Twin Dragon Chinese Restaurant

It's easy to forget what Chinese food used to be with all the Chinese fast food places around these days. When I was a kid, that sort of dining was really strange to me. Chinese food meant Oo loong tea, fortune cookies and those little paper boxes for leftovers.

Well, despite having lived in the desert of Chinese fast food for the past few years, it turns out that proper Chinese restaurants haven't gone away. Nalleli and I have visited this place, easy walking distance for us, twice now.

First off, let me just say three words: Moo shoo pork.

Damn, this is good stuff. Nalleli had never had it before our first visit, and the last time I had it (in Chicago), they served it with wheat tortillas. But this is the real stuff maynard. The waiter makes up the moo shoos for you using three spoons, never touching the moo shoo pancakes and oh, that plum sauce is delicious. I'd love to know what the proper traditional way is to eat this stuff as its the only Chinese that I don't eat with chopsticks (excepting the bits of little food left over at the end of the meal).

We've tried two other dishes. The orange chicken is delicious and spicy and completely unlike the stuff that they sell at the fast food places. The General Tao's [sic] chicken is another delicious foodstuff.

And the tea is just like I remember it from my childhood, and there are a couple of almond cookies offered at the end of the meal along with the fortune cookie.

And I almost forgot. Our leftovers were packed in little paper boxes. Just like the old days.

Twin Dragon Chinese Restaurant, 8597 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

Good Shepherd Catholic Church

I'm a big fan of evening mass. Mostly because getting up on a Sunday morning is a bit of a pain. But St Mary Magdalen doesn't do mass after noon, so if we're slow in the morning, we won't make it to mass there. We decided this week to try the 5.30p mass at Good Shepherd. Let's see what mass is like in the 90210.

We got there a bit early so we walked around downtown Beverly Hills for a bit, then got back to the church with plenty of time before mass. The music is quite traditionalist. Mostly organ with a classically-trained cantor (cantress? she was female). It's the first mass we've been to that's been packed, although, most of the people showed up a bit late. Apparently that's part of the culture at the parish since they have well-defined procedures for dealing with late arrivals.

Nobody famous (or at least not that I definitely recognized), but the crowd was also not as well-dressed as we feared so we didn't stand out a lot. It was kind of cool to hear the priest mention someone I know in his homily, so apparently while they're a bit liturgically conservative, not so much so for their overall worldview. (It's worth noting that conservative Catholic does not necessarily, and should not I think, mean that someone is politically conservative. Cathlic doctrine aligns much more neatly with the stances of the Democrats than the Republicans except on abortion and birth control.

There is an amazing gauntlet of panhandlers outside the church. We were reminded of a story on NPR about homelessness in L.A. and one of the people interviewed saying, "If I'm going to be a bum, I want to be a Beverly Hills bum.

Good Shepherd Catholic Church, 505 N Bedford Dr, Beverly Hills, CA

Loteria Grill

It's smack dab in the middle of the Farmer's Market and you wouldn't expect much, but you'd be wrong. They make their tortillas right there (mmm, fresh masa) and while some stuff is partially pre-made off site, the food is very good. It's very much in the Rick Bayless upscale gourmet Mexican school of things. Nalleli had the mole enchiladas and I had the special which was two chiles rellenos, but what a difference: One was a standard-looking chile rellano, but stuffed with cheese and plantains. The other was a stuffed dried pepper (but reconstituted before cooking), unbattered, and stuffed with a delicious picadillo. Mmmm, delicious.

Loteria Grill at Farmer's Market, 6333 W 3rd St, Los Angeles, 90036 - (323) 930-2211

Why was the chicken by the side of the road

So I'm walking along Whitworth (between Olympic and Pico), and I see a chicken by the side of the road. Not Kentucky Fried, but actually walking around clucking. I look around, there's no one to be seen. I want someone to verify for me what I'm seeing. A chicken! I'm three blocks away from Beverly Hills and there's a chicken on the corner.

I love Los Angeles.

St Agatha's Church

So we were going to go to 12p mass at St Mary Magdalene, but we were a bit slow in the morning, so we ended up going to evening mass instead. St Agatha's has two masses with a gospel choir and the 5.30 mass is one of them. Keeping up our tradition of being late for mass as Angelenos, we arrived at 5.45 and were a bit surprised to discover that we arrived at the end of the entrance hymn. Either they started late or we missed 15 minutes of gospel music. I'd like to think it was the former. The congregation here didn't look a whole lot different than St Mary's. Perhaps a few more black faces, but it wasn't an overwhelmingly black parish (which, on balance, is probably a good thing. A full-on African-American liturgy is typically a three hour affair). It seems that all the area parishes are about the same size physically and attendance-wise. It almost seems like a different religion now that we're back out of the O.C.

