eMarkLee

It’s official as of Friday. We have officially moved out of our apartment and are now just couch-surfing amongst our friends. Here’s been the series of events:

Moving Day: Three Mexican dudes show up and start boxing stuff up. Because it is an international move, they take everything out of our existing boxes and put in theirs. An hour into it two of the workers take off and we are left with just one until the end of the day for the bigger furniture. That sucked. On top of it I receive a package at 11am and my Visa lawyer tells me I need to get my paperwork to the UK Visa courier service by 3:30pm. Thanks for that. At 5:45pm, I am finally able to show up to my happy hour with work friends and manage to hang out until 2am. Rough one.

Saturday: Ship out 4 boxes via UPS to my folks place, AKA Permanent Storage. . Go to Dublin (not Ireland) for a dinner party. Thought about rocking it in San Fran one last time, but decided to go straight to Koah’s pad in Oakland Hills at midnight.

Sunday: Eat authentic Mexican and pay for it on the throne. Sorry, Koah.

Monday: Go to The Ramp in San Fran for the afternoon followed by Gelato in North Beach. I left my fart in San Francisco. Come back to Oakland Hills where our friends M and Serene roll by. We discover the beer in the fridge is from 2006 so proceed to do shots of Grey Goose and screwdrivers. M is still the legend. Start packing up for our departure at 2am. It is 2:20am…damn it. OUT

Los Gatos is a small but lush and green city that is always a lot of fun. The 180 bar is a great spot for happy hour and drinks afterwards. There is also a booth where a girl in lingerie (not pronounced “lin-ger-ree”, country and Asian folks) that just lies there and reads a book or just looks bored. Kind of an interesting gig….although I wouldn’t mind being paid to read a book.

What I am writing about is for weekend lunch/brunch. There are other Andales in the bay area (Palo Alto, SF, etc), but this one sticks out because it has a great outdoor patio area. On a nice day, it’s one of my favorite spots to enjoy some sun while eating Mexican food. I will speak to this in greater length separately, but I am on a goal to consume all of my favorite California foods before I go to London. Mexican is at the very top of that list.

The items to get on the menu are in this order:
1. Camarones(shrimp) Fajitas
2. Steak fajitas
3. Carnitas (pork)

i think I’ve had other items and they are ok, but I always go back to these items. If you’re not from California, you don’t know what you’re missing. And Taco Bell is not Mexican….it’s Mexican’t.

It’s official. I will be staying in Notting Hill for two months starting in June. Why not pick a Hugh Grant movie to start off my London experience?

MAP

In preparation for my London trip, I am replacing my sock collection. My sock drawer is a stew of various types of socks including holey ones, different colored ones, mysteriously appeared ones, etc. So I go to Walmart and go straight to the socks section to find the best socks foreign sweat shops can make. Lo and behold I see the Hanes sock:

There’s a problem here, however. When you look closely you see that the size is 6-13. I’m not sure how someone decided that one sock will fit both my 8 year old Taiwanese cousin Harrison as well as my 6′3 281 lb friend Workmonkey. This may work for long tube socks, but for low cut socks, you take the larger number. When I tried these socks on they felt like I was putting on booties…wtf. (not that I have ever compained about booties) I am a size 9.5-10…so the size 13 doesn’t quite fly.

Of course there is a natural solution….albeit with a certain amount of humility. I go to the Boys section, walking past all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpacks and underwear. There I find exactly what I have been looking for for the past 5 years. A pair of low cut socks that fit my feet.

Yes, folks. Size 3-9. So I am in essence wearing socks that is labeled be able to fit my 2 year old Taiwanese cousin Ian. Maybe I’ll buy him a pack too, as long as he doesn’t mind wearing booties.

Craigslist sucks. It was cool in 1998 but it is 2007 with all kinds of great technology(Flash, Javascript, AJAX, etc) to improve user experience. The text-only spartan look is fine, but the clicking back and forth, constant clicking of the “Back button” is just no longer acceptable in the Web 2.0 era.

The good thing is that a Web 2.0 site has addressed this exact dilemma and created a Visual Craigslist Listings site that allows you to look at an aggregation of pictures based on your search. This makes searching for a futon much more acceptable on Craigslist. Look at other categories, ie “Casual Encounters” at your own risk.

Yes, I saw this on Oprah.
No, I do not watch Oprah regularly.

Every once in a while an Oprah clip gets my attention. The best are usually either Lisa Ling (giving a plug about a National Geographic Explorer special on MS-13, Maximum Security prisons, or North Korea) or Dr Oz. Dr Oz is Oprah’s doctor who gives health advice and gives good visualization and allows the audience to relate to the conditions he is speaking of.

This last week there was a Dr Oz special that introduced the Oprah audience to a Neti Cleansing. Jala Neti refers to an ancient yogic cleansing technique, meaning literally “water cleansing,” where the practitioner rinses out the nasal cavity with water (usually salted) using a neti pot. He actually had a girl from the audience try it and you see the water flow out of her nose. Seemed pretty cool, especially because I get allergies this time of year. So I tried it.

So what are the reasons for simulating drowning and filling your nose and sinuses with water?
Dr Oz and other sites on the web claim that this mechanical cleaning of your sinues removes pollen and other impurities from your sinues, rendering the practice more effective than some medicine out there for sinus infections.

How do I get started?
There are lots of flavors out there. I went to Longs and bought this one:

What do I put in the pot?
Make sure you use lukewarm water and sea salt. The NasaFlo package above comes with 50 packets to get you started.
1. DO NOT USE TABLESALT. Table salt is iodized and may irritate your nose.
2. DO NOT USE COLD WATER. Apparently cold water restricts the nasal flow

What does it feel like?
Sorta like you’re drowning. It’s like that feeling when you get crushed by that wave or snort the pool water when you face upwards underwater. The first time can be difficult but the second time was a much easier experience. Still takes getting used to though.

What does it look like?

Ultimately it’s worth trying if just to say “jala neti” to your friends. Just don’t tell your friends that I saw it on Oprah.

As per my earlier post about my history of pets, I have owned a few cockatiels. In case you were curious what these look or acted like here’s one of them: