Phil’s blog

It’s been 3 months since I’ve posted and much has changed. I’ll write about the changes soon, but first some highlights since my last post:

• Went to the 25th annual Santa Cruz clam chowder cook off
• Went on a seven mile hike at Crystal Springs reservoir. I know it isn’t far enough to be notable by hiking standards, but for a non-hiker like me it’s plenty.
• Went to the CMAT wushu competition at Berkeley. Justine competed in nanquan (southern fist) and rocked it per usual. This was the first time I didn’t compete, my excuse being that I’m too busy to train. It was nice to see my former teammates from UVA and Justine’s friends from her wushu school back in VA. The event went way overtime as expected, and we all went out for food and bubble tea afterwards as is tradition. The after party was ok, the highlight being when Syl taught me some dance moves which I probably looked ridiculous executing but had fun nonetheless.
  
  
• Had a picnic on the hills between Google and Shoreline. We feasted on banh mi, Thai iced tea, and beautiful views while struggling for warmth in a small blanket because it was a bit breezier than we had anticipated.
  
  
• Practiced wushu at O-Mei. We went about twice a week and were starting to get back into the groove, but didn’t renew our membership this month because of my change in plans which I’ll write about in the next post. We once trained at Eagle Park (near downtown Mountain View) which was actually really nice until the sprinklers got us.
• Finally installed flush-mount turn signals on my motorcycle. I was all proud of myself but then all of them (even the rear ones which I didn’t replace) stopped working at some point during my first ride. Need to take care of that soon.
• Set up an easter egg hunt for Justine. I only had 12 easter eggs but I also hid tons of stray candy all over the apartment. Amazingly, Justine found every piece (that I’m aware of) except one which was pretty far under the bed.
• Golden Gate Park, specifically, the Japanese Tea Garden, the AIDS Memorial Grove, and the Conservatory of Flowers.
  
  
  
  
• Went to the Gel Conference in NYC. Not your typical industry conference, but rather a series of workshops and speakers covering various topics, the unifying theme being the creation of good experiences (Gel stands for Good Experience Live). I attended two workshops, one about juggling and the other about building MIDI instruments out of junk. Both were pretty interesting and I can now juggle 3 beanbags for a about 5 seconds before losing control. The speakers were also pretty good, and among the more interesting were Danny Meyer, owner of several popular NY restaurants, and Andrew, creator of songstowearpantsto.com. Also got to hang out with some old buddies from middle school, high school, and college - bonus!
  
  
• Spent a weekend in the Seattle area to work out business plans - more on this in the next post.
• Hanging out with my dad in San Francisco.
  
  
• Watched the entire Man vs. Wild and Planet Earth series.
• Watched Spiderman 3, Stranger Than Fiction (surprisingly good!), The Terminal, As Good as It Gets, Cave of the Yellow Dog, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Alien, and Inside Man.
• Cooked a lot and tried some new dishes including mango chicken salad (kind of made this one up), red bean soup (a simple dessert), congee (incredibly delicious yet so simple), and a soup with sausage and veggies that I added way too much cayenne pepper to but was still good.
• Got Justine to play video games with me! Actually got her hooked on Lego Star Wars 2 (which we played through in co-op mode) and The Sims 2 (which occupied many of our evenings). We also played Lego Star Wars 1 and X-Men Alliance, but these weren’t as fun.
• Went to a bunch of restaurants:
  • Palace Bar-B-Que Buffet - Korean BBQ place in Sunnyvale, good but we couldn’t eat enough to make it worth the money
  • Gochi - Japanese fusion tapas, crispy rice pot was incredible
  • Long Life Noodle Company - noodle place in Palo Alto, not that good
  • So Dong Gong Tofu House - Korean place in Santa Clara and Palo Alto (we went to both), outstanding bibimbop but I actually prefer Totoro’s tofu stew
  • Cafe Yulong - Chinese place off Castro, great calamari
  • Queen’s House - Chinese place on Castro, not bad but not super memorable
  • Katz Deli - deli in NYC specializing in giant meat sandwiches. The meat to bread ratio was ridiculous and I wasn’t able to finish. Very tasty though, and the pickles were great.
  • Shake Shack - burger joint at Madison Square Park in NYC, best I’ve ever had
  • Vung Tau - solid Vietnamese place in San Jose
  • Miette Patisserie - French bakery in SF serving up heart-stopping treats
  • Katana-Ya - ramen place in SF, pretty good but not better than Maru Ichi
  • 99 Chicken - Korean fried chicken? Delicious! And the owners are so friendly and cute.
  • I Love Sushi - sushi place in Bellevue, very tasty and nicely presented
  • El Calderon - El Salvadoran place in Mountain View, delicious and seems authentic
  • Afghani House - in Sunnyvale, the lamb was outstanding
  • Gooyi Gooyi - Korean BBQ place in Santa Clara. Was quite good, and at one point a girl and a person dressed as a giant soju bottle came in and started advertising the product to the Korean patrons. The soju bottle was dancing around the whole time - it was pretty awesome.
  • Breaktime Desserts - Asian dessert place in Cupertino, very large and interesting selection, and very tasty
  • Okane Sushi - in San Bruno, nothing to write home about

