that’s whacked

Posts filed under 'Food'

mmmm…coffee

you know what’s better than making your own vietnamese coffee at work?

nothing.

(well, coffee-wise anyway)

1 comment April 10th, 2006

Happy (White-Washed) Chinese New Year…

It’s always been interesting for me around Chinese events like Chinese New Year, or Qing Ming (literally ‘grave sweeping’ where people go to visit their ancestor’s graves to pay respects; our family goes to Toronto where my grandmother is buried).

I’m one of many ABC’s (American Born Chinese) I know, though technically (and patriotically) I claim myself as a BBC (British Born Chinese) with an ABC culture and upbringing.

Anyway, I’ve always liked how strong a role family plays in Chinese culture. Our families believe very strongly that our ancestors watch out for us, and that honouring them will bring good fortune/luck. One aspect of this which I’ve always wondered about is honouring ancestors with food. We do this on both New Years and Qing Ming, when our family lays out a veritable banquet feast in front of my grandmother’s grave, and all my cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. stand around in the cold Canadian springtime staring (and inwardly drooling) at all the hot steaming food getting cold while we wait and pray/pay respects. I’m never really sure what we’re waiting for exactly.

So I’m conflicted. I mean… sure, waiting a few hours for food is a small price to pay to make sure my super kung-fu great-great-great-grandfather has got my spiritual back. But at the same time… do spirits really need real-world food?

I know if I were a spirit, watching over future generations of little stevel’s (perish the thought), I would send a message saying “you know what… you spent hours slaving over that feast…. not to mention the two hours waiting in line at 99 Ranch picking up the huge roast pig… go ahead, eat up. I’ll grab leftovers”. In fact, I’m going to write that down in my will…

“Future Lau’s, when you gather together to pay respects and honour your ancestors. Go ahead, take a little bite before praying. I know you’re all hungry, and at the same time I can’t say I speak for your other ancestors - but I’ll let you go ahead and eat my share instead.”

I’m going to start a revolution in Chinese celebration….

2 comments January 28th, 2006

SF in jello

The City

my manager sent this to our group…. entitled “San Francisco in Jell-O”. why were we talking about this? it related to me writing a tool in threaded-Perl, which our resident Perl expert had the following endearing remarks on:

“Plus threaded perl is about as unstable as a Jello Empire State building… “

Add comment October 31st, 2005

random musings from my commute on BART

the south hayward station has a disproportionately high number of cute asian girls, compared to the rest of the BART stations - at least the ones on the east bay. why is that? CSU hayward/east bay? or do they just have better looking asian genes in south hayward.

i get into the union city station around 7:40 since i have to get to fruitvale BART by 7:15 to get parking. the Sun shuttle doesn’t come until 8, so this leaves me 20 minutes of time to kill. lately, i’ve been watching all the migrant workers, and all the asian general contractors/construction guys who pick them up in their trucks. it’s been kind of interesting trying to figure out the seniority/pecking order among the workers. for the most part, it seems to be a FIFO queue - but every now and then, there are people who for some reason or another (designated senior migrant workers?) who get to jump the queue and go ahead of others. the other funny thought that occured to me was if you were some random dude who just happened to be going to the union city station to pick someone up, and you pulled up in your truck - and two random hispanic guys just jumped into your truck mistaking you for a contractor. would it be weird? awkward? freaky?

yesterday, i took the bus to BART instead of driving - so i got to union city @ 7:30. 30 minutes to kill, so i figured i’d go grab a bite to eat at McD’s across the street. a sausage/egg mcgriddle’s (yeah yeah i like ‘em, deal with it) is clearly labeled as $3.69 for the meal. the cashier rung me up at $4.88. i gave her a $5 without really thinking and she gave me 12 cents change. after about 10 seconds (while i was waiting for my meal), it occured to me that $1.19 tax on something that is $3.69 is insanely high (i’m slow in the morning). i pointed it out, and she kindly pointed out that i had gotten coffee. i kindly pointed out that coffee and a hashbrown are included in the meal. she less kindly pointed out that it was due to tax. i less kindly pointed out that i didn’t believe Union City had a 32% tax rate, and that a more realistic rate was probably around 8%. she quite rudely pointed out that her computer was down. i, just as rudely, asked how she had arrived at $4.88 if her computer was down. she spitefully claimed that she did this every morning, and that a $3.69 meal came to $4.88 after tax. i thought about explaining to her how percentages work, and that .08 of 3.69 is not 1.19… and how you can make it simpler by just rounding .08 to .1, and taking 3.69 and shifting the decimal point, etc. etc. all these neat little shortcuts to estimate percentages. instead, i took the easy (less work) way out and pissed-offed-ly told her maybe she should brush up on her basic math skills … to which she gave me my breakfast, gave me a $1, and then told me “whatever.”

sigh. all this for some processed breakfast sandwich combo meal. on my way out, i handed her a piece of paper on which i had calculated all the various meal prices for the 10 “extra value” meals with tax.

