July 29, 2006

I went up to my uncle's medical office to visit him and see how things work in the medical office. What I got was quite an experience. So take a seat, grab a drink, relax and read at your leisure. It's a long post.

Sunday - July 23

My flight was scheduled for departure from Oakland to Ontario at 6:10pm. When it was around 4:50pm, my brother and I headed out to the Oakland International Airport, where he parked and escorted me to Southwest, where we said our goodbyes. Already having grabbed my boarding pass online the previous day, I went straight to the end of the line for the Security Checkpoint. After 15 minutes of waiting, I finally reached the TSA x-ray machine. There were no signs regarding what to do, nor any agents that were telling us what to do. Instead, what ensued was a chaotic mess where my line ended up taking a much longer time, due to the inefficiencies of the system of 1 metal detector and 2 x-ray scanners. I took off my shoes just like everybody else (there were no signs that told me to), and passed the test. I headed towards the gate where my plane was to depart. It was full of people, and it was hot and humid due to the heat emanating from all the people.

At 5:50pm, Group A was set to board the plane. My boarding pass had the letter A on it, so I got into line. As my ticket began to scan, an error popped up and the agent looked at my ticket. "Next flight," he said. With 20 minutes before the flight, our plane was not even in the terminal yet. Being used to international flights, I was dumbfounded by the lack of order for domestic flights. When 6:10 came around, I finally boarded the plane, where I just sat wherever I wanted to.

A SoCal native of Riverside sat on my row. "Sup, duude." I nodded at him. As I minded my own business, he continued to speak to me. "Man, you from around here?" I said yes, and he continued, "Duude, I lived up here for just a year. Ended up having a son from a one-night stand. Ahh, I wouldn't trade it for the world, but I gotta fly up here twice a month. That's a lot of money." Thinking to myself that he obviously doesn't know the cost of actually having to raise the kid, I told him, "Well, you'll pay for whatever you feel is worthwhile." He agreed, and began to look through the Sky Mall catalog. I began working on a crossword and through the flight, he would keep telling me to look at "interesting" things, such as a 32 inch Hyundai TV for $1000, a mechanical shark, and the world's largest crossword puzzle. After an hour, I finally got off the plane.

I gave my uncle a call and told him I was off the plane, and he told me to wait for him at the Southwest entrance, where he would come by in 10 minutes. As I waited, 10 minutes turned into 20, which is more or less understandable. When I got in, Uncle asked me whether I had eaten yet. I hadn't, and so he brought me to eat some Vietnamese Pho. I ordered the number one, as always, but to my dismay, there were no beef balls in the soup. In addition, the Ontario air was hot, and the boiling soup did not help. As we ate, he looked at me and observed my Asian fro. "Do you need a haircut? Your hair is very long. Don't you cut it in Berkeley?" I told him that Berkeley fees were fairly high so I would do it in Stockton instead, but he insisted that I get my haircut that night. It was almost 9pm, and I could not imagine a salon open at that hour. He called and after some Mandarin speaking, he said that we would be going soon. We left the place and headed out.

We pulled into a residential area, and I figured that he must have forgotten about the haircut and was going home. However, he pulled into some strange driveway. I wondered, "Did they move? Why did they downgrade to such a ghetto area?" As we got out of the car, my uncle greeted the lady and man in the backyard. The dog was barking ferociously and I saw the man holding the dog back, probably because it would have attacked us. "Uh oh," I thought. "We ARE getting our hair cut... but where are we?" The lady led us further into her backyard, where she opened up a dirty shed, the door squeaking as she opened it. She turned on the light and inside was a grungy looking home salon. I say in the chair and said the usual, "2 on the sides, and a 3 on top." After a blank stare, my uncle told me, "Um, she doesn't know what that means."

