Friday, March 21, 2008

deposit without envelope

Sometime last year, my local Wells Fargo branch upgraded their ATMs with a new feature, "deposit without envelope". I love it.

Old procedure:
- Hunt down a deposit envelope.
- Write down the amounts of all the checks.
- Add up all the amounts and write the total on the envelope.
- Put all the checks into the envelope, and deposit.

New procedure:
- Stick a big stack of checks (up to 30!) directly into the ATM.
- Watch gleefully as the ATM does OCR on the checks and figures out the total.

Now they just have to invent a way to automatically endorse the checks after I enter my PIN.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

consequences

Looks like the Chinese government is caught between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, they have civil unrest in Tibet, and of course they want to crush any demonstrations as quickly as possible, per their normal operating procedure.

On the other hand, aggressive use of police force against the Tibetans appears to have significantly swayed Taiwanese voters, who go to the polls in two days to choose their next president.

For me, it's win-win. Either the Tibetans raise a major ruckus and draw international attention to China's total disregard for free speech, or maybe Taiwan elects a president who doesn't want to sell the country to China. Worst case, Taiwan still ends up with a pro-China president, but at least he doesn't have a huge mandate.

Boston food

A friend of mine coerced the Boston Globe into doing a review of a new dim sum place in Boston. Reading it almost makes me want to plan a trip to Boston this year. I recently booked a one-week trip hitting New Orleans (bach party), Chicago (visiting my brother on his birthday), New York (visiting a friend on her birthday), and New Jersey (wedding), but I don't think I have the time to squeeze in a Boston to New York roundtrip too. Oh well, next year.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A More Perfect Union

I usually just skim news articles, but yesterday afternoon I started to read Barack Obama's recent speech, A More Perfect Union, and couldn't stop. I ended up spending a good 15 or 20 minutes reading it.

I'm sure he had help from his speechwriters, and I'm sure that he drew from past material, but nevertheless, the content is timely, truthful, insightful, and really well-written. I'm even more convinced now that I made the right decision when I voted in the California primary last month.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Biblical marriage

The other day, I was rereading Certain Women, a Madeleine L'Engle novel which draws parallels between the Biblical King David and a modern day David, a celebrated actor who is nearing the end of his life. Anyway, I was thinking that it's interesting that some people define marriage as a union between "one man and one woman", and then use the Bible to support that claim. Where does that leave King David and his eight wives?

Monday, March 17, 2008

spicy chocolate

I think I first discovered I really liked spicy chocolate a few years ago when I had a dessert at Azie that consisted of a molten chocolate cake spiked with shichimi.

Recently, I've discovered a couple of chocolatiers who make yummy spicy chocolate bars. Vosges has a Black Pearl dark chocolate bar which contains ginger, wasabi, and black sesame. Almost as good is their Red Fire which has chipotle chile and cinnamon. Not spicy but also yummy is the Barcelona bar which contains almonds and sea salt.

Just last week, a coworker brought in a box of chocolates from Lillie Belle Farms, and I got to sample the Cayenne Caramel. It was delicious...I have to figure out where I can get a box for myself, so I can try the rest of the flavors.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

brides of March

Yesterday afternoon, I was shopping in Union Square with a friend when we heard a commotion outside. We peeked out the window and saw a large number of people, both men and women, dressed in (mostly white) wedding dresses, with lots of interesting colorful accessories, like wigs and sunglasses. I was curious, so when we went outside I asked one of the male "brides" why they were dressed up, and he replied, "It's the Brides of March!" I guess there's probably a reference to the Ides of March in there somewhere, but I don't know what it is. Anyway, I was amused.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

recent eatings

I've been to quite a few new restaurants in the last few weeks, and most of them have been good. Here's a quick rundown:

Two weeks ago, I had brunch with some friends at Crepevine in Burlingame. Technically this wasn't a new restaurant for me, since I'd been there once before, but that time all I had was a Riviera crepe (lemon, sugar, butter, & orange liqueur). This time I tried a savory Tuscan crepe (chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, almonds, cheese, & pesto) which was pretty good. It came with a salad and a generous portion of home fries. I still prefer Alana's Swedish oatmeal pancakes, though.

