Where did I go?

I didn't think that I would ever be writing a post about why my blog post has gone from a consistent 3 posts a week to coming out at a snail pace. Am I lacking materials to write about? Nope. Have I gone hungry since? Gosh no! In fact I think I gained a few pounds. :(

Then what is causing this to happen? Well, I got the highly anticipated game "Spore" a few weeks back. This was a game that I, among many others, have been waiting for for a few years. After I broke the seal on the box and installed it into my computer, my life has since come to a screeching halt. If you don't know what Spore is but you know what The Sims are, well, they were both created by the same person, Will Wright. He is a game developing genius! Although he did not design most of The Sims 2, and is not designing The Sims 3, he certainly gave birth to this extremely addicting game franchise.

Spore is a very simple game, but it sure produces a lot of entertainment for me. If you read my profile, it did say that I LOVE games!!! Unfortunately, there are too many things to do, and since Spore is a new toy, it is getting most of my attention. I will write again, just after I finish Spore. Got to go conquer the world, and be the alpha dog on my planet now!

San Francisco - Golden Gate Bakery and a little good deed

Near the corner of Grant and Jackson Street in San Francisco's Chinatown lies this marvelous little shop called the Golden Gate Bakery. Even before I was born, my family would always visit this bakery every time they were in the city, and twenty somewhat years later, I still can't keep myself away from their yummy goodies.

The Golden Gate Bakery is arguably one of the best Chinese bakery in the U.S. and although they are also famous for their lotus moon cake, I primarily go here for their other famous baked good: the Chinese egg custard tart! I can't say much about the moon cake, but they definitely have the best egg custard tart around, it's even better than the ones I had when I lived in Taiwan. So believe me, they're GOOD!

Majority of the time you'll see a bunch of people outside the bakery, shifting their feet, waiting in line for a chance to get into the bakery before the custard tarts run out. If you don't see a line then most likely they are on vacation or it's near closing time. We were lucky enough to get there before a huge line formed up so I can get my hands on some of those amazing tarts.

While we were waiting, I overheard this guy standing in front of us tell his friends that the egg custard tart here is good (which I agree), but he also said that egg custard tarts are good anywhere because they are all made from a similar recipe (He is so wrong!). I couldn't believe what I just heard! But I took a deep breath and suppressed my urge of tapping on his shoulder to ask him what is wrong with his taste buds, and why is he standing in line at this bakery instead of buying his custard tart from a bakery down the street where there is no wait

If you also share his opinion or if you had an egg custard tart at a dim sum place and didn't think much of it, then you must try the egg custard tart from Golden Gate bakery. The outside crust resembles a pastry shell and is light, flaky, not at all oily, and the filling is so soft and delicate. They come fresh from the oven and you just can't stop smiling after you bite into it. I could probably eat 6 of them in one sitting, and I would have if I didn't have to share them with my family.

The egg custard tart is $1.35/tart (if I remember correctly) which is sort of on the expensive side, but it's worth every penny! If you actually are able to make your way there, be sure you know what you want to get by the time you reach the counter, cause these ladies don't mess around; there are minimal customer service here and they want to get the line moving. They'll indulge a few questions here and there, but if you don't make up your mind soon, they might just pass you up to help the next customer till you're ready.

When we were walking back to our car, we passed by this old Chinese lady and she was going through the trash can and drinking the milk tea that someone had just threw away. The sight of that just breaks my heart and although my dad would never agree with what I did, I stopped and took out one of the tart and gave it to her. My dad would say that when you give to the needy, they will never think it is enough or they just want to get drugs and alcohol, so we're actually not helping them. I really disagree with his view, sure there are people who are into drugs and alcohol, but there are also a lot of people who are just down on their luck and need a helping hand. I wish I could've done more for the old lady, but hopefully the egg custard tart will at least fill her tummy a little bit.

Hunger Awareness

I took a photo of this hunger awareness ad when we were driving down one of the streets in San Francisco. I guess judging from my blog I can't really claim I am the 5th person huh?

I am fortunate enough that I never had to go hungry in my life so far, no matter how much of a tough time my family been through, or how little I have to live on when I was in college, I never had to go to bed hungry. I always feel really bad for those that are down on their luck, do not have a home, and just long for a warm meal every so often, so even though I don't have much, I try to do what I can: buy a meal for the homeless sometimes, donate food to food banks, and another really fun one is to go on FreeRice.com

A lot of you probably already been on FreeRice.com and if you're like me, you get addicted to it once you start playing. If you have not heard of this site, you can play vocabulary, math, chemistry, art and language games, and for each answer you get right, they donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World food program to help end world hunger.

The amount of time it took me to finish this blog post, I have donated 500 grains of rice by playing the French vocab game, and I don't even know French! I know we will probably never be able to end world hunger, but each and every one of us can do a little something to help another less fortunate person. You don't need to have a lot, just need a heart and a will, so go have fun and you can also help put some food on someone else's dinner plate!