From L A with ♥ pt. 5: When Science and Art Collide

Previously: What was interesting is, we all got to communicate with the Japanese lady who served us. Elda spoke some Japanese words fluently. Aymee also said a fluent “Arigatou gozaimasu.” I tried myself as well :). The lady was amazed by our amateur ability! Then we went back to the hotel and bought some Japanese snacks from the restaurant for our breakfast tomorrow. Thank you Universal Studios Hollywood for the wonderful experience!!!!!! XD

DAY 3: MARCH 28, 2011

After an exhausting day at Universal Studios, we moved on to another adventurous day the next day. No more theme park and playing around, because it's time to get a little serious since we were going to deal with education...a bit.

According to our schedule, we were supposed to spend all day in Pasadena for campuses visits. We woke up in the morning to munch on our snacks we bought yesterday as breakfasts. Elda was scheduled to join a campus tour on California Institute of Technology or abbreviated as Caltech at 10 am, meanwhile Aymee would have a campus tour in Pasadena Art Center at around 1-ish.

Elda and I took off first from our hotel at around 9. Aymee was going to catch up with us later in Pasadena, that means she had to find out the direction to Pasadena all by herself. Since Elda and I didn't know how far it would be to Pasadena, taking off an hour before the appointment was quite a risk, especially we were a bit lost in searching for Little Tokyo's Metro station.

Good thing we quickly found it, it was no biggie, and we also got the direction to get to Pasadena.

Just a little bit about Pasadena, it was a city 11 miles from Downtown LA. Compared to LA, Pasadena was less crowded, tourist-friendly, and it got a friendlier, more comfortable vibe. After switching train in Union Station, Elda and I went straight to Pasadena and got off at Del Mar station.

After relying ourselves on the essential Mr. Google Map at our hands, we took a bus down the main road of Pasadena and got off when the GPS told us to.

Apparently, the institution was located not by the side of the crowded main street of Pasadena. We had to explore into the depth of a peaceful neighborhood. Seriously, it was really the subtlest atmosphere I could ever feel from a neighborhood so far in the US, which reminds me of my neighborhood in Jakarta.

The campus itself sort of blends in with the neighborhood since there were no giant signs saying “Caltech” or whatsoever. How we eventually got our way to the Admission office is considerably funny.

First we bumped into a neatly dressed guy who donned a pair of sunglasses. I was like “This must be a Caltech student.” Elda approached him and asked him whether he knew where the Admission office was. The guy told Elda that he had no idea, to which Elda replied. “I thought you were a Caltech student.” Then the guy went. “Oh no, not yet.”

Ooookkaaayyy....sounds someone appears to be confident. Judged from the appearance, this guymay have qualified to become a Caltech student.

The admission office didn't seem to appear no matter how many times we had circled the campus area. By coincidence, we stumbled upon the tour group that we decided to join. No one would notice anyway.

This building reminds me of Palace of Versailles

The pond that faces the court. I love the arches along the hallway.

Japanese Garden much?

Basically the tour involved visiting the campus grounds and especially the dorms. The dorm part left the biggest impression in mind as we visited one of the dorms. We got to take a glimpse of the dorm rooms. What's even more shocking is, we discovered lines of math, chemistry, physics formula scribbled on some dorm rooms' doors.

Too bad I have no pictures of those formulas.

It looked like they just threw a party over the weekend because almost all the decoration was still intact, some decoration was torn down already though. The tour guide, who is a student herself, explained mostly about the social activities and parties each dorm liked having.

The campus tour.

From Elda's observation, since Caltech is somewhat a notable school of science, a lot of people might figure out that it was a serious school. Students fully focused on their studies without bothering to socialize. So that's why the tour guide heavily emphasized about the parties part. I totally agree with Elda's thought though.

The tour ended in the Admission office that we didn't find in the first place. It turns out to be a building that resembled an old, haunted house looking building. I mean, really, when we stepped inside and went upstairs, I could feel the wooden floor beneath me created an eerie cracking sound. Seen from its look in the outside, people could have mistaken it as an ordinary old house.

Yep, above is the admission building I told you earlier.

I don't know about the house below whether it's one of Caltech buildings or not, since it's located right next to the Admission building. Seen from the homey feeling, I'll just consider it as a house then.

Elda got to buy a Caltech shirt just before we left. Elda and I also took a picture in front of a small Caltech logo in one of the buildings.

After we were done with the tour at around 1 pm, we managed to get to Old Pasadena aka Pasadena Downtown, to meet up with Aymee who just arrived. Together, we found a pizza parlor where we had lunch.

