February 27th 2007 - 9:00AM - jetBlue, Scott's Seafood, Mardi Gras
"Excuse me...did you know where the Big and Tall store is around here?"
This guy has got game.
This was a jetBlue promotion about their expansive legroom. I'll be taking jetBlue over on a direct flight to DC in a few weeks which I'm very thankful for.
For Valentine's Day, we went to Scott's Seafood for dinner. It's got an interesting exterior. I like the S-shaped door handles.
These shrimp rolls were ok but only 4 for $15? You gotta be kidding me! What a rip!
Emily's seabass was horrible...a dry piece of fish which needed a sauce to wash it down and supress regurgitation. I love the tomatoes but I was glad that I didn't order this dish...
I loved my dish which was some kind of Seafood Platter...the lemon creme was just perfect as a dressing.
You're really paying for the ambience at Scott's...there were many other Valentine's Day couples that day.
We had a little Mardi Gras celebration at work the other day...here Marjo and Vina pretend that they're on Bourbon St.
Scott shows off just how good he is with beads. lol
Jose says "No one is taking these beads from me!"
King Cake is a Mardi Gras specialty...the colors mystify me...the fact that there is a plastic baby (a good luck token to whoever finds it) in there also mystifies me. It's a very mystical cake. I'm actually in San Diego right now and arrived just in time to experience the San Diego Mardi Gras festival. However, since no cameras are allowed and apparently the nudity law is enforced, I just listened to the music from my hotel window. I do want to be in New Orleans at least once for Mardi Gras though at some point in my life. Emily might like it too particularly since she likes to roll out her Southern accent now and then.
February 25th 2007 - 9:45AM - Osteria, Palo Alto, Joey Basil's
Meg recommended this restaurant as one of her favorites in Palo Alto. Luckily, I was able to procure reservations which are very much needed for this popular place.
Osteria
247 Hamilton Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 328-5700
Interior is nothing to write home about...the food on the other hand...
These shrimp over artichoke hearts are to DIE FOR. The lemon parsley cream was just perfect over the artichoke. I can't believe that for decades, I just wouldn't eat them.
I had the Dover Sole I think...in any case, it wasn't as good as the calamari. I did finish it all though. I got caught up with the bones at one point...nasty stuff.
Calamari Steak is crazy good. Very lightly breaded...the flavor and texture is indescribeable. Emily wishes that I had ordered this for myself so she wouldn't have had to share. So selfish!!! :-P Another thing to note is that the waitress that served us was very very friendly and made the dinner so much better. It was very refreshing to have service like that...it's been a long time.
MMMMMMMMMM..this flan was just right.
The Cheesecake Factory in Palo Alto is quite nice...
Look at that window grill!
Very cool looking place...love the Frank Lloyd Wright accents...
Had dinner with the Perdue's and the Gimenez's at the newly opened Joey Basil's in Fremont...Bella Perdue is a pretty cute baby isn't she? Love the pink headband!
Joey Basil's Pizzeria Bar & Grill
3720 Mowry Ave
Fremont, CA 94538
(510) 797-2900
Awwwww!!!
Awwwww!!!
Awwwww!!!
The Thai Chicken Pizza was alright...I think it's better than CPK's.
Bella is pretty well-behaved...she wasn't trying to eat the table or anything like that.
You're so cute!!! Yes you are!!!
Bella is a jumper...she loves jumping up and down when you're holding her. Great leg strength!
February 25th 2007 - 8:53AM - Fried Rice, Thai Town, Naan N Curry
I've been experimenting with different ways of making fried rice after watching the teppanyaki chef do his magic back in SoCal. Woks are my pan of choice for fried rice. I'll go through my current recipe now...first cook the onions...I'd be careful about waiting till their golden since you'll be frying things for quite some time.
These are good ingrediants to have in fried rice...peas, carrots, tomatoes.
I've added some brocolli here. I would recommend boiling them beforehand to get them to a softer texture. Frying them does not make them softer. The secret to my favorite flavor is the Chinese BBQ sauce. One of my favorite dishes at Osha is a shrimp paste fried rice which I'll have to try at some point.
I put bits of beef here but in the future I'll lean towards pork/chicken/seafood since Emily doesn't really like beef.
Fried Rice is done!
Went with Emily's old college buddies to Thai Town in Milpitas for Thai food. Here's the green curry, kind of small but spicy and good.
Thai Town
542 Barber Ln
Milpitas, 95035
(408) 324-1032
Pork Basil and Chili - Very spicy and quite tasty!
