• Saturday – Multimedia music concert thingy.
• Sunday – Played World of Warcraft. Read a little. Went to Sausalito with Jason.
• Monday – Had pho with Cameron and Nick. Went to check out the Inner Sunset. Was very pleasantly pleased by rental video store selections (some of which were of an adult nature). Had coffee/tea at a cool hipster cafe/bar.
• Tuesday – Went for yoga class. Then went jogging with Courtney, Eris, and Buzz. Didn’t die! Kevin joined us for dinner.

The above is a small sampling of my (almost) daily activities for the past month or so. I’m exhausted just reading that list. Man. What has happened to me?

PS. Plus, I’m taking snowboarding lessons on Saturday! Seriously, WTF happened to me?

This year’s Christmas was rather laid-back. The family schlepped down to Los Angeles to visit the in-laws and coo over the baby in the family (aka Brandon’s niece). We ate at Penang, a Malaysian restaurant, on Friday night, and had the grand ol dinner feast on Christmas Eve. And breaking tradition, we opened up presents on Christmas Eve night instead. (I guess it’s ’cause of the baby or something, I wasn’t too sure either). The baby had tons of gifts, and honestly, that was the real fun of the whole night, watching her gush over the crazy beeping toys and snuggly dolls. The family exchanged gifts too — I managed to haul in a food processor, some Japanese snacks, and gift certificates galore. Brandon also seemed quite pleased with the Complete Calvin & Hobbes collection I gave him. It was only seven of us total, so all in all, a rather stress-free weekend.

I must say I was a little disappointed I wasn’t able to give all my friends a greeting this year — time just fell a little short, and by the time I thought of it, the day was over. So friends, consider this a belated Ho-ho-ho. And I owe you guys those cookies I baked.

Then we parted ways, as he had to go home, and I wanted to spend some time with my friends. Went over to Varnish Art Gallery for Net Tuesday, and saw several people present the value of technology to non-profit organizations. One of the presenters was none other than Chris Messina, who talked about the value of open source, as well as showed a short demo of Flock. Then we sorta mingled around a little before we grouped into two — a dinner group, and a drinking group. I was in the latter, ’cause I had already ate. Courtney, Jesse, Nelson and I headed to the Thirsty Bear Brewing Company, that makes hand-crafted beer. We sat down, and since I was “celebrating” I ordered a pumpkin cake as dessert. It was very good. As was the beer — I had the Polar Bear pilsner-style lager, which was tasty and went down very smoothly (although I did want the Golden Vanilla beer, but they were all out of it). Eddie and Ryan joined us soon after, and Jason too. We talked about a variety of subjects; topics included dodgeball ethics, regional dialects, work problems, my new job, and a lot of other things that I can’t remember. I think the highlight of the evening was when we were all hanging outside the bar, and Jesse was telling the tale of a guy in New York that’s known for his “Man-gina.” I’d elaborate, but I probably couldn’t do it justice.

After that, Jason took me home. I surfed around online, attempted to do some work but failed miserably, fell asleep… and dreamed of the new job, friends, beer, and good times. Happiness.

(This entry was re-posted on the SF Metblog save for a few details — see “Non-Metblog content” portion of this entry).

The Alternative Press Expo took place last weekend (April 9th and 10th). It was held at the Concourse Exhibition Center on 7th and Brannan. APE is known within the comic book industry as one of the biggest independent/small press conventions in the country. It is comprised of two days of zines, comics, and hand-made crafts galore. And like the past two years, the husband and I took our place behind the table to sell our wares. Or his wares rather. For the uninformed, Brandon happens to be a rather talented cartoonist, and has been churning out comics for the past three years now. He started exhibiting at APE in 2003 with a half-table, and has moved on up to a table all by himself in 2005. Well, we shared two tables with Entropy Comics, but you get what I’m saying (Gary from Entropy Comics also runs a comic book store out on Ocean Avenue called Comic Outpost). This year, we were debuting his new book The Stereos: In The Garage, as well as selling last year’s The Stereos: Battle of the Bands, past Little Things collections, and lots of Geek Pride shwag (the ones on our table were of the non-Cafepress variety).