It has been a great weekend. My friend Clement, whom I haven’t seen in over a year, came to visit. We went to UVA and worked on a couple of projects together, and he recruited me to intern at Microsoft in 2005. He’s now working at the MS office in Beijing, but has been in Redmond for the past couple of months, so it was a good time for him to make a trip down to Cali.

Highlights from the weekend:

• Dinner at Hyderabad House in Palo Alto with Clement’s friend Robbie whom I met while he was interning at Google this past summer
• Lunch at Brothers Korean Restaurant in SF with Clement’s friend Helen, who stayed and hung out with us the rest of the weekend. The food was amazing; they used wood charcoal in the table grill and brought more little side dishes than I’ve ever seen at a Korean meal. They also gave us a free dish of chap chae, perhaps because we ordered so much.
• Walking around Fisherman’s Wharf, checking out Ripley’s Believe it or Not, and getting clam chowder in a sourdough bowl.
  
• Seeing Blood Diamond at the Metreon. Great movie, and very cool that it is doing some social good in educating the public about conflict diamonds.
• Lunch at King of Krung Siam in Mountain View with Clement’s friend Shan and his girlfriend. We ordered several dishes but the only standouts were the seafood salad and the calamari.
• Hanging out and shopping at Santana Row. We went to the lounge at Sino which has nice decor but the lychee sangria isn’t so good.
  
• Dinner at Maruichi, my favorite noodle place outside of Japan. I learned that they have ramen in a spicy miso broth that isn’t on the menu. It was delicious!
  
• A great discussion with Clement, Robbie, and Helen about a startup idea Clement is trying to recruit me on. It brought back memories of the old days at UVA when Clement and I worked on a couple of ideas together. Fun times!
• Geocaching with friends from Google. We attempted and found: Google Falls, Octal Fair, Element #2, and Lone Pine Overlook. 4/4 is pretty amazing, but we did have seven people. Great times were had.
  
  

It occurred to me that I’m losing my ability to write sentences because my first instinct is always to make lists. I’d say about 50% of my emails contain bulleted lists. It seems more efficient to not have transitions and sentence boundaries, leading to higher information density. On the other hand, maybe people are used to the flow of sentences and the abrupt transition from one point to the next actually slows down the reader.

Anyway, the point of this post is to summarize roughly the last two weeks. Unlike the last massive update (after Justine’s previous visit), this time I’ll follow up with a couple of additional posts with a bit more detail on certain things.

