First 3 Days

27/03/08 <-- European date format!

tried reserving rooms at several hotels listed in Rick Steve's London 2009. all had no availability. tried Priceline.com. got carried away and bid $145! got Grosvenor House for 4 nights. $683.51 (~$170.88/nt) expensive

28/03/08

rode a train from Gatwick Airport to Victoria Station
got a notice from the hotel about a G20 protest @ Hyde Park across the street. tried to find the protest, but didn't see much. lotsa news vans. also lotsa police and sirens throughout the day.

tried to go Andrew Edmunds restaurant, but didn't realize it doesn't open till 1pm. saw street cleaning. it's really weird--the street cleaning vehicles actually drive onto the sidewalk to clean it. stopped at a pub to drink a StrongBow. saw strawberries!! it's strawberry season! first thing I'm gonna do when I get home is order a strawberry pie w/a ring of whipped cream.

went to Andrew Edmunds again. ordered a fortified apple cider. that's apple cider mixed w/brandy. as w/other fortified drinks, it has more alcohol and is sweeter than normal apple cider. also ordered dressed crab--extracted crab meat that's put back into the shell as a sort of bowl so it's easy to eat. for the main I had a fish cake on top of spinach. £27.50 (~$39.33) okay

COLD! RAIN! tried to go shopping. it was really hard. £35 ($50.35) on a sweater and £35 ($50.35) on a jacket. seems like a lot? WARMER and DRIER now. spent a crazy amount of time determining requirements. wanted a thin hooded sweater such that it could fit under a jacket and a jacket that was water resistant because I don't like carrying umbrellas.
went "shopping" again. by that I mean go to stores w/no intention of buying anything. there are like a zillion stores here. saw some cute animals made out of leather. saw a cool designer t-shirt for £145 (~$207.39)! and no, there's no way I would've bought that. I may not know clothing/style very well, but I definitely know that's way too much.

Hamley's Toy Store. it has 7 floors! played "scrabble" for like an hour w/a store employee. she kept wanting rematches because I kept on winning. turns out for a couple of the games I didn't realize that I hadn't draw enough titles, so I didn't really win. the game is like scrabble in that you make words from tiles. each player picks 21 tiles. it begins when the players flip over their tiles to make words. it ends when a player runs out of tiles. if a player cannot make words w/his/her tiles then draw 3. it's much easier to spend more time thinking finish w/o drawing any. initially, a greedy algorithm works best. simply construct the longest words w/o worrying if they'll fit or not. try to connect them afterwards.

went to Wagamama Noodle Bar. ordered a teriyaki steak soba and an apple-orange juice. waited 10 min and got my dish before my drink. asked the server about my drink... unlike most teriyaki places beef was cooked medium. it was good. ate a quarter of my dish and wondered where my apple-orange juice was. was really thirsty so just got up and left. :(

found cote. ate sirloin steak, fries, spinach, chocolate fondue a la mode, 2 bottles of Bretain cider, and an dessert white wine. £29.10 (~$38.59) good

29/03/08

lost 1 hr today due to BST (British Summer Time)

Vinopolis. it's kind of a wine tasting place/museum/bar/pub. learned about wines. sampled 5 wines, 2 beers, 2 absinthes, 2 wiskeys, and 3 rums. found out I like sweet white wines. still don't really like beer or whiskey. also had a gin cocktail (comes w/the entrance fee). drank too much! was way buzzed by the time I left. don't know how the employees do it. one poured herself some wine every time she poured me some. I didn't see anyone else doing this during their shift, but if they do they must all be continuously buzzed. £27.50 (~$36.46) good

another Wagamama Noodle Bar. this time they brought out the apple-orange juice right away. ordered the teriyaki steak soba again. it was good again. :) apple-orange juice, teriyaki steak soba, and mineral water £16.90 (~$22.41)

Shakespeare's Globe. interesting museum/tour. wanna be a groundling! unfortunately, no plays until summer. hope I have a chance to come back. good £10.50 (~$13.92)
Tate Modern again. tried to see special exhibits, but didn't realize it was 40 min till closing, so not worth it. will come back in April after additional new exhibits go up.

The Black Friar. ordered a cider. didn't really like it.

gotta find cheap Internet. it's crazy... the hotel wants £20/day (~$26.52)! found a cheap place between Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square, but no WiFi. on the way back found a McDonalds w/free WiFi. open 5:00-0:45

Busaba. type of flower? this place always has a line since it doesn't take reservations, but it's well worth it. ordered chicken satay, monk fish green curry, sticky rice, and a coke. £19.20 ($25.46) good

things here are crazy expensive. it didn't seem that bad to met at first since I just did £1 = $1 to be simple, but that's clearly NOT the case.