That same day, I had dinner at PPQ Dungeness, in the city. We had three kinds of crab: roasted, curry, & peppercorn. My favorite (by far) was the peppercorn, but all three were good. We also had a pretty decent green papaya salad, some (fried?) chicken, and several other dishes, as part of a set menu. The crab was definitely the highlight, though.

Last week, some friends came to visit from New Jersey. They were staying near Chinatown, so we ended up at R & G Lounge, a nice Chinese restaurant. I've been there before, but never without my parents, so it was a bit of an adventure to be in charge of ordering. We had the famous salt & pepper crab (yes, more crab), geoduck sashimi (in Chinese it's called "elephant trunk clam"), a fish dish with ham, mushrooms, & veggies, a fairly standard beef and egg drop soup, and the ox-tail stew in a clay pot. I actually liked the geoduck sashimi much more than I'd remembered, but then again, it'd been many years since I'd had it. The fish and ham dish was also very good (or so I heard, as I only ate the ham and the mushrooms).

This last weekend, some more out-of-town friends came to visit, this time from Seattle. We ended up at Zazie, which I've been wanting to check out forever, and only had to wait around 25 minutes, since it was late (~1:30pm). The gingerbread pancakes were pretty good, but the French Toast Tahiti was amazing. The toast itself seemed to be an egg bread, which had great texture, and it was stuffed with caramelized bananas and walnuts.

That evening, we met up with some more friends from the East Bay, and we all went to Tangerine for dinner. I tend to be skeptical of Asian fusion restaurants, but this one was actually fusion as opposed to Californian food with a few Asian ingredients. My favorites were the Roasted Duck Spring Rolls and the Coriander Beef Short Ribs. We got the short ribs as an appetizer, but I think next time I'll be ordering it as an entree, since I liked it so much.

For dinner tonight, I went to Fiesta del Mar with a bunch of my coworkers. I'd heard that the restaurant is known for its drinks, and indeed, I was initially overwhelmed by the huge selection of margaritas. After a minute, I spotted the very girly "Acapulco Breeze" (made with midori and cranberry juice) and ordered a pitcher of that, to go with the pitchers of more hard-core margaritas that others had ordered. For dinner I had a pork enchilada done "Rancheras" style and also some chicken enchilada "De Mole", both of which I liked. I was told the "De Enjococado" enchiladas were amazing; I'll probably try some next time. Actually, I think everyone liked their food, and we'd ordered a pretty wide variety; tacos, fajitas, burritos, enchiladas, chile relleno, and more. Plus, the chips came with three kinds of salsa. Yum.

Monday, March 10, 2008

bocce ball

I went to a birthday party a few weeks ago that took place at Campo di Bocce, in Los Gatos. We played bocce ball.

I'd never played before, but the rules were pretty simple to pick up, and it turned out to be pretty fun. Basically, there are two teams of players. Each team has an equal number of colored balls (ours were red and green), and then there is a small silver ball called a pallino. One team rolls the pallino (it has to go a minimum distance) and then follows it with one of their colored balls. Then, the other team rolls one of their colored balls. From then on, the team who does not own the ball closest to the pallino keeps rolling, until they manage to get closest to the pallino. At the end of the round, the team who has the ball closest to the pallino scores. They score one point for every ball which is closer to the pallino than the other team's closest ball.

We played maybe five or six rounds in an hour and a half, in teams of three or four, on two courts (fields?), while munching on appetizers. I think bocce is a good activity for a birthday party, especially with a large group; there's a lot of downtime, so people have time to hang out and chat.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

public policy & population

I guess the Swedish just really don't want to have kids!

From a mailing list, in a conversation about paternity/maternity leave:

...it's 18 months that we get in Sweden, with dad having to take at least 3 months of it.

Technically, both parents could get a job, and then produce children at the rate of 1 every year or so until retirement, and never work again.

