What? I have to go to Summer School?

Summer break is one of the most anticipated times of the year for students, and it's easy to guess why: no school, no homework, no grades, and fun!  During the school year, I always look forward to summer vacation because it's always nice to have a break from stress and high school.

But about two weeks into the summer, I begin to worry about what to do with myself... I'd played all the video games I'd wanted to play, slept in as much as I wanted, and was basically just an all-around lazy bum, but I wasn't doing anything that was truly productive.  I now understand that being a lazy bum can only be fun for so long.

That's where summer class comes in: Chloe took her t-shirt making class and just finished up an intensive painting class at UCLA, and I'm taking a creative writing class  as part of the Community Arts Partnership Summer Arts program in downtown LA, sponsored by Cal Arts.  

At CAPSA, I've been spending every day from 10-5 writing.  Though the focus is on poetry, I have had some chances to work on writing short stories, and I've definitely developed a love for poetry, too.  The best part is that the class doesn't even feel like class—it's just me and a bunch of writerly friends...writing. Being in the class has helped me realize that writing may be something I would like to pursue in the future.  Even though it's nice to lounge around the house, having work to do has been something of a relief to both of us.  Imagine that!

A lot of my friends are at summer camp right now, which is another productive way to spend your summer.  At least these organized activities keep us from wasting away our lives on the living room couch!

I say all of this now, but I know that when my class is done, I'll be back in front of the TV killing brain cells.  

Story of my life.
...when I'm not in class.

How do you like to spend your summer? 

Compartes Chocolate and Craft In America

I went to a chocolate appreciation/printing workshop at this funky place called Craft in America when summer first started. The class was not so much as making chocolate itself (although that would've been fun) but making chocolate wrappers using the monotype printing process. 

Me and the monotype printer

In the class, while we worked on designing the wrappers, we were supplied with chocolate truffles from Compartes. ( 912 S. Barrington Avenue Los Angeles CA 90049) Jonathan Grahm from Compartes told us about how took over his family's chocolate business as a teenager and transformed and expanded it all over the world. He also talked about how he came up with the designs for his chocolate bar wrappers, and how he printed designs onto he chocolate truffles. The chocolate was delicious but the intricate designs on both the wrappers and the chocolates (the colors being edible of course) are art in themselves. Each chocolate tells a story, with their vibrant colors and taste. Depending on the theme whether it's a holiday, an event, or different parts of the world, the chocolate and the design both match the theme. All of the chocolates are amazing (yet expensive). 

Yes, these are truffles.

Jonathan Grahm is the owner, artist, and chocolatier of Compartes. He integrates art, flavors, different cultures, and different styles together to create his gourmet chocolates. For his newest chocolate series, Jonathan researched graphic design and different cultures around the world to create the perfect chocolate that corresponds with each place around the world he based his chocolate off of.

Compartes chocolate bars

Jonathan's designs are especially amazing since he never even studied graphic design before.

Making wrappers using monotype printing was also very fun. We would paint on a piece of plastic and then place a piece of paper on top and roll them both through a machine to transfer our designs onto the paper. While we designed the wrappers we also got to eat some delicious chocolate truffles from Compartes.

My chocolate wrapper

The paper printing class was sponsored by Craft In America who has been doing some interesting workshops on art and food. The class was taught by Christina Carroll and is held in the Craft in America building located at 8415 West Third Street. The building is small, but has some beautiful craft and art on display.

A Great Documentary Film: Somewhere Between

Last weekend, we watched a documentary film on Netflix called "Somewhere Between", directed by Linda Goldstein Knowlton, that follows the lives of four adopted Chinese-American teen girls.  I have a few adopted Chinese friends, and I guess I never really thought much of their back stories, but the film was incredibly eye-opening.  Each of the girls has her own struggles with her identity: Fang, who vividly remembers being abandoned on a sidewalk, continues to return to China and reach out to other orphaned girls; Hayley longs to know the reasons for her abandonment and seeks out her birth family; Jenna, a top student at a prestigious academy, constantly busies herself in after school activities to keep her mind off of the questions surrounding her abandonment; Ann, a pre-teen living in suburban Pennsylvania, doesn't show any particular interest in her biological family but is jealous when Hayley finds hers.

One of the things that is so striking about the girls in the film is their resilience: through their struggles growing up "somewhere between", the girls demonstrate an intelligence and understanding far beyond their years.

