Prangster in Chicago

The company I keep

I started playing Cafe World on Facebook about 36 hours ago. Now my entire existence revolves around eating, sleeping, killing mosquitoes, working and Cafe World.

Just then, I was renovating my cafe (I had just expanded it) and four dishes that had been cooking disappeared from the stovetops. They just vanished into thin air. See image above of the vanished dishes and also my renovation. I'm going for a minimalist museum look. What do you think?

One of the dishes, a roasted spit chicken, had about 8 hours left to go. The thing takes 24 hours! It was going to be a big moneymaker and give me the cash to add more plants and put in some desperately needed lighting fixtures. Ugh!

So I hit the Cafe World support forum and apparently this kind of thing isn't uncommon. That made me feel slightly better. But what really didn't make me feel better was reading the comments from the shut-ins who bothered to write about their own disappearing dishes.

For your reference, here are a couple of the ones I read before I wondered if maybe I should stop playing Cafe World. Hmmmm.

First, this person:

I am frustrated I lost around 23,000 stuffed peppers at a value of over $115,000 coins. During all of the freezing up and problems with Cafe World I found that my peppers are gone along with all of the time I put into building my supply up for a few days. I have had my cafe at a constant 28,000 to 35,000 servings and have been open 24/7 for about 8 days. I was saving up to purchase the $999,999 cafe upgrade and now thanks to all the problems I am down $115,000. RRRRRRRRR feel my frustration. Not to mention I have had no visable servers or chef for almost 24 hours. Well at least they are still working even though they are ghosts! UG! I want my $115,000 back or my peppers!

This person is equally annoyed, but keeps it in perspective:

I logged in this morning only to find out that 12 of my 16 dishes were showing the 'whisk egg' icon. The other 4 were fine. They were all finished before I logged off, and I even left the program open for a while before logging out. This isn't the first time this has happened, but it's usually only one dish. This is a FOURTEEN HOUR dish! While I realize this is a small issue in the grand scheme of things, and I am very thankful I have the time and a computer on which to play games, it's still frustrating.

Staying hydrated

Yep, Tommy Lee Jones is still inexplicably the very serious face of Boss coffees in Japan.

The smug smile-a-thon

On the left: Helen Chen, industrial designer. On the right: Janice Chen Chow, interior designer. So smug.

At A to Z Cafe, the coffee shop and restaurant of Yoshitomo Nara. I had an great green tea latte there. Pricey, but great. Janice has to order cake everywhere she goes, so she got a slice of caramel sponge cake that was tasty. Tasty, but pricey.

Waiting again. This time for Maisen tonkatsu (fried pork cutlets!) in Harajuku.

One word: artists.

More from the album

Amazing store interiors. Schoolgirls eating packed lunches at Ueno park. Cute bikes. Blue skies. Clean architecture.

New year reading

It's true, last year I got slack about blogging. I stopped taking photos. I let weeks go by without posting anything. I shrugged a lot. But guess what, not this year. I've got three more posts lined up after this one, meaning they're scheduled to go live and I'm just keeping them warm in the oven. So organized, right? And because I don't want us to turn into Renee Zellwegers, I pumped up the type size too.

So this reading list thing is something I want to try out. It's a lot more realistic for me to do this than proclaim "I'm going to read one book a month!" because who am I kidding, I don't read books. I want to read books. But what I really do is read magazines and newspapers online.

Here are some I've enjoyed so far this month:

The 31 places to go in 2010
Apparently we should've gone to Seoul instead. The article says, "Forget Tokyo. Design aficionados are now heading to Seoul." Yes, sir.

Healthy aging, with nary a supplement
I'm serious. I'll turn 29 this year. Choke.

The best walking partner: man vs. dog
I loved the days I lived in Sydney at Christine's place and walked Arthur every day. I'm in need of a rent-a-dog service in my neighborhood.

How to make your advertising five times as effective
It's not really about advertising though. It's about how to work with people. I want to read the book, Up the Organization. Anyone read it?