The fact that even with this policy, our nativity rate is sub-self-sustaining, and that only 40% of fathers even use the benefit at all (average 38 days), is an interesting demonstration of how little impact policies have on the behavior of people.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

maybe guys do suck

Okay, not really. But, I was reading a blog entry in the New York Times today, and was surprised at one of the anecdotes:

The two men – both fathers, one at the beginning of middle age, one farther along, both married to smart, high-achieving women – were fantasizing about the kinds of women they’d go out with if they were single. You may or may not be surprised to learn that they both figured the women would be babes. You may or may not be surprised to learn that they both said they’d be younger. A lot younger. And childless.

The suggestion from me that men like themselves might actually prefer to date contemporaries, women who’d lived, matured, grown wiser and more human with the experience of parenting, and, at the very least, could recall the 1980s, was met with nothing but outraged looks and half-chewed-donut silence.

“Why?” one of them finally said.

“Why,” the second one swallowed to spurt, “would you want all those complications?”

[...]

I spent the following days nursing a sputtering sort of rage. The conversation marked the end of an illusion, you see. I’d thought that in our little bubble, a bubble, it should be said, that was defined not by class or money or education, but rather by goodness and decency and values and realness (even I am laughing now), the men were somehow different from the men Out There who dated women multiple decades younger than themselves, prized them for their looks and their fecundity and fell in love with the magical rejuvenating mirrors they found in the women’s adoring young eyes.


I wasn't that fond of the overall tone of the article, and I skipped over most of the self-analysis bits, but I thought that part was kind of insightful. Although, I do wonder if maybe middle-aged women feel the same about dating younger guys. Maybe everyone sucks.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Whistler trip (cont'd)

After three or four years of wanting to go, I finally succeeded in going to Whistler this year. I was a bit concerned that after waiting so long, my expectations would be too high, but in the end, the weather was fine, the mountains were wide-open and gorgeous, and the snow was amazing.

I was told by several people that the trip would be most worth it if we skied for at three or four days. I've never tried skiing four days in a row before, so I figured we could go for four days and ski three out of those four. With travel time from Vancouver, we'd need a total of five days for the whole trip. I chose Presidents' Day weekend, so it would only be two days of vacation time, figuring the Canadians wouldn't be celebrating Presidents' Day, so the lines wouldn't be too much longer than usual.

We flew into Vancouver late on Thursday the 14th, and stayed overnight near the airport. (Yes, it was Valentine's Day, but I never liked Valentine's Day anyway.) The next morning, we got up at 6am, had our free continental breakfast (mmm, waffles), and were out the door by 7am. Unfortunately, it was snowing, and the road was under construction in many places (probably in preparation for the Vancouver Olympics in 2010), so the drive took longer than expected. We also stopped in Squamish to buy our discounted 7-11 lift tickets, and had some difficulty with the parking shuttle, so by the time we hit the slopes it was after 10am.

The first day we stayed on the Blackcomb side. I hate skiing with poor visibility, so I worried at first when the snow didn't stop, but as it turned out, there were actually good ski conditions over most of Blackcomb Mountain. We hit a bunch of the trails near Solar Coaster, Excelerator, Jersey Cream, and Crystal Chair, before grabbing some food at Glacier Creek. After lunch, we decided to brave the mountain host's warning and try out Glacier Express. Bad decision. Visibility was so poor that I couldn't even see the ground right where I was standing. It took us almost half an hour to creep back down to lower elevation, where we stayed for the rest of the day. As an aside, the mountain hosts are super helpful; they stand at the top of the major lifts and give advice on navigation and trail conditions. I really wish every ski resort had them.

We had some trouble finding the property management office to check into our condo, but finally managed to get our keys, got parked, unloaded our luggage, showered, bought groceries, and started cooking around 7pm. We had spaghetti, garlic bread, and spinach, and like all after-ski meals, it tasted amazing. Afterwards we played a game of Settlers before getting to bed.

