oh_danny_b0i's Xanga

Risk-Reward.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:30:26 GMT

Today my good buddy from home, Rei, was in town helping his brother move into a certain cross-town rival school. He had a free day so he spent it hanging out with me in Westwood. It's always good to hang out with my buddies from home, because they're the people that I grew up with and were in some way responsible for my various quirks. He came into the past portion of my class and we went over to In-N-Out for lunch to catch up. We spent the rest of the day just relaxing at my apartment, because let's face it: I don't have a car and there's nothing in LA that we find particularly interesting. But really, who needs to go out on the town to have fun, I don't. Really, I'm fine with just hanging out in the apartment watching the HD tube.

Tonight's dinner was a bit more adventurous. I've always been a huge fan of good pizzas (well, huge fan of good food in general), with certain fancies for Chicago style deep-dish pizzas like Zachary's of Berkeley, and I'm beginning to become more partial towards the pan pizzas that help to define New York, like Enzo's. This said, it's been more of a goal of mine to learn how to make my own pizza from scratch, just for the sake of being able to taste my own blood, sweat, and tears. My beloved sister and brother-in-law (the younger ones), in all their infinite wisdom, were clever enough to buy me a pizza stone set. It's basically a pizza cutter, a little serving tray, and a stone circle that you bake your pizza on.

Rei and I stopped by Whole Foods on the way back from lunch, and bought our ingredients. I had already bought some raw garlic and herb pizza dough from Trader Joe's on Sunday and had some leftover boneless chicken thighs and sliced mushrooms. We grabbed some tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, baby spinach, and hot link sausages to round out the pie. Preparing the ingredients was the easy part really, just diced the chicken and the sausage into more manageable pieces before grilling them in a pan (can you really call cooking meat in a pan grilling?). The real trickster of the evening was working the dough. I have a new-found respect for people who work in pizzerias. It's harder than you think to get the dough nice and even all over, and I actually gave up on one dough because the flour I put on the stone made it so the dough couldn't stick together anymore (don't worry, there is redemption involved). I opened a new package and had a bit more success, but not without a good amount of effort involved. Anyway, I drizzled a bit of olive oil on the dough and added the tomato sauce and mozzarella and all the other ingredients on top. I finished the pie with an extra layer of tomato sauce and a generous amount of basil and garlic powder. Popped that baby in the oven and looked for a way to salvage the first pile of dough, along with a good amount of extra chicken.

Rei came up with the idea of making little garlic balls, like the ones you would find at C&O's. He got to work on ripping the over-floured dough and rolling them into little balls, while I decided to try my hand on making some soul food. You know where this is going: Fried chicken. I took the remaining pieces of chicken and rolled them around in a good amount of flour and spice. After we were both done with our task, we added a little oil to a hot pan and went to work on frying my mistakes. After all that was done, we tasted to see how it turned out. Our garlic balls were surprisingly good, just a little less salt and they would be perfect. As for the attempt at southern fried chicken, I was a little disappointed. It tasted just fine, except for the fact that it tasted like the crispy chicken you would find at a pearl milk tea place. Oh well, live and learn right? On the bright side, I just found a promising low fat oven-fried chicken recipe, so we'll see how that turns out when I get the chance.

The pizza itself was great, and only a few little adjustments need to be made before I would deem the crafted pizza date-worthy (hello ladies!). All in all, a fun (and amazingly tedious) experience and I really hope that the Trader Joe's in Westwood opens soon so I can get my hands on some more dough. The picture is a bit fuzzy but that's the finished product. Notice the second layer of tomato sauce added on top: That was my attempt to make my pizza more like a deep-dish, and it was almost overpowering the rest of the toppings so next time it will look much cleaner and be much less...saucayyyyy.

By the way, for those of you who actually still read Xanga, if you happen to frequent your Google Reader, add http://dsheu.blogspot.com to your Reader. I think it's time for a fresh start.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:38:26 GMT

"These days a hundredth of a second can mean the difference in everything. We've seen Michael Phelps win by a hundredth of a second, and we've seen Dana Torres lose by a hundredth of a second. And it's totally within our culture to use comparisons of each other as a standard, and if we were to beat everyone else then we're all set. But if we were to compare ourselves to God's standards, we would all fall completely short of even qualifying. But that's what makes God's grace and forgiveness so amazing, He ignores our record of wrongs and brings us up to His standard."

Why Starcraft isn't an Olympic sport.

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:33:36 GMT

South Korea and China would win gold every single time.

Did you feel the mountains tremble?

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:02:01 GMT

5.8 Earthquake in Chino Hills. Crazyyyy.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:19:24 GMT

Go. Watch. Batman. Now.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:31:19 GMT

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art

Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

This past weekend I was flown up to San Jose to play in two concerts celebrating the release of my sister's debut CD, Waking or Sleeping. The hymn, Be Thou My Vision, was a main theme of the CD and of the concerts. To make all aspects of life, day or night, waking or sleeping, to be an act of worship to Him. This concept always baffled me. Conceptually, it made perfect sense, use what God gave you and use it for His glory, and everything's all good. But practically speaking, it's always been a bit more difficult to actually do it.