Happy!

Wow! I just ran/jumped around my apartment for like 20 minutes for no particular reason! Everything just seems so limitless. It's like there's a whole new world out there. The last time I felt this way was such a long time ago. I think it was probably when I was leaving home for college and felt that my universe was finally expanding. Another weird thing is that I haven't been on the Internet much lately (relatively for me anyways), but I don't really feel like I need it--it's crazy! Anyways, if you're reading this be happy cause there's actually a study that says happiness is more contagious than sadness. HAPPY!

P.S. Running around can be tiring, but it's okay cause it's fun!

Japan Trip Recap, Day 2, Temples and Surroundings

Random Facts/Stats

• Japan has 15 national holidays per year.
• The probability of a random day being a holiday is ~4.11%.
• I was there for 12 days, which gives me a ~49.3% chance of being there on a holiday.

The most cultural Japanese city is Kyoto. Conincidentally, it was November, 3rd--Culture Day! Ron had created an itinerary consisting of cultural sites (temples) and a couple other places. So after eating sandwiches at the train station we took a train to a nearby temple.

On the way to the "main" temple there were a lot of smaller temples like this one.

From what I've heard it's not really sanitary to drink the water since people aren't supposed to touch their lips to the ladle but do so anyways. So I'm just posing here.


a wall inside the temple with a cool dragon painted on it

One thing to note about temples is that you generally have to pay to get in. The amount varies, and you have to consider if it's worthwhile (both time/money-wise). Although this temple seemed pretty cool, my brother and I are both of the opinion that if you've seen one you've seen them all. This would seem to be especially true since the one that I saw was in Kyoto which is supposedly where all the best temples are.


bamboo forest


Ron and a zillion other tourists in bamboo forest


It's only the beginning of the hike, and I'm tired already. I'm also looking extra touristy with my jacket tied around my waist.


It's a long climb to the top...

While we were hiking through this area there was a family that passed us up. I'm really out of shape, so it probably wouldn't surprise most people if I mentioned that the husband and kids passed us. However, the wife was leading in front of everyone, and she was carrying one of her kids!


This is a picture from way above looking down at what I thought was the top in the previous picture. We're just past half-way.

Upon arriving at the top we found an employee. Apparently, his job is to take your picture with this monkey. Well, maybe not, but it's a pretty convenient/coincidental that he and this monkey are there. It just just sits in the middle of the visitor area away from all the other monkeys spacing out all day.




a view from the top. It's mid-fall and trees are starting to change color. It's worth noting that Kyoto doesn't really have any skyscrapers in contrast to other cities like Osaka and Tokyo.

This brings me to the most important point of this post. Hiking is super awesome in Japan! A lot of the paths are paved well, and some even have restaurants/snack places along the way. Although it seemed hard, this was basically the first and easiest hill I tried to climb.

Maybe I just like hiking in general. Half of the fun is seeing what interesting things there are along the way. There's also something about completing a climb. There's almost always a view at the top. It's stuff that you would've missed if you hadn't put in the effort to make it there.

Blogging Experiment

It's not easy for me to consistently write a ton of stuff and tie it in together in a single blog post, so I'm just gonna try posting random bits...

Japan Trip Recap, Anti Bread Crust

I remember as a kid I would always peel the bread crust off slices of bread and eat them first. I guess the crust wasn't as good and the taste just didn't mesh well w/the center? If you feel the same way, then you'll love Japanese sandwiches. There's no crust! The one time I had a sandwich in Japan it had no crust. I thought that it was just this particular restaurant, but Ron said that bread w/o crust is actually the norm.


eggs and ham


Ron's breakfast

mine: fried shrimp

BTW, did I mention that wasabi mayo is awesome? I don't know why Ron dislikes it.

Japan Trip Recap, Day 1

If anyone's planning a trip to Japan, here's a couple interesting things to note regarding arrival at Narita terminal 1.

• Expect to arrive early. When I was doing research for my trip I read that Narita is the most on-time airport in the world. I didn't really believe it though since almost all my flights have been delayed, but as expected, my flight arrived over half an hour early.
  
• Stuff's easy to find. You don't have to wander around. After exiting baggage claim and heading down to the basement you might be wondering where everything is. E.g. information, tickets/reservations, train gate, cell phone rental, etc. It's really easy to find since there's basically just one central area with all these things surrounding.

