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sarea
Another LA trip has come and gone but we already have plans to go back! Who told it to have so many escape rooms and good places to eat?? And K-pop groups that visit it? We’re just doing what it wants! Note: Because Flickr now sucks like every other photo hosting service, I’m keeping pictures in this post to a minimum. In the past I would have posted photos of each dish I had a pic of, for example, but now instead I’ll just choose 1-2 representative pics. Sigh. Onward!
The last timeadelagia, jade_okelani and I were together in LA was last July, when Adelagia and I were going to the GOT7 concert. Ahhhhh I can’t believe it’s been so long already! They did just announce another worldwide tour though not yet the dates. A-holes, why did they wait so long to say? Now Adelagia is going to be in Seoul for most of the summer, and I’m joining her there at the end of July. It would be so terrible if we were there and they were here. Even the thought of it really aggravates me. -.- (They announced the dates this morning, but I'm keeping this in for posterity because it was true when I wrote it. For the record: They'll be in LA in early July, just like last year, so Adelagia will, in fact, not only miss that concert but won't even be in the same country as them the entire time she's in South Korea.)
Wed, April 3-midday Sat, April 6
As I am not bound by the schedule of schools, I went to LA a few days early. I have to call myself on some hypocrisy, lol. I was rereading my "LA trip that should never have happened" entry, and one of my complaints about J. was that she flew Delta down to LA despite all the extra time it took – but I ended up doing the same thing. >.> IN MY DEFENSE, no one was relying on me, timing wise. All the inconvenience was taken on by me alone. And the reason I wanted to do it was because I thought I had a shot at getting upgraded to first class on my flight legs (I didn’t. :/ Got upgraded to Comfort+ on all legs, but that’s it), and also I wanted to ensure my medallion status for next year. Still, if I could do it again I would just take Alaska.
During this time Jade and I hung out, ate food, went to see a movie ("Us"), and sprained our ankles. OH NO WAIT THAT WAS JUST ME. Idiot, klutzy me. I wasn’t even doing anything? I was walking, trying to get around a group of teenagers, when suddenly I tripped. I didn’t fall; I just tripped. And yet my ankle twisted in a terrible way; it felt like a super bad sprain immediately, even though I somehow stayed upright. I still don’t understand wtf happened! But anyway I hobbled to Coffee Bean, where I propped up my foot and Jade got me a bag of ice (put into a pastry bag cuz that’s all they had). I could not get my foot into a position where it did not feel painful. :/ Jade, bless her heart, also went to Target and helped me buy a brace, a pillow and some pain meds. Attempting to walk on it after icing it felt TERRIBLE. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to walk ANYwhere. But thankfully after walking a little ways it eased enough for me to be able to make it to where we were having dinner. (We went to Hatch Yakitori’s happy hour, and it was really yummy. But despite it being HH we still spent plenty of $$, sigh.)
Hatch Yakitori
Other places we went to eat during this time included Don Cuco, In N Out (obviously), Cousins (delicious lobster rolls at reasonable prices), Lawry’s (always a satisfying experience) and Rasoi Curry Point in the OC.
In N Out
Cousins
Lawry’s
We did one escape room with the two of us called "Galaxy Quest"... I literally have zero memory of the room itself at the time of this writing, though I seem to have a vague recollection that I enjoyed it. I did it on my sprained ankle somehow, so either I am a BEAST or I was hopped up on meds, which also explains why I can’t really remember it.
Edit: Both Adelagia and Jade have reminded me about the room. Yes, Adelagia, who wasn't even there, LOL. It was fun because the "gamemaster" was this weird alien creature thing who would help guide us along as we were solving puzzles. It had a series of prerecorded things it would say, but they could also get creative with it, I think. So if we were on the right track with something, it would be like, "Yes!" or if we were not on the right track, it would say "DO BETTER." LOL. There was also a part in the room where we had to give toys to a small monster that was behind a glass panel. At first when entering the room and seeing it there, it scared the shit out of me. It was clearly a hand puppet being manipulated by the gamemaster. You would take a toy, show it, and be like, "Do you want to play with this?" And then depending on its answer, you'd give it. That was pretty amusing; clearly a room that required a lot more interaction with the gamemaster than most.
Midday-evening Sat, April 6
We picked up Adelagia from John Wayne Airport and went to our first escape room, despite Alaska Airlines’ best efforts to sabotage our Day 1 fun. That’s what Adelagia was flying, and usually they’re pretty good about being on time. So we did not think of it as being that much of a gamble when we booked an escape room not too far from the airport – we told her to run from her gate, mowing down every slow grandma and child in her way, then jump through the window of our rental car so we could book it to the room asap. BUT there were multiple flight delays, and it seemed that our best-laid plans were going to go to waste. -.- Jade called the escape room place (No. 1 Escapes) and spoke to Adam, who clearly hated us and hated his job, but agreed to move our booking to 11pm that night, and if no one else booked our original time, agreed to take us then if we could make it. The whole thing was very stressful, and I kept having to look at Jinyoung gifs to self-soothe.
But as I already spoiled earlier, it ended up working out. We made it to No. 1 Escapes to do "Treasure of the Nation," and by that point Adam wasn’t there anymore and instead it was being run by some very nice girls. This room, too, is one that I don’t quite recall, but Adelagia’s hand-drawn pictures from her travelogue give me some vague impression at least. Also according to this travelogue we did manage to escape, so yay us. It’s a good thing, too, that they were able to take us at the earlier time, because none of us wanted to do an escape room at 11pm. WE ARE OLD. THAT IS SITTING AROUND THE HOUSE/LYING IN BED TIME.
For dinner we went to Brodard, which I had been to once before when my cousin B. was still living in Irvine. Vietnamese cuisine is probably my favorite, but in Seattle it’s fairly limited to pho, banh mis and if you're lucky, a bun bowl, which is annoying because like any cuisine, it has sooooo many other facets. The thing I remembered most from Brodard was their delicious spring rolls, which have a layer of crunch in the middle that’s just so yummy. I love the texture experience it adds. We also got some other stuff, including this one sizzling dill fish dish that K. from work recommended (she’s Vietnamese), but I only thought it was OK. This particular time, I was the one who ordered the good drink of the evening, a not-too-sweet pandan drink that was totally delish.
The spring rolls at Brodard
We went to check in to our Airbnb, which was a very cute house that had a lot of small touches and conveniences that made it really nice. At least one of the owners was Korean, which might explain why there were humidifiers in every room. (I think.) Every room also had a TV, and all the TVs in the house had different kinds of streaming devices (Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV), which is quite the selection! Jade took the master bedroom, which had its own bathroom and was the most spacious, but the downer was that the mattress was much too soft. Adelagia and I shared another bathroom, but while our rooms were smaller they were still decent-sized (I even had a piano in mine!), and our mattresses were nice and firm. My room also had an oscillating fan, which I used quite a bit. The kitchen was well-stocked, with a nice fridge, and they even had a Nespresso machine with a number of pods provided. I don’t think any of us actually ended up using any of them, but that they were provided was appreciated. All in all, we quite enjoyed our stay there, even if there was an impossible-to-operate keypad for the front door that totally discriminated against me. But enough about that. NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU, KEYPAD!! 미워! 니 죽어!
