January 2025 investment portfolio breakdown

Disclaimer: I am not a registered investment advisor. The information contained in this blog post is strictly anecdotal and should not be construed as financial advice. If you are seeking guidance, consult a licensed and certified professional.

It’s been over a year since I’ve last done an investment portfolio breakdown—my most recent one was on January 1, 2024 to cover my end-of-2023 portfolio. I figured one year is enough time for there to be enough changes in my portfolio to make it worth doing another breakdown, so I decided to write this one for the beginning of 2025.

Cash

At just a percent and a half, this is a significantly lower amount of cash than you would see in my portfolio compared to if I had pulled the numbers on December 31, 2024 like I usually do for end-of-year portfolio breakdowns, instead of January 6, 2025 like I did for this one. I did this intentionally because I didn’t want to make it seem like I hold onto more cash than I actually do.

I have a lot of cash in my savings account and settlement funds on December 31 because I have it ready to go for when contribution limits for tax-advantaged accounts (e.g., Roth/Traditional IRAs, SEP-IRA, HSA, etc.) reset on the 1st of the calendar year; a few days into the year, I’ve invested it all via those aforementioned accounts and have minimal cash left.

I am mostly a believer of maximizing your gains by way of maximizing the amount of time you are in the market, so on an ongoing basis, I only hold onto about 6 months’ worth of core living expenses as an emergency fund, then put the rest in investments as soon as possible. The way I hold this cash has not changed since last year—I use a Discover Bank savings account as my main bank account, then keep my settlement funds in the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) on Vanguard and the Fidelity Gov­ern­ment Money Market Fund (SPAXX) on Fidelity.

  1.519%

Domestic broad market index funds

As you might have expected, domestic broad market index funds account for the largest portion of my portfolio, and was also the category into which I invested the most new money in 2024 alongside international broad market index funds. Even though I like exploring fun new investment opportunities and partaking in risky new ventures once in a while, an overwhelming majority of my portfolio is in safe investments.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I opted to buy Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund Admiral Shares (VHYAX) because it seemed to historically tend to be safer during times of high turmoil and instability, but now I’m back to buying almost exclusively Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX) in this category. Ratio-wise as of right now, for every ~$3 I have invested in VHYAX, I have ~$7 invested in VTSAX.

For money I have in Fidelity for my Health Savings Account and Fidelity Charitable account, my broad market index fund of choice is the Fidelity ZERO Total Market Index Fund (FZROX).

 44.264%

International broad market index funds

Two years ago, I ended up selling a very large portion of my exposure to international broad market index funds by way of Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTIAX) for tax-loss-harvesting purposes. After waiting out the appropriate wash sale period, I started buying back into international broad market index funds to re-diversify my portfolio.

Along with domestic broad market index funds, this was the category in which I invested the most new money in 2024. My fund of choice throughout 2024 was the Fidelity ZERO International Index Fund (FZILX).

This allocation percentage is better than last year, but I still think it’s a little bit low; this will continue to be the category into which I invest the most throughout 2025.

  5.094%

Bonds

During the pandemic, I purchased Series I Savings Bonds from the United States Department of the Treasury due to their very high inflation-tracked interest rates. Since then, I’ve sort of just let them sit in my TreasuryDirect account to accrue interest and haven’t really given them much attention. Beyond that, everything else lumped into this category that isn’t with the Treasury is in Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VBTLX).

I’m still young and I have decently high risk tolerance, so I’m probably not going to be buying any more bonds outright. However, it still acts as a form of portfolio diversification and stability, so I likely won’t actively sell and reallocate this money anytime soon either.

  4.274%

Target date funds

I split my target date funds into their own separate category because their compositions change depending on the current year. Target date funds are intended to be a hands-off investment fund where you pick one with the closest year available to the date you anticipate on retiring, and the fund will automatically adjust risk to minimize the likelihood of you losing a substantial amount of money close to retirement due to market volatility.

I use target date funds in my tax-advantaged retirement accounts because it’s a way for me to further diversify my portfolio, but from a different angle: in the extremely unlikely but non-zero chance that I become completely unable to manage my own investments in the future, presumably through some unpredictable severe mental and/or physical incapacitation, and if my caretaker ends up being someone who is financially illiterate, then at least the money in my retirement accounts will remain steady, even if the markets fall into mass turmoil right before I reach 59½ years old. Of course, this only applies to my retirement accounts; I personally self-manage all my other assets everywhere else.

Right now, most of this is split across the Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX), Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Fund (VFFVX), and Van­guard Target Retirement 2050 Fund (VFIFX). As you can see by the names of the funds, I have it split across three different target years. This is because I am doing far better financially than I had ever imagined I would be when I was in my 20s, and I am foreseeing an earlier and earlier retirement year as I get older, so I shifted from buying the 2060 fund to the 2055 fund and now the 2050 fund. I plan on continuing to buy more into 2050, while leaving my 2060/2055 allocation alone, and not touching a 2045 fund due to it being too soon to make sense for the purposes of a government-regulated retirement account.

According to Vanguard’s website, as of December 31, 2024, my target funds are roughly distributed as 55% domestic total market index funds, 35% international total market index funds, 7% domestic total market bonds, and 3% international total market bonds.

 20.860%

Real estate investment trusts (REITs)

There haven’t really been any interesting developments on the real estate side of my portfolio. All my real estate exposure is still held via Van­guard Real Es­tate Index Fund Admiral Shares (VGSLX).

