On My Way To DC Today

Today is National HIV Testing Day: 30 Reasons To Get Tested

Today, June 27th, is National HIV Testing Day. 2011 is also the 30th year of the AIDS epidemic, which was first identified in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health has distributed "30 Years. 30 Reasons To Get Tested" on a website called EraseDoubt

1.      I didn’t use a condom.

2.      I thought we were monogamous, but I was wrong.

3.      My boyfriend and I want to share our results with each other.

4.      If I know my status, I can move on with my life.

5.      I know what I did last summer. I just don’t remember who.

6.      I’ve had an STD and I’m more vulnerable to contracting HIV.

7.      I want to have kids and need to know how to protect my baby.

8.      I respect myself. I respect my partner.

9.      I’d be lying if I told you that I normally don’t hook up.

10.  I shared needles back in my party days.   

11.  I’ve had multiple sex partners.

12.  I thought he would be more than a one night stand, but he wasn’t.

13.  I can no longer use my fear of needles as an excuse not to get tested because there are needle free options now. 

14.  We should have talked about it and not just assumed we were both HIV negative.

15.  Just because.

16.  My husband had an affair and I just need to be sure.

17.  My blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, and diet aren’t the only things I should be worried about.

18.  It would bother me if I gave someone HIV.

19.  I don’t remember his name and who knows what else I don’t know about him.

20.  He said the condom wasn’t big enough and I believed him, so we didn’t use it.

21.  I shared needles getting my tattoos and piercings.

22.  I’m out, proud and sexually active.

23.  In about 20 minutes or so, I can finally stop worrying and just know.

24.  One thing led to another and another…

25.  I love him enough to know my status.

26.  He said using a condom would ruin the mood.

27.  It’s been 6 months since my last test, so it’s time.

28.  Too many margaritas, a few more tequila shots, sneaking out of the club with what’s his name, and a night I don’t really remember.

29.  My boyfriend said he would get one too.

30.  Whatever the HIV test result, I know that I’ll be okay.

Get Tested. Know Your Status. Erase Doubt!

FOOD REVIEW: Yujean Kang's (Pasadena, CA)

exterior of Yujean Kang's restaurant

Steamed dumpling with green onion, egg, pork and vegetable

A combination of three dishes: string beans, chicken with cashew nuts
and scallops with cucumber

Chicken with Glazed Cashew Nuts

Sauteed Blue Lake Green Beans with Roasted Pork

Mandarin Orange Cheesecake with
Fresh Fruit in Raspberry and Passion Fruit Sauce

For my birthday on May 21, I had dinner with my husband at one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, Yujean Kang's a gourmet Chinese restaurant. They do not serve you typical Szechuan Chinese cuisine, but instead use high-quality ingredients to produce gourmet-level entrees at non-gourmet prices.

Although it is one of my favorite restaurants, I haven't actually eaten at Yujean Kang's for awhile. They have two dishes on their menu which I absolutely adore. They are: 1) crispy beef with chinese baby bok choi, szechuan style; and 2) chicken with glazed cashew nuts. In fact, I almost always order these two items whenever I go there.

We started with a very interesting steamed dumpling stuffed with four interesting ingredients (cooked egg, green onions, smoked pork and some vegetable whose name I forget. Unfortunately a single order of these only included 3 dumplings so I was forced to eat 2, after taking the close up picture seen above. They were quite small, but very yummy.

Since it had been awhile since I had eaten there we only ordered one of my favorites, the chicken with glazed cashew nuts (sliced chicken breast with assorted mushrooms, fresh snow peas and vanilla beans, served with sesame seed and glazed cashew nuts). This is a truly astonishing dish. The chicken is very, very tender, melting in your mouth, but incredibly flavorful thanks to the presence of vanilla beans and a yummy slightly sweet sauce. The dish has very interesting competing textures, with sweet, crunchy glazed walnuts and very smooth, slippery mushrooms and the aforementioned chicken. Additionally, there are bright green, crunchy snow peas which provide contrasting color and another interesting texture. The pictures above do not do it justice!

In addition to the Chicken with Glazed Walnuts, we ordered the Sauteed Green Beans with Pork, primarily to compare Yujeans Kang's version of this typical Szechuan dish with the same dish I've often ordered at Yang Chow restaurant. Honestly, I found Yujean Kang's version of the dish slightly inferior to Yang Chow's. The greens were not crunchy enough at Yujean's, although the dish was a nice contrast to the chicken. However, it was intended to be a light vegetable dish because the other two dishes contained protein and the addition of smoked pork made it seem a bit too substantial.

The third dish we ordered was one of the most expensive things on the menu, a $23 entree: the fresh spicy sea scallops with cucumber and jellyfish. The dish came with Szechuan peppercorn sauce on the side. My husband was very interested in ordering this because Szechuan peppercorns were banned for import into the United States for years (ban ended in 2005) and the spice is supposed to have an almost pharmacological effect on the tastebuds.