Pepperoni pizza for three!

As soon as we finished, we quickly caught a bus to Pasadena Art Center. We only had an hour to go there before the tour began.

Apparently the campus was located up on a hill in a secluded area of Pasadena. When we got there, we aimed to go to the Admission office but somehow – again – we got lost. At first we didn't know which building we had to go. The bus dropped us off in a side of a building but we weren't sure if the Admission was located in that building.

We kind of anticipated that Pasadena Art Center would consist of many buildings just like a common American campus was (Caltech too). But after surrounding the campus and asked bunch of people that told us to go to the front desk to ask where the Admission office was (sounds complicated huh?), we finally – again – stumbled upon the tour in the campus gallery.

Apparently the building we spotted earlier when we got off the bus IS the one and only building. It was unique how the building stretches horizontally like a giant black rectangular box, with only two storeys. Everything is in there: the classes, gallery, admission office, bookstore, etc.

In contrast of our visit to Caltech, the tour guide somehow emphasized how seriousness became a positive quality of the school, saying that the school encouraged all students to be devote into the works. I guess, in contrast of Caltech, a lot of people might assume that art students were relatively relax compared to those who study science or social studies.

As an art student, I am interested to apply to this school.

One of the artwork in front of the gallery. Soooo cute!

Outside the gallery

After the tour was done, we visited the bookstore and it was hella awesome! Seriously I may not be into a fine art a lot, but I do some drawings. I mean, the bookstore provides a gazillion number of art materials!!! It has the completest copic marker collection I've ever seen, mannequins, painting blades with ranging sizes, various kinds of oil painting...for someone who is really into fine art, he or she should be willing to spend days in this not-so-big bookstore.

Anyway, we decided to leave though, since we had to catch up with shopping and dinner time too. We returned to Old Pasadena. We strolled a bit to some clothing store like Forever 21. Since spring was approaching, I bought myself a set of spring clothes consisting of tank top and cardigan.

After a little bit of stroll, we realized it was time to have dinner. The sky wasn't completely dark but it was already 7 o'clock. And apparently it took us long before we decided where to have dinner.

The Yelp and Urbanspoon applications offered quite a lot of choices. I already asked my friend, Vania (who formerly resided in Pasadena), to recommend some good restaurants down the street of Pasadena. The problem is, we were craving for a lot of things. We were considering to go to a Himalayan restaurant but the location wasn't so convincing. We also had to turn down some offers due to the high price.

In the end, we were torn between going to Gyukaku (Japanese food) and Buca di Beppo (Italian food). They were located side by side, which made everything even more complicated. I kind of suggested that since we already had Japanese food two days in a row, why didn't we just eat Italian food? So we eventually had dinner in Buca di Beppo.

Calamari for appetizer!!

Ravioli as the main course. Excuse the low quality picture. This is apparently the best one I can take.

It was getting late when we finished our dinner, that we had to catch a train back to Downtown LA.

Actually there was nothing special with the train station, it was just we decided to kill time while waiting for the train to arrive.

And played head-wrestling on the train

We arrived at our hotel in Little Tokyo at around 9-ish. Before that, we scooted over to the computer in the business center to look for directions to UCLA, Simpang Asia (Indonesian restaurant), Koreatown, and Hollywood, which would be our destination for tomorrow!

That's not the end of the story. Elda and I woke Aymee up when the clock struck 12. Yep, it's Aymee's Birthday!!!!! Aymee was already asleep but Elda and I managed to be awake, and when it was time, we surrounded Aymee and sang Happy Birthday! XD

It's gonna be a looooong day tomorrow!!!!

<< Part 4 • • Part 6 >>

SPRINGSPRINGSPRING

SPRING'S HERE!

Birds are calling.
Skunks are crawling.
Wagging their tails for love!
Spring is here.

-Charlie Chaplin

Yay! The cold weather has officially left California. It's getting warmer as April comes. With that said, also comes a new school term. Winter quarter is over, though I must say my last encounter with Math didn't go very well.

Spring quarter has just begun this Monday and if you might not know, I'm currently taking a lot of General Education and Social Studies classes.

Comes with that are bunch of textbooks ready to be read. A lot of my friends have already got reading assignments. Me too, it's just that I've been procrastinating a lot, which is bad. I need to get a move on and start an academic life without procrastination.

See what I'm talking about?

And these are ONLY three out of total five textbooks. Two of them are not on the pictures because they are far out of my reach. I'm too lazy to grab them.

