that’s whacked

tetley

Wednesday, Oct 27. 2004  –  Category: Food

i’m down to my last 9 Tetley’s tea bags. every year i go to Canada and buy some more, but i fear i may run out before my next run to the border. anyone know anywhere in the Bay Area i can get Tetley’s tea at, and not get ripped off?

Random ramblings…

Tuesday, Sep 28. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog, Food, Football, Musings

Poorna and I got a late night soymilk at our favourite breakfast joint which happens to be open 24h a couple of days ago, when we worked till 2am (concalls with MPK can be a bitch from Beijing). It was really nice walking home, as for once, the streets were empty and deserted. We saw a couple making out, a bunch of taxi drivers standing around shooting the breeze, and had a nice hot glass of soy milk.

At the restaurant, while waiting for the soy milk we saw a pretty average couple sitting down waiting for their own order. The waitress brought out a Budweiser and a soy milk. Poorna and I both assumed the Bud was for the guy, and the soy milk for the girl. Boy, we were wrong. Just goes to show… don’t have preconceived notions when going to a different culture.

Poorna and I went for Sichuan hot pot a couple of nights ago with my dad. This was actually our first substantial meal after coming back from Qufu, and it was great. Coming from a whole weekend of eating relatively bland repetitive food, it was awesome to just start a fire in my mouth with some crazy hot Sichuan food. We did the half-half veggie/bone stock, and just dumped in tons of veggies and meat. My dad probably went overboard in ordering food, but hey, we loved it and ate almost all of it.

(and yes, I think my digestive system is still feeling it)

It’s a trippy feeling when, after having stuffed really spicy food in your mouth for about an hour, your mouth starts to get numb, and really cool (as in temperature cool). It’s almost like an anesthetic…. it’s very soothing. Until you think about it, and realise you’ve probably destroyed a lot of the tastebuds/nerve endings on your tongue.

I went for Korean BBQ last night with my dad (since Poorna wasn’t around, we went all out meat crazy). It was amazing….really great food. This was by far the largest Korean BBQ restaurant I’ve ever been to… with the really hot charcoal grills instead of gas, which in my opinion, really does lend itself to a better flavour. Oh yeah, and we went shopping at Hong Qiao again, where I bought a ridiculous amount of stuff ($10 for a pair of trekking poles, woohoo!)

Someone who will remain nameless (and no, it’s not Poorna this time, and no, it’s not me) got diarrhea last night….. from a mooncake….. on the Mid-Autumn “Moon” Festival. I find this hilarious…

and last but not least, how can I not mention Rooney in his spectacular debut for ManU. a hat trick in an unbelievable 6-2 win over Fenerbahce. this kid is amazing!

and while we’re on football, my condolences to my SEED mentor whose team lost to Olympiakos.

are you hungry?

Monday, Sep 27. 2004  –  Category: Food

cause this guy sure isn’t. not after the 8500 calorie sandwhich.

(shamelessly stolen from erik’s blog, because this sandwich NEEDS to be mirroured to PlanetSun). how much do you think it would cost on the MPK cafeteria sandwich scale?

housewarming

Sunday, Jul 25. 2004  –  Category: Food

wendy and i had our big housewarming party last night (thanks to Jesse & Anne for the photos)

wow. that was quite a party. we had tons of food, and alcohol. many gifts of wine and scotch were happily received, and then drunk. as jesse put it, we’re definitely getting more mature since we were getting tanked off expensive alcohol.

a while ago, Chester had gone to Finland for a business trip, and brought me back a bottle of some crazy good Finnish vodka. it had been sitting unopened, waiting for a good reason to be cracked open, and last night it was finally opened. man…that was some good stuff. i’ve never had such smooth vodka. my friends know that i’m not a vodka person - but i took down 3 shots of that stuff.

good vodka, good scotch, a crazy assortment of good wines that Jaime & Zac gave us…. the night was so classy and dare i say it, mature, until i took the tequila shot with Canada out of the tupperware container (dude, we have 11 shot glasses…you couldn’t find one?!?!)

it was pretty much downhill after that. opening the bathroom door to find bernie lying in the corner covered in puke was pretty much the signal for the end of the evening.

thanks to everyone for all the great gifts (aaron & grace: the wine glasses were well timed, since one of ours didn’t make it through the night).