How are dog and cat people different?
I'm not sure if I'm a dog or cat person yet. It's kind of like not knowing the sex of an unborn child. Maybe one day when I'm having an identity crisis, this will be the answer to everything.

100 things we didn't know last year
Yeah, I got some time on my hands. So what? My favorites are: 19. Elephants kiss, 22. Nicolas Sarkozy collects stamps, and 39. Five trees make an orchard.

Why we travel
This article was in the McSweeneys print paper, the San Francisco Panorama. I like this line: "It's not about vacation, or relaxation, or sipping daiquiris on an unspoiled tropical beach: it's about the tedious act itself, putting some miles between home and wherever you happen to spend the night." And this one too: "We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity."

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Now back to my nap...

Cheap meals in Tokyo and Harbs, Harbs, Harbs

This bowl of rice with salmon came with a teapot of hot broth, which you're supposed to pour over the rice to make a soupy rice dish.

Chabuya ramen noodles at Mist in Omotesando Hills are always good. I ordered dipping noodles this time.

Shabu shabu lunch at Hanamon in the Tokyo metro station underground. Knowing the address is worthless. I tried to find it for ages and only came across it by accident, which made me both happy and annoyed. But I love beef (in moderation), so I got over it.

Cakes at Harbs! The bottom one is the Queen of Cakes. Out of all the meals we had in Tokyo, the afternoon tea at Harbs was one of the most expensive. That's really messed up because all we had there were tea and slices of cake. We are total grandmas. But seriously, doesn't that cake look amazing? Yessssss.

A nerd teaching moment

Before we continue with the Tokyo photos, let me share with you a nerd teaching moment. Everyone gather around please.

Last night I borrowed an SD card reader from my aunt, who is a PC person, so I could finally release my photos from Fuji camera prison. I put my SD card into the reader, plugged the USB into my Macbook and POOF, a mysterious error occurred and I lost 4 days of photos from the Tokyo trip! Ahhhhh!

So I wrote an SOS Facebook status message and nerd friends from two continents offered their solutions. Except this is one of those situations where people are desperate and frantic and they're okay with forking over $29 for a program to retrieve their photos. Because those memories are priceless.

The thing is, I'm Gen Y and I don't want to pay for anything unless it's absolutely necessary. In other words, Gen Y people are the teenage shoplifters of the Internet. And while photos of Helen sleeping like a hobo at the airport are indeed priceless, they're not actually worth $29 in real money.

Luckily I got the photos back by using a free program called EXIF UNTRASHER. I found it by skimming the Macrumors forum where nerds gather from around the world to brainstorm exactly these types of important issues.

So the teaching moment here is if you have a Mac, you might want to consider bookmarking this page. It's a program that recovers JPEGs from multimedia cards and it's free. It might come in handy one day.

And since I saved $29 last night, I'm donating it to the Doctors Without Borders Haiti Earthquake Response.

Meiji Shrine

I first went to the Meiji Shrine by Shinjuku Station with Janice back in 2006 but we were distracted by this amazing traditional wedding procession. This time, I paid attention to the details.

Failed rescue mission

I was in Tokyo for 10 days and just got back to Taipei last night. On one of those days, I happened to wander into a loud, neon-lit gaming venue. They had those games you always find at fairs and stuff, where you control a weak crane as it feebly attempts to knock a prize down -- be it chocolates or a keyring with an action figure on it -- and it's always a stupid waste of money. I was looking at all the fools trying to win the stupid chocolates and thinking, it's never going to work! You're all fools!

But then I saw this munchkin sitting in one of the machines. He looked like he'd fit right in with my other bears even though he has stumpy yellow feet that are smaller than his ears. I also like that he's so serious looking. I figured the least I can do is part with 100 yen to try to win his freedom.

Except that crane arm is so dumb and worthless it didn't even reach the little guy's head! In this photo you see the stupid crane hitting his forehead. D'oh. Look at the crease in his brow. So heartbreaking.

I felt so bad I took a goodbye photo to remember him by. Who knows how long he'll be locked in there for? Bye little dude. Take it easy in there.