I'm becoming even and even busier. Since school just started a few days ago, I can't really tell what would become of me for the next three months. The assignments so far have been really well-managed as I only have had two reading assignments up until now. But I'm fully aware that this is ONLY (yes, now I'm using the word 'ONLY') the warming up. Almost all of my friends take social studies and science-related classes and they said handling them is such a distress.

Okay, I'm not gonna creep myself out. Think positivepositivepositive.

Especially most of my classes are culture-related. I'm good when it comes to culture-related studies. They're my interests. I love reading about them BUT when it comes to assignments and remembering all the -logy-suffixed terms and squeeze them all inside my brain, that's gonna be a challenge.

Anyway, enough with school issues. After a while of not experimenting with fashion styling on Looklet, I finally got my foot into the site again and try to come up with a fashion style.

Looklet has developed a lot since the last time I left it. They added new features such effects, new models, new backgrounds, and new items of course.

Here's what I come up with and I must say I'm pretty satisfied with it. It's called Grannie's Favorite.

Also lately, I went hiking with fellow boys, Aymee, and Elda to Big Basin Park. I tried to restore my amateur-ish photography skill by capturing some pieces. However, this one is my favorite piece that I decided to let you take a look at.

I named it dazing, and the guy in the photograph is my new friend, Ardy.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And now about the blog!

Do you notice anything different with the blog? Yep, I added a little decoration if you see the left sidebar. Inspired by my Web design class, I decided to mess around a little with my 30-day of my Photoshop trial.

• I replaced the normal links on the left with small buttons instead. I kind of like how my experiment turns out to be.
  
  
• I also changed some of the fonts in case you didn't notice. I didn't know Blogger would provide quirky-looking fonts. Such a blast!
  
  
• You shouldn't need to notice the change in the background anymore since it's quite obvious.

I still planned for some changes coming up soon. But for now, I might have to disappear for a while and refrain myself from blogging. I'll still be around and slowly continue on From LA with Love stories again, but my blogging mode wouldn't be as frequent as...probably now.

Wish me luck in this Spring break and may all of us achieve the best for our life in every aspect.

APRIL --> MAY --> JUNE --> JULY --> AUGUST (Going back to Indonesia!)

That reminds me...

I HAVEN'T BOOKED A FLIGHT HOME.
MUST DO THAT A.S.A.P -_-

From L A with ♥ pt. 4: I'll be back!

Previously: But then it turned out to be a simulator of the Simpsons family riding a roller coaster and went through a lot of ridiculous thing, from being bounced in the air, chased by a giant ball, and many more. The roller coaster cart we were on moved according to the motion depicted in the simulator movie.

It was a fun ride I admit, but the after-effect was kind of brutal. Elda and I felt nauseous while Aymee felt extremely fine.

As a result to that, we all had to rest for a while. Following our nauseous feeling, we decided to see an attraction that was more relaxing and didn't involve any graphic or motion effects. We chose the New Special Effect Stage. The show was super funny! I'd seen this before but this new version of the show was even much more exciting!

Moving on...it seems like we had got on to every rides on the lower lot, and now it was time for us to descend to the lower lot! There weren't much attractions to see down there, with only three attractions. Two of them are realistic rides, not 3D/4D movie or simulator like we did before. Aymee determined to get on to Revenge of The Mummy Ride but Elda and I were still getting over the nausea, so we decided to wait for Aymee.

Here's what we did while we waited for Aymee.

Elda was an avid fan of Egyptian mythology, so she was ecstatic to take picture with 'Anubis'.

Anubis was being nice to Elda...but wait till you see what he was being to me

See? OMG he pulled my hair. Mean.

Shortly after Aymee got out, the three of us went on to the next ride which was located right across the Mummy ride. It was Jurassic Park: River Adventure! I vividly remember what the ride was like.

Universal Studios was just opened that morning back in 2009 and my parents and I were the first riders. Yes, just the three of us on the 16-people-capacity seats. It was like a private ride! When the boat plunged down, I could only hear the sound of my panicky mom screaming (my dad wasn't fond of screaming in thrill rides) and I was too numb to scream.

Anyway...back to the topic. This time, it was different. So glad that finally I got to feel the sensation of this thrill ride with 16 people on board. Compared to the Mummy ride or any other adrenaline-rush-triggering rides, this one was more relaxing. Why? Because we basically just got on to this yellow boat and entered Jurassic Park. We were even offered by the sight of the animatronics dinosaurs. I was even accidentally sprayed with water on the face by an animatronic velociraptor.

The drop wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be (and I got to hear a lot of people screaming this time!!!). Aymee gave a tip to reduce the free-fall feeling, which really helped! And the drop turned out to be not really high as I thought. As a result, I came up with a plan to try this ride again (getting addicted to it), but then there were still many rides to try so trying Jurassic Park again would be a waste of time.