The world of classical music is an especially tricky one. Whereas if you're playing more mainstream where you're just singing and playing guitar, you have a variety of genres to fall under, from grunge to punk to death metal to positive alternative to whatever. But classical music is what it is, classical. Sure there's different eras of the stuff like Romantic and Baroque, but it's still the same stuffy, elitist demographic of people. And unfortunately, there's little room for one's faith to poke its nose in the business. It's a cruel world where the slightest slip in one's intonation could cost someone a career that they've worked hours upon hours isolated in a practice room working meticulously to perfect every last detail. After the performances, after the recordings, the real end product that most people end up with is just an inflated ego. But as Christian's we're called to profess our faith, to usher in messages of deliverance, and to glorify Him in all that we do. Not exactly such an easy feat when you're working to become an elitist snob.

I've always believed that people should put all that they are into what they love to do. If you have a passion, go for it, and don't half-ass it. Especially if what you love doing ends up being your professional career. So this is where the problem lies. I love music. I'm working to make it my professional career. But up to this point I've found it extremely difficult (to the point of impossible) to invest all that I am, which would include my faith, into my craft. Sounds hypocritical right?

My sisters understand this concept of investing their life and faith into their work wonderfully. I, on the other hand, prefer to compartmentalize my life. My career on one end of the spectrum, and my faith on the other end. Sure, I help out with music for the worship team at my church and my fellowship, but do I incorporate worship into my music? Not so much. How do I offer what I do as an offering to God when all I'm concerned about is myself and how good I sound?

The concerts went very well, despite the last minute aspect of a lot of things. Of course, musically everything could've gone better, but for the first time in a classical setting, I understood what it was to truly make an offering of worship. Maybe it was just the type of music that we played (tangos and hymns and a hint of Josh Groban), or maybe it was the emotional session of prayer beforehand, or just being able to learn first hand from my wonderful jie-jie's examples, but something clicked inside of me. I'm really looking forward to see if I can keep this up. I've gotta at least try, right?

And on a side note, despite it being a birthday gift for our dad, the Josh Groban arrangement was definitely the most draining towards our musical integrity; talk about cheese -_-

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:21:19 GMT

Technology is such a convenient way to hide your true feelings. Just put up a smiley at the end of a sentence and it can change the meaning completely. You can make Xanga posts like these seem as cryptic and pensive when there might not even be anything negative to spur it on. The possibilities of lying to the world are endless!

Monday, July 07, 2008

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:52:27 GMT

I've noticed that the days that I'm most disappointed with humanity are the days that I can see God's glory the most. On the same note, when I'm content with humanity is when I'm the least content with God. Ironic, huh?

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:36:42 GMT

San Jose Canaan Christian Church presents
Connie Sheu,
classical guitar
Saturday, July 12, 7:30pm
1228 Redmond Ave.
San Jose, CA 95120

Join Connie Sheu, classical
guitarist, at a special CD Release
concert with special guests
La Verne Chen and Danny Sheu
Featuring music of Villa-Lobos,
Torroba, Barrios-Mangore, sacred
music and hymns.
Free admission. Connie’s debut
album, Waking or Sleeping, will be
available for purchase!

Fail

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:05:25 GMT

Report: Clippers reach verbal deal with Baron Davis

1 hour, 26 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (TICKER) —Baron Davis will soon return home to join the Los Angeles Clippers, according to a published report Tuesday night.

Citing Davis’ agent, Todd Ramasar, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Clippers reached a verbal agreement with the Los Angeles native and star point guard, who opted out of the final season of his deal with the Golden State Warriors on Monday.

The newspaper said the contract would be worth “in the five-year, $50-million range.”

“From a basketball standpoint it’s always been about winning for Baron,” Ramasar told the Times. “This presented a good opportunity to do that - to pair him with Chris Kaman, and Elton Brand is expected back.”

By NBA rules, the deal cannot be officially announced until July 9, when the league’s free agent moratorium ends.

Tuesday’s report also came one day after Davis had a startling change of heart, leaving $17.8 million on the table to become an unrestricted free agent.

Clippers forwards Brand and Corey Maggette also opted out just before Tuesday’s midnight deadline for declaring free agency, which would leave Los Angeles with some cap space if - as expected - only Brand returns.

But it was a surprise move for Davis, who decided to try the open market after weeks of telling teammates and those close to him that he wanted to remain in Golden State.

The third overall pick in the 1999 NBA draft, Davis opted out of the final season in a six-year, maximum-level contract he signed with the New Orleans Hornets in 2002.