Food Review

“反正我已经习惯晚睡，不知不觉又要三四点。我好害怕害怕失眠，更怕妈叫我吃早点。” — 《习惯晚睡》Ronghao Li 李荣浩

Streaking

As I wrote at least once before, loss-streaking in League is probably one of the worst feelings. Did I deserve to win all the games? No. Did I deserve to lose three in a row? No. Too bad it happened. I think the solution is just to not play after the first loss of the day.

UCLA

I heard that people occassionally run around naked at UCLA, which is pretty interesting. It sounds like something that probably used to happen here, but I guess weirder things happen in other colleges. It’s nice to step outside of the Caltech bubble for once.

Food Review Bros

Ate lunch with my brother at Ipoh Kopitam and talked about old and new Caltech traditions.

At a Fleming alum lunch, the current students chanted “Alright” before announcements, but the alums didn’t. As it turns out, it’s a moderately old tradition that no one knows the history of. Note that most visiting alums are established in their careers, so are quite old.

Ipoh Kopitiam

is an 8/10 Malaysian restaurant with a relatively long wait time, so make sure to reserve a table on Yelp. The Hainanese chicken was elegant yet simple, however, my brother said that Cluck2Go is better.

The roti was solid, but the large piece-size forces double-dipping. Also, I experienced Malaysian toast for the first time, so good! If you order a milk tea or a coffee, you can dip it in and it just tastes so amazing. It doesn’t taste sweet compared to American breakfast—there is some element of smell that elevates the taste.

However, the Nasi Lemak with chicken curry was dry and there wasn’t enough paste for the rice. Overall, 6/10 performance on the Malaysian national dish.

Another interesting discovery was 100PLUS soda, which is carbonated Pocari Sweat, an electrolyte drink similar to Gatorade. In Shanghai, I enjoyed drinking Pocari Sweat more than exercising, which means I exercised often.

Note: It’s annoying that I can no longer type an em-dash on my smaller keyboard.

康师傅 (Kang Shi Fu)

The Kang Shi Fu brand of drinks is amazing, from iced tea to sour plum juice.

I also found the yogurt 安慕希 “希腊好酸奶” at 99 Ranch Market which was a pleasant surprise. However, the size of each bottle also shrank, which is not great. I was reminded of it a few months ago by an old friend who used to drink it a lot back in China. I remember it as a big sponsor on 《奔跑吧兄弟》Running Man China and the contestants would drink it every episode.

Clash of Cooks

There are many pockets of restaurants near the Caltech campus where daring students venture for something that isn’t a [INSERT PROTEIN] + avocado sandwich.

Restaurant locations around Caltech.

When far away, it appears as if there is a cross formed by the restaurants (E Colorado Blvd horizontal, S Lake Ave vertical), but they actually inhabit rather distinct pockets from the perspective of walk-time and direction.

Also, for reference, most of the restaurants below have an average cost of about $20 per person.

The Northerners

Beginning with the far north, which is categorized by being at least as far north as Colorado and west of Lake or east of Hill Ave, we have Cluck2Go.

Cluck2Go

The day after going to Ipoh Kopitiam, I went here with my friends TEDGCS and found that the Hainanese chicken was a very solid 8/10 and came with some pickled vegetables and a chicken broth. The rice wasn’t as fragrant as Ipoh’s, but they did give more chicken (with no bones) at a cheaper cost. The sauces had slightly too much ginger flavor for my liking.

Although their one-trick dish did not really impress me compared to Ipoh’s, it was really satisfying. I might need to retry Ipoh to see which one is actually better. Next time, I’ll try the fried Hainanese chicken.

The trip for one of the cheapest places on this list is actually the longest, since you need to walk all the way through Pasadena City College, so you should probably wait for a slow weekend to come here.

Speaking Chinese is helpful since at least some of the workers are Chinese, though I would infer that they are all Chinese.

Chim!

is a Thai street food place in the western far north that I would say is 8.5/10 except for the distance. The workers there all speak Thai or Cantonese, I wasn’t really listening.

The roti was sliced into smaller pieces, so no double-dipping is required. Other than that, it’s a very basic Thai restaurant that always has seats.

Yoshinoya

吉野家 (Yoshinoya) was one of my favorite places to go in Shanghai because it’s very basic and reliable and I am really nostalgic for my kindergarten/middle school days. It’s impossible to mess up the classic beef bowl. However, there is no point in getting a large bowl because they don’t actually add more beef, they just add more rice. It’s like paying for college only to find it’s high school with more homework.

I was happy to find that there was a bad review of how the large bowl is just a regular bowl with more rice:

What’s the difference between large and bowl? Every time I order large size, the only one thing difference is rice!! Large size means more rice?? What the hell is that?

It may not be to the liking of people unblinded by nostalgia expecting the same thing, so I probably would recommend only coming here if you are going to the Pasadena City College Flea Market as well.

Fleas

Going to the PCC flea market (open Sundays 9 am to 3 pm) was a very fun experience, there’s all sorts of trinkets and gadgets that are fun to look at. By the way, they accept Zelle and Venmo, so there’s no need to bring cash. I only had $5 in cash and was wondering if they accepted credit cards for a while.

