Russian Restaurants and Ocean Park

I have been super busy as usual, so today is a *break* day and here I am writing in this blog. Firstly, I want to talk about crane games/ claw machines. Here in Hong Kong, most of them are two-pronged and not three-pronged claws so there is a lot more skill involved in these games. I like to challenge myself with them and I have gotten a few big prizes as rewards. However, there was one I just could not beat. Even though it is three-pronged, the ice cream was just too slippery!

Darn that slippery ice cream! =(

So after partying it up in LKF (Lan Kwai Fong) which is basically like the white "clubbing/drinking" district in Central, my cousin, two friends and I came back in the afternoon for some Russian eats.

My first groupon in Hong Kong!

The set menu consisted of a twelve course meal for four people, valued at over $1700 HKD. I ended up buying it for $599 and it was very much worth it!

Appetizers were:

Smoked duck with cranberry

Smoked Salmon with red caviar and sour cream

Pork jelly aspic

Grilled Aspargus

I forgot to take a picture of the ox-tail borscht but it was yummy!

Siberian Pork and beef Pelmenis (tasted more like dry wontons!)

Main entree:

US Sirloin Steak

Herb Marinated Spring Chicken

Baby Pork spare Ribs

Fish Fillet with green herb butter

All the meat was very good, moist and tender. The green herb butter saue was delicious but made me feel so fat for putting it on everything!

And the dessert platter came with some chocolate cake, a blueberry mousse and a graham cracker crumble! I can be so full but I always have room for dessert!

After we had our fill, we also made a visit to the Ice Bar located inside the restaurant.

My cousin sitting on a ice bench!

Supposedly the temeprature inside was -20 degrees Farenheit but I was ok from standing in there for a few minutes with just a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops!

So the Russian restaurant was a good experience but I want to try more ethnic food!

I ended up visiting Ocean Park with my friend. I have not been there since I was a little kid and I wanted to see all the attractions and animals! One of the sad things about the trip was that the cable cars (not like san francisco cable cars but like the airborne variety) were closed for yearly maintenance so no pictures of the aerial variety =(

Ocean park is very spread out so there was a LOT of walking involved and many tall escalators to boot. We ended up riding a few rides, all of the roller coasters and watching a dolphin and sea lion show! It was actually somewhat annoying to hear the stories three times (once in English, Cantonese and Mandarin) but necessary, nontheless.

But what I wanted to see most was the PANDAS!

That is definitely a REAL panda... a REALly big, fake panda! =)

But this one is real!

Yay for Pandas =)

And finally, I wanted to ttalk about these two foods that I tried and were very delicious.

Top: Durian!

Bottom: Mango

If you don't know what durian is, the outside looks like a vey spiky dark green watermelon! The inside is this soft and tasty fruit. However, to some people, the meat smells and tastes DISGUSTING, but to others, it is amazing, especially to me! =)

And this is how shaved ice looks like in Hong Kong:

Green Tea Ice Snowflake with chcolate syrup, red beans and lychee jelly.

Doesn't it look so much more appetizing! Yummy!

With all the food I have been stuffing down my throat, it is no wonder I feel fatter than usual.

Until next time =)

Update Update: More Hong Kong Fun

Sorry for the long time period in between posts: I have been out a lot these days, mostly visiting family and going out to Lan Kwai Fong and drinking. Haha!

So I went wakeboarding! If you don't know what that is, it is like water skiing but using a surfboard like thing. 

Wakeboarding is not as easy as it looks. I thought it would be very easy but in fact, I fell over four times before I could even stand up! And twice after I was able to stand up, I fell over just because I was nervous and/or didn't know what to do next. But by the end of the 30 minute session, I was able to ride for about one minute. And the feeling was amazing. Wind in my face, riding along the waves. You can see me wakeboarding HERE!!

Also, did I mention that it made my arms so sore!! It almost felt like when I went rock climbing for Pakpoom's birthday, except my fingers didn't hurt.

