everything online

Sometimes it's a little scary how much information is online.

Recently I discovered PropertyShark, which lets registered users enter addresses to look up property owners, sale prices, tax information, title documents, and sometimes even loan details.

That's even more data than Zillow, which just provides the sales and tax information, as well as a ballpark valuation.

On the rental side, Rentometer aggregates rental prices by location to determine roughly what constitutes a reasonable rate for a particular address.

More depressingly, there's also family watchdog, which maps registered sex offenders near a given address.

upset!

The Warriors played the Mavericks tonight in Game 6 of the first round of the playoffs. Going into the game, the eighth-seeded Warriors were leading the first-seeded Mavericks 3-2 in the series, and they won big tonight, 111-86, to close out probably the biggest upset in NBA history. It was, in fact, a historic upset; no eighth seed has ever upset a first seed in a seven-game series before.

I'm really glad that the entire country got to see this team play on national television. Things were looking pretty bleak for the Warriors back in early February; we were in Vegas around then and the line for the Warriors to win the championship was something like 80:1. The Indiana trade had just happened, but Harrington and Jackson hadn't quite adjusted to Nelson's system yet, and then Davis and Richardson got injured, and it seemed like the Warriors were in for yet another losing season. Then, everyone got healthy, the new lineup started to click, and the team started to play the way they're playing now; high-octane small ball, fueled with almost too much emotion (those technicals could have been much worse), with players hustling for every loose ball, and scoring tons of points on crazy fast breaks. They ended on a 9-of-10 tear to wrench the final playoff spot away from the Clippers on the last day of the season.

It's funny, when the Warriors started their first playoff series in thirteen years, the commentators were pronouncing their names wrong (it's Mick-KAEL, and BEE-drinzh), and calling them "pesky" on defense. But, they're a fun team to watch, and I think a lot of basketball fans all over the country were won over by the Warriors' exciting style of play (they're like, the poor man's Suns!), plus the whole Cinderella-underdog setup. Honestly, sometimes when they go on the fast break, it's so pretty I want to laugh and cry at the same time. Then again, sometimes they try to get too clever and turn the ball over instead. Didn't happen tonight.

A lot has been said during this series about the fans at the Oakland Coliseum, or as they call it now, Oracle Arena. I only went to one or two games back in the 80's and 90's, so I don't remember what the atmosphere was like then, but in the last six years since I moved back to the Bay Area, I've been going to a couple of games a year. Up until recently, I never thought the Warriors' home court advantage was all that great. In fact, I distinctly remember several games when the fans booed the Warriors, and started streaming out towards the parking lot during the third quarter. I guess that's what happens when the home team sucks for years on end.

Well, that's definitely changed by now; I think things started to turn around when Baron Davis joined the team. During the last two years, Oakland fans have showed a lot of support, even while the team missed the playoffs last year and barely made it this year. And now, with the team playing so well in the playoffs against the top-ranked Mavericks, the fans have upped the noise to another level. My roommate and her boyfriend have season tickets, and they've seen several good wins at the Arena this season, but it wasn't until after Game 4 (an instant classic, I think) that they decided to bring earplugs to future games. Apparently the crowd noise now borders on painful. Those of us who were watching from home today were amused when TNT kept adjusting the sound settings on the broadcast every time the Warriors made a shot. That was some pretty amazing fan support, right there.

I can't talk about sports these days without mentioning the Sports Guy, so here are some of his words on the subject, from earlier today:

These things don't happen at Warriors and Knicks games because they're the only two places left with old-school fans, fans who have been coming to games for 30-40 years, fans of all colors, fans who genuinely understand basketball and every nuance that comes with it. They don't need a giant video screen to help them out; hell, they don't want the giant video screen to help them out. These are the fans who recognize a beautiful pass as it's happening, not after it happens, simply because they love basketball and see the same angles players see. These are the fans who instinctively understand stuff like, "Mickael Pietrus just threw down a ridiculous putback; I'm going to stand and keep cheering for an extra 30 seconds because he's a young kid and we need to keep pumping him up so he'll do it again."

[...]

As for Warriors fans, it's a little more simple: They play in Oakland and have the most eclectic mix of fans in the league, so their home games have a different feel, almost like an upscale version of Rucker Park. Earlier this year, my wife and I were trying to determine whether we wanted to leave L.A. and live somewhere else for a few years (just to mix things up), and during the course of the discussions, she brought up the Bay Area. Well, you know why I couldn't live there? Because of the Warriors. If we moved there, I'd end up purchasing Warriors season tickets; inevitably I would be compromised by those unique crowds, placing me in a precarious sports bigamy predicament since I'm utterly and completely disgusted by the Celtics' front office and ownership right now. It would be like a guy who hates his wife hiring the hottest 20-year-old Danish au pair on the planet. Just a bad idea all the way around.

What does this have to do with Game 6 of the Warriors-Mavs series tonight? In the words of Russell Hammond, everything. I don't believe the 2007 Dallas Mavericks have the collective heart to prevail in Oakland, not with the Warriors' fans smelling blood and providing one of the all-time electric/rabid/emotional/crazed atmospheres in recent sports history. As good as they were in Game 3 and Game 4, the fans will be better tonight. They will rise to the occasion. They will. I am convinced. They have been waiting for a night like this for 30 long years. Literally.

yay Amazon!

A few weeks ago, I ordered a set of 100 slim-line jewel cases from Amazon, to go with my 100 count spindle of blank DVDs. It came within a few days, as always, but I soon discovered that out of the 100 cases, 14 were cracked. I called up Amazon's customer support line (1-800-201-7575, not listed on their website but easy to find using Google) and the customer support representative fixed everything. First, she put in a replacement order, which would arrive within a week. Then, she walked me through the steps to get a label for free shipping on the return package. I had the new tracking number within a day. Today I received the new cases, wrapped in two extra layers of padding, and indeed, it appears that all 100 are intact.

This is why I buy things from Amazon. I hardly ever have problems, but when I do, they are resolved quickly and effortlessly. When I used to live in Central Square in Cambridge (7 years ago!) I once ordered some books from Amazon which were supposed to have been delivered to my doorstep, but I never got them. Someone probably saw a package and swiped it (I'm sure he/she was thrilled to discover textbooks inside). Anyway, I called up Amazon, and within a day they had sent out a replacement package.

Recently, I've taken to buying things like refrigerator water filters and vacuum cleaner supplies from Amazon. It's just not worth it to research and call up multiple stores looking for the exact part that I need, and then have to drive there (with gas prices so high!) to pick it up; I just pay the $5 shipping and save myself time and hassle instead.

The Other Boleyn Girl

Even though I'm a pretty big fan of historical fiction, I didn't get around to reading Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl until sometime last year. I quite enjoyed the premise and the fresh viewpoint, if not always the writing.

