The World's Most Exotic and Rarest Coffee

My oh My. This is dedicated to all the coffee lovers out there. Was watching VH1's The Fabulous Life: Top 40 of 2006 about the ludicruous and extravagant indulgences of the rich and famous. Then to my surprise, among the Top 40 was shown a map of the island Sumatra, our dearest neighbor Indonesia. Hmm... it seems like the world's most exotic and rarest coffee does not come from Starbucks, Coffee Bean or Costa Rica but from the poop of the luwak animal. Lawaknya! Haha! It cost USD$300 for a bag of those coffee beans and supplies are quite limited. I am not sure whether those poor farmers in Indonesia knows about how much those beans fetch in the USA and I guess they can be millionaires just collecting luwak droppings. The luwak eats only the ripest coffee cherries and since it is unable to digest the coffee beans, it will graciously deposits them on the jungle floor. Seems like their stomach acids and enzymatic action involved in this unique fermentation process produces the beans to make it the world’s rarest coffee beverage. So if you do happen to travel to Indonesia, make sure you try out kopi luwak. Perhaps you can also experiment with kopi manusia at home. :)

2006

As I type the year 2006, it reminds me of a Chinese movie I watched recently called 2046. I just watched way too many movies recently thanks to Netflix and the empty weekends (probably will blog on that later). 2046 is a room in a motel where the writer based his futuristic story in the year 2046 about the people he met. 2006 for me is not a room but probably another year waiting to be surprised. I was quite amused by the preaching last Sunday when the pastor mentioned that our current Gregorian calendar came to existence 400+ years ago. For us, it is the year 2006, for the Chinese it is the year 4073, Hebrews 5000 something, Muslims probably 600+, Indians I'm not sure and probably for God just a few seconds?

Ok, for the fun of it... I did not celebrate the dawning of 2006. Probably I'm old and wanted some peace and quiet at home with my wife. The city of Tempe hosted a huge block party nearby because the Fiesta Bowl (a big college football championship) is in town. Blues Traveller the group is performing and there's projected to be 150,000 people. So I'll just forget it and stay at home because I don't intend to fight for a parking spot somewhere. Plus there's church service the next day and Lila is teaching in the children's ministry. For the US, the definitive countdown place is in New York City where a big ball slowly descended and when it reaches the bottom, lights will flash out brightly. Yeah, those lights are sponsored by Phillips (go figure how commercialized everything is). I'm also not sure what is the significance of this ball on New Year's? Perhaps when someone ask how are you feeling this New Year? Your reply will be "I'm having a BALL!" Anyway, they will record that segment and when Arizona reaches 12am 2 hours later, this segment will be shown again. That's the gripe I have for staying in the west coast instead of the east coast. Many supposedly live events like the Oscars, Grammys and even American Idol finales are tape delayed in the West coast so by the time we watch it, you can actually know the results earlier if you surf on the Internet.

Hmmm... sounds like I'm getting more cynical as I grow older. Anyway, as I was laying in bed with my wife, we tried to think of what have we accomplished last year. We have:
1. Travelled a lot. Portland, North Dakota, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas plus many 2 hour trips to neary San Francisco, Napa Valley. Finally sat on a Greyhound bus for the first time on my butt numbing 1.5 days journey to North Dakota.
2. Relocated to Arizona and bought a house here. Also had to take care of my own apartment in the meantime and buy my own furniture.
3. Found 2 nice Chinese churches. 1 in Sacramento before we left and 1 in Chandler.
4. Made new friends and luckily no new enemies. Prob a few frenemies (a phrase from Sex and the City describing your friends who are also enemies).
5. I think quite a lot of other stuffs after looking back. Can't complain too much and need to count my blessings one by one.