The plan was to meet my brother in Shinagawa before heading to Kyoto. However, since my flight arrived early I had almost 2 hours to kill by the time I got to Shinagawa. I was really hungry so I decided to get something to eat. I picked a restaurant just outside the station and ordered some katsu curry:

Sorry, this is the only photo I have. I meant to take a photo before I ate it, but when it appeared in front of me I just ended up inhaling it. I didn't realize it then, but I was really being impulsive that day...

I eventually met up with my brother and got tickets for the Shinkansen to Kyoto. Unfortunately, by the time he got tickets there wasn't any reserved seating available. Since I had gotten reserved seating it meant we would have to sit in different cars. So we ended up in different areas waiting for the train. A couple minutes passed and I saw a train with a pointy nose, a bullet train--Shinkansen! I hopped aboard. Moments later I called Ron...

Me: ...where do I put my luggage?

Ron: ...

Ron: ...

Ron: I think you're on the wrong train. Our train hasn't arrived yet.

Me: !!

It was a scary few minutes there as I tried to figure out what to do. I just decided to get off at the very next stop, Shin-Yokohama. Little did I know that I had gotten on the worst possible train--a Kodama. They stop at every single stop all the way to the end of the line. The train that I meant to get on was the Hikari, which makes infrequent stops. There was a possibility that the Hikari wouldn't even stop there. Luckily for me all three shinkansen (Kodama, Hikari, and Nozomi) stop at Shin-Yokohama.

Fortes fortuna adiuvat (fortune favors the bold)...or the incredibly stupid? I'll pick the former since it sounds cooler. Anyways, I almost missed the Hikari again. Just as I called to ask Ron when it was going to arrive he said that they'd just gotten there? I thought that was weird since I didn't see a train in front of me. As I spun around I saw the rest of the train station behind me. It never occured to me that there may be several different platforms for the same tracks. Again, as luck would have it, I was already on the right platform so I finally boarded the right shinkansen for Kyoto. Good thing I rented a cell phone at the airport. I can only imagine how things would've turned out if I hadn't.

We stayed at a ryokan, Station Hotel Seiki.

Our room.

Ron posing for sleep.

Yogurt pepsi?

Samsung HL-S4266W 42" Widescreen DLP® HDTV with 720p Resolution

I recently purchased an HDTV for gaming. My reasoning was that current generation game consoles were designed for 720p, so it wouldn't make sense to get a 1080p HDTV. Also, games being the way they are tend to have UI that exacerbates burn-in. Therefore, I wanted an HDTV based on a technology that wasn't susceptible to burn-in. These two reasons and some extremely competitive pricing led me to choose the Samsung HL-S4266W.

Summary

Purchase Price: $799.99 (Black Friday sale price)

This is just one of many reviews on Samsung's 720p DLP HDTVs. Consequently, I'm going to skip the technical specs and cover some of the more subjective issues such as black grass and rainbow effect. I'm also going to cover pixel resolution as most of the aforementioned reviews don't cover this issue.

Black Grass

It's definitely noticeable when the picture is black. ie. when there's nothing on the screen. Usually this happens when your source (eg. DVD player, game console, etc.) is off. Then again, is it really an issue if it only happens when showing nothing?

Rainbow Effect

Didn't notice it.

1:1 Pixel Mapping

I attempted this adjustment on both the component input and VGA input. An Xbox 360 was used to display the test pattern. I tried various menu options to adjust the picture, but ultimately I wasn't able to achieve 1:1 pixel mapping using the menu. Although it's a disappointment, this is not at all unexpected. After all, the HL-S4266W is on the low end of Samsung's HDTV offerings. Their target demographic generally isn't too concerned about image resolution issues.

• I also did some research regarding this issue and came up with a couple conclusions.
  It's possible to disable overscan via the service menu. This option is available on Samsung's 1080p DLP HDTVs. However, it's not available on their 720p DLP HDTVs.
• The good news is that adjustments can be made to minimize overscan, but then additional adjustments will need to be made to compensate for geometry distortion.

Note: I didn't attempt either of these adjustments myself since I was satisfied with the pixel mapping regardless of the overscan.

Conclusion

Good: Black grass was a non-issue. Rainbow effect was not noticeable. Lots of inputs.

Bad: Not being able to achieve 1:1 pixel mapping was a disappointment.

This Samsung HL-S4266W is a great value. I would recommend it to anyone who's looking to purchase an HDTV under $1,000.00.