Then we went to do our 10pm escape room, "Benjamin Franklin’s Invention Room" at Escaperoom Era. This was the first of several late-night escape rooms we would end up doing, but we’ve come to realize that we should stop doing them so late at night. Our brains aren’t operating at full capacity, and the rooms always seem to drag and we do poorly. Our gamemaster was this ultra-peppy girl who would have been a little much to take even during the daytime; when that late at night, when I was tired and sleepy, I could not bring myself up to her level. Also, we didn't like this room because it was so poorly lit. Plus there was a mirror/reflection element, and I fucking HATE those. They’re so effing persnickety and frustrating. The funnest (seriously this needs to be a real word) part of the whole thing was Jade’s hilarious remarks at the start. We were offered costumes in order to immerse ourselves better, but we declined... it was hats and bonnets, which for reasons of hygiene EVEN MORE NO than usual. But when, as part of the story, we were told that Benjamin Franklin couldn’t make it after all, Jade exclaimed, "But we schlepped all the way here in our bonnets! In our horse and cart and there was no parking!" I’m laughing hysterically even now.
Sun, April 7
Before I start talking about this day, I need to share an anecdote from Adelagia’s travel experience the day before. Apparently on one of her flights, she overheard a family with two little girls named -- no joke -- Grayson and Penti. We assume Penti is a nickname for something else, but maybe not. Who knows? But from that point on, we appropriated the name, referring to ourselves collectively as Penti. AHAHAHAHA.
"The word you’re looking for is, ‘Anyway…’"
We had booked an escape room first thing in the morning, at 9am. It was at Fox in a Box, which was the only escape room place to offer rooms that early in the morning. We didn’t know it, of course, but there we would meet our collective soulmate, Steven. Steven + Penti 4evah!!!! He just seemed like a nice guy initially; not that different from other decent gamemasters we’ve had before. The room we were doing that morning was "Zodiac Killer," which is pretty much what you would expect from a name like that. (Steven: "Last night, you guys met this really great, charming guy at the bar. He offered to buy you drinks, and you accepted, but that was a bad idea. The next thing you know, you’re in a strange apartment, handcuffed to the wall." Jade: "Not AGAIN!" My first out-of-the-norm good impression of Steven came at this point, when he was taken by surprise but genuinely laughed at Jade’s quip.) Jade was handcuffed to a desk, while Adelagia and I were handcuffed to a bar next to a window with blinds on it. As usual in such situations, we had no idea what to do, despite there being a limited amount of things we even COULD do. It turns out that we were supposed to flip the blinds over for a clue, which we did not do, even though it was one of like, two things we could actually reach. And I had even fiddled with the blinds a bit, but still did not think to actually turn them, because they so often tell us not to touch furniture and things like that, so I didn’t want to get in trouble for doing it!! So we ended up wasting a ton of time there. :/ At one point I had to lie in a coffin/box type thing and Jade and Adelagia had to slam the lid down; I was expecting to maybe see a clue written on the inside, and blacklight would make it visible; instead, the side panel dropped and I was sent into another room. I had to work my way around in the dark by feel, and I finally found a flashlight. That was when I realized I had been Facebook stalked, as the "killer" had my profile pic on the wall! Gasp! NOT COOL. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered an escape room using this strategy though, so it was only slightly freaky. Anyway, long story short, we wasted too much time at the beginning, so the Zodiac Killer got back to his place before we could escape and killed us all. (Steven entered the room with a mask and fake knife, lol.) He was an attentive gamemaster throughout, but apparently something about the way we played or communicated or whatever charmed him, and he said he was going to try and swap schedules with the person who was working the next morning (as we had more rooms booked at that time). Jade believed him, but Adelagia and I thought he was just being nice.
For brunch we went to Donald Duck’s Seaside Buffet, which was a request of Adelagia’s, as she loves Donald. Buffet wise, it was fairly standard, but all the characters who come around to your table (and Donald, who generally stays up front) made it pretty fun. Plus we got to celebrate Adelagia’s birthday, which was coming up in less than a week. We took about a thousand pics of her with Donald (I really wanted to see an altercation between him and Daisy over this, but was doomed to disappointment), and Jade got a bunch with Stitch, who is her favorite. There’s not a Disney character I feel any particular affinity toward, but you know what I do feel affinity toward? Disney churros. They are the best churros in the whole world, and Jade said they started selling them in Downtown Disney, which you don’t need a park ticket to enter, and was walkable from Donald Duck's Seaside Buffet. However, in talking with one of the staff members, we found out that the vendors in Downtown Disney, including the churro vendor, were not actually Disney affiliated. :/ So after breakfast we (schlepped, in our bonnets) to Downtown Disney, and confirmed that the churro vendor was like, California Churro, or some other fake-sounding name. Nothing they had on offer looked appetizing, and I decided against getting one just to disappoint myself. I couldn’t even get excited about Salt & Straw, which was there, because when you’re expecting a hot, crisp churro, you don’t want any goddamn ice cream. Adelagia got to meet Donald Duck, Jade got to meet Stitch and I got more reason to self-soothe with Jinyoung gifs. Everybody’s LAUGHing and RIDing and CORNHOLING except Sarea!!
Next time I’m just going to have to actually go into the park if I want the churro. It’ll be the most expensive churro ever, but if that’s what it takes; I didn’t make the rules. Of course, on this trip I ended up hobbling my ankle, so it was probably a good thing we nixed the idea of doing Disneyland several months before the trip. On the other hand, I might have been able to sit in a wheelchair while being pushed around by my friends, while we all got to go on all the rides ahead of everyone else. Oh well.
We went back to rest at our Airbnb; I was surprisingly tired and achy, which could not all be chalked up to the lack of churros, but I would soon find out why. In any case, we re...sted and then went to Puzzle Workshop for our 3pm escape room, "CSI: Hollywood." Only we were supposed to be there at 2:30pm. I’m still not sure what happened with the meticulous spreadsheet that Jade and I had been keeping. Jade’s phone, which wasn’t accessing the spreadsheet live, totally said 3pm. And yet when I checked the live spreadsheet, it really did say 2:30pm. So .... ???????? At what point would we have made that error and fixed it? Because we did all our planning ahead of time, so at any point Jade accessed the spreadsheet after that, it should have been the updated version. It’s baffling. Anyway, because we got there late, they said they wouldn't be able to give us the full time unless no one else ended up booking the time slot after us (luckily, no one did, so our full time got restored). It was a fairly easy escape room, but pretty fun. This was also the one where we had to rub a stuffed bear’s butt up a wall to do something magnetic that would open a door or I don’t even know, but it was incredibly fussy – we rubbed that bear’s butt up against the wall OVER AND OVER and it didn’t work until it finally did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don’t feel like we did anything different that time versus the 23791024 times we did it previously, but what do I know. We did manage to solve the murder and leave the room in the time allotted.
For a break from all the fun and eating we had done, we went to 7 Leaves Café. Jade and I had seen one (albeit at a different location) the day before, and there was a line out the door, so as a Level 7 Suggestible of course I was curious to try it. This time Adelagia was the one who got the superior drink, a pandan-flavored mung bean milk tea. My matcha soy milk tea was far too sweet. This was also about the time I discovered my aunt had arrived. (This is Chinese slang for getting one’s period. I have no idea why, but I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese webnovels recently and I’ve encountered it often.) This explained why I was tired and achy. Also, I have like half a dozen bottles of Aleve now, as well as a never-ending supply of tampons and pads, because I seem to always get my period when I am traveling and not expecting it. I don’t know why that is, or why I’m always taken unawares, despite the fact that I use a period app and everything. This time I’ll cut myself some slack, because my normal cycle was thrown off. I had gotten back on the pill for a bit, to try and stave off having any periods whatsoever... but apparently the subscription I got was for a pill that’s not strong enough, because despite not taking the placebo week pills, after two more weeks I started bleeding anyway. /period TMI
The next escape room we did, after I made some necessary purchases at CVS (I swear, if you looked up my CVS purchase history, you would see the same three items listed over and over again, in all different locations all over the country), was "Stillwater Asylum" at Kryptic Tales. It was a really fun one, complex but still pretty accessible. Unfortunately we didn’t escape in time (they allowed us to finish with an extra five minutes), but if they ever design another room, I'm there! One of the things Adelagia did was use the provided writing board/implement and basically recreate some kind of chart in its entirety – later, one of the gamemasters told us when he saw that he was like, "Daaaayyummmm" lolol.
