Armageddon

Another yearly tradition.

Noticed that there were a lot less new people this time around.. hahaha. 

I think we were the only people in the entire establishment (probably because it was Sunday and some might need to work on the 31st?).

Family Dinner and Hot Pot Day

So it's only been a couple weeks, but lil nephew looks ALOT bigger (and his eyes are opening more now!!!).

For dinner, we had the home style AYCE hot pot.  Mmmmm....

Lobster Sashimi!

Haven't had it in a couple years. But finding it out, I had to try it! For ~$20, that's a pretty good deal I think given it's $12.99/lb. just for the lobster in S.Town.

Not shown above is also the claws of the lobster.
Also ordered some skewers. Pretty nice presentation of it I thought.

A Nice Surprise Gift :)

Right before I left for Horseshoe, I was told that a gift would be arriving soon.

Today coming back I saw it in the mail in its bright neon yellow envelope.  What was inside was really cute and hilarious.  I was laughing as I read through what was written.

Thanks! :)

Horseshoe Week

Pretty much stayed dormant the entire time... heh heh heh

Slept and boiled TVBs and watched snow fall from the inside.

Also went to learn how to make some towel animals.. hahaha

做冬 Dinner

With Grandpa not feeling well this week, we postponed the 做冬 dinner to Sunday.

So I ended up going to Hermie's place early, then bumming at his place.  Watching the nephew from afar, talking to skype with cous who was in Europe (drinking wine instead of water... lol).

Yummy home made food :)

Brunch - Shark's Fin Soup Leftovers

Shark Fin's Soup for Leftovers.. Delicious!!!

It was pretty cool that when put in the fridge, the soup actually looks like jelly. Then with a little water and heat, it melts and turns back into soup... in a matter of a couple minutes!  Yum-my!

Aiden's One Month Old Dinner

Uncle Mson first time meeting the nephew in real life :).

Little Dragon Baby was sleeping most of the time, occasionally waking up to eat, then falls right back to sleep. Guess he has the same 'dai sac lan' genes running through both me and Hermie.. wuhahaha

Congrats Hermie! Welcome Lil Aiden :)

Skydrive Album to Pics of Dinner

Airport Travels

Nexus is awesome... My first time using it at an airport.

The speed gain is not even comparable to the past... Even with me doing it wrong the first time, dumbly lining up thinking I have to see someone, to realizing I only needed a little card printed by the machine to walk through, that was still easily much faster than having to line up in the normal line.

On another note, this morning my carry on was checked as I crossed TSA. Turns out one of my presents had too much liquid... so TSA took it. No more apple smelling face :(

Rainy Soccer Day

Having not played soccer for a couple weeks, I was itching to play.  So with that, I decided the morning of to go and play.

December is a cold time to play soccer...  It was damp, rainy, and cold.  I was tired, but it was fun.  I was put on the field for much longer than I usually have been (either I seem to look pretty good out there, or the other team members were too out of shape).

One of these days I gotta break my scoring drought in this league and start scoring... my passes are slowly getting more and more accurate, but the shot and power is still no where near where it should be, nor my stamina :(.

January I will start working out again!

Mashiko... One Last Time for the Year

This time I wrote down every dish as it was served. The pictures though didn't turn out as appetizer as the food actually was. I have to look up how to fix this new phone camera so it takes better pictures.

Geoduck with Asian Pear	Kumanoto Oysters
Sea trout sashimi on Ponzu Sauce	Uni on Half Shell
Abalone (body, intestine, et. al)	Tuna Poke Salad
Poached Egg on Tuna Tartar	Sapporo, Salmon, Albacore Toro
Tako Salad, Mushroom with Monkfish Liver	Ishin with Ikura
Geoduck Satay	Nabiyaki with Crab and Clams
Jasmine Tea Ice Cream Brulee

On another note, I think next time I come I am going to have to get the order 2 weeks in advance one. This omakase is starting to be very unexciting (not to mention I think over the last year, the price has started going up).

Surface RT - Arrived!

So after being told a couple months ago that we would get one.  Today it began - the receiving of my long awaited Xmas toy.

Some folks had to wait a week to get it.  But I was able to get my hands on one.  How?  I thought I had an early doctor's appointment, but turns out I was off by a day... so waking up at 7:50 am, I basically got into work before 8:30 am.  So before the notification was widespread, I had already unwrapped mine :).

