Inept Email

I wrote several emails today, research-related. I was left with the feeling that somehow I'd forgotten bits, that I remembered just after sending the email. And then doubting that I'd said what I wanted to clearly. As far as I can tell, the emails weren't that bad given the responses, but it was a nervous time while waiting for those responses and thinking that maybe they'd make fun of my crappy emails.

Anyone know a way around this? Approved email writing style, maybe a program that reads the email over and says "Nice work, says what you want it to, and clearly" so that I don't get worried about them?

Photo Editing

One of the few things I enjoy relating to photography, besides taking pictures of Lorian or taking pictures of the ratties, is editing photos using photoshop or GIMP. The following photo was taken on our grand canyon trip (a gift from Gary, Patty + Doug for our wedding), and was such a great picture of Lorian that it was necessary to do some editing to remove all the pesky tourists sitting around in the background. Can you tell where they were?



Edit: I just noticed, there's still one errant tourist left in the photo! Oops, gonna have to remove him too. Off with his head!

Conversations are Weird

Today at dinner at Din Tai Fund I got to experience something strange: the stupid little story on CNN's front page about Lindsay Lohan being found passed out in a car actually served to start a conversation. Not only that, but it went on for a while at our table, and ended with the
comment that the other table seemed to be talking about things much more scientific. Of course, when mentioned to the other table they got a good laugh at that notion.

The other interesting conversation starter was the movie Lost in Translation. Arguments raged, minor points were discussed and generally it served to hold most everyone's attention for quite a while.

Anyways. I mostly bring this up to mention a conversation method I picked up a while ago: read the front page of news to get interesting topics to talk about. They may not even be interesting, but it's something to talk about and usually a good way to get started finding a common topic you may be more interested in. (For example, at the memorial day event Nadine had yesterday, one news item mentioned was Dell putting out linux boxes for sale. This triggered a chain of minor conversations until it was established that all four people involved knew programming in various ways, and we went into a discussion of different high level languages. Pretty interesting.)

In which books are "reviewed"

Books!

I recently read some books. This is probably not surprising at all, I tend to read books. What is surprising is that I will now review these books! Actually, since I pretty much like most every book I read, I'm just going to talk about the books I have read recently, and hope that that will serve as a useful review, or at least be interesting to read.

Book #1-3: Trading in Danger, by Elizabeth Moon. I also read Marque and Reprisal, the second book of the series, and Engaging the Enemy, the third book of the series. These were a slight twist on usual military sci-fi with a strong lead heroine (i.e., the Honor Harrington template), in that the lead character was a member of a family of traders, who at the start of the first book gets kicked out of the space academy for something she didn't realize was a mistake. Assisting me in this review is Cao Cao, who is entirely too curious about the laptop for my liking. Sorry for the non-sequitur. Anyways, the main character then goes into the role of a trading ship's captain, and ends up in one military situation after another, which was a pretty interesting and different take on the genre. The second and third books are also good, using the set-up of the first book to continue a long storyline involving the main character's family. Another interesting topic covers the FTL communications in the setting being controlled by a single corporation, and what happens when they get subverted. I haven't read the last book in the series yet, but only cause it's out in hardcover and I think it'll be in paperback soon.

Book N: March to the Stars, by David Weber and John Ringo. I've of course read a lot of Weber books, and knew he'd written some with John Ringo which I'd not yet read. So when I saw this one in the used bookstore, it was easy to pick up (sometimes used bookstore ones are hard as I won't recall if I've got it already or similar). Halfway through the book it became clear that it was the third book in the series. It was still quite good, the plot covering a stranded marine company and the prince (third heir to the Galactic Space Empire or whatever they called it) they were in charge of protecting. The prince apparently started out being pretty spoiled, but by this book he was pretty damn cool, and many of the characters were excellent. It also had some interesting insights into how four-armed roughly humanoid aliens would adapt to warfare ranging from swordfighting to rifle volleys and on to higher tech weaponry. Great characters and an interesting story, I'm going to have to pick up the two previous books, as well as the one after it in the series.

Other books which I may review in the future: Shadowplay, by Tad Williams. The Summer Tree, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Prime, by Poppy Z. Brite.

Post here!

This is what happens when I don't sit down and write something to the blog earlier. It gets left until I'm about to go to sleep and then I can't think of anything interesting to say.