Dinner that night was at Vox Kitchen, which I enjoyed greatly. It was a hip Vietnamese fusion place, and we had excellent service. The lemonades Jade and I got were far too sweet, which was a shame. (Some of the best lemonade in the world, it turns out, can be found at Chik-Fil-A, but I didn’t actually find that out until recently.) We got Brussels sprouts with bacon, garlic noodles with grilled shrimp and essentially steak frites with rib eye. Their menu is small, but that helps them do the things they do, well, because it was all delicious. However, we were sitting outside and there was a persistent bug that would not be deterred from our yummy noodles, no matter how much I waved at it. "I will die for these noodles," it thought, and then did. I ended up killing it right in the noodles, which pretty much meant the end of that dish.
The shrimp and garlic noodles, bug free that we know of at the time this picture was taken.
Rib eye with fries.
Rewind 60 seconds. Me: "It’s a lot of food, but I think we can actually finish it all!"
Fast forward 60 seconds. Close in on bug carcass in the half-finished garlic noodles. Everyone at the table: ".........."
Our server just happened to be walking by at that moment.
Him: "What’s wrong?"
Penti: "We killed a bug in our noodles."
Him, removing the dish: "I’ll bring you a new one."
Penti: "But..."
Him: "It’s no problem."
Penti: "No, it's just..."
Him: *waves us off*
Penti after he’s left: "Okay... But there were still two shrimp on there? We should have eaten those first. DAMN IT!"
And then like twenty seconds later there was a fresh new dish of garlic noodles with grilled shrimp on our table. There was no WAY we were going to be able to finish everything NOW. Siiiiiiiiiiigh. We either took someone else’s dish or... I’m wondering if, because their menu is so scant, they actually just keep making all the dishes fresh, over and over, because someone’s gonna order it.
We then did "Mystery Manor" at The Prism. Neither Adelagia nor I remember very much about this room, but we did manage to escape it – or rather, solve the murder mystery – with 13 minutes to spare. I don’t think it was particularly challenging, but I think I had fun, lol. I feel like I can’t be responsible for remembering escape rooms that are done after dinner. It’s late and I have a stomach full of food!
Mon, April 8
At the buttcrack of 9am, we were back at Fox in a Box, and lo and behold, Steven actually did switch shifts with his coworker and was once again our gamemaster! Trix was right to be idealistic, and Adelagia and I were wrong to be Debbie Downers.
"Zombie Lab" was the first room we did, but I have to say, while I remember the room itself quite clearly, I was in a lot of pain from cramps and really didn’t give a shit until about halfway through, when my Aleve kicked in and I was able to feel like a normal human being. Despite the room being oddly lit, I thought it was a pretty OK room. Science lab rooms aren’t my favorite, nor are we particularly good with chemistry charts and microscopes and what not, but I thought it was fine. We escaped and averted the zombie apocalypse!
Our second room was "Central Bank," which had been advertised as a room done purely in the dark. I was both anticipating and dreading it. However, it turns out they give you hard hats, on which are very bright lights. So despite the fact that we had no extra lighting, the lights from our hats were basically all we needed -- there were really no annoyances from being in a dark room. In fact, with those hat lights we could see better than when we were in the Benjamin Franklin room! At one point, one of us had to stick our hands inside a box to manipulate a number lock (I know. They’re all number locks. I can’t describe the kind it was). That person could feel the lock and move the different digits, but wasn’t able to see. Another person had to go on the other side, in a different room, where they could see the lock but not manipulate it. So of course it’s intended for you to use teamwork and have the person who can see tell the person who can manipulate the lock, what to do. The problem was that the lock got stuck on one of the digits, and none of us could fucking move it. We complained to Steven. He came in and fiddled with it and of course, it immediately began working. Ugh. That said, I do think he messed with it in a way we had been unwilling to, because I remember when we restarted we basically had to go from the second digit onward again. Maaaaaaybe we could have unstuck it by just fiddling with it and making the numbers go all awry, but it was already pretty difficult to get the right numbers in the right spots, so we wanted to keep the ones we’d already done, as is, and just move the damn digit that refused to move. It wouldn’t budge, though, so. Despite this snafu, we finished successfully and began our careers in diamond heisting with a hurrah.
After that we had some extra time, and Steven offered to let us do their final room, "Bunker," at a discount, so of course as proper escape room junkies we couldn’t say no. As this is a fairly common thing (being offered a discount right then and there to do extra rooms), it’s probably a good idea for us, in future, to stop being such organized planners and play things by ear more. That way we’ll get discounts to do extra rooms. But just watch, once that’s our plan, we’ll run into situations where the timeslots after us are always booked. -.- Don’t mind me, I’m just being bitter for the future.
I don’t remember Bunker that well, but I do remember I thought it was pretty fun. Yes, both those things can be true. It was hilarious, though, one of the final puzzles made a small compartment open that was previously not open, but it was in a previous room. All of us wandered around it, not seeing it, until at long last Jade spotted it. After we were done Steven was like, "You guys were killing me with that box." HAHA.
We then had a nice chat with Steven, and learned we had a lot in common with him, including the fact that he has no escape room friends and the people in his life didn’t understand his interest. He called himself "the white sheep" of his family, because they're the weird ones. Hahahaha. He also described an escape room he did where you have to test into "role," and he got Prom Queen lolol, oh Steven. It sounded really fun, I’ve always wanted to do something like that where you play a certain role, but unfortunately that particular room requires a minimum of five people, which of course meant we couldn’t do it. We really, really wanted to suggest to Steven that he accompany us in the escape rooms we were doing, but I think two things stopped us: 1) it might be a little weird; and 2) it was our last day in the OC anyway, and the chances of his being able to traipse around non-OC doing escape rooms with three random girls he just met seemed slim. Still, we loved him and couldn’t help collectively writing verbal fanfic about how Steven would be the Bosley of our Penti team, and we would traverse the lands doing escape rooms, and he would be our personal gamemaster.
Penti, upon arriving at every new escape room: This is Steven. He’ll be our gamemaster today. You explain the rules to him, and he’ll explain them to us. We communicate only with Steven.
Game person: But…
Penti, holding up a hand: You’re ... you’re still talking.
For lunch we went to Oc & Lau, which was a Vietnamese seafood restaurant I found on Yelp that was reminiscent of the Korean seafood grill place we would be going to later in the week (recommended to Adelagia by one of our Korean class classmates). I figured it was a cool new experience to try (I’ve never had Vietnamese seafood like this before), and a good way to compare two different Asian seafood grill places. Our server was not shy about giving us recommendations once we explained that it was our first time there, and we got some good stuff: mango squid salad, grilled oysters with cheese, king scallop with fish eggs, escargot (sea snails) with garlic butter and peppercorn, and crab and shrimp fried rice. We probably didn’t need the salad, and my favorites were the fried rice and oysters. Everything came out precooked/grilled.
