Halloween at DC Cemetery

One thing that continues to amaze me even after all these years is how much effort, time and money people here would invest in their hobbies.

Case in point...DC Cemetery. I call it Halloween lawn decoration gone wrong:) For several years now, I always come here for my Halloween Haunted House fix.

In the front yard of a house, a few blocks away from Castro Street, in Mountain View, the owners had setup a haunted house complete with gates, and facade of a haunted castle in their front yard. That alone would have been impressive, but the owners had also installed various mechanical goodies.

There's a skeleton holding on to the railings and would periodically pull itself towards the railing, as if trying to get out. There's also a chained coffin which would make knocking sound and have its lid ajar, as if a ghost is trying to get it open. There's a skeleton playing piano, a ghost floating in a corner, glowing in the dark and a bat flying in another corner of the garden. New this year is the display of a tall ghost which stood up periodically, while smoke filled the air.

The owner collects no fees for the display, but do accept donations. Given how elaborate the puppets and decorations are, I would venture to say it's a net loss.

This year, Halloween falls on a Wednesday, so the crowd is smaller than years past. I hope there is enough donations to keep this tradition going...

Lunch at Google!

I am a little embarrassed to admit, but today, I had lunch at Google for the first time.

As a techie foodie, you would imagine I have many friends that work in Google, and I would be hitting them for lunch every week:) Atlas, that is not true. As of now, I have only know of 1 friend working in Google.

My friend's cube is in the main campus, but for ease of parking reason, we went to a satellite campus for lunch.

The cafeteria is fair high tech looking, with flat screen LCD display showing the special of the day.

I took a slice of the smoke salmon pizza, some grill vegetables, sole and a sushi bowl, consisting of sushi rice, seaweed shreds and topped with raw tuna and salmon. For drinks, I got a bottle of Vignette Wine Country soda-Pinot Noir.

The smoke salmon pizza is quite good. The smoke salmon is topped with capers and a drizzle of sour cream sauce. The pizza itself was thin, but a little tough, but I did pick up the last piece of pizza, so that was to be expected. The grilled vegetables were simply tossed with olive oil and tasted very fresh. The sole is pan seared and quite juicy. It is topped with a relish of olives and tomatoes which give it some flavor. The sushi bowl was excellent. The raw fish tasted very fresh and I enjoy the texture of the meat very much.

I got round 2 at a different cafeteria, serving Cambodian specialties. I had some of the shrimp curry and pumpkin curry. Again the shrimp were fresh, firm and sweet. The pumpkin curry was very sweet as well. I would prefer if the curry was a little more spicy, but the quality of the ingredients were indeed excellent.

We decided it was enough savory food, and started on dessert. I had a pumpkin mousse served in a small, hallowed out pumpkin, topped with whipped cream. The mousse was not too sweet and very creamy. I would happily pay for dessert of this quality in a restaurant.

We finished with a freshly brewed cafe latte, with Google's own espresso machine.

After lunch, my host took us for a walk around the main campus. I notice how much food was available around the campus. There's a small cafeteria in almost every building, each serving different types of food. That's in addition to the break room, whose fridge is filled with all types of drinks. My host suggested trying the Godiva chocolate drink, which is also excellent!

I started working at the end of the "Dot COM" boom, so I always felt like I knew what lavish food arrangement companies could prepare for employees, but this exceeded my expectation.

I wish Google continue to do well and I can come back for more lunches:) If you are reading this...don't forget to click on the Google Ad!

Moonlight Kayak at Jack London Square

I have done several kayak trip in the past, but tonight I did something different. A kayaking trip at night!

I arrived at California Canoe and Kayak in Jack London Square at 5:30pm. Launched at the from a dock at about 6pm. Got a quick lesson on getting into a kayak from a dock from our tour guide Su. He taught new technique that I had not seen.

We left Jack London Square docks and went right, towards the bay. Our first stop is USS Potomac, FDR's presidential yacht. It was not a very big boat, so I was a surprise. According to Su, while the boat has 2 chimney structure, one of them is fake and hide an escalator. (FDR was wheelchair bound...remember?).

Next to USS Potomac, was a ship label "RELIEF". According to Su, this ship was a floating lighthouse.

I was quite excited, as I had not expected seeing any historic relics during this trip. Took out my camera and tried to snap a few shots when I realized...battery have no juice!

We then saw a yacht leaving the harbor in Alameda, right across the water from Jack London Square. This was the evening cruise from Commodore Cruise, which I had taken just 2 weeks ago while attending M & S's wedding...

One thing I did notice is the area around the port of Oakland is very quiet. Besides the few people at Jack London Square and the cruise, there was no one on the street.

We paddle away from the bay towards east. On our right are houseboats in the Estuary. With the fairly quiet water and the warm glow of the lights from inside the houseboats, the whole setting had an romantic feel...

Further up the Estuary, are several dry docks. Su explained these are Kaiser docks. It seems that the Kaier family, before getting into medicine, were ship builders. The docks were used to maintain World War 2 boats.

At this point, we had been paddling for a while. I was actually feeling a little hot with a fleece sweater and wool hat. I started around the sky, but did not see any signs of the moon in the sky! Jokingly, I paddled to Su and said I want my money back. "It is supposed to be a moonlight kayak", I said...

