Push Push (Lady Lightning)

By Bang Camaro

My Chemical Romance

Thanks to Guitar Hero, we discovered this band

If you want to listen to some rock songs but not sure which band, then try My Chemical Romance. You can go to their website and enjoy some free music. Among their songs, I like Welcome to the Black Parade and Dead! very much.

http://www.mychemicalromance.com/

Inside Man

Somehow, the Hindu music and New York City historical buildings mingle well

It was my first impression of Inside Man. The Hindu music gave me an ancient and exotic feeling. The music and the visual images of New York City buildings clicked. It was my first time to listen to a Hindu music. Quite enjoyable.

The movie was kicked off by Dalton Russell's talk (Dalton was played by Clive Owen). Dalton mentioned the difference between a cell and a prison. This talk was essential. If you miss this talk, then you will miss an important hint. So, listen to it carefully. We did not pay much attention to it. After the movie ended, we rewired it to the beginning and played it. All of us had a "that's why" thought.

We saw a bank was robbed by a group of painters. These painters collected electronic devices (reasonable). I thought the robbery would be similar to others. I was wrong. These painters asked hostage to take off all their clothes (not for sexual reasons) and re-dress up like them (so you barely recognize who is hostage and who is not). This step was intelligent. I never thought about that.

Denzel Washington in this movie was a street-smart detective Keith Frazier. Keith was asked to handle this case. Keith was informed by a local officer who passed by the bank at the very beginning of the robbery that if anyone approached the door, two dead bodies would be thrown out of the bank. Keith would not allow this situation to happen. But, how to get robbers and hostage info? He put devices in Pizza and tried to hear something. What he and other cops heard was the talk from a former Albania president in Albanian. This plan did not work.

The scene went to Arthur Case's office. Arthur Case (played by Christopher Plummer), the founder of the bank, seemed to have a secret hidden in this bank. So Arthur approached Madeleine and wanted her to get his secret out to avoid his secret getting exposed to the public. Madeleine White (played by Jodie Foster) was an expert in pursuing people to do things. Madeleine appeared to have quite high level connections. So she could obtain the privilege to enter the bank. She entered the bank with a NYPD jacket and talked to Dalton, who revealed Arthur's secret. Dalton shows Madeleine (not the audience) a document from the safety deposit box. This safety deposit was the one that Arthur requested Madeleine to approach. Based on Dalton's talk, you knew that Arthur Case, the chairman of the board of directors and founder of the bank, had somehow received money from the Nazis during World War II for unspecified services that resulted in Jewish deaths. We learned Arthur earned enough to start the bank where the hostage has occurred.

Keith did not know the secret. What he wanted was the safety of the hostage. The device plan mentioned above did not work. He then played the game baldly. He walked in the bank. Through the main entrance. Dalton was next to him all the time. Keith saw all hostage. Keith saw the vault was open. But nothing apparently was moved out from the vault. He talked to Dalton. He tried to piss Dalton off. He almost got Dalton (but another painter discovered it and stopped it). The scene between Dalton and Keith was a good one.

Keith gradually discovered that the robbers' goal was not money. Oh, then what the goal could be? Madeleine did not reveal Arthur's secret to Keith. After a well-planned hostage release, you saw how hard Keith tried to get Dalton. But Dalton was not there. How come? Then you saw a cell in the bank. Dalton was there.

The movie ended creatively. With nice projector and home theater sound system, the movie looked even better. Some interactions in the second half part help the audience understand the stories, the plots, and the secrets. All actors played well. The story was not plain or general. I expect to see another Spike Lee's movie.

Be thin to cut cancer

"Cancer is not a fate, it is a matter of risk, and you can adjust those risks by how you behave."

An interesting BBC news.

"The World Cancer Research Fund just issued a report about how to avoid cancer. They included not gaining weight as an adult, avoiding sugary drinks and alcohol, and not eating bacon or ham. Everyone must also aim to be as thin as possible without becoming underweight.
People with a Body Mass Index (BMI), a calculation which takes into account height and weight, of between 18.5 and 25, are deemed to be within a "healthy" weight range."