Hubby had dropped the knowledge that this was my birthday dinner so they insisted on providing a dessert for free. While I ran out to feed the meter (even on an early Saturday evening it is not wise to defy the Parking God in Pasadena) and when I returned there was a lovely (complementary) mandarin orange cheesecake with kiwi, grapefruit and tangerine artfully arranged around the plate. Amazingly, there was even mandarin inside the cheesecake itself, and this did not clash with the dairy-laden sweet.

All in all, Yujean Kang's is an excellent dining experience, one I would like to repeat soon, but next time I will make sure to order both of my favorite dishes!

Name: Yujean Kang's.

Location: 67 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91103.

Contact: 626-585-0855.

Visit: May 21, 2011.

AMBIANCE: A-.

SERVICE: A.

VALUE: B.

FOOD: A. 

OVERALL: A- (3.667/4.0). 

Blogger Ate TWO of My Restaurant Reviews!!

Wednesday night I spent about 2-3 hours on a draft of a review of my visit to the Lazy Ox Canteen restaurant in downtown Los Angeles which Blogger's now-infamous service shut down has apparently chewed up and spit out. The review was posted on Thursday May 12 (Thursdays are Review days at MadProfessah.com) but has since disappeared and not been restored. On Wednesday, I also spent another hour or more on a review of my visit to Go Burger in Hollywood. That was in draft form and has completely reverted to a version which eliminates all my lovely insights and well-written prose. *sigh*

Sunrise in Cape Town, South Africa

Hi... Just a quick post to let my readers know that I have arrived safely in Cape Town, South Africa. I'm on vacation until March 28th, visiting the country (Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria).u

Above (I think) I have posted two shots I took of sunrise this morning (Tuesday March 15, 2011) from the roof of the place I am staying, in the "Gay Village" section of Cape Town called, De Waterkant. South Africa is currently 9 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time (6 Hours Ahead of Eastern Daylight Time).

They don't offer unlimited internet usage here, so blogging will be light!

MadProfessah on Vacation in South Africa

more...

I'm on vacation in South Africa from March 11th through March 28th. I'm flying from LAX (Los Angeles) to LHR (London Heathrow) to CPT (Cape Town) and then after 9 days up to JNB (Johannesburg) where we'll spend 5 days and then back to Los Angeles via London again. 22,526 miles on the Star Alliance (United and South Africa Airways). It's basically a day and a half of travel time in each direction, with 14 days spent on the ground.

I will have internet access, but blogging will be much lighter than usual, with some favorites (such as Monday's Eye Candy and Thursday's Reviews and Celebrity Friday programmed to post automatically).

VOTE TODAY! (For Born This Way Blog)

Vote for the Born This Way blog to be About.com's #1 blog on Blogger. Born This Way is "A photo/essay project for gay adults (of all genders) to submit childhood pictures and stories (roughly ages 2 to 12), reflecting memories & early beginnings of their innate LGBTQ selves. Nurture allows what nature endows. It's their nature, their truth!"

Today, March 8 is the last day to vote online.

Pictures from the 2011 NOGLSTP Awards

As I blogged about earlier, I was named the 2011 Educator of the Year by NOGLSTP (National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals) and flew to DC during the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAS) conference to accept the award this weekend. The other winners were Bill Hendrix, 2011 Scientist of the Year, and Bill Huffman, 2011 Engineer of the Year.

Well, here are some of the pictures from the event (I have no idea why the last one is rotated 90 degrees). Enjoy!

Mad Professah Named NOGLSTP's LGBT Educator of the Year

I wasn't sure if I should really blog about this but I decided that if I had found about it about someone else, I probably would have blogged about it, so here goes. Plus, I usually give some indication of my travel schedule (although not always why I am travelling) so I figured I would do so this time.

Mad Professah is in DC this weekend, to pick up the National Organization of Scientists and Technical Professionals' LGBT Education of he Year Award!

Two Occidental College professors have been recognized for their scholarly and teaching acumen by national academic and professional organizations. 

Associate mathematics professor Ron Buckmire has been chosen as the 2011 Educator of the Year by the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, and psychology professor Nancy Dess has been elected a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. 

Buckmire was chosen for his "outstanding achievements in mathematics and education on race and [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] issues," said John Burke, a member of the organization's board of directors. Buckmire's research areas include computational aerodynamics, numerical analysis, and applying mathematics to "real world" situations. He joined the Occidental faculty in 1996. 

The Oxy mathematics professor will be honored at a reception and dinner on February 20 during the annual conference in Washington of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is affiliated with the gay and lesbian scientists and technical professionals group.

So, yeah that's why I'm in DC this President's Day weekend. (And blogging will be light)

If you have suggestions for people who should win the award next year, here are the criteria.