I need to work from home more often
So my apartment complex has these public grills. Not the little crappy charcoal grills, (though we have those too). I'm talking massive brushed stainless steel gas grills that are built into the ground. There aren't many of them, and I'm having guys over for a bbq tonite, so I came home early to camp the grill.

Now I find myself here under the shade of an umbrella, and the sun peeking through behind the palm trees swaying in the breeze. The weather is perfect, and I'm using VPN and Windows Remote Desktop to code on my work machine.

I also have an open Heineken beside my notebook.

I need to work from home more often.

Camping in Point Reyes National Seashore

Having just finished Faith on the Edge (which, incidentally, I bought at Urbana '00, along with a whole bunch of other books I have yet to open), I started The Purpose Driven Life. The natural cynic in me shivers to think that they'd register the "Purpose Driven" trademark (yup, that R symbol is there on the cover), and the advertisements for the "Purpose-Driven Life Scripture Keeper Plus" and "The Purpose-Driven Life Journal" in the introduction doesn't help. Anyways, my Dad gave me this book since he picked up a few extra from Costco since they've been going through this at church (but they've finished it already), and I figured I'll still give it a chance.

The "Question to Consider" for Day 1 is:
"In spite of all the advertising around me, how can I remind myself that life is really about living for God, not myself".
It reminded me of a comment I wanted to make a while back, when I noticed that there's a Christian radio station Air 1 that had these little evangelical sound bites, either a pastor with some encouraging words, or a testimony. These would end with the blurb "You are not alone", since the sound bites targetted people who were struggling and looking for someone to turn to. I've always thought it was interested how this compared (and rhymed) with my church's theme from 1 Cor 6:19 "You are not your own, you are bought with a price", which has struck me as an excellent theme, since many Christians (including myself) rarely demonstrate this kind of attitude. And since the verse is permanently inscribed on the main wall of the sanctuary, it's somewhat of a reminder of the lessons I haven't learned, week after week.

One Year Old
Happy Birthday Eugenie

Maybe I'm a sap, but...

Cinema Paradiso
Wow. 5/5

Meditation
Give careful thought to your ways.
You have planted much, but have harvested little.
You eat, but never have enough.
You drink, but never have your fill.
You put on clothes, but are not warm.
You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.

Give careful thought to your ways.
Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house,
so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored.
You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little.
What you brought home, I blew away.

Why? Because of my house, which remains a ruin,
while each of you is busy with his own house.
Therefore, because of you the heavens
have withheld their dew and the earth its crops.
I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains,
on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces,
on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.

In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth,
the sea and the dry land.
I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come,
and I will fill this house with glory.
The silver is mine and the gold is mine.
The glory of this present house will be greater
than the glory of the former house
And in this place I will grant peace.

Now give careful thought to this from this day on -
consider how things were
before one stone was laid on another in the LORD's temple.
When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten.
When anyone went to a wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were only twenty.
I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail,
yet you did not turn to me.

From this day on, give careful thought
to the day when the foundation of the LORD's temple was laid.
Give careful thought: Is there yet any seed left in the barn?
Until now, the vine and the fig tree,
the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit.

From this day on I will bless you.

Piano For Sale
click here.

As seen on TV

It's not your fault
your child has
Cerebral Palsy

Not that cerebral palsy is laughable, but whoever wrote that (with the emphases) certainly is.

Napa Saturday
Meals:
breakfast at Chow in Lafayette (near Oakland): Banana Strawberry Yogurt Smoothie and a slice of Apple Pie with Warm Caramel Sauce and Sweet Whipped Cream
lunch at Mustard's Grill in Oakville (in Napa Valley): (shared) Crab Cakes, Deep Fried Morel Mushroom Salad, Seared Ahi Tuna, Fries, Smoked Quail, Strawberry Cobbler with Vanilla Ice Cream, Warm Chocolate Cake with Jack Daniels Ice Cream
dinner at Chez Simone's in Piedmont (near Oakland): Onion Soup Gratinee and Escargots

Wineries:
Napa Wine Company: $5 for 5 wine tastings plus a glass of sparkling rose. selection of cheese, deli meats and fruits.
V. Sattui: Free tastings
Franciscan: just looked around, didn't check out their tastings
Domaine Chandon: Free tour, $4 for a flute of sparkling wine

Other Restaurants:
Bistro Jeanty: Dropped by before we left Napa. Hoped to get an order of their fries for take-out, but we were rejected since the restaurant was busy. Boo.
The French Laundry: Drove by. Three times. Missed it the first time, since it was very unassuming. Saw it the second time. Billy insisted that we go back for a third pass.












