Missing Piece by David Choi

I've been following David Choi for a while now. For the uninitiated, David Choi is an Asian American singer/songwriter who started off covering songs on YouTube and subsequently started writing his own songs etc. He's got a big fan base in the US and all over the world, but sadly none of my friends know him. Okay, maybe 1 does. Come on you guys, get your ass off the couch and watch some clips online. Not the triple XXX kind please. 

Being Asian from an English speaking country, I rarely see good English production from my own kind. Sure there are a lot of good Chinese, Japanese and Korean shows/production. But when it comes to English, nada. So when I stumbled across a bunch of Asian American YouTube artistes like David Choi, the Jasyalee twins, Wang Fu Production, Jeremy Lin, Kev Jumba etc, I was hooked. And boy are they talented. Go check them out if you haven't already, I guarantee you'll be hooked too. 

Obviously when David Choi came down to Singapore, I couldn't resist going for one of his shows. I dragged the hubs along to The Beer Market. I was a little surprise and disappointed that it was NOT full.. really?? Oh well I had a lot of space to manoeuvre around. He performed all of 3 songs before he left. And I followed him to the carpark, like the groupie that I am and he obliged when I asked for a pic. He snubbed the other small kids. The hubs took a pic of us (YAY!). 

Well here's one of my favorite song. Thank you for the song David Choi!

I feel like a boat without a sailor
I go where the wind blows
Just moving around like a lonesome stranger
I got no home

In search of a treasure
Some place I don't know
It feels like forever
I'm making my way
Through the hills and deserts
I thirst for hope

I don't know
What I'm looking for
But I'll know
When I find it

There is a missing beat
Inside of me
The rhythm of my heart
Hits unevenly
There's a missing piece
Inside of me

Trying to figure it out
But it amounts to nothing
I want to realize
But nothing I find
Ever feels like the real thing
Can you empathize?

I don't know
What I'm looking for
But I'll know
When I find it

Chorus

I'm lost inside
A cold bitter world
I can't understand the need
It's makes it so hard to breathe
I don't know what I'm looking for
But I'll know when I find it

There is a missing beat inside of me
The rhythm of my heart hits unevenly

There's a missing piece inside of me

California Dreaming - Los Angeles

Our last destination was Los Angeles. On hindsight, I should have planned on coming here first as Coachella took place the weekend before. Yeah, I feel like kicking myself right now. Ah whatever. So we drove for another 4 hours before arriving to Tinseltown. 

SBUX - Can we have one of these please in Singapore please? 

After the long drive, we rewarded ourselves with an omakase at Katsuya @ Hollywood. Apparently, celebrities like John Mayer and Jen Aniston frequent this place as well, but alas none was sighted. 

We spent the next day at the Universal Studio before heading to Jeremy's place at Pasadena for dinner. 

Do you remember this? It's the city hall from Back to the Future!

Oh donkey! 

HE HE

The hubs love the Transformers

Pretty impressive show at the Water World

My buddy

Scene from War of the World

Also spent some time at my favorite mall in LA - The Grove! And guess who we bumped into? It was Mario Lopez,  hosting a show! What are the odds? 

Not sure if anyone remember the show 500 Days of Summer, but I remember watching it (with Joey in Bali... weird right) and liking it very much!! What I did not know was that the famous bench scene was shot at downtown Hollywood right across the hotel where I used to stay. 

And here we were.. we found it! It's at the park called Angels Knoll. And even though the buildings overlooking the park resembled very little from the movie, and the park stank of pee, I was still very excited!! 

This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know up front, it is NOT a love story

This one is (:

And this is the end of our 2 week long vaca. It was time to head home.... 

Our road trip theme song: Mirror by JT
Road trip food: Almonds!

Calfornia Dreaming - 10 Things To Do in Las Vegas

Check out a Diner in the Desert
Peggy Sue's is probably the only decent stopover for food on the way to Las Vegas. Can't say much about its washroom though. But Rob Pattison and Lindsay Lohan have been here if this excites you. 

Tour the Strip

The hotels here are the brightest! We drove into Circus Circus on our first night and were overwhelmed and a tad blinded by the lights. The room however was an utter disappointment. We stayed at Vdara for the next 2 nights. 

Also remember to check out the various free shows at the Bellagio fountain and Treasure Island. 

Do not forget to visit the new city centre! 

Learn to Play Craps

This is a must do and it's our new found game at the casino thanks to Jupe, and boy it was pretty fun! Still don't fully know how to play it but you should be fine following a few simple rules. Bet your first round of chips on the Pass Line. If 7 or 11 are rolled, you double your chips. If craps (2, 3 or 12) are rolled you lose. 

Any other numbers and the game starts. The objective is for the player (dice thrower) to throw and bet as many rounds as possible before hitting a 7. You bet on the numbers for every throw. 6 and 8 are the most common so that's where our chips go most of the time. It's amazing how fast the money comes in (and goes!). And so exhilarating when you throw a couple of hard 8 (ie. two 4s). So fun! 

Food Food Glorious Food
We had brunch at the fancy Bouchon at The Venetian. Another note worthy foodie visit was at PF Chang - one more thing to strike off my list of To-Do in California. And this is fully sponsored by the craps table at Planet Hollywood. Thank you!

Check out the Buffet 

One down side of going to Vegas during the weekends is that the buffet queue is super long. There was a queue to get to a queue at the Wynn's buffet. The waiting time was close to an hour. Are you nuts? We weren't, so we snubbed the buffet and got ourselves some healthy breakfast at the nearby cafe instead. 

Shoot some Guns
For the life of me, I still don't get American's obsession with owning guns. But since we're here why not try one our own? It was the hub's idea obviously. We checked out Battlefield Vegas opposite Circus Circus (why do we keep coming back here?). The wife picked the AK47 and the hubs chose the M4 Carbine. You can tell who's the terrorist in this relationship :) 

Check out the vid. 

Catch a Cirque du Soleil 
Personally, I am not a fan. But the hubs enjoyed it immensely. So much so that he caught another one in the plane on the way home. 

Ride the Mechanical Bull and Dance 

Ride the bull in a bikini, I dare you.

Look for the Sign 
The iconic Las Vegas sign is right at the end of the trip, next to the airport. Pose, smile, snap!

Visit the Gold & Silver Pawn shop and the Rick's Restoration
It was so crowded. I had no idea what was going on. If you want to know what's the big deal about these places, you got to ask the hubs. 

A Break in the Desert

We were slightly disoriented after the skydive. But happily we pressed on and continued our drive. Our destination? Las Vegas! The hubs was super ambitious at first and wanted to drive all the way to Grand Canyon. I don't think he was aware that it's a 12 hour's drive. Hah anyway we barely made it to either. 

We drove for about 4 hours and decided to stay the night at Bakersfield, which is in the middle of no where in California. Again, I gotto thank Googlemap for being super helpful through out the journey. Oh how did we ever do without a GPS. 

The little sleepy town had some conference that day so we had difficulty looking for a hotel room downtown. So we settled for a motel called La Quinta which was not half bad. In hind sight, it might have been a tad unsafe because there was hardly any security and anyone could just park their cars right next to our room. A colleague joked that these motels are like buffet spread for serial killers. Nothing stops them from driving to the motels and randomly start killing people. Very true.. but we were safe and sound. 

The hubs taking a leak. This cracks me up. 

Our trusty Mitsubishi for 2 weeks