I don’t really use social media anymore, but that doesn’t make me immune to doom scrolling—I’ve caught myself losing track of time and getting sucked into Zillow on several occasions. I think that’s productive though, as it means I’ve been looking for good real estate purchase opportunities and keeping tabs on the state of the real estate market in general.

I will likely end up selling my allocation in this category to use as a down payment if I end up purchasing a property (which will also help me do some tax loss harvesting, as this REIT hasn’t been performing too well), but until then, I don’t think I will be taking great initiative or otherwise doing anything majorly proactive in the foreseeable future when it comes to real estate.

  6.570%

Individual stocks and private companies

In 2024, all of my tax loss harvesting came out of this category. I sold my down positions in Stellantis, N.V. (STLA), Cloudflare (NET), and Under Armour (UAA). Keep in mind that this does not mean I’ve lost faith in these companies; it just means the timing was right for me to use these companies’ stock for tax benefits. Ram still makes my favorite pickup trucks, and Cloudflare still has a huge part in allowing you to read this very page on my website.

I’m still holding onto stock in Marriott International, Inc. (MAR), T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS), and TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (TKO). Comically, I am also still holding onto my single share of Nxu, Inc. (NXU), which is down to about one-tenth of one percent of what I bought in at when they were still Atlis Motor Vehicles, Inc. I guess leaving it in my brokerage account acts as a continued reminder of the risks of investing in individual securities. And of course, I still have my unsponsored American depository receipts of Nexon Co., Ltd. (NEXOY); you can read the silly story behind that one in my previous investment breakdown.

As a side note, in case it was not clear already, I am not including my equity ownership of AVY Entertainment, Inc., d.b.a. Tempo in this portfolio breakdown, not only because I own a combination of stock options and common stock (and no preferred stock) so it would be tricky to pinpoint a proper valuation on it anyway, but also because it would greatly skew the percentages in the breakdown. As a consolation prize, I present to you a fun fact: later in 2025, I will be celebrating my ten-year anniversary working at Tempo.

  2.739%

Cryptocurrency

What originally started as my “gambling fund” ended up becoming a significant component of my investment portfolio. I first bought into cryptocurrency as a way to learn about it hands-on, only putting in money I was okay with losing entirely. Since then, and especially over the past two years, cryptocurrency has spiked substantially in value such that it had the biggest increase in my portfolio allocation percentage, even with me barely buying any more of it.

Although I have some cryptocurrency in a self-custodied hardware wallet, I actually have a substantial part of my cryptocurrency exposure via funds with my brokerage. Namely, I have varying amounts of shares of the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC), Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC), Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW), and ProShares Bitcoin ETF (BITO). As you can see, my collection of funds is fairly diverse, ranging from broad market funds to Bitcoin to Bitcoin futures. An overwhelming majority of these have just been positions I’ve sat on for years, and will continue to sit on for the foreseeable future as a form of portfolio diversification.

A question I get asked occasionally is why I don’t just convert all of my holdings into actual cryptocurrency held in my hardware wallet. I have two major reasons: The first is that selling shares of these funds to use the proceeds to purchase actual cryptocurrency would trigger a capital gains taxable event, and I would like to postpone that to a point in the future that could potentially be more tax-favorable to me. The second is that knowing how to manage hardware wallets is not quite mainstream yet, so in the extremely unlikely but non-zero chance that I suddenly die and my assets get passed on to my beneficiaries, I don’t want to burden them with having a substantial amount of money mysteriously locked behind what appears to be a USB drive.

 12.795%

International currency

This is a new investment category as of 2024, inspired by a handful of people recommending that I look into expanding my international exposure not only by purchasing more broad market index funds, but also by buying currency funds. I’m still not too knowledgeable about international matters, but I figured that, if I’m going to invest so much into cryptocurrency, I might as well also invest in foreign currency.

After a (somewhat brief) session of research, I decided on purchasing shares of the Invesco CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE) and Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY). As of today, Invesco also has ETFs for the Australian dollar, British pound sterling, Canadian dollar, and Swiss franc; I may look into buying some shares of those in the near future as well.

  0.962%

Precious metals

I bought shares of Fidelity Select Gold Portfolio (FSAGX) during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to get gold exposure without physically purchasing and storing gold bars in my closet. Since then, I’ve been fairly uninterested in diving deeper in this area, so it has just existed in my Fidelity account without receiving any of my attention.

  0.599%

Fine art, and other collectibles

A few years ago, I participated in StartEngine Collectibles Fund I, LLC’s Regulation A+ as a unique way to get exposure to the fine art and collectibles market without having to physically buy and store any of it myself.

Since then, StartEngine has been horrible to work with. They refunded portions of my investment money, presumably because they did not meet minimum funding goals for certain items, but they did so without ever communicating anything about it (and still have not to this day), so as far as I’m aware, it could’ve basically been that I just inadvertently gave them thousands of dollars as a free loan.

I saw that they had a secondary market open on their platform, so I’m wondering if I can just dump this at-cost and be done with it, but this is such an insignificantly small amount of money that I have not been motivated to do anything about it yet.

  0.324%

That concludes my portfolio breakdown and summary of what I’ve been up to investment-wise over the past calendar year.

To wrap up, I want to reiterate that I am simply sharing how I invest my money, and I am in no way saying you should copy my strategy. Keep in mind that I am not a financial expert, and be aware that some of my investment decisions are rooted in me doing what I think would be fun or interesting at the time, rather than any rational or logical thought. Everyone’s situation is uniquely different, so you should not make changes to your own portfolio’s investment class distributions to match my own. Instead, consider consulting a licensed financial advisor so you can come up with a plan that works for you.