I have a few adopted Chinese friends.  Sometimes I wonder how they feel about their birth families and adoption. I don't quite have the gall to ask them about it myself, perhaps because I know how delicate the subject can be, especially considering Chinese culture's pattern of abandoning baby girls in favor of raising boys.  "Somewhere Between" provides a lot of insight into the various thoughts and feelings of different adopted Chinese girls.  The film beautifully captures a wide range of emotions—happiness, despair, loneliness, curiosity—and had me laughing and crying along with the girls.  I would highly recommend it; it's a film that everyone should watch, regardless of whether or not they know any adopted Chinese kids, because anyone can relate to its theme of being an outsider and trying to find a place in society.

I give it a two thumbs up.

T-Shirt Making Class and Lumi Co.

So for the entire last week, I was at a T-Shirt making class with a friend of mine. The class is a program for high school students at ArtCenter in Pasadena.  It was also, much to our surprise, a business class (more so than a t-shirt making class). We learned how to license our products and copyright our designs, which of our designs would sell better, and how to advertise our designs.

Before this camp, I had made t-shirts with my cousin using screen printing which is very time consuming. I wanted to take the class so that I can learn different ways to print on t-shirts that are both more efficient and to place more detailed graphics on them.

At this Art Center camp, we first designed what we wanted to put on our t-shirts and scanned them into the computer. You can also draw your designs directly on the computer too. Then we formatted it on a 11x17 canvas size and turned the images into negatives.

Negative of my T-shirt design

We emailed our designs to Lumi Co. who then printed our designs out on film. Lumi Co. is  a company that has created a new type of dye called Inkodye that is clear when rolled on to a surface, but becomes colored when exposed to direct sunlight. The Inkodye colors come through the transparent part of our film, but remains clear where the film is black because the black parts block the sunlight and prevents the dye from activating. If the film has grey tones, then a little bit more light gets in to form a gradient. What's more amazing is the fact that Lumi Co was founded by a young woman called Jesse Genet, who started the company when she was only 16. We met her. She was really nice. Her company is in this artist's colony at the Brewery, a live work place for cool artists.

Here's a link to Lumi Co's website where they explain how the print process takes place.

My teammates modeling the T-shirts I made.

With the Lumi Co. dyes you can experiment a lot more than you can with screen printing. However, if you want your designs to look exact with more colors, I would suggest screen printing. Both are very time consuming (so you might want to get a company to print t-shirts if you were looking for mass production). However, DYI is a lot of fun to do. I'll be making my own T-shirts soon, so look for them my store site at http://twopears.storenvy.com/.

By the way, I sold three of my T-shirts for a total of $90! Not bad eh?

2013 V3con!

If you haven't already heard, I was invited to speak at V3con last weekend on a panel about internet safety.  V3con is a digital media conference, presented by the Asian American Journalists Association, that focuses on Asian American Pacific Islander communications.  It was such a rewarding experience for me - it's not everyday that I get to exercise my public speaking skills, let alone in front of a bunch of adults!

Chloe and I worked together to revamp our business cards from last year.  Unfortunately, she couldn't make it to the conference this year, but I was able to hand out most of the cards we printed. I'm so proud :D

Last year, Chloe and I attended the conference as volunteers, so it was really neat being able to go as a guest this time around.  I had the opportunity to meet some seriously cool people whom I hope to keep in touch with (I got their business cards, too!).  Hopefully you can all check out V3con in the future if you get the chance; it's really inspiring and fun!

Me (left) and one of the cool people I met at V3con, Mallika Bajaj (right)!

I did end up writing a blog post about the panel I spoke on, which you can check out here: 

Driving Troubles

Did I tell you guys about how I got my driver's license?!  I've had it for about a couple of months. I can finally drive myself places now!

But...I kind of got into an accident already.  Don't worry, nobody got hurt; it was just a bumper thumper.  Still, it was a real bummer—my mom had literally just been warning me the day before about insurance rates, and then I went and rear-ended another car.  I guess traffic was so bad that I got bored and forgot to pay attention....big mistake.  I guess I really met the "bad driving" Asian standard.  Definitely not the one I wanted to meet.

It looks like I won't be driving for a while because my insurance rate went up.  So...lesson learned: don't go thinking you're cool and stop paying attention to the road.  I feel so uncool right now.  

But at least I can always be proud of myself for not getting hurt.

Woooo!  I'm so proud!

Mother's Day Card

Social Media!

I was thinking about all the social media sites I use. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, DeviantArt, Tumblr....

Which one is your favorite?

Personally I don't really get the point of Twitter even though our KoolAsianKid Twitter account has over 600 followers. I guess it's nice to get the word out fast about what I am doing, my newest blog post, or find out what other people are saying about topics I'm interested in. From a fan girl's point of view, I do like getting updated on when the next season of my favorite TV show or movie is coming out or follow actors and directors. I also follow topics about teens and Asian Americans and what they are doing.