We arrived pretty early to set up on Saturday, and were super-stoked to see what a good table we had. Our table was situated in the front center of the hall, and we were right across from the tail end of APE behemoth Slave Labor Graphics. In indie-comic speak, this means we had a Very Good Spot. We set up our materials, and waited around for the crowd to spill in. Meanwhile, I was stoked to spot so many people from such big name indie publishers like Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, Oni Press, AiT Planet Lar — all of whom were situated really near us.

Once the con started going, I became the defacto Booth Bunny. Dressed up in my Geek Pride shirt, mini-skirt, and Vans sneakers, I was pushing the cute-wifey shtick to the hilt. Not that it mattered — most people seemed more interested in the free brownie squares that I had baked up to give away. And no — they were not that kind of brownies. I had several people come up to me and asked if the brownies were made with pot. And at least two people WALKED AWAY when I told them it wasn’t. Like, what’s their problem? It’s FREE FOOD. Regular chocolate not good enough any more?

Anyway, while Brandon was doing the soft sell, I often got up and walked around the place to visit other tables. I was enamored with Giant Robot’s booth, and immediately purchased a small hoodie. I was similarly taken with the Super 7 booth, and bought a green t-shirt. Other than that, I visited our friends (mostly cartoonists) who also had tables there — Thien Pham from Global Hobo & Sparkplug, Lark Pien, Derek Kirk Kim, Jason Shiga, Shaenon K. Garrity of Narbonic (as well as her husband Andrew Farago who’s the manager of the Cartoon Art Museum), Keith Knight, Paige Braddock, Chris Kohler of Hidden Agenda Press, Tom Beland, Scott Beale (the only non-cartoonist on this list) of Laughing Squid, Jason Thompson of Mock Man Press (and new friend Dirk Tiede from Dynamanga.net), Bryan Kolm of Atomic Bear Press, and lots more that I can’t remember right now.

Walking around, I also turned rather fan-girly when I encountered such big indie names like Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Seth, and Jhonen Vasquez (who was hands-down THE rock star at APE, with the longest line of fans throughout the whole con). I then bought the latest PunkPunk issue, which has this awesome packaging of hand-embroidered grocery bags as the covers (The latest one, issue 4, is an anthology of stories by couples/partners. The covers were designed by Derek Kirk Kim. Cool stuff). And seeing as the Cartoon Art Museum had a booth at APE, I took the opportunity to renew my membership right then and there. I then ran into Alex K. from Illegal Pussycat (who happens to be an ex-Metblogger), we talked for quite a bit, and she even gave me a free copy of her comic. Throughout the weekend, I wandered around the rest of the hall, trying to take in as much sights and sounds as I could. I saw so much wacky and wonderful stuff that it’s impossible for me to list them all — it was like a sea of comics, zines, shirts, buttons, bags, and more.

‘Course, this entry wouldn’t be complete without me mentioning my friends who came out in support of The Geekout — fellow Metbloggers Jason Schupp and Courtney Patubo (with her Kevin in tow). Thanks guys, you are the bestest. It was clear that they too were having a blast. I especially enjoyed Courtney and Jason’s bat hats.

[Non-Metblog content]
I also ran into — wait for it — a fellow Malaysian! His name is Azmeer, and it was quite the bizarre thing. He apparently came across my blog while looking for Malaysian restaurants in the Bay Area (long-time readers will remember my Banana Island entry) , clicked on Brandon’s link, and recognized him due to the many pictures I’ve posted on here. It was such a breath of fresh air to actually meet another Malaysian here in San Francisco, you have no idea. We talked and reminisced a good bit about Malaysia, exchanged immigration stories, tips and tricks of the process (he’s already got PR here), and overall I think I have a new friend. How awesome is that! Ah, the community-bonding powers of blogs. It’s not to be understated. Now back to the APE stuff.
[/Non-Metblog content]

All in all, we did good. Our sales were high, people seemed to like Brandon’s stuff (he even got approached by a few potential distributors), and the brownies were a huge hit (despite the lack of pot). Here’s looking forward to next year’s APE!