The second day we checked out the Whistler side. It wasn't snowing anymore, and conditions were excellent at the top and bottom of the mountain. Unfortunately, mid-mountain was shrouded in heavy mist, as we discovered halfway down Franz's Chair. Consequently, we tried to stay mostly at the top of the mountain, in the Harmony and Symphony areas, both of which were very crowded, since it was Saturday, and they had the best snow conditions.

Symphony Amphitheatre, with visible mid-mountain mist:


We actually had quite an adventure getting from Harmony to Symphony. The first time, we missed the green trail that leads directly to Symphony, and bypassed the subsequent black, so we ended up on a blue that took us right back to Harmony. There, we spent 15 minutes waiting for the lift chair, making us quite eager to get away. So, the second time we missed the green trail, we decided to just take the black "Sun Bowl" instead. For some reason, I was in the lead, and I kept pushing to the right side, hoping to avoid the large moguls I was seeing on the left. Unfortunately, the trail kept getting steeper and steeper, until I finally decided to give up; I actually took off my skis and walked about 20 feet back up the mountain, until I could get back over to the left. The walking part was quite a challenge, and I'm not sure I would have made it if my friends weren't helping me with my gear. The left side was a pretty steep, mogul-filled bowl, but we were able to slowly make our way down to the Symphony Bowl, and from there to the Symphony Express. At the bottom of the Sun Bowl, I paused to catch my breath, and when I saw the narrow trail on the left-side bluff that I'd almost ended up on, I was pretty happy about my decision to walk back up the mountain.

At the end of the day we tried to take the Peak-to-Creek trail all the way down the mountain, but we missed the Peak lift by a few minutes, because it closed at 3pm instead of 3:30pm, like the other lifts. Instead, we made our way down some of the runs under the Whistler Gondola, most of which I enjoyed very much. We were much more efficient the second day getting back to the condo; instead of having to drive we took the Whistler Village shuttle, and by 6pm we had dinner on the table. This time we made "soft tacos", which were more like burritos, but messier.

The third day, we slept in, and then wandered around Whistler Village for awhile, stopping at the library, a camera store, an ice cream store, a bunch of other little shops, a hamburger joint, and the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I'm totally addicted to freshly made candy, so I bought some pecan and cashew turtles, some old English toffee, and some fudge (German chocolate and B-52). Yum. We also spent some time in the bookstore, before heading home for a few games of Settlers (or Seafarers, rather). For dinner, we went to the Bavaria Restaurant for fondue. We ordered cheese fondue, Chinese-style meat fondue, and of course, Belgian chocolate dessert fondue. My favorite was the cheese fondue; the cheese was a mix of Gruyere and Emmental, the wine didn't overwhelm the cheese, and they'd also added a touch of brandy. The chocolate was also very good; in retrospect we probably should have ordered four or five of them (for the six of us) rather than just three.

Fondue time!


Monday the 18th was the last ski day, and it was also the best. Since it was the last day, we decided to go hard-core, so we woke up early, and were at the bottom of the Whistler gondola by 7:30am. We bought "Fresh Tracks" tickets, which let us go up the gondola early, and also gave us access to a pretty decent breakfast buffet. After loading up on pancakes, muffins, fruit, eggs, sausage, and bacon, we got out on the mountain just after the lifts opened (around 8:30am). We were determined to get up to the Peak since we'd missed out the last time, but the Peak lift didn't open until 9, so we took a few runs nearby while we waited. When we finally got to the Peak, we took a billion pictures of the view, as well as the giant Inukchuk statue at the top, before heading down the Peak-to-Creek trail. It took us over 35 minutes to get from top to bottom, and although we did stop a few times to admire the snow and the view, we were still going at a pretty good clip. I think that was my favorite run of the whole trip.

