
Walking into Ar Roi, I was impressed with the decor. I don’t think Rodney or Angela were particularly impressed, so I’m guessing I’m just used to all the South Bay Thai restaurants that have incredibly tacky decor. We were seated in the back of the very narrow restaurant (another characteristic of SF restaurants I’m not used to). Despite the decent decor, the prices were reasonable and not much more than other Thai places I’ve been to. We each ordered a different curry, and aside from Kelvin, we ordered various drinks. All the curries were pretty delicious and had good portions. I think the only complaint was that the veggies that came with some of the curries were a bit on the few side; I think my yellow curry only had potatoes. Servers were decent, and the bathroom was clean. Overall, a good Thai restaurant.
During dinner, I showed Angela my engagement ring up close, and I was really amused with her reaction… because it was almost identical to when I first saw the ring. Looking at the ring on my finger, she had the normal it’s-very-nice reaction, but when she saw it from the side, I think she was pretty legitimately impressed based on her comments and close studying of the ring. And being an engineer from MIT, I think it’s fair to say she’s got some level of nerd in her, so I’m glad someone understands why I think the ring is cool in a techie kind of way. I think Kelvin got more validation for his ring choice from (Angela said she “approved” of the ring, hee.).
After dinner, Angela had to leave to meet up with her brother, so Rodney, Kelvin and I went over to Coco Bang (less than a block away from the restaurant). Kind of a hole-in-the-wall joint, and it was only 9PM, so nobody was there. All the tables are separated with little walls covered with ads of pretty happy Korean girls with glasses of soju. High on the back wall, there’s projector projecting Korean and American music videos for background music. Yay, for K-pop.
Speaking of K-pop, if you haven’t heard of Stephen Colbert’s intense rivalry with K-pop star Rain, this video is a must-watch:
The nice Korean waiter said we could sit wherever we want, and he gave us menus. We were here to drink soju, a mild Korean alcohol that is often mixed with sweet stuff to go down easier for alcohol wussies like me. In fact, the menu even highlighted this soju perk, mentioning soju as the “most no taste” drink. We ordered a bottle of yogurt soju and an order of kimchee fried rice as an appetizer (to lightly mask the fact we weren’t just there to drink soju). The kimchee fried rice was actually pretty good, but we were hella stuffed from dinner so we didn’t eat much of it. The Yelp reviews make mention of a spicy chicken that’s also supposed to be good, but we avoided it as it sounded heavy (and reviews also mentioned from not-so-pleasant after-effects from spicy chicken the next day).
Our first bottle of soju was pretty good. In fact, it was REALLY good. It tasted like… yogurt drink. I could barely taste any of the alcohol, IF there was any alcohol. Either there wasn’t any alcohol in the first bottle, or the guy in the back making to soju was increasing the soju-to-juice ratio with each successive bottle. Maybe it was some weird trick to get us all hooked on the first bottle and order more. And we did order more. Next up was apple soju, which was stronger and not as yummy as the yogurt one. (I also happen to really like yogurt drinks, always get them in Taiwan. Yan-leh-duo ftw!) For the apple soju, they also made too much, so there was an extra half-bottle of it, which the waiter said I specifically had to drink (which I did). We ordered another yogurt one, which was DEFINITELY stronger than the first bottle we got. The last bottle we ordered was mango, which was really sweet and mostly drunk by Rodney since Kelvin and I weren’t into the flavor. Around this time, nice Korean waiter guy brought us cheese corn on the house. It was something we saw on the menu but didn’t get because it sounded sketchy. And… it was pretty sketchy. It’s just… cheese on corn. Gwoss. We tried a little bit, felt a little ill, and couldn’t eat anymore. It was nice of them to give us free food, but it made me feel bad we wasted it.
After four bottles of soju, we couldn’t handle anymore. We probably shouldn’t have eaten so much at the Thai place, as it was inhibiting our getting-buzzed-from-soju attempt (which is already tough since soju isn’t very strong). I was both full from Thai food and soju, but I was at least a little buzzed. While it was nice to have background music, the music video player thing ended up on a DVD that only had ONE music video on it. And it’s not just ANY music video; it’s some music video promoting some Korean cell phone thing called AnyCall. So there’s also like 50 variations of this music video/cell phone commercial, playing the same damn song and club scene OVER and OVER again. Totally maddening.
Kelvin and Rodney, you guys might want to skip the next Youtube video if you want to preserve your sanity:
Imagine hearing and seeing parts of that video (particularly 4:04 to 5:15) repeatedly in various iterations ranging from 30 secs to two minutes in length, all ending with some Korean chick whispering “AnyCall”. Ugh. Despite this minor issue, I still really enjoyed Coco Bang; decent soju and food (aside from cheese corn :P) and good service. I’d certainly recommend it if you’re looking for some soju in Nob Hill.
After Coco Bang, Rodney wanted to take us to Cantina since we’ve just warmed up on soju. We went to Rodney’s place to drop off the leftover kimchee rice, and then I decided I didn’t want to leave because I was tired from pigging out and felt like water/soju balloon. So instead of going to get more drinks at Cantina, we did some more boring-Judy-like and played Settlers of Catan. (If only we could do both…) Rodney had just gotten the game and had been eager to play it. The last time I played was at a conference in high school with Chris’ board. Back then, Chris had also just gotten the set, and we were breaking it in with some really annoying guy plus a fourth person I don’t remember. I teamed up with anonymous fourth person to destroy annoying guy, but unfortunately Chris ended up being shafted in the process. Yeah, haven’t seen that board game since. Anyways, we played Settlers until 2AM with me as the winnah. Kelvin somehow managed to only have the initial two settlements throughout the entire game yet manage to get the longest road.
Hmmm… I think I’ll give up on recapping the rest of the weekend. Summary of summary pt 3: Ate dim sum in Chinatown, rode train home, went to Kelvin’s Dad’s place for Father’s Day dinner, played with Naomi a lot.





New thing I learned today: Pompholyx is a common skin inflammation that occurs on hands (and sometimes feet) characterized by small, bubble-like blisters.
If anybody is wondering why I’m wearing my ring on my right hand, don’t worry; I’m still engaged :P However, on Monday, this small bubble of skin formed underneath my ring on my left ring finger. I’ve gotten this weird bubble thing before, and I usually just pop it cuz I’m bored. So I popped this one, which was a bad idea because the next day, two more formed next to it. I’ve never had more than one bubble, which is weird. And it’s annoying and itchy. So I’ve moved my engagement ring to my right ring finger, and my brass rat is on vacation in the meantime. I’m pretty sure it’s not an allergic reaction to the ring; most white gold mixtures don’t contain nickel (which I am allergic to), and I’ve already wore this ring for over 2 months. I’m guessing something yucky got caught in the ring and I had an unhappy reaction. I’ve wiped my ring down with alcohol, and I think my finger was unhappiest yesterday, as it seems to be less itchy today. My fingers and ring placement should be back to normal soon.
I’ve put a picture of my messed up finger in the spoiler thingy (which will make no different to people using RSS feed readers).
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