Today was a super fun end to an amazing birthday weekend. I woke up around 11 and we got ready to go to dim sum (Chinese brunch) at our favorite Chinese restaurant A&W Seafood, the one in Northridge. This one is the best one for dim sum and it was great! The food was excellent as always but today we seemed to have a lot more food to go around with our family of four. My favorite thing to eat is the chicken feet. I know that the idea of chicken feet might put some people off but its so tasty, especially with spicy sauce. I also really like the Chinese spare ribs, they're a lot smaller than regular beef and pork ribs but they have so much flavor. Then there's the jook, which is like a salty porridge that tastes good with a bit of soy sauce. Also, we had honey walnut shrimp just because I really like shrimp. It's a lot better than the walnut shrimp that I sometimes get at Panda Express. We also had barbecue pork buns, small custard pies, sticky rice, noodles with barbecued pork inside of them, and this great dessert that feels like a sponge but is sweet and delicious. A&W's has a great atmosphere while you eat. There are tons of other families all around you all eating all this great food. Everyone's talking, eating, and having a great time. It's become one of my favorite restaurants here in the Valley. The thing about dim sum is that you have to know what you want and how to order because sometimes they might not have everything you want.
In addition, my parents got me gift cards for Panda Express and Chipolte, not too shabby! They gave me this card that's a little funny. It has these two kids wearing these weird glasses and wearing all this crap all over themselves and it has a funny message in it. It's very me. My dad got a cool pop out birthday card with cash money in it. That cash money though! I talked to my mom the other day and she said my gift would be coming through the mail a little late, I'm hoping there's going to be cash in it (lols). And my younger brother sent me Super Smash Brothers Melee as a gift for me, our original version we had as kids. I'm looking forward to playing Melee with my friends, I think I will wreck them with Fox super hard. I've kind of become used to playing all the variations of Smash lately. If I had to say which one is my favorite I would have to say Brawl because I like Snake in it and I feel like the physics in the game is slower and easier to understand. Smash 4 is a bit faster and more like Melee but still different from Melee, which is more about pure technical skill (in my opinion).
After lunch we went home and I played some guitar. I hadn't played guitar for damn near a week so I thought I would be super rusty but nope. My hot licks were all there and I even had some good speed. I was focusing my practice routine on just improvising lines, but singing the lines in my head before I play it and then play it on the guitar. It's a really simple exercise that sounds great once you know what you're doing. I was getting all those old timely jazz guitar licks (like from the 30s and 40s) today, licks a la Tal Farlow, Charlie Christain, and Les Paul, although I'm nowhere near any of those guys' level. I was just doing an imitation of their style, and it sounded great surprisingly. Jazz lines are a little weird to figure out because what makes a line jazzy is all these little blue notes and swing them, and you have to know what you're doing to play them. You can't just run up and down scales, which is what I'm more used to coming from a rock/metal background. It was pretty good. In addition, I might be performing on a composition by a friend of the family's called I can't breathe-Eric Gardner. It would be cool to add some violent electric guitar to a piece with a name like that. So I might go to Chicago and perform with a great composer named Frank Abbinanti. I would learn a lot about music rehearsing and performing with him.
After guitar stuff I played games. Mostly Smash on the new Wii U. I played an awful lot of four player free for all because I want to become better than my friends at free for all. But realistically free for all isn't all that important, I'm all about the 1v1 game, especially because Fox isn't a great ffa (free for all) character. Then I hopped on the good 'ole pc master-race console. I still haven't forgotten that thing! I played a round of Heroes of the Storm and then saw one of my friends on and I asked him if he wanted to practice against me in Starcraft so we hopped on that game, we were going to go on the beta for Legacy of the Void but there are issues in playing with friends in the beta so we played plain 'ole Heart of the Swarm. Surprisingly I did pretty well against him. The last time we played he crushed me badly every time. Winning in Starcraft is great, its completely different from winning in Smash. Its more of a brainy strategic win and it makes me feel like a million bucks. I've been practicing more because Legacy of the Void is coming out in November and I want to make sure I at least have some skills for the multiplayer game.
Lastly, I ended the night with some Call of Duty Advanced Warfare. I find Call of Duty super hard to play but I think that's just because I haven't set up my custom weapons, perks, and load-outs with the proper equipment and guns that I need to fit my play-style. The way I play is a straight up Rambo run and gun type guy, which is totally the way to play Advanced Warfare. Other CoD games you want to camp sometimes and take it easy because running is slow but in Advanced Warfare you can jump and run across the map super fast, because of the exo-suit. It's still a fun game but I think the servers are dead because the only games you can get into are team death-match, nobody is playing any of the other options unfortunately. And now I'm relaxing listening to some Les Paul and Mary Ford. What a great end to a wonderful birthday weekend. Tomorrow I'll go back to work and try not to get fired, haha.
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