Shockingly (or perhaps not so shockingly), I managed to get through the entire dinner (plus Matt‘s afterparty) without getting involved in a tech discussion. I mostly listened intently, nodded, laughed, and fiddled around with other people’s gadgets. Not that I didn’t hear a lot of tech geek talk; I just didn’t see the need for my participation. Curse my lack of tech knowledge! Also, I’m not sure if this sort of dinner would be very conducive to new bloggers — seems to be more of a get-together of people who are already in-the-know. Of course, the dinner wasn’t specifically meant for new bloggers, so the idea is probably moot.

As far as my actual participation in conversations, I did talk about other stuff. Like Indian food. And alcoholic beverages. And rainy weather. And San Francisco geography. And Flickr (Okay, ONE tech-related discussion). And other stuff I can’t remember. Scoble had the right idea when he actually walked around and talked to people; then again, he IS the host of the darn thing. Other people mingled too, but all in all, a lot of people just kinda stuck to people they already knew. I’d propose some kind of icebreaker introduction game, but that’d be too radical and horrifying I’m sure.

Most of the actual fun took place at the afterparty at Monsieur Mullenweg‘s place. It was great fun seeing Jonas and Jasmeet trading bartending duties. MJ and I flitted about arranging food on the dinner table, which turned out to be rather pointless since people didn’t eat much anyway (to those who did eat — those brownie squares? I made them. You may compliment me now.) After that, I mostly just lounged about being all lazy. I took some photos, ate, drank, played around with my Powerbook, and gossiped. It was fun. Kudos to Matt for letting us use his apartment as our playpen, so to speak.

More talk of the dinner/afterparty: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Photos of the dinner/afterparty:
Mine: here, and here.
Jasmeet’s: here, and here.
Jason‘s: here.
Jonas‘s: here

PS. One of the more exciting parts of the day for me, was what happened BEFORE the dinner even took place. But I’ve been warned by certain parties that names cannot be used in the re-telling of events. And there’s really no way to tell the story without everyone knowing who I’d be talking about. So it’ll have to remain a mystery… for now.

Ah, the things you learn by talking to bloggers.

I had the pleasure of meeting up with a few of my fellow SF metbloggers at the Pied Piper in the Palace Hotel (in SF, natch) recently, and it was an enjoyable and enlightening experience. Met with Christiana Dominguez, Brian Lam, Cheyenne, Marc Canter, and Jason Defillippo (the latter few are probably quite familiar to a lot of you).

The entry title was quoted by none other than Mr. Canter, who claims that San Francisco streets like Minna and Jessie were named after whores. Apparently in exchange for a little nookie, the judges would grace the streets with their names. How incredibly San Franciscan. The only reason I’m not blogging that on the SF Metblog is because I can’t find a source (Darn you Google!).

There were many other interesting conversations that evening, most of which revolved around the world of blogs (“Which is better, XML or RDF?” “Am I a loser for sticking with Blogger?” “Let me tell you about this thing called blogrolling.” etc.) Ah, such geek fun. Us old-time San Franciscans also schooled newcomer Jason on San Francisco geography, as well as the best place in town to get a proper bed (It’s Sleep Train, natch).

Much alcohol was also consumed, which was a really bad idea on my part — ended up having a horror of an allergic reaction later on. Damn it. Should’ve remembered I’m allergic to vodka. Three days later and I’m still covered in splotchy rashes. Sigh.

Overall though, it was a fun evening. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Minus the allergy thing.

Anyway, I went to the mixer only knowing Jasmeet would be in attendance. I really didn’t know anybody else. I sorta got to know Justin Foster of Airblogging earlier that day when he helped me out with my moblog. Other than that, I was looking forward to a night of sitting at the bar by myself staring at a sea of unknown faces. I’m really not all that comfortable in a social environment like this — I’m more of a listener, not a talker (Although I’m way better one-on-one). I guess I was primarily there for the food and the sneak peek, plus getting to meet Jasmeet and getting to know a couple people.