A full news can be found via http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7069914.stm

Basque Cultural Center

Have you tried Basque style French food

If you like to try good French food, you can add Basque Cultural Center to your to-visit list.

Totof one day asked me if I would like to try French food. Why not? So we went there on a Friday night. The restaurant was more like a dinning place for a country club. Many middle age people were there. Atmosphere was nice. A relaxing place.

What we remember

Totof told me Basque was in South France. Basque was quite close to Spain. Many good chefs were from Basque. So, you could imagine that Basque people were picky about food. Basque cuisine is the heart of Basque culture. In Basque cuisine, you can see French influence and Spanish influence. In addition, you can see the excellent link of the sea and the land in Basque cuisine.

The bread was not sour dough. Somehow, Americans like sour dough. Totof told me French barely ate sour dough. He disliked sour dough. So, when Totof discovered that Basque Cultural Center provided normal bread, he smiled.

We had onion soup. The soup was just right. As entrée, we ordered Stuffed Quail and Chicken Basquaise. The quail was stuffed with apple, cabbage, and bacon. Nicely cooked. The chicken was the typical Basque dish. After entrée, we asked for dessert menu and ordered something with coffee aside. A nice experience.

Location: 599 Railroad Ave, S San Francisco, CA 94080

VMware

VMWare, would it go above $150?

VMWare is a star. I knew this company through my work. My company is using VMWare products so I got exposed to this name. But, I had no clues about their business until this summer. This summer VMWare became super hot. Why? IPO. After dot.com bubble, IPO becomes hard. Every startup wants to do IPO but no big firms want to underwrite small firms' IPOs. The NASDAQ market had been quiet for ages. Then, we had Google IPO. You must remember how crazy Google's stock price has gone. Now, the question is... would VMWare be another Google? Would VMWare go above $150? Today its price is $120.

Although VMWare looks promising, for me, I am not comfortable to get it with this price. So, I decided to get some options instead. If you have little money to invest and do not mind the risk, you may want to try the same thing. Get an option with a month or two expiration date. Buying and selling options properly can help you hedge and manage your portfolio more efficiently.

Another Catan night

The Settlers of Catan is quite popular at game nights

This time was a flash back for the night with Rain and Peter couple. Totof and I hosted that night. Rain was a good cook. So, we did not want to disappoint them with some crappy food. After some discussions, we decided to cook instead of dinning out.

We wanted our guests to have a hearty meal. So, we picked Totof's signature dish - Daube de Poulet as entrée. The course was simple. Entrée directly. Then, salad. Then, the salad was followed by some cheese and bread. The dinner went well. Rain and Peter liked the chicken. Totof was happy. (he did not show much, but in his mind, he was thrilled when someone complimented his cooking) After everyone was satisfied, we started the game.

How about the Settlers?

Totof showed Rain and Peter his board game collections like a kid showed off his toys. The Settlers of Catan was picked. The Catan island was laid out quickly. The rules were mentioned. In 10 min, we started the game.

We could tell both Rain and Peter were smart type players. Learned fast. Captured the mechanics of the game quickly. Carefully expanded territory and maximized resources by good combination of hexes. There was an interesting chain. Rain attacked Peter. Peter attacked Totof. Totof then observed the whole situation and decided to attack me. I was robbed several times. Of course, I revenged. So did everyone else. At the beginning, Rain and I barely attacked each other. But, after 10 min, no one retained. Just attacked. One attack was followed by another attack. You saw attacks were all over the table. Sometimes attacks had impacts on multiple players. So you heard exclamations here and there. Rolling became so important. No one wanted to be attacked but everyone wanted to revenge for the previous loss. So every time when some one rolled the dice, you could sense some tense. Violent? No, more like fun attacks.

The game lasted around 2 and a half hour. I remember Rain won the game. See, I told you. Our guests were smart type. Totof and I did not have any advantage even though we played the Settlers of Catan before this night. We had a great time.