Asparagus Shrimp - I only thought this was ok. All in all the food isn't bad...I think it's priced better than Blue Mango.
I've been making different kinds of squid. I have a crab stuffed version that's to die for.
Fans do crazy things...
Even pigeons enjoy Naan N Curry
Cool ceilings
Eric, Priscilla, and Meg
February 24th 2007 - 9:03AM - Foreign Cinema, Homemade Food
Based on a recommendation from Meg, we went with Eric and Fred to Foreign Cinema in the city for dinner. It's rated pretty highly by customers although service can be somewhat abrasive.
Foreign Cinema
2534 Mission St
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 648-7600
Indoor seating is available but the main draw has to be...
the outdoor seating where they show foreign films projected on one of the building walls. They were playing "The Last Emperor" on the wall when we went. It's outdoors because there aren't any ceilings. They do have an awning though that they put up when rain threatens. The heaters kept things nice and toasty.
Hamachi carpaccio
The pork chop was exceedingly juicy...apparently the secret is slow cooking with a cold pan.
Petrale Sole was a bit on the salty side but I enjoyed the potatoes.
Eric and Fred...Eric is proud to display his Asian-ness.
Satisfied with our meal...our server was somewhat rude (probably because none of us ordered any wine) and freaked Emily out when she suddenly leaned over to within inches of Emily's face and asked her about her scarf.
Some homemade food! Here's my Spicy Shrimp with Mushrooms
Here's my Basil Shrimp with Crab
Crab Fried Rice! This is originally my dad's recipe.
February 23th 2007 - 12:31PM - Tech Museum Part 2, Vung Tau
I'm actually in San Diego for a week...should be able to catch up here.
This was a neat exhibit...the idea is to be able to pit museum patrons across the nation against each other. The day that we were there though there were no opponents for us to compete against so we had to settle for some LAN action.
This kid obviously understood the power of gravity.
Two hands? For shame! Actually after so many wrestling matches, i ended up having to use 2 hands as well.
Gravity AND 2 hands???
Spamassassin...in mallet form. I wonder if I could install one of these at work.
Angela prepares to do battle...
Emily is overjoyed at defeating the incoming spam...for now!
I didn't know some of these acronyms.
The Tech Museum's server room...look at all that storage in the lower left!
They have an earthquake simulator that is supposed to recreate real historical earthquakes. This one is Taiwan - Sep 99.
Emily trains to be an astronaut. Basically, this was a huge air table. You glide around and try to hit certain targets with a light mounted on the chair.
We got our heads scanned...I was even able to download the scan is a VRML file and loaded it into my laptop for viewing. I need to be able to convert it to a more usable format though.
It's Matrix Emily!
Emily shows her support for her company
This exhibit lets you put jellyfish DNA into bacteria to make them glow.
Careful...
It takes awhile for the DNA to propagate throughout the culture...here's what the results look like hours later.
Emily's
Angela's
Infrared cameras are cool
Piggy! This exhibit was about donor organs from animals...
Afraid...very afraid.
So Cute!
Scary!
Is Angela praying?
Re-enactment of a typical day in the Taiwanese legislature.
I love "Incredible Machine"-type devices. This is a large one outside of the Tech Museum.
Had dinner at the Vung Tau in San Jose. More of the same good stuff like the one in Milpitas. We ordered the shrimp rolls which were very tasty. You get 8 shrimp which is a better deal that another place that we went to (later post).
Vung Tau Restaurant
535 E Santa Clara St
San Jose, CA 95112
(408) 288-9055
Since it was Valentine's Day, I got to thinking about how it's gentlemanly to open the door for a woman and say,"After you!". This is really in stark contrast to what happens when you're in a shady neighborhood. Then it's "Let me go through first and if I don't get knifed or stabbed, you can come in as well." We were in Palo Alto after having dinner at this wonderful place (later post) and my spidey-sense came on when we were getting back to the parking garage. Nothing happened but I had never thought about it that clearly. Imagine a tactical strike force doing the same thing before a room breach. "After you!" hahahahahaha
I'm traveling at least 5 times a year now so I got to wondering about what would be considered the safest seat on the plane. Is it in the front, the middle, or the back? After doing some research online, it seems that there is not one seat that can be considered safest however if a conclusion had to be made, a seat in the row next to the front of the wings is your best bet. I do know that the safest seat in the car is the middle seat in the back provided that the occupant is wearing a seatbelt.