With that in mind, I'm not going to say anything interesting! Instead, if anyone finds this blog, friends, family, J. Random Person, please drop a post here and say hi. :)

Edit: one may note I post an awful lot at 11:59pm. That's me keeping it to a single post per self-day, rather than per logical day. This post was actually written about 3:45am, but as I've not gone to sleep yet, it's still in my sunday self-day.

Ticket to Orange Trains

After a great day of board gaming, dinner at Buca di Beppo, and then a pirate move with the gang (In this case, Tim, Mike, Mason, Katiya, Weronika, Matt, Gary, Patty, Lorian and myself), we came back to my place and started up a game of Ticket to Ride. This time we played the correct way - previously there was some confusion about what people could do in a turn, with our interpretation that one had to draw, play a route (if they chose), draw route cards, and then move a passenger if they chose, all in the same turn. This really caused the game to slow down. The correct way is that you have to choose one of those four things to do. This fixes my one complaint about the game - it now moves quickly, the only slight pauses were when someone had to figure out which route cards to keep, as it usually took a while to figure out the names and locations. Very fun, and a lot less susceptible to the graph theoretic approaches we saw in the first game, as the connectivity changes were much more prominent due to hoarding of cards and then rushes to claim critical routes. Gary won with an excellent job of using passengers and completing a ton of short routes, with Tim a close second with a ton of long and improbable but high-scoring routes. Patty was third, with a respectable 100+ score, and I managed a 48, ending up being lapped by Gary and nearly by Tim. I blame this all on the lack of orange trains in my hand, ever - I needed a single connection of 3 orange trains at the end (along with a 2 connection I easily had the cards for) and 30 points of failed routes in my hand would have been made, at least bringing my score up into the 100+ range. Oh well :) It was a good game, and actually played pretty close to the 30-60m time listed on the box, unlike our first play.

Calm and Composed

Continuing the rat personality series of posts, we have the post featuring Blue. When we first got the rats, Blue and Cao Cao were the smallest rats (with Cao Cao perhaps being a tad smaller), but now Blue is squarely on the average as far as weight goes. Blue is also blue. Yep, that's why he's called that, we're not that imaginative. :) It's actually a color which really feels more like a gray to me, but it has enough of a hint of blue that I can sorta see why it's called that.

We were originally very worried about Blue, as he was extremely vocal about Lu Bu coming close to him. This vanished within a few days though, and Blue seems to get along well with the others, though he is more commonly hanging around with Barrick and Scotty. Blue is very calm, though not as social as Lu Bu, he doesn't get bothered by petting or sudden movements. He's also a good climber, usually the second one to manage any particular climbing feat. While it's hard to define what "sweet" means, Blue is definitely the sweetest of the rats. He loves his naps, unlike some of the rest who are very easily distracted from their naps, and he loves hiding in the hammock or burrowing under the covers. He's not really interested in tussling, but seems to do pretty well, though more commonly he's the one trying to nap when Cao Cao flips Barrick over, landing right on Blue's nose or generally interfering with the napping.

I think that about describes it. Blue was my favorite rat when we first took them home, as he was the quiet one who reminded me of myself. I really should get some pictures and link them up here :)

Tank Mentality, part two

So, after that long rant yesterday I had the opportunity to get another group. I should note that I was playing Virkan in the crappy group, and had switched to Thyralya for the next group as there was a real shortage of tanks. Mylanda was originally going to play as Haeberlen (discipline priest, primary healer), but when we formed the group there was a restoration shaman (also a primary healer type) who wanted to join us, so he switched to Mayaluen (hunter, dps/cc). A high level mage (67, dps/cc) wanted to join us, and a paladin (confused).

It was quickly apparent that this was an excellent group. I never had to worry about my own health, which makes it a lot easier to pay attention to situational/spatial issues with tanking. Maya was in great form, holding a single mob ice trapped easily (while still putting out excellent damage, more than the mage even), and the mage was on the ball with polymorph, sometimes even hitting mobs I'd not even marked for it that it'd be effective on. I'll only comment on my tanking to say that I think I did pretty well at it, and you can ask Maya for a more objective opinion.

A good sign of a good group is when I don't have time to type. That means that we're getting pulls constantly and there's always something to do. In this particular group, I think I paused maybe once every 3-4 pulls, and even then it probably wasn't necessary, just more of a safety precaution. The final boss of the instance, a particularly tough fight for poor groups (most can't even finish it after many tries) went down on the first try, without us even being close to a dangerous loss, or a death.

