Lots of great cosplay this year at Fanime 2010. It definitely seems like the quality of costumes has increase a lot compared to previous years. Full set at flickr
Monthly Archives: May 2010
Things I hate about MUNI
MUNI is one of those things you just have to deal with living in San Francisco. Vehicles are constantly breaking down, things are alway delayed. It’s like watching a gigantic slow motion car accident. Since the recent fare increases I’ve noticed an accelerated deterioration in the quality of service and it doesn’t seem to be getting better anytime soon. The following list of things aren’t the some of the big reasons why muni fails, but the smaller things that get under my skin.
The touch to open strips on some buses
These things almost never work. I guess the whole point is to make it easier and less moving parts mean it would break down less. This would be nice, if it worked. Out of all the times on these buses I think the system has worked maybe once or twice.
Angry/unprofessional muni drivers
I understand the job hard and you gotta put up with a lot of crap, but that does t give you the right to be angry at customers. If this were a restaurant or any private business if they were as rude as they are they would be fired. Also there are the MUNI drivers who are constantly talking to someone during the trip. Not only is it unsafe, but it slows down service because they aren’t doing what they are being paid to. There are many occasions when I’ve seen drivers chatting it up with someone at a stop and they forget to leave delaying me even further. There are tons of MUNI drives who are very nice and professional, but it only takes one or two bad apples to sour the reputation and give an impression that all of MUNI drivers are like that.
Stops at every block
Do we really need a bus stop at every block or every other block? I know one of the original goals of the muni layout was to always have a stop within two blocks where ever you are. This is nice, and would be convient on more of the hilly sections, but there are large sections where I think its completely redundant. Is it so hard for people to walk an extra block or two to get to a stop? I personally wouldn’t mind walking an extra two blocks if the stops were spaced apart further. This would reduced the number of stops MUNI would have to make and maybe speed up service and reliability. Once a vehicle stop it introduces a level of unpredictability that constantly is slowing down service.
The lack of information regarding delays
It’s great that muni has bus prediction, and it’s understandable that it’s not always accurate. What really irks me is when a delay occurs there is no information that is readily available about why there is a delay. If they would just pass on the information to customers I wouldn’t be as frustrated as I am when one occurs.
Not making full use of station platforms
Okay muni trains are not that long. Most platforms seen to be long enough to accomidate 3 cars on them. So why not use that space to let more people off. I know they can do it because when there is a serious problem the use the whole platform to get people out of the stations and onto buses.
Bad train allocation
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this; having 3 trains of the same line go past in succession, or having all the lines but the one your looking for pass. Now this is understandable for inbound trains, since muni shares track with above ground traffic it cannot determine the order in which the trains enter the underground sections. It doesn’t really matter that much on this anyways since most trains terminate at Embarcadero station anyways. For outbound traffic I don’t understand why they cant just reallocate train assignments. How hard is it to order the trains so that trains leave in order like J, K, L, M, N in that order or something reasonable, at least dont let 3 K trains go by or 4 N trains go by without a change to something else.
Hapa Ramen is like Star Wars Episode One
Hapa Ramen is a new food stand that is slated to open at the San Francisco Ferry Building this summer. Now being a Ferry Building stand there is a level of expectation that is comes with that. For the most part the new breed of food stands that are coming out have been amazing. Namu, Tacolicious and others have all had exceptional food with impeccable execution. Sadly, Hapa Ramen’s preview event that occurred tonight was far from either.
I won’t talk too much about the service issues that occurred. To summarize those, the event began at 6:00pm, I got there around 6:20. From that point until we were seated was almost 4 hours. Afterwards it took 45 minutes to get our food, for a grand total of almost 5 hours waiting. As a final note on this we were the last group to be served.
When I first got the ramen the portion incredibly small, about a quater of the size that one would get at Katana-ya or Tanpopo, at equivalent prices. The price for a bowl of “Everything” ramen was 13 dollars. To add insult to injury, by the time we were seated they ran out of pork so the “Everything” ramen became the “Almost Everything” ramen. To be honest though even if the pork was included I don’t think it could have salvaged this bowl of food. The aroma that came from the ramen was somewhat funky. It had the slight aroma of a ramen broth, but was dominated by something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Everything was generally lukewarm like it had been sitting on a shelf for 30 minutes to cool down before serving.
The noodles, which are hand made, were mushy and lacked texture. It was if they noodle was overcooked to the point that they were barely holding their shape and as soon as you put them in your mouth they would break apart. The broth was another big issue. There was no flavor whatsoever, which gave it a watered down taste. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be a shio, shoyu, or tonkatsu style broth, but it didn’t taste like anything. I had to add a lot of togarashi for it to even remotely have any flavor at all. There was also an unpleasant aftertaste that made it hard to finish. It was almost as if they put unwashed gobo into the broth which created an almost dirt like taste.
While the men and the broth were complete disasters, the topping didn’t escape the ramen hell either. The karaage was flavorless, it would have been less offended if they would have just put boiled chicken down. The egg not bad, and the peas were okay. But the green onions were poorly chopped, looked liked they tried to slice them thinly, but ended up getting a few large uncut portions. The summer vegetables either rhubarb or celery was so chewy that it felt like it was gnawing or a piece of bark.
While I can attribute a lot of the problems to being just a test run and being the end of the night, I feel there are some core problems here for ramen purist that cannot be resolved without a whole reworking of some of the recipes. With that in mind I feel that this could be a good “Ferry Building Ramen”. The toppings that were included are not the items one would traditionally associate with ramen in the first place. The broth doesn’t invoke in my mind anything associated with the regular ramen flavors either, but they do go well with the whole organic, locally sourced vibe of the Ferry Building. For people who have never had real ramen before, or their only experience with it is the store bought instant stuff, then this might be amazingly tasty.
This whole experience can be summed up in the analogy of the title. There was so much hype in the blogosphere, and the lines and wait were so long that it is impossible to live up to that.
Final Rating:
1/10
The peas and egg were the only good things. This is so far from what I would consider ramen that it should be called something else.
