Hong's L.A. Trip

Los Angeles, February 1996

[Pic. 1] Me, not quite sure what's going on.

It all started on the Wednesday right before the Presidents' Day weekend. Jongyoon, Byung-Hyun and I were having a dinner at a Korean-Chinese restaurant, Tenfu. Jongyoon was telling us how delicious the Korean food was in L.A. and kept complaining about the "JjamBbong" we were having in Tenfu. We all agreed we should go down to L.A. some day.

After the dinner, we had a cup of coffee at the Bourbon Cafe in Menlo Park just because we didn't feel like going straight home and study. We sat outside (mostly because Jongyoon had to smoke a few cigarettes) and watched women go in and out of the cafe. And right there, we all decided to rent a car and go down to L.A. for the weekend.

[Pic. 2] With Byung-Hyun, at UCLA

We rented an Altima (we wanted a Maxima, but almost everything was reserved for the long weekend) with an UGLY color. I mean it was painted electric blue and it took us a couple of days to get used to the color.

On the first day in L.A., we did some tourist things. As it turned out, this was the smartest move we'd made. After that day, we barely got up before noon, and had no time nor energy to do other things.

[Pic. 3] With Jongyoon, at UCLA

Since Jongyoon went to UCLA, he showed us the campus. It was total surprise to me. First, the campus was a lot bigger than I thought. The streets on the campus (well, those near the gate) had signal lights! I thought all the university campuses had was stop signs.

And the campus was clean and beautiful. It wasn't like the image I had about L.A. There were actually a lot of big trees. That really looked great. We don't have that many large trees at Stanford. Jongyoon told us that the campus was located on a nice area in L.A., near the Beverley Hills, unlike a certain L.A. private university. :) All the time we were driving around the campus area, Jongyoon was continuously telling us about the shops and restaurants he used to go.

[Pic. 4] Santa Monica beach

We also went to Santa Monica beach. There weren't that many people on the beach, probably because it was still cold to be out there. We were very lucky to capture the moment when the sun was setting. It felt great to look at the sea, especially that stretched out toward where I came from...

We sat on the beach and saw the sun being swallowed by the dark green thing. I felt that I needed someone (not these two!) to watch this with. Well, what can I do?

[Pic. 5] With Byung-Hyun, at Santa Monica beach

After spending some time on the beach, we climbed back and walked around the Promenade. It wasn't that big, but had a lot of small shops that had very peculiar items. And there were a lot of street artists, too. Some were playing musical instruments, some making balloon animals, some molding hand figures... Alas, we forgot to take any pictures there.

That was the all the tourist thing we've done, and it was all done on the first day. For the rest of the days in L.A., all we did was to get up in the afternoon, eat Korean food (which was very important and most memorable), drink and dance.

Maintained by Younghong "Hong" Cho
Last updated: March 27, 2008
Second revision: April 26, 1997
Created: March 26, 1996