HTC

A side track for Google phone

If you read the previous post, you knew Google was going to launch Google phone (might be around mid 2008). The article mentioned HTC. So, I googled it and guessed what I found? HTC is a Taiwanese company. Oh. Sweet. You can check HTC's website and see what might be included to Google phone. http://www.htc.com/

A Google phone?

Would you buy a Google phone?

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9044758&intsrc=news_ts_head

Orange juice

Odwalla has the best premade orange juice

When I was in Taiwan, I did not have any preference on orange juice. If I wanted to have some juice, I picked whatever looked healthy and tasty to me (I did not like juice with green or purple color. Just did not think they would be tasty). I developed my orange juice liking after I arrived in States. I lived on campus at that time. My apartment had kitchen, however, I would not like to cut fruit and eat it regularly. But I knew I needed to get some fruit in my diet. So, I started to drink orange juice. Why orange juice? Because Safeway had various brands of orange juice. The color of orange juice looked healthy.

Then, I discovered Odwalla. Thanks to Totof. Odwalla really knows how to make orange juice. Odwalla's orange juice is expensive. But, much better than other brands. To save some money, we go to Costco to get Odwalla. Costco's Odwalla is almost half price compared to Safeway's Odwalla.

Odwalla's orange juice is very orange. Fresh, no sugar, and taste like just pressed. It does not have orange skin taste (bitter taste). It does not have old orange taste (plain taste). Odwalla's orange juice tastes like you are drinking juice from healthy, strong, and young oranges.

Pho Vi Hoa

Their spring roll and seafood Pho are highly recommended

Last night, after OSS 117, we went to Pho Vi Hoa for dinner. Why? Navaline recommended it. When we discussed where to go for dinner outside the free screening place, Pho Vi Hoa was mentioned. Since the majority in the group have been there, we decided to go there to enjoy some homemade dishes.

I knew this place through Pei-Chen and Yongjin. We four people went there once. However, I did not remember what we ordered before. Roughly recall Pho Vi Hoa's broth is recommended.

Navaline said Pho Vi Hoa's spring roll and egg roll were excellent. She said "Pho Vi Hoa's rolls are unlike other Pho places. They are big. The egg rolls are not just with many carrots. They have meat inside". So we ordered some spring rolls and egg rolls. We were happy to have them.

Kitty ate already. So, she ordered a Vietnamese coffee. I never seen Vietnamese coffee before. It was a drip type. The waiter served her a cup with milk and a coffee powder holder. The waiter already put the coffee powder holder on top of the cup. Then, he walked away and returned with a hot water container. He told Kitty to pour hot water to the coffee powder container when all the water inside was gone. So, she could refill her coffee as many times as she want. The coffee device looked interesting. If we were not there for dinner, if yesterday was not a weekday, then I would like to try it as well. Apparently Navaline and Heve thought the same way as me. The coffee thing looked tempting.

What we ordered

Appetizer
- Spring roll: it is fresh. It has shrimp, pork and vegetables inside. It is served with peanut sauce. The sauce is thicker than other places.
- Egg roll: it is deep fried. Normally I do not like deep fried. But this one does not look greasy. The egg roll has ground pork, shrimp, and vegetables in rice paper. The lime sauce matches the egg roll well.

Entrée
- Beef Pho: it has eye round steak and well-done brisket inside. It is a noodle soup.
- Seafood Pho: it is a rice noodle soup with pork, shrimp, crab claw, squid, and fried fish cake.
- Grilled marinated shrimp and pork on top of Vermicelli.
- Grilled marinated shrimp and pork on top of Vermicelli. It has an egg roll on the side.

Drink
- Vietnamese coffee (nice try, Kitty)

Dessert
- Red beans, shredded ice, Vietnamese jelly

Everything looked great. Every dish was tasty. We stayed there pretty long. We were the last people to leave. We were having a lot fun so that after we walked out, we still stayed in the parking lot and continued our chat. A nice dinner. Pho Vi Hoa is not a fancy place. But it warms your heart and satisfies your belly with authentic homemade food.