After the wakeboarding, my cousin realized that he had lost his keys, probably dropped them in the ocean! So when reinforcements came with spare keys, we decided to go explore a little bit. We wandered into a little Japanese store with a restaurant at the top. 

This was what we started the meal with: Kumquat Sake! It was actually pretty good, a little more sour than I would prefer, but manageable.

Next came the main course

Sashimi!! Om nom nom

The Sashimi was very fresh, at just the right temperature. The lemon added just the right amount of tart/flavor. I never had sashimi with lemon before but it was delightful.

And finally for dessert

It was basically like flan but sweeter and more "Asian"!! It was very good and we all had a good time.

My friend is fixing my ipod touch so I will make another blog entry soon with the pictures from there! Until then.

Let's go back to Hong Kong!!

Hong Kong at nighttime from MEGABOX

Sorry for the long delay. I've been very busy seeing many people I haven't seen in a while, and also visiting many family members.

So I have been on many adventures in the past few days after Macau. Let's start off with my day in Mongkok.

I decided to have a little ME time and wandered the streets of "ladies' market" in Mongkok. I picked up a few trinkets and card games (monopoly deal and cranium) on the cheap. I ended up striking a conversation in English with a person from Germany over price gauging. He was suspecting the people of raising the prices when they saw white people and I told them that this was truly possible. In the end, we worked out an arrangement where he basically *hired* me for an hour to help bargain for him and his family. So we wandered for about an hour, buying things from electronics to shirts. It was fun for me to haggle with the vendors while being able to speak English to someone! In the end, he treated me to some delicious street food and drinks, and gave me $100 HKD!

Fried pork "large intestine" OM-NOM-NOM

After this encounter, I found a place called "shopping mall" (how creative) and I walked up, surprised to find... AN ALL GUY'S SHOPPING CENTER! This was amazing to me, how every shop was dedicated to clothing for MEN. W0W unbelievable! Anyways, I spent a good two to three horus there and ended up buying two pairs of jeans, a few belts and a few shirts. I did see some other cool things in the store. There was this shop that sold 3-D t-shirts (shirts with 3-D images of Mario and other characters) but that store wasn't open and the pictures didn't show any 3D whatsoever. I did also see a shop that exclusively sold...

Figurines... made of folded paper!!

I watched the lady make them for a few minutes and it looked tedious! I did not envy her but the figures were gorgeous!

The next day was somewhat uneventful, but I did end up going with my friend to a video arcade that also had crane games! Including this one...

Ice cream crane machine!

I tried it like five times, not because I wanted any ice cream but I wanted to look PRO. But it wasn't meant to be, that ice cream was much too slippery! =(

The next day was a day full of new and interesting foods. For breakfast/lunch, my mom and I went to the "cooked food center" connected to the market to try some dumplings.

These may look like simple, regular dumplings to you but these were actually crack filled addiction dumplings... OK... maybe they were made of regular LAMB meat. But there was nothing regular about them. They were delicious! The wrap was just right, not too thick or pasty and they were cooked just right. The lamb meat was made with very little additional sauce added in, so that it preserved a lot of original lamb taste. The dumplins were so juicy and was packed with so much flavor! They were so good, my mom bought four dozen home for family! Did I mention it only cost $3.50 USD per dozen? =)

Later that night, my mom and I went to visit my aunt and cousin in Kwun Tong. We went to a mall called MEGABOX (the view from the top of the post is from there) and wandered around the shops. We walked up to the food court and tried a few items from each of the shops there.

Firstly,

Burgers! But not just any burgers, these burgers had buns made of rice! The first one was with "asian" pork and was very good, and we also tried the seafood one but it was only ok. But it was interesting to see how Asian people adapt and still put rice in every meal!

Secondly, we all had some

RAMEN! Living in Southern California for four years randomly gives me cravings for ramen so I went to grab some at the nearest store. It was actually very good, the soup base was very tasty, just the right amount of salt, with seafood and tempura rice on the side. I regret not telling them not to put bean sprouts in it but that is my own fault, not remembering bean sprouts come in these kinds of dishes in Asia.