Just this week, I found out that BBC Films has already finished shooting the movie version, starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn and Scarlett Johansson as the titular Mary Boleyn. Yet another reason to get Netflix.

maze trouble

Looking at these photos of the broken sections of the MacArthur maze this morning, I had flashbacks of watching the news after the Loma Prieta quake. This particular photo even recalls the Bay Bridge collapse, a little.


I wonder if it's possible to avoid going to the East Bay for the next few months; I'm sure both 580 and 880 traffic is going to be even more horrible than usual.

Olympic politics

I've refrained from commenting on the Taiwan Olympic torch controversy until now, but I thought this map was pretty revealing (then again, I'm heavily biased):


China claims that it's not trying to be political about the torch route, but if so, just looking at the map, wouldn't it make more sense geographically for the torch to pass from North Korea to Taiwan to Vietnam, and then to Hong Kong, rather than going to Vietnam first, and then backtracking to Taiwan?

done with April weddings

Yesterday was the last of the weddings for this month. After two weeks of out-of-towners, I was glad this one was local, and involved no rental cars, hotels, or airplanes.

Some thoughts on weddings after this last batch:

- After going to so many weddings, certain things seem to look and sound familiar. For instance, I'm not a Christian, but I can practically recite that verse from the Corinthians by now, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." Okay, I lied, I forget the rest. Not bad, though?

- I'm not sure why, but sometime during the 90's, it became standard bridal attire to wear a strapless wedding dress. This style looks great on slender women with good shoulders and toned arms who don't slouch, and is not super flattering otherwise. I really am curious as to how this look became de rigeur.

- Wedding cakes seem to come in two varieties: those that look good, and those that taste good. Heavily decorated cakes tend to have too much sugary frosting that weighs down the cake itself. The best wedding cake I ever had was at a wedding in Seattle last year; the bride's med school friend baked three scrumptious cakes, one carrot, one lemon, and one chocolate. Unfortunately I only got to try the first two, since the chocolate one ran out so fast.

- I'm not a big fan of tradition, myself, so perhaps this complaint is unique to me, but I feel a lot of wedding receptions go through a laundry list of "must-do" items. There's the introduction of the wedding party, the first dance, the father-daughter and mother-son dances (I always feel like the mother of the bride and the father of the groom are getting ripped off), the speeches, the cake cutting, the bouquet/garter toss (always awkward since no one ever wants to catch it), etc. I don't include the table toasts in this list because that's the only activity that actually involves the bride and groom getting to spend time with their friends and family.

- Wedding DJs tend to be really loud and really perky. No further comment.

I realized I'm making it sound like I hated all the weddings, which is totally untrue. So, here are a couple of the highlights from this month's weddings:

- I do think it's pretty risky to plan an outdoor ceremony in April, but things worked out okay for both outdoor weddings, so there was some gorgeous scenery. One venue even provided cute Japanese umbrellas for the guests to ward off the few sprinkles.

Greystone Park, Beverly Hills	The Bridges Golf Club, San Ramon

- For one of the bridal showers, we had afternoon tea in a private room at the Beverly Hills Peninsula. Although the food was not as impressive as the Hong Kong Peninsula (to be expected, I suppose), the decor and the service was amazing.


- One of the slideshows that we saw was extremely professional-looking; it used off-center zoom transitions between photos, and had a "scrapbook" sequence with framed images. Later I discovered the groomsman who put it together works at Shutterfly.

- One of the receptions was on the 48th floor of a high-rise in downtown Dallas, which made for great views. (I'm told the glowing ball on a stick is called Reunion Tower.)

Dallas by day	Dallas by night

- At the end of the Dallas reception, the guests were given 3-foot-long sparklers, to help "send off" the bride and groom. This may have been a bit dangerous, given the preceding four hours of open bar, but it appealed to the pyro in me.


- The cake from yesterday's reception, was one of the prettiest wedding cakes I've seen:


Also, one great thing about going to so many weddings is that I never lack for fresh flowers. Currently I have one centerpiece on my dining table and two small decorative bouquets in my living room. Those should last me until mid-May, which is when I'm off to the next wedding, this time in rural Minnesota.

studies confirm yet again...

I try to keep an open mind towards religious conservatives (like I said, I try), but sometimes I just don't think there are really two sides to a debate.

For instance, when it comes to abstinence-only education vs comprehensive sex ed, the evidence against abstinence-only seems too overwhelming to deny. What part of it doesn't work don't these people understand?

Here is the telling statistic in this latest study:
In the Mathematica survey, which was released by sex education activists after the health department sat on it, the mean age at which the control group, that had been taught about contraception, lost their virginity was 14.9 years. That seems strikingly low, until you look at the mean age of first sexual experience for the abstinence control group - 14.9 years.

It's all well and good to theorize that promoting abstinence will reduce sexual activity among teens, but it's been tried and done, and the facts don't support the theory. At this point, wouldn't it make sense to stop pouring money into an effort which is yielding zero results?

chili overload

We had a chili cookoff at work yesterday, and one of my coworkers signed me up to judge (along with the rest of our team). There were five categories, and each category had somewhere between 7 and 15 entries. I volunteered for the "Traditional Meat Chili" category, and ended up having 3-5 bites of 15 types of chili. That may not sound like a lot of food, but trust me, it is.

In the end, I voted for two entries. The first was a beef brisket-based entry which had a perfect degree of spiciness, nice tender chunks of beef, and a good variety of vegetables and beans. My only complaint was that there was a bit too much grease, making the chili slightly more watery than ideally. The second (surprisingly) relied on ground turkey and ground chuck, and was lighter than a standard chili, but had good flavor and texture. It was slightly less spicy than I would have liked, and I think it would have been even better with added beef, but overall I was impressed.

There was one other entry that I liked best for pure flavor, but it was a little hard to call it chili; it was more like tender chunks of steak with sauce on top. If I had to choose a dish to eat for dinner, though, that would have been it.

After I finished judging my category, I was only able to eat one additional sample, which was a duck chili, with bits of corn and duck cracklings in it. Maybe I was sick of beef by that time, but I think I enjoyed that last chili most of all. Then, I was unable to eat another thing until six or seven hours later, when I had a bunch of grapes before going to bed.

another awesome Sports Guy article

I love this guy. Reading one of his longer articles is like biting into a nice juicy steak sandwich. That particular comparison probably makes sense to no one but me.

My favorite bits from his most recent article, The NBA, from LVP to MVP:

401. Eric Snow
Every time I complain about the Celtics in a column, I get a few counter-responses from Cleveland fans (independently of one another) that specifically mention the agony of rooting for a superstar-led playoff team that plays Eric Snow 25 minutes a night. In a weird way, they say it's worse than rooting for a bad team. Look, I'm with you guys ... if my life were at stake and I had to pick any NBA player to miss a 20-footer that he was trying to make, or else I'd be killed, I'd pick Eric Snow and rejoice as he bricked a set shot off the side of the rim. But at least you get to watch LeBron. Come on.