Since I have never fully fulfilled any of my previous resolutions... will just list them down. What the heck!
1. Be a good husband and family man. Not really up to expectations so far and had been quarrelsome, impatient, bad, hurtful. Yeeks... need I say more and you might wonder that is Ernest? :) Hope that I can also help my parents back home in some way.
2. Daily devotion and read through the Bible at least once. In my quest and lust for the world, God has taken a back seat. Are you still there in my car, God? Perhaps should either let God drive or sit beside me in the front seat.
3. Further my education by taking an MBA. Not that Married But Available course but the real degree in the hopes that it could help in the future somehow.

That's it I guess. No need to write more and then be disappointed next year that I didn't achieve any of them. There's 11.5 months to go now and before I end, Happy Gregorian New Year!

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas

I have been deciding for the past few days whether to write the second part of our Christmas trip to Las Vegas or just let it stay secret (like the tagline from the Las Vegas ads). There were certain aspects which I like about Las Vegas. As a recovering shoppaholic, I was impressed with most of the shopping malls within the Las Vegas strip (especially inside the hotels) which open till 12am and they still stay open on Christmas Day. There were also plenty of partying clubs with cover charge above $100 to countdown to the New Year with invited stars like Goo Goo Dolls, Shannon Elizabeth, etc. And also due to the explosion in Las Vegas tourism and real estate, there were many resorts/hotels which opened or got into this thing called timeshare or vacation ownership. In a nutshell, vacation ownership is a multi-billion $ business and it is something like joining a vacation club and then able to vacation anywhere in the world for a cheap price which can also be passed over to the kids after we die. However the cheapest membership option is around $11k which is not cheap. The good thing about attending this vacation ownership presentations is the many free gifts they provide. But for me, the hardest is to say "no" because I'm a person who can't say "no" easily. We were tempted a few times to join the club but eventually I stuck to my ground and decided not to get it. We attended 3 presentations on the same day in the morning (because there's nothing much to do in LV in the daytime) and the fruits of our wasted time were $50 Planet Hollywood dinner, $100 shopping voucher at the Treasure Island hotel, $50 free slot play (which my wife used to win another $50), $200 tickets to watch a show called Zumanity, another 3d/2n stay in Las Vegas which can be used at another time plus a 5d/4n stay in Hawaii. So not too bad for a hard day's work attending talks.

Since prostitution is legal here, there were many hispanic people passing out callgirl cards. They have a certain style of hitting the cards (with a clicking sound) and passing it out. There were many topless pics strewn across the floor, not to mention there were many unwholesome shows too. So before long, the surroundings would influence the mainstream. The show Zumanity by Cirque du Soleil was an example of that. Cirque du Soleil was formed by a group of poor street performers in Canada and now they have taken over Las Vegas and the world with their mixture of circus and fantasy. Each big hotel has their own Cirque show: MGM Grand hotel with Ka, Treasure Island hotel with Mystere, Bellagio hotel with O and New York New York hotel with Zumanity. Even one of the ex Cirque bigwigs, Franco Dragone, is the creator of Celine Dion's A New Day show at Caesar's Palace.

My friend told me that he saw Zumanity before and it was different. Since I got those expensive tickets for free, I was looking forward to see what it was all about. We took our seats for the 10:30 pm show after enjoying ourselves at the Irish pub nearby. Zumanity is a cabaret style type of show with a woMan emcee. S(he) was quite foul-mouthed funny and made dirty jokes. The show was all about exploring our sexuality with many risque circus fantasy performances and some funny ones. There's no outright full frontal nudity but lots of topless ones which after awhile, doesn't seem unique anymore. The people giving us the tickets said that it was supposed to look tasteful. One of the performance photo which I found on the internet is the one called 2 lilies of the pond, which is something like topless chinese female acrobats doing their weird body contortions and stunts just like water lilies. Normally on family oriented shows, they are fully clothed but now you can see their ribs bending at odd angles because they weren't clothed. Gross! There were other weird characters in the show like a pair of fat lady twins, a dwarf, a half man half beast, plus others. The funny parts are the jokes and audience participations. There were other performances which I think is not good to be mentioned here. In the end, Zumanity is not just another side of Cirque du Soleil but it also brings out the dark side of our humanity.