To make up for it, Sunday consisted of:
Meals:
lunch at home: two peaches
dinner at the Bakery in Milpitas: minced pork on rice
dessert: the bottom of a bucket of Haagen-Dazs Rum Rasin Ice Cream

Where is Everybody?
It's Memorial Day on Monday. Got to work today, and the parking lot's empty. Did I make a mistake? No, it's just people taking the extra day off.

Postcards
I've been getting a few of these lately. Almost never got them before.

Just got one from J and her cuties. Made me smile. :)

Not a Long Weekend
Not in the States at least.

Dropped by the other uwcrew house on Friday evening. We had take out, and I worked on the message for Sunday while we watched DVDs, it turned out to be a marathon of father-son movies.

Audition
Japanese horror flick about a widower whose son encourages him to find love again. His TV producer friend offers to help by setting up an audition for an imaginary TV show, in order for him to meet girls. He falls for a girl who turns out to be a psycho. Some extremely disturbing imagery. Henceforth will be known as Johnny's S&M flick, since he picked it. Not worth the time by any means. 1.5/5

Together
A Kaige Chen film about a peasant father working for the success of his violin prodigy son. Interesting characters, touching moments, and a storyline that unfolds rather beautifully. Redeemed the evening from the previous film. I normally avoid cheezy films, but this one was heartwarming without being cliche. I actually felt a little like happy by the end of it, highly recommended. 4.5/5

Rebel Without a Cause
Watched this at home afterwards since I couldn't fall asleep. Not what I expected at all. I was expecting James Dean to play some kinda bad boy, but he plays the only decent character in the film. Interesting portrayal of youthful idealism against the ineffectual Dad played by the old guy from Gilligan's Island. 3.5/5

Spent the majority of Saturday working on the message for Sunday. It was on the same passage (Isaiah 43) I taught for the intern class about a month ago. It went much better the second time around, after having had some useful feedback, and a lot more time to mull over it.

Saturday evening was Sinyee's birthday. We went to Left Bank for dinner, a little early at 6pm. Left Bank's a small chain of brasserie style restaurants owned by the chef of the much fancier La Folie in San Francisco. Food is ok, but not spectacular. We ordered a bunch of appetizers, mussels florentine (with spinach), half a dozen oysters, quenelle (scallop/salmon mousse in lobster sauce), and fried calamari. I got the duck, a seared breast and a confit leg. Duck's always good, though this one was not too special. I tried the lamb which was pretty good, a little better than the duck.

The plan for the evening was to go to the Vbar at Hotel Valencia, but since we finished dinner pretty early, we just hung around for a while. I finally picked up the Yeah Yeah Yeahs album (the singer, Karen O, sounds so awesome). Anyways, we get to the Vbar sometime around 10, meaning it's not quite picked up yet. There's a good number of hotel guests milling around, but the average age looks to be 30+. Couches are all taken, so we went upstairs to check out the rooftop patio. Hung around there for a while, but since it was rather cool, we headed back down around 11. Looked like it had picked up in the bar when we headed out - the music was louder and the lineup was longer. Felt rather old leaving that early, but I needed to finish off the message anyways.

Which I didn't do. Well, I didn't finish writing up the entire thing. I wrote up about three quarters of it, and finished the last part in point form. If I finish writing it up, I'll post it.

Taught at YAF on Sunday morning, not a bad experience, since I was pretty satisfied with studying and preparation. On the other hand, I didn't think it was particularly great either. I just don't have any flair for speaking. I don't think standing up and teaching's my thing, but it was still a good experience in case an opportunity or need comes up again.