I know one particular person who, whenever his team plays Boston, is always calling for Snow to get the ball. It's exactly the same sentiment.

287. Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy (tie)
The lesson, as always: Anytime you're considering a six-player NBA trade in which you end up with both overpaid white guys in the deal ... you might want to rethink that baby.

Here in the Bay Area, we could not have been happier about this trade. I'm talking the day it was announced. I am normally very skeptical about trades, and in fantasy sports I pretty much never pull the trigger because I'm afraid I'll regret it, but in this case I felt nothing but optimism when Dunleavy and Murphy went on their way. Now, the Warriors are one game away from the playoffs. I'm still too scarred by the past 15 years to call myself a Warrior fan, though.

And, on the other side of said trade...

69. Stephen Jackson
Gave us a little bit of everything: He had the best off-court incident (allegedly getting hit by a car outside of a strip joint, then firing gunshots in the air); he has a legal trial that starts May 10 and could coincide with the second round of the playoffs if Golden State upsets Dallas (not out of the question); he caused the fading Pacers to make one of the worst deals of the decade because they were so desperate to dump him; he turned his career around by embracing NellieBall, even giving point guard a whirl for a few games (now that was a sight); and if that's not enough, the fact that he's living in Oakland doubles as the most dangerous running subplot in sports right now that doesn't involve Pacman Jones. I haven't been this excited since Tupac got out of jail.

15. Amare Stoudemire
The guy who created microfracture surgery is rejoicing right now.

I'm not sure I like the Suns as a team (my roommate has it in for Raja Bell and it's hard to cheer for them when she's yelling "You suck Raja!" every five minutes) but I do like watching Amare play. It's great to see him back.

D. Wade: Takes an Iversonian punishment every game, only he's not a freak of nature like Iverson was/is. If Wade doesn't start picking his spots, he'll go Earl Campbell on us and be gone from the league by 2011. This would be bad. This summer, Wade might need to take summer courses from LeBron ("The Art of Mailing In Half The Season") and Carter ("How to Spend Entire Games Pretending to Drive But Settling for 20-foot Jumpers").

I think Wade may be my favorite NBA player. He just seems like a good guy, not to mention that whole being awesomely good thing.

4. Tracy McGrady
The lost MVP candidate this season. Lemme know if any of these tidbits interest you:

A. The Rockets were 50-21 when he played this season and 2-8 without him.

B. When Yao went down for 32 games with a fractured kneecap, T-Mac carried the team to a 20-12 record and boosted his stats to a 29-6-6 for that stretch.

C. Other than Yao, his best teammates were Shane Battier, Luther Head, Rafer Alston, Chuck Hayes, Juwan Howard, Dikembe Mutombo and Yugoslavian gunner Turdo Sandowicz.

D. On a personal note, I don't trust basketball stats beyond a certain level because they can't interpret somebody's general impact on a game. Tim Duncan averages a 20-10 every night with two blocks ... does that measure everything he does for the Spurs? Of course not. Along those same lines, T-Mac and his cousin finished this season with almost identical numbers (a 25-5-6 for T-Mac, a 25-6-5 for V.C.), but unless you watched the games, you wouldn't know that Vince happens to be a streaky offensive player, a moody teammate and a defensive liability, and T-Mac happens to be a great teammate and superb all-around player who only goes for his numbers when absolutely necessary (like when he recently bumped his numbers to push Houston into the fourth seed).

If you asked 100 NBA players who they'd rather play with between Kobe, Vince, Arenas and T-Mac ... T-Mac would win the vote in a landslide. You win with Tracy McGrady. Wasn't always the case, but it's the case now. He's a true superstar. Now he needs to prove this in the playoffs. Please.

The Rockets being my adopted team, I can only hope Bill Simmons is right about T-Mac. Down with the Jazz!

heroism

I just read this in an AP article regarding the Virginia Tech shootings:

Liviu Librescu survived the Nazi Holocaust. He died trying to keep a gunman from shooting his students in a killing spree at Virginia Tech — a heroic feat later recounted in e-mails from students to his wife.

Librescu, an aeronautics engineer and teacher at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday's massacre, which coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Apparently Prof. Librescu's act allowed several students to jump out of a window, thus avoiding the gunman. That's just so tragically heroic, that I don't even know what to say.

a few hours in the woods

One of the things I love most about the Bay Area is how we have the best of both urban living and natural beauty, all within easy driving distance. We can easily drive up to Tahoe or down to Yosemite for a weekend, there are myriad overnight camping possibilities, and the beautiful Pacific coastline is a half hour away.

After dining at French Laundry and spending the night in Marin, we got up bright and early, grabbed a quick breakfast, and drove out to Muir Woods.

We spent a few hours wandering the trails and snapping photos, and were crossing the city by noon-ish, pausing briefly to buy fresh fish for a sushi-making party later that afternoon. How amazingly convenient is that?

French Laundry play-by-play

Since I had the reservation, and I managed to find other people who were willing to spend the money, I ended up going to French Laundry after all.

In order to make sure that I would be able to consume the full nine courses, I ate a suitably large but light dinner the night before (theory: stretch the stomach) and then subsisted on cereal and yogurt on the day of the meal (theory: only eat quickly digestible foods). By 7:30pm, I was suitably hungry, but not starving, which was exactly what I wanted.

The front of the restaurant is pretty understated. In fact, we missed it entirely the first time we drove by, and had to U-turn back.


There is a cute little courtyard with a garden outside the door, and as soon as we arrived, we were promptly seated, even though we were fifteen minutes early.

Disclaimer: I usually take photos of food with flash, but we were seated in a very cozy back room with only two other tables, and I felt a little bad disturbing the other patrons, so I went without flash, which is why these photos are a little dim.

We started with Gruyère Cheese Gougères, which are like super-light cheese puffs.


Next, we were treated to tiny cones of salmon tartar. This was one of my four favorite dishes during the meal. (By the way, the much longer, official name for these? Black Sesame Cornets of Atlantic Salmon Tartar with Red Onion Crème Fraiche.)


After those few scrumptious bites, we started on the official menu, with the famous Oysters and Pearls. The pearls referred to both the warm tapioca inside the pudding, as well as the caviar. I really enjoyed how the textures of the two types of "pearls" were so similar but the tastes were completely different. This was another of my four favorites.


Next up, a mushroom salad. I wasn't that impressed by this one. Maybe I just don't like Honshimeiji mushrooms? I've never had them before.


