Stephanie "MissZhu-laneous" Z.'s Profile

Okay, what the EFF.

So on TUESDAY (yesterday) I go into this BofA with all of the necessary information to try and do a international money transfer to my grad school in London. I ask one of the ladies sitting at the personal banking desks and she goes "Oh, you can do that online now."

Me: "Ohhh, I can't do it here?"

She doesn't really respond, shuffles some papers around, gets up and goes photocopy something and says "Yeah, this is what you do.. and heres the number to call if you have problems."

So, I try to add a few different accounts. My own personal bank abroad, works fine. When I tried to add the account of my school so I could pay tuition, not so lucky.  I chose the bank and the city (London), and then came a drop down menu with a list of branches. The branch that I needed was not on there - and I wasn't able to manually enter a Swift code. After googling a bit to see if there was an "alternative address" or anything to this branch, I called the number on the handout she gave me.

It was the usual customer service number, so I ended up talking to someone in Billing and she goes "We don't do anything international here, not bills not anything." ..... Ohh.. kay.... "Let me transfer you.... to customer service."

Customer service goes (this guy was actually nice about it though) "Oh, you want to do an international wire transfer? The easiest way and the way most people opt to do it is in the branch." I tell him I tried to do it yesterday but she told me to do it at home. So he apologized and gave me a "direct" number to the international wiring department of sorts.

I punch in some numbers, talk to someone, explain what I need help with, and she goes "Umm, okay, hold on..." and transfers me to THE SAME CUSTOMER SERVICE I CALLED IN THE FIRST PLACE. I get nowhere (this is about an hour and a half later) so I decide to just go into the branch and get it sorted out.

I get here, the greeter lady tells me "Ohh, I guess we just can't do it then...."

What do you mean you can't do it??? What about all those other people in my program who did it?

I told her the whole story about how I couldn't do it online and couldn't get any answer, and she goes, well go try again, and then come back by 1:30 if you can't, and we'll have to do it manually here.  Well, I've tried for about the past 3 hours, and it didn't work, so can I do it here.

Ok, but you have to wait. Umm, ok.

So I talk to a personal banker, I tell her what I have to do and she says "Oh .. I don't know.... I don't know how.. we dont do that now...and she tells me I have to call the number on the handout... after I told her I was on the phone w/ them for about 1.5 hours, she moves me to another desk and tells me to call them again and try to get a hold of them, while she goes back to her desk and does something else. WTF??????

She finally tells me to come over and inputs the information for the wire in the computer. "Oh, sorry, your IBAN is not valid....." ..... she rewrote it and then it worked.

Then she asks me how much in USD I want to transfer, and I told her I needed to do it in GBP. I pointed to the form and showed her I already stated the amount in GBP that I needed to transfer. She goes "so how much in USD is that?"

I don't know...check in your computer for the current exchange rate!! What ami?!? http://Bloomberg.com?!?!

So I point to the number with the £ sign in front. She points to the £ sign and says "Whats that?"
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........................ O.M.F.G... where. am. I?!?

By the time everything was done, it was 1:45PM (more than an hour after I had arrived). Had I come back at 1:30, it would have been 2:30 when we were done and I would NOT have made the 2PM cut off time for daily transfers.

You know, if you don't have the capacity or the knowledge to provide a service, just DON'T PROVIDE IT. I would have gladly taken my money elsewhere and PAID more for people who knew what they were doing to help me. Seriously, you couldn't PAY me to try to use this service again - I can't believe I have to shell out $35 for such a painful experience.

Cheap food, fun place, GREAT PEOPLE!!

I had egg & cheese on a bagel - $3 or something like that. Fries were also DELISH here. Great, greasy, cheap DINER FOOD.

Also, say hi to QUOC aka Q if you're there! Absolutely hysterical!

Quoc: Do you work at Hyatt too?
Me: No, I'm from SF. Well.. near SF.
Quoc: Where?
Me: East bay...?
Quoc: OH OH OH. SAN JOSE? UNION CITY? FREMONT? OAKLAND? HAYWARD..... SAN LEANDRO?????
Me: What. The.........Actually yes, I am from there.
Quoc: So when are you leaving?
Me: Later today
Quoc: Out of Dulles?? Flying JetBlue?
Me: YES. W...T....F.... IS GOING ON???