Facebook I don't really get either. It's really time consuming though. I guess it is nice being able to keep in touch with old friends and things of that sort...but a lot of times, my friends and I just post pictures of ourselves and wait for "likes" and comments from each other about how nice the photos look. Of course, it's not as if we are going to call each other ugly on Facebook, so the whole exercise is a bit self serving. I have a public CoolAsianKid Facebook page, but that one doesn't get too many followers, and I don't use it much except to occasionally advertise our blog posts.

If had to choose between the two social media sites Mark Zuckerberg owns, I would have to go with Instagram because I have a...fandom account that I enjoy updating very much. My fan account is everything about the British TV shows Sherlock and Doctor Who, and yes I'm a nerd. But you say that like it's a bad thing. Don't scoff though. My cousin and I have close to 2000 followers in the short five months since we created it. In my opinion, our fandom account is really cool. Check it out http://instagram.com/doctorwho_sherlock#.

http://instagram.com/doctorwho_sherlock#

TUMBLR. Tumblr is the home for a fangirl or fanboy. I personally like it because there are quite a lot of interesting people and subject matters on it and you can always find people or things that inspire you, or things you can connect to through Tumblr. On Tumblr, you can personalize your account by setting up your own theme for your tumblog....your own music, your own cursor....Anything that portrays your style. Also, unlike Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter it seems like a very safe environment. You don't have to worry about hacks (Like Instagram), or unwanted people on your account or annoying ads everywhere!

I'm always inspired by the artwork on Tumblr  I always find an amazing animation on Tumblr or an amazing artist. It's a very artsy community. Plus they have gifs, which is a series of pictures that appear to be moving like a short animation.  See my Cool Asian Kid Tumblr here.

My plush animals race gif on http://www.tumblr.com/blog/koolasiankids

I have an AskChibiAang Tumblr account where I pretend to be Aang from Avatar: The Last AirBender, . . . but in a miniature chibi form I created. Other Avatar fans ask me funny questions about Aang's duties, and I respond about what an Avatar has to do. It's fun role playing, and it's funny that other fans like to engage in this kind of role play.

My gif on http://askchibiaang.tumblr.com/.

I guess dA (Deviantart) fanfiction and YouTube are also forms of social media. Deviantart is mainly for people posting art and stories, and Youtube is quite fun with a lot of people posting Vlogs (Video-blogs) that are fun, informative and interesting.

People are also into Pinterest and SnapChat now I believe? I haven't tried them. My school discourages us from using SnapChat for our own safety. Some kids have gotten into trouble for posting inappropriate comments on SnapChat which prompted our school to give us a talk about internet safety and social media etiquette. I think social media can be fun, but kids need to be careful about what they post online and not abuse the freedom they get on social media sites to invite unwanted followers or criticisms. By far, the worst offenders I meet on social media are the advertisers who spam me with things they are trying to sell. This makes social media a lot less fun.

From Up On Poppy Hill by Studio Ghibli

We weren't sure about this Studio Ghibli movie because first of all, it is directed by Goro Miyazaki, and not the great master Hayao Miyazaki who directed My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc. Secondly, the movie was not being released widely in Los Angeles. The closest theatre showing the movie is in Westwood, but only once a day, smack in the middle of the day. It's hard to find the right time to go.

Luckily, our parents are die hard Miyazaki fans, so on Saturday night, we drove all the way out to the Laemmle theatre in North Hollywood to see the movie.

The movie doesn't have any white knuckle action like most American movies do. The storyline is slow paced: It's about this girl in 1960's Yokohama who waits for her sailor father to come back to her while she takes care of her family's boarding house. She falls in love with a schoolmate who is involved in trying to save an old school club house and she chips in to help.

The movie should be a classic. The background artwork is stunning, depicting the streets, sights, culture, and architecture of 1960s Yokohama and Tokyo: a time when the country was modernizing after World War II to meet the demands of hosting the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. The story seems definitely a departure from Hayao Miyazaki the father, lacking his adventure and action style. However, we may just become Goro Miyazaki fans too with his nostalgic and sentimental story about treasuring the past while moving forward into the future.

We've visited Yokohama,Tokyo and the Miyazaki Museum in the past and it's fun to be reminded of those places while watching the movie. The movie should definitely be more widely released in the United States. It's recommended for all kids and adults alike.