I don't know what a Salade Nicoise normally looks like, but this particular salad was gorgeous to look at and delicious to eat. I normally hate artichoke, but I ate the artichokes in this dish. This was the third of my four favorites.


At this point the waiter started to serve bread. Over the next three courses, I managed to taste six different types of bread, but I've forgotten what kinds they all were. One was a mini-baguette, and one was an Italian bread that was particularly good.

I love both crab and lobster, and they taste especially good to me if they're prepared so I don't have to extract them from the shell myself. Here's the last of my four favorite dishes; three small bites of lobster dressed with potato and asparagus. I wasn't able to bring myself to eat the asparagus, though.


The meat courses were a fatty pork dish which had an almost Chinese flavor, and a lamb rib-eye. Both were good but not among my favorites.



The dessert courses began with a cheese dish. Interestingly, the cheese was presented together with the accompaniments (leeks and onions), rather than as on a traditional cheese board. I wasn't especially blown away by the cheeses themselves, though.


Next was the palate cleanser, a raspberry sherbet. I particularly liked the dish on which the sherbet was served.


There were two desserts. I had the white chocolate mousse, which had a hint of green tea flavor, and came with an intensely tart passion fruit jelly. I love sour foods, so I liked the jelly even more than the mousse, but I think it was a little too sour for some people. The other was baked Alaska; I tried a small bite, and decided I liked my own dessert better.



We were then treated to one of two additional desserts not on the menu. I had the Tahitian vanilla crème brulee, and also sampled a spoonful of the Meyer lemon pot de creme.



The menu mentioned "mignardises" but I wasn't sure whether to expect anything more, so when the waiter showed up with chocolate caramel macadamia nuts, I had three of them, to go with my coffee.


This was somewhat unfortunate, because he then came back with some orange-y, tuile-like crisps and a tray full of chocolates. Since I had just had three macadamia nuts, I limited myself to only six chocolates.



Here's a photo of the complete official menu, although it doesn't have any of the amuses or post dessert treats on it.



Apparently the waiter was impressed we were able to eat everything. I did notice the two tables behind us packing away most of their desserts, but I thought that was because they were both parties of older customers.

Anyway, I went home with a copy of said menu, the rest of the macadamia nuts, and an additional parting gift; a package of four small shortbread biscuits that I ended up eating for breakfast for the next two days. Yum.

uh oh

Best Buy, a company that I hate, has bought Speakeasy, the ISP that I use and love. This can't be good.

junk food weekend

Went to a birthday party on Saturday night, at Triple Rock in Berkeley. I'd had a really light lunch, so I managed to polish off an entire half pound Mesa burger (bacon, pepper jack cheese, chipotle mayo). Yum.

The next day, I had brunch with friends at Stacks in Menlo Park, and had my usual scrumptious strawberry waffle. Double yum.

the magic glove

I played softball my last two years in high school. We were a completely new team; most of us had never played softball before except in gym class, and when we first got out on the field, the coach was literally showing us how to wear the batting helmets properly. Most of us didn't own gloves (I'd borrowed mine from my brother; it was his Little League outfield glove), so the coach had brought a bunch of her old ones.

The oldest one was so beat up that it was completely flat, and had turned a brownish-grey color, but we soon discovered that it was the best of the bunch, and dubbed it the "magic glove". It was so soft that when a ball hit it anywhere near the middle, the sides would automatically collapse on it. I think it may have also been a little stickier from having been used so much. Anyway, we used to fight over the magic glove, because we were all convinced it made us better fielders (I swear it did, at least for me).

I suddenly remembered all of this today, when a friend was raving about her new softball glove.

here today, gone tomorrow

So much for going back to Bay Meadows next year. It appears they'll be closing down in November, after 73 years of racing.

AMT suckage

Yesterday I got my tax return back from my CPA, and had a bit of a nasty surprise when I realized that I owed a couple of hundred dollars, instead of being owed a few thousand.

It only took me a few minutes to figure out what had gone wrong. The AMT figure was significantly higher than the ordinary tax number. I had sold some stock in 2005, had paid lots of state and federal taxes on the gain in 2006, and now was being punished for having paid those same state taxes. It feels like I'm being taxed twice!

I do love living in California, and I'm already resigned to the real estate prices, but when faced with the reality of also paying thousands of dollars a year to the federal government for the privilege, well, I start to entertain vague notions of moving to Seattle.

I've known about AMT for many years (my dad being a retired CPA), and it's even affected my taxes a bit for the last two years, but this is the first year that it's impacted my tax burden significantly, and let me just reiterate that it sucks very much. It's much worse in practice than in theory.

I'll say right now, that if a presidential candidate that I'm otherwise undecided about (not anti-choice, not anti-gay, not anti-Taiwan, not crazy) pledges to fix this broken system, I'll vote for him/her in November.

Obama-mania

A friend invited me to the Barack Obama rally last weekend in Oakland. I was already booked that day, so I declined.

In retrospect, I'm really glad I didn't go. That's no reflection on Obama himself; I'm still undecided about him, since there's been so little data about his stances on my key issues. I'm just sure I wouldn't have been thrilled standing around for hours in a crowd of ten thousand people. I guess I didn't realize that the Bay Area was caught up in Obama-mania already.

yet more wedding-related activities

Yesterday, after spending the morning at an organizational brunch for one wedding, I went to a bridal shower / bachelorette party for another bride-to-be.

This one was pretty well done; the hostess put together a really nice lunch (most of which I didn't eat because I'd just had brunch), with pretty decorations and homemade dessert, and we did the standard spa thing, this time at Burke Williams Santana Row, and then headed up to the city for dinner, drinks, etc.

We had 7pm reservations at supperclub san francisco. Unfortunately, none of us had ever been there before. Even more unfortunately, we hadn't eaten since about noon. Apparently, the deal at supperclub is that there is one seating, at 7:30pm, and for the next 4-5 hours they slowly feed you courses of food, while you lounge around on beds drinking cocktails and/or dancing on the ground floor.

Here are a few photos:

dinner in bed	open kitchen
tough love from the "hostess"	live entertainment

By the time we were served the first course, which was a small smoked salmon salad, it was past 8pm. Over the next two hours we were served a glass of onion soup and a fish (or tofu) appetizer, but at 10:30pm, we still hadn't had the main course yet. We left at 11:30pm after finishing our porkchops, without having had dessert.

It was really too bad; if we had had a snack or something beforehand, I think we could have had a much better time. Even as it was, the first two hours were fun from an "interesting experience" and "cool concept" perspective. But, hungry people are generally cranky people, and we were definitely hungry for most of the night. Afterwards, I went home, and the rest of the girls stopped for porridge in Chinatown before hitting the bar scene.

night at the racetrack

A friend invited a bunch of us to go to Bay Meadows with her tonight, because there was a special: $1 admission, $1 beer, $1 hot dogs, and $1 minimum bets. Plus, Tainted Love, one of my favorite 80's cover bands, was playing between races.