 

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Hello, Yakiniku Shodai in San Francisco, California

For my final night in San Francisco, my friend and I had dinner at Yakiniku Shodai, a high-end Japanese restaurant in the Civic Center area southeast of the Fillmore District.

Known for its wagyu, Yakiniku Shodai has two different tasting menu options—a basic one for US$150 per person and a full experience for US$225 per per­son. We opted to go for the full set because, not only was I hungry, but I also figured I might as well go all-in while I’m in town and have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so, as I don’t really ever visit the San Francisco Bay Area unless it is for a very compelling reason.

My friend works remotely on East Coast hours and wanted an early dinner, so we booked the first available reservation slot at 5:30 PM PDT and were the first ones in the restaurant.

After being seated, the chef explained how the tasting menu process works. We then received a set of sides—pickled cucumbers, seasoned bean sprouts, and kimchi. We also got a small dish of lemon juice, used to offset some of the fattiness of the wagyu to come.

We also received a small bowl of beef broth with mushroom and green onion.

We were seated at the end of the side of the eating area, as close to a “command” position as possible, which allowed us to clearly spectate what the chefs and cooks were doing (as well as observe the other guests, once they arrived).

Our first meat was thin-sliced Australian wagyu beef tongue, served with seasoned onions and green onions.

The chef cooked only one side of the beef tongue and took it off the grill when it still appeared blue rare, but the heat momentum continued cooking it to a perfect rare by the time it was ready to eat.

Beef tongue is my favorite cut of beef, and this exceeded my expectations. It was the most tender and delicious beef tongue I’ve ever tasted.

Next was thin-cut American wagyu short rib with fresh wasabi and seasoned kelp strips, and thick-cut American wagyu zabuton topped with plum paste.

I had never tasted anything like this plum paste before, and it was incredible. There was definitely plum in it, but it wasn’t just plum—there was an in­de­scrib­a­ble additional flavor in there that made it uniquely sweet, and I cannot for the life of me pinpoint what it could’ve possibly been.

Eating back-to-back cuts of wagyu can feel very filling due to the extremely high fat content, so we were regularly served palate cleansers. For this in­ter­mis­sion, we were given some zucchini and mushrooms seasoned with salt and pepper.

Our next portion of meat was thick-cut Australian wagyu harami skirt steak with barbecue sauce.

Note that this was a very light Japanese-style barbecue sauce, not the type of thick American BBQ sauce you’d find in the United States.

Our next palate cleanser was the house special salad. I really appreciated the frequency with which they mixed in vegetable dishes, as it really helped bal­ance out the overall flavor storyline.

The chef took us on a brief detour with some seasonal seafood—scallop. This was the thickest, juiciest, most tender, and most flavor-rich piece of scallop I’ve ever tasted in my life.

It was time to go back to the meat. Next up was thin-sliced Japanese A5 wagyu oyster blade, served with barbecue sauce and wasabi.

Our second portion of Japanese A5 wagyu was thick-cut tenderloin, seasoned with garlic sauce.

Although my friend and I opted for the full set, some of the other diners who had arrived after us were opting for the smaller menu. While enjoying my meal, I was able to watch the chefs prepare their dishes, which served both as extra entertainment as well as a good learning opportunity.

Next up was what ended up being my second favorite item of the dinner—Japanese A5 olive wagyu ichibo served thin-sliced nigiri style with caviar and truffle.

I’ve always known truffle to have a very strong flavor, but the truffle used on this wagyu nigiri was very mild.

The flavor bal­ance of this nigiri was incredible—the intensity of the wagyu, caviar, and truffle was perfectly equal, and no single flavor was o­ver­whelm­ing, so it truly felt like you could taste the richness of every single individual flavor depending on what you were mentally focusing on.

We were slowly approaching the end of our meal. Our second-to-last main dish was salmon and ikura with a small sprinkling of edible flower.

The grand finale dish was yakishabu don, made with thinly-sliced Japanese A5 wagyu striploin over rice, topped with raw egg yolk and truffle.

This combination manifested as a beautifully shimmering golden sauce over the wagyu rice bowl.

Our dessert was a refreshing frozen yogurt. It was only subtly sweet, which allowed the yogurt flavor to really shine.

Shodai Set ×2 $ 450.00
Mandatory gratuity (20%) $  90.00
SF HCSO surcharge (4.8%) $  21.60
Sales tax $  48.44
Total $ 610.04

The table on the right shows how much we paid.

You might have noticed that I didn’t really give many thoughts on the various cuts of wagyu. The rea­son for that is… my thoughts are basically the same for all of them. Pretty much every single piece of meat I ate during this meal ranked as a top best cut of meat I have ever tasted in my life.

I don’t eat anywhere near enough Japanese A5 BMS 12 or Australian MSA 1100+ grade 9 wagyu in or­der to compare it on an appropriate scale, and if you compare any meat of that quality to anything else, that ultra-high-end wagyu is just going to be indisputably better by a chasmic margin.

I cannot put in words how much I was impressed by our chef Chris Yuen. He managed to cook every single piece of meat to absolute perfection, and he appeared to do it effortlessly. I would be overjoyed at myself if I had even 5% of his cooking ability.

I’m not too happy about the 20% mandatory gratuity. I would have preferred for them to just set the price at $270 per person instead of $225 and make themselves a no-tipping establishment—that would’ve felt much better than making it look like there was a nearly hundred dollar hid­den fee. Gratuity is meant to allow diners to show gratitude, and it just doesn’t feel the same when it’s forced. This would also probably be particularly unsettling for in­ter­na­tion­al guests who may come from cultures where the concept of tipping does not exist.