An excellent group. Now if I could just get one of those for poor Virkan. Oh well, at least he can sneak off if the group sucks. :)

Tank Mentality

This interruption in discussing rat personalities is brought to you by the letter R, for rant, and the letter I, for idiotic groups.

What is the tank mentality? First, some perspective. I'm talking about a role-playing game situation, in which one plays with a party of people and those people fill various roles. In general, in any type of game like this (mmorpg, pencil + paper RPG, etc) the party members can be divided into roles. The simplest such division is into three roles: tank, dps (damage dealers), healer. Yes, there are other divisions, and sometimes the party members can switch roles, etc, etc. There are always exceptions. But what I'd like to talk about is the role of tank.

What is the tank mentality? What are the qualities necessary to tank well for a group? It can be boiled down into one simple idea: The tank should be the one wanting to take every bit of damage dealt to the group. If someone in the group is going to die, it should be the tank, and to let anyone else die before the tank should be a mark of shame for the tank. That is how I approach tanking, and it tends to work out well. First, why is this a good approach? The tank is typically the person best suited to actually taking damage, either in that they take less damage, they are easier to keep healed, or they can enable the dps to deal the most damage (a subtle point - for example Ranthral, an arms warrior in WoW, can sometimes tank better by giving up his shield to use a more powerful 2h weapon, allowing him to cause more damage and also enabling all of the dps to open up more. This means the monster dies faster, and so there is a balance - he may be taking more damage, but over less time). Focusing the damage through a single point gives the healer a better target and also much more breathing room in case of emergencies. If the healer can trust that the majority of damage will be going through a single person, when an emergency pops up (other party members start getting hit), they have some assurance that the tank will resume control and can deal with healing a lot easier. For example, say a monster adds on the group (joins the combat), the tank is already keeping the attention of two monsters, and the rogue spots the add very quickly. The rogue picks up the add and starts taking damage, the tank then (even if he/she did not see the add immediately) notices the rogue taking damage and starts to pull the mob onto himself. A healer in this situation is free to toss simple heals on the rogue to make sure he stays alive, without having to devote a lot of attention as they can trust that the tank will be back in control, and can continue to focus their big heals on the tank. This is a lot easier to deal with than trying to keep both people alive at once, for most types of healers.

What happens when the tank is bad? The healer can't trust that any monsters that attack him/her will be dealt with, so has to be more cautious in how much they heal. The dps can't try to ride the fine line of dealing damage without pulling attention as they have no guarantee that the tank will pull it back, or that the healer can spare heals for them. To some extent, this is an extreme example - with a good dps/offtank the healer can still be sure. The healer could be extremely good and be able to handle that situation without any problem. In general though, the tank's willingness to pick up all the monsters and keep them focused on themself is the key to the group's work.

Finally, I have one more comment, this one specific to WoW, and a specific talent specialization for the priest class. Namely, shadow priests who are in charge of main healing. There are two important steps to this role: #1 establish that you are attentive and can handle the healing, BEFORE you start using your shadow abilities, #2 work in your shadow abilities while maintaining enough of a safety net for emergencies. The first is important, because if your concentration is on dealing damage rather than healing (when you are the main healer), the dps and tank will be pretty uncertain, since they can't trust you'll heal them when they need it. Once you have established that trust, then you can start dealing damage to avoid boredom and the rest of the group won't have a problem with it as you've already shown you are paying close attention to your primary responsibility. The second point is important because the healer is often the linchpin of any emergency situation. The healer has control over who lives and dies, and who gets the heals first when something bad crops up. Very few other classes have that control (to some extent, crowd control classes do, but they typically can only affect a single enemy target, rather than the entire friendly group), and if the healer doesn't have a reserve in case of emergency, no-one has that control.

I saw a group today that on paper should have been one of the smoothest ever. The tank and the shadow priest, however, did not follow the ideas mentioned above, and it was one of the worst groups I've seen.

Brooding Prince

That would be Barrick, one of our rats. It could possibly refer to my mood today, which was terribly bad. Not far any good reason, just felt like I got nowhere except in planning stuff out at work, kept getting interrupted in whatever I was doing and nothing I did want to do turned out well. Except the Braves game, which we won vs the Mets, that'd be the good bit. Though I had to miss about half of it for group meeting.

Anyways, going to briefly talk about Barrick and his personality. He's very distinctively marked - mostly white, with a black ring around the neck, and some mottled black splotches elsewhere. This type is usually called possum marked, or possum hooded. He's right in the middle as far as weight goes, being around 310g.