1337 S4UC3

Thursday, Apr 29. 2004  –  Category: Food

okay that last entry was like all …. serious and shit. so to lighten things up…. i give you 1337 S4UC3 (elite sauce to those non-1337 out there).

R j00 1337??!??

chinging the ming in toronto

Monday, Apr 5. 2004  –  Category: Food, Travel

we went up to Toronto last weekend for the annual Ching Ming festival where we sweep our grandma’s grave, hang out with the family, eat an entire roast pig, and play pool/drink canadian beer with the cousins.

it was pretty much the same routine… we arrived friday night, had a huge dinner, went out to play pool, drank a lot of Molson’s Dry, got thoroughly schooled at pool by my cousin Gilbert, went out for a second dinner of jerked chicken and beef patties from a great Jamaican place called “Albert’s”, and had fresh apple pie back at Peggy & Albert’s place. woke up on Sat., and commenced an entire day of gorging and eating after having cleaned up my grandma’s grave. we paid our respects, i assumed my designated role as cameraman, and then we went back to my uncle’s place (f-ing gooooorgeous house, oh man…). we took a break after a huge lunch to go to the grocery store where we bought 11 bags of two-bite brownies, 2 bars of chocolate, 2 bags of ketchup chips, and 2 boxes of Tetley’s tea. after dinner we went back to Central Billiards and shot some more pool, drank some more Molson’s Dry, and then… yup, went back to “Albert’s” for some more beef patties.

that was a ridiculous weekend of eating…. it was amazing i didn’t get sick…

oh wait. yeah, i did. Sunday morning, my cousin Albert gave me some yoghurt for breakfast. i should have been suspicious when he asked me if i wanted anything, and then spent a minute rustling around in the fridge before pronouncing he had found some yoghurt. oh well…he’s a doctor, i trusted him. anyway, i ate the yoghurt, felt vaguely nauseaus on my flight from Toronto to Chicago, and then puked about 6 times on the flight from Chicago to SF.

fortune cookie

Friday, Mar 12. 2004  –  Category: Food

“You know what you want. Get to work to make it materialize.”

this was the fortune that was in my fortune cookie i just ate. when i opened it up, at first, all i read was “Get to work” which just freaked me out.

… how did my fortune cookie know i was reading a friend’s blog?!?? i immediately got all defensive, thinking to myself, “i just started a run, i’ve got like 2 minutes while this finishes so i can analyse the results. i can read a fucking blog if i want.”

… and then i realised i was trying to justify my actions to a fortune cookie.

… and then i read the rest of the fortune cookie.

and then i ate the cookie. who got the last laugh now, bitch?? that’s right.
I did.

give thanks for…. turducken?

Tuesday, Dec 2. 2003  –  Category: Food, Musings, Travel

wendy and i flew out to Chicago to visit erik and spend a vacation weekend relaxing. photo gallery is here

i got in tuesday night, passed out after watching the England-Australia rugby match, and the Arsenal football match. had an awesome prime rib sandwich for lunch at Lawry’s and then we made our way over to Rock Bottom to play 11-up and drink beer while waiting for Wendy to get in. we then spent the next 2 and a half hours driving to the airport, picking up wendy, and driving back. fun fun chicago thanksgiving traffic. dinner that night at CPOG was great though, if not a little too cheesy. erik also drove us out so we could see the Chicago night skyline. wendy and i then went to the Signature Lounge at the John Hancock building for wine, dessert, and some night-time viewing.

wendy and i spent most of thursday just walking around the city’s Michigan Ave. shopping area (most stores were closed obviously). we shivered, drank Starbucks and just walked. that night Erik had a bunch of friends over for Thanksgiving, and we ate “Turducken” (chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey, with jambalaya stuffing to boot, and all deboned). we also spent a lot of time playing with their new pug George.