And since we're on the subject of flying, a woman next to me once offered me licorice on the plane. It was very unexpected. Also on a recent trip, I saw a man carry his baby like a football. Wonder if he was a running back or something. :-D
February 19th 2007 - 3:31PM - Them Ky, Monitors, KDFC, Tech Museum Part 1
Rare Beef Noodle Soup for lunch always hits the spot. This place, Them Ky, in the Tenderloin gives you a whole box of noodles (it seems like). I've determined that I like pork-based soup (hu tieu) better but you can't go wrong with pho.
Them Ky
717 Ellis Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 441-8525
Excellent crispy rolls...just the right thickness of the skin. And the flavor was great!
Vietnamese turnip cakes!!! I thought that these were a Chinese thing.
Digging in!
I have these huge CRT monitors that are taking up space...the 19" that I went to Berkeley with and a 21" that I got later.
They're still bright and all...tis a shame to be trying to get rid of them. No takers on Craigslist...although maybe someone in the complex would be interested in them.
I've been doing a lot of shrimp based dishes...perfecting different kinds of flavors. The next one I need to try is the snow pea shrimp...I think the walnut shrimp is easy enough to make. Snow pea shrimp is healthier.
KDFC had an event at the Tech Museum celebrating the 251st birthday of Mozart. Free admission! John, Dianne, and Rik were there broadcasting live. We actually listened to them on the way over to the Tech Museum.
Andy Grove's handprint at the Tech Museum is pretty messy.
Gordon Moore has a much neater handprint. I don't know why that's important.
That is one neat cake!
Emily asks John, "Have you ever considered the metaphysical nature of Hungarian classical accordian music?"
This globe showed flight paths, fault lines, currents on it...although, not in real time. In order for there to be no distortion of the video on the globe, they must have taken into account the surface contours and the distance from the projector to the globes...and then figure out how best to stitch the video together from all the projectors to appear seamless. No small task.
The power of solar light...the mirror array in the front is being used to shine light onto photoelectric cells that are generating the electricty to power the LEDs in the back. Neat exhibit.
February 12th 2007 - 7:07AM - Observations, Curry, Homemade Food
Whole tomes can probably be written about things you can see on a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit...our local rail transit system) ride. Sometimes I can't help but mention a few things along those lines.
In the past, I've mentioned the sight of women carrying Victoria Secret shopping bags to carry their lunch in. I thought that was quite provocative. However, I saw a man carrying one the other day and that was mind boggling. I wish I had the guts to take a picture. What kind of a man does this? He wasn't a tranny and he was a middle-aged asian fellow. All I could think of was "Why?" Was it the pink that caught his eye? Maybe he finally had to retire the Sephora bag?
I hate people who stand near but not in the lines that form in front of the black squares denoting where the train doors will be. Do those people think that we're all standing in a line for our health? They always stand off to the side and when the train comes, they rush forward with total disregard for the fact that they didn't line up like the rest of us. Apparently lines do not apply to them.
There's a man who gets on the same train that I do and is always in the same car as I am. He's Indian/Pakistani (I know enough that there's a difference but I can't tell the difference) and looks like 1 of the hundreds of thousands of Indian/Pakistani developers in the Bay Area. However, this guy stands out because he never ever changes his clothes. He always has on the same black fleece over the same red shirt that's never tucked in with the same blue jeans with the same hiking shoes. Although I did see him with a grey shirt once...still untucked though. Although he doesn't carry a Victoria Secret bag, he does carry an Oracle conference bag from 2002 which is just about as bad. My conclusions is that this is a man who only owns about 1% closet space, a woman's dream. I wonder what his co-workers think. If I've noticed it, then I'm sure that they would have as well. Also, why do so many Indian men have mustaches? In all of the Indian movies I've seen, none of the good guys or lead actors have them. It's usually the swarmy bad guy or the slimy politician that has them.
One day, I arrived at the Bart station a bit late thinking that there would be no parking spaces for me. Lo and behold, the entire lot was almost empty. "Wow!", I thought, "This is my lucky day!" When I got on the train though and saw that the lot was still unfilled, I began to worry and think the thoughts of the neurotic. Was this actually still the weekend? In the past, Ive woken up early on a Saturday thinking that it was a workday. Did I miss some clock change due to Daylight Savings Time? I couldn't figure it out until I arrived at work. Martin Luther King Day. Dang it.
One of the apartments in Fremont has this nice kitchen. Love the counter space and breakfast bar. The sink is split though which I don't like.
Wait...no fan?!!!
Every once in awhile I get the craving for some curry. There's a process that I follow which maybe some people would find enlightening. I've never messed around with trying to mix my own curry. Emily's mom makes her vegetarian curry using curry powder but it doesn't have the smoothness/taste that Golden Curry does. That's the brand of curry that you see pretty much everywhere. Here's the first tip, break up the curry powder as much as possible and cook it separatedly from everything else. If you cook it with the vegetables and only break it up into 4ths as they would have you do, it'll clump together and cling to the vegetables.