Cheesy oysters
Crab and shrimp fried rice
After lunch, because we were totally stuffed, obviously we went to get dessert. :P OK in our defense it wasn’t dessert, per se, but drinks. It’s basically water! I ended up getting two drinks, because when I can’t decide what to get, obviously the only solution is to get all of my choices. Because certain drinks of theirs were BOGO as part of a promotion, Jade and I both got some kind of fruit tea, which was refreshing, but nothing particularly outstanding. What I ended up reallllly enjoying was their corn juice, which sounds at best not very appetizing, and at worst, gross. But it was delish! If you like corn, that is. It was basically like drinking fresh corn, though the server told me they add just a bit of sugar. It was perfect for the drink.
After that, I tested my ankle by driving the rental car... it went well, which was exciting. We went to ROYCE’, which is a chocolate confectionery from Japan. I first learned of its existence in the drama Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, haha, but saw my first actual store when I was in Las Vegas earlier this year. Their chocolates are ridiculously expensive, but delicious; I really love the texture. Anyway, I had looked up ahead of time that there was a ROYCE’ in the OC, and they were coming out with a limited edition seasonal flavor, sakura. Cherry tends to be a flavor I really enjoy, so I was planning to get that if they had it. Luckily, they did, and I bought two boxes! It’s quite delicious. I also got one of their mochi cream puff things, also in sakura flavor, but that was not so good. I recommend just sticking with their chocolates.
Jade found an escape room we had previously been unaware of (or at least, I was), one called "Zoe" at Escapade Rooms. It was supposed to be a horror room, with live action actors, and one that many freaked-out people had written reviews about. It made me both excited and nervous; I had, after all, really enjoyed The Orphanage. After trying to get in contact with them in various ways without success, we decided to drive there and see if we could get in. It just so happened that one of the gamemasters was there repairing a doorknob that a previous group had broken, so they said they could take us after a bit. While we waited, we sat in a creepy waiting room, and I got more anticipatory, but also more nervous and tense. They had a thing on the wall that kept track of people who left the room partway through, unable to go on -- there were quite a few marks. When the gamemaster came back to introduce the place to us, he also heightened the anticipation. It’s perhaps all this hype that led to the room being ultimately fairly underwhelming. :/ It was creepy being blindfolded at the beginning and having phantom hands touch you/your hair, and to be chased with loud noises and stuff like that, but... at the end of the day, you knew it was just another person? The puzzles themselves weren’t all that difficult – it was mostly the scare factor – so when it was over it was like, "Really? That’s it?" We needed to get a weapon of some sort from the uncle father (it was supposed to be Uncle Robert, but we heard "uncle father" and the game people just went with it, which is hilarious), so I ran out of the room we were in, back into the little girl’s room, where the actor guy was writhing on the floor with the weapon in his hand. He let it go so I ran forward to grab it, and he chased me out of there which was scary because it’s scary to be chased, but I wasn’t actually scared? If that makes sense. Anyway, so once we were out in the bright California sunshine once more, we were all kind of like, "Okay… well, that wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was gonna be." So yeah, a room that I had had very very high expectations of actually ended up being a letdown, and I partially blame the way they prepare you, as well as all the reviews – it was so overhyped that what I was imagining was actually far more scary.
For dinner we went to Borneo Kalimantan in Alhambra. Because LA has such a diverse population, and there’s so much variety in terms of cuisines, all done well, we had wanted to see if we could find a good Malaysian restaurant. This one seemed promising, at least from what Adelagia could see of the menu, so we had high hopes. Unfortunately, like Zoe, it underwhelmed. The moment the first dish was brought out I could tell it was nothing special... in fact, it couldn’t even compare to Malay Satay Hut in Redmond. (No pics because I am not wasting Flickr space for it. OMG I’m like Elaine from Seinfeld now when she's looking for sponge-worthy suitors.) Poor Adelagia, I’m sure, was even more disappointed. We’ll keep looking! I just don’t know where there’s a big population of Malaysian ex-pats. That’s probably the place to go.
After dinner we went to Creamistry. Now here’s my story about Creamistry, lol. I guess I never wrote about the trip Jade and I took to the Bay Area back in November – shit, gotta do that. But anyway, while we were there, we encountered a Creamistry, which is a chain that specializes in liquid nitrogen ice cream. It was really expensive but very delicious; I had gotten their organic cream with black cherry flavor, almonds mixed in and whipped cream on top. (I told you, I like cherry-flavored things for some reason.) They don’t have any locations in the Pacific Northwest, but I knew they were in LA, so since I was on vacation I planned to go there several times. The first time I went in LA was actually during the period when it was just Jade and myself; we went to the one in Woodland Hills. But it was a disappointment, because they didn’t have the black cherry flavor! We were told that it was retired! WTF. I was like, but we only just went like six months ago, and they had it! So I wondered if maybe it was just an LA thing. To satisfy my curiosity, I called the Campbell location Creamistry to ask about black cherry – and they still had it!!!!!!!!! So apparently, it being retired was a work in progress. Next, I called up various Creamistry locations all around LA, to see which still had black cherry, and the only one I was able to reach that still had it was the Alhambra location. So that’s the backstory. I was greatly anticipating it, so imagine my horror, especially after the churro incident, when we walked into the store and there was NO black cherry listed on the board! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! However, when I asked, they said they still had it, but there was only a bit of it left, and when that was gone, no more. Gasp, cry, rending of garments, etc. But at least I got to have it one last time! It was very good, but I was pretty full from dinner, and the experience just wasn’t the same as when Jade and I had it in the Bay Area. Maybe because the Alhambra location was a lot dumpier, and neither Jade nor Adelagia got any ice cream, so it was just kind of a blah experience. Basically the entire time after we leftSteven the OC. Sigh.
This is actually a pic of the strawberry, graham cracker and almond ice cream I got at the Woodland Hills Creamistry, along with the one Jade got, which I think was Captain Crunch with strawberries. I forgot to take a pic of the black cherry one in Alhambra.
Then it was time to check into our new Airbnb home, which was a very spacious and classy apartment in Woodland Hills. It was super nice, even though the fridge was not up to par with the rest of the place – it didn’t even have a built-in icemaker, for God’s sake (what are we, animals?). The only problem was, as nice as it was, it was also run by a fairly anal guy who had a huge list of house rules. He had prices associated with a bunch of different infractions, including leaving any trash behind – and yet did not provide trash bags for any of the trash cans located in the apartment other than the one in the kitchen. His analness is what makes this story even funnier -- when I checked in via text with him, he sent over a bunch of instructions, and basically we only paid attention to the part about how to get through the gate, park the car, open the door. The other stuff we just blew right by. Well that first night, Adelagia was going to take a shower, but then she came to me, flummoxed, about how in the world to actually make the water come out of the showerhead. I went to take a look, and we both just stood there, baffled. We fiddled with it in various ways, including accidentally pulling the cover of the water controls right off. O.o Oops. But there was all this glue-type stuff on it, making it obvious that it had been done many, many times before LOL. So I just stuck it back on and it looked the same as before. But can you imagine what he would charge for such a thing?! But anyway the funny thing was that he had actually included instructions for how to operate the shower in the text he sent, along with how-to pictures and everything. :)))) If only any of that shit had interested or mattered to us at all, earlier. Anyway, the answer was that you could actually pull down on the lip of the spigot, and that's what made the water go to the showerhead, lol. I mean in terms of elegant design I guess that's pretty cool? But in terms of actual practicality it was terrible. As for the kitchen, what was provided was also very sparse, with only a couple of Nespresso pods, and there was a rule that we were not allowed to cook "smelly food, including curry." Which is just as racist and annoying as it sounds. As Adelagia put it, our host was basically like, "Welcome, make yourselves at home, but don’t touch anything." He had a Tesla and Miata, by the by, and everything about the place screamed "rich asshole," lol. But that said, the rooms and beds were extremely comfortable, and I slept very well the whole time we were there. So that's something.