friday we dove into the madness that is post-Thanksgiving shopping on Michigan Avenue. utter madness. i can’t believe how many people were out shopping. we checked into the W Chicago hotel that afternoon, and then headed out for dinner at the Chicago Chophouse where i had an enormous 20oz bone-in New York strip steak. i saved the bone for George who made short work of it and stripped it even more over the next two days. wendy and i then went to the Lyric Opera to watch Faust. it was surpsingly good and not sleepy and boring like i feared it might be. wendy only slept for 5-10 minutes of it. we grabbed a “dessert” of oysters and wine at Bin 36.

saturday was more shopping/walking/sight-seeing, this time with dinner at Bin 36 again. it’s strange, it’s a snooty wine restaurant without all the snootiness of a wine restaurant. had some great lamb, and some really good wines. oooh, and the creme bruleee…. damn that was good.

sunday was our last day. we slept in hella late (left the hotel at 1pm!), went to the Field Museum where we saw some really cool exhibits, including Sue the largest/most complete T-Rex skeleton in the world. had dinner at Sushi Samba, a Brazillian sushi restaurant, and then endured the flight back to SFO.

i think i’m still stuffed from all the great food i had in chicago.

my diet lasted 6 minutes

Wednesday, Sep 24. 2003  –  Category: Food

well. not exactly a diet. but i resolved i would maybe try to eat a little healthier, at least for today.

that lasted 6 minutes until someone brought in Krispy Kreme donuts

….ah original glazed….my temptress will be the death of me

literally

canada, eh?

Monday, Sep 22. 2003  –  Category: Food, Music, Travel

My family and I went up to Toronto, Canada this past weekend to have a mini-family-reunion and celebrate my grandfather’s 87th birthday. We also went to both the Buddhist temple and the burial site to pay respects to my grandmother who passed away in 1996.

I seriously spent the entire weekend eating. We took a horrible red-eye flight leaving SFO at midnight and arrived in Toronto at around 9am. While my parents napped, my cousins Peggy and Gilbert took Jaime and I out on a “Toronto Eating Tour”, which while really just localised to the local Kensington Market, was awesome. We were pretty much eating non-stop. Gilbert & Peggy also introduced us to these things called ‘two-bite brownies’ which were so damn good, we brought back 6 bags to the states with us. After stuffing ourselves on cheese, enpanadas from a Chilean restaurant, brownies, and crisps, we got back home only to find out we were going to Dim Sum with my parents and my uncle. So we had dim sum at 3pm (great chicken’s feet!) and headed home to take a nap in order to rest up for……. family banquet at 6:30p!

The banquet was your standard fare, with the best part seeing my granddad so happy. I’ve never seem him so happy; he was smiling the whole time!

After 12 courses, we headed home to relax for an hour or so before heading out at 11:45pm to go to a lounge called “Habitat” in downtown Toronto. We met up with my other cousin Albert (Gilbert & Peggy’s middle brother), who was on a steady path to getting wasted while celebrating his last exam of his life ever (he’s an ER doctor). Anyway, after hanging out there for a bit, we went to a billiards club where Gilbert subsequently whooped our collective asses.

We then headed home to partake of toasted bagels with cream cheese, sliced cheeses, ketchup chips, and (more!) brownies sitting on a chilly and crisp outdoor deck on the third floor of Peggy’s house on a nice Toronto morning at 4:30am.

The next day we headed out for….. dim sum. After dim sum we went to pay respects to my grandmother’s grave, and the Lau family burial plot. After that, Peggy, Gilbert, Jaime, and I drove home and stopped at an estate sale we saw signs for.

After browsing around for 10 minutes it finally hit me (I’m a little slow, okay?) that a (very much) older woman had just passed away, hence the estate sale. While this put a slight damper on things, it was still cool to see all the stuff she’d accumulated throughout her life. We saw a ceritificate from some royal board of medical examiners in London certifying her to resuscitate people who had ‘apparently drowned’ in London… from 1918. We also found a really cool fire extinguisher from 1938 that Peggy bought. I picked up an old ceramic mug labeled “PORK DRIPPINGS”.

And that’s about it….after a long weekend stuffing and gorging myself on great food, I’m back in the states. Time to take a break….stop blogging… and go eat some brownies.