Location: 4546 El Camino Real Suite A12 Los Altos, CA 94022

OSS 117: Le Caire nid d'espions

If you have not had a chance to know French, try this movie

You will then say to yourself "No wonder". This movie presents French vividly. In a fun way.

Yesterday, I went to have a free screening (another word, free movie) with Totof, Heve, Navaline, Fabian, and Kitty. The free screening was supposed to start at 6. So, Totof and I were in a hurry. Then, we knew, we were too early. We should have known that. French never done things on time. We should have given the movie crew 15 min polite time (which means we should have arrived at 6:15).

The movie crew changed the free screening room. So Totof called Navaline and Heve to ensure they would come to the right location. Apparently Navaline parked her car far away from the main quad. Totof called her at 6:05, but she was still walking when the time hit 6:30. At the beginning of the wait, we saw two people at the same hall wandering around. It appeared that they were waiting for someone too. We did not know them. So we just politely nod. Then, a funny thing happened. Kitty showed up. These two people knew Kitty. Oh, they were waiting for Kitty... and Navaline. Everyone at the hallway connected to each other. The world is small. You never know who you can link to.

A hilarious movie

The introduction, the dot, the line, the link, was quite art-oriented (when you see it, you will know what I meant). The beginning reminded me of 007. A handsome looking hero with a dangerous female enemy. A sexy, dangerous, proud little thing. But... The first scene ended up funny and silly. Totally unexpected. You knew at that moment that OSS 117 was not just a 007 movie. I did not want to spoil your interest in OSS117. So, you need to figure out this by yourself.

OSS 117 was a French secret agent. OSS 117 was a code. Just like James Bond or 007. OSS 117 had a charming smile and very interesting eyebrows. His eyebrows could act too. Many excellent expressions were due to his eyebrows.

The way OSS 117 and other French agents recognized each other cracked me up. They asked each other "how is your veal stew?" The correct answer was "Excellent." Then the beginning person needed to say "There is a hearing that the side dish was good. What is it?" The second person needed to answer something silly. The lines did not sound intelligent at all. You could imagine anyone who likes veal stew could provide a similar answer. How could these line served as spy recognition tool? Very silly.

The silliness of OSS 117 was unlike that of Austin Power. Austin Power type silliness was more sexual. OSS 117 kind silliness was more French humor. The movie was in French with English subtitle. Sometimes the English subtitle did not make sense. For instance, the subtitle said "You are "Russian" at me". What did this mean?

Many fun parts were pronunciation jokes. If you do not know French, grab a French friend with you when you watch OSS 117. Then you would understand more.

Overall, I have fun when I watched it. A hilarious movie. Recommended.

Hong Kong Saigon Seafood Harbor Restaurant

Saigon's food is highly recommended. But their services are rude.

If you are looking for a good dim sum place, you can try Hong Kong Saigon Seafood.

Saigon just opened couple months ago. I was told it was initially in Berkeley. The original one got burned out. So, the owner decided to move the new Saigon to South bay. South bay has had some dim sum places already. However, since South bay is quite diverse, people like to try different cuisines, a new dim sum place can always find a niche on any competitive market.

Totof and I have been there three times. We always felt very satisfied with their dim sums. However, if you have not been there and you want to give it a try, then you need to be prepared. Their services are rude and you may feel uncomfortable. Some waitresses would just force you to get some plates. If you refused, you would see a very nasty look. I hate going to a place with rude services. Don't know how other people feel. But I think a dinning place without good services like Saigon will fade away soon. Saigon indeed provides better quality dim sums. However, if Saigon does not improve their services, customers will walk away to another dim sum place if there is a comparable rival coming.