Barrick doesn't like being around people. Or rats. Or anything, really. He's the most antisocial of the bunch and will dart away from hands that might want to pet him. When placed on a shoulder, he'll leap down. Doesn't care about safety, just wants to get away. This hasn't really changed much even though we try to pet him a lot and get him more well adjusted. He will hang out with the other rats and usually is one of the ones sleeping in a pile, but occasionally when they are all awake he'll be the one off in a completely different part of the cage pretending to nap. He does tussle with the others a decent bit, and I've been trying to figure out if he's ending up as the dominant rat. Probably not so far, but it's possible.

A good example of Barrick's shyness is the story from the previous post. Yep, he's the one who didn't even escape the cage after a door had been left open. He was probably happy to be left alone by the rest. Barrick does have a favorite thing to do though: burrow in the blankets/sheets. He will spend long stretches of time sneaking around under the blankets, only to poke his nose out in a completely unexpected spot to see whether anything interesting is going on outside. Not that he tends to go out, but he will get interested sometimes, at least as long as we're very careful to not startle him back into the covers. He is a very picky eater, and does not like taking medicine unless it's really diluted with some food he likes (usually sweet potato baby food). Lastly, Barrick was named for a moody prince in the Tad Williams series Shadowmarch (i'd just read the second book in the series, Shadowplay), mainly because he shares many of the same traits with that prince.

Potent Personalities for 200, Alex

Today's entry is a short one, but likely to be continued over the next day or three. I've been thinking about our new rats and their personalities, which leads to thinking about personality in general. So, let me tell you (the hypothetical reader) about the personality I've seen in our new rats, and perhaps once I finish describing them I may talk about the other thoughts.

Actually, I should mention one here. In a recent discussion about mental concepts of people (as in, what I think about particular people), I mentioned that I tended to store aggregated information - strengths, weaknesses, probable behavior in situations, that sort of thing. Another interesting approach to the same mental concept was to remember particular events involving that person, and when needing to make some conclusion about behavior to extrapolate from the remembered events. I find it interesting to note the two different ways, as in preparing to write about the rats I find that while I think of them as having particular attitudes and personalities, illustrating those to another person it feels more concrete if I can relate a story which exhibits those characteristics.

For this post, let me tell you about Lu Bu, the oldest of the five rats we recently adopted. First, the physical facts: he weighs about 360g, which is nearly 50% more than the lightest one (Cao Cao), and about 20% more than the average. So he's a big one, noticeably larger than Cao Cao. Very easy to distinguish as he has a large white blaze on his nose and forehead, and otherwise very smooth black fur with a white belly. I'll post a picture when I figure out how/where to post one.

Lu Bu got his name on the way home (as did all of them, though we weren't sure of some for a day or two), for he was the biggest and most demanding at the time. If there was food, he wanted it, but it couldn't just be left for him - someone had to hold it so that he could eat it with the appropriate style. It turns out that he's not really very combative (the rats tend to try and establish dominance by pushing the others over and grooming them), and I rarely see him actually start a fight, though he does tend to get picked on by the smaller ones (i.e. all of them). He is also the calmest around people, which is not to say that he will just sit around, but he seems to not mind petting and grooming, and tends not to get skittish. That said, he's also pretty fearless (I hesitate to say the most fearless, as Cao Cao seems to have a lock on that, but he's close). For instance, one day recently L had the ratties out of the cage and when putting them back in didn't notice that the lower door was unlatched and open. This was discovered a while later when Lu Bu revealed his presence in the living room couch, which L was sitting on. That is quite a distance from the cage, and our other rats have always been afraid of the hallway, as it is a long open space with nowhere to hide. For comparison, in the same time Cao Cao was playing in the clothes on the floor by the bed, Scotty and Blue were hanging out on top of the cage (having climbed the exterior), and Barrick was still inside the cage, just chilling. Or perhaps he hadn't noticed the door was open, or maybe didn't care.