My fingers are tired from all this typing so I am going to take a break and write about my wakeboarding adventures tomorrow! Until then! =)

Macau: The Vegas of Asia (Part 2)

After the meal, we stopped by the hotel to drop off our belongings. The view from the taxi was very scenic. Crossing one of the three bridges connecting either side of Macau led to this grand picture.

 Getting to the hotel, we decided on a quick swim at the pool before the nighttime show of a majestic performance of the House of Dancing Water. What can I say except refer to the picture below.

Just WOW!

The pool looked like something out of Hawaii or some kind of paradise. It had a beautiful waterfall, tall palm trees, abundant lawn chairs on which to sunbathe, and even its own water slide!

We spent two hours at the pool before getting ready to go to the show. We had VIP tickets in row 2, and when we sat down, were given towels to wipe ourselves off if and when we got wet during the performance!

Shazam, money tickets!

The show was very interesting but there was this weird part where they sort of time traveled and a dragon and motorcycles got involved, which was very...intriguing. After the grand performance, we went to an authentic Portuguese "diner" to grub out at 10:30 pm.

Words cannot begin to describe the food at this place. Judging from the outside, it did not look like anything special. The outer decorations were average at best, but sometimes the hole in the wall places are the ones that are indeed the best.

My mom's friend ordered for us and as I looked around, all the menu items on the walls had very distinct "names". It is hard to describe in English what I am referring to but the owner used very creative names for each and every one of his dishes. My favorite dish was this.

Curry chicken served in a bread bowl.

Unlike the soggy old bread bowls they serve at Boudin's in San Francisco, this crispy and scrumptuous bread bowl was filled with some of the best tasting curry I have ever had. I burned my mouth with every bite, ripping handfuls of bread that was still dripping with savory stew before it was all gone. My gosh, I would go back just for this place, just for this bread bowl.

Other notables:
Deep fried pork ribs: simply amazing, fried just crisp but not burnt, with just a light salt and pepper seasoning that was just right.
Cheese baked shrimp: the name in Chinese was very cute but I am unable to translate it properly into English.

The experience was just amazing and I will go there again anytime I visit Macau.

The next day, I went to more tourist-y attractions, stopping by this famous landmark.

The story of this church goes like this. There was a fire in the back of the church, where supposedly a candle had lit a curtain. The fire spread throughout the building and as people were rushing out of the building, parts of the church started to collapse. Eventually, the whole building collapsed...except for this. The whole front of the church stayed up, including the five statues of the five saints that the church was built for, and the cross that did not burn and stood erect on the roof. This was seen to be a miracle and tourists come here often hoping to have "miracles answered".

My last stop in Macau was to buy souviniers to bring back home, and what could possibly be better than...

Sweets! Almond cookies, sesame candy, "grandma" cakes, and so many more things to choose from. We ended up buying almsot twenty boxes of goods to bring back to Hong Kong and some back to San Francisco.

So the Macau trip was a total success (besides the fact that I lost money gambling, but it happens to the best of us =P ). I wouldn't mind visiting again but for now, I ahave a lot more exploring to do in Hong Kong. Until next episode =)

Macau: The Vegas of Asia (Part 1)

     Macau is a fascinating place. On the ride to the airport, the taxi driver explained to us that Macau was the last stop for most people vacationing in Asia. Why? Because people who go to Macau leave for home with ridiculously bulging pockets, or leave with absolutely nothing.
 
     A short history of Macau. It was taken from China by the Portuguese and only just recently was it given back to China in 1999. It has a unique population mix of Portuguese, Cantonese and Mandarin speaking, as well as some Spanish influences.

    The ferry ride to Macau was smooth and quick. Supposedly it was a 75 minute ride but between doing magic tricks for everyone and talking about good eats, the time flew by. Our first stop: the Kitchen.

   My mom's friend owns the place so we decided to stop by. The food was pretty darn good but it wasn't really the type to fill you up. I would compare it to appetizers or sample sized plates, especially for the eleven people that we brought into the restaurant! But most everything that we ordered was very good, with a strong fusion of Chinese and Portuguese cuisine.

