President's Day Weekend in Seattle 2

I woke up at 8:30am and call K to make plans and meet for brunch this morning.

From my hotel in lower Queen Anne, I cut across Seattle Center to reach K's place in Belltown. From her place, we went to Macrina Bakery and Cafe. This bakery was mentioned in Hemisphere's Magazine 3 Perfect Days in Seattle and was extremely popular. Unfortunately, my late start to the day meant we had to wait for table. Since the cafe was rather small, I had to stand next to display cases full of decadent baked good while waiting. I got hungry in a hurry :)

After a 20 minute wait, we were seated. K and I both ordered the salmon scramble, which was a smoked salmon with scramble eggs and chive creme fraiche over bread. For drinks, both of us opted for Mimosa. I had the pomegranate and she had the grapefruit.

After a satisfying brunch, we walked to the waterfront by Pike's Place Market. The sun was shining brightly on this winter morning and the sky was especially blue. Over the azul colored Puget Sound water on the horizon were the snow peaked mountains of Olympic National Park. It was amazingly beautiful. My point and shoot camera could not do the scenery justice.

Pike's Place Market is basically an open air market full of tourist traps, the most famous being the fish toss at Pike's Place Fish Market. We found out that if a customer bought a fish, they would toss it, even to the customer! K and I had not intention of doing any cooking, so we passed on this opportunity.

Around the corner from Pike's Place Market is the first Starbucks. In Seattle, Starbucks are located a few steps from each other, but this one was extremely crowded. There was no clear sign to indicate this was store number one, but the Starbucks logo on the window was different.

From Pike's Place Market, we walked to Pioneer Square to take the Seattle Underground tour. Seattle was originally built on the flood plains. After a big fire, the city rebuilt, by raising roads to second floor height. The original first floor became "underground". Since this plan was communicated to building owners, underground doors and windows were not decorated. Hence, there wasn't much eye candy to see. But the tour itself was interesting and full of historic facts.

After the tour, we walked around Pioneer Square area a little more. This area is located near the stadiums and there are several sports bar. It also felt like a tourist trap and there wasn't much to see.

After browsing for a while, we walked along 4th Ave to Westlake Center, downtown Seattle's retail core. At this time, both K and I were a little tired. We decided to take the monorail back to Seattle Center and rest before evening activities.

At 7:30pm, K and I met up and walked to Pintxo. K and a bunch of her friends: S, J, Vik and Jessica were meeting for drinks and tapas. I ordered a hot toddy and a bunch of finger food. The goat cheese stuffed dates wrapped in bacon was delicious! I also enjoy the sweet Tequila Lime shrimp and seared Catalan sausage with red pepper sauce.

After dinner, we went to Twist for more drinks. I had a Millionaire Mojito and enjoyed it very much. Rana joined us at Twist and we chatted a little more.

By the time we were done with drinks, it was almost midnight. Rana wanted to go dancing, so K and I went with her to Frontier. K's friend Colin joined us at the club. In the beginning, we really like the music and but as the night move on, the DJ started spinning slower music. We were increasingly bored and decided to call it a night.

President's Day weekend in Seattle 1

My flight touched down at SeaTac airport at about 9:45pm. I called K from the light rail station to annouce my arrival.

"We are out having a drink!" She said, "Care to join us?"

I had a good rest on the flight over and was feeling pretty fresh. "Why not?" I figured.

When the light rail reaches West Lake Center, K directed me to White Horse Trading Company: a small bar located a block away from Pike's Place market.

When I entered the bar, I immediately like the space. The bar was a older building, but was very well maintained. The space itself were small but felt intimate and warm. There were bookshelves along one wall and along the other. The whole room felt like the library of an old English gentlemen.

I had a mead and met a few of K's friends.

It was almost 11pm when I arrived at the bar, so after my drink we decided to call it a night. K's friend Colin drove and happened to live near my hotel, so he was able to drop me off.

Chinese New Year Eve 2011

This year, for Chinese New Year, I decided to prepare my own the traditional reunion dinner.

I had planned for a proper 10 course dinner as per tradition, but after talking to my Mom, she told me a five course dinner would suffice.

So, here's my five course reunion dinner menu:
1. Steamed White Pomfret
2. Sauteed Spinach with Shittake mushroom
3. Steamed rice cake with Chinese sausage
4. Braised pork
5. Pork rib soup with Napa cabbage and carrots.

Fish is a must on Chinese year, since the word sounds like "abundance" in Mandarin. Similarly, rice cake is required, since it symbolized "Yearly increment" :) My Mom wanted to include mushroom in the menu, since it sympbolized "growth".

Frankly the quality of the produce, fish and meat at the Chinese Market were not very good due to high sales volumne during Chinese New Year. As a result, the dishes did not taste very good.

Without further delay, here's a picture of the dinner spread...

Outrigger Canoeing, second outing

I went outrigger canoeing with the Pu Pu O Hawaii crew again on Sunday. I had always wanted to write my paddling experience as a poem, so here goes...

Arrive at Santa Cruz in the morning,
The air was cold, but the sun was shinning.
Launched the canoe with southwestern wind blowing,
Choppy seas did not stop us from paddling!

From the harbor we paddled into the sea,
Waving at boaters, surfers and everyone else we see.
The paddlers' faces were filled with glee,
Amazing weather we are all enjoying for free!

On this morning, our motion were spot-on,
Our reach were long,
Our strokes were strong.
Canoe glided with otters and dolphins swimming along.

