Evita, Bouchon Bakery and Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen

I won free tickets to Evita courtesy of KDFC. The musical was playing at Lincoln Theater in Yountville. Since the theater is quite a drive from where I stayed, so I figured I will a day out of it, making dinner reservations in advance.

I had not seen Evita the movie, but the storyline was remarkable familiar. Somehow, the story of an ambitious woman behind a dictator is a recurring theme in history:)

I could not find too much information about the company putting on the show, but I really enjoyed the singing. The actor playing Che had a wonderful voice, and had acted the rebellion behavior beautifully. The actress playing Eva was wonderful as well, with a bright voice, though I felt she over-acted in some segments. I particular like the cast for articulating the words clearly while singing, allowing me to follow the story. Props was less elaborate than some other musicals that I have seen, but adequate.

This is a little of bit of a cliche, but here's a video of "Don't cry for me, Argentina".

After the show, it was too early for dinner, so I decided to visit some of the local restaurants. Yountville is home to three Thomas Keller's restaurants: French Laundry, Bouchon and Ad Hoc. I stopped by all three to check them out.

Various reviews said Ad Hoc had a casual atmosphere, but it still looked quite sophisticated to me. I noticed French Laundry have a nice little garden just outside the waiting area by the hostess stand, which would be a lovely place to sip wine while waiting to be seated. I decided I wasn't going to leave Yountville without eating something. Luckily, there Bouchon Bakery. I tried a $3 tart de citron. A little more expensive than the your neighborhood bakery, but very good. I have a simple write up on Yelp for this location.

Dinner was at Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen. While there are many excellent restaurant in the Napa area, this seem to be the only option for a casual dinner. I wasn't wowed by the food here, but think it is inexpensive by Napa standards and quite good. I reviewed it on Yelp as well.

Friend from Phoenix; A friend in need is a friend indeed

My buddy from Grad school is getting married! A had worked long and hard for his PhD. After graduation, he worked at Freescale and somehow found time to study for a MBA as well. He is now an NPI manager. After years of school and work, he finally found time to date and settle down. A is one of the nicest guy anyone could know, and I am really happy for him.

His fiancee used to live in the Bay area and still have family here. They organized simple wedding celebration/reception at Shanghai 1930. I have not seen A in about a year now, and was quite excited to meet him. Besides, I heard Shanghai 1930 has good cocktails and good jazz...good enough reason for anyone:)

It was a fairly low key affair. Turns out I was the only friend from the groom side, so my showing meant a lot to A. I had a few cocktails, got stuffed on the free appetizers and generally had a good time. There was a band (Terry Disley) playing jazz which I enjoyed as well. My detailed review of Shanghai 1930 can be found on Yelp!

A is getting married on Dec 23rd in India. I volunteered to inform our mutual friends.

After the party, I went to the Bart station for my ride home. I had came up from Fremont BART and notice there was no train from Embarcadero to Fremont after 8pm. I panicked and call another friend, A, to pick me up from Millbrae and drive me to Fremont.

Turns out I made a mental mistake. The direct train from Embarcadero to Fremont was not running, but I could still make Fremont by going to East Bay and transferring trains. A told me he found the information on the web after I called, but decided he will come pick me up anyway. I am really grateful about that.

Bodyworlds 2 and the three pound gem

My friend Dave suggested going to the Bodyworlds exhibition at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. I had wanted to see this exhibit as well, so eagerly agreed.

We decided to pay for the audio tour since both of us do not know too much about human anatomy. The exhibits are a little gruesome since they were all made of actual human beings. These allow the exhibit to show details that recreation cannot easily accomplish.

Another aspect of the exhibition which I enjoy is how the make the exhibits relevant. The audio tour and exhibit will refer to diseases common seen in popular media and show the impact of the disease on the particular organ. I overheard a father told his teenage sons, "This is what your grandfather had." In this manner, the exhibit was interesting not just from a curiosity point of view, but also help people understand when a person contact a disease or injury, what was the resulting impact on the human body.

