Shells, Ice Skating And Thai Food In The City

At the BART station, a guy around his early to mid 20s approached me, my cousin and brother at the platform. He had a shaggy beard, curly blonde hair with a red flannel shirt and many travelling bags stacked on his hiking backpack. We shall call him "Shaggy." My other cousin that I was meeting up with called me to discuss that night's plans. I was still on the phone when Shaggy asked if we could spare a dime, nickel or quarter. Everyone said no except for me. Talking on the phone with one hand, I fumbled, reached into my pocket with my other hand and grabbed two quarters and a dime. I handed the change to him.

"Thank you." Shaggy says nicely. 

"You're welcome." I say, mid-phone conversation. 

Less than a minute later, he comes up to me again and gives me back the dime.

He says, "I don't think I need this much. Thank you." 

I smile and take it back. The shaggy bearded guy approaches me, in less than a minute again.

"Here you go. Thank you." He passes me back the two other quarters. 

Sooo, at this moment I'm thinking that's all the change I gave him so he really just returned the change and he gets nothing in the end. HMMMM...

I  just laugh and say thank you when Shaggy turns around and approaches me again.

"Hey, here's a shell." He says, with a sweet smile on his face. 

I'm still on the phone but I'm surprised by the token.

"Thank you! A shell! That's so sweet." 

It was so nice.  Now, I'm wondering where the hell this shell is from? Shaggy looked like a traveller (either that or homeless... maybe both, who knows), so it could be from anywhere really. Hmmm, I'd like to imagine that Shaggy recently travelled to Hawaii or the Caribbean and that's where it's from. And does anyone remember that episode of That's So Raven when she accepted a shell from a guy from a foreign country and in his culture, the shell was part of a proposal to marry him?
If that dude just proposed to me, then I guess we're engaged because this shell is lovely. Jaykay, gurl. But it really is nice.

All jokes aside, Why can't people be like this more often? Giving people change and receiving a pretty shell in return... If more people did that, the world would be a nicer place because I can say that the small gesture did make me feel happier. Feeling happier made the rest of my night more fun as well.

Small gestures = big impact.

We met up with my cousins and her boyfriend. We went straight at this place called King of Thai Noodle. Walking in, the first thing I noticed were purple walls with minimal decor and plain silver seating furniture. The ambience of this restaurant was very dry and stale, kind of like a cafeteria painted purple. The wait for our party of six was about 10 minutes and we were seated in the upstairs area.

Purple walls and art work

EVALU-EATIN': Looks like it's time for a restaurant review!

We ordered two orders of pad thai, Kao Prik Sod (sauteed beef with vegetables), chicken satay, Thai-style fried rice with pork and Thai iced teas. The food was not very good. I've definitely had better. Their portions at this restaurant were also pretty small even though all of the orders were a la carte. The chicken satay was in small portions, was dry and overcooked. The pad thai did not deliver in flavor. It also didn't come with the usual lime to mix into it (I LOVE MY LIME... I was throughly disappointed). The Thai-style fried rice was actually very good. The sauteed beef was flavorful, was soaked in lots of sauce and was cooked well.

Chicken satay, pad thai, Thai-style fried rice and a Thai iced tea

 I always try the Thai teas whenever I go to new Thai places. The quality of their Thai tea is what really interests me when it comes to Thai restaurants. It's such a basic beverage that's on every Thai restaurant menu but finds a way to have their own unique taste at every restaurant. It's kind of like searching for the perfect burger at different fast food joints, but instead, it's searching for the tastiest Thai iced tea. Their Thai tea was really good, I think that was my favorite part of the whole meal. My youngest cousin asked what I'd rate the place and i told him I'd give it a 6 out of 10.
After dinner, we decided on ice skating at Union Square. I must say that I was pretty uneasy about skating since I don't really know how to and because of my fear of falling on my ass... but we ended up having a blast!

