Despite all of my kicking and screaming and my best attempts to avoid it, I found myself stuck at Whole Foods Market in El Segundo with some colleagues for lunch.
If I ate fiber, the very concept of Whole Foods would go against every fiber of my being. It takes seemingly untouchable products like potato chips and makes them healthy (tasteless). This Whole Foods in particular jumped to a whole new level of anti-unvegan, offering all sorts of food cooked-to-order. I got chills as I walked by what I believe was an entire olive bar, but I was afraid to make eye contact for fear of burning my retinas. I shuddered as I walked past the multiple salad bars and finally made it to what seemed like a safe haven, the Mexican section. The Ranchero Burrito, with carne asada, looked like a decent unvegan choice, so I ordered mine with cheese, salsa, rice and beans, being careful to avoid the Pico de Gallo and potentially dangerous greens.
Another LA landmark restaurant that has managed to evade me since I have lived here is Canter’s Deli, located at Fairfax and 3rd Street. Canter’s is a good old-fashioned Jewish-style deli, heavy on meat and character.
Their menu is immense, but the best way I know to judge a Jewish deli is the pastrami. As goes the pastrami, so goes the deli. Canter’s offers a hot pastrami sandwich, which I promptly ordered after the waitress told me it was simply pastrami and rye, without any wasted add-ons.
Tucked into the corner of Sepulveda and Washington in Culver City lies one of LA’s best-kept secrets: Cinco de Mayo. Although overshadowed by the incomprehensibly more popular Tito’s Tacos, which it happens to sit right next to, Cinco de Mayo has much more to offer.
The menu spans the walls of the restaurant and offers just about every Mexican dish one could imagine. On top of that, they also offer hamburgers and other random American things like fries.
On a typical visit to Cinco de Mayo, I will order the Mexican Nachos, which contains some of the greatest ingredients known to unvegans (carne asada, cheese, guacamole, salsa and enchilada sauce). On this particular eve I wasn’t feeling too hungry, so I ordered a hard-shell chicken taco, without lettuce. The perfectly-fried culinary concoction came quickly, served with a nice helping of chips. I bit in and my unvegan senses yelped in glee.
This is what a hamburger looks like when it comes from an apple pan.
Although few and far between, old-fashioned hamburger joints still exist in LA. One of these is the Apple Pan, which opened in 1947, so you know it’s good.
When I walked in, the place was packed and every seat at the boardroom meeting-style counter was taken. There was no waiting list, so we had to find a couple diners to stand behind in the hopes that they would leave soon.
Our gamble paid off and we were soon able to take our seats. The menu is a pretty basic one, and my friend suggested the hickoryburger, which sounded good, if not mildly 19th-century presidential.
Pink’s is one of those places that you have to experience in Hollywood. It has been around since 1939 and is a staple. If you live in LA, you know what Pink’s is. If you visit LA, there’s a good chance you’re going to drive by Pink’s and be intrigued by the constant line emanating from the place. With that said, it took me over a year in LA to finally stop and see what it had to offer.
When I arrived, the line didn’t seem too long, but it wound and wound for a good 20 minutes until I finally made it to the counter. Along the way, I stared at the menu on the wall that should have had a disclaimer reading: “Do not eat if you are pregnant, have a history of heart conditions or are on a pacemaker.” In other words, just about everything looked amazing to an unvegan.
This is what Mexico and Korea should look like. Don’t worry, that green stuff is cilantro.
Over the weekend, a friend of mine enlightened me to the existence of Kogi BBQ, a Korean taco truck. The very concept of this blew my mind, in a good way. The truck’s whereabouts can be tracked via Twitter. Now I’m not entirely sure what Twitter is (perhaps a polite way to say twister without offending people with lisps?), but we found out that the truck would be outside of a bar called The Brig on Abbot Kinney that night.
We set off, and although most of my friends were looking forward to the bar, I really only cared about the taco truck.
When choosing where you’ll go, you should think about the nature and needs of your business, and whether your budget can stretch to that office location you’ve got your eye on. If you’ve currently got a home-based business and you’re expanding, you’ll need a more professional location where you can welcome clients and suppliers, and have much more space for your employees or to store stock.
However, this all comes at additional costs in terms of rent, insurance, utilities and transport. You’ll need to balance these costs against the added value you think permanent offices will bring to your business. It can be a major leap when it comes to finances, so if you’re not quite ready there are alternatives.
Rather than going straight from your home to permanent offices, it might be worth considering interim measures such as a short office lease, moving into a co-working space, or hiring meeting spaces by the hour as and when you need them.