Regardless, this restaurant has easily landed itself in my top three favorite restaurants of all time, alongside Utzutzu and Masamitsu. A meal coming in at $270 per person before taxes and fees is obviously unrealistic for most people, but if you’re ever in the San Francisco area and this pricepoint is man­age­a­ble for you (remember that there is a lower-cost option as well), I highly recommend Yakiniku Shodai.

 

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Hello Open Sauce 2024

FTC Disclosure: Open Sauce, Inc. did not ask me to write this blog post, did not pay me cash for this review, and did not have an opportunity to review or request changes to this piece prior to its publication. However, I did receive material financial incentive to attend Open Sauce 2024 by way of free VIP admission and free lodging. The public retail value of such incentives amounts to a VIP ticket worth US$1,499.00 and a hotel stay worth approximately US$600.00. All other expenses beyond the aforementioned items were self-funded.

 
I’m not really the biggest fan of the San Francisco Bay Area in California (which should be unsurprising to you if you’ve read my blog post about how I got ~US$3,000.00 of stuff burglarized from me the last time I was here), but my friend Billie-Rae invited me to attend Open Sauce, a science and tech­nol­o­gy convention taking place at the Cow Palace in Daly City. Billie-Rae is a full-time employee at the company that runs the convention, so I de­cid­ed that was enough of a reason to support her work and check it out last week between June 14-16.

I’ve been to a lot of events and conventions of all different kinds over the past decade. I’ve attended as various roles, including an organizer, staff mem­ber, host, tournament competitor, exhibitor, media, broadcast talent, and plain old con-goer. Many conventions and brands have compensated me (or have tried to compensate me) in the past with high-end luxury accommodations worth several thousands of dollars, as well as hefty cash payments.

With all that being said, I can confidently say that Open Sauce 2024 was my favorite convention of all time.

Yes, I understand that people probably think my opinion doesn’t mean much because I got a special invite from my friend who works there. However, long-time readers know that I take my reputation very seriously and would never write an intentionally inflated or exaggerated review just to help out a friend. I have been very honest and transparent about disclosing everything up to this point, and I feel that I am being objective and unbiased with every­thing else in this blog post as well.

 
Open Sauce had a very different feel to it than any other convention I’ve ever been to, which made me enjoy it a lot more; upon some thought, I’ve con­clud­ed that that can be attributed to a handful of factors:

  • It does not feel commercialized.

    Revenue from ticket sales are pretty much never enough to run a large-scale convention. A convention center will have limited space for attendees, and consequently, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale. If the ticket price is scaled to cover all expenses, it would be pro­hib­i­tive­ly high and cause fewer people to attend, thus reducing revenue. There is a sweet spot of balancing ticket price with attendance, and that sweet spot is usually nowhere close enough to cover expenses associated with venue rental, attractions, experiences, staffing, utilities, equip­ment, dec­o­ra­tions, marketing, etc.

    For this reason, conventions will sell space in their exhibition hall to sponsors, and these sponsors will promote their brand and products at their booth. Every other convention I’ve been to has had its exhibition hall feel like a gigantic three-dimensional billboard of endless advertisements with logos plastered everywhere. Companies furnish their booths with plush carpeting and nice fake walls to attract con-goers and incentivize them to get ex­po­sure to their brand.

    Open Sauce did not feel like this whatsoever. There were four exhibition halls, and all of them looked like massive empty warehouses with no love or care given to their presentation… which fit the convention perfectly, because it made it feel more genuine and authentic. All the focus of Open Sauce was on the science and technology of the cre­a­tions that people brought to the convention. Each booth was run by passionate scientists and inventors, not salespeople. There was nothing fancy in any of the booths—it was just the creator and the creation, and nothing else there to distract you from taking in their work.

    This doesn’t mean there were no sponsors at Open Sauce. However, the sponsors they did have were extremely well-integrated. For example, PCBWay sponsored the admission credentials for the convention, so everyone’s badge was a thin metallic circuit board (as opposed to just a flimsy piece of laminated paper like every other convention does). At their booth, you could finish soldering the connection with a battery and LED and make it light up. Formlabs also appeared to be a sponsor, and they brought high-end 3D printers that people could experiment with and try out. Both of these were directly relevant to the theme of the con­ven­tion and were actual interesting interactive things, as opposed to just ads.

    I diligently went up and down every aisle in all the exhibition halls, and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. This is the one and only con­ven­tion where I regularly stopped at many booths to try out their activity because of how inherently fun all the creations looked. I heard from a mu­tu­al friend that Michael Reeves (who was also in attendance) calls it a “science fair” instead of a convention, and I think that is a pretty accurate de­scrip­tion.

  • The special guests were pleasant people.

    Due to the nature of my work at Tempo during our prior esports and influencer marketing era, I’m used to interacting with stereotypical content cre­a­tors and broadcasters, especially those related and adjacent to Twitch live streaming. I’m fairly outspoken about my dislike of most of these peo­ple due to how disconnected they are with reality—many of them have a false and egregiously inflated sense of ego and self-importance com­pared to the rest of the world, which manifests in them coming off as extremely vain, arrogant, ignorant, lazy, and irresponsible.

    Open Sauce also had content creators in attendance, but the attitudes of these content cre­a­tors were very different. They all acted like normal people, and they all treated me like a normal person. I have had my fair share of encounters with meeting Twitch streamers during which they acted genuinely insulted that I didn’t already know who they were, but all the content creators at Open Sauce introduced themselves to me with a clear intent to meet new people and make new friends. I imagine there was a fairly thorough vetting process to decide who was and was not invited as a special guest, and this vetting process was well done, because I felt comfortable around everyone who was there.