Read part two here.
The last time
adelagia, jade_okelani and I were together in LA was last July, when Adelagia and I were going to the GOT7 concert. Ahhhhh I can’t believe it’s been so long already! They did just announce another worldwide tour though not yet the dates. A-holes, why did they wait so long to say? Now Adelagia is going to be in Seoul for most of the summer, and I’m joining her there at the end of July. It would be so terrible if we were there and they were here. Even the thought of it really aggravates me. -.- (They announced the dates this morning, but I'm keeping this in for posterity because it was true when I wrote it. For the record: They'll be in LA in early July, just like last year, so Adelagia will, in fact, not only miss that concert but won't even be in the same country as them the entire time she's in South Korea.)Wed, April 3-midday Sat, April 6
As I am not bound by the schedule of schools, I went to LA a few days early. I have to call myself on some hypocrisy, lol. I was rereading my "LA trip that should never have happened" entry, and one of my complaints about J. was that she flew Delta down to LA despite all the extra time it took – but I ended up doing the same thing. >.> IN MY DEFENSE, no one was relying on me, timing wise. All the inconvenience was taken on by me alone. And the reason I wanted to do it was because I thought I had a shot at getting upgraded to first class on my flight legs (I didn’t. :/ Got upgraded to Comfort+ on all legs, but that’s it), and also I wanted to ensure my medallion status for next year. Still, if I could do it again I would just take Alaska.
During this time Jade and I hung out, ate food, went to see a movie ("Us"), and sprained our ankles. OH NO WAIT THAT WAS JUST ME. Idiot, klutzy me. I wasn’t even doing anything? I was walking, trying to get around a group of teenagers, when suddenly I tripped. I didn’t fall; I just tripped. And yet my ankle twisted in a terrible way; it felt like a super bad sprain immediately, even though I somehow stayed upright. I still don’t understand wtf happened! But anyway I hobbled to Coffee Bean, where I propped up my foot and Jade got me a bag of ice (put into a pastry bag cuz that’s all they had). I could not get my foot into a position where it did not feel painful. :/ Jade, bless her heart, also went to Target and helped me buy a brace, a pillow and some pain meds. Attempting to walk on it after icing it felt TERRIBLE. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to walk ANYwhere. But thankfully after walking a little ways it eased enough for me to be able to make it to where we were having dinner. (We went to Hatch Yakitori’s happy hour, and it was really yummy. But despite it being HH we still spent plenty of $$, sigh.)
Hatch Yakitori
Other places we went to eat during this time included Don Cuco, In N Out (obviously), Cousins (delicious lobster rolls at reasonable prices), Lawry’s (always a satisfying experience) and Rasoi Curry Point in the OC.
In N Out
Cousins
Lawry’s
We did one escape room with the two of us called "Galaxy Quest"... I literally have zero memory of the room itself at the time of this writing, though I seem to have a vague recollection that I enjoyed it. I did it on my sprained ankle somehow, so either I am a BEAST or I was hopped up on meds, which also explains why I can’t really remember it.
Edit: Both Adelagia and Jade have reminded me about the room. Yes, Adelagia, who wasn't even there, LOL. It was fun because the "gamemaster" was this weird alien creature thing who would help guide us along as we were solving puzzles. It had a series of prerecorded things it would say, but they could also get creative with it, I think. So if we were on the right track with something, it would be like, "Yes!" or if we were not on the right track, it would say "DO BETTER." LOL. There was also a part in the room where we had to give toys to a small monster that was behind a glass panel. At first when entering the room and seeing it there, it scared the shit out of me. It was clearly a hand puppet being manipulated by the gamemaster. You would take a toy, show it, and be like, "Do you want to play with this?" And then depending on its answer, you'd give it. That was pretty amusing; clearly a room that required a lot more interaction with the gamemaster than most.
Midday-evening Sat, April 6
We picked up Adelagia from John Wayne Airport and went to our first escape room, despite Alaska Airlines’ best efforts to sabotage our Day 1 fun. That’s what Adelagia was flying, and usually they’re pretty good about being on time. So we did not think of it as being that much of a gamble when we booked an escape room not too far from the airport – we told her to run from her gate, mowing down every slow grandma and child in her way, then jump through the window of our rental car so we could book it to the room asap. BUT there were multiple flight delays, and it seemed that our best-laid plans were going to go to waste. -.- Jade called the escape room place (No. 1 Escapes) and spoke to Adam, who clearly hated us and hated his job, but agreed to move our booking to 11pm that night, and if no one else booked our original time, agreed to take us then if we could make it. The whole thing was very stressful, and I kept having to look at Jinyoung gifs to self-soothe.
But as I already spoiled earlier, it ended up working out. We made it to No. 1 Escapes to do "Treasure of the Nation," and by that point Adam wasn’t there anymore and instead it was being run by some very nice girls. This room, too, is one that I don’t quite recall, but Adelagia’s hand-drawn pictures from her travelogue give me some vague impression at least. Also according to this travelogue we did manage to escape, so yay us. It’s a good thing, too, that they were able to take us at the earlier time, because none of us wanted to do an escape room at 11pm. WE ARE OLD. THAT IS SITTING AROUND THE HOUSE/LYING IN BED TIME.
For dinner we went to Brodard, which I had been to once before when my cousin B. was still living in Irvine. Vietnamese cuisine is probably my favorite, but in Seattle it’s fairly limited to pho, banh mis and if you're lucky, a bun bowl, which is annoying because like any cuisine, it has sooooo many other facets. The thing I remembered most from Brodard was their delicious spring rolls, which have a layer of crunch in the middle that’s just so yummy. I love the texture experience it adds. We also got some other stuff, including this one sizzling dill fish dish that K. from work recommended (she’s Vietnamese), but I only thought it was OK. This particular time, I was the one who ordered the good drink of the evening, a not-too-sweet pandan drink that was totally delish.
The spring rolls at Brodard
We went to check in to our Airbnb, which was a very cute house that had a lot of small touches and conveniences that made it really nice. At least one of the owners was Korean, which might explain why there were humidifiers in every room. (I think.) Every room also had a TV, and all the TVs in the house had different kinds of streaming devices (Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV), which is quite the selection! Jade took the master bedroom, which had its own bathroom and was the most spacious, but the downer was that the mattress was much too soft. Adelagia and I shared another bathroom, but while our rooms were smaller they were still decent-sized (I even had a piano in mine!), and our mattresses were nice and firm. My room also had an oscillating fan, which I used quite a bit. The kitchen was well-stocked, with a nice fridge, and they even had a Nespresso machine with a number of pods provided. I don’t think any of us actually ended up using any of them, but that they were provided was appreciated. All in all, we quite enjoyed our stay there, even if there was an impossible-to-operate keypad for the front door that totally discriminated against me. But enough about that. NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU, KEYPAD!! 미워! 니 죽어!
Then we went to do our 10pm escape room, "Benjamin Franklin’s Invention Room" at Escaperoom Era. This was the first of several late-night escape rooms we would end up doing, but we’ve come to realize that we should stop doing them so late at night. Our brains aren’t operating at full capacity, and the rooms always seem to drag and we do poorly. Our gamemaster was this ultra-peppy girl who would have been a little much to take even during the daytime; when that late at night, when I was tired and sleepy, I could not bring myself up to her level. Also, we didn't like this room because it was so poorly lit. Plus there was a mirror/reflection element, and I fucking HATE those. They’re so effing persnickety and frustrating. The funnest (seriously this needs to be a real word) part of the whole thing was Jade’s hilarious remarks at the start. We were offered costumes in order to immerse ourselves better, but we declined... it was hats and bonnets, which for reasons of hygiene EVEN MORE NO than usual. But when, as part of the story, we were told that Benjamin Franklin couldn’t make it after all, Jade exclaimed, "But we schlepped all the way here in our bonnets! In our horse and cart and there was no parking!" I’m laughing hysterically even now.
