unwinding

The holidays were a mad whirl of activity as my sister got married and we were deluged with relatives. Slowly starting to get back to normality...

We had a few last dinners with family this week, one of which I cooked myself. It turns out that 3.5 lbs of chicken marsala is barely enough for ten people, even with pasta, garlic bread, salad, and green beans on the side. Either that or it was really good.

On Friday night we went to a friend's dinner party. We were supposed to play games, but we got to chatting and stayed until midnight but never opened the box. I don't remember the last time that happened!

Before all the cousins left town, we of course had to pay a visit to Music Tunnel, so we squeezed that in last night.

We had dinner at Barracuda, in the Castro. I picked the restaurant based on a friend's recommendation, even though I'd never been there. Things started off great when I found parking a block away (on a Saturday night!). Everyone liked it, and it wasn't too expensive, especially for Japanese food. I think my favorite thing was the "Phudon", which was udon with kobe beef and foie gras in it. Not a big fan of foie generally but it added great flavor to the broth.

Karaoke was nice and relaxing with only seven; we stayed five hours and had all pretty much lost our voices at 3am so we didn't stay until closing. Good times.

singing while eating

A friend recently discovered a Japanese restaurant called Ninkimono in Newark which has private karaoke rooms. They allow you to order food and drink in the rooms, so you can sing and eat at the same time. This works pretty well most of the time (people who aren't singing can eat, so they're not bored) but not so well when you have a mouthful of sushi and your song comes up.

Anyway, we had a pretty good time there on a rainy Sunday night, although the song selection is not as good as Gamba (I guess no one's is). I also realized again (for the first time since...maybe college?) that I am not a fan of sake bombs. I mean, why spoil perfectly good sake?

maybe babies can have lives too

Chalk up another couple points in the "having a kid doesn't end your life" column.

Last weekend, some friends of mine took their 4-week-old daughter to LA to attend a wedding. Apparently the trip went fine, plane ride and all. I guess babies that young don't have the lungs to scream very loudly anyway.

On Sunday, some other friends brought their 14-month-old son to a birthday party which consisted of brunch at the Original Pancake House (which is yummy but has not the fastest service) followed by several hours of karaoke at Gamba. Then, a couple hours later, they (and lots of other people) came over to my house to watch the (tape-delayed) men's basketball gold medal game, and didn't go home until after ten.

If I ever have a kid, I'll have to remember to be that kind of parent, instead of the sit-at-home-forevermore kind of parent.

assorted doings

Driving home from work today, I realized that it's starting to get dark earlier. I'm not sure how summer went by so fast. Sigh. I don't even like summer usually, but it's been quite pleasant and not very hot at all this year.

Last week I went to yet another company offsite, this time at Great America. The rides and shows were fun, but the highlight of my two hour stay was getting to eat a big cup of soft strawberry lemonade. Why don't they sell the stuff outside of amusement parks, I wonder?

Over the weekend a bunch of alumni from my college dorm descended on the Bay Area for a reunion of sorts. I was busy for most of Saturday but joined them Friday night for dinner at Walzwerk, a German restaurant in the Mission. I'm sure it was authentic and all but I think I'm just not that fond of German food and/or beer, both of which were present in large quantities. In fact, I distinctly remember not liking Germany because of the food, even compared to Austria or Switzerland. Anyway, it was fun to see everyone, and afterwards we headed to Festa, a teeny karaoke lounge in Japantown. I drank very little (maybe two drinks) since I expected to be drinking much more on Saturday night, so I didn't end up onstage, but some of our party did, and seemed to have a good time.

Saturday night I headed up to the city again, this time for a bachelorette party. We met up at the Fairmont (where the girls who were crashing in the city had gotten upgraded to a pretty nice suite), and hung out there for a bit before embarking on a club tour with Three Babes and a Bus. The original plan was to hit Gravity, Roe, and then Suite One8One, but we had to ditch Roe after an episode where we nearly lost the bride-to-be and got off-schedule. Seven drinks and six hours later, my designated driver took me home, where I think I managed four bottles of water before heading to bed. Apparently that was enough, since I successfully made it to basketball practice the next day at noon.

I guess my strategy for coping with the end of summer is to cram in more fun before it's over. Anyone for another BBQ?

should schedule downtime?

I think I may need to schedule more downtime on weekends. Otherwise, I'm inevitably falling asleep by mid-afternoon on Mondays. It's just so hard for me to say no to fun things.

Last weekend was a really good mix of events. Friday night was the annual Oakland A's luxury box outing. It's always fun chilling in a box, but this was actually a good game, too; it ran into 11 innings before the A's pulled it out with a walkoff double by Suzuki, who was 4-5 with a homer and 5 RBIs overall. The guys in the neighboring suites were really drunk and pretty entertaining, too.