The unique process of creating the exhibit also presents a holistic view of the human body. When reading books and even watching documentaries, the human body always felt disconnected since the diagram was usually show only the bones, or only the organs, leaving one wondering, what is in between. 2 exhibits: the exploding man and the drawer man was especially effective in answering that question and provide a unique perspective to the human body that was unlike anything I have seen before.

There were some controversy about the full body exhibit, such as the baseball player or the ballerina. Personally, I think those full body exhibit have limited educational value, but was done in a tasteful manner that should not offend anyone.

At $22.50 for the admission and $4 for the audio tour, prices for the exhibition was a little steep, but in my opinion well worth it. We spent a total of 3.5 hours at the Tech and was able to cover everything, but felt that we could use a little more time.

Asian Art Museum and Banana Island

I like San Francisco, but don't consider it a great museum town. I sometimes to go for special exhibits, but felt the regular collection is not worth the time and effort.

The lone exception is probably the Asian Art Museum. So, when I found someone organizing a docent led tour at the Asian Art Museum, I signed up for the event.

The featured exhibits at Asian Art Museum are Hiroshi Sugimoto's "History of History" and Stylized Sculpture: Contemporary Japanese Fashion.

I arrived early and had a chance to wander about the museum before the docent led tour. The Japanese sections seem to have added new exhibits since my last visit. Interesting...I need to come back.

Our docent, Kaya, was an interesting lady. She was clearly enthusiastic but somehow unwilling to give direct interpretation of the art work we saw. There was a pendant with a ring of stylized fire sitting on a lotus flower base. In the ring was a photograph of a calm sea. Kaya pointed to the outer ring and said "History", then pointed to the photograph and said "Of History", then said no more. I could only take it to mean it was human history (the pendant) surrounding natural history (the photo of the sea).

There were several other exhibits that had similar theme. Fossils locked in a modern glass safe, jade pendants displayed inside a sterilizer and crystal balls inside a miniature pagoda. But there were also pictures of natural scenery which do not follow this pattern and Kaya also call them "History of history". I am confused.

The second part of the docent tour was for modern Japanese fashion. Kaya made a point about how kimono did not have size and adapted to the user by folding and tucking the fabric, especially resulting in a knot on the back. She told us to look for similar influences in modern Japanese fashion.

There were the usual spiky looking clothes but also several sensible looking clothes which was slightly oversized, but elegantly folded to form clean lines on the back. There was another dress which was more tubular in shape. A roll of excess fabric was form in the front of the dress, giving it a clean look with a little accent.

Then there were a few dress which not overly modern, but probably not pratical either. One example was the hunchback look, where the dress has a bough on the back to give the wearer a hunchback like look. Along the same line is the dress with a big bough on the behind, giving the wearer a snail like look.

After the docent led part of the tour, we ventured into the regular exhibit. Someone had wanted to see the central Asia exhibit, and I tagged along. I am very familiar with central Asian history and really enjoyed those exhibits.

As usual, I made dinner plans with friends living in the city whenever I visit. My friend S and I went to Banana Island in Daly City, a Singapore/Malaysian restaurant. Food was quite good, and I was amused by the chef stretching out the dough for roti prata. As a teenage, I would order the same dish and watch the chef stretch out the dough before frying it. Watching the chef do it in this restaurant brings back a lot of memories. For my detail review on this restaurant, please check Yelp!

The Magic Flute

This is my first time at the Opera in the War Memorial Opera house. After going to various simulcast, I gave in:( I bought tickets!

The opera is the Magic Flute by Mozart by SF Opera. For this production, the set was designed by Gerald Scarfe, whose cartoon I had seen in the New Yorker. The set had a whimsical design so unique to Scarfe's cartoon and I was quite amused by the wacky animals he had created for the opera. There was a crocoguins (penguins with crocodile head), giraffestriches (giraffes with the body of an ostrich) and so on. It was quite delightful.
The famous "Queen of the Night Aria" was performed wonderfully! I had the tune stuck in my head all the way home.



A review of the opera from the SF Chronicle can be found here.

Overall, it was an enjoyable performance/experience. My only regret were buying balcony circle seat, which was too far remove from the stage. It was almost like the nose bleed section in sports arena, and there were times when I did not feel connected to the performers.

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!