Haircut Shed

Seeing trouble ahead, I told her to "cut just a little." She then proceeded to use the crappy scissors with the geared teeth, and in doing so, probably tore out a lot of my hair instead of cutting it. When she was done, it looked somewhat crappy, and felt uncomfortable. Realizing she had forgotten about the sideburns, I told uncle to tell her to clip my sideburns. Then, she pulled out the killer razor. She began to shave everything else, BUT the sideburns until the end. When it was all said and done, I looked pretty fobby and was extremely disappointed in the cut. It's not anybody's fault, but it's just too hard to explain to somebody exactly how to cut your hair if there is a large language barrier. She asked if I wanted any more extra and I said no to avoid any further destruction of my hair. As I took a seat to wait for my uncle's turn, I looked around the shed and saw random things crawling around. One looked like a 1/2 inch tan mouse scampering around, until it suddenly took flight and slammed into the chair. As I looked away, I suddenly felt something hit my shirt and I looked down to see an insect flapping around half-dead. I was startled; and as we got up to leave, uncle told me to quickly get in the car while he tried to give her a tip. As I exited the shed, the dog once again had to be restrained from attacking and I moved quickly to the car. We got in and drove home.

That night, there was nothing on TV except the Miss Universe Pageant, of which I saw Miss Japan wearing the craziest national costume. If you missed it, here's a crappy picture. She was definitely a beauty. Then, my aunt put in a movie for me to watch, "The Emperor and the Assassin." It was completely in Mandarin, and after a while, I could not watch it anymore. It was not my kind of movie, but the main reason was because I couldn't understand anything anyways.

I went to sleep that night at around 11pm, but I kept waking up itchy and hot. Such is Ontario weather.

Monday - July 24

I woke up at 7 o'clock. I went into the kitchen, expecting some sort of Asian breakfast, something we've eaten everytime we visit my aunt and uncle. However, there was no breakfast available. So, I went into the living room and took a quick nap awaiting to go to the medical center. After a bit, my aunt poked her head into the living room and told me that my breakfast was ready. As I went to the dining area, I looked at my breakfast to see a sandwich. "We don't have any butter or anything else, so we'll have to use avocado instead." I took a bite of it, and it was initially pretty good. However, 3 bites later, I overdosed on avocado and the sandwich became harder to eat. Seeing that the food was just meant to be something to eat before work, I ate the rest. It was perfectly understandable to me that they simply did not have any time in the morning to make a large meal.

Auntie took me to the medical office, which opens at 8:30am, where she discovered that both of the front desk receptionists would not be able to make it into work. That meant that my aunt would be the main employee and that I would have to help her do a lot of stuff on my first day. Finally, an employee showed up. Then, my aunt asked what her name was. Shocked, I realized that it was also HER first day on the job too! Not good.

My aunt then stacked a pile of medical records in front of where I sat, and she told me to file papers and call patients to tell them about their test results. Both intimidated and confused, she walked me through the first one and I quickly grasped how to accomplish my duties. It wasn't that hard, and I was able to learn most of the things within a few hours. Luckily for us, another employee named Ofelia came to save the day. I'm not sure whether it was the red streaks in her hair, the nose/lib stubs, the scrubs she was wearing, or just her, but she looked cute. She was pleasant to talk to, and was my age, a major bonus. Her kids are adorable too, from the picture I saw. Anyway, just having somebody to laugh with made the day a lot better.

Lunch #1

Lunchtime came around and auntie told me that food was available in the kitchen. I went in to find rice mixed with grains and reddish bean looking things (I guess it's red rice or something), some string peas, some leftover filet mignon, and three eggs: one each for my aunt, my uncle, and myself. I took a little bit of each and ate it in the office. It was a simple meal, and again, was just something to hold us over for the rest of the day.

After lunch, Ofelia, who normally only works mornings, came back to help out due to the shorthanded staff. I quickly finished with the rest of the files that were on my desk. As I lounged in the chair, looking at my computer screen, I heard a plop on my desk. I turned to find another stack of medical charts to complete. It was hectic once again, having to answer phones and taking appointments while putting them on hold if they spoke Spanish or Mandarin. Finally, 5pm came around and the day was finished. However, there was still stuff left to be done by my uncle and aunt. I sat around for an hour and a half, waiting for them to finish. Finally, we went out to eat.

