Karen did a pretty long Twitch stream today for her birthday, and we invited a few friends over. This was her sushi platter and mango cake:

I don’t have much time for commentary though, because we’re going on a trip tomorrow – we’ll be headed to Las Vegas for Heroes of the Dorm 2017.

I went to Los Angeles county earlier today with one of my friends to accompany her as she met up with some of her pre- professional gaming era friends. Apparently, they wanted to go to a restaurant called The Boiling Crab. After I arrived, I discovered that it wasn’t actually a real restaurant (at least, not to any decent human’s standards).

I’m not really a huge fan of seafood (unless I prepare it myself), but because I’m pretty open and not very picky with food, I was fine with going to a seafood place. But, considering the way that I got served, I wouldn’t really consider this a restaurant.

You know how generally, at a restaurant (or even at home), you get your food served on a plate? Well, apparently, the Boiling Crab thinks it’s normal to instead just throw your food into a clear grocery bag, squirt some sauce into it, shake it up, and throw it on your table. You might as well call your table your plate, because it seems to serve that dual purpose – the table just has a bunch of wax paper covering it, with no plates provided.

Eating utensils? You don’t get those either. You better be ready to get your hands dirty, unless you want to shove your face straight into grocery bag like the dog that they treat you like.

It’s beyond my comprehension how this is actually a thing, and how they haven’t gone out of business yet due to this repulsive concept.

This careless and reckless environment seems to also be rubbing off on the waiters. Never before have I seen containers of salt and lemon pepper be thrown onto tables from feet away. Want your container to be upright? You’re out of luck, because all of them are going to land upside-down or sideways, getting seasoning everywhere.

But the best part? It’s absurdly expensive. You don’t actually save money as a result of the Boiling Crab saving tons of money by not providing a proper eating environment. Instead, they charge a high price by the pound and end up just dumping a ton of seafood shell and waste on your table. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of the actual seafood meat ended up being over US$100/pound, considering how much of what you buy, you just send right back to the restaurant as garbage.

I’m sure you know by this point where I’m never going back to.

(The sauce is Spread from In-N-Out; the potatoes are seasoned with salt, pepper, and basil.)

After the post I made yesterday evening of my trip to Irvine, CA, we went out to get some dinner with the other attendees of the event. We claimed our spot in line for an all-you-can-eat self-cook Korean barbecue restaurant, then went across the street to a bubble tea restaurant.

I personally think single-serve drinks (like bubble tea, Starbucks-style coffee, etc.) are overpriced, so I didn’t get any of my own (although I did sample some of my friends’ drinks). Instead, I took this photograph of some earl grey macarons that were on display.

After a decently long wait (because there were so many of us), enough tables freed up for us to start eating KBBQ.

Because pretty much everyone attending the event was at the KBBQ restaurant and everyone attending has a big part in Internet culture (including social media), there were a lot of photos of cooking meat going up on Twitter. One of my friends sitting in front of me Tweeted “my entire Twitter feed is filled with KBBQ pictures,” so in response to that, I took the following photograph and sent it to him:

That all happened yesterday. After a long night of work, I slept pretty late.

Although, again, I cannot reveal anything about the actual reason for the event itself due to confidentiality agreements, I can share some more generic photos. For today’s dinner, I again ate food from Eats Kitchen & Bakery on the first floor of the hotel (except this time, I got takeout instead of eating in). I got another burger today, but a different one than yesterday, and apparently, I picked one that literally has potato chips inside the hamburger.

The event itself was only one day long (although most people are staying for three, to include two travel days), but I will most likely leave tonight, seeing as I am local to Irvine and don’t need to wait for a flight to depart tomorrow. Because tomorrow is Monday, I’d rather drive at around 4 AM to avoid traffic, rather than leaving at regular hotel check-out time tomorrow and making a 30-minute drive take an hour and a half.

I never got around to figuring out whether or not we actually got the benefits of that special hotel club for being on this floor (because normally you have to pay extra per room to get on this floor), but then again, I never actually really needed those extra amenities. At least I got to experience this nice view; I got one last photo of it during sunset today.

One of my family members is having a birthday tomorrow, but they live right around 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) away from me, so I decided to snap some photos of cakes for them while a friend and I stopped by a bakery to look at some bread. You can look at the photos too, in case tomorrow (or today) is also your birthday.

While we were out shopping, we stopped by a restaurant for some dinner. My favorite type of prepared chicken is orange chicken, and I like spicy foods, so I was pretty excited when I saw that spicy orange chicken was on the menu.

That looks delicious until you actually start eating it and realize that it’s about 85% breading.

I’m not really much of a fan of Korean food. Even though my parents are Korean and I grew up in a Korean-culture family, my preferred type of food has usually been any kind of food except for Korean.

Apart from 김치, Korean food is known for its boiling hot liquids to go along with rice.

There is where the problem lies – I hate hot liquids. I’m pretty sure I just have an overall relatively high body temperature and I emit a lot of heat, so I usually like eating cold things. One of my favorite snacks is ice cream, and my favorite drink is actually just fresh, filtered water at the freezing point. A majority of the items on a Korean menu comes with flusteringly hot soup that makes my body feel itchy from the inside, so I usually opt to get a dry meat-rice-vegetables dish instead.

Since moving to California and being away from my parents, there has been no reason for me to eat Korean food. There aren’t any Korean restaurants around where I live, and when I cook, I just buy raw meat and season it with a bit of salt, pepper, and Italian herbs, so I hadn’t had Korean food for a while.

If you saw my blog post from yesterday, you’ll see that I went to visit my aunt and uncle; while I was at their farm, we drove down to the main city area and stopped by a Korean restaurant.

Then, earlier today, I went to Los Angeles with one of my friends so she could meet up with her childhood best friend. There’s a lot more Asian food in Los Angeles than there is where I live, so we went to a Korean tofu house (I got some meat, vegetables, and rice, rather than the stew).