  • I personally liked how the panels were scheduled.

    Most conventions have many panels scheduled and happening at once, and attendees have to pick which ones they want to go to, oftentimes hav­ing to miss out on some panels they want to watch in lieu of others. Open Sauce seemed to have a fairly limited number of panels, and there were only two places where panels were taking place—the main stage and secondary stage.

    This had two interesting effects. First, the panels that it did have were higher-impact panels that appealed to a broader audience, as opposed to having a lot of more specialized or niche topics. Second, because there were limited options of panels to watch, the audience was naturally bigger for each of the panels. Because the main stage was in a sporting arena and the massive amount of arena seating was used for the panel audience, it actually felt nice enjoying panels together with a large group of people.

    In a similar vein, I think Open Sauce realized that, although some people attend panels to listen to the topic, many of them go just to watch their fa­vor­ite content creators and broadcast personalities speak. I heard that most panelists held small meet-and-greets after speaking, so what the pan­els functionally ended up being was an opportunity for fans to know when and where to find their favorite creator, so they can meet them af­ter­wards.

    I heard that some people didn’t like this format, but I personally think this was a very efficient and practical way to run the schedule.

  • The activities for special guests were fun and relevant.

    When I am invited as a special guest or otherwise receive VIP treatment during conventions, the “exclusive access” usually just ends up being a lounge and a networking party. Although Open Sauce also did that, they further scheduled two fun activities that really stood out to me.

    The first was a visit to “The Cave,” Adam Savage’s workshop. The second was a visit to CrunchLabs, Mark Rober’s facility. Considering that both Adam and Mark are well-known personalities in the science field, being able to see their offices was very meaningful and interesting. I didn’t watch MythBusters when it was on TV, but I do watch all of Mark Rober’s YouTube videos, so I loved being able to see in-person the things he built for his channel.

    In a not identical but still similar vein, I enjoyed the fact that there was a hotel fully booked out exclusively for special guests. At first, the staff por­trayed this as being done for “security” reasons, which made me chuckle—I’m from Las Vegas where even A-list celebrities walk the casino and ho­tel floors alongside everyone else, so the fact that YouTubers would need that level of security was funny to me. However, I realized that having this kind of hotel was a good idea for a different reason.

    What was nice about the booked-out hotel was that everyone knew everyone else there was a science-related or science-adjacent person. In a reg­u­lar hotel, if you saw a stranger, you wouldn’t know if they were there for the same convention as you, or for something else entirely unrelated. How­ever, for Open Sauce, you knew that, if someone was inside that hotel, they were definitely there for Open Sauce. This encouraged people to be much more social and approach and initiate conversation with strangers because they are going into the interaction knowing that they share some degree of interests.

The second and fourth points obviously will not be relevant if you are just a general admission attendee, but for the sake of thoroughly sharing an an­ec­dote of my own experience, I decided to still include them.

 
So, if it wasn’t blatantly clear by now… if you are interested in science and technology and want a fun and high-value convention to attend, I highly rec­om­mend Open Sauce based on my experience that I had this year. The general admission ticket for 2024 was US$200.00, which I think is a very rea­son­a­ble price for a two-day convention that has so much to do that you’ll probably fill both days from open to close with interactive experiences. Their web­site currently shows early bird purchases for 2025 coming soon at US$99.69, which I find to be insanely cheap for what you get.

Below are some photos I took (and some that others took of me) during the convention:

 

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Hello, The Capital Grille in Costa Mesa, California

This one… requires a little bit of backstory.

Over a decade ago, I used to stream a lot on Twitch, a live broadcasting platform serving as the gaming arm of Justin.tv. Since then, I stopped streaming consistently, but I do still hit that coveted “Start Streaming” button once in a while, most frequently when I’m making a guest appearance on a show, but some­times when I’m just gaming with friends.

May 12, 2023 was one of those days. After a long and treacherous journey through the first 20 levels of World of War­craft: Classic in hardcore mode with my friend Doug Wreden, we managed to make it to the first pair of dungeons and I streamed footage of us clearing Wailing Caverns. During that stream, I gave moderator privileges to a user named @PhummyLW so he could use Twitch’s Channel Points Predictions feature to make the broadcast a bit more interactive. I picked him because Doug recognized his name as an active member of his own Twitch community.

Since then, I’ve been streaming once in a while, and Phummy kept returning to watch and chat. Moderators are usually responsible for ensuring com­pli­ance with the broadcaster’s rules, but considering that the only rule I have for my viewers and chatters is to follow the Twitch Terms of Service and Com­mu­ni­ty Guidelines, and I use AutoMod to automatically moderate my chat, there is very little for my human moderators to do. So, Phummy con­tin­ued to stick around to run Channel Points Predictions where relevant.

To go on a tangent for a little bit, I am not a fan of the traditional streamer-moderator relationship. I don’t know if this is just because I ended up build­ing a lot of friendships with female Twitch streamers throughout the years as a consequence of my industry of work, but when I see my friends’ mod­er­a­tors, a lot of them give off the impression of matching a lot of the negative stereotypes—a lonely man who is socially awkward and is dedicating a sub­stan­tial amount of time supporting and moderating for these women due to developing a parasocial relationship and holding onto the non-existent chance that the streamer will reciprocate their love after seeing how much the moderator has done for the streamer. I think this is extremely unhealthy, and I go out of my way to call it out when I see it—not only because I want it to stop before it goes too far and my friends end up with resentful stalkers with motives rooted in unrequited love, but also because I don’t want these men to be exploited and suffer through inevitable pain once something hap­pens that snaps them back into reality.