Before getting back to the upper lot, the three of us bought some snacks to munch first.

Next up, we were back to the upper lot to catch with Universal Studios' famed Waterworld show. The show was awesome! Too bad we didn't get to sit on the soaked area. We had anticipated on getting splashed or wet in Universal Studios today that even we brought a substitute shirt.

We also realized that we hadn't taken a picture together with cast character. So when a dracula character passed by, we immediately asked him to take a picture with us together. The cast character's skin literally glittered under the sunlight. I tried not to mistake him as Edward Cullen in disguise.

The last attraction of the day was Terminator 2: 3D. It was the last show of the day and the line was long. Look at what Aymee and I were doing in the line.

Okay, even though we weren't recommended to wear our 3D glasses before the show, we tried them on and see how they looked on us.

Since Elda didn't get to go inside, I decided to share the story here.

We then entered a room that turned out to be the pre-show room. A newsticker controlled by a computer greeted us, making an impression as if a line of text appeared on it was talking to us. But things were getting even more annoying when the text began to intimidate us, saying “You suck!” when we didn't cheer out loud. Aymee complained. “We're being bullied by technology!” After all, that's what Terminator story is all about, where in the future, humans will be controlled by machinery and technology.

A lady then came up and introduced herself as Kimberly Duncan (a real person). At first she appeared as a nice lady everyone would put their trust on. She said a lot of 'super' words in every ten seconds.

Kimberly introduced herself as a representative of a fictional company featured in Terminator movies – a company which promised to offer humans with various advanced technology to make real life feel so easy. In the middle of the company's promotional video, suddenly a woman appeared on it and interrupted the video.

She was Sarah Connor, who asked everyone in the pre-show room to not believe in the company's offer since it would gradually destroy the mankind. The company was said to sabotage human life with all the offer. Meanwhile, Kimberly was panic and she tried to call the security to capture Sarah who appeared on the video. Finally we were led to believe that Kimberly was actually one of the “bad guys”.

The main attraction was uber cool! It involved 3D movie, simulator effect on our seats, and also live show with real casts appearing on the stage. An actress who played Sarah Connor and an actor who played John Connor, popped up and pointed the gun at Kimberly. The cool part also involved when the Arnold Schwarzenegger character on the screen “magically” appeared on the stage followed with a plume of smoke (of course, it wasn't Arnold himself who appeared live on stage).

With all the advanced technology involved, it was so far one of the most impressive shows we saw in Universal Studios.

After the show, we met up with Elda again and we decided to do a little shopping now. In the end, I bought a fridge magnet for my mom.

The clock showed 8 pm and we suddenly realized that the last shuttle to Universal City station would take off that time. We hurriedly went to the shuttle stop and caught the last shuttle back to the subway station.

Since it was too late for us to have dinner around Hollywood area, we decided to go back to Little Tokyo and see what we could have for dinner. We ended up having dinner in Kouraku. Elda and I had curry rice while Aymee had a bowl of ramen.

What was interesting is, we all got to communicate with the Japanese lady who served us. Elda spoke some Japanese words fluently. Aymee also said a fluent “Arigatou gozaimasu.” I tried myself as well :). The lady was amazed by our amateur ability!

Then we went back to the hotel and bought some Japanese snacks from the restaurant for our breakfast tomorrow.

Thank you Universal Studios Hollywood for the wonderful experience!!!!!! XD

<< Part 3 • • Part 5 >>

From L A with ♥ pt. 3: Light, camera, action!

Previously: Before we headed to our hotel, we went to Marukai Market to buy a galon of water for our days ahead. Also, we dropped by Mitsuru cafe to grab Imagawayaki and Shrimp Balls for night snack and breakfast.

DAY 2: MARCH 27, 2011

Here comes the second day!

Yet it was the most exciting day ever spent in LA. As mentioned yesterday, on the second day of our trip to LA, we were to visit LA's most awesome place...and that is...Universal Studios!!!! Aka the entertainment capital of LA. I really agree with the tagline though.

I'm going to tell you this briefly. Actually, before during the trip planning, the three of us were torn with three choices of attraction to go to.

I had always wanted to go to Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure since I love Disney (who doesn't hate going to the 'happiest place on earth'?). Elda would always love to see aquarium and she preferred to go to the famed San Diego Seaworld. Meanwhile, Aymee had never gone to Universal Studios Hollywood. She had been to one in Singapore, but of course, although bearing the name of 'Universal Studios', the one in Hollywood would absolutely have a lot of difference than the one in Singapore.

In the end, it was decided that we went to Universal Studios!

Anyway, the front desk lady told Aymee, Elda, and I the direction to get to Universal Studios by public transportation. Turns out it wasn't so hard to find a way there, and things even went smoother when Elda directed the way. FYI, Elda had been to Universal Studios before using public transportation, so she still had that fresh memory where to stop and where to transit.

After munching the snack we bought last night for breakfast, we took off from the hotel and found our way to the hotel's closest Metro Rail Station, which is Little Tokyo/Arts District. From there, we needed to take a Metro train to Union Station and later switched to Metro subway. From Union Station, we needed to take the red line subway which leads all the way to Universal City, the station we were supposed to get off.

It was drizzling once we emerged from the subway station. Good thing that the subway station wasn't too far away from our destination. In fact it was right before our eyes! Well not really, since we needed to take a free shuttle right across the intersection which would take us all to Universal Studios entrance.

For the record, I went to Universal Studios on February 2009 with my parents and my dad's friends (that's when I ditched school over a vacation in the US). So the memory of the visit was still fresh in mind, except if Universal Studios added a new attraction. That's another story.

The main entrance to Universal Studios was indeed packed by a lot of people, no wonder because it was Sunday and some people might be having spring break just like us too. Fortunately, we didn't have to line up to the ticket box anymore since we already had our online tickets printed out. What we had to do was just going to the turnstile to have the online tickets exchanged with a real ticket card.

Once we got inside, we stopped by at a restaurant near the entrance to have brunch. We all had a cheeseburger and french fries.

At first, I was considering to go inside House of Horror. I had been in there before with my parents and I was scared to death. But then I remembered that Aymee and Elda had this fear on grotesque looking creatures and ghosts that either Elda or Aymee pointed out that she wouldn't be able to sleep for days after going inside the walkthrough. Well, that's a good point though.

There was also no way for me to go inside by myself unless I wanted to creep myself out (the 'monsters' in the walkthrough tend to surprise and chase a party of people away, while I was by myself, going inside alone is a big NO NO).

The first ride we chose of the day was Shrek 4D. I had never been to this ride before and I think it would be a good warming up for the rest of the day. Shrek 4D wasn't too aggressive compared to other rides. Seeing many adults lining up with their children, I was even more relieved that the ride was a light one, which wouldn't involve anything nauseating or driving our adrenaline rush.

Then the second ride was not really a ride. For someone who hadn't visited Universal Studios Hollywood yet, then the Studio Tour is a must-see. Basically we were to board a vehicle and we would be taken around the studios of Universal Pictures. At the beginning of the tour though, we were given a glimpse of the screenwriter's, directors', movie makers' workplaces that were located near the studios.

Every after the Studio Tour, I always had this temporary wish to be able to work in film industries (before choosing graphic design as a major, I was about to major in film industries, but then I dropped it). I mean, the best part of the job is, you have people passing by your workplace! Just like the one in this Studio Tour!

Ready for the "Behind the Motion Picture Adventure"

No matter how many times I'd join the tour, I still found myself very amused, Elda too! Aymee, who's a first timer, was quickly fascinated by the demonstrated special effects, like the effect used for Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift.

We were too fascinated by the Tokyo Drift demonstration effect that we forgot to take a picture of it

The so-called Mystery Machine

One of the sets for the movie
Spiderman movie set

The War of the Worlds movie set. Oh and the Boeing plane is REAL.

Whoville featured in "The Grinch"

The Collapsing Bridge. It's no longer functioning. :(

But then came the best part of the whole tour: King Kong 360: 3D!! Now I can understand why this new attraction was heavily promoted by Universal Pictures. It. Was. AWESOME! It didn't exist back when Elda and I visited Universal Studios before. So it was something new for us, and Aymee too. Even the three of us were really nervous when the darkness of the studio surrounded us, not knowing what would happen next.

Basically, we entered a studio with the gate decorated just like Skull Island. An introductory video by Peter Jackson, the director of King Kong the movie and the creator of this attraction as well, was played inside the vehicle. It concluded with Peter Jackson asking the visitors to don their 3D glasses and get ready for the adventure.

The entrance of Skull Island

I guess I'd let you feel the whole sensation or visit Elda's post for spoiler.

The tour continued with much more exciting attractions and sights. I was amazed by the Jaws part where the giant shark appeared right beside the vehicle when it was moving, the War of the Worlds set, and so much more. I was a little disappointed with the actor who played Norman in Psycho attraction during the tour.