The Amazing British TV Shows

I'm not sure if you've realized, but I have a bit of a thing for British TV shows. My parents and my sister think I'm weird. Maybe I am. I first got obsessed with the BBC show "Sherlock". The adaptation, featuring Benendict Cumberbatch as Sherlock and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson, is (in my opinion) the best adaption of the Sherlock Homes mysteries books ever. The creators really followed the books (which I read in 5th grade) even though the TV series is modernized. There are so far only two seasons of the Sherlock stories, but they're coming out with a third one soon. (Only three episodes in each season. But each beautifully done and 1 hour and 30 minutes long)  I can't wait! I was so sad after the end of Season 2 of Sherlock, it was SUCH a sad, heart wrenching episode.  Those of you who read Sherlock knows that in the Reichbach Falls story, Sherlock supposedly dies!

In the meantime, American might have noticed that Martin Freeman starred in the Hobbit, as the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, and Benedict Cumberbatch is going to be in the next Star Trek movie as a villain. I can't wait, because Star Trek is one of my favorite TV and movie series.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman

So, in order to compensate for the lack of Sherlock in between seasons, I decided to try out other BBC shows. In particular Doctor Who. My gosh what did I get myself into. It's SO good. I can't really tell you if Sherlock or Doctor Who is better because I love them both. It's impossible to give a short summary of Doctor Who. The genre is sci-fi. It's basically about a time traveler named "The Doctor" who's species is a Time Lord. He's the last of his kind because the evil Daleks killed the rest of his race. He travels around in the TARDIS (A blue police box) through time and space and saves people and other alien races. Through the decades that the shows has been on, the Doctor usually time travels with a human companion. He has been portrayed by 11 actors now. Each time he reincarnates into a different doctor for survival. After he reincarnates he remembers everyone but he just looks different from before. I haven't gotten to the eleventh doctor yet. I'm still on the Tenth Doctor.

David Tennant as the 10th Doctor. Tardis

As a tribute to my love of Doctor Who and Sherlock, my cousin and I have created an Instagram fan account that features images from, and about just these two shows and their stars. We put so much time and care into it that in a mere 4 months, we have gained over 1000 follows. Here is the web address: http://instagram/doctorwho_sherlock. It's a great page. Our followers say so. My cousin and I have even started to make T-shirts and buttons featuring Doctor Who and Sherlock to give away to our followers every time we reach a milestone.

My family likes to watch Downton Abbey. This is the one show that we all watch together. (I personally prefer Doctor Who and Sherlock....but...I love Downton Abbey also.) Downton Abbey is. like all British shows, really well done. The sad part is that BBC is not afraid to kill off their own main characters and it makes for completely unexpected, spectacular shows, but also the most heart wrenching moments ever. I bawled my eyes out during the episode of Downton Abbey when yougest sister Sybil died from childbirth, and another episode when leading man Matthew Crawley is killed in a car accident right after he and his wife has a new baby!

The Cast of Downton Abbey

Well I suggest watching all of these British TV shows.  They are completely different from each other, but they're the kind of shows that make you fall in love with the characters and sometimes feel sad about sharing them with anyone else because you want to think you are alone in this great fandom .....Or maybe that's just me.

Road Trip to Temecula

This was a super long weekend for us because of President's Day and our school's semester break combined. We had five days off. Unfortunately, Dad's on a business trip to Hong Kong, so we thought it would be a good idea to get out of town and enjoy ourselves while he's away. Chloe and I went on a road trip with our mom to visit. . . the INLAND EMPIRE. More specifically, the wine country of Temecula. Mom decided that it's time I get ready to take my DMV road test, so she asked me to drive . . . all the way to Temecula.  Aside from one scary lane change that scared the bejeezus out of all of us, we stayed in one piece.

I've always assumed Temecula would be a dusty, dry and hot town with not much to see. However we were pleasantly surprised. If you don't know what Temecula is like, here are some pictures of the vineyards:

Vineyards at Churon Winery

Oak wine barrels at the Callaway Winery.

We spent a lot of the first day just driving around and checking out the wine country, partly because mom didn't make any firm plans. We didn't really know which hotel we would be staying at.  Eventually, we checked into the Fairfield Inn, and got a nice suite, which was the cheaper of the two hotels we were considering (bargain hunting rocks!).

Once we settled into the room, I took a really long nap.  Mom wasn't too happy about that because she wanted to go out and eat dinner with us, so she woke me from my peaceful sleep (grr).  She wanted to try this local steakhouse called The Gambling Cowboy, since it was getting kind of late and we hadn't had dinner yet.  We drove all the way out to Old Town Temecula - a really charming, old-west kind of town - and checked out the steakhouse.  That was when we realized that none of us were actually hungry.  So in the end, we brought a couple of slices of pizza back to our hotel room and munched on them while we watched the season finale of Downton Abbey, which was [SPOILER] really depressing, by the way.