In the end, I spent $7, ate a hot dog, was entertained for three hours, and learned a lot about betting on horses. Now I know what it means to "win, place, or show", what a "quinella" is versus an "exacta", and how the odds are read off of the scoreboard.

Here are a few somewhat blurry photos (horses are fast!):

lucky

Last weekend, I threw a birthday party on a yacht, followed by dinner in the city.

I'd obsessively planned out all the details, including figuring out transportation logistics, printing maps and directions for all the carpools, pre-ordering cake and ice cream, bringing plates, forks, and serving utensils, buying decorations and balloons, drawing up a (40+ person!) guest and payment checklist, and arranging a preset dinner menu.

But in the end, the most important factor in making the party a success was that the weather was absolutely gorgeous. When we set sail at 4pm, it was 75 degrees, with not a cloud in the sky. Over the next three hours, it cooled off bit by bit, until it was probably in the mid-60s by sunset, which is actually my kind of weather. I'd rather be lucky, indeed.

so worth it

Yesterday, I went to watch the Warriors' pre-game warmups. The doors open at 6pm for a 7:30pm game, so I left work at 4pm to meet up with everyone at Oracle at 4:30pm. We got to the BART station around 5:30pm, and were waiting at the North Gate by 5:40-ish. As soon as the doors opened, we walked directly to the tunnel leading to the home locker room, and draped ourselves over the railing. Over the next hour, I was able to get an autograph from every Warrior who practiced, for a total of ten (10!) autographs.

Here are some photos:


left to right: Monta Ellis, Patrick O'Bryant, Matt Barnes





top left: Al Harrington, bottom left: Steven Jackson, right: O'Bryant and Ellis (see above)





top row: Adonal Foyle, Josh Powell, Jason Richardson, bottom row: Kelenna Azubuike, Andris Biedrins

Baron Davis and Mickael Pietrus didn't come out for warmups, so we had no chance at them. Still, I was super-excited to get as many autographs as I did.

Some funny tidbits from the hour-long autograph hunting experience:
- My friend said "Welcome to the team!" to Josh Powell, who was the first player to come off the floor. He looked a little surprised, and said "Thanks" back.
- The security guards on the visitors' side were really strict about not hanging on the railing. Not so on the home side; although, at one point, I was bracing my feet on the bottom of the glass and got a semi-stern look from one security guy. I gave him a pleading look and he smiled back, so I stayed where I was.
- Some people were really, really pushy. One mother kept trying to get her young son to squeeze into the non-existent space between me and my friend, even though he obviously didn't want to go there. Another guy was pushing me in the back, until I asked him if he really wanted me to fall over the railing.
- One guy was pretty far up on the railing and wasn't having much success reaching the players, so he rigged up a harness out of a piece of rope, and managed to get the basketball low enough to get autographs from Richardson, Barnes, and a couple of others. Creative ingenuity, indeed.
- Al Harrington was wearing humongous diamond earrings during practice, but I guess he had to take them off for the game, because he wasn't wearing them later. It's kind of funny that he would take the time to wear them just for warmups.
- All of the players took a fair amount of time to sign autographs. I wonder if they're required to, for PR purposes, or whether they're all just that nice?

All in all, it was a really fun experience, and definitely worth the extra hour and a half of waiting time.

Oh yeah, and there was a game, too. Iverson lived up to his billing with a fantastic first half (24 points) and finished the game with 35 total. The Warriors spread the ball around a lot, did a pretty good job of running their new speedy offense, and ended up with a 110-96 win, which meant free Big Mac coupons for everyone.

no Carmelo for me

As soon as Iverson got traded to the Nuggets, I checked the Warriors' schedule to see if the Nuggets would be in town again this season. When I discovered they would be playing in Oakland on March 7th, I quickly arranged to get tickets while they were still being sold at face value. How could I pass up an opportunity to see two of the most prolific scorers in the league, playing on the same team?

I even went out and bought some new basketballs and got ahold of some silver Sharpies, and planned out my work schedule so that I could leave super-early, to get to the Arena in time to try and snag some autographs. Then, yesterday night, I'm watching SportsCenter, and what do I hear? Carmelo's fiancee is giving birth to their son, so Carmelo won't be making the trip to California. Much disappointment. Iverson better be awesome tonight.

192 countries

I object to this country quiz on principle, because it uses the UN list of countries and so doesn't list Taiwan, but I tried it anyway. Apparently I'm not great with countries; here's my result (with my comments in parentheses).

You forgot: Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo (I tried "Zaire" and "Congo" but neither counted), Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, East Timor, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Moldova, Montenegro, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines (I swear I tried every combination of L's, P's, and N's except this one), Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Suriname, Swaziland, Tajikistan, The Bahamas ("Bahamas" doesn't count?), Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Kingdom (I tried "England", "Ireland", and "Great Britain". No dice.), Vanuatu, Venezuela, Zambia.

one day ski trip

There was a lot of snow in Tahoe early last week, plus the weather forecast for the weekend was clear, so I decided I wanted to go skiing. Since Friday and Saturday were already booked up, the only option was a one day trip on Sunday. I polled for interest and got four solid yesses (all girls this time, go figure), so it was a go.

I've done the day trip lots of times before, starting in my middle school ski bus days. The ideal schedule:
4:00am wake up
5:00am assemble at departure location
5:30am start driving to Tahoe
8:30am arrive at ski resort and gear up
9:00am hit the slopes
4:30pm meet up at lodge, snack & change
5:00pm start driving home
7:30pm grab dinner around Sacramento (depends on traffic)
10:30pm arrive back in Bay Area

Sounds perfectly reasonable, right? And, everything went off without a hitch. The snow was great (Northstar, mostly backside), we took our last run just as my legs were about to give out (sign of a good ski day), I ate a Euro Snack Belgian waffle for the first time (totally worth the four dollars), and we had a yummy dinner at Claim Jumper in Roseville. We got home somewhere between 10:30pm and 11:00pm, and I was in bed by midnight. The only downside is, in another sign of impending oldness, I'm really not all that awake today.

50 states

I've seen this name the 50 states link a couple of times in the last few days. Yesterday, I decided to try it. I managed to name 49 states in 3 minutes, but it took me another 2 minutes to figure out the last one. (It was Nevada. Ironic, since I was just there last month.)

It's really not fair for me to play these games; I had some very boring lecturers in college, and I distinctly remember trying to stay awake by doing useless things like writing down all of the teams in the NFL (by division), writing down all of the school teachers I'd ever had (chronologically starting from kindergarten), and writing down all of the states (with their capitals, both alphabetically and geographically in order). Yes, I'm really strange.

relationships, seriously

I had dinner yesterday night with a friend who recently broke up with his girlfriend of over six months. Of course, we chatted a lot about the reasons that they broke up, and talked a bit about relationships in general.