However, I did end up meeting more people than I expected, albeit without much conversation. Let’s see if I can rattle off their names: There was Anil, Mena, Ben, Ms Jen, Tom Coates of plasticbag.org, Dave (for the life of me I can’t remember his last name or his website, though I did recall it having to do with CSS), Dinah, Niall Kennedy, Min Jung, Andrew Zangrilli of Blogbook, Rebecca Blood, and other people that I can’t quite remember. Min Jung and I got together due to the SF Metblog connection, and she ended up introducing me to quite a few people. We also ended up going to LobbyCon SF together, and she later took me home as well. Might have a new real-life friend there. Also, as thrilling as it was to meet all the MT folks, I was really quite humbled to meet Rebecca Blood, who is well-known as one of the pioneers of the blogging phenomenon (And who, to this day, continues to blog by hand, despite the proliferation of Blogger, MT, and the like). I told her I used one of her books as a reference in a research paper, and she was rather pleased with that.

Like I said before, I’m not too much of a talker in these mixer parties. I just tend to pipe up occasionally and do most of the listening. The conversations were quite fascinating though — we talked about everything; from the delights of CSS, to the wonder of tax-deductible vibrators. Ah, geek talk, ya gotta love it. It was also quite a pimp-myself-to-get-a-job sort of evening, with Jasmeet and Min Jung looking out for potential job opportunities for me. I already emailed the MT folks for any job openings, but no one has gotten back to me yet.

As for the Movable Type portion of the event, it kicked off with us getting free USB keys containing a beta version of MT 3.1 and Six Apart buddy icons. In the last half hour of the evening, Ben and Mena finally demo-ed MT 3.1, which promises to be A Very Good Upgrade. Notable improvements: Further integration of plug-ins, better spam control, introduction of sub-categories, and most awesome of all, the choice of dynamic rebuilding. That’s right: If you so choose, you may be able to update your entries and templates without having to rebuild every single time — all you would need to do is click “save” and the pages would update. That, in and of itself, is GOLDEN.

Soon after that, it was time to head to LobbyCon SF 1.0. I first heard about it on the SF Metblog, and it seemed interesting enough — the idea is for a group of bloggers to gather around and talk shop. We met up at the W Hotel lobby, and I got to meet Eric Rice, the host of the event, and various other bloggers pictured here (Note the hilarious picture of me and MJ). We mostly just shot the breeze. While we did talk about blogs, moblogs, and such, the overall tone was that of social bonding. Jasmeet and Justin showed up too, and Dinah ended up buying me a drink. It was cool to just sit around and soak in the friendly blogger buzz (Although the thump-thumping of the DJ music was a bit much).

By 9 p.m., my brain was beginning to melt. So while I didn’t want to leave Jasmeet so soon (It’s not everyday I get to see a fellow Malaysian), I did feel grateful when Min Jung asked me to leave with her. During the ride home, I discovered we had a couple of mutual friends, which was a pleasant surprise (Amazing how small the world is). I got home, talked like a frantic monkey high on caffeine to the boyfriend (I was still running on post-mixer adrenaline), had some dinner, and slept.

So, that’s that. It took me a week to report the dang thing, but there you have it.

Now to blog more often.. er.. soon..

The past couple of weeks have been an absolute whirlwind. First, we went to Brandon’s brother’s house in Los Angeles, where we first saw Brandon’s niece, sweet baby Mira, with our very own eyes. She is such a tiny, cute, little thing. I’m sure she’ll break many hearts when she’s older.

Then we were off to Comic-Con International in San Diego, California. Brandon was an exhibitor there for the first time, and we managed to get into the convention center without waiting in line. It was super-cool to browse around the area with hardly anybody there. We shared our table with a friend, Gary Buechler, who owns a comic shop in San Francisco called Comic Outpost. It was certainly different being behind the table rather than in front of it (For one thing, Brandon was keeping longer than regular work hours at the table. He woke up everyday at about 7-8 a.m. and stayed at the hall until 6 p.m. or so). But it was all good because he made serious bank. We sold a ton of Geek Pride t-shirts and buttons, and lots of comics to boot. We even came to a PROFIT, which is amazing.

I won’t even bother giving you the details about the awesomeness that is the San Diego Comic-Con. I mean, it’s too much to even describe. The amount of comics, toys, merchandise, video games, tv/movie related things… it’s overwhelming to even think about. I’ll just give you a general overview of what I did. I bought a few things from Giant Robot (Great company, support them!), a couple more things from Drawn and Quarterly (I met Adrian Tomine of Optic Nerve, got him to sign things), met up with Scott Kurtz of PvP and just generally soaked in the awesomeness of pop culture that was Comic-Con International. I managed to sneak a peek at the new Incredibles movie, plus saw a preview of a new HitchHiker movie (Yes, they’re making a movie out of the HitchHiker series! Too awesome). I couldn’t meet Neil Gaiman for a signing, but I did show up at his MirrorMask panel. If you’re any kind of fan of Gaiman’s or the Sandman books, you’re not going to want to miss it. It looks wild and crazy, like most Dave McKean stuff, and they basically described it as “acid for kids.” Which seems quite accurate, really.

