She Blinded Me with Science

Friday, March 23, 2012 Posted by Digital Katsu 2 comments
I enjoyed my Thursday going to the California Academy of Sciences with Annie and some friends. We had a discounted group price + a student discount which made our tickets $20 each. The regular price tickets are $30.
http://www.calacademy.org
This was my first time going to the new CAS building. It's a very interesting modern green building. They tried to get as much light in from the outside to eliminate the need for lights. They also have a garden on the roof; I'm guessing for insulation and there are solar panels all over the place.
There's a pretty amazing jungle area with butterfly's everywhere and there's a very nice aquarium. I noticed that most of the informational panels consisted of touch friendly ipads as displays. I thought this was an interesting, but an expensive way to display the information. I guess if you're spending $392 million for the building what's another $20,000 or so for ipads.

We ran out of things to do after a few hours though. I don't think that there were enough things to really occupy us. We skipped some of the sections, but they were mainly just lounge areas. 
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If you need Data you might want to check this out

Monday, March 19, 2012 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Free Data. No he's not in Jail.
NetZero is offering free 4g data access if you buy one of their hotspots. You can only get up to 200mbs per month of data access, but free is free (at least for the first year). Their access points range from $50-$100 depending on what type you choose. It's worth checking out if you're interested in checking a couple emails on the go and you don't have data tethering with your phone. I don't see why you wouldn't just check your emails on your phone, but I guess in case you can't do that it would be handy.

http://www.netzero.net/
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2010 Updated~!

Sunday, March 11, 2012 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
I tried to update the missing events in 2010 related to Japan. Please check them out! I'll also try to keep updating 2009 when I have time and I'll post another update link when finished. Please comment~!
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A Flea Market, A Carnival, and Some Luck

Saturday, March 10, 2012 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Ah, the American Flea Market. The place where you can find all kinds of junk, most likely stolen things, and mannequins with voluptuous booties.

This was the Colosseum flea market located near 880. It's open 7 days a week with varying entrance fees depending on the day. Today (Saturday), the fee was $1.50 to get in and walk around.

The flea market's a great place to buy things you wouldn't really think about getting a discount on. Socks...for one, are very cheap at the flea market. I remember looking for socks recently with a couple of people and you would be lucky to find a pack for $10. At the flea market there were some that were selling for $3 a pack. Razors are also a cheap commodity at the flea market that is priced ridiculously elsewhere.

After the flea market we went to Costco. After shopping and loading our car with the things that we just had purchased, Low noticed that someone left their package of coke bottles in the bottom of their shopping cart. They were the nice cokes too in the bottles from Mexico. We waited for a bit and then I ran and got the package;  no one seemed to be coming back from it. It was kind of weird too since the cart was jammed in with a pile of the other carts. It was like the person had a hard time pushing it in, but they didn't realize they had left their drinks at the bottom of their cart. Anyway, I felt a little bad, but if I wasn't going to get it someone else might have later on.

We concluded our day by going to a Carnival that is currently occupying a parking lot across from the Colosseum flea market on 880. The admission price is $2, ride tickets are $1(with rides costing 3-5 tickets), and an unlimited pass cost $25. It was a decent carnival. The rides seemed mediocre and fun, but very expensive if you didn't decide to splurge for a $25 pass. Then again, if you did get the pass, I don't know how many times you could ride on the Ferris wheel before you threw up from monotony.

The Carnies were nice, they offered free games to entice people. The prizes weren't that great though. Typical stuffed $100 bills and stuffed crayfish. There were larger prizes, but none of them were that extraordinary. 
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Mary had a little Beef... which was nicely marinated

Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
All you can eat Korean BBQ at the Jong Ga House in Oakland. A typical birthday dinner for me and my friends. All you can eat meat for around $20.
http://www.jonggahouse.com/

The food is okay. The first couple plates of meat seemed to be marinated better than the later ones. They seemed to give us lower and lower quality dishes as we went on, but they weren't that bad overall.


I kind of understand why the meats were degrading in quality; since we started our feast, 3 groups ate, finished, and left. We did pay for the all you can eat experience, so we were going to at least stay for 4 or 5 plates of meat. I think we ended up getting 5 plates of meat, but in order to break even we would need  to consume around 7 or 8 plates (according to Julie). Though, that calculation seemed a little off considering we were paying 20 bucks a plate of meat, which doesn't seem quite right. I think it would have really been around 16 plates to break even, but the value didn't really draw us to the Jong Ga House; we were there for a celebration. 

It was after all Mary's birthday~! Another year to be celebrated because we were able to enjoy it with friends and family. I think we all should be grateful that we get to enjoy ourselves. I think we should also remember no matter how bad things get we are still alive and we can look forward to tomorrow. Sometimes we tend to forget things like that when we are burdened with things from our everyday lives.


Anyway, Julie, James, & Annie presented Mary with a delicious Chinese cake. A Chinese cake you say? Were the slices slanted? From what I gather it's supposed to be less sweet than a typical cake. It was adorned with various fruits reminiscent of the fruit cups you get as a kid.
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Inflated Taiyaki Prices~!

Wednesday, March 7, 2012 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Precious Taiyaki prices have gone up (+33% for chocolate and red bean!). Is it due to the strong yen or the complex supply and demand markets of Japantown... We will never know.

A recent visit to Japantown showed an increase in price for a lot of items. Did it stop us from gorging ourselves? No.
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Interesting Places Near Market Street in San Francisco

Monday, March 5, 2012 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Westfield Shopping Center
A very upscale mall located near Market & 5th. It reminds me of the nice shopping centers in Nagoya. It had very elegant architecture that future generations would probably infer the place to be of some importance rather than just a mall. 
We also saw a pigeon that lived inside the mall. If I was a pigeon I would prefer the mall as well.

http://www.westfield.com/sanfrancisco
Metreon
The Metreon was not the place I remembered. Most of the building seemed to be under construction. Though, there was a nice IMAX theater located there. Outside of the Metreon was a nice park as well.
 
http://www.westfield.com/metreon
Homeless guy with Ipad
There was a homeless guy outside of forever 21. I assumed he was homeless because he had shoes and a bag of clothes near his stuff. He might just be a street performer that enjoys entertaining for a living. The man had an amp hooked up to a car battery and seemed to be using an app that played a background beat and allowed you to play a bass guitar.
Game Developers Conference
They were setting up for the GDC 2012 when we checked out the Moscone Center. Seems interesting, but the passes on the website are pretty expensive even for student admission.

http://www.gdconf.com/
Parking
We parked in the Tenderloin. There were a lot of homeless and less than reputable looking people, but besides the urine smell we weren't bothered too much. There was someone who wanted to take a picture of us for a couple bucks, but I think he just wanted to run off with my camera. And there was an incident with a beggar asking Lily for money. Lily said to the beggar, "Sorry", but I think he thought she said, "Sorry, I don't speak English". He responded with "Oh, but when it comes to money you understand English". I tried comprehend the meaning of his response, but I concluded that he meant to say "Oh, when it comes to money you don't understand English".
When we were leaving we noticed the birds left Low a present on his car that kind of looked like a cyclops.



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