Can you say “Brown Rice Tea”?!!

I’ve been trying to cut down on coffee by drinking some green tea and such… and then one day, I discovered…

And all I want to say is WOW!! It’s very soothing… the brown rice definitely adds well to the touch! The Japanese of the day is “Yamamotoyama”!

IKEA, oh how I love to hate you!

So it’s the Black Friday… I wanted stay far away from the malls and stores…
But we have to eat still and so with the day off, I suggested that we go to Komart.  After having lunch with my good friend, Paul Minifee at Pho Binh, we started to head off in that direction.  Half way there, Soojin suggests a sneaky one… “We could stop by IKEA since it’s on the way…”  Oh how innocent are those suggestions, eh? 

Well, so we get there about 1 pm.  Soojin is all lost in the “presence” of IKEA.  This is the one store that she said that she could either work at or live at!!    As much as I do like some of their stuff and how ingenious some of their stuff are, I do hate them for few other reasons…

1.  It’s freakin’ huge!!    It took us nearly 3 hours to get through the store at “relatively fast” pace!!
2.  Sure they’ve got some great stuff for real cheap… but when you get 20 to 30 of such things, they still add up HUGE!! 
3.  Did I mention that it’s big??!! 

I am not good at shopping… so needless to say, after 3 hours there, I was exhausted!  Soojin did notice that I was about to crash so she felt a bit guilty… but still didn’t stop her!    And after 3 hours with the kids, they also began to get very cranky and  irritating and demanding after all that…  At least, JJ was well distracted with those blue arrows for him to keep searching for. 

Whew… I’m tired…  IKEA… How I love to hate you!

K-Movie: “Holli-Dei” (aka. Holiday)

In the year of 1988, Korea held its first Olympics.  However, to do so, the government had to take down the slum areas of Seoul to try to improve its image.  Additionally, there was no concept of “rights” to inmates.  This movie captured the disillusionment and the sadness of those times while staying true to its message.

Though I didn’t shed a tear physically, my heart cried inside … Korea, like many countries, have loads of secrets that need to come out in the open.  I pray that movies like “Holli-Dei” will awaken the people around us to kick us out of our ignorance.

This is for the victims of injustice…  If you feel brave enough to see the movie, let me know… 

Computer Upgrade Done Right…

So over the past couple of months, I’ve been scrunging to sell my older parts in the effort to upgrade my desktop PC, which is mainly used for gaming and video capturing (miniDV camcorder).  I don’t mind used parts so I found great deals and hitched up!    Here’s the rundown…

Before:

CPU: AMD Athlon64 Socket 754 3000+ (OC’ed to 2.4 GHz)

Memory:  2x 512 MB Patriot PDP+XBLK memory

Video:  BFG 6800GT 256 MB AGP

Motherboard:  Chaintech VNF3-250

HDD:  100 GB IDE Seagate / 160 GB IDE Western Digital

Now:

CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 Socket 939 4200+ (OC’ed to 2.5 GHz)

Memory: 2x 1 GB Patriot EP PC3200

Video:  Sapphire X1900XT 512 MB PCI-E

Motherboard: Epox 9NPA+ Ultra

HDD:  250 GB SATA Hitachi / 200 GB SATA Maxtor

All I can say is…

Dual core helps a LOT in multi-tasking… my http://folding.stanford.edu project is now crunching out faster than ever to find the cure for cancer!    My games both look beatiful and runs so much faster…  hee… the satisfaction of building/upgrading your own rig is just a pure sensation!    Say what you will… at least I’m a very happy nerd/geek …