“extra value” my ass.

3 comments October 20th, 2005

steve & geoff: powered by solaris

i’ve been so busy making grommit ‘powered by solaris’, i haven’t had time to post photos from last wednesday when geoff, chris, celeste, wendy, and i went to Le Cheval in Oakland for dinner. geoff already wrote all about it, so i don’t have much to add other than our own ‘powered by solaris’ photos

Add comment August 31st, 2005

a weekend to digest

i consumed a ridiculous amount of food this weekend. it started out early saturday morning with wendy and i heading down to Fremont with val & jason to this great little Chinese restaurant (finchi cafe, i think?)… it’s next to the Lion Supermarket at Warm Springs & Mission. $8.95 all you can eat Chinese buffet breakfast. mmm…. rice porridge, and all that funky weird looking stuff that Chinese people eat for breakfast. and it was great

after that, we headed to the Gilroy Garlic Festival for even more eating. we had some crab aioli garlic fries, garlic fried alligator, garlic sausage sandwich, garlic ginger chicken stir fry, garlic mushrooms, garlic scampi, garlic bread, garlic ice cream, and about 5 cups of frozen lemonade cause it was so freaking hot out. after all these years of hearing about it, i’m glad we finally went… i was amazed at how well run the festival was. from the moment you see the “Garlic Festival - exit Madsen Ave.” sign on 101, there were people directing you in to the massive parking lot fields, and shuttling people onto buses to take them to the fairground. and at all the entrance/exit gates were people handing out free cups of water to try and beat back the heat. overall, i’m very impressed at how smooth all the organisation was.

after a long day in the sun, we had a stinky garlic-smelling car ride back to Oakland where we bbq’d some hot links up and dropped back a few beers.

on sunday, to celebrate wendy’s birthday, we went to Gary Danko in the city. wow! what an amazing restaurant. the food was brilliant. we each had a 4 course meal. best course for me? easily the foie gras… or maybe the seared ahi… but the loin of lamb was pretty damn good too. and the peaches flambe for dessert!!! wow. yeah, you get the picture. definitely highly highly recommended restaurant to go to if you’re looking for a great dining experience.

Add comment August 1st, 2005

good eats

We went up to Toronto for my cousin’s wedding over the July 4th weekend. While I was kind of bummed to miss the July 4th fireworks here, I did get to experience flying over Toronto while Canada Day fireworks were going off, which is pretty damn cool. It’s not often you get to see fireworks from above.

We had a great time, my cousin’s wedding was hands down the best I’ve ever been to. She’s a bitchin’ breakdancer, and she and her crew did a little Chinese fan-dance remix at the wedding dinner which was awesome.

We also did the usual family trip to Niagara (my 4th trip there now..?), and took the requisite Niagara Daredevil photo at the silly booth (photos will be uploaded soon once I scan ‘em in). We also had dinner at the top of the Skylon tower in the revolving restaurant.

We then spent the last two days doing our usual Toronto thing: eating. I love Toronto for many things:

1) food 2) family 3) friendly people

In my opinion, Toronto has some of the most diverse and best foods to be found. And you can’t beat all-you-can-eat korean BBQ for ~$10 US.

I could definitely retire to a place like Toronto…

Add comment July 9th, 2005

le bateau ivre

it’s another gorgeous work from home day… but i’m not working from home.

i found a great little cafe called Le Bateau Ivre here in Berkeley (2629 Telegraph, near Telegraph & Dwight).

really great friendly staff and owner… a yummy spicy italian sausage sandwich, some great iced viennese coffee, and most importantly… free wifi.

nice outdoor seating too so i can enjoy the sunshine (granted, the glare on the laptop screen is a little bad, but i found a good position under a tree where i can work comfortably).

Add comment June 3rd, 2005

mmm….dogs…

It’s not often you get to combine 3 of your all time favourite foods into one hearty edible meal item.

I just had lunch at DogZilla Cafe, just a block down Howard from the San Francisco Sun building… more specifically, I had The BB&B, baked beans & bacon dog.

I love baked beans. I love bacon. And everyone who has been with me at Costco during lunchtime, or gone with me to Top Dog, knows that I love a good hotdog/sausage. It never occured to me to combine the 3. It’s like the BB&B was destined for me.

Anyway, the icing on the cake was when I went up afterwards to buy a bag of chips and was digging around in my pocket for 63 cents. I gave him two quarters, and was fishing through all my dimes/nickels/cents when the guy said “dude. save your quarters for when you need ‘em…unload all your small change on me”

Add comment March 25th, 2005