Sun, April 7
Before I start talking about this day, I need to share an anecdote from Adelagia’s travel experience the day before. Apparently on one of her flights, she overheard a family with two little girls named -- no joke -- Grayson and Penti. We assume Penti is a nickname for something else, but maybe not. Who knows? But from that point on, we appropriated the name, referring to ourselves collectively as Penti. AHAHAHAHA.
"The word you’re looking for is, ‘Anyway…’"
We had booked an escape room first thing in the morning, at 9am. It was at Fox in a Box, which was the only escape room place to offer rooms that early in the morning. We didn’t know it, of course, but there we would meet our collective soulmate, Steven. Steven + Penti 4evah!!!! He just seemed like a nice guy initially; not that different from other decent gamemasters we’ve had before. The room we were doing that morning was "Zodiac Killer," which is pretty much what you would expect from a name like that. (Steven: "Last night, you guys met this really great, charming guy at the bar. He offered to buy you drinks, and you accepted, but that was a bad idea. The next thing you know, you’re in a strange apartment, handcuffed to the wall." Jade: "Not AGAIN!" My first out-of-the-norm good impression of Steven came at this point, when he was taken by surprise but genuinely laughed at Jade’s quip.) Jade was handcuffed to a desk, while Adelagia and I were handcuffed to a bar next to a window with blinds on it. As usual in such situations, we had no idea what to do, despite there being a limited amount of things we even COULD do. It turns out that we were supposed to flip the blinds over for a clue, which we did not do, even though it was one of like, two things we could actually reach. And I had even fiddled with the blinds a bit, but still did not think to actually turn them, because they so often tell us not to touch furniture and things like that, so I didn’t want to get in trouble for doing it!! So we ended up wasting a ton of time there. :/ At one point I had to lie in a coffin/box type thing and Jade and Adelagia had to slam the lid down; I was expecting to maybe see a clue written on the inside, and blacklight would make it visible; instead, the side panel dropped and I was sent into another room. I had to work my way around in the dark by feel, and I finally found a flashlight. That was when I realized I had been Facebook stalked, as the "killer" had my profile pic on the wall! Gasp! NOT COOL. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered an escape room using this strategy though, so it was only slightly freaky. Anyway, long story short, we wasted too much time at the beginning, so the Zodiac Killer got back to his place before we could escape and killed us all. (Steven entered the room with a mask and fake knife, lol.) He was an attentive gamemaster throughout, but apparently something about the way we played or communicated or whatever charmed him, and he said he was going to try and swap schedules with the person who was working the next morning (as we had more rooms booked at that time). Jade believed him, but Adelagia and I thought he was just being nice.
For brunch we went to Donald Duck’s Seaside Buffet, which was a request of Adelagia’s, as she loves Donald. Buffet wise, it was fairly standard, but all the characters who come around to your table (and Donald, who generally stays up front) made it pretty fun. Plus we got to celebrate Adelagia’s birthday, which was coming up in less than a week. We took about a thousand pics of her with Donald (I really wanted to see an altercation between him and Daisy over this, but was doomed to disappointment), and Jade got a bunch with Stitch, who is her favorite. There’s not a Disney character I feel any particular affinity toward, but you know what I do feel affinity toward? Disney churros. They are the best churros in the whole world, and Jade said they started selling them in Downtown Disney, which you don’t need a park ticket to enter, and was walkable from Donald Duck's Seaside Buffet. However, in talking with one of the staff members, we found out that the vendors in Downtown Disney, including the churro vendor, were not actually Disney affiliated. :/ So after breakfast we (schlepped, in our bonnets) to Downtown Disney, and confirmed that the churro vendor was like, California Churro, or some other fake-sounding name. Nothing they had on offer looked appetizing, and I decided against getting one just to disappoint myself. I couldn’t even get excited about Salt & Straw, which was there, because when you’re expecting a hot, crisp churro, you don’t want any goddamn ice cream. Adelagia got to meet Donald Duck, Jade got to meet Stitch and I got more reason to self-soothe with Jinyoung gifs. Everybody’s LAUGHing and RIDing and CORNHOLING except Sarea!!
Next time I’m just going to have to actually go into the park if I want the churro. It’ll be the most expensive churro ever, but if that’s what it takes; I didn’t make the rules. Of course, on this trip I ended up hobbling my ankle, so it was probably a good thing we nixed the idea of doing Disneyland several months before the trip. On the other hand, I might have been able to sit in a wheelchair while being pushed around by my friends, while we all got to go on all the rides ahead of everyone else. Oh well.
We went back to rest at our Airbnb; I was surprisingly tired and achy, which could not all be chalked up to the lack of churros, but I would soon find out why. In any case, we re...sted and then went to Puzzle Workshop for our 3pm escape room, "CSI: Hollywood." Only we were supposed to be there at 2:30pm. I’m still not sure what happened with the meticulous spreadsheet that Jade and I had been keeping. Jade’s phone, which wasn’t accessing the spreadsheet live, totally said 3pm. And yet when I checked the live spreadsheet, it really did say 2:30pm. So .... ???????? At what point would we have made that error and fixed it? Because we did all our planning ahead of time, so at any point Jade accessed the spreadsheet after that, it should have been the updated version. It’s baffling. Anyway, because we got there late, they said they wouldn't be able to give us the full time unless no one else ended up booking the time slot after us (luckily, no one did, so our full time got restored). It was a fairly easy escape room, but pretty fun. This was also the one where we had to rub a stuffed bear’s butt up a wall to do something magnetic that would open a door or I don’t even know, but it was incredibly fussy – we rubbed that bear’s butt up against the wall OVER AND OVER and it didn’t work until it finally did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don’t feel like we did anything different that time versus the 23791024 times we did it previously, but what do I know. We did manage to solve the murder and leave the room in the time allotted.
For a break from all the fun and eating we had done, we went to 7 Leaves Café. Jade and I had seen one (albeit at a different location) the day before, and there was a line out the door, so as a Level 7 Suggestible of course I was curious to try it. This time Adelagia was the one who got the superior drink, a pandan-flavored mung bean milk tea. My matcha soy milk tea was far too sweet. This was also about the time I discovered my aunt had arrived. (This is Chinese slang for getting one’s period. I have no idea why, but I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese webnovels recently and I’ve encountered it often.) This explained why I was tired and achy. Also, I have like half a dozen bottles of Aleve now, as well as a never-ending supply of tampons and pads, because I seem to always get my period when I am traveling and not expecting it. I don’t know why that is, or why I’m always taken unawares, despite the fact that I use a period app and everything. This time I’ll cut myself some slack, because my normal cycle was thrown off. I had gotten back on the pill for a bit, to try and stave off having any periods whatsoever... but apparently the subscription I got was for a pill that’s not strong enough, because despite not taking the placebo week pills, after two more weeks I started bleeding anyway. /period TMI
The next escape room we did, after I made some necessary purchases at CVS (I swear, if you looked up my CVS purchase history, you would see the same three items listed over and over again, in all different locations all over the country), was "Stillwater Asylum" at Kryptic Tales. It was a really fun one, complex but still pretty accessible. Unfortunately we didn’t escape in time (they allowed us to finish with an extra five minutes), but if they ever design another room, I'm there! One of the things Adelagia did was use the provided writing board/implement and basically recreate some kind of chart in its entirety – later, one of the gamemasters told us when he saw that he was like, "Daaaayyummmm" lolol.