Little delight

Unlike other dim sum places, you can always have fresh and warm dim sums any time you walk in. We got some seafood based dim sums. Shrimp dumplings, scallop dumplings, shrimp with pork dumplings, Shrimp rice ball. All of them were excellent. We ordered Turnip cake since Navaline and I like it very much. Unlike other places, the Turnip cake at Saigon is made of real Turnip. Not the flour. The pan friend chive bum was tasty and juicy. We had the shrimp with wide noodle wrapper too. The sauce was fantastic. We did not know what Saigon put in dim sums. They must have some secrets in making them. So, with similar looking, their dim sums were 2 times tasty than others.

We ordered Sesame balls as dessert. I normally do not like sweet dim sums. But this time, the sesame balls totally blew me away. Others agreed with me, this sesame ball was much better than those from other dim sum places.

Saigon can be more successful if its staff respects customers more. I like food there. However, the services hold me back sometimes.

Location: 1135 N. Lawrence Expressway, Sunnyvale, CA

Charles' travel blog

The sand dunes picture is fantastic

http://somanyplaces.blogspot.com

This is a high quality travel blog. I like to review the pictures. Among the pictures, the sand dunes is my favorite. Enjoy

Revisit the Settlers of Catan

A flashback

The Settlers of Catan is dynamic. You always have no clues who will win this time until the very end. This is one of the reasons I like it. Another reason is that this game brings me different type fun when I play with different friends. Also, the game settings and rules are easy. Everyone can get quite familiar with the settings and rules within 10 min. This merit makes the Settlers of Catan approachable.

This time I wanted to mention a game night between us and my friends. At a Friday night, we met David, Janus, Solomon, Charles, Frank and Charles' friend in my place. Most of them had not got involved in board games. So I felt it would be a good chance to introduce the Settlers of Catan.

Before Totof and I went over the rules, we saw Charles and David already constructed something with the settlements and roads. They said "we are building toilets".

We started playing the game. You saw each person had his/her own style. David likes to rob people. The way he robbed was creative. He asked Totof and Charles what they would give to him if they did not want to have a robber on their hex. Then he compared the responses and picked the better one. Got a free card (a bribe) from one party and robbed the other party. What a creative robber.

Charles was very calm. He computed outcomes right and got many good resources at hand. Solomon took every action carefully. He executed plans with good amount of contemplation. Frank was playing the game like a smart kid. You saw him to upgrade settlements as soon as possible in order to acquire resources faster. Janus played pleasantly. You would want to have Janus type player in your game. David expanded his territory with very computer science way. He used "Estrella" to build his kingdom. So you saw all his settlements were built with spiky roads.

During the game, David kept drinking beers. Everyone noticed that. How come? Because he asked for toilette super often. We made fun of him. He was easygoing. So he did not care about this type teasing.

Who won the game? It was me. As mentioned, the Settlers of Catan is dynamic. I was not winning in the first half. Totof and Charles looked promising in the first half. Then, through some dramatic robbings and monopolies, the winner positions got changed. Did not remember who helped me. But, I guessed some good drawings were quite in favor of me so that I won the game.

Economist

Reading makes me think

Don't know why. I feel peaceful when I read.

When I was in school, I read. But most of my reading materials were school related. Now, I don't read text books. I read magazines and novels. Reading helps me discover fun things and true stories. Seems like my brain cells appreciates reading a lot.

Among many reading materials, I like Economist particularly. I like the wordings. I like the way Economist presents stories, opinions, and facts. The vocabulary and phrases are something I am looking for. I am not proficient in English. Economist helps me discover my wrong grammars. Economist helps me train my skills of writing. Economist helps me distinguish elegant sentences from blunt usages. And, for me, Economist is not a boring magazine. I enjoy it very much.

Thebes

An Indiana Jones style board game

As mentioned, Friday night Totof and I had a game night. We drove to Belmont. Totof told me Belmont meant "a cute mountain or a beautiful mountain in French". A nice name for a city.

Emily hosted we four guests with homemade dishes. Guests were Wen, Memet, Totof and me. The most impressive one was the potsticker. Emily and Danny made their own potstickers. The bottom of potstickers were all golden brown (yes, another golden brown). You could tell they had good skills at making folds. These potstickers were folded in similar way as dumplings. The folds were in similar depth and laid out nicely. The folding provided a visual pleasure.