Sunday afternoon, drove up to Berkeley for a Dido concert. Popped my new CD in the car CD changer where it promptly jammed. Bummer. At least I ripped it via iTunes the night before. I'm not a huge Dido fan, but it was a welcome distraction. It was odd, being a live concert with a very electronic sound. Given the reverb occasionally added to her voice, I wasn't quite sure if it was real or not. I'm tempted to believe that it was digitally enhanced, because she sounded so perfect. The production was much deeper, more ambient, and with a much stronger rhythm than the CDs. There were a few sets where she tried to get the crowd up, but I was happier in my seat. The only sore point was the overtly PDA couple right in front of me. Hey, I'm usually all for it, but when they're between you and the stage, it gets to be a little too much after the first hour. Anyways, if she has a remix of Life for Rent with the concert sound, I'd be tempted to get it, it was the perfect chill-in-a-deep-couch-with-a-hard-drink music.

White Flag
I know you think that I shouldn't still love you
I'll tell you that
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
Where's the sense in that?

I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were

But I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

I know I left too much mess and destruction
To come back again
And I caused nothing but trouble I understand if you
Can't talk to me again

And if you live by the rules of it's over
Then I'm sure that that makes sense

I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

And when we meet, I'm sure we will
All that was there will be there still
I'll let it pass and hold my tongue
And you will think that I've moved on

I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

Greetings from the Ditch

Been sleeping a lot, which is nice, but I'm never awake. Too much, I suppose. Prov 6:10.

Saw "Troy" this past friday. For a film that's supposed to be an epic, it ends up being one long whimper. Critics of the modern Hollywood portrayal of love and sex would have a field day. There's a good amount of skin, but no believable passion, either in the battle scenes or the love scenes. In fact, the whole film is bereft of any emotional involvement except perhaps the scene where Peter O'Toole's Priam begs for his son's corpse. The decade long seige of Troy was wrapped up in less than a month in the film, any sense of grandeur was equally abreviated. Eric Bana's Hector did come across as both troubled and heroic, probably the best role. Orlando Bloom's pansy Paris was a departure from his Legolas role (although apparently he kept his elvish archery), and Brad Pitt's Achilles came off as more of an asshole than a hero, I'm not sure he could have done much more given the extraordinarily cliche'd script. He was still much better in Fight Club/12 Monkeys. Diane Kruger's Helen wasn't bad looking, but I got the impression that incredible eye make up is what it takes to launch a thousand ships. Interestingly, the gods which coloured Homer's tale were absent and clearly powerless in this film. Perhaps it was an attempt to bring added realism for a secular audience, but at the same time it lost much of the drama that fate brought Homer's tales. In fact without any trace of divine influence the entire war was pretty pointless except for the ambition of a few petty men in powerful places. Oh wait, maybe that was the point. 2.5/5

Watched "Man on Fire" a week ago. All the critics have been talking about the recent spate of revenge flicks, the kind of morals we're teaching to the impressionable audiences, the type of society that demands these kinds of films. On the other hand I found this a rather thought provoking religiously themed film. Having been raised with Sunday school stories of the heroes of the Old Testament, I've recently began to realize that a lot of the moral stories are much more complex than they're often portrayed. Scott's (our pastor) recent series on the narrative of Jacob paints Israel as a rather pathetic asshole, but a blessed and fortunate one. Most of the Old Testament characters are neither good nor bad, but often flawed and redeemed. So then Tony Scott (the director) also has an interesting picture of a troubled bodyguard, Creasy on a quest for justice and his own redemption. Can't really describe why I liked it, it might have been Creasy's solitary character portrayed by Denzel's solid acting, or the gorgeous but gritty cinematography, or maybe the lack of a clean good-guys-win ending. True, there were a few cliched, but well delivered lines, and the artificial jumpy video effects got a little annoying, but despite the length of the film, I was not bored for a moment. In the end, unlike Troy, it made me feel, and it made me think, and that's what a good movie is for me. 4/5

Out of town
Rendez-vous with this rag-tag bunch. Should be back late Sunday evening.

