Prangster in Chicago

The verdict: I'll never eat at Macaroni Grill again

After the baseball game last Saturday, Steve, The Meems and I drove to Wheaton, IL (which is freaking far away) to eat at Macaroni Grill with the $100 gift card I won for writing a first prize-winning love letter to my favorite MG menu item, Carmela's Chicken Rigatoni. Remember when that happened? You should, because it was awesome.

Well, what a waste of $75 in gift card money that was! The food at the Wheaton Macaroni Grill, in particular the Carmela's Chicken Rigatoni, sucked. Sucked something very unsavory. (Before I wrote "sucked balls" because I was at that baseball game and all, but it's not very Brinky friendly to say that.)

The worst part was I had been looking forward to that meal for months and months. Like a rich woman anxiously awaiting the end of season Barneys warehouse sale. Like a grandma anticipating the birth of her first grandchild after years spent relentlessly nagging for one.

But instead of great cashmere bargains or a cute baby, our food was really terrible. Sigh. And even worse was that Carmela's Chicken Rigatoni went up from $10.99 to $11.50. I have no idea why. The only thing they added to the dish was a tablespoon of untastiness. Snap!

Now I've got $25 or so on left that gift card. I think I'm going to use it at Chili's. Same parent company. I've never been to Chili's before. There are so many important cultural things left for me to experience here in America...

Taipei says hi

I'm in Taipei! After 17 hours of flying (13 of which were spent in the middle seat), 5 hours in airports and 1.5 hours on the road. Yes!

I know you're happy that I'm posting, but you're also curious to know why I'm blogging at all. Shouldn't I be stuffing my face with food by now? Shouldn't I be annoying my mum? Shouldn't I be prancing around because I didn't have to go to work yesterday?

Well, I woke up at 6am. And now it's 7am. My sleep last night was disturbed by freaking hotness in my shoebox-sized room. It was so hot I stood up and reached to turn the air conditioner on three or four times. At least I didn't have to take any steps -- I only had to reach up -- cause it's really a shoebox in here. But then it got too cold and I had to stand up and turn it off. Sleep doctors would have paid to observe me last night.

But the bigger issue is: why are you so hot, Taipei? Why are you 27 degrees Celcius (81F) at 6am and last night, when I finally left the airport at 9pm, why were you 29 degrees (85F)? Hrm?

Everyone is sweating because of you, Taipei. Think about that. Well, everyone except my dad. He claims he doesn't sweat.

Oh, my parents are awake now. I was just saying hello to them. My dad told me some exercise tricks he read lately in a book. One of them he called, "Grasping at birds mid-air with your feet". He said it with a completely serious look on his face.

My first ever baseball game

Last Saturday, I went to Wrigley Field for the first time. I saw the Cubs play. We sat in the first row right by the field. We talked to the visiting Washington team. I got a baseball. Not bad for my first baseball game ever, eh?

First, the seats we had were awesome. They were definitely rich people seats. And I could tell the rich people behind us were jealous of our richer people seats. Steve hooked us up with tickets. I don't really know the details because i was too busy to listen. I was looking at this view:


I was also staring at the professional baseball players that were mere metres away from where we were sitting. Poor guys didn't have a dugout. The sun was beating down on them. A few had Gatorade towels over their heads. Trust me, it was really hot and sunny. I mean, I think I got a tan.


We also watched the pitchers warm up. I probably called out to this guy, "Hey Mister, give us a ball!" about 10 times but was ignored. Steve made chit-chat with the pitching coach and his girlfriend, Mimi (or The Meems) did her best too. After laying this strong foundation of pestering, we got two balls! One from the pitching coach that The Meems kept and one from a Washington pitcher called Rivera that I got to keep. The rich people behind us were most definitely jealous of that.


Here is the main entrance to Wrigley Field. Once the game was over, I waited to take the bus home and watched in awe as thousands of people walked straight from the game to the bars across the street. Literally, the crowds exited the stadium and crossed the street diagonally to enter the bars. Of course these people are not clowns and they couldn't all fit into the one Irish pub so the excess people kept moving south along Clark St to the next Irish bar. And the next Irish bar. And the next. It was crazy. Oh, wait. Here's why: the Cubs won! I almost forgot about that part.

A thought while I'm thinking

I have an idea. My idea is that one of the Olympics of the next 20 years should be held somewhere in Africa. Well, anywhere in Africa.

In a country with barely any infrastructure -- so no roads, no running water, no public transport, no hospitals. And all the developed and emerging countries that compete (which is all of them) will shoulder part of the economic burden.

Sponsors will donate technology, services and volunteers to help train locals. Media attention will be brought to HIV, poverty and famine. Buildings will go up and they will stay up. The entire world will see Africa for what it is. And see how much help it needs to catch up.

With the whole world taking part and the spirit of the Olympics driving the entire project, I think it would really make an impact.

Now for reality: if I was seven years old, I would write a letter to Bono or Angelina Jolie about this. But I just turned 27 so I'll just write about it my blog.


FYI: The next comment will be the 200th! Don't all rush to post!

Homesick or something

No posts for the past 10 days. Sorry. Also no posts today. And probably no posts tomorrow either. Good thing I'll be back in Taipei on the 29th.

(You hear that, Taipei people? Hello?)

EDIT: It's however many hours later and I've decided maybe it would be helpful to jot some things down. Like how my accent is changing, i.e. getting progressively worse. I don't like it. I don't talk like myself. And that sometimes when I hear news from home, I wonder what the hell I'm doing here. It's up there on my list of the worst feelings ever.

Help me be a better consumer

When I moved to my apartment in the Boystown area of Lakeview, I visited the Intelligensia coffee house across the street just about every weekend. I also walked by the Argo Tea on my way to the then-cheap Japanese place to pick up my take-out. (I still do that, except now I pay more money.) What I noticed was how the people who choose to go to Intelligensia are different from the people who choose to go to Argo Tea. And the people who go to Argo Tea are different from the people who go to Starbucks.

Namely (and of course generally), the people who go to Starbucks with their computers use PCs. Those at Argo Tea are usually staring into Macbooks. (This is a photo on Flickr of the store by my house. How many Macs do you see?) And the folks at Intelligensia are bookworms and newspaper readers. (This is the one across the street. What are the guys by the window doing?) If I walk left out of my apartment building instead of right, I'll pass a Caribou Coffee, where the interior looks like a ski chalet and the coffee tables double as chess sets. Fan-see.

So I used to be a PC person. I used to have a clunky no-name laptop with no soul. In January 2007, it died and then I bought a Macbook. The mourning period was very brief for the PC. As was the decision buying process for the Macbook. I've had the Macbook for around 18 months now. It's the most expensive thing I've ever bought for myself.

I also have a 512MB MP3 player. The brand is "Creative MuVo". I bought it three years ago for about NT3,500 or around US$100. I could have picked an iPod but I purposely didn't. And I decided on 512MB because I couldn't see the point of walking around with a jukebox in my pants pocket. I still don't. That's too much choice for a morning commute.

The thing is, the MuVo player runs on AAA batteries. It's the only thing I own that needs a regular battery change. My current home phone, which cost $10 from Target and has a cord, uses two AA batteries but I haven't needed to change them yet. The MuVo battery thing bugs me because I'm pretty sure they don't last as long as they used to. And batteries in themselves are so 1988. Nothing in 2008 should require batteries.

So what's the point of saying all this? Well, I've decided to buy an iPod. OMG.

I'm getting an iPod because I want to download (and pay for) TV shows and movies from the iTunes store and watch them while I'm in airports and on planes. And I'm getting the 8GB iPod Nano instead of the 4GB because the 4GB only comes in silver and I want to get a black one and be matchy-matchy with my Macbook. Being matchy-matchy is crucial.

Best of all, replacing the battery-suck MP3 player with the iPod will be more sustainable because I won't need batteries. (I'm ashamed to say I've never brought my used batteries to the office to be recycled.) Other than that, this is an important move because when I buy something for myself or my living space here in Chicago I feel like it's permanent because I don't want to accumulate lots of stuff. So I think hard. I change my mind a lot. I write lengthy blog posts.

Bottom line: I'll soon be an iPod person instead of the other kind of person. I wish I didn't have to be an iPod person, but it doesn't really matter. No one cares because it's all about iPhone people now.

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Okay, now we talk money. Getting an iPod nano here in Chicago will cost me $199 plus $14.43 in taxes for a total of $213.43.

Based on today's currency exchange rates, doing the same will cost $226.10 in Taipei, $225.84 in Sydney and $250.99 in the UK.

Not bad, Chicago.

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Argh, I just talked to Jonathan at the lunch table and he told me Apple is likely to release new products in September. Including new iPods. Also he suggested I get an iPod Touch instead of a Nano because it can get online and the screen is much bigger than the Nano. The screen size thing sounds good, but do I need to get online? I don't know. Also the Touch is $299, though that might change if a new one comes out. I'm confused. Too much choice.

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Two hours later: Caught the train home with Ry and Zack and Katie. I asked them about iPods because that all that everyone's talking about these days. Ry says he's actually selling his iPod Touch cause he got a new phone. It's 16GB and he'll bring it in tomorrow to show me. Oh, interesting.

(Are you on the freaking edge of your seat?! This is a total nail-biter!)

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Okie dokes. I'm buying Ry's 16GB iPod Touch! I tested it out over the weekend and it's great. Yay! Clap clap! Yay!

Ahh, this is a much better -- and cheaper -- solution to buying a new iPod, especially before I go back to Taipei at the end of the month. And I've kept my last dead battery on my desk to recycle. What a happy ending.

VSA Summer Outing

Although we look like a cosy twosome, there were dozens more people from work standing in front and also behind Elizabeth and me. We're outside the Cirque du Soleil tent at United Center, where unfortunately, the toilets were the temporary kind and the beers were $8 each.

America, why do you spell "glamour" with a "u"?

Today I did something I should have done this time last year. I signed up for a writing class at the University of Chicago's Writer's Studio. The class is eight weeks long starting Sept. 22 and runs every Monday from 6pm to 8:30pm. (I'm telling you this because I have a bad history of skipping classes.) It costs $545, which is the equivalent of 50 or so tops (on sale) from the Gap.

Now let's get the math out of the way: $545 means $68.125 for each of the eight classes. That's just in case I hint that maybe I feel like skipping one of the classes, then you can tell me exactly how much money I'll be wasting. The classes will be downtown in the cool looking Gleacher Center, which incidentally is very close to a Gap. Ahem.

Now another question for you, America: why does University of Chicago use "Autumn" instead of "Fall"? You're confusing me!