Back in 2009, the actor really did come over VERY CLOSE to the vehicle, holding a knife as if he was about to kill the visitors, that I even felt a bit crept out, but this time, the actor didn't even go near the vehicle. He just walked a little bit but didn't even bother to chase it. Lack of adrenaline rush dude!

Overall, the studio tour succeeded to take our breath away. Kudos for Universal Pictures for demonstrating the movie effects amazingly. Next up, we went on to the Simpsons Ride. I didn't get to get on to this ride before, so I was enthusiastic to get on to it. I believe Elda and Aymee would enjoy this kind of ride too. At first, I was indeed very nervous because I didn't know what kind of ride it would be. I heard some people whispering that it was just a simulator, so I felt at ease.

Apparently it wasn't just a simulator. The whole line was divided into smaller groups of 8 people, and we were led to enter a small room (which reminded me of a karaoke lounge). Inside the “lounge” was a small roller coaster cart. I began to sweat out thinking the wall in front of the cart would open up and reveal a real roller coaster track.

But then it turned out to be a simulator of the Simpsons family riding a roller coaster and went through a lot of ridiculous thing, from being bounced in the air, chased by a giant ball, and many more. The roller coaster cart we were on moved according to the motion depicted in the simulator movie.

<< Part 2 • • Part 4 >>

From L A with ♥ pt. 2: Sho-Tokyo

The title's literal meaning is: "Little Tokyo", refers to the place where we mostly spent our first day.

Previously: Time flew fast as we kept on taking pictures and talking. At around 7.50 am, we were to board the plane.See you in five days, San Jose!

The plane was smaller than I thought (possibly the smallest plane I've ever gotten myself onto) that even we had to put our hand carried luggages to the baggage. Good thing we weren't charged for that. I was practically sweating along the way since the cabin didn't turn on the AC. I was even woken up from my nap by the excessive heat. Luckily, we arrived at Los Angeles soon, at 9.30 am.

LA wasn't as cold as San Jose when we got there. It was relatively warm but the wind really killed us. The shuttle finally came to pick us up to our hotel.

Aside of us as the passengers, there were also three other passengers engaged in a warm, lively conversation. Elda attempted to join the conversation and finally made it, meanwhile, Aymee and I decided to continue our 2-hour sleep inside the shuttle.

Finally, we arrived at our hotel, Kyoto Grand Hotel and Gardens at around 11-ish. It was located at the Little Tokyo/Arts district, a district in downtown LA inhabited by mostly Japanese Americans. You can tell how ecstatic my Japanophile* friends are, particularly Elda.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to check in until 3.00 pm. So practically we had plenty of time before checking in. With the help of Yelp application installed in Aymee and Elda's phones, we decided to have lunch at Suehiro. Aymee helped herself with bowl of don, meanwhile Elda and I had udon. It was considered a simple lunch since we were purposedly saving ourselves for our shabu-shabu dinner later in the evening.

We were strolling a bit in Japanese village plaza. Elda got herself a Japanese style small lamp and Aymee bought a Totoro tee. Personally I think it's a hilarious shirt, with only Totoro's famed grin. I was thinking to get myself one but apparently I was too small even for the smallest size.

Little Tokyo is basically filled with shops that sell Japanese stuff, not just any stuff, but stuff like anime, manga, and cute accessories. Our faces literally lit up when we stumbled upon an anime/manga shop that doesn't only sell manga, anime DVD, action figures, but also J-drama DVD.

At one point, Elda was even torn whether buying a Fruit Basket manga or not, but in the end, she decided not to buy it since she already bought a Fruit Basket artbook just the day before.

At around 2.30pm, we decided to return to the hotel. We knew it was still half an hour early from our check-in time, but then Elda suggested that we took a look at the hotel's Japanese garden. I don't know if the Japanese garden the hotel has is famous or not, but the receptionist seemed to brag about it.

It is actually a beautiful garden, but too bad it doesn't really impress me much. It has a strong Japanese vibe in it, but somehow it lacks of decoration to make it look/feel more Japanese. But anyway, it's still a nice garden. I enjoyed the view. If it hadn't been a nice garden, we wouldn't have taken bunch of pictures there.

And we even took more pictures in the lobby. Narcissism alert! You have been warned.
We're quite immune to people's attention. So we don't really care if people around us would be weirded out seeing our act.

Three girls waiting for a talent agency to hire them kekeke

Looks like Elda's doing something suspicious there

The lamps in the lobby. Fascinating right?

Posing a la Totoro using Aymee's Totoro tee

Finally, we checked in and went straight to our hotel room: 926. It was a decent room of two queen beds. At last, after not being able to rest our feet for the past nine hours (yes, no kidding), we literally slumped ourselves on the bed and took a momentarily nap, while also watching a random show on TV.