                                  Salmon Skin Salad w/ Garlic Bread and "Homemade" Thousand Island

This was one of my favorite dishes and one of the best pictures that turned out!

Other notable dishes:
Portuguese bun --> light and crisp bread, baked only six at a time to ensure all the bread is cooked properly.
Salt and Pepper fish skin --> fried just the right amount with just enough kick
Parmesean Eggplant --> the light tomato sauce gave the juicy eggplant a great amount of flavor.

                                  Lychee "Wonderland" (Fresh Lychee, milk, Sprite and Lemon juice)

     It sounded too interesting to pass up and I'm glad I ordered it! The bill came out to over $1000 HKD (divide by 8 to convert to USD) but the kind sir gave us free drinks and dessert!

So I am out of time at the hotel wi-fi so I will make part 2 tomorrow!

Breaking Down the Central American Nationals

So the first WCQ has been finished, and the top 32 results are less than surprising.

16 Tengu Variants
4 six Samurai
2 gravekeeper's
2 x-sabers
2 gladiator beast
2 scraps
1 t.g.
1 fabled
1 light gemini
1 worms

As I have already talked about this trend before, tengu variants are trending very high, while gravekeeper's and x-sabers are also trending very low. What is surprising to me is that I feel like six samurai was underrepresented in this top 32, with spots being stolen with decks like gladiator beasts. Of course a few "rogue" decks will make it into top 32 and in this case only 8 "rogue decks"  (2 GB, 2 scrap, 1 t.g., 1 fabled, 1 light gemini and 1 worm). As we get further into hyper librarian's legality date, more and more players will be running plants and samurai and that should be what we are expecting at nationals in three weeks.

Water Tengu Synchro vs. Planets/Herald

This is a continuation of my video from my youtube site. I was talking about the water tengu matchup versus fairy/planets but neglected this matchup so here I go.

Water Tengu Synchro vs. Fairy/Planets

Herald is always hard to play against. The point of herald is to negate everything you throw at them and when you run out of cards, they counter.

So when you play against herald, it is so important for you to waste the herald deck's cards. They only have a finite amount of faeries they can discard from their hand so baiting out their cards is most vital to winning.

The best and easiest way to get rid of their cards is to go for formula synchron early and often. If they choose to negate the drawing of formula, they lose a faerie. If they choose not to, you get to draw more outs. Going for formula usually sets you up for more options because treeborn is free while you usually discard something useful into your graveyard for fishborg without using your normal summon. This is one of the few decks that can outpace heralds.

What to do in the side deck:
Thunder King Rai-Oh is necessary to side in to stop their Kristya, Manju, Senju, and/or sonic bird searches.
Torrential Tribute and Smashing ground are also important in this matchup because after you waste their negations on trivial things like formula synchrons, you can easily activate these cards against it.

So the side board really only has a few cards against herald but the reasoning for that is the deck is already capable of handling herald decks.

Top 32 Trends

What has been trending at the past few YCS?

Tengu Variants have seen a huge spike in play at the most recent events. 13 decks at the YCS topped with with a full 3 copies of reborn tengu.

Gravekeeper's have been on the decline as only 3 made it into the top 32 of YCS Rhode Island.

Pot of Duality: 17 players ran at least one copy of Pot of Duality. I'm still not sure what is the case for the huge price drops in this valuable card.

Solemn Warning: 28 people ran a full complement of this card in their main/side deck. No wonder this card is swelling in price.

The power/momentum have switched from control decks like gravekeeper's to full on assault/synchro decks such as six samurai and tengu pant variants. In this day and age, decks that are anti-meta/ anti synchro summons are slowing down, being driven away by faster and more broken decks that include reborn tengu. If you haven't hopped off the gravekeeper's bandwagon yet, i sure hope you consider it soon.

Perfecting the Side Deck

What decks are you going to see at nationals? Let's see what we have.

