Last month, I went to Los Angeles for Sandra‘s bridal shower. This month, she actually got married! She had family-only wedding in Vegas and had a casual reception for friends the next weekend in Culver City. Kelvin and I spent the weekend there to attend her friendception, hang out with some folks on our TF2 server, and meet up with Jack, Kelvin’s friend since forever and best man at our wedding.
Speaking of my wedding, Sandra was maid-of-honor at my wedding, and she also caught the bouquet. She’s the first of my friends to get married after me, so she has officially fulfilled ancient wedding lore and tradition.
Friday
We drove to SFO and used the airport’s long term parking. Our flight was slightly delayed, but the plane trip was quick, and we were in LAX before 10PM. We went to Alamo to pick up our Kia… Rio I think? It was a dinky red car I forgot to take a picture of. Kelvin “navigated” as I drove us to our hotel, the Four Points Sheraton in Culver City, where we dropped off our luggage.
They didn’t have any rooms left with one king bed, so we were stuck with two queens. Room was clean, and the way they label all the amenities was cute. Yay for free bottled water! Bathroom was TINY tho.
For dinner, the closest place we could find that was open late was Manna, a Korean BBQ place at the Westfield Mall (AKA Fox Hills Mall) across the street from our hotel. The kitchen was closing soon, so we had to rush our dinner a bit. I wasn’t that hungry, so we just split one order of beef. Despite this and the late hour, we still got good service.
The restaurant is very non-Asian people friendly: nice decor, friendly servers, and instructions on the menu on how to eat everything. The types of appetizers and mild flavors also catered towards non-Asians, and they had some stuff I’ve never had at a Korean place before (cooked eggs, salad with a strong horseradish dressing, wraps for the meat). The kimchee wasn’t that great, but everything else was pretty good. Kelvin liked the milder food and the fancy grills with vents built into the sides.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel and straight to bed.
Saturday
Because Kelvin was starting a new job on Monday, he wanted to start getting up early this weekend. Why he didn’t start this during the three weeks he had off, I have no idea. We watched some House MD until it was brunch-ish time. For brunch, I Yelped up local restaurants and found Green Peas down Sepulveda Blvd.
Pretty inexpensive, probably because portions aren’t very big. I don’t like large portions anyway, so this was a good thing. I had bacon scrambled eggs, which was simple and yummy. Fruit salad was fresh, though the toast was dry and needed butter (which I was too lazy to ask for). Kelvin got an omelette and wasn’t impressed; he said everything was bland. I think he’s just thrown off by the fact that their menu has a lot of healthy, vegan dishes.
After lunch, we just hung out in the hotel room, watching poker tournaments on TV. We contemplated driving 40 minutes to an Asian arcade to check out BlazBlue Continuum Shift, but in the end, we were too lazy. Around 5ish, we went out to the nearest Baskin Robbins for a milkshake. I noticed the area was familiar, which meant we were near Sandra’s place. I called her to see if she was already at the friendception site setting up, and she was. She told us we can come early and hang if we’re bored, so we did.
Sandra and Owen held their reception at Bluebird Cafe, a Mexican restaurant/caterer plus cupcake bakery. I already visited this place with Sandra last time I was in LA. It has a nice, open area with picnic tables, very rustic and not cafeteria-like. There’s an open indoors space, a small stage for a band, a bar area, and outdoors firepit-thingy. Very appropriate setting for Sandra and Owen’s shindig.
The only unfortunate thing was the weather, which was abnormally cold for LA this time of year. Same thing happened last time I came to visit, but this time was a little extra strange because the night before and after was typical LA warm. I, along with all the other out-of-towners, checked the weather report beforehand, but even the weatherman couldn’t forecast this weirdly cold weather. Thankfully, Bluebird has a few heatlamps, so I spent most of the evening huddled near one.
The Mexican buffet was yummy, though I didn’t eat as much as I should have. We played games for most of the night, and I can’t stand eating finger foods and playing board games at the same time. I mainly ate appetizers before gaming and didn’t eat anything during the games. I saw some delicious-looking tacos, but managed not to eat any of them. I made sure not to miss out on cupcakes though, which were good just like the last time I had them.
Deborah dealing next to Justin
I’m not particularly social, so most of the night I played games with people I already knew: Sandra’s brother and his gf plus old classmates from high school (a couple I haven’t seen in 10 years… wow, I’m old now). We played Texas Hold ‘Em and Settlers of Catan, both of which I won somehow. Settlers of Catan was pretty fun, but Kelvin still manages to bitch about the game even though we (as a team, but he did everything pretty much) won the game.
(Longest) road to victory = army of sheep
I was a little anxious seeing old high school people, but everything turned out to be great! I’m really happy for Sandra. Owen is super awesome; I approve! Congratulations again to Sandra and Owen!
Sunday
I had a difficult time sleeping. Because we had two queen beds, we slept in a different bed each night for kicks. You’d think the beds would be the same, but I was much more comfortable the first night than the second night. Not sure what was up with that. I thought Kelvin would wake us up early, but I guess he also slept terribly as we both slept in a bit.