We drove a little bit to a Japanese restaurant. Having not eaten Japanese in a long time due to China, I was pretty happy. Then, I saw the name of the place: Ken's Japanese Restaurant. Uh oh.. not very Japanese sounding. When we walked in, my aunt was greeted by the workers in Mandarin. Double Uh oh... extremely not very Japanese. My expectations dropped even further as we were seated at a table by my aunt's "friend" without menus. She simply dictated to her what she wanted to eat, all in Mandarin.

Turns out that the place was owned by my uncle/aunt's neighbors. The lady was not Japanese (she was probably Taiwanese), but the husband/owner was. At least the sushi chef who bought the fish was fresh. Then, I learned that he only picks the freshest ingredients. This should be true of any Japanese restaurant. What we ate that night was as follows: a fried pumpkin roll, a plate of 4 types sashimi (sake/salmon, maguro/tuna, red snapper, hamachi/yellowtail), a type of Japanese stirfry noodle, a bowl of steamed spinach, ginger/tofu/seaweed/clam soup, edamame, and a shio saba (salt grilled mackere). The food was pretty good, but I was sad because I was not able to order any of my nigiri favorites.

After dinner, we drove back to the medical office so that my uncle and aunt could finish up their stuff. I spent an hour talking with friends on the phone as they worked. Afterwards, we went home.

Nothing was on TV again, so I watched South Park and declined to watch a movie with my aunt. Went to sleep again, only to continue getting bitten and waking up overheated.

Tuesday - July 25

Tuesday came about and at 7, I got dressed and headed to the kitchen. Again, all that was available was bread and avocado. Wondering why the bread was so strangely different and not as tasty, I looked at the brand name, which read, "Organic Flourless Sprouted 7-Grain Bread." Not too great, but whatever. I put some avocado on there and ate it as I had the previous day. However, this day I would drink some fresh grapefruit juice to go along with the food. This, of course, led to my poop being green for the day.

Went to the office, where - to our delight - one of the front desk receptionists had returned to work. Her name is Mindy, and she handled a bunch of stuff that auntie had the previous day. Of course, I still had my stack of work due to one other worker not being there so I was kept busy. She is attractive, engaged, and has a baby. Her specialty at the office, from what I understand, is doing referrals for Dr. Chan, so that things would go smoothly. By lunchtime, I already saw how much more smoothly the office ran with more workers.

Lunch #2

As lunchtime came around again, I once again found myself eating the same thing as yesterday. Only one egg out of the three from the previous day had been eaten, and so I ate another egg, leaving the last one for my aunt and uncle. I ate very little and went back to work until dinnertime.

At dinner, we went back to Ken's Japanese Restaurant. This time, however, my uncle had a meeting to go to, so it was just my aunt and me eating there. I ordered my own food this time: saba, aji, scallop, and hamachi toro. There was no anago, nor amaebi. My aunt ordered some salmon skin rice soup. It was very good. The fish, unlike the day before, seemed much nicer, probably because the types of fish I had ordered were actually to my liking. The hamachi toro was okay, and the Aji was about the same, but the saba was especially delicious. I really felt that it was done very well and the marination did not let me down.

Burrito Roll

Next, however, was a fairly different thing. My aunt talks in a mix of Mandarin/Cantonese/English to me, and sometimes it's hard to understand her. I can make out a few things so I can get the jist of what she's saying sometimes. This time, she went off in Mandarin and then said, "Burrito." Confused as hell, I asked her to clarify, and she told me that she was going to order burrito. Finally it came and it was the weirdest maki I have ever seen. It was maguro, avocado, imitation crab, ebi, and rice wrapped in a layer of rice tortilla. Not that great. I finished off the meal with some green tea ice cream. It was much sweeter than most green tea ice cream I've eaten, but it was still pretty good.

Went back to the office, and back home to watch South Park. Watched a pretty good episode.

Wednesday - July 26

Waking up at 7 once again, I knew that I would once again face avocado grain food. I simply could not eat more than one slice this time, some of which actually went to the dog.