Entrance to Old Town Temecula

Mom had been talking about taking us to mine for tourmaline - that was really the big point of the trip - so on day two, she woke us up bright and early (nine-ish) to get ready to dig for those gems!  I was never too big on the idea, but she insisted we give it a try at the Himalayan Mines.

We went to Old Town Temecula to grab a bite to eat, but again, we weren't very hungry.  We ended up buying some fudge from a local candy store called Old Town Sweet Shop  instead, and before long, we all decided to put off the gem-digging until the next day.

Different kinds of delicious fudge.

The fudge is cut perfectly using these metal guides.

We decided to spend day two checking out Temecula instead: we went on a tour of the Callaway Winery and wine cellars and learned some fascinating facts about how wine is made, not that we can drink wine yet. (Did you know Callaway winemakers are also the Callaway golf club makers? or that oak wine barrels from Europe can cost $1000 each?)

We walked around old town and took a look at an old jailhouse (scared the heck out of us - there were a couple of mannequins in there!), drove around the Wine Country some more, and had a lovely lunch at the beautiful Ponte Vineyard and Inn.

Old Temecula Jail. You don't want to be locked up in here.

Beautiful day for an out door lunch at the Ponte Winery.

For our second night, we decided to stay at Churon Winery, another one of the many beautiful wineries in Temecula, and got a huge room with a GIGANTIC bathroom.  Huge.  You wouldn't even understand.  The bathroom is probably twice the size as my own bedroom.  Seriously. (Did you know that the name Churon came from the two original founders of the winery, Chuck and Ron, hence Churon? We learned that Chuck sold his share of Churon to Ron, so maybe it should be called Ronron Winery?)

After we moved our stuff into the room, mom checked the internet and found out that there was no gem-digging to occur the next day.  The mines are all closed to the public on Tuesdays!  Chloe and mom were really bummed out...but I didn't mind all that much.  I didn't really want to get my fingers dirty. We ended up hanging out in the room for the rest of the day and having In n' Out for dinner.

We were hoping to find some gems like this!

The next morning, we had a nice breakfast at the inn and headed back home for school tomorrow. I drove all the way back, in the rain and did really well.

However unplanned and disorganized it may seem, it was a lovely little trip!  Sometimes, you find more adventure that way. We definitely suggest you check out Temecula when you have the chance! We have to make it out to dig for gems some other time, and we'll let you know what that's about!

Going to College . . . Why?

It's been a little while since we last posted.  We both have midterms coming up, so we have to study for those! I'm a junior this year, so a lot of my senior friends are going to be graduating soon and I'll have to start thinking about which colleges I want to apply to.

Thinking about going to college is really scary sometimes!  I always wonder about what colleges I'll be able to get into and where I even want to go.  I hear that it's especially hard for Asians to get into the colleges they want to go to because so many Asian-Americans apply to top colleges that we automatically have lower chances.

Dad went to UC Berkeley, so I thought about going there for a while, but then my mom told me that there are so many exceptional Asians in the UC system that I won't be able to compete. Not to mention the fact that the UC system really only looks at GPA and test scores, and I'm definitely not quite up to par. So I guess I'll have to do some major research! Come to think of it, Chloe and I have a lot of expectations to meet because dad went to Berkeley and then Yale, and mom went to Wellesley and Columbia....

Luckily, my high school class is going on a trip to the east coast to visit some of the colleges there, so I'll be able to get a better taste of what kinds of colleges there are and what kind of college I'd want to go to.  Still, since we grew up on the West coast, I'm worried I won't be able to handle snowy weather!

Shall I go here?

Or Here?

Also, my going to college means that the Cool Asian Kids will be separated!! Noooooo!!! But with the internet, we might still be able to continue with our blog, but maybe as Cool Asian Teens? Cool Asian Young Adults?  Doesn't have the right ring to it. We gave to come up with something better.

Sawtelle Boulevard (Part 2) The Stores

Food aside, I really like the stores on Sawtelle also. The stores are so cute and have great for buying gifts. I really like going to Happy Six and Black Market. Happy Six has a bunch of really cute Japanese t-shirts, bags, and accessories. On top of that, they also opened up a macaron store inside Happy Six that sells really good macarons in the cutest little packaging ever! Plus they give out coupons to the best boba place next door called Volcano Tea.

Macarons inside Happy Six

The Black Market has so many different things. You can spend an entire day in the Black Market and never get bored. It has toys, mugs, clothing, journals, keychains, stuffed animals. Anything you can imagine. The stuff they sell are really funny and cute also. It's one of my favorite stores to shop for gifts because you can always find a good and unique present.