At one point, we discussed an article that I'd read recently about the major issues that can become deal breakers in long term relationships. According to the article, those issues are: religion, money, politics, sex, family, children, division of labor, work-life balance, health and fitness, and social attitude.

The first six are pretty self-explanatory and are often discussed, but I thought that the last four were less obvious and more interesting.

For example, division of labor was probably not an issue a hundred years ago; it was assumed that women would stay home and do housework and raise children, and men would work outside the home and produce income. Nowadays, it's much more complicated, and couples have to figure out who cooks, who cleans, who plans, and who runs shuttle duty.

Work-life balance and social attitude are two related issues which can get overlooked. Some people are workaholics, others find fulfillment in spending time with friends and family. Some people like to hole up in their own homes, others like to go out regularly and explore new people and places. Of course, there will always be some discrepancy, but if one person is completely absorbed to his/her work and the other is constantly nagging him/her to come home, things can get ugly. Similarly, if one party is always having to drag a resisting significant other out of the house, that conflict can cause serious problems, as well.

The health and fitness issue is one that I hadn't really thought about until recently. It doesn't tend to come up in younger relationships, but as people start to figure out what their adult lives look like, they develop patterns of food consumption and exercise, and it can be hard to adapt these routines to accomodate another person who may have different habits. Often one or both will have to compromise. I guess that's what relationships are all about.

team demographics

I had a funny conversation today at work:

coworker:	Someone was saying to me yesterday that everyone in our group looks the same.
me:	(amazed silence, since my coworker is male and white, not to mention British, while I am female and Asian-American)
coworker:	Well, we're all young and single, and we all go to the gym.

I guess that's mostly true. There are fifteen engineers on our team, three of whom are over 30. Of the three, two are married, and of those two, one has children. Everyone else is "young and single", although I feel pretty old surrounded by all of the recent grads. And, over half the team goes to the gym at least every other day. I don't think any of that makes us look alike, though, except that (being somewhat in shape and not having spent money on kids and such) we mostly all wear nice jeans.

new drinks

I find that I like cocktails better than both wine and beer. Unfortunately, that makes drinking expensive, and which makes it hard to find new drinks, because it sucks to pay $5-10 for a cocktail that you end up not liking.

However, I've been going to a lot of weddings, and weddings tend to have open bars, so I have discovered some new favorites. Chambord and soda with lime is light and yummy, and so is tequila sunrise. Most recently, at the wedding two weeks ago, I discovered the amaretto stone sour, which is way, way better than a plain amaretto sour. I've been told that toasted almond (amaretto, Kahlua, & cream) is also good. I'll have to keep that in mind for next time.

good day

It was rather an unproductive week for me at work, mostly due to me switching onto a new subproject and having to spend a lot of time ramping up. And, being unproductive always makes me feel a little icky, like I'm losing whatever programming skills I ever had, and/or wasting the company's time (and money).

Consequently, it was especially nice to have a really good day today, during which I thought about work not at all.

I slept in pretty late, got up in time to eat a quick brunch, and then spent a couple hours on the EA basketball courts working on my shot, which has been off pretty much since I got back from Hawaii. I now have a really sore right arm, but I think I have some of my form back.

After that, I spent most of the afternoon working on various things that I'd been putting off, including the menu for a birthday party I'm planning, and a detailed task list for a baby shower that I'm also planning.

Dinner was at Delfina, in the Mission, right next to Tartine. I was actually able to find parking only three blocks away, which is always a great way to start off a night in the city. The restaurant was pretty crowded even when we got there at 6pm, and was totally packed when we left after 8pm, with good reason. We ate family style, and there were several dishes that I enjoyed very much, including the Ribollita (kind of a pan-fried stuffing with veggies), the Papperdelle and duck sugo, and the Berkshire pork spareribs.

We were supposed to go to a party at Bubble Lounge around 9pm, so the timing worked out pretty well, what with the drive from the Mission to the Financial District, and then another round of parking bingo. This time we were even luckier, finding a parking spot only a block and a half away. We closed out the evening snacking on Hamachi tartare, grilled mushroom and fontina panini, and strawberry and chocolate fondue, while drinking champagne (of course), scotch, and assorted cocktails generously mixed with Belvedere vodka.

happy new year!

Happy year of the pig! I spent the weekend eating lots of New Year's foods, at my parents' house and at a family friend's house. Then, I actually managed to deep fry some sweet nein gau of my own at a friend's house yesterday night. That is, I took pre-made nein gau and fried it; I didn't make it from scratch. Small steps.

massive cultural gap

I was talking to a friend the other day about why I get along better with my grandfather than my grandmother.

The average conversation between me and my grandfather goes something like this (in Taiwanese, of course):

me:	Hi Grandpa, I'm glad to hear that your hip is better.
gf:	Yes, but my eyes are still not very good. How about you, how's work? Are you very busy this month?
me:	No, it's not bad right now, I just had a deadline last week.
gf:	What are you doing for exercise these days?
me:	I've been playing in a basketball league once a week, and my team practices once a week, also.
gf:	Do you have any fun upcoming plans?
me:	Yes, I'm going to Hawaii with my friends, and we are going to hike and kayak and maybe go windsurfing.
gf:	Maybe it's best if you don't go windsurfing; it's dangerous.

The average conversation between me and my grandmother goes something like this (again, in Taiwanese):

me:	Hi Grandma, how is everything?
gm:	Good. Are you getting married soon?

Okay, I exaggerate. But it's not far off, I swear.

My friend was saying that she has a similar problem with her older female relatives as well; they tend to be concerned primarily with whether we have boyfriends, when we're going to be married, and whether we're planning to have children soon. In contrast, our older male relatives are interested in our careers, our hobbies, and our daily lives.

We concluded that the cultural gap between American 21st century women and Taiwanese early 20th century women is much, much larger than the typical gap between grandparents and their grandchildren. Having that realization made me a little sad, but it doesn't stop me from feeling irritated when talking to my grandmother.

wedding overload

I was counting the other day and realized that I'm scheduled to attend nine weddings so far this year:
- Charity & Mark: February 17th, in Stanford/San Francisco, CA
- Jane & Bert: April 8th, in Beverly Hills/Pasadena, CA
- Justin & Jennifer: April 14th, in Dallas, TX
- Ann & Duong: April 21th, in San Ramon, CA
- William & Kimara: May 12th, in Lanesboro, MN
- Ingrid & Christopher: May 27th, in Verona, WI
- Kathie & Steve: June 2nd, most likely in Palo Alto, CA
- Angela & Perkin: June 9th, in Menlo Park/Redwood City, CA
- Wen & Mehmet: June 24th, in Los Gatos, CA

Last year, I attended six weddings:
- Spencer & Stephanie: May 28th, in Novato, CA
- Stephanie & Edwin: June 17th, in Seattle, WA
- Steve & Jocelyn: August 12th, in Sonoma, CA
- Debbie & Hsien: October 7th, in Long Beach, CA
- Sherry & Brian: November 11th, in Woodside/Milpitas, CA
- Spencer & Erica: December 30th, in Honolulu, HI

I was unable to attend a seventh wedding because it was also on May 28th (Emily & Bob, in Monterey, CA), and an eighth (July 2th in Boston, MA) was cancelled. I chose not to attend a ninth (Linda & Leon, October 14th in Richardson, TX) because it was one week after Long Beach.