Plants
Samurai
Plants
Samurai
Fairy
Fish
Plants
Plants
Plants
Fish
Samurai.

So that's basically what you are going to see at nationals, in that order.

So how do we prepare the side deck for these decks?

Firstly, what cards are great against all/most of these decks.

D.D. Crow
is good against plants, fish, and anything reliant on the graveyard.

Maxx C
is great for all matchups especially with hyper librarian running rampant.

Fairy Wind
is important in the samurai matchup, as well as a good card against necrovalley, dimensional fissure, etc.

Malevolent Catastrophe
is good in any matchups not named fish or water tengu synchro.

Thunder King
stops people from searching their deck and negates synchro summons.

Debunk
removes from play cards with effects taht activate in the graveyard or hand. Great tech.]

These are the cards off the top of my head that I will definitely include in my side deck. At this point, the only real thinking is how many of each card I will be using.

YCS Rhode Island Top 32 Deck Feature: Chris Gong

    Like I said yesterday, Samurai are a force to be reckoned with. With that being said, which samurai deck did I like the best out of the YCS decklists?

That would be my good friend's decklist, Chris Gong. His deck choices were unique and not used in many "top" samurai decks. Here is the list to the top 32 as well as his decklist.
Top 32 YCS Rhode Island Deck Lists

Monsters: 15
3 Kagemusha of the Six Samurai
3 Legendary Six Samurai – Kageki
3 Legendary Six Samurai – Kizan
2 Grandmaster of the Six Samurai
1 Hand of the Six Samurai
1 The Six Samurai – Yaichi
1 Spirit of the Six Samurai
1 Enishi, Shien’s Chancellor


Spells: 17
1 Gateway of the Six
3 Six Samurai United
2 Shien’s Dojo
1 Reinforcement of the Army
3 Shien’s Smoke Signal
1 Dark Hole
1 Monster Reborn
1 Giant Trunade
1 Book of Moon
2 Dimensional Fissure
1 Mystical Space Typhoon

Traps: 9
2 Solemn Warning
1 Solemn Judgment
2 Double-Edged Sword Technique
1 Mirror Force
2 Musakani Magatama
1 Royal Oppression

Now what makes this deck so special?
      Firstly, the inclusion of dimensional fissure. As he and I discussed before the event, dimensional fissure is good against EVERY meta deck. It even works against gravekeeper's because they have to tribute recruiter to search for cards. It works in the mirror when they can't double edge their monster's back and can't use grandmaster's effect. It works well against plants, frogs, and even blackwings. The inclusion of two in his maindeck was an absolute beastly choice and worked out well for him on his quest for top 32.

     Secondly, he ran two cards that samurai players tend to neglect. Yaichi is a really good card against many decks because it can pop a spell or trap once per turn. So many times when I have test played against him, he had yaichi and kizan on the field, he would always protect his yaichi in order to pop more cards. That won him plenty of games. Another card that many neglect to play is spirit of the six samurai. Spirit is another out to stardust dragon and is a great card to abuse in order to draw cards. He would have grandmaster in hand and I would have stardust and gorz on the field. He would draw smoke signal or spirit, summon spirit and grandmaster, equip and run over stardust, then draw an out like monster reborn or mirror force or whatnot.

     Lastly, the inclusion of oppression is just devastating, especially when you get out to a quick start with your samurai's. Even if you go 2nd, oppression stops many cards in your opponent's deck and it is just knowning when to activate it that separates average players from good players.

These tech choices in his main-deck forced players to play around even more than the usual Shien and warning. This is an example of scouting the meta and ensuring that your main deck is highly likely to win game 1.

Road to Nationals: Part 1

     So I've finally made my mark on the Yu-gi-oh community, topping at a YCS going undefeated in Swiss, with a powerful and innovative deck. What better way to use this to advance in my Yu-gi-oh career and have people actually listen to my ideas than to start this blog and power up my yu-gi-tube channel.
3zInferno's youtube

      Shoutout to Michael Bonacini for always having my back and giving me mad support.
DeathAspectBlog This is also where I got the idea of keeping a blog because it is a great place to put all my ideas and thoughts about yu-gi-oh.