Su plead with me to be patient. We paddled further inland and stopped near the Coast Guard Island while a few of our paddle mates docked. I was casually chatting with a few other paddlers when my kayak turned west...

From behind the Oakland hills, there it was! Round, a little fuzzy and red from the dust of the Southern California fires, was the moon. When I first saw it, the bottom 1/5 was still hidden by the hills, but it rapidly rises above the horizon. Against the backdrop of the Oakland skyline, which is not too busy, it glowed...

I was reminded of the Tang poem "海上生明月"(Moon rises on the sea), but for the life of me cannot remember what comes next...(which by the way is "天涯共此时", at the same time across the land）

At this point, our paddle mates joined us and we cross the Estuary again towards Coast Guard Island. Su had all our kayaks group together as he handed out cookies and sparkling apple cider. We looked at the moon, in the calm and quiet water, while eating cookies and drinking cider. It was a great feeling.

After another 20mins or so, it was time for the trip back. We went in between Coast Guard Island and East Bay, west towards the Bay and Jack London Square. I started noticing there were several restaurants on the Bay, but while driving along 880, we tend to miss these locations.

After another 25mins of kayaking, all of us got back to Jack London Square. We unloaded safely and changed into dry clothes. I had gotten friendly with a couple. Turns out the wife works at Pixar and is friends with a former co-worker of mine. Both of them has a software background, but also worked in animated film production, so had interesting stories to tell.

We were all hungry and decided to have dinner at Kincaids. The restaurant was near the dock and we had a good whiff of the food before heading out.

I would describe the restaurant as a steakhouse, even though it had a good selection of seafood. Despite the time and our attire, we were promptly seated near the window, from which I had a great view of the Estuary. I ordered the sesame crusted salmon with rice and sauteed vegetable. The food was pretty good and we had a good time. Please see my review on Yelp for details on the food.

Left Jack London Square at about 11pm, tired, but very happy!

Free night of theater

I missed the announcement of Free night of theater this year and did not get tickets until a week ago. The choices was limited when I looked and I decided to watch Mademoiselle Modiste, performed by the Lyric Theatre of San Jose.

The performance is at Montgomery Theater in downtown San Jose. I got in after a long day of work and was some what tired. The show was in 2 act and it had a fairly simple storyline, so I was able to follow along.

This performance was put on by an amateur troop and it shows. The actress playing the main character Fifi had a wonderful voice, but the rest of the cast was not able to carry the show during several solo segments. Also, the music itself was good but lack certain qualities to make it memorable.

I did have a good time, and definitely applauded the effort of the cast and theater to put on the show. However, it is unlikely I would buy tickets to the next performance.

Kayaking at Point Lobos

Woke up at 6:30am in order to get to Santa Cruz by 8am. This is the part of sea kayaking that I don't like. Since the ocean tends to be more calm during the morning hours, most trip starts early in the morning. Given it is about an hour drive on the hilly Highway 17 to the coast, I sometimes wish I am staying on the ocean front:)

We met up at the carpool location. From there, it is another hour of van ride to Point Lobos. This time Dave Johnston , our tour guide, drove, so I was able to catch up on more sleep.

We launch at Carmel River State Beach. This beach is beautiful! It is quite wide and deep(by Nor-Cal standards:), with a cliff on one side. The water front dips quickly, so there's not too much wave. The sand, however is not fine, but like small pieces of granite, making moving the kayaks literally painful:(

The weather on Sunday was slightly gloomy, but not windy, so conditions was just right for kayaking!

As with previous trip, Dave have people sit in their kayak on the sand and he pushes the kayaks into the ocean. The first kayak launched successfully, but the second flipped! Not an auspicious start!

It took us about another 15mins to launch all the kayaks, including relaunching the one that flipped. Just as we kayak past the kelp forest, into open sea, one of the kayaker felt seasick. We had to go the next cove and unloaded him. Like I say, not an auspicious start.

Coming out of that cove, we went into blue fish cove. In the kelp forest there, we observed lots of wild life. Dave was able to pick up a jelly fish in the water. It was quite a sight to the translucent animal in the water. We also saw a crab. It was curious enough to climb onto our paddle. Big mistake, as I was thinking about salt and pepper crab...Luckily for the, we decided there was no room in the kayak for it, and it would live another day:)

From Blue Fish cove, we paddle between rocks to go into another cove, whose name I forgot. Paddling between rocks can be dangerous because the waves are strong between the rocks, but all of us made it through safely.

In that cove, we saw a baby seal. The animal was sticking its head out of the water, curiously observing us. It is so cute! We also saw red moss and majestic cypress tree, growing on the cliff face, barely hanging on to anything.

There was no real beach near Carmel River State Beach, so we were not able to rest on this trip. We explored about 2 more coves and started heading back. The trip back is quite uneventful and all kayaks got onto shore without flipping.

We were on the sea for a total of about 3 hours. At one point, I was a little hungry and felt a little seasick. I had packed a sandwich, but since we did not stop, was not able to eat it. I should have brought along a power bar, which can be eaten on the go.

Despite the bad start and a little seasickness, I had a good time. Going on the water is always exciting for me and the view of the rugged shoreline from the sea was quite a treat. I would not recommend this trip for beginner however, since the sea is somewhat rough.

Pictures will be posted after I had my pictures have been developed. I need to buy waterproof casing for my digital camera on future trips.