That's (at least) fifteen weddings in two years. I was curious as to whether I'd been to that many before 2006 in my entire life, so I started cataloguing them:
- Tina & Minh: October 29th, 2005, in Milpitas/Campbell, CA
- Lisa & Matt: October 8th 2005, in Sugarland, TX
- George & Diana: May 7th 2005, in San Jose, CA
- Alwin & Connie: July 24th 2004, in Sunnyvale/Cupertino, CA
- Elaine & Alex: May 8th 2004, in Laguna Beach, CA
- Sergio & Nicole: August 9th 2003, in Boston, MA
- Katelyn & Laurent: June 14th 2003, in Redwood City, CA
- Alice & James: October 12th 2002, in Shanghai, China
- Cindy & Andrew: September 7th 2002, in Boston, MA
- Ken & Bo: May 31th 2002, in Tiffin, OH
- David & Elsa: May 11th 2002, in New York, NY
- Mabi & Michael: February 2002, in Burlingame, CA
- four of my parents' siblings' weddings (1983, 1984, 1993, January 2002)

Turns out there were sixteen pre-2006 weddings, and there have been fifteen post-2005 weddings so far. Does that make 2005/2006 some kind of inflexion point?

In general, I'm happy to celebrate weddings with my friends and family, but my wallet has been complaining a bit lately, especially for the out-of-town ones. Well, it's hard to complain about an excuse to go to Hawaii, but Minnesota? Wisconsin?? On the bright side, given a finite number of friends and relatives, there should be a finite number of weddings to attend, I should hope.

I am looking forward to this weekend's wedding; the ceremony is at the Stanford Memorial Church, and I haven't been there since I was a flower girl in my uncle's wedding (1984, see above). I don't remember it, but I have the pictures, and they're beautiful. Plus, the reception is at the Asian Art Museum, which I do remember from school field trips, and that should be gorgeous as well.

Update: I've been told that the Asian Art Museum has moved. I guess I should have realized that after visiting the new De Young last month. Oh well, it'll be fun to check out the new location, anyway.

Swiss chocolate

A coworker arrived from Switzerland a few days ago, and brought with him a large amount of Swiss chocolate. By large, I mean that our team has been eating it for several days now, and we've consumed maybe a fourth of it, tops. I'm so spoiled now, I can't even eat Godiva anymore. I certainly can't eat Hershey's.

Vegas highlights

I got back yesterday from yet another sleep-deprived, smoke-filled Vegas trip.

This time, I did head back to the Fashion Outlets in Primm this time, and had a productive shopping day.

On the food side of things, I finally got to try Bouchon Las Vegas, where I had a yummy bucket of mussels, accompanied by French fries. I topped that off with a plate of cheese; I've forgotten the other two (one was sheep's milk, one was cow's milk) but my favorite was the Garotin, which is a fairly mild, soft cheese made of goat's milk.

The next night, we ate at Rosemary's Restaurant, which is a good 15 minutes off the Strip, but is well worth the drive. I had a $49 prix fixe, with a parmesan souffle and wild mushroom ragout appetizer, roasted rack of lamb entree (+$10 surcharge), and a chocolate bread pudding, espresso ice cream, and vanilla creme anglaise dessert. All three of the dishes were extremely good; I felt the souffle was the most creative, and the lamb had no aftertaste at all (like New Zealand lamb), but I enjoyed the dessert the most. We were also treated to a savory bread pudding amuse, and homemade sweets after dessert.

I was finally able to eat again the next day at around 1:30pm, and at that time we headed to the Paris Sunday brunch. It was $25 per person, and well worth it. My favorite dishes were the puff pastry with the chicken stew inside, the king crab (of course), and the chocolate tart dessert.

The non-food activities mostly involved drinking and gambling. On the first night, we went to Caramel, a lounge inside of the Bellagio, and had lots of expensive drinks. I think I spent over $100 buying a round of Lemondrops for six people. Afterwards, we were fairly tipsy, and managed to entertain ourselves playing nickel slots for a couple of hours before heading off to bed.

The next night, I actually meant to get a decent amount of sleep, but three of my friends entered a poker tournament starting at 11pm, and after three hours, two were still in it, so of course I had to stay and watch. On the bright side, one of them finished third in the tournament, making a couple hundred dollars. On the other hand, the tournament finished at a quarter past 4am, so I didn't get to sleep until sometime after 5am.

Right before we left for the airport, one person (who had lost a lot of money over the last few days) decided on a whim to put some money on roulette. He walked up to the nearest table, and put $20 on 24, and $20 on 28. He wasn't watching the wheel, but several of us were, and we were completely stunned when the ball hopped in and out of 0 and landed on 28, netting him $720. It was a great way to leave.

gone skiing

So after two days of staying up until 3am, I actually managed to wake up at 4am on the third day, to get on a bus to Tahoe. We hit the slopes at Squaw Valley at around 10am, took an hour long break for lunch, and then skied right up until the lifts closed at 4:30pm, for over five hours of solid skiing.

Until this week, I hadn't been up yet, since I'd been hearing such horrible things about the snow this year. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised. There were definitely some very bare and/or rough spots (the top of Emigrant, except a narrow stripe in the middle, and most of Solitude was horrible) but there was good skiing to be had on Shirley Lake, Red Dog, and a few other places.

Every year, I always think that I forget how to ski, but then when I get out there, I realize that not only do I remember how to do it, in fact I quite enjoy it.

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.

the best laid plans...

My mother has always wanted to go to French Laundry, except that it's so hard to get a reservation that we've never had a chance.

I thought it would be a nice gesture on my part to secure a reservation for my parents' 30th anniversary, which is coming up in two months, so I blocked out my calendar starting at 10am for four straight days. (The reservation policy is that you can call starting at 10am two calendar months before the date of the reservation.)

Yesterday, I got through to a "reservationist" at 10:23am, and all the tables were already full for dinner on Thu 3/29 (lunch is only served Fri-Sun).