A very large Inukchuk:


Looking down the gondola at Whistler Village:


After that, we tried out a few easy blacks in the area (Dave Murray, Bear Paw) and then headed over to the Blackcomb side. We hadn't had a chance to try out the 7th Heaven area on our first day, so that was where we went first. There, we discovered a slight downside to the beautiful weather. It was actually so warm that the snow was starting to get a little damp and slushy. We only ended up doing a couple of runs before deciding to head to the less-sunny part of the mountain. We had a good time on both Glacier and Crystal (since we could actually see the terrain this time!) and I even tried another mogul-y black, Heavenly Basin, which turned out to be not too bad; the top was steep but less bumpy, and the bottom was bumpy but less steep. Unfortunately, at this point, our group split into two. Half of the people didn't want to try the moguls and half did, and we lost each other when we got confused as to the lift at which to meet. Luckily, it was already around 2pm by this time, so we just skied the rest of the day apart. As it turned out, no one ate lunch, so we all had nearly eight hours of skiing that day. Apparently we'd managed to stuff ourselves sufficiently at the breakfast buffet to last until closing time. My group caught one of the last lifts at Solar Coaster right as they were closing, and then did almost a straight shot down. The one short break was at my request; my legs were starting to feel pretty jelly-like at that point.

The view from the top of 7th Heaven:


For our last dinner, we put in two pre-made lasagnas, stir-fried some green beans, and I personally ate quite a bit of my candy that I had bought the previous day. We actually did a pretty good job of eating up the leftover food, but I did end up bringing home a bottle of corn oil and some Cheerios. I also tried to bring home some chips and guacamole, but the guac got confiscated by the TSA as a "liquid".

Overall, I thought the trip went extremely well. The weather was okay the first day, good the second day, and awesome the last day. The snow was good all three days (it was actually best the first day), except when 7th Heaven started to melt on the last afternoon. The condo was pretty expensive ($400+) but we easily fit six people, since we had two bedrooms plus a pull-out sofa bed. We also had three full bathrooms (which came in handy after skiing each day), a pretty good-sized washer and dryer, a full kitchen, and a pretty decent-sized living area. The Whistler Village shuttles were convenient and ran regularly, which made it really easy to get to the slopes (except on the first day, when we hadn't checked in yet). Plus, the Village itself was actually pretty big and had some cute shops and restaurants; it was fun walking around on our day off. In short, I would definitely consider going back at some point in the near future.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

sushi = cure for everything

As I mentioned previously, I had a horrible stomach flu last week.

The first day, I drank apple juice and ate nothing. The second day, I had half a packet of oatmeal and half a bowl of rice porridge. On the third day, I felt like I could eat, but I still wasn't hungry and nothing tasted very good, so I think I only managed a bowl of noodle soup. On the fourth day, someone ordered in a big tray of sushi for lunch (this was in Houston). All of a sudden, I found myself starving, and I ate at least 10 pieces of sushi (mostly tuna rolls).

Apparently, the best cure for stomach flu (at least for me) is lots of raw fish.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

naming collision

I'm so geeky. I find it totally hilarious that there's a restaurant in Napa called Ubuntu.

Monday, March 03, 2008

back (again)

I feel like I'm always getting "back" from something. It's probably related that I'm way behind on blogging. I did manage to upload my Whistler photos last week so those should be up soon, I think.

This time I was in Houston for a family event. Two highlights:
- I finally got to check out the Johnson Space Center (as in "Houston, we have a problem"). At first I balked at the $18 admission price, especially as I'd already been to Kennedy Space Center before, but it turned out to be more interesting than I expected. There was a pretty comprehensive update on the current status of the International Space Station and the Constellation project, plus we heard about NASA's future plans for moon and Mars exploration. We also got to see one of the real Mission Control rooms, a replica of the interior of the astronaut quarters, and some other cool stuff. We ended up spending over four hours there, and were late to dinner.
- One night for dinner, we bought 30 lbs of crawfish and cooked them with corn, potatoes, lemons, onions, and Lousiana Fish Fry's "Crawfish, Crab & Shrimp Boil". So. Good. I think there were maybe 15 people there that night, and we ate at least 20 lbs of the crawfish. This was after we had already had a full meal of Taiwanese lun bianh. Afterwards, we topped off the crawfish with fresh homemade tang yuan, ai yu jelly and fruit cocktail. Yum.

 

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