     So let's get started. What will will see at Nationals?

Top 32 deck breakdown at the YCS:
5 Six Samurai
3 gravekeeper's
9 tengu/debris synchro
2 x sabers
3 planets/herald
10 random decks

 With hyper librarian coming out before nationals, we will see every person running this card. It is not a matter of price, because everyone who is attending this nationals trying to win it, will be running hyper librarian. So a few decks already have been knocked out of the picture because of this. The low reliance on synchros (gravekeeper's) and how hard it is to make a level 5 (sabers) lowers the "national's value" (NV) of these two decks. I'm going to refer to NV (national's value) in the remainder of this post.

Three decks that will see it's NV go up.
1. Samurai
    Samurai have a great drawing engine, and special summon with reckless abandon. They make level 5 in so many ways (ascetism, kagemusha, kaigeki, elder, kizan and squire) that is is hard to pass. In many ways, samurai can win this natoinals.
Take an opening hand of Smoke Signal, Ascetism, Six Samurai United, Kaigeki, Reinforcement of the Army and Mystical Space Typhoon. You can turn this into such a powerful opening, especially going second. (2nd): Smoke signal for elder, activate united. Special elder, asecetism into kagemusha. Synchro Librarian. ROTA for kagemusha, draw two for united (pretend you don't draw ANYTHING useful) kaigeki for kagemusha, then synchro shien (draw one). So what does that leave you with? Librarian and Shien on the field, and four cards. Imagine if you drew gateway of another united or dojo off of the united. Samurai is a force to be reckoned with.

2. Reborn Tengu Variants (Mainly Water Tengu Synchro)
    Seeing that I ran the water tengu synchro, I will talk about its variability and how devastating the water engine is in this deck. Seeing how I can formula every turn without normal summoning, I can draw two cards from hyper librarian every turn. With hyper librarian on the field, this is what a turn could look like.
DRAW for turn: standby phase, get treeborn. Discard Malicious for fishborg blaster. Remove malicious. Tune to make formula (+2), then tune formula and malicious for stardust (+1), that leaves a normal summon for things like tengu or lonefire that can lead to even MORE draws. That is why the water variant is the BEST version of the deck, hands down.

3. Planets:
     This deck is pretty good and amazingly consistent. What I do like about this deck is that it can make its own hyper librarians while also stopping other people from special summoning their own (with archlord kristya). This deck has tons of surprises (herald of orange light) that can not always be "read" and is a great choice for players who don't really like "meta" decks but are still hoping to take people down at nationals.

Decks with lowered NV:
1. Gravekeeper's
    This deck is all about consistency. But in this format, consistency with mediocre power is not the right way to go. True, royal tribute is still devastating and necrovalley is still a good card, but without the ability to make synchros, this deck is getting outpaced by all the others. As you can see, gravekeeper's have been dwindling (slowly) in numbers in the top 32. Decks that take advantage of huge turns with synchros will soon outpace gravekeeper's.

2. X-sabers:
     Sabers are somewhat of a mess for me. I know that they can play very well and that they are not a tier 2 deck as many people have them out to be. To be fair, they can pull off hyper librarian (although not as easily) and have some decent tricks up their sleeves. But having to set all so many monsters, and still having an engine that needs people to attack blindly into facedowns (emmersblade) is being outdated quickly. What the deck needs is to get back to its original roots. I feel like being able to synchro Gottoms and discard cards people's hands is one of the only ways for x-sabers to get back into this meta.

Predictions:
    Even though I have made my name in the yu-gi-oh community with water synchro, I feel like Samurai is the deck to beat. It is true that tengu is an amazing card and that's what makes these variants so versatile. However, if you are willing to trade in the more consistent plants for a more explosive six samurai deck, I'm sure that it won't disappoint you. Being able to go hyper librarian and Trishula first turn is just WOW amazing.