St Agatha's Church, 2610 S Mansfield Ave, Los Angeles, 323/935-8127

The Farmer's Market

Last time I was here was twenty years ago. Things have changed a bit. I remember a lot more food and flower vendors and less of a food court atmosphere. But, the produce that we bought was better quality than they had at Albertson's and cheaper as well. We just need to find a good off-peak time to show up.

The quest for free WiFi

Burger King was a bust. I picked up a wifi signal, but neither my Mac nor Nalleli's PC were able to sign on. We returned to EZ Laundromat and Cybercafe but the internet connection there continued to be flakey. I guess the next step is to try some of the other locales that turn up from the google local wifi search.

EZ New Web Laundromat & Cafe

It seems like a great idea: Take a laundromat, attach a coffee shop with internet access and watch the customers roll in.

Great idea, poor execution: First off, the cybercafe has a separate store front which makes it seem less integrated into the laundromat. I seemed to be the only person there who patronized both shops. And it was a bit disturbing to contemplate the idea that I couldn't keep an eye on my laundry whilst in the cafe. The Wifi signal did reach into the laundromat, but the internet over wifi seemed to be terribly flakey. But no one said anything when I sat down at one of the wired PCs. unplugged the ethernet cable from behind it and plugged it into my Powerbook, so that at least worked for a while.

Not, however, worth the trip for the internet. On the other hand, given the miniscule laundry room in our new building, heading to a laundromat does seem like a good idea.

EZ New Web Laundromat & Cafe, 6144 Washington Blvd, Culver City, 310/559-3279

St Mary Magdalene Church

The short version: We like it. We like that it's close enough to walk to (although we were late anyway). We like that it's a small community. We like the music. We like that there's no single demographic that dominates (although Nalleli pointed out that the 10a mass was devoid of older children). I think we've found our parish. We'll have to go to some other mass times to see what those are like.

St Mary Magdalene Church, 1241 S Corning St, Los Angeles, 310/652-2444

Super Movers

This is only my second attempt at using movers for a local move, and the fact that the movers didn't look at my apartment, and leave, laughing at my distress, already put them up a notch.

They alerted us on Saturday morning that our crew would be arriving a bit late (they'd been up late the night before on another move), which was a nice bit of professionalism and we were happy to have the extra hour to continue packing.

The good: They were fast and professional (although, it was amusing that the head of the group was terrified of my cats who spent most of their time locked in one of the bathrooms. They even attempted (unsuccessfully, ultimately) to repair a piece of furniture which was repaired in a previous move, and packed things for us that we didn't expect them to pack.

The less good: The unloading was kind of slow and inefficient. If I were less tired, I would have directed them in how to get things up to our place a lot faster (they should have had one member of the three-man crew moving boxes off the truck, a second ferrying them to the foyer of the apartment and the third bringing them up the elevator).

But overall, we were pleased with our experience. The next time we move, some things we do need to remember are to remove the movable shelves from the bookcases, and to keep an eye on things during the loading/unloading, but I think that we would use them again.

Super Movers: 310/207-0048. 3548 Veteran Ave, Los Angeles

Is Westside Rentals worth it? Maybe

My wife and I spent most of January looking for an apartment somewhere West LA-ish since she's now working in Santa Monica and the drive from the O.C. (which is exactly like the television show) was the sort of hell that I'd like to see Bush and friends consigned to.

Our first attempts, based on driving through residential neighborhoods only revealed Westside Rentals signs so we went to the office and signed up.

My thoughts: The web interface was very nice. It has some bugs though where it would sometimes lose notes and there were some listings which were inaccurate, but not many (usually it was cases of availability dates being off, or less frequently rents were incorrect or listings were miscategorized).

But the apartment into which we're moving wasn't in WSR (nor was our second choice), and we still think that it was worth the $60. Why? Because without WSR, we would never have even found the neighborhood. What WSR really excelled at was helping us figure out where we would find apartments in our price range. Then by actually going to the neighborhoods and looking at apartments, we were able to also call any other number that we saw on a for rent sign. And thus we found our new place.

If we were moving again within the area, we might not use WSR, but we're not planning on moving again until we buy a house and that'll be after real estate crashes but we've saved up plenty of cash.