Other than that, much of the time was spent with our mutual friends from Comic Book Resources. They were great fun — we had a get-together dinner, a beach barbecue/grill, late-night talking sessions in hotel rooms — ah the beauty of Internet friendships. There were more sexual double entrende jokes than you could shake a stick at (No pun intended). I think some of them are coming out to San Francisco for the Alternative Press Expo next year, which will be great fun as well.

After that, well, we came home and just crashed. I just didn’t want to do anything at all for a few days. And here I am blogging about our trip. For a whole boatload of Comic-Con related pics (All 133 of them), click here.

More updates about my life in a few days. For now, I rest.

As for around here, Mom has been busying herself with shopping. Lots and lots of shopping. Well, she didn’t buy that much stuff, but she has been spending hours on end at the mall. Me, I’ve just been sleeping. I got abit of a sore throat bordering on sinus issues a few days ago but I remedied that with some Theraflu.

Tomorrow we’re going on a 1-hour bay cruise on the Red and White Fleet. Fun.

Pictures will be posted soon.

Anyway, I had a lovely day yesterday. I woke up at noon, went online, and had a good 3-hour chat with new-found friends while listening to the radio. From noon until dinnertime, I only ate two pieces of toast — I was that engrossed with chat (It’s amazing how time-sucking this Interweb thingy is). At about 4 p.m. Brandon and I then spent some quality time together. Just because.

When 6:00 p.m. rolled around, we got ready to head out to eat. I already reserved a table at Ponzu a few days earlier, at a 7:45 p.m. slot. It’s an Asian fusion cuisine sorta restaurant, which serves “tapas,” or small plates that are meant to be shared. They have big-plate items too, which are also meant to be shared. I’ve heard about this place from various review sites, so I figure I’d give it a try.

After riding on the MUNI train, getting out at Powell, and walking until we hit the corner of Taylor and O’Farrell, we finally found Ponzu. When we entered the restaurant, I was immediately struck by the funky and colorful decor. We were told to wait for our table, so we headed to the bar and lounge area to rest, which incidentally had very comfortable couches. Technically, we could’ve started ordering our appetizers right at the lounge, but we decided to wait until we got into the restaurant proper. Oh, and the wall behind the bar had these aquariums built into it, with real live fish swimming around in the water. It was funky.

About 10 minutes of waiting, we were finally called into the “real” restaurant. The atmosphere inside struck me as plush and comfortable; continuing the lounge-like theme of the bar area except a whole lot darker. The restaurant was very dimly lit — as is the case with these kinds of fancy restaurants. The decor was rather like their cuisine; a fusion of Asian and contemporary aesthetic. Plush couches line the wall, but they also had regular table and chair arrangements in the middle. Our table was in a sort of curved sofa area, and the table itself was rather tiny, so we got to sit a lot closer to each other than in regular restaurants. Which isn’t an entirely bad thing.

But enough about the decor, let’s get straight to the food. The style of small-plate eating is that you order several small dishes and share them with someone else. So we ordered the shrimp and lobster dumplings, baby back ribs with guava and pineapple sauce, taro fries with three dipping sauces, “Malaysian Lamb Kebobs” (Hey, I had to have it okay?), and Thai-style fried chicken. The food was delicious. I liked everything, although I think the lamb could’ve been less chewy. Then to finish things off, we had hot green tea, and a wonderful serving of Kaffir Lime Pie in mango saffron sauce. It’s not as sweet as Key Lime Pie, but it has a nice spicy and tangy zing.

By the time we got home, we were stuffed and ready to sleep. Of course, I’m still up typing this because I’m hopelessly addicted to the Internet, but I’ll also be heading in soon.

So, yeah, quarter-century old, and happy as can be. For now anyway.