Of course, there is Giant Robot, the original store that carries all the Ugly Dolls. Our parents got us our first Ugly Dolls back in 2003 when they were at the San Diego ComiCon. We loved them so much and since then, we found that Giant Robot on Sawtelle carries them and we've gotten many more Ugly Dolls there over the years. The new Ugly Doll designs and colors are not as nice as our old ones, but that's just our opinion.

Our Ugly Doll Collection since 2003

Giant Robot carries other designer toys, t-shirts and books too.


Sawtelle Boulevard has become a great destination for hip contemporary Asian American art, design and food for kids and older folks too. Go check it out sometimes.

Happy Six: 2115 Sawtelle Boulevard  Los Angeles, CA 90025
Black Market:  2023 Sawtelle Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90025
Giant Robot: 2015 Sawtelle Boulevard  Los Angeles, CA 90025

Happy 2013!!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Sawtelle Boulevard in West LA (Part 1)

In Los Angeles, we always drive from place to place because there aren't so many good places within walking distance of each other. So today I'm going to write about Sawtelle Blvd in West LA! So many great shops, restaurants and supermarkets line the few blocks along Sawtelle making it a really nice and manageable area to stroll around for a few hours. To list a few:

Starting with Brian's Shaved Ice. Brian's Shave Ice is really good Hawaiian shaved ice. Strangely, the name is Brian 'Shave' Ice. Which is kind of "Engrish-y" in my opinion. Well that aside, the shaved ice there is really good. Unlike most shaved ice places the ice is really smooth and has a velvety feel to it. It's not crunchy as some Taiwanese shaved ice is. (Those are good too). It's really great going to Brian's Shave Ice to share a large bowl with people on a hot day. It's usually really packed in the summer though!

Their Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/shaveicela

Adding to great dessert places around Sawtelle, is Beard Papa's across the street from Brian's Shave Ice. They're going to open one near my house soon! Since I walk to school I'm probably going to get fat by picking up a cream puff every time I pass the store. Anyway, Beard Papa's is a Japanese cream puff place. They also sell a few cakes and whatnot, but they are famous for their cream puffs. They have vanilla, chocolate, coffee, green tea, strawberry, and so many more flavors for the filling in the cream puffs. Did people notice that Mr. Bear Papa was featured in one of my favorite movies, Wreck-It-Ralph!

Right next to Beard Papa's is Nijiya Supermarket. (2130 Sawtelle Blvd.) Nijiya is a great little Japanese supermarket. They sell really good authentic Japanese food and candy. We always love to go to Nijiya to buy a little bento box, rice bowl, sushi, or onigiri for lunch. The food is really fresh and delicious. Last time we went they were selling these really good Japanese pancakes called okonomiyaki. They were making them right outside the store. It was really good!

A few other restaurants and eateries we frequent on Sawtelle Blvd. are:

Coffee Tomo: (11309 Mississippi Ave. just off Sawtelle Blvd.)This is our new favorite place to get coffee. Their latte and affogado (vanilla icecream smothered in espresso) are to crave for. Not to diss Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf where we go to all the time, but this place really make a cup of lattee look beauteous.

Coffee Tomo Latte

Curry House: (2130 Sawtelle Blvd.) We blogged about this wonderful curry place on our Coolrice blog here.
Chabuya Ramen (2002 Sawtelle Blvd.): We blogged about this great ramen place earlier this year. Here.
Asahi Ramen: (2027 Sawtelle Blvd.) The original ramen place on Sawtelle. Old fashioned, but clean and good.
Tofu Ya: Best Korean soon tofu place west of Korea Town.
Little Hong Kong: Satisfying Cantonese style Chinese food.
Non La Cafe: 2055 Sawtelle Blvd. New Vietnamese restaurant that opened. Decore is really clean and modern. Food is good. We used to drive all the way up to Wilshire Blvd for Vietnamese Pho, or go all the way to the San Gabriel Valley, so this is a closer alternative for sure.
Hide Sushi: (2040 Sawtelle Blvd.) This has been open forever, and is still popular for sushi. You must bring cash though.
Volcano Tea: This place has the boba drink even compared to the ones in San Gabriel Valley. Read about it here.

Now that this blog has gotten long just describing some of the restaurants on Sawtelle Blvd., we will blog about the boutique stores on Sawtelle in our next blog.

Competition Made for Nerds: Robotics

This past weekend, I went with my school's robotics teams to participate in a VEX Robotics North San Diego Regionals Sack Attack Competition.  The Our school as 4 teams: Robocelots, Snoop Lions (my all girls team :D), Lynx-Sys, and Wild Tigers.  Each team had been working their robot for a while, so we were really excited to go on the trip.