Weekend Catch-up
Figured I'd better catch up with last weekend before I head into this weekend.

Hung out down at Santana Row with a couple people from church last Friday. It's an overly flashy development, but it's got a lot of patios, and the evening weather was perfect last week.

Three of us had dinner at Pizza Antica, which has good thin crust gourmet pizzas. Food there is simply done, reminiscent of the Italy. Fairly crowded and noisy though. A little pricey, as with everything else in Santana Row, but this is probably one of the more reasonably priced joints in the neighbourhood. 3.5/5.

Sometimes I wonder what makes people 'click'. Is it just a matter of time? Sometimes my time here is reminiscent of the days in Loo. I'd gotten along with CCF people fine, but I guess I just didn't quite click with them as well as my high school friends. I did get to know people a lot better starting in 3B. Scary thought is, it's the middle of my third year down here in Silicon Valley. Time has flown.

We moved over to Left Bank for dessert. A bit of a change of scenery. The place is a french bistro style chain restaurant. We got brisk service from a flustered waitress, but the food quality here is relatively bland, nothing to rave about. 3/5.

Conversation over dinner had spun haphazardly around work and life in general. Conversation over dessert was geared more towards the hospitality ministry at YAF. One thing we've realized is that we've gotten rather lazy at welcoming new people over the past few months. The catch is, of course, being welcoming isn't simply a task, a matter of throwing a switch and pretending to be nice and cheery. People notice if they're greeted with open arms when they step in the door, but promptly ignored the next week because they're no longer the-new-person-you-have-to-be-nice-to. One of the things you learn in college fellowship that can be applied pretty much anywhere.

Came home, went to Safeway, bought 4 lbs of baby back ribs, an onion, a bottle of bbq sauce, two 6-packs of Molson Canadian, and one of those disposable aluminum lasagna trays. They're in the import section here. That's weird. Went back home, cut up the two slabs of ribs into a few more manageable pieces and sliced the onion. Rubbed them down with salt and pepper. Mixed the bbq sauce with a bottle of beer, washed the tray, popped the ribs in the tray and onions and beer-sauce on the ribs. Wrapped it up in foil and stuck it in the fridge.

On Saturday, five of us from the usual suspects finally went hiking at Pinnacles National Monument. It took about two hours to drive down. When got there around 11am in the morning, and the day was warming up. However, there was either breeze or shade through the majority of the trail, it was a comfortable hike.

The first half was mostly flat, with small lizards occasionally scurrying across the path before us. It included a short spelunking expedition down through some caves, which was kinda neat. We covered it pretty quickly, being driven by the picnic area on the east side of the park. However, when we arrived, we discovered that the picnic area had been converted to the residence area for park rangers. A stern looking ranger informed us promptly that we were not to eat on their picnic tables. Obviously not happy campers.

We ended up having lunch under the shade of a tree on the side of the trail. The return trip was a bit longer than the first part of the trail, and much more difficult since it actually had an elevation gain to the top of the hills where the lava rock formations jutted out into the sky. The natural scenery was much more striking than the first half. I was rather tired by the end, and it didn't help that I had left one of my two water bottles in the car. We made it back down to the car by 4:30pm, rested for a little and started the two hour drive back home.

Rested up a bit, headed out for dinner at Straits Cafe in Palo Alto. It's an upscale Singaporean/fusion style restaurant. Arislan has a high school friend doing his PhD in Berkeley, this guy had come to to visit his girlfriend at Stanford, which was why we headed out to Straits. Most of us were too wasted from hiking to chat about anything significant. Food was on par for Straits, which generally pretty good. Their more "normal" dishes with chicken or beef tend to be a bit boring, but since Arislan's friend and his girlfriend were vegetarian, we were limited to vegetable and seafood dishes. Straits seafood dishes are generally pretty well done. From past experience, both their crab dishes are very good, but we passed since those are the most expensive dishes on the menu. The standout dish was the seafood green curry, which definitely had a kick compared to some of their other toned down curries. Waitress was very, very cute. Unfortunately, she was way too pushy, which got annoying fast. Would you like some drinks? Thai Iced Tea, that's great. How about a martini? No? You sure? We have a special martini today blah blah blah... The same for appetizers, main course, and dessert. Would you guys like to any desserts? No? Too full? How about I leave the dessert menu for you to look at, just in case you see something you'd like? The worst was when she came back with the bill, after we had given her 15% tip, because we had a party of 7, and she forgot to put on the 18% gratuity for parties of 6 or more. Pity. 3.5/5 but it could have been a 4 if the waitress wasn't so damn annoying.