Here I have the potatoes and carrots cooking in my glasspot. Due to the amount of time/heat involved, I would recommend not using a non-stick pot. You'll have to stir more often to make sure that the potatoes don't burn on the bottom or you can just use a lower heat. I like my carrots/potatoes nice and soft so that's why I put them in to boil first.
Broccoli is a new addition for me. Next time, I would probably put it in with the carrots since they take awhile to boil as well. Tomatoes can go last since they cook so readily.
After awhile the curry will have melted into a nice smooth texture. It would be next to impossible to get this if you had tried to put the curry cubes into the vegetable mix above as the instructions on the Golden Curry box indicate. Took me a long time to figure out this method.
Now would be a good time to start the browning of the mushrooms and onions.
If you want meat, you can throw it in after awhile which helps to promote the browning of the onions/mushrooms. I try to sear the beef as much as possible so that the juice is still inside. Remember that you're just doing a quick sear over high heat. The cooking of the meat should still be done inside the curry.
Here's the setup. It's a 1-2-3 punch of flavor!
Ahhh...mmm...I can almost smell it now.
Now just throw it in the curry and start the stirring process. It's really better to cook at low temperature since it takes away the risk of burning veggies on the bottom also the meat seems to take on more flavor that way. If you can, wait 20 minutes here.
Hmm...nice and creamy. No more curry clumps! The broccoli tends to fall apart which is fine actually. Next time, I'd go with pork since Emily isn't into beef really. Pork tends to impart a sweet flavor anyways which is great for curry. Hope this provided some insight into the process of cooking curry...those instructions on the back of the box just don't cut it.
I tried my hand at a version of the mushrooms with oyster sauce dish that is one of Emily's signature dishes. My addition of tomatoes in my mind really kicked it up a notch. Those vegetarian fish cakes you see in the middle...the "skin" is actually seaweed...were great too. Emily's mom usually lightly fries them but they taste pretty good slowly cooked though. I hadn't used the LKK oyster sauce that I have in a long time so when I tasted it (after having so much of the vegetarian oyster sauce that Emily's mom uses), it really tasted acrid.
February 5th 2007 - 12:07AM - Villa Montalvo
I got a mobile GPS device (the TomTom 700) recently and this was the first real destination that I used it for...Villa Montalvo. Some people have their weddings here but its primarily a perfoming arts center. I really like the TomTom...its' not the smallest GPS device but it's easy to use, the speakers are loud, and the screen is pretty good. I've also added additional voices to it which makes driving more interesting getting directions from 007 or Yoda.
Emily auditions for Rocky VII
I'd hate to have a bust made of me where I look perpetually surprised/shocked/dismayed.
I asked Emily to pose for this shot. Emily claims that she was trying to imitate the Von Trapp (the family in The Sound of Music) female singing style. However, when she did this, I thought of communist China since all the old Red Guard singers had this pose too. Either way, it was a little freaky.
We came across this beautifully carved statue on the grounds...you can only wonder...
...what is she thinking about?
My first HDR (high dynamic range) image. An HDR image is usually a combination of RAW/JPG images that were taken at different exposures. You take an exposure bracket and use fancy software to combine them. The effect is sometimes ethereal which is good and bad. I've seen some crazy ones that look out of this world. Usually you use RAW files since they provide better information for the HDR process than JPG files would.
HDR processing...3 bracketed exposures...1 final HDR image.
The garden at Villa Montalvo is world-class. If you live on Mars.
Prickly Pear...Did you know that you can eat it? You have to boil it first to get the needles off...then you can cut it up just like a fruit.
Emily got the Canon 580EX Speedlite flash for me this Christmas which has really changed the way my pictures turn out in certain situations. Overhead lighting makes a big difference compared to direct lighting but just the ability to easily change the flash duration is pretty cool...I want to try the strobe effect at some point.
I used the flash to bounce off the ceilng to provide overhead lighting that wasn't there before. I also took one with direct lighting. Very different results. This fountain was pretty freaky. 4 men with no bodies hanging off of a basin jeering malevolently at the center is the stuff of nightmares. It didn't help that the runoff at the base of the fountain had Medusa heads all around it.
Another beautiful statue!
I could only tell it was Adam and Eve because on the back there was Mr. Snake with the Forbidden Apple in his mouth. As a rule, I never eat fruit offered by a snake.