Saturday was pretty chill during the day (bunch of errands plus yummy Chinese breakfast at China Bee, in downtown San Mateo). After dinner, we headed to a going-away party at Music Tunnel. It seems like we end up there about once every quarter, even though it's at least 45 minutes away. This time, because we had 15 people, we got the "Super VIP" room, where we stayed for five-and-a-half hours; slightly longer than usual.

I was in bed by 4am on Saturday but still didn't get up until nearly 11:30am the next morning, making me ten minutes late for basketball practice. From there it was a mad dash to get showered and changed for a 1-year-old's birthday party. I'm not sure if he understood that it was his birthday or not, but the rest of us had a great time, eating lots of yummy BBQ and homemade dessert, and then playing a couple games of Mafia.

So if I were really trying to do this whole downtime thing properly, I would have to figure out which of the following events to turn down for next weekend: a poolside BBQ Friday night at a coworker's gorgeous place in Atherton (they have a pool house the size of a small apartment), a going-away party later that night at a San Francisco lounge I've been wanting to check out all year, or a Sunday afternoon birthday party for a friend I haven't seen in forever. (Saturday is untouchable; I'm going to an amazing Japanese restaurant in the city, and then hosting a casino night birthday party in the evening. I've already decided to ditch a matinee showing of Wall-E.) What to do, what to do...

TP on a tray

Yesterday night, we were at Partyworld again, and we ran out of toilet paper. (In Asia, pretty much every KTV room has it's own private bathroom.) We rang the service phone, and two minutes later, a server arrived, carrying a roll of TP on a tray, waitress-style. We were quite amused. Then again, we'd been drinking Suntory.

fun birthday

My birthday party this year was a tripleheader, starting at 3pm and ending at 2am.

We started at the Scharffen Berger factory, where we had an hour-long private tour, during which we tasted three kinds of chocolate: the 70% bittersweet, the 62% semisweet, and the 41% milk chocolate. After we ended the tour (in the gift shop, naturally), we tasted two others: the 82% extra dark and the milk chocolate nibby. Apparently a "nib" is a cacao bean which has been roasted and peeled but not yet crushed. I found them yummy, but some people didn't like that they weren't sweet at all. I also managed to try smaller samples of the milk almond (41% with sea salted almonds), the 99% unsweetened chocolate, the limited edition (75% Antilles), and the 62% mocha, as well as the zante currents (chocolate-covered champagne grapes). In the end, my favorites were the limited edition and the nibby bar.

After selecting a few bars to take home for later, we headed next door to Cafe Cacao for more chocolate. I had a slice of the famous tribute cake, as well as a bite of the raspberry truffle cake, and some espresso, to wash it all down. I much preferred the tribute cake, which was barely sweet at all; it was pure chocolate-y goodness.

Immediately after chocolate came sushi, at East Bay favorite Sushi House. Somewhere between Berkeley and Alameda, I started to feel a bit lightheaded, probably from the huge overdose of chocolate and sugar. Luckily, once I got some sushi in my stomach, I was fine, except that I wasn't able to have my usual tempura ice cream for dessert.

Finally, a bunch of us finished up the evening at Music Tunnel, where the hard-core among us ended up staying until 2am again, before making our way home. It was a very fun day.

still sleepy

It's Monday morning, and I'm still a bit sleepy from having stayed at Music Tunnel until 3am on Saturday night. Yes, that was two nights ago. Sigh.

On the bright side, I finally got to try the Peking duck at Great China, and it was as yummy as advertised.

Chou time

It's been a very Jay Chou-centric weekend.

The original plan for Friday was to see Curse of the Golden Flower at the AMC Mercado, but when the movie showtimes came out for this week, we discovered that Golden Flower had been yanked already. The next closest showing (in both time and place) was the 10:45pm showing the the Metreon.

So, Friday after work, a bunch of us headed up to the city, got some tapas at Thirsty Bear, tried to get dessert at Beard Papa's only to discover that they'd closed at 8pm, and snuck some Just Desserts into the theatre instead.

I had pretty low expectations going in, since Golden Flower had gotten some bad reviews and was being yanked so quickly, so I actually enjoyed the movie quite a bit. The visuals were stunning, and the acting wasn't bad (it's nice seeing Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat speaking Chinese instead of English). Of course, my roommate most enjoyed watching Jay Chou in his role as Prince Jai.

For dinner on Saturday, we'd planned a group outing to Sushi House in Alameda. I'd never heard so many recommendations for the same restaurant from so many different people before, so we had to try it. The rolls were yummy and the portion sizes were super generous, but it was the tempura ice cream that I liked the best; it was huge, well made, with a cake-y batter, and had raspberry sauce on the side (which sounds strange, but was delicious).

Since we were already in the East Bay, we then headed over to Music Tunnel in Richmond, which is likely, after all these years, still the best KTV in the Bay Area. Usually when I go to karaoke, we sing mostly English songs, because most people don't read other languages very well, but this time, I had invited my cousin to join us, and she's fluent in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese. As a result, we not only sang more Chinese songs than ever before (including at least ten Jay Chou songs), but we actually had some Japanese songs on the program as well.