Lu Bu appeared to get sick about a week after we'd brought the rats home, with a respiratory ailment of some kind (very common for rodents) that made him sound like a motorboat at times. He's now been to the vet and is on the usual combination of medications for it and sounds a whole lot better. I had thought perhaps he was calmer because he was having trouble breathing, but even with it sounding clearer now he's still rather calm - tonight, when the ratties were getting their medicine, he and Cao Cao had the privilege of getting to visit me on the couch while L tried to give the others their medicine. Which, translated, means that they were getting into trouble and probably trying to steal the medicine from the others. Cao Cao naturally was bounding all over the couch and trying his best to escape and play on the scrapbooking table. Lu Bu on the other hand explored for a while and ended up figuring out that he could climb down the sleeve of my shirt (long-sleeved, it was cold today). He happily played in there for quite a while, sometimes just sitting at the end of the sleeve, his head poking out just under my hand, and watching what was going on outside (pretty much nothing, I was attempting to read and trying to keep Cao Cao off the table). Very calm and he appeared to like the spot he'd found and was happy to sit there for a while.

So, what personality would I call Lu Bu? Friendly, exploratory, calm. Unafraid to win a fight when provoked, but not a bully.

Spicy Tuna

Today's entry in the restaurant review section is from dinner at Zono Sushi. It's located on Lake, between Del Mar and Cordova, so it is a very short walk for us and one of the places we like to go to. Both the sushi bar and the tables there have great service, and today we sat at a table. My order was for the dinner combination: beef steak teriyaki and vegetable tempura, with an extra order of spicy tuna cut rolls from the sushi bar. What followed was an excellent dinner, i'll describe each item in roughly the order it was eaten.

Edamame: A bowl is brought just after the drinks when eating at the table (rather than sushi bar). This was perhaps the weakest link in tonight's meal. If I were to compare the size and quality of the edamame, it would be to Kabuki's offering, which is usually hot with sea salt on the outside and huge soy beans (steroid-juiced?). We were served what looked like pretty normal soy beans. Some sort of scrawny, and not really any specialness to them. They were good, but just not quite the polished component which I've sometimes seen elsewhere.

Miso soup: Served extremely hot, in a bowl perfect for sipping. I can't stress enough how the serving temperature affects miso soup, even when way too hot it can be allowed to cool down, but if it's lukewarm it just doesn't taste as good. This was excellent miso soup, lots of particulate in the broth which made neat patterns while sipping, and a scattering of the tofu and seaweed which adds flavor.

Spicy tuna cut rolls: This is a particular favorite of mine, and something which I'll order from every sushi place I go to in order to compare the myriad ways in which it can be served. There are three main components which tend to vary for this dish: The consistency and composition of the actual spicy tuna mixture, the flavor and type of spice used in said mixture, and the extra garnishing and presentation of the rolls. I should probably expand on this subject in a seperate post, but as I only analyze these pieces as I'm eating and then file (later) an overall assessment of how much I liked the type, it's hard for me to actually compare with past selections as this will be the first time I've recorded the actual components. The spicy tuna cut rolls at Zono are one of my particular favorite types. The spicy tuna mixture is excellent: no hint of mayonnaise (which typically is used as a binding element and conveyor of the spicing), excellent and generous amounts of tuna, and a solid consistency with just enough porousness to allow the wasabi/soy sauce mixture to seep into it. I don't have a good word to explain the flavor of the spice, other than it is the usual flavor used for spicy tuna. This version was not extremely hot, but had a solid spice heat that built up over repeated exposure. The wasabi in the soy sauce complemented this nicely with a small flash of instant heat that quickly died off only to leave the realization that the background level of heat had risen pleasantly. Finally, the only addition to the spicy tuna rolls were finely cut pieces of cucumber in the roll, which added a fresh crunch to the roll which I liked. Overall, an excellent spicy tuna roll and one of my favorites out of any sushi place I've ever been to.

But that's not all! As I was rambling on here, the main course actually had arrived only very shortly after the sushi, and so I started on that as well.

Vegetable Tempura: There are again many ways to serve this dish, and to meet my approval there must be two important components: The tempura sauce must be served extremely hot, and the tempura batter can't be too thick on the vegetables. The whole point of this dish (in my opinion) is to serve excellent cooked vegetables with a light batter that performs the duty of conveying the tempura sauce, such that the resulting flavors are a mixture where the primary taste and texture is that of the vegetable, with a light crunchy texture from the batter and the sauce's flavor overlaid upon the whole thing. The common mistakes of lukewarm sauce or thick batter can easily turn this dish into a good or mediocre one. If the sauce isn't hot enough, the dried batter on the vegetable, which usually retains heat very poorly even though the vegetable will be quite hot, when soaked in the sauce, becomes a lukewarm wet batter which contrasts with the warm interior. If there's too much batter, it can be hard to taste the real center of the dish, the vegetable, and all you get is tempura sauce flavored batter. I have now been horribly sidetracked. The vegetable tempura was excellent: the sauce was hot enough that steam rose off the surface. The batter was perfect, completely covering the vegetables, but so thin that the color of the vegetables shone through. I had zucchini, eggplant, onion, green bean, carrot, green pepper, mushroom and sweet potato. A few of these deserve special mention: I don't normally like the eggplant, green pepper or sweet potato (or for the latter, not as much as L does, so she tends to claim it). With that in mind, they were excellent: I normally do not like cooked green pepper as it will go mushy, even though the taste is still good. In this case it was cooked perfectly, the outside having a slight crunchy texture without causing it to go mushy. The mushy texture is also why I tend to dislike eggplant, but in this case it was pretty good. The only odd thing was that I couldn't taste much eggplant, I'm not sure if it has a strong flavor or not as I don't tend to eat it, but it came across as mostly a solid base for the sauce flavor.