There was no way for us to go to Downtown LA that late afternoon, since Aymee told us that the queue for Shabu-shabu we aimed to have for dinner would start at around 5.00 pm. I must admit the Shabu-shabu House, the restaurant that I'm talking about is quite famed. Aymee's friends had recommended us to try it, and so were my friends who resided in LA. They said. “It's a must-try food in LA's Little Tokyo.”

With the determination to get the taste of LA's best Shabu-shabu, we took off from our hotel at 4.30 pm. The restaurant itself was located in the center of Japanese Village Plaza.

It didn't take long for us to get there as we only needed to walk on foot. When we got there, the restaurant was closed but bunch of people had already waited outside. I had a feeling that the food was gonna be goooood.

Apparently it wasn't easy for us to just go in and find our seats. An oji-san asked all costumers to jot down their names, their preferred Shabu-shabu size, and number of party on the waitlist. We signed up under Aymee's name.

At first, I was okay by waiting for the people to come in, have their Shabu-shabu, and exit once they finished it, because I wasn't really hungry. But since we were to wait inside the small restaurant, it gradually became a torture.

The smell of the chicken broth, combined with cabbages, tofu, noodle, meatball, mushroom, and slice beef tantalized our nostrils. The sound of the boiling soup filled our ears. Elda, Aymee, and I decided to distract ourselves from the temptation by talking to each other. It actually helped!

Finally, Aymee's name was summoned and we quickly took our positions. It turns out that it wasn't a normal Shabu-shabu dining I had always had before back in Jakarta (yeah, this Shabu-shabu I had in LA was the first one I ever had in the US). The one that I always had in Jakarta was a shared one, due to its relative big portion.

In Shabu-shabu House, each costumer was to eat up their own portion of Shabu-shabu. The pot sizes were all the same, but the portion size was determined by the number of beef served. For small portion, the served beef was half the plate.

Sorry, not picture, we were too busy munching all the beef, veggies, and broth. Food is always on top of everything, eh?

Once the dinner was over, we strolled a bit again before going back to the hotel. Tomorrow was gonna be a looong day as we were going to visit one of the coolest places in LA...Universal Studios!!!!

Before we headed to our hotel, we went to Marukai Market to buy a galon of water for our days ahead. Also, we dropped by Mitsuru cafe to grab Imagawayaki and Shrimp Balls for night snack and breakfast.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

*A Japanophile is not an otaku. It's basically a term for people who harbor strong interest in Japanese culture and Japanese stuff :) So it's not a negative term.

Picture credit to:
- Aymee's camera
- Google.com


<< Part 1 • • Part 3 >>

From L A with ♥ pt. 1: Departure

Okay, I know that Elda already posted the stories on her blog. But I feel like posting the whole experience from my point of view, and especially I have promised y'all readers to post it today. So here we go!

Two of my friends (Aymee and Elda) and I chose to go to SoCal - Los Angeles to be exact - to spend our spring break, which would come to its end just tomorrow :(. Sad right? Anyway, it was funny how we first initiated the idea to take off to LA. Aymee talked to me about her plan to see Pasadena Art Center, her preferred university to transfer to – which is near LA – in Arts class.

Apparently, I took her word seriously and suggested we should also spend our holiday in LA whilst looking up to some universities. Apparently she agreed and then Aymee and I told Elda. Turns out Elda was also interested in looking up to UCLA and Caltech, both are in LA area.

The whole real planning started three weeks prior to our departure. I know we should have planned it at least a month before our departure, but everything seemed to be in a rush so we had to plan things super quick (especially before the prices rose rapidly).
Basically we planned all of our accommodation, where to stay, where to go, and which plane to take. Aymee luckily found a discount package including plane ticket and hotel.

DAY 1: MARCH 26, 2011

On March 30, I got up at 5.00 am and I was super sleepy (how the heck I keep saying this 'super' word? I'm blaming Kimberly Duncan of Terminator 2: 3D for this). The shuttle was scheduled to pick us up at 5.30-ish. I only got to sleep for two hours since I needed to pack because I had no time to do so days before. Finals kept me busy. Plus, I chatted with Aymee on MSN up until 2.30-ish.