Sunday morning, woke up, showered. Grabbed the tray of ribs from the fridge and stuck it in the oven. Put the oven to 225 degrees, and headed off to church. Stayed for lunch at YAF and hospitality team meeting. Got home at 2pm looked at ribs. Still a lot of fluid in the tray, and the ribs were a pale colour, not dark. Hm, I was afraid it would burn since I was gone for 4 hours, so I had set the heat low. Apparently that was too low. Set the oven up to 350 degrees, gave it another hour before I turned it off.

Headed over to FunnyGuy aka shaven_yak_with_down_syndrome's bachelor pad around 5:30pm for the first bbq of the year in California (already had a pseudo bbq in Toronto, where it was really too cold for a real bbq). Unfortunately, spilled some bbq sauce in the car, so my car smells now. Yuck. Totally sucks. Luckily most of it was on the removable floormat. Got there, the grill wasn't even constructed yet, but the place was clean. We had flank steak, tri-tip, ribs, a variety of hot dogs, sausages, homemade guacamole, and a chocolate strawbery cake to finish it off. Also watched Hero afterwards. Very laid back, good times. 4/5.

On rotation: Warning Sign - Coldplay
A warning sign
I missed the good part then I realized
I started looking and the bubble burst
I started looking for excuses

Come on in
I've got to tell you what a state I'm in
I've got to tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign

When the truth is
I miss you
Yeah the truth is
That I miss you so

A warning sign
You came back to haunt me and I realized
That you were an island and I passed you by
And You were an island to discover

Come on in
I've got to tell you what a state I'm in
I've got to tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign

When the truth is
I miss you
Yeah the truth is
That I miss you so

And I'm tired
I should not have let you go

So I crawl back into your open arms
Yes I crawl back into your open arms
And I crawl back into your open arms
Yes I crawl back into your open arms

Weekend Review
Haven't done this review thing in a while. That's not to say I haven't been out much. A while back, I finally got to go to Chez Panisse, which was great. Charlie Palmer's Dry Creek Kitchen was pretty good too.

It's funny how good food is a form of escapism in itself. For a little while, a period of a meal, you can forget about your stress. Or if not, it seems a little bit more manageable. The world seems a little more structured. Things actually go your way, you ask for food, and you get it. For a little while at least. I guess that's why it's escapism, because it's temporary.

This past Saturday, our whole crew went up to Raffles Cafe in Fremont. There were 12 of us. The food was decent, a little more homestyle than Banana Leaf, the other Malaysian/Singaporean restaurant we frequent. However, the service was abysmal. This restaurant seriously needs to rethink its service. It prepares a meal at a time, meaning that after we ordered, we had to wait an hour and a half, watching the food trickle out for our neighbouring table (which also happened to be a large group). Furthermore, the satay appetizers we ordered never appeared, we had to ask thrice before we were finally told that they were out. In the end, we cancelled about a quarter of the dishes because we were tired of waiting, and not having your food come out two and a half hours after ordering seemed rather ridiculous. Food wasn't bad, some dishes were pretty good. But the service gives this place a 2/5.