Pickled cucumbers: a small side dish that comes with the combination, I loved the japanese style pickled cucumbers as they are sweet but not overly so, and a great spiced taste.

Beef Teriyaki: There are two levels of beef teriyaki on this planet. There is the good, solid beef teriyaki that has a solid texture and conveys the sauce well. Then there is the tender, perfectly cooked excellence that I usually think of as a different dish entirely. I find it is usually pretty easy to figure out which kind I'm getting: if I order beef teriyaki and the server asks how I'd like it cooked, it will be the second kind. That is exactly the kind I ordered and got at Zono tonight (cooked medium-rare), and it was excellent, tender and juicy in its own right, and served with plenty of teriyaki sauce which complemented the beef's flavor, rather than taking it over.

The salad, rice, and egg roll: I actually remembered to ask for no dressing on the salad, as the usual one I don't really like. It was a good salad, fresh lettuce (though mostly iceberg) and a scattering of cabbage and carrots. The rice was great, though I ended up being too full to finish it, I like having it with the teriyaki as it tastes great with the teriyaki sauce. The egg roll was a tiny little thing served as decoration perhaps, but still crunchy and tasty.

Dessert: a generous slice of orange. Excellent, fresh and so juicy I had to eat it with a napkin at the ready so as to not endanger others nearby. A great finish to the meal.

On the whole it was an excellent meal, and I would (and do) recommend Zono Sushi to anyone in the area. I've eaten there many times and it's always a great experience. I feel like I should mention the prices here - it came to roughly 40$ (before tip) for the two of us, and my meal was a slightly larger portion of that.

Why am I here?

Or, more precisely, why am I writing this? Why post at all? Why now?

The short answer is that I need the practice. All too often when I endeavor to write anything which other people might see, I get caught up in endless editing before the sentences even arrive on the page. To some extent, editing as I put things down isn't bad, but taken too far it can pretty much paralyze me. I've spent hours looking at a blank page without being able to put anything down on it, even though I know what I want to say, it never comes out like I wish it to.

So, this is my attempt to just put things down and not over-edit. I imagine at some point people will locate this blog. Comments and joining a discussion is welcome (should that happen), criticism is also ok if you have pointers on how I can improve my writing, but I would ask that you use e-mail for that, there should be an address somewhere on the page. My plan for now is to start simple and write whatever comes to mind, at least once a day. I'll likely be reviewing the various places one can get a taco around here, as that seemed an amusing idea. Other things that might come up are other types of reviews, discussions of the work i'm involved in, and perhaps paragraphs from thesis writing. Probably other stuff as well, but I can't think of everything.

Teriyaki Tacos

This just in: Teriyaki Tacos are delicious.

Take one corn tortilla, add rice, shredded beef teriyaki, generous amount of teriyaki sauce and eat. Very tasty. This meal was served courtesy of B&C Teriyaki, a restaurant in Arcadia (or perhaps Monrovia, it's right near the edge) on Foothill. We've been by this place several times before, and it was always noticeable by the big signs in the window saying "Tacos" and "Teriyaki". It indeed serves a selection of tacos and teriyaki. In particular, there's about three different taco choices, three burrito choices, and a selection of teriyaki and curry (beef or chicken). I chose the beef and rice plate, which also comes with beans (which were ok), salad (forgot to ask for no dressing), teriyaki sauce in a separate cup, hot sauce, and three corn tortillas, which led to the assemblage of the teriyaki taco as mentioned above. I did not get a chance to test their hot sauce, due to the stunning surprise that was the teriyaki taco.