I brought all my stuff with me, because I would be flying home later that day. I printed out my boarding pass. That day, my uncle would have to have a meeting, so he couldn't see any patients in the afternoon. That, of course, meant a fairly busy morning, and luckily both Ofelia and Mindy were able to help out a lot. As I finished up the stuff, I learned about HMOs, PPOs, and other sorts of medical insurance.

At lunchtime, we were supposed to head out for food. However, my uncle had to work a bit late due to an overload of patients, and such, we had to once again eat the stuff before. I ate the last egg.

After lunch, there were no patients, and so I spent a lot of time looking up things on the internet, and playing Hearts. At 5:30pm, we headed out to Ken's again. For the third night in a row, I would be eating Japanese food. Before I left, my uncle gave me a bunch of pens and two usb key pens.

This time I simply ordered saba, shiro maguro, and hamachi kama. I was pleased with all but the shiro maguro. Also on the table was a cold soba, a spider roll, the same 4 sashimi types on the plate, edamame, and gyoza. After dinner, they drove me to the airport.

Unlike the Oakland airport, the Ontario airport is quick, clean, and pleasant. As I entered into the Security checkpoint, I was greeted instantly by friendly TSA agents. The first lady to greet me asked me nicely to place any video equipment into a bin, and that it is recommended for me to take off my shoes and place them in the x-ray as well. I was confused to hear that shoe removal was a recommendation, and feeling confident that the TSA agent was genuinely nice, I inquired as I placed my shoes in the bin, "Why is it a recommendation? What if somebody were to go through the metal detector with shoes on?" She told me that they would have to look at the size of the shoe sole, and that if people did not put it through the x-ray, that they would have to take a swab and wipe around the shoe to make sure there aren't any strange oils on there that could indicate an explosive device. Interesting.

Although my first bag went through okay, the other bag was left in the x-ray machine. I knew something was up, as they continued looking and looking. At that point, I knew the bag would get searched. It was the bag I had placed my pens into, and so I asked the TSA agent searching the bag what he was looking for. He told me that they were 99.9% confident that what they saw were pens, but they had seen two different looking things, something that looked a bit like a .50 caliber rounds. Confused, I remembered the two USB key pens and I told him that was probably what they saw as I pointed out the two cases to him. He looked over then and cleared me through. Before I left, I asked him, "Out of curiosity, what is the danger in carrying a single bullet?" He then told me that people could use such things to scare other people, as well as use the tips of such rounds as explosives or other potentially dangerous weapons. Interesting.

Anyways, I sat down at my gate, when I then felt the urge to urinate. I looked up for where the restroom was and I found a sign that told me to go down the hall. After walking down the hall for 5 minutes, I came to another sign that told me to head down yet another hall. Finally, I reached the restroom. It took me 8 minutes just to get to a bathroom. I MUST have missed one that was very close. I boarded the plane and we took off towards Oakland.

As I left the aircraft, I phoned my brother's cell phone. No answer. I tried it again. No answer. I called the apartment. No answer. At that point, I knew he had forgotten his cell phone. As it was, he was also 5 minutes late. I began to worry and started to look around. 12 minutes after the time he was supposed to meet me, I finally saw him walking down the terminal towards me. We went off.

My brother was hungry after not eating, and so we went to Luka's Bar. We drove around and missed it until we finally got there at 10:20pm. After 10:30pm, they card people, but they decided to card people early, so we couldn't eat there. We went to ABC instead. Then, we went home. Had to go to sleep early, because I had to wake up early to take a train back home.

June 19, 2006

Went back to my home town in Stockton, and the family headed over to Lyon's for a late family dinner.

When my brother and I saw the decor and the menu, we breathed a sigh of relief, reminiscing upon the Lyon's experience we had in Emeryville. Finally, we would get good service at a standard Lyon's without getting creeped out by a high class Lyon's.

Unfortunately, our waiter was simply bad at his job. When going around and taking drink orders from our table, he unbelievably skipped over my brother and asked the next person what he would drink. My brother, amused at this, decided to let the situation play out and see whether the waiter, after bringing everybody's drinks, would notice the empty area in front of him and then realize he skipped over. Yet, the waiter brings back the drinks, and does not see any of this. My brother finally had to tell him to bring him a water before he would respond.