Dinner that night was at Vox Kitchen, which I enjoyed greatly. It was a hip Vietnamese fusion place, and we had excellent service. The lemonades Jade and I got were far too sweet, which was a shame. (Some of the best lemonade in the world, it turns out, can be found at Chik-Fil-A, but I didn’t actually find that out until recently.) We got Brussels sprouts with bacon, garlic noodles with grilled shrimp and essentially steak frites with rib eye. Their menu is small, but that helps them do the things they do, well, because it was all delicious. However, we were sitting outside and there was a persistent bug that would not be deterred from our yummy noodles, no matter how much I waved at it. "I will die for these noodles," it thought, and then did. I ended up killing it right in the noodles, which pretty much meant the end of that dish.
The shrimp and garlic noodles, bug free that we know of at the time this picture was taken.
Rib eye with fries.
Rewind 60 seconds. Me: "It’s a lot of food, but I think we can actually finish it all!"
Fast forward 60 seconds. Close in on bug carcass in the half-finished garlic noodles. Everyone at the table: ".........."
Our server just happened to be walking by at that moment.
Him: "What’s wrong?"
Penti: "We killed a bug in our noodles."
Him, removing the dish: "I’ll bring you a new one."
Penti: "But..."
Him: "It’s no problem."
Penti: "No, it's just..."
Him: *waves us off*
Penti after he’s left: "Okay... But there were still two shrimp on there? We should have eaten those first. DAMN IT!"
And then like twenty seconds later there was a fresh new dish of garlic noodles with grilled shrimp on our table. There was no WAY we were going to be able to finish everything NOW. Siiiiiiiiiiigh. We either took someone else’s dish or... I’m wondering if, because their menu is so scant, they actually just keep making all the dishes fresh, over and over, because someone’s gonna order it.
We then did "Mystery Manor" at The Prism. Neither Adelagia nor I remember very much about this room, but we did manage to escape it – or rather, solve the murder mystery – with 13 minutes to spare. I don’t think it was particularly challenging, but I think I had fun, lol. I feel like I can’t be responsible for remembering escape rooms that are done after dinner. It’s late and I have a stomach full of food!
Mon, April 8
At the buttcrack of 9am, we were back at Fox in a Box, and lo and behold, Steven actually did switch shifts with his coworker and was once again our gamemaster! Trix was right to be idealistic, and Adelagia and I were wrong to be Debbie Downers.
"Zombie Lab" was the first room we did, but I have to say, while I remember the room itself quite clearly, I was in a lot of pain from cramps and really didn’t give a shit until about halfway through, when my Aleve kicked in and I was able to feel like a normal human being. Despite the room being oddly lit, I thought it was a pretty OK room. Science lab rooms aren’t my favorite, nor are we particularly good with chemistry charts and microscopes and what not, but I thought it was fine. We escaped and averted the zombie apocalypse!
Our second room was "Central Bank," which had been advertised as a room done purely in the dark. I was both anticipating and dreading it. However, it turns out they give you hard hats, on which are very bright lights. So despite the fact that we had no extra lighting, the lights from our hats were basically all we needed -- there were really no annoyances from being in a dark room. In fact, with those hat lights we could see better than when we were in the Benjamin Franklin room! At one point, one of us had to stick our hands inside a box to manipulate a number lock (I know. They’re all number locks. I can’t describe the kind it was). That person could feel the lock and move the different digits, but wasn’t able to see. Another person had to go on the other side, in a different room, where they could see the lock but not manipulate it. So of course it’s intended for you to use teamwork and have the person who can see tell the person who can manipulate the lock, what to do. The problem was that the lock got stuck on one of the digits, and none of us could fucking move it. We complained to Steven. He came in and fiddled with it and of course, it immediately began working. Ugh. That said, I do think he messed with it in a way we had been unwilling to, because I remember when we restarted we basically had to go from the second digit onward again. Maaaaaaybe we could have unstuck it by just fiddling with it and making the numbers go all awry, but it was already pretty difficult to get the right numbers in the right spots, so we wanted to keep the ones we’d already done, as is, and just move the damn digit that refused to move. It wouldn’t budge, though, so. Despite this snafu, we finished successfully and began our careers in diamond heisting with a hurrah.
After that we had some extra time, and Steven offered to let us do their final room, "Bunker," at a discount, so of course as proper escape room junkies we couldn’t say no. As this is a fairly common thing (being offered a discount right then and there to do extra rooms), it’s probably a good idea for us, in future, to stop being such organized planners and play things by ear more. That way we’ll get discounts to do extra rooms. But just watch, once that’s our plan, we’ll run into situations where the timeslots after us are always booked. -.- Don’t mind me, I’m just being bitter for the future.
I don’t remember Bunker that well, but I do remember I thought it was pretty fun. Yes, both those things can be true. It was hilarious, though, one of the final puzzles made a small compartment open that was previously not open, but it was in a previous room. All of us wandered around it, not seeing it, until at long last Jade spotted it. After we were done Steven was like, "You guys were killing me with that box." HAHA.
We then had a nice chat with Steven, and learned we had a lot in common with him, including the fact that he has no escape room friends and the people in his life didn’t understand his interest. He called himself "the white sheep" of his family, because they're the weird ones. Hahahaha. He also described an escape room he did where you have to test into "role," and he got Prom Queen lolol, oh Steven. It sounded really fun, I’ve always wanted to do something like that where you play a certain role, but unfortunately that particular room requires a minimum of five people, which of course meant we couldn’t do it. We really, really wanted to suggest to Steven that he accompany us in the escape rooms we were doing, but I think two things stopped us: 1) it might be a little weird; and 2) it was our last day in the OC anyway, and the chances of his being able to traipse around non-OC doing escape rooms with three random girls he just met seemed slim. Still, we loved him and couldn’t help collectively writing verbal fanfic about how Steven would be the Bosley of our Penti team, and we would traverse the lands doing escape rooms, and he would be our personal gamemaster.
Penti, upon arriving at every new escape room: This is Steven. He’ll be our gamemaster today. You explain the rules to him, and he’ll explain them to us. We communicate only with Steven.
Game person: But…
Penti, holding up a hand: You’re ... you’re still talking.
For lunch we went to Oc & Lau, which was a Vietnamese seafood restaurant I found on Yelp that was reminiscent of the Korean seafood grill place we would be going to later in the week (recommended to Adelagia by one of our Korean class classmates). I figured it was a cool new experience to try (I’ve never had Vietnamese seafood like this before), and a good way to compare two different Asian seafood grill places. Our server was not shy about giving us recommendations once we explained that it was our first time there, and we got some good stuff: mango squid salad, grilled oysters with cheese, king scallop with fish eggs, escargot (sea snails) with garlic butter and peppercorn, and crab and shrimp fried rice. We probably didn’t need the salad, and my favorites were the fried rice and oysters. Everything came out precooked/grilled.
Cheesy oysters
Crab and shrimp fried rice
After lunch, because we were totally stuffed, obviously we went to get dessert. :P OK in our defense it wasn’t dessert, per se, but drinks. It’s basically water! I ended up getting two drinks, because when I can’t decide what to get, obviously the only solution is to get all of my choices. Because certain drinks of theirs were BOGO as part of a promotion, Jade and I both got some kind of fruit tea, which was refreshing, but nothing particularly outstanding. What I ended up reallllly enjoying was their corn juice, which sounds at best not very appetizing, and at worst, gross. But it was delish! If you like corn, that is. It was basically like drinking fresh corn, though the server told me they add just a bit of sugar. It was perfect for the drink.