Justine and her family came out here on the 9/27 for her cousin’s wedding. The ceremony was on 9/30 at Villa Montalvo. I’m not a huge fan of weddings (I don’t dislike them but don’t get excited about them either), but it was nice hanging out with Justine and her family. Dinner was great and I was even convinced to dance a bit during the after party (an extremely rare sight). Her parents and younger sister Syl left the next day, but she and her twin sister Constance stuck around and stayed at my place. I’m glad Cons stayed a few days because last time Justine visited, she got really bored while I was at work. Cons stayed 4 extra days and did stuff with Justine during the day, then we’d all have dinner and see a movie or something after I got back. Justine had planned to stay until 10/9, but within a couple of hours of her flight, changed her mind and rescheduled for 10/13 Here’s a brief list of what we did (including when Cons was here):

• Movies
  • Dumbo - Their idea, but was actually decent for an old children’s movie (1941!). I liked the crows.
  • Akira - My idea. They didn’t like it much but I guess you have to be more of an anime fan to appreciate it, especially because it was made in 1988.
  • The Science of Sleep - Charming, hilarious, awesome.
• Restaurants
  • Jatbar.com is a great resource for restaurant reviews in the Bay Area. We used it to find a few of the places below.
  • Maruichi - Multiple times for udon and ramen. Can’t be beat.
  • Totoro - Kalbi and chap chae, nice but less pickled veggies than we got last time
  • Pasta Pomodoro - Perhaps the most reasonably priced restaurant in Santana Row. We got prosciutto/mozzarella/asparagus bruschetta, some kind of meat/pasta soup, and linguini with clams and white wine sauce. They were gross, pretty good, and pretty good, respectively. There was also garlic bread which was served cold, intentionally apparently, which was also gross.
  • Pho Hoa - Justine is getting tired of this place but it’s fast, cheap, satisfying, and reasonably healthy, and I still love it
  • Sushi Coast - Random little japanese restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Read that their rolls are a great bargain on Jatbar, but we weren’t blown away. On the way back we saw an interesting sight on the 101: a police car with lights flashing was swerving back and forth across the width of the highway, making a sine wave as it progressed, and causing all cars behind it to slow down. We thought there might be an accident or hazard ahead but there was nothing, and the cop just exited after a minute or so. Strange.
  • Back A Yard - Tiny carribean place in Menlo Park. We got jerk chicken and ox tail, both of which were incredibly delicious, but the ox tail was like 1/2 fat.
  • Taqueria la Bamba - Massive burritos for cheap - we got carnitas and pollo asado. What makes this place stand out is that they brown the meat so it’s slightly crispy - delicious!
  • Momoya - They disappointed me this time. We got the sashimi dinner for two as we did the last time Justine visited, but this time the selection was much smaller, including only tuna, salmon, yellow tail, and scallops (which I’m not a fan of by the way). Definitely not worth $40. I’ll probably give them another chance but I’ll definitely ask about selection before ordering another variety meal.
• Cooking
  • Couscous with golden raisins, pine nuts, and green onions - Quick, easy, delcious, plentiful, reheats well. We made this a lot last year at UVA.
  • Thai shrimp curry - We also made this a lot at UVA. Our version is based on the linked recipe, but minus the spinach and plus chopped onion, bamboo, and snow peas. Rivals any restaurant’s curry in my opinion, but isn’t so good reheated.
  • Uji kintoki - A japanese dessert consisting of shaved ice topped with green tea, red bean paste, and optionally condensed milk, mochi, and ice cream. I’ll write more about this in a later post.
• Other stuff
  • Shopping/dining at Santana Row, including trips to the Diesel store ;]
  • Mountain View Public Library - Justine loves books
  • Geocaching - Will write more about this later.
  • Shopping at Ikea - Got a sweet bookcase.
  • Toys R Us - Thought it would be cool to go back to this place that was so awesome during childhood, but now all the toys seem lame :[
  • I’m sure there’s more but my memory is hazy.
  • EDIT: forgot to mention taking Justine to the emergency room at 4am for an itchy rash that would appear in seemingly random place on her body and was driving her crazy.  Turns out it was an alergic reaction to amoxicillin prescribed for a tooth infection.  The doctor gave her a steroid and Claratin and there was no trouble after that.  We were pretty hungry so we went cruising for burgers afterwards.  Luckily I didn’t have to work the next day :]

Justine visited for two glorious weeks and we did a bunch of stuff. I was thinking of writing individual entries for various things but I don’t think people would bother looking back a few entries to where I left off (but really I’m just too lazy to write that much). So here it is, condensed to a single post.