Early bird gets the worm...
...Maybe it's a sign I should wake up earlier?

MS Soccer Season 1: Super Uber Invincibles: Win by default... 2nd last place!

With 1 Win, 8 Losses, a +/- of less than -30, today we actually still had a chance to end up second last in our division.  As long as we win, we will end up ranked 10th, out of 11 teams.

Throughout the week, our Leads put on their rallying hatS, and so even on a cold December day, 17 people showed up for our team.  This is probably the best turn out we have had.  Usually we do decent when we have a few subs, but with 7 extra subs (only 10 on the field at a time), our team could pull hockey like line changes.

Against these numbers, the other team... didn't show up...lol.  They only had 6 players and had to forfeit the match.  What a shame.

We did play a friendly game.  They did have a few good players, so if they actually had 7 players, it would have been a fun game (though of course we might have not won if we did...).

So with this, the season has ended.

First season stats: 2 wins, 8 losses.  Scored 2 goals, GF: 5, GA: 30+
Not too bad for a team where half the team hasn't played soccer before!

Thanksgiving Dinner #2 - Ham

Went to dinner with the Waterloo group today.  Doris always prepares and has some of the most interesting games.  And the best part, there are prizes for winning!

With my awesome teammate, we won packs of Pocky and also the Blue Can Biscuits.  The games:
- Putting on a bunch of clothes of the other gender's clothes ... in a race against time
- Being fed a banana... blindfolded

Goes without saying, no one was close to beating me at eating half a banana :).

Candelight Thanksgiving Dinner

A Thanksgiving feast for two.

The menu:
- Miso soup with Enoki (especially made for me)
- Brussels Sprouts with Bacon Bits
- Spaghetti with Tomato sauce
- A 12 lb Turkey (free range) that I hand picked
- Vegetables used to stuff the Turkey
- Apple Pie

The verdict:
Marvellous and delicious :). The turkey (which I helped pick and ahem...cook :P), was tasty. Moist and cooked juuuust right. The carving was also top notch. The miso soup was also extremely good... in fact, all the courses were good. Also made my apple pie for the first time in a few years. Used butter instead of vegetable shortening this time (because I couldn't find any at Fred Meyer or Safeway)... the crust was not as flaky, but the bottom held up pretty well. Biggest ever pie made yet!

Space Needle - Hawaii Funds Begin

5 months in, time to revisit the place I was suppose to be 5 months ago... the Space Needle :). With both of us dressed in our orange attire, this time not only did we dress like it, we went inside!

To make things even better, the special of the day was a large steak :). A nice big piece of Tomahawk... Yummm... I have never seen such a way of eating steak. It was pretty tasty!

After dinner and two rotations around and a bit, we started up towards the observation deck. We walked outside for a bit, but it was super cold. So we walked the lonnng way back indoors. As part of walking around the observatory deck, we grabbed a souvenir. Once the tower becomes full.. Hawaii.. here we come!

Happy 5 months!

Costco Raid

Ran out of garbage bags a week or so ago... and so the day has come for me to replenish this super useful commodity... Using one of them Costco gift cards given to me by my aunt a couple years ago, I walked in by myself.. and started loading up :)

Result:

As I was looking though, the prices at Costco isn't THAT much cheaper than regular Safeway and QFC.  But nevertheless, purchase success!

Halloween and Stuck in Traffic :(

Wanted to celebrate Halloween wearing our costumes to a bar.  Afterall, we did spend quite some time getting it together and planning :P.

However, leaving work, got stuck in motionless traffic... and instead of taking 20 minutes, it took 1.5 hours to get across the bridge.  Being super agitated from traffic, didn't end up dressing up but instead just went as normal.

Did end up going for some oysters at Taylor shellfish.. but the price went up $2-4 a dozen for most types... I guess it's no longer in season :(.