She hadn't packed yet either and all of her clothes she was about to bring to LA were in her apartment's laundry room. To make matters worse, the laundry room was locked before she could even retrieve her clothes. It would be open in 5.00 am. She told me “I'm a fast packer. I can pack things in 15 minutes literally.” Oh well XD

It was drizzling that morning and the sky was still dark. Aymee was already at the lobby, playing around with her umbrella. Elda and I caught up with her soon, although Elda was suddenly in a panic state because she forgot to bring her passport along. She hurriedly reentered the apartment to obtain it. After the shuttle came, we took off to San Jose airport.

Nothing much happened until we reached the check-in counter. When three of us put out our tickets and boarding passes from our colorful folders that Elda had organized for Aymee and I, the guy went “You guys are so organized!” or so I thought he said.
The credit goes to Elda though. Kudos!

Then we went through the scanning process. Aymee and I passed smoothly without any of our items getting distrained. But then Elda came up with a pout on her face. Apparently the officers distrained three of her important items (which apparently contained liquid) and Elda was mourning for the loss of her shampoo, body lotion, and conditioner. Aww...

It turns out we arrived super early in the gate, approximately 2 hours before the boarding time. But there's no word for bored for us since we decided to kill time by taking loads of picture...of narcissism.

Elda managed to keep all important documents inside each of these colorful folders and gave each of them to Aymee and I.

Intimidation of the not-so-tall person *points at self*

Although not in its perfect proportion, I like how we actually attempted to do our very first self-timer picture.

FAIL XD

Time flew fast as we kept on taking pictures and talking. At around 7.50 am, we were to board the plane.

See you in five days, San Jose!

Part 2 >>

Happy April!

You ask, where have I been? I've been an avid, frequent blogger just last month and suddenly I just went poof, gone for a while. The thing is, I spent a few days in LA for spring break.
Yeah, it's spring break time, baby!

Too bad I'm posting this when the break is about to come to its end. Sad ey?

I'm definitely going to post soon about my spring break stories. SOON. Maybe tomorrow. I'm planning to post the first day story today after watching a movie tonight. But turns out I got extremely overwhelmed by the movie that it refrains me from posting about spring break stories. It's actually Welcome to Dongmakgol that I watched just earlier. I was too convinced that it'd be a pure comedy movie by how the poster looks like (see above). But then along the plotline, sad things began to occur. More and more sad events filled the 2-hour-long movie.

Basically the story is set in Korean War back in the 1950. Three North Korean soldiers were found by a lunatic girl, Yeo-il, when they got lost in the remote forest of Korea. She then led the soldiers to her village - Dongmakgol - where trio soldiers encountered two South Korean soldiers who were found by another villager. As they were enemies, confrontation began to ensue among the soldiers. The villagers, who had no clue about the war happening within Korea, could just wonder why the five soldiers fought against each other in their village. After a fight that accidentally led up to exploding the winter food storage, the soldiers were forced to make up the damage by helping the villagers to regather the food. Along the way, these soldiers who came from different allies, started to befriend each other. When the enemy (Americans) threatened to destroy the village, the soldiers teamed up to protect it.

I don't really know about the genre of the movie. I guess it's supposed to be comedy as - again - seen from the poster. See? You can see the smiling casts up there. I expected to laugh a lot when I watched it. Well, it was funny in a way, but following the sad, tragic events occurring along the movie, I guess it should be considered more as tragicomedy, you know, the kind of Life is Beautiful movie.

The yellow butterflies play quite a minor role in the movie as they occasionally appear without any particular reason from attacking the American soldier's plane to constantly appearing in some other scenes. But by the end of the movie, I suddenly realized what the butterflies actually portray in the movie. It's some sort of an implied symbolism, left for the audience to decide what they were in the movie for. You'll figure out the meaning once you finish watching the movie.

I'm telling you: nothing beats the power of tragicomedy. The moment when you actually laugh and cry at the same time is a torture, but it leaves an unforgettable impression, too. Don't even compare it to the oh-so-sad Titanic.

Anyway, I'm pretty much entertained tonight. I love the cinematography, some exaggerating scenes like when the soldiers were chased by a boar (which reminds me of a scene in Swing Girls) and everything suddenly went slow motion, and also the popcorn rain. And the music too! The score is simply subtle-sounding, with thick traditional theme. In the end, I found out that the whole movie score was composed by Joe Hisaishi, the acclaimed Japanese composer who has done a lot of pieces especially for Ghibli movies.

All in all, Welcome to Dongmakgol is a sweet story which focuses on the value of friendship - how a place full of clueless people unaware of the raging war out there, can unite rivaling soldiers and build bond among them. If you're looking for a movie that can make you laugh and cry at the same time, I strongly recommend this movie for you to watch.

I won't spill the spoiler. You should see it yourself and judge whether it's as sad as I think it is.
Have a nice weekend!