Things I Learned When Ice Skating at Union Square:

• When my brother skates, he moves his arms like he's swimming through water. Very fun to watch.
• My youngest cousin is bad at ice skating. He fell on his ass several times and later complained of his ass hurting later that night. LOLLL.
• My cousin's boyfriend is a good skater. 
• My cousin that didn't know how to skate at all ended up being a good skater. 
• Boys and younger guys get excited and/or try to show off and end up trying to skate really fast even though they don't even know how to skate properly. 
• Boys and younger guys tend to be the ones who fall on their ass while ice skating. 
• I almost fell and my cousin saved me, so I think we're a pretty good team.

 I always feel like a baby learning to walk when I try to ice skate. I also dislike when people are great skaters and zoom past you like Apolo Ohno and I'm looking like I just shat my pants on the ice. I suppose old people that walk slower feel this way all the time. Life for them must be a constant ice skating rink where they are being overtaken by a ton of Apollo Ohnos.

Damn you, Apolo Ohno. Damn you.

We ended the night by taking photos in a booth and walking around Union Square while everything was closing for the night. We went our separate ways when my cousin and her boyfriend suggested we get off the S.F. streets and hop on BART before the crackheads came out. I was like, "Thanks for the advice. We bouncin'. PEACE." Because my ghetto comes out when I'm in defense mode. Can I just say how much I love my friggin' family? GOOD TIMES.

We really did randomly scream at the same time.

There was a party in that photo booth.

Stay Klassy and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

GOBBLE GOBBLE NOMNOMNOM,

Kris

Zombie Food and Late Night Art

My cousin gave me a piece of candy that she got from a swap on the East Coast that I found to be absolutely intriguing. It's a chocolate novelty treat called, "Zombie Food"by Skybar. I've neither heard of the chocolate's name or whatever Skybar is and anyone that knows me knows that I love to try new foods. Another awesome thing that got me pumped to gobble this is that it's zombie-themed. Again, if you know me... You should know that I love horror movies, the zombie genre being one that is greatly appreciated. So, let's take a peek at the description. In case you can't read the contents from the picture, here it is: "Milk chocolate covered assortment of brains, feet and hearts filled with oozy red caramel."

How disgustingly cute does that sound??? Naturally, I needed to open this thang up. I was so excited that I decided to do a food blog critique and take pictures of my zombie food experience. 

Nom nom nom

The Unwrapping and Presentation:

Upon opening the package, it looks like this:

... It's a heart! I initially assumed the chocolate would be in the shape of a zombie head for some reason.

Taking a bite out of it and splitting it with a knife, the center looked like this:

It's "blood", A.K.A. red-colored caramel. Cuuuuutteeeeee. From the description, I actually thought there would be little body parts combined inside with the caramel but I'm guessing that the chocolate mold is different depending on what kind of organ you get and all are filled with the caramel. 

The Taste:

The milk chocolate is not the best that I've tried. It has a bit of a waxy taste and texture to it, kind of like shortening. Despite the description on the packaging, the red caramel is not oozy. When I think of oozy caramel, I think of those World's Finest chocolate bars filled with caramel. YUM. Those are forrealz oozy. But the red caramel in this was pretty stiff and held up like toothpaste. 

Texture and consistency of the caramel

The caramel had a soft grainy type of texture and didn't really taste like caramel. Can't explain what the caramel tasted like but I can say it did taste creamy.

This treat is definitely not the tastiest thing to eat, it's less focused on the candy's quality and more focused on it being a novelty type thing to buy because it's zombie-themed. Personally, I don't care too much about a fancy looking presentation. As long as whatever I'm eating TASTES good, then I'm completely satisfied.

 I can say it's fun to eat so it'd be great to give to kids. I know I probably would've gone ape for a chocolate treat like this when I was a kid. I did get a kick out of eating this as my current 20 year-old self though. It's such an adorable treat.

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Later on in the night, I was in a drawing mood after browsing through a bunch of art on Pinterest so I decided to whip something up and exercise my creative side. I took two photos: one without flash and one with flash. I used a blue ballpoint pen and a black Sanford T.E.C. Sharpie. Everything is freehand, except for using a pencil to get the proportions correct for her face and going over it with the ballpoint pen.

This is drawn on thick sketching paper from my small spiral sketch book that I received as a gift. This whole piece was drawn within a one hour time span. It's untitled. I wanted to focus on different patterns and details and how to go about incorporating them in one piece.

Without flash

With flash

Stay Klassy,

Kris