These nice looking potstikers were all yelling at me "eat me". I could not refuse this kind temptation. I ate a lot. The visual pleasure got amplified when you had one in your mouth. Emily also cooked some Shanghai vegetable rice. A nice dinner.

We got a new game

You know, when you are into board games. You become excited when your friends tell you they got a new game. Emily and Danny has good collections of board games. That night, they showed us their new toys. One of them is Thebes.

According to Memet, Thebes is the ancient name of Greece (but Wikipedia said Thebes was the ancient name for Egypt capital). Danny said they had not played Thebes yet. It would be good if we tried it together. Done deal. We opened the box. Wow. This game was so unlike all the games that we had played. This game had many gadgets. The gadgets were nicely designed. You saw something like time wheels. You saw bags with different colors. You of course saw some Meeples. No dice involved.

The instruction booklet was another impressive part. The booklet has 5 versions: English, Spanish, German, Italian, and French. Each booklet has 8 pages. We spent some time on understanding the rules and popping out cards. After 30 min "study" time, Danny said time to start the game and we could get familiar with the rules as the game went.

Thebes is an adventure game. Imagine you were Indiana Jones. You were involved in a treasure hunting. You needed to visit five ancient civilizations - the Greeks, the Cretans, the Egyptians, the Palestinians, and the Macedonians. Before you excavated the sites, you needed to acquire knowledge on the things you were going to discover. The knowledge was all over the places in Europe. You needed to travel to North Europe, West Europe, and Central Europe to acquire knowledge. Some knowledge was civilization specific while other knowledge was general. You could apply the general knowledge to every civilization. But for the civilization specific knowledge, if you do not go there, the value of the knowledge is zero. You may also need to get assistants or tools to help you when you were at sites. Besides, you could get some knowledge from the elders. The elders would pass some info on you. However, the info may be only useful one time.

You could also get zeppelins to shorten your travel time. For our first try, the game setting was two years (104 weeks). Each turn we needed to choose action carefully since each action cost us different weeks. For example, it took a week to travel from Berlin to Wien. It took six weeks to learn knowledge on a general book. It took 4 weeks to exhibit your finding from your adventure.

The excavation part was fun. As you can imagine, not all excavations will return you treasure. Sometimes you will just get dirt. Thebes designer has already thought about that. The game mechanics made the excavations so vivid. Players would either have many exclamations on good findings or depression due to zero return in the middle of an excavation.

We took 2 hours to finish this game. Thebes was quite fun. Totof and I would not mind playing it again.

SAW I

A creative enigma type movie

If we did not have dim sum with Navaline, we would never got a chance to watch SAW I.

Dim sum at Saigon Sunnyvale is quite tasty. Yesterday Totof and I went there with Navaline. We ordered various types and all of them were with good quality. During the lunch, we talked about Guitar Hero. Then Navaline suddenly asked us if we would like to watch SAW IV together. Of course a big NO. I did not like to watch horror movies and scare myself to death. Totof could watch bloody scenes. But he did not enjoy horror movies much either.

Navaline said SAW was just an enigma. Every victim was there for a reason. Every victim must have done something wrong in the past so the Jigsaw brought the victim to "the room". If the victim could solve an enigma before the time was out. The victim could redeem their life. SAW was more like a thriller than a horror movie.

Sounded interesting. I was not that against SAW after her explanation.

We went to Totof's place after the lunch. We played Guitar Hero. We could tell Navaline very much liked this game. First song, Navaline tried Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box and got 84% at easy level. So we encourage her to try medium level. She tried Pearl Jam's Life Wasted and Cheap Trick's Surrender. Suddenly, she asked Totof to get SAW I. Oh, the SAW topic was back. Well, since we were not that against SAW I, we could give it a chance. We continued to play Guitar Hero for an hour. We all had fun with it.