After that, I tested my ankle by driving the rental car... it went well, which was exciting. We went to ROYCE’, which is a chocolate confectionery from Japan. I first learned of its existence in the drama Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, haha, but saw my first actual store when I was in Las Vegas earlier this year. Their chocolates are ridiculously expensive, but delicious; I really love the texture. Anyway, I had looked up ahead of time that there was a ROYCE’ in the OC, and they were coming out with a limited edition seasonal flavor, sakura. Cherry tends to be a flavor I really enjoy, so I was planning to get that if they had it. Luckily, they did, and I bought two boxes! It’s quite delicious. I also got one of their mochi cream puff things, also in sakura flavor, but that was not so good. I recommend just sticking with their chocolates.
Jade found an escape room we had previously been unaware of (or at least, I was), one called "Zoe" at Escapade Rooms. It was supposed to be a horror room, with live action actors, and one that many freaked-out people had written reviews about. It made me both excited and nervous; I had, after all, really enjoyed The Orphanage. After trying to get in contact with them in various ways without success, we decided to drive there and see if we could get in. It just so happened that one of the gamemasters was there repairing a doorknob that a previous group had broken, so they said they could take us after a bit. While we waited, we sat in a creepy waiting room, and I got more anticipatory, but also more nervous and tense. They had a thing on the wall that kept track of people who left the room partway through, unable to go on -- there were quite a few marks. When the gamemaster came back to introduce the place to us, he also heightened the anticipation. It’s perhaps all this hype that led to the room being ultimately fairly underwhelming. :/ It was creepy being blindfolded at the beginning and having phantom hands touch you/your hair, and to be chased with loud noises and stuff like that, but... at the end of the day, you knew it was just another person? The puzzles themselves weren’t all that difficult – it was mostly the scare factor – so when it was over it was like, "Really? That’s it?" We needed to get a weapon of some sort from the uncle father (it was supposed to be Uncle Robert, but we heard "uncle father" and the game people just went with it, which is hilarious), so I ran out of the room we were in, back into the little girl’s room, where the actor guy was writhing on the floor with the weapon in his hand. He let it go so I ran forward to grab it, and he chased me out of there which was scary because it’s scary to be chased, but I wasn’t actually scared? If that makes sense. Anyway, so once we were out in the bright California sunshine once more, we were all kind of like, "Okay… well, that wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was gonna be." So yeah, a room that I had had very very high expectations of actually ended up being a letdown, and I partially blame the way they prepare you, as well as all the reviews – it was so overhyped that what I was imagining was actually far more scary.
For dinner we went to Borneo Kalimantan in Alhambra. Because LA has such a diverse population, and there’s so much variety in terms of cuisines, all done well, we had wanted to see if we could find a good Malaysian restaurant. This one seemed promising, at least from what Adelagia could see of the menu, so we had high hopes. Unfortunately, like Zoe, it underwhelmed. The moment the first dish was brought out I could tell it was nothing special... in fact, it couldn’t even compare to Malay Satay Hut in Redmond. (No pics because I am not wasting Flickr space for it. OMG I’m like Elaine from Seinfeld now when she's looking for sponge-worthy suitors.) Poor Adelagia, I’m sure, was even more disappointed. We’ll keep looking! I just don’t know where there’s a big population of Malaysian ex-pats. That’s probably the place to go.
After dinner we went to Creamistry. Now here’s my story about Creamistry, lol. I guess I never wrote about the trip Jade and I took to the Bay Area back in November – shit, gotta do that. But anyway, while we were there, we encountered a Creamistry, which is a chain that specializes in liquid nitrogen ice cream. It was really expensive but very delicious; I had gotten their organic cream with black cherry flavor, almonds mixed in and whipped cream on top. (I told you, I like cherry-flavored things for some reason.) They don’t have any locations in the Pacific Northwest, but I knew they were in LA, so since I was on vacation I planned to go there several times. The first time I went in LA was actually during the period when it was just Jade and myself; we went to the one in Woodland Hills. But it was a disappointment, because they didn’t have the black cherry flavor! We were told that it was retired! WTF. I was like, but we only just went like six months ago, and they had it! So I wondered if maybe it was just an LA thing. To satisfy my curiosity, I called the Campbell location Creamistry to ask about black cherry – and they still had it!!!!!!!!! So apparently, it being retired was a work in progress. Next, I called up various Creamistry locations all around LA, to see which still had black cherry, and the only one I was able to reach that still had it was the Alhambra location. So that’s the backstory. I was greatly anticipating it, so imagine my horror, especially after the churro incident, when we walked into the store and there was NO black cherry listed on the board! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! However, when I asked, they said they still had it, but there was only a bit of it left, and when that was gone, no more. Gasp, cry, rending of garments, etc. But at least I got to have it one last time! It was very good, but I was pretty full from dinner, and the experience just wasn’t the same as when Jade and I had it in the Bay Area. Maybe because the Alhambra location was a lot dumpier, and neither Jade nor Adelagia got any ice cream, so it was just kind of a blah experience. Basically the entire time after we left
This is actually a pic of the strawberry, graham cracker and almond ice cream I got at the Woodland Hills Creamistry, along with the one Jade got, which I think was Captain Crunch with strawberries. I forgot to take a pic of the black cherry one in Alhambra.
Then it was time to check into our new Airbnb home, which was a very spacious and classy apartment in Woodland Hills. It was super nice, even though the fridge was not up to par with the rest of the place – it didn’t even have a built-in icemaker, for God’s sake (what are we, animals?). The only problem was, as nice as it was, it was also run by a fairly anal guy who had a huge list of house rules. He had prices associated with a bunch of different infractions, including leaving any trash behind – and yet did not provide trash bags for any of the trash cans located in the apartment other than the one in the kitchen. His analness is what makes this story even funnier -- when I checked in via text with him, he sent over a bunch of instructions, and basically we only paid attention to the part about how to get through the gate, park the car, open the door. The other stuff we just blew right by. Well that first night, Adelagia was going to take a shower, but then she came to me, flummoxed, about how in the world to actually make the water come out of the showerhead. I went to take a look, and we both just stood there, baffled. We fiddled with it in various ways, including accidentally pulling the cover of the water controls right off. O.o Oops. But there was all this glue-type stuff on it, making it obvious that it had been done many, many times before LOL. So I just stuck it back on and it looked the same as before. But can you imagine what he would charge for such a thing?! But anyway the funny thing was that he had actually included instructions for how to operate the shower in the text he sent, along with how-to pictures and everything. :)))) If only any of that shit had interested or mattered to us at all, earlier. Anyway, the answer was that you could actually pull down on the lip of the spigot, and that's what made the water go to the showerhead, lol. I mean in terms of elegant design I guess that's pretty cool? But in terms of actual practicality it was terrible. As for the kitchen, what was provided was also very sparse, with only a couple of Nespresso pods, and there was a rule that we were not allowed to cook "smelly food, including curry." Which is just as racist and annoying as it sounds. As Adelagia put it, our host was basically like, "Welcome, make yourselves at home, but don’t touch anything." He had a Tesla and Miata, by the by, and everything about the place screamed "rich asshole," lol. But that said, the rooms and beds were extremely comfortable, and I slept very well the whole time we were there. So that's something.
Read part two here.