Halloween Weekend

A few weeks ago, we decided to dress up as Kiki and Lala for Halloween. So today we went about trying to get to it work. For those who don't know, Kiki flies on a nimbus and Lala is good at making soup (for more info, see here)

To create this set, the following is needed:
- two white gowns
- wigs (a blue and a pink one)
- 'nimbus' (cardboard in the shape of a star)
- Lala's wand (spachelor with a star covering it)

Result:
- Found a white suit :). So Kiki is now formal Kiki.
- As such, Lala has to up her attire and wear a dress
- Wigs. Surprisingly hard to find, found a blue one and a pink one. Success - Nimbus, found an inflatable balloon with a string
- Lala's wand. Simple enough :)

Now as we were putting on the costume, we had to make some on the fly adjustments:
1) Since we found a suit, Kiki no longer wearing a robe. Formal Kiki is borne!
2) The blue wig looked really bad on me, as did the pink of PhD friend... so we swapped and we both concurred it looks a bit better (for both).
3) Nimbus, the cardboard was a lot of work.  But as I strolled through Walgreens, I found a balloon and voila - the nimbus is borne.  Even better was that because it was on a string, by pinning it on my clothes, when I ran, it would dragged behind a bit so it was trailing me.

So net is Kiki now has pink hair, and Lala now has blue hair. Final Result of Kiki shown on the right...  Formal Kiki, dressed like Lala.  Lol...

Surprisingly, there were one or two people who could actually tell who we were. Very impressed...

PS. If you are bursting out laughing at how I look with pink hair on, just imagine how I'd look with blue hair that looks like the style of Sailor Mercury... on me...

Mashiko... Another Outing

Next time I will definitely write down the names of each dish I have... For now, pictures will have to do.

Oyster on Half Shell	Scallop with Asian Pear
	Tofu in fish broth with Uni on top
Tuna poke salad	salmon tartar with quail egg
sushi (seared black cod)

First Canadian Thanksgiving Meal in the US

Brushing off a bunch of late work chats, I headed towards Seattle for a 20 lb turkey meal. Big turkey.. lots of wine. My first Canadian Thanksgiving in the States now that I think about it. Yummmyyyy!

MS Soccer Season 1: Super Uber Invincibles: First Achievenmnet Unlocked!

Our team scored our first goal!  Yeaaaaa!

We still lost I think 5-1 or 6-1... but a month and a couple new players later... achievement unlocked!

Onto the next goal... to win a game... .. .

First Attempt at a Cake and Canlis

Today (well yesterday) was the first day I attempted to make a cake. After looking up ideas for it during a few meetings, I figured it would be easy. Turns out a fruit cake is not as simple as it looks. Final result shown :).. It's the effort that counts right?

After presenting my cake, we went to Canlis - a fancy fine dining restaurant. Trying to make it a surprise, I didn't disclose where we were going... but then we got lost... lol.

At the end, it was her who ended up pointing us to the entrance of the restaurant... There goes the surprise :).

We got some pretty good seats, not to mention the table swirled and moved! And the service was pretty good. They even had the scraper thing to get bread crumbs off the table.

We ordered a couple things from the menu... The most memorable one for me was the desert :). The famous duck dish tasted like a peking duck, but not as good as one you would get from Vanc or Toronto.

Also, a side note. I don't take nearly enough pictures of us... gotta start doing that more.

Bday Weekend Part II: Soccer and Glass Blowing Adventure

After a nice surprise last night, today I was to get another surprise :).

So after the soccer game (which we lost 6-0), but probably our team played our best game yet, I drove into the S.town.  Turns out today we are going to be going for some Glass Blowing fun!

I've been wanting to do this for years - but always felt it was a bit expensive to do and didn't want to just get a sub par class experience where one doesn't get to blow on glass but only paint stuff or make something simple like a paper weight.  Today though, PhD friend got the private class package, and we would get to blow and 'grab' glass from the oven, make a bunch of stuff with glass that we would get to keep!  Sweeeet!

It was really hot, and I think I now can see why 'real' glass makers usually don't have arm hair or eyebrows... They get soooo close to the kilns.

We ended up making:
- 2 paperweights
- 1 floating ball
- 1 ornament
- 1 pumpkin
- 1 popcorn bowl (though pretty small)
- 1 wavy bowl
- 1 bowl w/ a space needle in the middle
Truth be told though, other than the paperweights, the other glass pieces required our teacher's 'guidance' and saving to materialize... hahahaha.

Ohhh... I also got to wear the fire suit.  I gotta get that picture one of these days and post it.  I look like a space man!

Thank you for the birthday present :).

PS. Now that I think about it, this is the first sober birthday I've had since I was 18!

Bday Weekend Part I: Bday Dinner - AYCE Lobster!

It's been a couple years now since I have had bday weekends or a bday week of festivities.

Today I thought I was having a birthday like the ones I had for the last few years.  A simple dinner here and there, nothing surprising or out of the ordinary... boy was I wrong!

I was given the instruction that I had to arrive at PhD friend's place by a certain time, so I obliged :).  When I got there, I find out that unluckily, the iPhone had shattered.  She was frantically trying to figure out how to replace it (which I had thought was strange at the time... I mean, who was she waiting a call or text from?).  But anyhow, we ended up going to an iPhone store and getting a new phone.  Problem solved.

Then I was taken to dinner.  Didn't know where we were going until the very end... ... . when we were at the parking lot...lol.  I thought this was pretty awesome since I had told her about this buffet place I wanted to try because it had AYCE oysters and lobsters supposedly.  For her to take me here for my bday, I am doubly happy.. not just because it was AYCE lobsters!.. but also because I know she doesn't like buffets at all, and that she was doing this just for meeeeeeee.  Mmmmmm.....

So walking in, turns out we can't make reservations and this place is pretty packed, so she dashes towards the restroom (which I thought nothing of), while I started lining up to get a table.  At some point I thought I heard someone call my name, but I didn't pay much attention as I was looking around trying to figure how long the wait might be.  Then after I look around a bit more, I see US frequent traveller and Aman waving at me, and I thought, oh man, what a coincidence (just yesterday I had asked if they wanted to go to Mashiko and they said they had plans this, and we would arrange to meet up some time this weekend).  As I waved back, they started to wave me to them, and as I was walking towards them while wondering how they heard about this place, a light bulb (well, a text message went off... and later a phone call on Aman's phone), and I realized, they were here for me! :).  The text and call was from PhD friend, who was trying to orchestrate the surprise from the bathroom!

Turns out PhD friend somehow found lil genius's facebook (according to her, it wasn't hard because of how unprivate my profile was), and from there, was able to connect to other people, and get things organized up.  Totally wasn't expecting it at all.

AYCE Lobster!.. Buffet.. Mmm.. Thank you!

MS Soccer Season 1: Super Uber Invincibles: New Way of Losing

Today marks a new way our team lost... We lost before even played... sadddd. We didn't get the memo.  Bummer.

On the up side, we only lost 3-0... since that's the default forfeit score. haha...

Drew Carey Show

My second ever live comedy show. The first one was Russell Peters a couple years back, this time it's Drew Carey. Really funny, and the group Drew Carey brought with him were really good. There was this video of playing off of the Gatorade commercials, where instead of just Gatorade, it was Gatorade with LSD. It was hilarious... had the whole pre, during and post bottles and their different effects...lol.

One thing I thought though was though the jokes were pretty funny, some of them a lot more potty mouth or rude that I expected... I'd bet there must be a few people who might have been offended. But then again, I guess this was a 18+ show anyway so it should be fine.

MS Soccer Season 1: Super Uber Invincibles: 1st Achievement Unlocked

Final score... 1-6. But the key is the '1'. Our first goal... yeaaaa! Achievement unlocked.

Benihana Happy Hour

I get a call from visitors of Cali to come downtown for dinner. So after a quick booking, I sprint over, suprisingly beating rush hour, in time for happy hour!

A geisha, and $2 sake, 3 bottles later...Very very fun times... The ultimate combo, when the $45 for 2 Lobster and Steak Combos is factored in.

Winnie in Town Day II: Mashiko!

Omakase at Mashiko.. Mmm....

Uni on Half Shell	Scallop with Mango
Sashimi on ponzu sauce (don't remember the fish)	Abalone (body, intestine, et. al)
Tuna Tartar	Raw fish on seaweed in a broth
Sushi Plate	Tako salad (has jalapeanos)
Pressed Mackerel with Salmon Roe with some kind of Fried Fish on Top	Clams in a clay pot with miso soup
Rice with a sauce/beans that made it very sour	Cheek of a Fish
Creme Brulee and Green tea Icecream