Oh yea, I have a blog…..

Lemme tell you….the past couple months have been BUSY. And I always managed to write posts, even on the road. Then after life settles down again, and there’s not much to do, I stop posting. Funny, right? No? Ok.

Since we live far away from every single person we have ever known, I feel an obligation to write more updates on our life so everyone knows what we’re up to. But that’s pretty boring. It’s not my angle. I don’t want to do that. Though I feel guilty not doing it. What should I do? I guess I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing. Write a bunch of crap. And some recipes in between. And documenting everything with photos.

So, how has San Diego been treating us so far, you ask? Pretty well. There’s always pros and cons to a new area, but luckily we’re rewarded with more pros.

For instance, the WEATHER. I love how the weather forecast describes ‘cool’ as ‘low 70s’ and ‘warm’ as ‘mid to high 70s’. Meteorologists must have the easiest job on the planet in San Diego. Aside from this place (click on the link, it’s cute). And it’s sunny, like, 90% of the time. We don’t use heat or AC much. Sometimes in the early morning I turn on a space heater for an hour or so, but other than that, it’s pretty damn temperate. If it’s warm, open the window. If it’s cold, close the window. Recently, I looked at the forecast for Rochester, and one of the days were described as ‘gloomy’. I chuckled. It’s interesting that I never realized how weather could be described so depressingly. I feel bad for chuckling now.

One of the cons here is the water. First of all, water shouldn’t have color. With specks of other colors. In fact, it shouldn’t be called water. More like sludge. Dirty smelly gray sludge that comes out of our faucets we use for bathing, cooking and drinking. We installed a water purifier, though I still drink water cautiously…not that that helps ease my mind. Because it really doesn’t make sense when I say ‘drink water cautiously’. Ya drink it, or ya don’t drink it.

Hence why we have such cheap wine. California solved the dirty water problem by producing lots of WINE. Wine ranges from $1.97-$25 a bottle in grocery stores. In fact, wine is almost cheaper than bottled water, than milk, than soda. Well, the cheap wine, that is. Chris tried to argue that you get a higher quantity of milk than wine for the price.

“But you don’t get drunk from drinking more milk, duh,” I retorted.

I’ll let that one marinate in your brain a bit…

Another pro is wine is sold everywhere, not just liquor stores like in New York. You can buy wine at any grocery store, hell, even at Target. Even at Walmart. Not only is this convenient… well, okay, it’s just convenient. I don’t have to drive around looking for a specific store that sells wine. Imagine driving around for a specific store that sells shampoo. It’d be a hassle, wouldn’t it? Not that I’m comparing wine to shampoo. Not that wine is a necessity like shampoo is. Not that shampoo is a necessity…

I’ll add another con just to mix things up. Car registration and smog checks. Another way California can take more money from us. I guess some things are called the sunshine tax here. I would consider this as one of them. For two cars, that roughly totals around $500. $500 for registrations and smog checks.  I can’t understand why it’s so much money. I don’t want to think about it right now. Let’s pretend I didn’t type that number.

Another pro is the diversity around here. There are so many different cultures. Just take a look at the restaurants and you can see there’s a variety of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican restaurants on every street. There’s so much to eat. Oh wait, I was talking about diversity. But that’s always associated with great food for me. I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but not once did someone ask me where I was born, after I have a conversation with them in English. For instance, even in Rochester, the last day before we left, someone asked me where I was from. And after saying I was born in Rochester, NY, they asked me where I was from again. Since that wasn’t a good enough answer. Apparently they want to hear that I’m from China. Even though I have never been in China.

Moving on…

Another pro is the FOOD. Stop picturing tall, skinny blonds in sunny SoCal and start picturing short, chubby asian girl gaining 5 pounds a week. After all the stress of moving, eating on the road, introducing pizza rolls as a 6th food group, gorging myself on Thanksgiving stuffing, cooking with 3 sticks of butter per week, and eating at every food establishment within a 10 mile radius of our apartment in San Diego, I stayed away from the scale for the past few months. There’s so much variety, both in the grocery stores and restaurant choices, that I want to eat everything as fast as I possibly can. I want to eat like all food will disappear tomorrow. Which is actually not very healthy, my tightly fitting jeans have told me. And I don’t mean eat junk food. Most of the choices are pretty healthy. There are so many different grocery stores, I actually have options here. But I won’t go into detail about food just yet. There’s many many posts I will write later about food. Let’s just say, $2.50 for a banh mi sandwich the length of my forearm. And let’s also say, $1 for 3 mangoes.

Speaking of which…I need to get a banh mi and some mangoes now…