At the last competition we went to, none of our teams were all that impressive.  My team's robot ended up being pretty decent, albeit small and kind of flimsy.  We ranked 18th out of 32 teams, which we weren't too happy with, but I guess we couldn't have expected much from our robot after having spent only a month or so on it.

For this competition, we scrapped our old robot and built a new one with the same general design. It's a lot bigger and sturdier now:

There's me awkwardly smiling for the camera...

And I guess that really helped us out a lot, because we ended up in 6th place by the time the alliance selections came around - and if you don't know this already, rank is super important when it comes to alliance selections, because the 8 teams get to pick their alliances.  So it was a big deal that 3 of our teams (Snoop Lions, Robocelots, and Lynx-sys) made it into the top 8.  Snoop Lions was ranked highest out of our school's teams.  The fact that we're one of the only all-girls teams around makes it even more awesome.

Yay!  I carried the robot everywhere.  My arms are sore now.

My team ended up picking another school's team as its alliance due to some confusion, while Lynx-sys and Robocelots partnerned.  Our quarterfinals match was against their alliance, and we ended up losing (but only by a little!).

 Do we look like the Witches of Eastwick?

That's okay, though, because then the Robocelots/Lynx-sys alliance ended up facing the number 1 and 3 ranked teams and got crushed in the semi-finals.

Even though we lost, the competition was so much fun.  We got to meet some really cool teams from other schools (including the 1st place team who crushed us) and it was just fun to hang out with each other.  I think that's the most important part: having fun.  It sounds cliche, I know, but it's really true.

All the teams!  Look at me, crouched in the front row and looking all cool.  It wasn't my idea.

Anyways, feel free to ask me any questions!

Asian Kids and Glasses

There was an article from a while back that 90 percent of Asian kids are nearsighted, probably because they spend so much time studying. This is sad, because most of my Asian friends are indeed nearsighted and wear glasses or contact lenses. In my family, both my parents are very nearsighted, probably from studying too much when they were kids. This doesn't bode well for us genetically. Strangely, my sister has near perfect eye sight. Like an old person though, she is slightly far sighted and occasionally needs reading glasses.

As for me,  I am mildly myopic, but ever since I was a kid, I use this treatment called "ortho-keratology" where I wear these corrective hard contact lenses when I go to sleep at night. The lenses shape my eyes during the night so that when I wake up in the morning, I have perfect vision for a day or two. The good thing about ortho-k is that during the day, I don't have to wear contacts or glasses, and I get to play basketball, or swim without having to worry about wearing glasses or taking contact lenses out. Ortho-k is also supposed to slow the progression of myopia, so hopefully I won't have eyesight as poor as my parents when I grow up.

My optometrist, Dr. Randall Yumori from the Pacific Eye Care Center is wonderful in helping me with the ortho-k lens fittings (because it take some careful examination to make sure the curvature of the ortho-k lenses are just right for my level of myopia.

Occasionally though, when I don't wear my contacts at night because my eyes are hurting, or when I forget to wear them for a couple of nights, I can't see so well in school. That's when I need a regular pair of glasses as back up. I go to Hourglass Optical in West Los Angeles for glasses. They have so many frames to try on, and the price is super reasonable. For my glasses, it took them 8 minutes to cut and put the lenses into the frame I selected. The owner, Kathy is wonderful in helping me select my glasses. She also happens to be our neighbor.

Okay, not the best picture of  me.

Our One Year Anniversary!

I'm always a bit late in general. Whether it's to basketball practice, school, or even birthday parties. At least I'm fashionably late.

Anyways it was our one year anniversary for Cool Asian Kids on November 18th. We were going to have a huge celebration and have giveaways....but laziness got in the way, as always.

But anyway, in this one year of blogging about what we like and do as Cool Asian Kids, we became more connected to what is happening around us via social media.  My sister and I were able to become more involved in things we wouldn't normally do. We were invited to volunteer at the Asian American V3Con. We were asked to guest blog for other sites and reviewed books, comics, movies, music, and electronic gadgets we liked. We even posted our own artwork on our blogsite for folks to enjoy.

By entering in contests and giveaways we discovered through sites that we follow, we got tickets to attend events such as the Asian American Film Festival and the Supply Cup soccer fundraiser hosted by KevJumba. Attending these events made us appreciate Asian American films and filmmakers, as well as socially conscious endeavors that Asian Americans were pursuing and promoting through social media. We are also tickled to learn that we were beginning to start a small following of our own.