One of the reasons I liked having Phummy around is that he just seemed like a very normal guy with a normal and healthy lifestyle who also just hap­pens to have a hobby of watching Twitch streams once in a while. He also seemed to be aligned with my opinion on being strongly against unhealthy parasocial relation­ships—so much so that he would joke about it and create satirical situations pretending like he and I had some deep bond and lifelong close friendship, using comedy to exaggerate how absurd some of these situations with other streamers and moderators have gotten.

Not too long ago, Phummy started counting down the days in my Discord server (which, if you’re not familiar, is sort of like a real-time forum and chat channel which is reserved for paid subscribers to my Twitch channel). I didn’t know what he was counting down to, but I knew he was cooking up some kind of joke.

Yesterday, May 13, 2024, I got my answer. In the morning, he messaged me wishing me a happy anniversary of him becoming my Twitch moderator. He sent a bunch of heart emojis and even translated a portion into Korean about how he looks forward to the next year ahead. I figured he was going to come up with some prank like this, so I just replied “ok” and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, I realized there was a big problem. Remember how I said earlier that my World of Warcraft: Classic stream was on May 12, 2023? Phummy was one day late to wish me a happy anniversary. At first I couldn’t have been any more indifferent about this entire situation, but now that I had found out that Phummy messed up his own prank, I was ex­tremely invested.

I let Phummy know of his critical error, and he replied in due sarcasm, profusely apologizing and asking if the anniversary was ruined and whether he should cancel the celebration dinner reservation. Of course, there was never a dinner reservation, but I decided I would stonewall him and take his joke in the most literal way possible. I told him that if he books a dinner reservation for us tonight at a high-end restaurant of his choice, I would show up for our “anniversary date.”

So he did.

… So I did too.

 
When Phummy booked the reservation, he wrote in the comments that this dinner was for a special occasion—an anniversary. Apparently this restaurant took that note very seriously, because when we arrived, they had our table… specially prepared.

The funny part is that they gave us a yellow rose, which often symbolizes friendship, but still scattered red heart confetti over our table and drew red hearts on the note.

While we were browsing through the menu, we received a bowl of complementary bread with a side of butter. The variety of bread in this bowl was nice, and it was a lot better than the average bowl of free bread that you get from other restaurants.

Our first appetizer was fresh oyster on half shells atop ice and with a side of mignonette sauce and lemon. There was nothing particularly remarkable about these oysters, but sometimes, that’s a good thing—they tasted crisp and clean, and served as a solid start to our meal.

Next was steak tartare with capers, chives, sweet onion, hard-boiled egg, and brioche toasts.

I had never had beef tartare before with hard-boiled egg in it, and today I discovered that I really like that flavor combination. I’m a big fan of onions, so I ob­vi­ous­ly liked that ingredient too. The capers added a nice touch to the flavor—they’re usually a bit too sour, but these were milder and balanced the umami of the steak well.

I wish there was a little bit of mild oil to help mix together the ingredients, but overall, this was one of my favorite tartare dishes I’ve ever had.

For my entrée, I ordered seared tenderloin with butter-poached lobster tails.

I ordered the tenderloin cooked rare, and it was prepared perfectly. I made sure to slice against the grain, and it ended up being the most tender steak I’ve ever had, up to the point where the first bite was actually surprising. It took “melt in your mouth” to a whole other level.

The lobster tails were also great. Something I dislike about lobster is how butter is often overused during its preparation, but this restaurant used just enough butter that the added flavor was recognizable but subtle.

Phummy ordered a 10 oz. filet mignon.

For dessert, we got a crème brûlée with seasonal berries. As you can see from the photograph, they continued the festivities by writing “Happy An­ni­ver­sa­ry” in chocolate on the plate.

I found this to be the most mediocre dish out of our entire meal. It didn’t really taste like what I’d expect from a crème brûlée, and the layer of hardened caramelized sugar didn’t have the satisfying crunch that people come to expect from crème brûlée.

Here are some shots of the dining area and exterior of the restaurant:

Oysters  $  23.00
Steak tartare  $  20.00
Tenderloin and lobster  $  74.00
Filet mignon  $  65.00
Mashed potatoes  $  15.00
Sales tax (7.75%)  $  15.27
Gratuity  $  45.00
Total  $ 257.27

I treated Phummy to the meal; the table to the right shows how much I paid.

I had an amusingly good time. In case it wasn’t clearly implied from the story, I have only ever interacted with Phummy through the Internet and this was my first time ever meeting him in-person. I’m known to be someone to do some unexpectedly chaotic and impromptu things, and I feel like driving a round-trip of almost a hundred miles relative to where I was staying in Los Angeles County and spending over $250 on dinner seems characteristic of some of the strange things I would do.

With that being said, I think this exceeded my threshold of comfort because Phummy does still keep an eye out on chat for me when I’m streaming and takes care of removing spammy advertising bots and other egregiously intrusive chatters that AutoMod does not catch, so I was far more willing to treat him to a nice din­ner as a gesture of appreciation, considering that he doesn’t formally accept payment from me.

On top of that, Phummy also occasionally live streams on Twitch himself for fun, so I had enough footage of him online for me to watch and determine that he wasn’t some unstable and dangerous person. In fact, he was very sociable, and if anything, he was the one carrying our conversation while I was basically busy role playing as a professional competitive eater and stuffing my mouth with good food.

