At 7pm the doors opened to the Kobayashi Hall, the screen and the risers were set up for the movie.  Two Subaru cars were placed in the front as well.  The hall was surprisingly nicely set up.  The movie I saw was titled “Kakera: A Piece of Our Life”.  It is around a university student (girl) who meets a young lady who tells her that she’s not interested in women but is interested in certain people.  The young lady is a lesbian while the university student has lost her way with having a boyfriend who is the stereotypical Japanese man and is curious with her sexuality.  All of my friends did not enjoy the movie.  The lesbian was desperately in love with a straight girl trying to convert her and was acting like a stalker.  The university girl was quite confused like a high school teenager.  The movie was slow paced.  This is a low budget film and the actors were all wearing the same clothes every single day.  Some of my comments from my friends were “I want 2 hours of my life back!” “Is that why they served alcoholic beverages?” “If that is the best movie of the festival I don’t want to see another”.  Although the movie was not the best I would recommend supporting up and coming directors and film makers. 

At the end of the movie the director of the movie Momoko Ando flew in from Japan and she spoke to us about the movie and she also had a question and answer period.  She also talked about James Iha (previously in the band The Smashing Pumpkins) was in charge of the music in the movie. 

For a free night of 2 alcoholic beverages and some appetizers, well worth it if you have nothing to do.

It was a pleasant evening, so a table in their little patio was a great start to our meal.  The friendly waitress explained the menu to us in English and we all decided to go for the $49 4-course tasting menu since the a la carte would’ve costed more money.  The tasting menu consisted of an amuse bouche, an entree, a main and dessert.

For our amuse, we were served with blood pudding, cured duck breast, and pickeled mushrooms.  I have never tried blood pudding before, it looks just like the Chinese pig’s blood except it is seared.

For my entree, I picked the escargots with wild mushrooms.  It was very yummy.  My coworkers tried the foie gras terrine and it was very very smooth!

For my main, I got the Thazard with risotto.  The fish tastes kind of like tuna or mackerel.

I think the only disappointing part of the meal was the dessert.  I was supposed to get the blueberry and vanilla creme brulee, but they ran out and they gave us jasmine tea creme brulee instead.  It didn’t taste that good because the bitter tea taste was too overpowering, but my coworker got the bread pudding and it was awesome.

Chuck Hughes from Chuck’s Day Off owns this tiny little, unmarked restaurant.  They specialize in seafood and have a fresh menu daily.

I couldn’t say not to the lobster poutine appetizer, but I thought it would be too heavy to get another main, so I decided to go with the tomato salad with avacado and cheddar frit.  (Ok fine, their dishes were kind of pricey, so I decided to go with two appetizers instead!)

The tomato salad was very refreshing and very appetizing for a hot day.

The lobster poutine was less exciting than I expected.  There were a few chunks of lobster which I initially though tasted pretty sweet, but then I realized that it was actually the gravy that tasted sweet.  The fries were good, but the cheese curds were not as squeaky and chewy as I would have liked.  When comparing this poutine to another gourmet poutine like the foie gras poutine from Au Pied de Cochon, this is definitely the loser.

The table across from me ordered the seafood platter.  It was more like a huge toolbox full of seafood and it comes with a hefty price tag too, Small $45, Medium $85, and Large $150.

Three kinds of spreads for our bread, olive tapenade, butternut squash and humus.

Smoked salmon eggs benedict

Lobster mac & cheese

I went and checked the seller’s feedback and found out that they have 4 negative feedback comments in the last month and 10 negative feedback comments in the past 6 months.  All related to poor communication with the seller and not receiving items ordered through eBay!  I immediately opened a case with eBay customer support and a week later, I got my full refund.  Thanks to eBay, I got my money back and I’m a happy camper again.  I left negative feedback for bestbuykorea, but then realized that the comments box has a 50-character limit, so there wasn’t even enough room for me to bitch about them!

(picture above not taken by me)

I was in LA during the days of June 18 – 22.  The trip was all about spending time with my god-grandmother so I mostly stayed in the house with a few random visits to the local areas.   Her house has a gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean which I spent hours looking at.

Close by the house is a trail which runs along the Palos Verdes coastline.  Whenever I have free time, I would hike down the trailers with my camera in hand to capture the mesmerizing ocean view.

At the end of the trail lies an old lighthouse with a whale museum nearby.  Observers come to watch and count the whales every year during the whale’s migratory path.  You can receive a free interesting tour from a local volunteer inside the museum.  The tour guide was explaining how they are having an over population of sea urchins and I thought to myself “wouldn’t crazyDiva like to turn them all into Uni”.

On the day I arrived to LA, my grandmother treated me to an extremely delicious apple fritter from the local bakery.  I later went back and purchased and ate 3 more in the span of a day, all by myself.

I also had a chance to drop by the local farmer’s market only opened on Sunday.  There were large varieties of fruits and vegetables, many of which had samples for.  

One of the booths was selling a Mexican fruit called “Cherimoya” that I have never seen before (you can probably purchase it in Toronto as well, but I have never came across it). 

A customer beside me describe the fruit as “a fruit from the heavens, it taste like a combination of pineapple, avocado, strawberries and all the best fruits you can think of”.  Which such high praise, I surely must try some for myself.   The verdict – it tasted exactly like coconut!

Black dress $310 $108.5

Capris $114 $56

Printed dress $196 $67

Satin pumps $226 $79

This tea house is very old English style indeed.  I actually think they should update their decor so that it is more classy than old looking.  We started off with a huge menu with over 80 different types of teas to choose from.  They have many different types of black, white and green teas, as well as some African and Asian teas.  I chose my go-to tea English Breakfast.  They served the ladies and gents with different styles of tea cups.  The ladies got floral-patterned tea cups and the gents got a more masculine design.

First came the finger sandwiches.  They tasted ok, but I was expecting some smoked salmon sandwiches but they didn’t have any…

After a long wait, we finally got the scones.  These tasted pretty good, but they were a lot flakier than normal scones which are usually more dense in texture.

Overall, it was a fun experience, but next time we’ll have to try the King Edward Hotel’s afternoon tea!

So You Think You Can Dance is starting again! I have been a fan since season 4. They completely changed up the format this year. Instead of having 20 new members, they now have 11 newbies teamed up with 11 all-stars (previous season’s best contestants). The new format is a very welcoming change! The show was starting to get stale and this breath a new life into the program.

This week is the first elimination and by far, the best dance was from Alex Wong. Created by Sonya who is quickly becoming one of my favorite choreographers, Alex and Allison danced a contemporary number to Hallelujah. The performance was so good it left the judges teary eyed.  Contempory is what Alex was trained in so I wonder how he is going to do in routines that aren’t in his element.

At the other end of the spectrum is Melinda Sullivan. She’s a tap dancer who is trained by the tap-dance legend Gregory Hines. She was dancing with Pasha to a ballroom routine but the entire dance looked sloppy. It was so bad that Nigel mentioned she would be in the bottom 3 tomorrow. Even though she had a bad dance, I still want to see what else she has to offer so I hope she can survive tomorrow’s elimination.

The most annoying contestant must be Kent. His annoying smile and facial expressions is enough to make me want to projectile vomit. I really don’t care how he dances, I hope they vote his annoying ass off the show ASAP!

All the other dances were pretty average so not much to talk about there.

As much as I hate Mia Micheals, I have to admit, the show is not the same without her.  Having her return this season brings back what makes So You Think You Can Dance a good show.  Can’t wait for next week’s performance!

I wonder how long they have been in the business of gel nails because not only did the manicurist not have any pre-made designs for me to choose from, she didn’t have a big selection of colour gel or sparkles available either.  I decided to pick a darker purple colour with gold sparkles, very simple design, and just wanted her to get it over with so I could get out of there.  It took her several tries to get the colour gel the way I wanted it.  All the different colours that I tried on were very transparent and didn’t turn out opaque even after 2 coats. When I thought that hurdle was out of the way, the manicurist surprises me with another amazing act of trying to apply sparkles to my nails by using the same paint brush that she used for the gel!  Obviously this didn’t work as the sparkles wouldn’t stay on my nails, so I asked her if she had another type of brush, and when that didn’t work, she decided to just dip my whole nail into the jar of sparkles!!  I couldn’t believe how bad this experience was and how this store could possibly provide gel nail services to customers when they are so amateur.

The finished product turned out to be alright, but as you can see there are sparkles spread all over the nails instead of just at the tips.