I was craving a BLTA, and went to the menu to look for it. When I saw it, I noticed there was the Classic BLT, and Avocado would be added for another $1.50 or so. So, I ordered the BTLA from the waiter, opting for potato salad over fries, as the rest of the party had. As you can well assume, I didn't get the avocado.

When the waiter brought us the food, he looked at us and asked, "Would you guys like any ranch for your fries?" Confused because none of us had ordered any fries, we looked down at our plates to see whether he had made a mistake in taking our order. Yet, the fries were nowhere to be found. "What?" we asked, thinking that perhaps we actually got fries as well. He looked at our plates one more time, and then switched his question to, "Would you like any ranch on your (um...) potato salad?" My brother repeated his exclamation of disbelief, at which the waiter responded, "So, no ranch or thousand island on your potato salad?" "No thanks," I told him. Wow.

At least he was competent at refilling drinks.

June 12, 2006

I've generally enjoyed eating at Lyon's. However, due to recent downers in the economy, Lyon's has had to sell off several of its franchises, and has begun to change things a bit, perhaps to attract more customers and get more capital.

Yet, the new changes creep me out a bit. Recently, my brother and I went over to the Lyon's Restaurant in Emeryville, where we were greeted well. As we sat down to look at the menu, we saw definite differences in the menu from the last time I had visited Lyon's. I have no clue whether the changes were branch-specific or franchise-wide, the experience was so different that it caused my brother and I to wonder whether we were actually still at a Lyon's. No longer were we inside of a diner, we were in a wannabe-nice restaurant.

After ordering our food, we were presented with a basket of bread - normal for some restaurants, but not for a diner-like environment such as Lyon's used to be. In addition, the basket came in a very cliché red and white checkered paper. The dessert menu came in a velvet colored booklet that looked like it belonged to a high class restaurant, not in a Lyon's.

The most ridiculous addition to their repertoire was the futile attempt at a fancy hor d'oeuvre. The patty melt I ordered came along with 2 onion rings, a single olive, and a cube of cheese stuck onto a toothpick put onto a bed of lettuce and a pickle. A cube of cheese?! Come on!

The whole place began to look extremely tacky. Each new addition was an obvious attempt (and failure) to look high class. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive, but from what I saw, I wouldn't go there again.

The Iced Tea sucked.

April 28, 2006

As a lover of good food all around the Bay Area, I am completely and utterly disgusted at the restaurant picks from the Best of Berkeley.

Every year, the Best of Berkeley restaurants are chosen by a "group of Berkeley students and residents" without taste buds, or whose taste springs from lack of transportation or cash. Therefore, most of the restaurants chosen are situated merely a few blocks away from the campus, most falling on the 3 or 4 blocks of Telegraph Avenue and no more than 1 block in either direction of Telegraph Ave. With the exception of Chez Panisse for Best Overall Restaurant and perhaps a few others, the list of restaurants chosen as Best of Berkeley is a total joke.

I am not the only one who feels this way. Just the other day, James Boo wrote a column to the Daily Cal, showing his indignation towards the whole system. In his argument, he proposes his own choices for Best of Berkeley, and for the most part, these are better choices. Therefore, I feel that I too must do the same.

I could go on, but the point is made clear. The Best of Berkeley simply should not be based off college student popularity. After all, most college students are broke. If there were a Best Burger category, I have no doubt that the award would go to McDonalds.

Edit: Apparently, there was a Best Burger category that I had missed. Thankfully it wasn't McDonalds.

April 23, 2006

Well, it's finally over. Yesterday, I took the Medical College Admissions Test over at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco.

In preparation for the day, I bought a sandwich from Cheese N' Stuff only to forget to bring it to San Francisco with me. What resulted was that I had to purchase the most expensive sandwich I have ever eaten. A $17 roast beef sandwich. It was good, but not $17 good.

Afterwards, we went to see Silent Hill. Freaky movie, and totally like the game, apparently. Sweet stuff.