BUDGET: If you can’t afford a new office right now, think about the alternatives?
How do you plan for growth and office space?
When you think about future growth, you need to consider what that will mean in terms of your staffing levels. If you plan to sell more products or services, will you need more sales staff, more technical staff or more customer service staff, for example? Always save a monthly budget for office supplies, personally I found these cougar paper deals perfect.
Also, the speed of your growth is also essential in planning for the type of premises you’ll need. If it’s gradual, you might not need a big, new office. If, however, you’re going on a recruitment drive, then you’ll need to ensure there’s room for all of your new recruits.
How do you decide where to buy office space?
When you’re buying office space, location can make a big difference. As with all markets, the most popular office locations will command higher costs, so you’ll first have to consider what your business can afford.
When considering an office location think about the practical impact it’ll have on your business. If you have employees, think about how they’ll get there and whether it’ll provide a positive working environment. Are there good road or public transport links and places to get lunch, for example? This sort of thing can have a real impact on your employee / office morale and might even impact staff turnover.
Think about the impression your location will have on clients and business contacts when they visit. You should also consider the availability of important services such as fast broadband, telephone, heating and security.
In just a few years, Papa John’s has gone from a second-tier pizza chain to the top level, joining Domino’s and Pizza Hut. It even has branches in China.
The Papa John’s on National Boulevard in LA offers a fantastic $6.99 carry-out special for a large, one-topping pizza. Last time I went, I ordered pepperoni and sausage, the two greatest meats to ever find themselves atop a pizza.
The basics of solid poker strategy involve many concepts that you must combine to become a consistently winning player. The following concepts are crucial to learning poker strategy:
Tight play
Aggressive play
Random play
Taking advantage of the mistakes of other players
Keep these concepts in mind as you develop as a poker player.
SOME POKER STRATEGY CONSIDERATIONS
DECISIONS FOR THE NEW POKER PLAYER
Decide whether you want to play poker to win or to play for fun. To play at a consistently winning level requires both time and effort. In other words, it takes work. There is nothing wrong with playing poker for fun, but there is no reason to plan to lose, even when you are playing for fun. However, deciding which type of poker player you want to be before you start will make your decisions and sessions easier. Test out these professional tips at Pkv Games online tables.
MAKE GOOD DECISIONS – THE RESULTS WILL FOLLOW
Even the best poker players in the world have losing sessions. Don’t make the mistake of expecting to win every time you play. Your goal should be to play to the best of your ability in every session. If you do, the cards and winnings will take care of themselves as you improve. Many players make the mistake of judging their poker playing ability based on the results of each session. Your goal should be to make the best possible play every time. The closer you come to this, the better your results will be.
THE MATHEMATICS OF POKER
Poker is a mathematical game, and it’s a game of incomplete information. That may sound complicated, but it really isn’t. On a very basic level, winning poker starts with the selection of which starting hands to play. If you enter the pot with the best hand more often than your opponents do, you will win more times than your opponents.
BEYOND STARTING HANDS
Starting hand selection is fundamentally important, but it’s only one piece of the poker strategy puzzle. Once you have mastered solid starting hand guidelines and understand how they change by your position at the table, the next area you should work on is your play for the rest of the hand. The area that separates professional players from amateurs is that professional players tend to play much better than their opponents during the remainder of the hand, after the starting hand decisions are made. This is especially true concerning the decisions made at the very end of every hand. These skills involve calculating pot odds, recognizing betting patterns, bluffing, and using position. The years of practice necessary to master the middle and end game play are well worth the effort, because even small improvements in a player’s abilities can have a tremendous effect on that player’s lifetime winnings.
AVOIDING TILT
Another meta-skill that should be part of a winning player’s poker strategy is avoiding tilt. Your opponents will use your emotions against you, but only if you let them. Emotional play results in poor decisions and lost money. Tilting and steaming can happen to anyone, and sometimes the only cure is a break from the game. That’s okay; the game will still be there ten minutes from now. In fact, it will still be there tomorrow.
Fruit makes for an excellent vegetable replacement.
Coco’s and I have a long and interesting history. A few years ago, I lived in Japan and a Coco’s was attached to my building. Coco’s (pronounced Cocosu in Japanese) was a Japanese attempt at American food and despite the fact that it wasn’t at all like American food, it was still pretty decent. We had a healthy relationship and I even had the frequent diner card. When I returned from Japan, Coco’s and I took a break, we couldn’t handle the distance and I had no knowledge of Coco’s in America. That all changed when I found a Coco’s on Pico and Robertson in LA. I went in with great expectations that would be impossible to meet.