On the way back, we rode the waves,
A little energy we all saved.
Around us the sea raved,
Time on water time I still craved!

Aerial Yoga

I am not a yogi.

Happy New Year!

A year with several first,
Cannot end without a verse!
If you feel these poems are getting worse,
My apologies, please bear with my outburst :)

A patent issued with my name,
Don't you dare infringe on the claims!
A humble dwelling to call my own,
Remodelling and furnishing to turn it into a home.

Trained and raced with BAD to feed my paddling addiction,
Outrigger canoeing in balmy weather was a paddler's heaven.
Finally experienced rock climbing in the wilderness,
Rappelling down Goat Rock was pure awesomeness!

Visiting Spain had to be put off for another year,
White Mountain, Shark's fest...I'm training for you, you hear?
More of life's adventures in the months to come,
To the status quo, I will not succumb!

Thanks for reading and....
Happy New Year, everyone!

Paddle for Life 4.0

This past weekend, I participated in the 4th Paddle for Life Dragon Boat Festival. I had been participating in the race every year since its beginning in 2007 and always had a good time.

This year, the event was held at Leo Ryan Park in Foster City. I raced at this location in 2007, and actually preferred it to Jack London Square. The water is calmer, there are no wake from ships/boats and best of all, it is a shorter drive from my house, so I don't need to wake up as early:)

I arrived at Leo Ryan Park at 8am. Summer 2010 had been unusually cold, but this morning was especially gloomy. Someone asked "What happen to the Sun?", to which I replied "They got acquired by Orcale." :)

Xilinx was the defending fundraising champion, so this year, we were rewarded with the "Ultimate Team Tent". Our tent was provided by the organizers, pitched near the finishing line, where we had a great view of the competition. Breakfast, lunch, snacks and drinks were provided, as well as 2 cushioned butterfly chairs!

For the last couple of years, we share a tent with Lucy's party boat. Lucy and Marvin were married last year and they had a baby. Lucy is now too busy to organize a team :(

As per last year, 10 person boats were used for this race. I asked our team captain, Marin about this. It seems like many teams had difficulty finding 20 paddlers. So, 10 person were used instead, so that teams with less paddlers can still participate.

The Xilinx team had enough paddles to fill 2 boats, so we were divided into Virtex boat and Spartan boat. Most of the people on the Virtex boat had raced in previous Paddle for Life events, while the Spartan boat were mostly newbies. Having paddled in the past 3 events, I was placed on the Virtex boat.

Our first race was against PepsiCo, MPBA and Rainbow Coi. Marvin was our drummer. Before the race, Marvin told us his stradegy: given we were a team of veterans, Marvin expect us to be able to paddle in sync better. So, he planned to have a high stroke rate.

It was not to be. Our team did not click. From the marshall area paddling to the starting point, our paddles were not totally in sync.

I also felt the floor of the competition boat was especially slippery. I quickly took off my sandals before got to the starting line to help get more traction. Luckily, with the calmer water, the starting call was slower. The judges actually had time to say "We have alignment!" before making the start call.

Our boat got off to a good start, but during the transition from start to race pace, we lose our timing. The boat started to rock. With the 250m course, there was no chance to recover, and we came in about 4 seconds slow to take second place. I felt really frustrated after the race. With the slippery boat and the timing issues, I did not feel any power on my strokes!

For the second race, Xilinx Vertex raced with Clorox, Chu Crew and Xilinx Spartan! The Spartan team had a really good first race, so it was not clear the Virtex boat would prevail against them.

Nathalie was our drummer for this race. Given the problem with how slippery the boat was, I marshalled barefoot. This really helped my grip and I was better able to help move the boat. I felt our boat paddled better compare to the first race, but when I looked up after the race was over, all the boats seemed to have crossed the finish line at about the same time.

When the result was announced, it was explained all four boats were separated by less than 1 sec! Our boat, the Virtex team, unfortunately, came in last, while the Spartan boat came in first. Marvin was perplexed. I heard him discussed with another Bay Area Dragon teammate how the experience team actually performed worst than the novice team :)

We stopped for lunch while the organized arranged for the final race. The "Ultimate Team Tent" had our lunch provided by organizers and we were served not-fully-thawed turkey wraps and potato salad :( Just after lunch, our massage therapist showed up. Again, that was one of the perks of the "Ultimate Team Tent".

The Virtex boat was assigned to the Division E finals. In the finals, we faced Henkel ACA Dragon Flyers, VOCAL and Water Shredders. Marvin was our drummer for this final race. We had decided we would do a different call for the transition from the start to race pace since that seem to throw the timing of the boat off the most.

Again, for this final, I marshalled barefoot. After 3 races together, our team finally came together. We had a good start and did a pretty good finish! At the end of the race, I looked up and notice we had finished neck to neck with another team. As we were paddling back to the marshalling area, Marvin nodded to one of the judges at the finish line, who said "Xilinx!"

After docking, we got the official confirmation. Xilinx Virtex was the Division E champion and we were to receive Gold Medals. After 4 years of racing, I finally medal-ed.

IMHO, our team this year probably was did not perform better than teams from previous years. But we did win our division this year and I am happy to finally bring home hardware.

After the race, I got a chair massage from the masseur, then hung around for the medal ceremony. Our last minute donation push helped Xilinx won the fund raising challenge again, so next year, we could look forward to the "Ultimate Team Tent" once more.