end of summer

Summer must be ending, because all of a sudden everyone wants to BBQ. This past weekend, I went to a coworker's BBQ in Atherton on Friday night, hosted a party of my own on Saturday, went to another coworker's BBQ in San Mateo Sunday at noon, and then a birthday party in Golden Gate Park on Sunday afternoon. I've already turned down two more BBQ/party invites for next weekend, since I'm going to be out of town.

new games = sleep deprivation

We ordered some new board games a few weeks ago, to go with the original set that we bought almost two years previously.

Up until last year, our favorites were Settlers (+ both expansions), Puerto Rico (+ expansion), Carcassonne (+ expansions & variations), and Ticket to Ride (usually Europe).

Recently, we've been playing a lot of Goa and Power Grid, so we ordered those two, plus Caylus, Thebes (brand-new in 2007) and A Game of Thrones (being the George R. R. Martin fan that I am, I couldn't pass it up).

Yesterday, we opened the new games for the first time, and inaugurated them by playing a 4.5 hour game of Caylus. Granted, three of the players had never played before, and the other two had only played a few times before, but it was still a long game. Amazingly, it didn't start to feel long until sometime well after midnight, when I realized I was losing and I would have to drive twenty minutes to get home afterwards. I ended up getting home at 2am, which meant about 5.5 hours of sleep, but I think it was worth it. It's a good thing today is Friday, though.

good cheese today

Today at lunch I had three cheeses, and I liked all of them, probably because they were all soft cheeses. I'm going to write them down for future reference, because I always forget names.

The first was a Saint Andre. The consistency was something like Camembert or Brie, but the flavor was stronger. That was followed by a super creamy Brillat Savarin, which was just sour enough to be interesting, and then my favorite of the three, a delicious La Tur, which was slightly harder and had a very nice rind.

Other cheeses I'm afraid I'll forget: Last week I had a Fontal which I liked quite a bit (apparently it's a French Fontina), and some months ago I went and ate three servings of an Époisses de Bourgogne, each served in an Asian soup spoon with a dab of honey. Yum.

highly recommended

Going from expensive yummy food to cheap yummy food...

Once in awhile there's a restaurant that I start to hear about from lots of disjoint sources. For example, Sushi House was recommended to me by three separate people who I'm pretty sure have never met. The first is a friend who I've known for almost 10 years now, who lives in Milpitas, but will drive to Alameda with her husband specifically to eat there. The second is a classmate from MIT, who discovered Sushi House while doing graduate research at Berkeley. The last is a friend that I met recently, who I play board games with; he did his undergrad at Berkeley, and used to eat there while in school. I think I've previously written about it, but as it turned out, I did enjoy Sushi House very much, and have been back a couple of times.

More recently, I started to hear a lot about Layang Layang, in San Jose. The same MIT friend who recommended Sushi House said it was his new favorite Malaysian restaurant, and another person mentioned it in passing, but the clincher was when a friend who grew up in Malaysia claimed it was the best Malaysian food he'd had in the area. Yesterday, we finally made our way down there to try it out, and it was very good indeed.

My favorite dishes were the Sarang Burung, which is a seafood dish that comes served in a fried taro nest, and the Princess Tofu (I do have a weakness for good tofu). I also quite enjoyed the "ABC" dessert, which is a shaved ice dish with a lot of goodies inside: red bean, sweet corn, grass jelly, and some other kind of green jelly. Plus, we ate until we were stuffed, and paid about $15 per person. Bonus!

steak & sushi

We just got back from Alexander's Steakhouse, and I have to say, outside of French Laundry, it was the best food experience that I've had so far this year. Japanese-inspired appetizers, excellent steak, creative and delicious desserts, what more can a diner ask for?

Since we were celebrating a birthday, the waiter started out by bringing out complimentary Spanish sparkling wine, which was sweet and fizzy, just the way I like it. Next was a lobster, corn, and daikon amuse, followed by the three appetizers that we had ordered. The tuna tataki was fine, but not especially worth mentioning. The other two small plates were amazing; there was a king crab with some kind of chili mustard sauce, and a shrimp "kuruma". My favorite was the shrimp dish, and although the shrimp got top billing, what I really liked was the yuzu, tomato, and cilantro salsa accompaniment.

tuna:


crab:


shrimp:


For my entree, I had a dry-aged New York steak. I normally order filet mignon rather than New York steak, since I like my beef tender, but the waiter convinced me that the dry aging process would make the steak tender regardless. He was right. The meat was done perfectly; real medium rare, with just the right amount of fat, and not hard at all, except maybe a tiny bit around the edges.

steak:


For dessert, the four of us shared a chocolate souffle, as well as a trio of dessert tapas: the "Pink Flamingo" (strawberry mousse, raspberry(?) sauce, and lemon chiffon), Kaffir lime brulee, and homemade "S'mores". At first, the waiter made a mistake and accidentally brought us a "Yin-Yang" instead of the S'mores (white and dark chocolate cheesecake with raspberry coulis) so he gave us that one on the house. Ironically, I liked the cheesecake best of all the desserts, except maybe the souffle. We were also treated to green apple cotton candy for everyone, and a small chocolate cake for the birthday boy, on the house.

souffle:


trio of desserts:


S'mores & cotton candy:


It was a very satisfying meal; the service was friendly and unobtrusive, the appetizers and desserts were creative and generally well-executed, and the steak was the best I've had in a long time. Although I usually prefer to try new restaurants rather than going to the same ones again, I will definitely returning to Alexander's. Maybe I'll bring my parents; I have a feeling they'd love it.

steak display cases:

reading

I was talking someone recently about reading. He was saying how he never used to read much before, but then in college he had to read a lot, and so now he feels comfortable reading, and even does so in his spare time.

This was a totally foreign concept to me. I've been reading for almost my entire life, so I don't remember ever not being comfortable reading (unless it's in Chinese). My parents taught me and each of my siblings to read when we were about five, but for some reason, while my brother never read for fun, my sister and I were soon devouring every printed material in sight. As a kid, I would read under the covers by flashlight after I was supposed to be asleep, and I would walk up and down stairs while holding a book. At the breakfast table, I would read the nutrition information on the cereal box because I didn't have a book with me.

These days, I'll read Popular Mechanic because I'm stuck in a car rental waiting room, or Sassy because I'm at the hair salon, because it's better to be reading something than nothing. When I get off of airplanes, I snag the discarded magazines that other passengers have left behind. Strange, I know.

milestone

Today, I checked in a pretty big changelist. It felt like I had been working on it forever, so I looked at a calendar, and it has indeed been a month and three days since I first started to work on this change.

A rough breakdown:
- 1-2 days figuring out initial approach
- 3-4 days iterating on approach
- over a week coding up a mostly working but slow version
- 1-2 days reverting some changes to make it slightly faster
- 3-4 days writing a separate changelist which would help my original changelist's performance
- another week or so of further performance improvements
- 3-4 days of addressing code review comments
- 1 day of wrestling with the build, getting all the unit tests working, and manual testing

That brings me up to today, when I checked in my changelist, just a few hours ago. It's possible my changelist will cause lots of bugs and wreak havoc on our build, but it's still a relief to have it checked in.

Wyclef visit

I was excited when I heard last week that Wyclef would be visiting at work and was going to talk, introduce his new CD, and even perform a bit. I'd been a fan of the Fugees (a long time ago), and even went to a Lauryn Hill concert one summer at Jones Beach.

Anyway, I put the visit on my calendar, but as usual, when the time came around, I was swamped and felt like I couldn't leave my desk. I finally dragged myself over to the cafe about 20 minutes late, and I'm really glad I did.

Wyclef was funny; kidding around with the sound guy and challenging a random employee to a push-up contest (the other guy started doing clap pushups so Wyclef did one-armed pushups). He was interesting; he talked about collaborating with other artists and played some clips from his new CD. Most of all, he was entertaining; he played several acoustical pieces, and followed that up by freestyling for a good 10 minutes or so.

I don't buy a lot of CDs these days, but now I'm tempted to buy one.

living in luxury (boxes)

Last week, some friends invited me to join them in their ultra-discounted luxury box at the A's vs Angels game.

I'm not a particularly huge baseball fan; I usually go to games at most 3-4 times a year. But, the luxury box experience isn't exactly the same as sitting in a normal seat, where you run the risk of getting beer spilled on you or getting sunburned. In fact, I didn't hesitate for a second; I'd sat in a luxury box once before (at a Raiders game, also at the Oakland Coliseum) and remembered the bank of TVs, with access to all other concurrent games, the large sitting room area, and the stats printouts that the concierge brought after every quarter.

We didn't get the printouts (maybe they were just for football?) but the space was even nicer than I remembered; I'd forgotten about the in-suite bathroom and full kitchen, which turned out to be useful for pouring margaritas and sharing junk food. The game was pretty good too; close up until the eighth, when the A's broke things wide open with a five-run rally. Vlad hit two home runs, which made several fantasy baseball players in our box very happy, and we got to see Huston Street coming back from his injury (he pitched the seventh).

Here's the view from our box into the next box:


Here's someone in our group mistaking the TV for a touchscreen:


Here's a shot of us hanging out in the sitting area: