I love Costco. The store offers high-quality merchandise at low prices. This weekend, I joined the mad holiday rush and made a quick dash into the local warehouse store. Near the entrance, the Mountain View Costco was selling exercise equipment: treadmills, stationary bikes, etc. Just in time for New Year. I guess their members need something to help them burn off all the calories from the gigantic boxes of chocolate truffles and other sweets that Costco plies in the run-up to Christmas.
Author: Ken Chan
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Review: California Cafe
Had dinner at California Cafe in Palo Alto. I had no problem finding the Stanford Barn, but the restaurant was tucked into this small corner that required some effort to locate. The crab cakes, organic greens and mango lemonade were quite tasty. The appetizer comes with two crab cakes. Moist on the inside and crispy on the outside. Good stuff. Loved the delicious blue cheese dressing in the salad. Mango lemonade was equally delicious, but $3.50 a glass without free refills seems a bit steep, especially, when half the glass is filled with ice. With the appetizers hitting the marks, I was looking forward to the entree. However, the meal peaked too early. I had first ordered the braised short ribs, but the waitress told me that they were out. C’mon, it’s a meat dish. Beef isn’t in season? So I ended up ordering the miso glazed salmon instead. The fish was okay, but that miso glaze was nasty. The miso glaze was cloying sweet and has the consistency of a paste. Ick. Fingerling potatoes were good, but the soy wilted kale was excessively salty. The taste of soy sauce was bit overpowering. Had me longing for the miso salmon at Cheesecake Factory.
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Chinese Adoption Blog
The New York Times has a Relative Choices blog that focuses on adoption and the American family. One of their bloggers is Jeff Gammage who writes about the experiences of his two daughters, both of whom were adopted from China. He recently wrote about the Chinese language and culture classes that his daughter attends, and he asks whether these classes are enough or too much.
I think this issue is pondered by all Chinese-American parents and not just those parents with adopted Chinese children. How “Chinese” do we want our children to be? Regardless of whether we send them to Chinese school, make them take erhu lessons, or learn Chinese kungfu, our Chinese-American children will never have an identical experience as those children raised in China. And that is okay.
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Chinatown, 1925
TIME Magazine: Tong. Western Union operators in Boston were puzzled, last week, by a number of enigmatic telegrams sent from their station to various parts of the U. S. The messages appeared, at first glance, to be in code, but a closer scrutiny revealed that they were merely lists of names—Chinese names.
The above passage comes from the September 7, 1925 issue of TIME Magazine. It contains one of the earliest references to Chinatown in TIME Magazine and describes a tong war between the Hip Sings and the On Leongs.
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Chinese History From a Western Perspective
Time: Second Thoughts on the Chairman. Not even Mao was perfect, it turns out. Propped up by two solicitous aides, Ye Jianying, 81, the venerable chairman of the National People’s Congress, tottered up to the rostrum last week to deliver the keynote speech for China’s 30th anniversary celebration.
If you are ever curious about how the West perceives China, head over to TIME Magazine. For example, if you search for Liu Shaoqi, TIME will return results from its historical archives. The earliest reference to Liu Shaoqi comes from October 14, 1979. You can then sort the results by newest, oldest or relevance, or even refine your search by date.
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FireFox Drop-Down Menus Broken After Leopard Upgrade
I upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard last week and have been struggling with various “issues” that have come up. The latest involves Firefox. I’ve already come across two web sites that use drop-down menus; however, the menus don’t drop. Who wants to browse through a menu by hitting the up arrow / down arrow and viewing one item at a time? Back to Safari for those sites.
The Firefox release notes said, “On OS X 10.5 (Leopard), drop-down selection widgets on some websites may not function.”
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AT&T FamilyTalk Plan is Not Family Friendly
“Your World. Delivered.” Or, so they say. Anyone try to get a FamilyTalk plan that includes cell phones with phone numbers from different area codes? I think this can be done, but after spending 50 minutes talking to various customer service people within AT&T, I have run out of patience. I don’t need this that badly. I don’t think there’s a technical reason it cannot be done, just a marketing excuse. And that is the lamest reason to turn down a cash-paying customer.
For some reason, the telecommunications industry is locked into a bizarre old world mentality. Tell me how does forcing an established customer to surrender a long-held phone number breed customer loyalty? It doesn’t. It just reminds me how behind the times your business practices and perspectives are. Sure, AT&T forced us to all have phone numbers from the same area code now, but every time I’m dialing that phone, it reminds me that my world wasn’t delivered. AT&T probably spent some big bucks to come up with their marketing slogan. Instead, I just wished they had hit a few keystrokes (which is probably all it would have taken) to let all of us be on the same FamilyTalk plan with our original phone numbers, even if they were from different area codes.
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Beard Papa’s Open in Cupertino
Beard Papa’s is now open in Cupertino. I was in the area for other purposes and happened to discover a Beard Papa’s right in front of me. So, I had to stop in (of course) for their delicious cream puffs. So, I started off by asking what was the special flavor of the week. Vanilla. I gave a puzzled look. So, the cashier explained that they were only serving vanilla right now. If I wanted something other than a vanilla cream puff, I had to come back in a few weeks. The official grand opening will be this weekend. However, a few weeks wait for something other than vanilla? I think they need a few weeks to iron out some kinks in their system.I don’t have an address for the Cupertino Beard Papa’s, but they are located in that shopping mall across from Cupertino Square (f/k/a Vallco) and in the same complex as Potsticker King, Merlion and the Elephant Bar.
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Happy Moon Festival
Hope you all were able to enjoy the Moon Festival with your family members. I couldn’t figure out how to take a photo of the full moon, so I looked it up online. I set the Nikon D50 to manual, then set the ISO to 200, aperture to f/16 and shutter speed to 1/200. Worked like a charm.To change the ISO, press the ISO button and turn the right-hand dial until it displays 200.
To change the aperture, press the +/- button and turn the right-hand dial until it displays F16.
To change the shutter speed, press the shutter release lightly, and turn the right-hand dial until it reads 200. So combined with the above settings, you should see 200 F16.
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The Long Tail of Mooncakes
In preparation for the Mid-Autumn Festival, I bought some moon cakes from my local Asian supermarket. Usually, I’m not a big fan of moon cakes because I don’t like the dried yolk in the middle and I’m not too hot on the traditional flavors. So, while shopping around, I came across of box of tea-flavored moon cakes. Green tea anyone? I love the green tea smoothie at Jamba Juice and I also love green tea ice cream. And, the green tea moon cakes did not disappoint. Absolutely delicious. The oolong tea moon cakes and jasmine tea moon cakes were equally well-received. That’s the long tail at work. A flavor for anyone and everyone, even for me.