Free watermelon too.. yeyah!

Hahahha, BEST. BAR. EVER!!!!!!!

Met the crew ANDDDD had the pasta here w/ Elizabeth "Guys Don't even Drink as Much as me" McWhirt.

Pasta was so good I inhaled it. Cute little place!

+ Amazing outdoor seating (right next to the street!!) on a warm summer night!

+ You can substitute TOFU for any meat. (THIS is amazing).

+ Freaking gimungo portions.

+ $3 frozen margaritas that taste like heaven. Also, two were sufficient to get me drunk.

+/- Not sure if its a pro or a con, but their drink (I forget what its called) that is a frozen margarita, a shot of tequila, w/ a mini corona shoved upside down. Pretty sure its enough to get anyone wasted.

+/- Free tequila shots at the end of the night!

I love outdoor seating and people watching...this place is amazing!

This isn't going to be a comprehensive review of their food - only because all I tried was the crunchy snowball (hardly something to measure "good sushi" by) and their vegetarian udon.

Crunchy snowball (at least that's what I think it was called) - cream cheese deep fried sushi w/ sriracha sauce. It was good....because I've never seen it anywhere else. Cheap too.

Ordered the veggie udon - the soup base was okay, the noodles were too mushy, and the veggies were horrendous. Not fresh at all. I actually took a bite of the brocolli and refused to finish it cuz it was just gross - that's pretty rare for me.

I think the rest of the sushi was good tho - and at a good price too! So if you come here - stick to the sushi I suppose.

Just for the King Tut exhibit:

I honestly don't think it was worth shelling out $30 to try to push my way through hundreds of people to try to get a glimpse of this stuff. There are certain times where I just don't do crowds and museums is one of them.

Don't get me wrong, anything about Egypt (tombs, artifacts, mummies) NEVER gets old in my book, but I just don't think this exhibit was that great. I guess that's kind of hypocritical cuz I spent a complete hour and a half reading and examining almost everything there!

Okay, and obviously his mummy is not going to be there - for everyone who thinks King Tuts mummy which JUST became available for public viewing at the Valley of the Kings would tour?? Get. real.

Cairo museum may be a bit of a mess and unorganized, but defo better than this!

Favorite Things about the Sierra Nevada Brewery slash Restaurant:

1) The tour (albeit VERY short in comparison to other breweries): mainly because of their highlights about sustainability, creating their own energy, etc. I love it.

2) The prices:

Tour - Free (only about 20 minutes)
Gift shop - $13 T shirts, $26 sweatshirts, cups for about $2. I didn't make any purchases but I was quite surprised.  Prices that low are pretty atypical for these types of souvenirs.

3) The restaurant
- Beer sampler: 2 oz. each of their 16 beers on tap. Tips: Share the sampler with someone (or some people), and don't force yourself to finish all of each sample! By the time we got halfway through, we really  couldn't stomach anymore of the alcohol.  In addition, we were nearing the darker beers which are not up my alley at all. Skipped straight to the Porter & Stout (just to take a sip) and called it a day. It was a really hot day (about 107 degrees) so the beers were warming up too - another thing that deterred us from finishing the samples.

- Food was good, very decent prices once again. I got the chicken vegetable pasta, without the chicken, with extra veggies. Tons of squash, zucchini, mushrooms, onions, peppers, w/ the thick pasta noodles and cheese on top. Yum. Friend got the beer battered fish & chips .. didn't try it but she said it was really good!

- Outdoor patio is SUPER cute, theres even a mini tiki looking ish bar (okay really, but I felt like I was more at a pool area of a resort than a restaurant). Theres also mystifiers (is that even what its called?) to help cool you down.... but in 107 degree weather.. it didn't really help.  I thought it would be okay to sit outdoors so long as we were in the shade...that was not the case. I HIGHLY suggest you wait for a table indoors.... or pound those samples once they are brought out.

All in all, good service and a must visit (both the brewery and the eatery) if you ever visit Chico!

So usually when I go to Indian food, I don't order - I make whoever I'm with order (esp on Brick Lane) and I'll just pick at the curry until my mouth is about to explode (which is pretty soon....I don't do to well w/ spicy foods) and thats about the end of the story.

Came here to meet up w/ my friends' friends from Denver... didn't know what to expect because I didn't know them and I thought this was going to be some foo foo place where I had to sit proper and not be able to be myself (aka: laugh).

Not the case at all.

We get here (parked at the Japan Center Garage and did a few sake bombs beforehand). First impressions: chic, trendy, nice bar, smells hell of good, dim, NOT quiet, super fun looking place.

Started with drinks, I had the Juhu Palm at the suggestion of someone from our table who had tried it before. It tasted like a sherbert. DELISH! Also tried the Bollywood one (v good too) and the Mood Indigo (way too bourbon-y for my liking).

What to get at Dosa? DOSAS of course! All vegetarian!! (Are all dosas suppose to be vegetarian?!) Crepe like dish (I think it's made w/ rice and lentils?? Don't quote me on that) wrapped in various veggies. Tried the Chutney one which had eggplant and it was SO GOOD. Came w/ the sambar and 2 dipping sauces, one coconut and the  other i can't remember. I'm not going to lie, my mouth was kind of on fire after barely dipping it into the sambar, but trust me, that's just me being wimpy.

First time trying dosas and I am OBSESSED!

By the way, we were literally having the freaking time of our lives in this place and no one cared. Thanks Dosa!!!

Top notch ice cream. And by top notch, I mean the best mother effing ice cream I have ever tasted in the history of my life. And the world. And that is saying a lot because I have an obsession with ice cream and have to eat it in every country I go to, even if it is raining horizontally and my hands just turned to icicles and then fell off.

Good Morning America agrees also.. apparently it was voted as  NUMBER TWO in America for scoops of ice cream. Their homemade ice cream seriously is amazing.

Cute little old school place - it's almost like a true ice cream parlor ... minus a seating area.  

The three people working there weren't very friendly or responsive...but I guess I shouldn't expect too much cuz I think they were in high school.  Plus we had gotten weird looks from everyone in Chico that day ....... Hmmmmm

Get the root beer float. Best thing ever for a 107° day in Chico. After drinking beers.

1pm on a Saturday, my friend and I decided to come here after a stroll on the beach whilst we were waiting for our other friend to drive down from LA.

It was unusually cold/drizzly weather for San Diego, but we opted to sit outdoors anyways.

We decided just to snack on some stuff and have a drink, so we asked for the small sake, a sushi roll for my friend, and the tofu appetizer for myself. The waiter told us that the small sake "only" was about 4 shots. 2 sake bombs at 1pm was MORE than enough for us.

A bottle of Sapporo and EIGHT sake bombs later, he informed us that the waitress had "accidently" brought us the large sake.

So when our other friend came, we got another order of sake and proceeded to drink our way through the afternoon. Sort of.

The manager (I think) asked if I was having fun when I walked into the resturant to use the restroom, and I told her "YES!! You should totally come do sake bombs with us!" Hahaha, she was so cute and said "I wish..." aka..."get out..."

Sorry, me and daytime drinking, maybe not so good.

The view here: spetacular!!

Agedashi Tofu: A.MAZ.ING.

Sake Bombs -..... Yeah.

The prices were very decent, considering I thought it was going to be a foo foo trendy type of place that serve mediocre food and inflates the prices just because it's by the water.  

Theres was a vegetarian hand roll that had a LOT of stuff (I asked the waitress what was in it and she rattled off a list of ingredients), which is surprising, and it was only $3. They also had pan fried udon - I've never seen that either. Unfortunately we didn't try either of those.

Additional plus: they only charged us for 2 small sakes even though we got two larges.

Pleasantly surprised w/ service, price, view and food!!!!