Today, I enlisted my sister as well, and the two of us dialed and redialed four phones (two cell, two land) until I finally got through at 11:08am. The good news was that there were actually some tables left for Fri 3/30. The bad news was that the tables were 4-person tables, not 2-person tables. I made a reservation anyway, since I had spent all this time already, and anyway my parents might enjoy the company.

So, I was somewhat satisfied with myself, until I got a totally unrelated email from my mom, in which I learned that my parents are going to be out of town that day. Argh!!!

Now I'm trying to decide whether to sell the reservation, invite some friends to go (unlikely, at $240 a head), or what.

goodbye, athena

I'm losing my Athena account next week.

Athena is MIT's campus-wide distributed network. Basically, an Athena account is a Unix account with a gig of space, an HTTP server, and lots of other random utilities like Matlab and LaTeX, etc. I could have kept it by continuing to act as a volunteer online consultant, but my knowledge is increasingly outdated and it started to seem like I was just mooching off the system.

Besides, I don't really use my account much anymore. I used to use it exclusively for email (go MH!) until Gmail came along a couple of years ago, and I used to host photos on it until I traded up to a 7.1 megapixel camera, and 1 gig wasn't really big enough anymore. Now it's basically a place for me to keep random notes and bits of data, so it shouldn't be that hard for me to give up the account, but it does feel awfully strange; kind of like I'm letting go of my college days. I guess it's about time.

a few good restaurants

I like trying new restaurants, so it's been a couple of good food weekends for me.

Two Fridays ago, I went to a birthday party at E&O Trading Company, in downtown San Jose. It's a Southeast Asian place that serves small plates, which can be shared family style. The food was fine, but I mostly remember the excellent cocktail that I had before dinner; I think it was a martini of some tropical flavor.

That Saturday, four of us waited the half hour that it takes to get into Queen House, in downtown Mountain View. I live two blocks away but have only been there twice due to the long wait times. But, it's always nice to have some cheap ($40 for 4, plus leftovers), authentic Chinese food. This time we had beef noodle soup, black bean chicken, salt and pepper pork ribs, a clay pot stew, and some stir fried Chinese veggies. Mmm...

Since Monday was a holiday, I was able to make it up to the city to eat with some friends at Helmand, an Afghan place which is located in a sketchy area of North Beach but is actually very nice inside. I had a lamb shank dish, which was good, but several people ordered the lamb chops (Chowpan?), which was better. I'll probably get that next time.

This weekend, Friday dinner was at Left Bank, a not-too-expensive French restaurant that has several locations throughout the Bay Area. We had booked the private room at San Mateo, for a birthday party, which turned out to be a good thing because we had a few bottles of wine and some people got a a little loud. I had the skirt steak (much better than Cheesecake Factory) with fries, and am now completely hooked on their fries.

We went upscale on Saturday, eating at Silks inside of the Mandarin Oriental. I'll have to recommend this place to my parents; my mom has a thing about noisy dining rooms, so she'll love the hushed atmosphere as well as the Asian fusion food. I actually liked the amuse bouche best of all the food that night; it was a raw oyster in a delicious onion-y, vinegar-y sauce. I had a clever "Eggs, Ham, and Toast" appetizer (the "ham" was crispy suckling pig, etc.) and rack of venision entree. Dessert was a coffee souffle, and then we were treated to a creamy-smooth hot chocolate with "Snickers" whipped cream on top. Service was really good; they took longer than usual to serve the main course, and someone came to apologize, well before I would have thought to complain. When our waitress presented the bill, she told us that as an added apology, our desserts were on the house. Bonus!

On Sunday night, I finally tried out one of this year's Dine about Town menus, at the Moroccan restaurant aziza. The restaurant is in the outer Richmond, mixed in with the Chinese grocery stores, so it's not very appealing on the outside, but once we went inside I was impressed by the cozy booths, exotic but not cheesy music, mood lighting, and curtains everywhere. The food was yummy and the portions were generous; I had three courses (lamb sausage with yogurt, couscous aziza, and almond chocolate cake), didn't finish my entree, and was completely stuffed.

Hawaii (Kauai, Day 6)

The last day of the trip was pretty chill; there were only three of us left, and we didn't have any big items on the agenda. Our flight back to Honolulu wasn't until evening, but checkout time was at noon, so we went ahead and packed up anyway, cramming all of the luggage into our compact-sized rental car.

First, we headed up Waimea Canyon Road back to see the Kalalau Lookout by day. Unfortunately, there were clouds completely covering the valley, and we couldn't see a thing. We walked the mile to the Pu'u o Kila Lookout, hoping things would be better there, but they weren't. Undaunted, we decided to hang out for half an hour or so, to see if the clouds would burn off (it was about 11am at this point).

For about twenty minutes, we continued to see nothing. In the last ten minutes, the clouds started to ease up ever so slightly, so that we could almost see green beneath the white. Encouraged, we stuck around, and were rewarded for our patience by an awesome show, as the clouds slowly drifted, rolled, and melted away. Every minute, the view would change again, and it would still be spectacular.

It was pretty hard to capture the magic of that hour on camera, but I certainly tried. Here are two of the better photos:





Afterwards, we walked back to the Kalalau Lookout, which had also cleared up. At one point we were treated to another of the many rainbows we had seen during our trip:



It was around 1pm when we started driving back, and we were hungry, so we stopped in Waimea at Jo-Jo's Clubhouse, a famous shave ice place that nevertheless looks like a cross between a barn and a shack. Never judge a book, right? We had the Tropical Rainbow (guava, papaya, and lilikoi), with macadamia nut ice cream and azuki (red) bean underneath. Ice cream, ice and beans sounds like a horrible combination, but it was really, really good; the best shave ice I'd had during the whole trip.

We checked out the Red Dirt T-shirt store next door, although I didn't buy any T-shirts (my socks were already permanently red from all the hiking anyway), and then drove back to Poipu Shopping Village for some real lunch. We ended up having hot dogs at Puka Dog, which serves hot dogs in a huge enclosed bun, with "garlic lemon secret sauce", as well as an assortment of tropical relishes (mango, pineapple, banana etc.) and optional lilikoi mustard. The food were good but overpriced; essentially $6-7 for a fancy hot dog.

From there, we were off to Wal-Mart (yes, there is one on Kauai), to stock up on macadamia nuts, cookies, coffee, and other goodies, and then to the airport. One person was on the 7pm flight, and two (including me) were on the 8pm flight, so we just checked in early to wait at the gate. Amusingly, after the 7pm flight finished boarding all passengers, the counter agent asked if there were any passengers who were ticketed on the 8pm flight, who wanted to go early. Of course we did, so in classic Hawaii fashion, we just hopped on, which got us to Honolulu an hour early; plenty of time for a leisurely dinner before boarding our San Francisco flight home.