The restaurant he picked was great. I did not expect the food quality to be that high, and I feel like this whole joke ended up coming to a best-case pos­si­ble conclusion.

… I guess this may be the birth of a new annual tradition.

 

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Hello McDonald’s

If you’ve been following my website for a while, you know that I like going to high-end fine dining restaurants. I’m especially a fan of multi-course meals, tasting menus, omakase experiences, and other “chef’s choice” formats of eating.

Last night, I decided to go to one of the world’s most famous and recognizable restaurants for a six-course meal: McDonald’s.

As my appetizer, I got a four-piece Chicken McNuggets®.

I ordered this with a side of the new, limited-edition Savory Chili WcDonald’s Sauce, but unfortunately, I did not receive it with my order. This tends to happen to me irritatingly frequently with special sauces. I recall at least one instance each within the past few years of wanting to try the Szechuan, Mambo, and Sweet & Spicy Jam sauces—and going to McDonald’s and ordering Chicken McNuggets® for the sole purpose of trying those sauces—and not receiving the sauce.

The nuggets themselves were fine; the breading seemed a bit thicker than usual and tasted a bit too over-fried, but overall, it was still passable.

My first entrée was a Cheeseburger. I customized my Cheeseburger to also have shredded lettuce in addition to the standard ingredients.

Lately, I’ve been minimizing my consumption of red meats and other foods high saturated fat to maintain good heart health. Because of this, I decided to get a small burger, as opposed to the Quarter Pounder® with Cheese like I used to always get when I was younger.

Having not had a McDonald’s burger for a long time, having this Cheeseburger was nostalgic. It tasted about the same as I remember, and the extra let­tuce added a very small but noticeable dash of extra freshness to the flavor profile.

As my side for all three main courses, I got a medium-sized portion of World Famous Fries®. The ones I got were a bit more flaccid than they usu­ally are, but they still had the distinct, iconic McDonald’s Fries taste. As dipping sauce, I got some Honey Mustard.

For my beverage, I got a Mango Pineapple Smoothie.

I usu­ally don’t get sugary drinks and generally opt for a Diet Coke, but for this meal, I decided to get something special. I think the smoothie should’ve had a bit more blended ice because the consistency was a bit too close to juice, and it was overall too sweet for my preference, but flavor-wise, I liked it.

For my second entrée, I got a Filet-O-Fish® with shredded lettuce.

A lot of people don’t expect this, but the Filet-O-Fish® is actually my favorite sandwich at McDonald’s. I like fish in general, but for some reason, there is just something about the Filet-O-Fish® that I really like when it comes to the balance of flavors. I ordered it with shredded lettuce this time, but it usu­ally doesn’t come with any lettuce; I think it tastes great both with and without the modification.

My third and final entrée was the Deluxe Spicy McCrispy™.

I think McDonald’s chicken sandwiches are generally a hit-or-miss. I think it is very easy to overcook the chicken, and I’ve found the doneness of the chicken in McDonald’s sandwiches to be fairly inconsistent. I think this is compounded by the fact that the shape and thickness of the chicken is also fair­ly inconsistent, so it’s pretty difficult to universalize a cooking methodology across the franchise.

To make things even worse for McDonald’s, a lot of fast food restaurants have come out with some incredible, juicy chicken sandwiches with very unique flavors after the chicken sandwich wars that started in 2019. I eat a lot of chicken sandwiches, and comparatively, I find McDonald’s to be mediocre.

Before dessert, I used the provided napkins to clean my hands.

I like McDonald’s napkins for two main reasons. First, the fold makes it easy to use the inside to wipe your mouth and feel like you’re using a “cleaner” part of the napkin that hasn’t been exposed to its surroundings. Second, the brown color makes grease show up very obviously, so as you wipe down your fingers, you get the satisfaction of seeing how much progress you’re making.

For dessert, I got a McCafé® Baked Apple Pie.

I used to eat a lot of these when I was a kid. Every time my parents and I went to McDonald’s, they would always add in an apple pie as dessert. For some reason, I stopped having these as an adult, but I was looking forward to trying this again for the nostalgia.

Unfortunately, this apple pie didn’t quite meet the quality bar I was hoping for. The outside was overbaked and too crispy. The caramelized apple filling inside was dehydrated. The crust was too firm. Instead of tasting like a sweet apple pie, it just tasted sweet, with the apple being an afterthought. Overall, this was pretty disappointing, though I imagine there is a possibility that this particular pie was prepared erroneously and I just got unlucky.

And finally, for my second dessert and my sixth and last course of the meal, I got an OREO® Shamrock McFlurry®.

This tasted a little bit like unmixed mint chocolate chip ice cream, but with a distinctly more artificial flavor. It was also extremely sweet. This is prob­a­bly fine for someone who actually likes the taste of the Shamrock syrup, but personally, I recommend just getting a Vanilla Soft Serve Cone for a much cleaner and classic flavor.

4-piece Chicken McNuggets®  $  2.99
Cheeseburger  $  2.29
Filet-O-Fish®  $  4.99
Deluxe Spicy McCrispy™  $  6.29
Medium French Fries  $  3.89
Honey Mustard  $  0.00
Medium Mango Pineapple Smoothie  $  4.39
Apple Pie  $  2.19
OREO® Shamrock McFlurry®  $  4.29
Discount (20%) –$  6.26
Tax (10.25%)  $  2.57
Total  $ 27.63

The table on the right shows how much I paid.

I used a promotion on the McDonald’s mobile app to get a 20% discount on my entire order. That deal often doesn’t give the most value on smaller orders and I usually end up using a dif­fer­ent one, but considering the large size of my six-course meal this time around, it ac­tu­al­ly took a good chunk off my total.

You may find that the prices I paid at this McDonald’s are higher than what you’d find at your local McDonald’s. Keep in mind that costs are localized, and because I dined at a South­ern California location, I probably paid some of the highest prices in the United States for my meal. Even when eating at McDonald’s in my home city of Las Vegas, it ends up being sub­stan­tial­ly cheaper.

Even though my experience with this McDonald’s wasn’t the best for all the dishes, the sta­ples that I usu­ally order—the Filet-O-Fish® and World Famous Fries®—were good. I ac­tu­al­ly like McDonald’s, not only for my preferred menu items, but because of the fa­mil­iar­i­ty and feeling of “home” that seeing the Golden Arches gives, no matter how far away from your ac­tu­al home you are.

Also, happy April Fool’s Day.

 

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Hello, Masamitsu Japanese Cuisine in San Marino, California

I go to nice restaurants on a very regular basis, but it’s been a little while since I’ve been to an ultra high-end place. Last Wednesday night, I joined one of my foodie friends for an omakase experience at Masamitsu Japanese Cuisine in San Marino of Los Angeles County, California.

For our appetizer, we got four small dishes. The first was shrimp and mushrooms in house-made sauce. The sauce had a perfect level of tang to it, and the shrimp was literally the most tender shrimp I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.

The second was monkfish liver. This is the second time I’ve ever had monkfish liver; the previous time I tried it, it sort of tasted like crab miso, but this time, it had a more unique and individual taste. The third was some noodles with jelly-like consistency. I wasn’t really able to precisely pinpoint exactly what it was. The noodles themselves had a mild flavor, but the sauce was a tiny bit too sour for my preference. My favorite facet of the dish was actually the texture—it was very slippery and slimy, but not in an unpleasant way.

Finally, the fourth was an oyster. I squeezed a tiny bit of fresh lemon juice onto it. This was probably one of the best oysters I’ve ever had—it had just enough flavor that it was right up to the threshold of strength and intensity of oysteriness without being too strong. The texture was extremely smooth and it had a very clean and pure aftertaste.

The second course was a plate of sashimi. Each cut of sashimi was aggressively thick, which made it extremely satisfying to eat. Even the slice of chutoro was very large, which is rare to see when it comes to high-end fish like tuna belly.

The sashimi came with various edible flowers on the side. I usually try to avoid edible flowers because they just taste too much like I spritzed perfume in­to my mouth, but these were a lot more subtle in flavor. The chef also gave us some advice on which ones to have in what manner (e.g., certain ones that work better with or without soy sauce), which also helped maximize the flavor profile of the whole course.

The third course was chawanmushi with truffle, caviar, and mushroom. The deep richness of the egg custard went well after having just finished large por­tions of raw fish.

Next up was the assortment of nigiri.

There was one piece that stood out to me. I actually don’t remember which fish it was, but it was very well prepared. Half of it was seared so, when I put the whole piece of nigiri in my mouth, it tasted as if I was eating two different pieces at once. The amount of sear was perfect—it added the nice flavor of charred and burnt fish, but it was not bitter at all.

One other recurring theme for some of the pieces of nigiri that I really liked was the way the fish was scored. This increased the surface area of the fish so that, when I put the piece in my mouth, it made more thorough contact with my tongue and allowed me to taste the fish more deeply. This doesn’t mat­ter as much in other situations, but when the quality of the fish is as high as what Masamitsu uses, it does make a noticeable difference.

We took a brief intermission from nigiri for some black cod. The skin was nearly as tender as the fish itself, and with the thinly-sliced and lightly-pickled cucumber on the side, it tasted amazing.

I always take and use my own photographs for my website, but my friend wanted to contribute this time around. She took six out of the 21 photos in this blog post. Can you figure out which ones they are?

The next round of nigiri came after the cod. We got sweet shrimp, tuna belly, and salmon roe.

If you know me well, you know that my favorite sushi is uni. The chef opened a new box of sea urchin for us and let me take a photo of it. He then pre­pared uni gunkan for us with a very generous portion of uni.

As our dinner approached an end, we received some miso soup with mushrooms and fish as a closer. This is probably the one and only thing we were served that I wasn’t a huge fan of, as the miso was a bit too strong. I ended up not finishing the soup, but I did eat all the mushrooms and fish inside.

The final piece of nigiri was skinless eel. I was very full by this point, but the relatively mildness of the eel went along nicely with the strong miso soup.

For dessert, we got one scoop of ice cream each. Mine was black sesame, which sort of tasted like a mixture of coffee and vanilla bean.

My friend got green tea and decided to add some extra character to her scoop.

The total for the meal pre-tax and pre-gratuity was US$306.00—omakase was $150 per person, and we added on a yuzu soda for $6. Compared to other omakase restaurants I’ve been to, this was a great price considering how good the food was. The service was also fantastic—the servers were attentive and respectful, and our chef was interactive to a degree that you like to see during an omakase experience.

If you’re ever in the Los Angeles or Pasadena area and looking for a great meal around this pricepoint, I highly recommend Masamitsu Japanese Cuisine. This was a real omakase experience in the sense that it was a truly chef-catered experience, as opposed to some restaurants that have been popping up now­a­days that just piece together a few existing items on their menu and claim that it’s omakase.

When people ask me what my all-time favorite restaurant is, my go-to answer has been Utzutzu. After this dinner, I now have Masamitsu to add to the list.

 

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