We met up with folks from our TF2 server for lunch. Bean, being the super-nice guy he is, with Draconis picked us up at our hotel in Culver City all the way from Arcadia to eat lunch back in Arcadia. Now, if you know nothing about LA geography like I did, let me tell you that it’s about 30-40min without traffic. And there’s always traffic in LA. I was glad I didn’t have to deal with driving that because LA roads and drivers scare the piss out of me. I told Sandra the day before about our plans for Sunday, and the conversation went something like this:
Judy: Yeah, so our friends from the server are taking us to Din Tai Fung for lunch.
Sandra: Din Tai Fung, omigawd, I told you about that place before. I love Din Tai Fu- wait a sec, that’s really far.
Judy: It’s okay, our friend’s picking us up. He lives in Arcadia, too.
Sandra: Dude, that’s crazy. This guy is crazy.
Judy: He’s used to it, he commutes from Arcadia to Irvine.
Sandra: Dude, you’re going to end up in a tub of ice in Tijuana without your kidneys. Take my pepper spray.
So, I had to text Sandra throughout the day to assure her I still had all my organs. Anyway, Bean and Draconis aren’t black market organ-dealers, kidnappers, or serial killers. I already met Draconis from GDC, and Avery has met Bean before and told me he’s cool, so I wasn’t particularly worried then either. Not that Bean isn’t weird, because he is. Along with the games he said he’d help me get, he got me this kid’s book he saw while shopping for goodies for a friend’s baby:
Spoiler alert for the book: it’s about a freaky little finger puppet duck who wants to be your friend and play with you. Yeah, THANKS BEAN. Anyways…
Bean drove us to Arcadia via 134, I think? Draconis seemed scared for his life, as Bean drives like a, um, typical BMW driver. (btw, a beaner driving a Beamer? lolol) I noticed the drive is a bit more scenic up here than down by West LA. However, even the huge mountains can’t escape the haze.
I’ve never been to the northeast part of the LA area, but I’ve been told it’s Asian People Central, and it pretty much lives up to that. It was very reminiscent of Cupertino; there’s even a Shinbala! (I just read those Yelp reviews… they apparently don’t have stinky tofu like the one in Cupertino! WTF is up with that??) It’s like I’m at home! Din Tai Fung was busy, but they got to our number quickly. We were still waiting for eMo (who introduced everyone to this place), Butters, and his gf (AKA CompanionCube) to arrive though, so we chatted outside until everyone arrived.
They seated us at a large table upstairs. We ordered a bunch of dishes, including their specialty xiao-long-baos. Their XLBs? REALLY GOOD. Lived up to all the hype Sandra gave it. Light, just right amount of saltiness and flavor, juicy. The broth wasn’t completely scalding, though Draconis still managed to burn his mouth shoving one immediately into his face newb-style. Their other dishes (fried noodles, won tons, dumplings) were also very good, though they have the weirdest take on shao mai I’ve ever seen.
I forgot to take pics of the food, so for yummy pics, check out Sandra’s food blog.
Service was a bit on the slow side, as food would trickle in one dish at a time. Everyone would still be starving after we annihilated one dish, so we kept ordering more. In the end, we ordered too much. Even then, I thought the price was pretty reasonable. You know what’s really strange? The servers are actually friendly and not grumpy. They smile at you and say thanks when you leave. I think the joint loses some authenticity points right there.
After lunch, we grabbed dessert at a nearby Yogurtland. I also ate Yogurtland last time I was in LA. Whenever I get dessert in Cupertino, it’s Yogurtland. I think I need to broaden my frozen yogurt horizons… but Yogurtland is sooo good and cheap.
Bean really packed his cup in. I made him let me pay for it in thanks for
the games. Only what… 20 more cups of yogurt before we’re even?
After dessert, Jack met up with us in Arcadia. Everybody went to Dave & Busters to kill time before our flight. I’ve never been to Dave & Busters before in the Bay Area, but I imagine this one was very similar. We played several arcade games that netted me 800 tickets, which I spent on cheap-o shot glasses for me, Bean, and Draconis.
Some multiplayer trivia game about people I’ve never heard of…
random guessing makes me a winner!
It was convenient that Jack met up with us, since he could take us back to our hotel and Bean won’t have made four Arcadia-Culver City trips. Though, I almost had to call Bean to take us back when the door handle to Jack’s ride (a hand-me-down minivan, haha) got stuck on open and the door wouldn’t shut. Kelvin and Jack probably spent a good five minutes (felt longer than that) jiggling the handle and all the latches in the door before the door finally managed to lock shut with the handle still depressed open. And during our ride back, the handle magically and randomly returned to its shut state, and everything was back to normal. That was exciting.
Jack the soccer mom
Traffic on the 10 was crappy, but we made it back with enough time to drop off Sandra’s wedding gift (I left it in the hotel room the night before) at her apartment before getting to LAX for our flight. And that was our trip to LA! Much thanks to everyone who took the time to hang out with us and take us around!
New thing I learned today: Sepulveda Boulevard is the longest street in Los Angeles.
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