Delicious food
We went out to eat almost every day. Here are the restaurants (that I can remember) in no particular order:

• Momoya Sushi (pictured left): As I said in a previous entry, fantastic. Probably the best sushi in Mountain View. Found out they supply the sushi at Cafe Pacifica at the Googleplex.
• Pho Hoa (pictured right): Pronounced fuh huh-ah. I’ve probably eaten there 10+ times since moving out here. Cheap, fast, delicious, close, reasonably healthy - what more could you ask? We actually tried a non-pho entre one night: some kind of grilled chicken plate with a sweet/vinegary sauce - delightful.
• Betelnut: Asian fusion restaurant in SF. We got counter seats and watched the prep cooks work the woks. Had some delicious Korean noodle soup and firecracker chicken.
• Amarin: Thai in downtown MV. Great beef salad, so-so pad thai.
• Maru-ichi: Best Japanese noodles in MV. My favorites: bukkake udon (cold), nabeyaki udon, maruichi ramen w/shoyu broth.
• Pasta Pomodoro: Cheap, passable, chain pasta store. Nothing special.
• Totoro: Good, cheap Korean food in downtown MV.
• Sue’s Indian Cuisine: Pretty good, great portions. Downtown MV.
• Dakao: Pretty good banh mi (Vietnamese baguette sandwiches) in San Jose.
• La Rioja: Latin American/Carribean fusion. They try to pass themselves off as a legit restaurant, but it’s more like a club that happens to serve food. I ordered a rare ribeye and it came back anything but, so I politely sent it back and received a thicker steak that was still cold on the inside. I ate a few bites to be polite, then boxed it.
• Seoul Garden: Great Korean food in SF Japantown, very nice staff too.
• Crepe place on Pier 39: Too much cheese. Will never eat another non-dessert crepe as long as I live.

Japantown Festival
Like Chinatown, but cleaner! Seriously though, Japantown was awesome, and there was some kind of annual festival going on. There was singing, dancing, playing of games, taiko drumming, and a virgorous mochi ritual pictured left. We had a delicious lunch form Seoul Garden, a parfait from a nicely decorated tea house (pictured right), and a sno-cone. It seem food is always a major part of our activities. Anyway, good times were had. More photos here.

Exploratorium
Probably intended for children, but we saw plenty of adults having a good time. It’s basically a bunch of science lessons in the form of (mostly) hands-on exhibits. Memorable ones included:

• a game where you listen to ambient noise and try to determine the location (laundromat, supermarket, etc)
• an aquarium of mutant goldfish
• a giant display showing the transformation of one scene to another, one small piece at a time, and flickering with each change (I almost wrote flickring, haha), showing that it’s hard to perceive changes when your whole field of view is disrupted
• a heat sensitive video camera (output pictured left)

We walked around SF afterwards (right photo) and dined at Betelnut. More photos here.

Alcatraz
We went on Labor Day, huge crowd. The history was interesting but I appreciated the scenery most. It probably didn’t help that my audio guide device was malfunctioning and the line was too long to go back and exchange it, forcing me to have Justine tell me the interesting parts while she listened to the narration, or to put my ear next to hers to try to listen myself. Weather was beautiful as it has been this whole summer. Parking was crazy expensive. More photos here .

Geocaching
Spent an afternoon geocaching in MV. First went after Middlefield Field. The readings on my Magellan eXplorist 200 GPS kept drifting so we had to cover a wide area. I don’t know whether it was due to conditions or lousy hardware. Justine ended up spotting it in a tree as you can see in the photo. Then we went for Stevenson Surprise near an elementary school. We’re pretty sure we were in the right area, but came away empty handed. I suspect it was buried in some bushes, which we weren’t willing to go too far into. Good times though :] More photos here.

Movies

• Ghostbusters: You know these guys. One of my favorite movies as a kid, and still is. Teeny fell asleep though
• Porco Rosso: About a bounty hunter pilot who happens to be a pig (in a normal human world). Charming!
• Zatoichi: About a blind swordsman who takes on Japanese gangs. Hilarious and fierce.

PS: I posted this from writely!