On Sunday, I had to swing by San Francisco on an errand, which seemed to be excuse enough to try out Cesar's tapas bar in Berkeley. I should have figured it'd be rather upscale since it was next door to Chez Panisse. Most patrons were well dressed, although it was casual enough for a few sweatshirt and jeans types, but most definitely not a college crowd as I was expecting. Food was quite good, but overpriced for the very small plates. I guess you're paying for ambience here.
morcilla & mushrooms: morcilla being a spanish blood sausage. real black and ugly looking, but good tasting.
batter-fried asparagus with lemon allioli: perfect texture, but rather bland, and way overpriced at $6.75 for 4 spears.
orange & avocado salad with orange-red wine vinaigrette: ugly looking green blob, but very good. recommended.
a plate of jamon serrano with almond stuffed olives: sliced dried ham, flavour reminiscent of the chinese ham they put in soups. quite good, but salty.
gambas a la plancha: salted and fried shrimp, like chinese pepper/salt shrimp. good, but way overpriced at $9.75 for six shrimp. Overall quite good, but only 3/5 given the price.

Here is an interesting synchronicity. Maybe there is something about July... (cue in Travolta and Newton-John's conclusion of "Summer Nights")

Addendum: someone's blog template doesn't allow linking to individual entries because they're not named. You'll have to manually scroll down to the April 10th entry on the second link.

The Beautiful Letdown

I love these lyrics

We are a beautiful letdown
Painfully uncool
The church of the dropouts
The losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools
What a beautiful letdown

- Switchfoot

Back to Reality

Main Entry: pro?found
Pronunciation: pr&-'faund, prO-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French profond deep, from Latin profundus, from pro- before + fundus bottom -- more at PRO-, BOTTOM
1 a : having intellectual depth and insight b : difficult to fathom or understand
2 a : extending far below the surface b : coming from, reaching to, or situated at a depth : DEEP-SEATED (a profound sigh)
3 a : characterized by intensity of feeling or quality b : all encompassing : COMPLETE (profound sleep)
- pro?found?ly /-'faun(d)-lE/ adverb
- pro?found?ness /-'faun(d)-n&s/ noun

I think everyone desires depth in their lives. Well, I can only speak for myself really. Somewhere deep inside I'm looking for a level of profundity in my relationships with people, the things I do, the experiences I find myself in. I prefer a few close friends than many shallow friendships. A part of me chides myself about meaningless work while the other side of me thoroughly enjoys it. It's the same part that disapproves of cheap thrills while the other half is looking for the next adrenaline rush. Generally, the other half tries to dismiss him as raising a ruckus. Who needs all the drama of internal conflict anyways? Isn't it just easier to have things clean and simple and open to all, rather than buried in one deep mess? One of my friends describes life as being inherently trivial, but even that indicates that there's a desire for something more. Each person wants to be individual and special, but in reality everyone's the same. I think everyone desires depth in their lives.

Toronto was fun this past weekend. The idea of friendship popped up a lot.

Had lunch on Friday with a bunch of old high school friends. It's been a long time since I've seen many of them. We were all pretty similar back then. We each had our own slant, but we really weren't that different from each other. Now it seems like we're worlds apart.

Babysat on Saturday for the first time. Our relationship started off pretty rough, she didn't want anything to do with me. She warmed up eventually. I'd like to think that it's something about me, but I suspect it's really because I was the only guy around. I was the one with the bottle. In the end, when she fell asleep on me, I couldn't help wondering how she'd grow up. I pray that she'd be wise and kind and compassionate and beautiful. Like her mom, but even better. I wonder what it's like to be a parent. It must be tough seeing all the shit in the world and just praying that you can teach this one right.

Besides that there was a lot of time just hanging out with friends over the easter weekend. Time at church together, eating, drinking. I felt just at home, with my family. This is what I'm used to, this is where I fit in, just like everyone else.

On the flight home, for the first time in a while, I drew up a list. People and things to pray for. It was longer than I expected. It had quite a few things I had forgotten about, but I guess I was reminded of this weekend. People and things that I have ignored for a long time, just because I haven't seen them, they might as well have stopped existing. But they were still there. I think that's the point of Easter. It's been 2000 years. To be frank, I don't see God every day. I know he's there. But sometimes He might as well not be until I'm reminded by the bread and the wine, eating, drinking. It's like the open tomb. It's there and empty unless we are reminded what it stood for.

When I got back I found something else to add to the list. Please pray for Renee's dad, his health is poor. And pray her family too.

I had a good weekend. Thanks.
It seemed like I was on the edge of something profound. But something was missing.