We'd like to thank everyone who has been encouraging us and following us this year. We welcome any suggestions for our blog for the upcoming year and we hope to do some new things too to make our blog even better. So watch for updates regularly!

Cheers everyone!

Electronic Gadgets and the 4G Network

As a result of volunteering at the V3Con social networking conference, we had the opportunity to test use Verizon's 4G network using a couple of awesome devices: The Samsung Galaxy S3 smart phone, and the Samsung Galaxy 7.7 tablet.

Here are some disclosures: For a couple of years now, because of my lack of self-control in using electronic gadgets, (I used to text and IM into the wee hours of the morning during school nights and once texted over 900 times a weekend when I had only a 1500 texts per month plan), we have parent imposed restrictions placed on all our cell phones and computers. While we have wifi access on our computers and tablets at home, only our dad has 3G access on his cell phone. The concept of unlimited data use and live tweeting from anywhere, anytime, was new to us until the Verizon 4G network was make available to us . . . temporarily.

Having unlimited access to test use the Verizon 4G network for a whole month was a dream. We used it for everything, from watching movies on Youtube, to using the GPS (and I especially needed it one time when we didn't know how to get to the gym my basketball game was at.), listening to music, to live tweeting my basketball tournament and the Supply Cup Soccer Tournament, and to promote our blogs from everywhere. We posted pictures we took, made movies of my robotics competition preparation. Even mom got excited over a new money saving activity: downloading ebooks and audiobooks from the Los Angeles Public Library so she doesn't have to buy books to read. The 4G network was faster than my dad's 3G network in terms of streaming programs from the internet. It was much faster than our wifi capabilities at home using Uverse.

As for the devices themselves, we split up reviewing them. Chloe reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S3 because she doesn't have a smartphone. I reviewed the Samsung Galaxy tablet 7.7 because I don't have a tablet.

Chloe:
The Samsung Galaxy S3: For a kid who has a dumb phone with only 250 talk minutes and 200 texts, this smart phone is quite an upgrade and an attention getter. I was happy to show off it's sleekness everywhere: at sleepovers, in school, and at parties. It's like going from driving a Prius to a Ferrari (not that I drive).  The moment I powered the phone on, I noticed that the screen resolution is beautiful. The phone's screen is huge and much larger than dad's iPhone 4s. Photographs taken with the phone are crisp and clear. It was so convenient to take a picture and tweet it immediately anywhere and anytime. As I mentioned, using the skills I learned from V3Con, I used the phone and Verizon's 4G network to live tweet and post pictures of my VFW Basketball tournament when we came in 2nd Place. I also used it o to live tweet and promote the charity Supply Cup Soccer Tournament hosted by Kev Jumba, and attended by some favorite Asian American stars: Dante Basco who plays Prince Zuko from Avatar, the Last Air Bender, Wong Fu Production guys, The Fung Brothers, etc. Since we blogged about those events, being able to promote them via Twitter also drove traffic to our blogs. Really cool.

I love the large size screen, but the size of the phone makes it hard to just slip it into my pocket and run about with it. I have to put it in my back pack, or worry that it might fall out of my pants pockets and break. I like Android keyboard swiping, and other convenient Android features. In some ways, I like the phone much better than the iPhone because the sound quality is great and the screen resolution is amazing! The phone is also really good for drawing on because of the big screen and the touch sensitivity. If I ever get a smart phone, I wouldn't mind getting the Samsung Galaxy S3. You can do so much with it without having to switch devices. As of this writing, I accidentally dropped my dumb phone in the school's girls toilet. It has not come back to life despite placing it in a bucket of rice for a couple of days as some online posts suggest I do. So, hint hint, mom and dad, I need a  new phone!

Eileen:
The  Samsung Galaxy 7.7 Tablet: Like the Samsung Galaxy S3, the screen resolution is excellent. It is so clear that the screen image on it looks like a photograph. This tablet is definitely smaller than the iPad 3 that Chloe uses for school. We have mixed feelings about this. I liked the smaller size because it is really convenient to be able to carry it around in a purse and bring it to school, or on a bus. The iPad is a bit too big for that. Putting the tablet on a shelf and using the 4G network to stream shows on this tablet, I can watch TV shows or movies while using the exercise bike. This made exercising quite pleasant.

However, the smaller screen size is also a drawback in the sense that everything appears a bit smaller on the screen.  While I'm okay with it, my parents complain that they need to wear reading glasses just to look at the news online using this tablet.  So I guess for older people, maybe the small size of the tablet is not so appealing. Otherwise, I think the tablet is quite good, although I haven't seen the new iPad mini yet, so I can't compare them.