Eating With My Eyes

OK, I made it to LA! I was hoping to write a bit from the airport in Shanghai, but alas, I forgot about the Great Firewall of China. In other words, Blogger does not work in China, so updating the blog there was a no-go.

Because of the 15-hour time difference between Shanghai and LA, I essentially did a bit of time traveling today, going back in time: I departed at about 8 p.m. but arrived four hours earlier.

Pretty cool, huh?


Lucky for me, Jody picked me up at the airport, drove me back to his pad, and then showed me around Westwood (his 'hood.)

One of the first things we did was grab an ice-cream sandwich from Diddy Riese. The last thing I needed to eat was junk food, but I definitely have a sweet tooth, and I can't tell you how many awesomely delicious foods I've seen and felt like tasting in the few hours I've been here, so I had no problem digging right in. (I give the snack a 7 out of 10.)

After our pre-dinner dessert, we walked around UCLA a bit (Too bad I didn't have my UC Berkeley shirt on!), grabbed some snacks at Trader Joe's (I swear I could have bought just about everything in the store!), and went to a dinner at a pizzeria called 800 degrees. Jody promised me it would be the best pizza I've ever had.

Well, I wouldn't go that far, but I had a great time, enjoyed my pizza (which, by the way, was at least(!) twice the size of the typical personal-sized pizza you get in Japan), and would go there again. We actually had to wait in line (or "on" line, as Jody likes to say) for about 45 minutes, which prompted me to mention to Jody that the most I've ever waited in line at a restaurant in Japan is about 5 minutes. (Somehow, in Japan, you just don't see lines in front of restaurants.) Lily also joined us, but, as you can see from the exchange pictured below, she only decided to show up after realizing that yours truly, a.k.a. "a really hot white guy" was in town, yo! :-)

Yeah, so I guess you could say today's focus was food. I honestly wish I could eat 10 meals a day, but I guess I'll just have to do most of my eating with my eyes.

Tomorrow morning we are off to do the Valley Crest Half-Marathon (yes, we're crazy!), and later in the day we head to Oceanside, to get ready for our first day on the job on Monday.

That's it for now! There's a lot more to come, so please stay tuned for my next update, most likely sometime tomorrow!