I bought:

• 3 pairs of circular sunglasses (to dress like Gojo/Nanami for fun), one of which I plan to gift to J, who likes JJK.
• Duck shirt + socks, this was actually my favorite buy because the duck shirt was so funny.
• A small bonsai, which I gave to W and J for room decoration.

The Lakers

Most restaurants are on Lake Ave, and they are close to campus, so people generally come here.

HiroNori Craft Ramen

is a typical middle-tier ramen restaurant that has an interesting watermelon-cucumber water instead of tap. I think that detail elevates it to some degree, but it is a very reliable place to go. I think it might have been the first restaurant I went to when I came here.

Dan Modern Chinese

has very good American Chinese food. The dimsum is pretty solid, I recommend the pork and shrimp.

The cucumber is strangely spicy, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Three-cup chicken is one of the best dishes here probably, the noodles were not too memorable, but they are probably what is expected. Shrimp fried rice is pretty standard as well.

UOVO

must be one of the best-tasting restaurants in the area. They have ok prices, at around $35 per person, but it is actually much better than other restaurants of the same pricing.

Its problem is that they do not allow reservations and they are always packed on weekends, so either come at 5 pm or lunch, or don’t come at all. I believe that they actually create a lot of runoff customers for Dan, which is directly adjacent.

Tip for all western restaurants: do not order the special because it is just a 40% increase in price for a 10% increase in quality.

You could probably order anything and it would taste good because the menu is so small.

Inbetweens

There are some restaurants that are rather isolated compared to the ones in the northeast and on Lake.

Matsuri Restaurant

is higher-quality than HiroNori, but it costs more and I don’t know if it’s really worth it. Also, Matsuri is less likely to have seats.

I was actually surprised when I heard the staff and customers speaking Japanese, because I’ve only been to Japanese restaurants run by Chinese people, specifically, from 福建 (Fujian).

Daisy Mint

is a slightly more sketchy walk because the road is not well-lit at night. People who do not enjoy walking in the dark on streets with only a few cars and people should stay away.

However, if you do not have an irrational fear of dark streets, Daisy Mint is one of the best Thai restaurants on Colorado, next to Target as well.

Urban Plates

is a food-court type joint with American food that is relatively cheap, healthy, and tastes ok. It was actually O’s suggestion because it’s quite close to campus and she’s been there before.

I ordered brussel sprouts and broccolini to eat some vegetables, which both tasted horrible. Brussel sprouts only taste good to me when they are stir-fried and not when they are baked. It was bitter, sour, and burnt. The broccolini was cold and they didn’t cut off the stem.

The shrimp skewer was really good though.

Wild Wild West

There’s a batch of restaurants west of Lake on Colorado that I haven’t explored yet, but I have high hopes for them. Most promising candidates are probably Takuya, El Portal, and Janejira.

Other Potential Candidates

I have not yet tried Venezuelan Chamo Cuisine, Heidar Baba, Shanghai No. 1 Street Food, Mercado, Pier Grill, QQ Kopitiam, Pho Banh Mi Che, NY Chicken & Gyro.

Wagariyo

Ultimately, if you like to eat sandwiches, eating on campus is fine. However, if you want to go somewhere, I would recommend the following:

• Japanese: HiroNori
• Thai: Daisy Mint
• Chinese: Dan
• Italian: UOVO
• Burger: Pie & Burger

New Mic

My brother gave me a very nice condenser microphone from Audio Technica and a Scarlett Solo audio interface. He didn’t have a stand though, so I just bought a pop filter and a desk stand.

My current Blue Yeti is bad at picking up my guitar: after the initial strum, there is no ringing. I believe it may be a noise cancellation inside the Blue Yeti that gates quiet sounds from recording. Anyway, look forward to some better recordings.

Artistic Liberty

In a recent video by Pewdiepie, whom I haven’t watched for a few years, he learned how to draw decently well within 30 days with just a few minutes every day.

I’ve always wanted to know how to draw well, but not enough to actually learn it. However, I’ve been considering more and more the importance of being able to put the images in my mind onto paper. Ever since Kip Thorne mentioned the best course he took at Caltech was a mandatory art course for engineering, I’ve felt an impetus to figure out drawing. Also, whenever I sign birthday cards, I like to draw a little picture, so I’d like to get a bit better at that.

For G’s card, the most recent birthday, I wanted to draw DJ Khalid because we often repeat his inspirational quotes, such as “Let’s go golfing!” and “They don’t want us to jump in the ocean that looks like listerine.” But, I didn’t know how to draw DJ Khalid.

Lunar Ring

On the eve of G’s birthday, there was actually a lunar ring, which is when the ice crystals in the atmosphere refract the full moon’s light in a circle around the moon. It truly looks amazing, and it actually inspired me to download the Sky Guide app, which has a compass feature that shows which stars are currently visible.

It turns out that the brightest star directly above in the southwest is actually Jupiter, which has been visible every recent night (bottom right of the Moon in the image).

Lunar ring on the night of Nov 26.

Kindergarten Wars

Pewdiepie mentioned that he practiced drawing characters from Kindergarten Wars, his favorite manga. I checked it out and it’s actually a very good manga, kind of similar to Sakamoto Days because the characters are all assassins and the genre includes some comedy and slice-of-life.