Breath, breath, and breath

Then, we decided to switch to SAW I. The beginning was ok. After 5 min, we were all tensed. The director used flash back to show us what the Jigsaw has done and all the scenes were cruel. Somehow I remembered Amanda, the girl who survived from the Jigsaw's capture. She took the key out from a man's stomach and opened the jaw confinement.

Then the scene went back to a room where you saw two victims were chained at two corners and one body laying in a big blood pool. Each victim found an enveloped and a tape inside. The tape provided the game rule. Apparently the rule for Lawrence, a doctor, was to solve the enigma by 6. Adam, another victim, found a kidnap image accidentally when he looked around Lawrence's wallet. The image showed that Lawrence's daughter and wife were kidnapped. On the back of the image, it said you would look more clearly when you shut your eyes. Adam asked his partner to turn off the light and Lawrence found a box and a cell phone.

Both tried to remember how they ended up in this room. Some scenes were quite scary especially the one Adam remembered. The scenes were flashed back to two cops. Two cops were chasing after the Jigsaw. At a face to face confinement, a cop was cut by a sharp knife at throat. His partner was chasing after the Jigsaw. The Jigsaw setup a trap and this partner cop killed himself by gunshots by triggering the trap. Bloody. And you saw the Jigsaw crawled up and the move enriched the scary atmosphere.

Then you understood the sins Lawrence and Adam had. Then the discovered cell phone rang. Lawrence realized his family was in danger. He needed to get out of here. He did not solve the enigma by 6. The kidnapper decided to kill Lawrence's daughter and wife. Lawrence was blinded. He did not see what was happening in his house. He only heard by the cell phone. You heard a struggle between his wife and the kidnapper. Then you heard a gunshot. More and more. You saw how desperate Lawrence was compared to his calm at the beginning. A dramatic change. You saw how Lawrence reached his decision - cut his foot by a saw. I could not watch that scene.

Lawrence then crawled to the gun and shot Adam. Adam was dead. Lawrence was yelling loud to the camera and said he completed all missions he had. He begged the Jigsaw to free his family. Then the door was opened. Zep, the kidnapper, opened the door because he needed to kill Lawrence. Lawrence was saved because suddenly Adam moved swiftly to get the gun. The anger that Adam had in assuming Zep was the Jigaw made him crazy. He took the toilet cover and stoke it on Zep's head. Zep was dead.

Lawrence crawled out and promised Adam he would come back to save him. The cruel part came when Adam found a recorder and a tape in Zep's packet. Zep was not the Jigsaw. Zep was also a victim with a game for him to play. Adam was mad. Then you saw the body in the blood pool stood up. He was alive. He was John. He was the Jigsaw. What an amazing scene.

The Jigsaw left Adam another cruel fact. The key of his chain was left in the bath tub where Adam woke up at the beginning of the movie. It was Adam who kicked the key and pushed the key to the sink hole. The key was gone due to his kick. The Jigsaw wanted Adam to taste "alive" and then closed the door. That was SAW I.

I was so tensed during these 103 min. SAW was much better than I thought. It was a good movie with incredible ideas. I would not mind watching other SAW's. Navaline and Totof agreed with me. So we were talking to get another SAW...

HGTV

Did not remember how the conversation got there. You might want to bookmark this website if you are in the middle of house hunting process

TV sometimes provide useful info for you to make decisions. According to my coworker, HGTV sometimes give out useful tips on money savings. She is savvy on house remodel things. If you want to know how to manage your budget to get the remodel done nicely but not costly, you may need to delve yourself into HGTV.

HGTV website
http://design.hgtv.com/kitchen/Video_detail.aspx?id=1057

Game night

Excited

Why? Tonight we will have a game night at Danny's. We expect to be blown away by a new game. Emily and Danny update their game collections often. If you ever saw their collections, you must agree with me that they know cool games.

I am excited about tonight.

$799 irons

Is this price reasonable?

The more frequently I practiced the more often I check Golf clubs. I was asked to have a Costco golf set. Totof got one from Costco. He likes his set and apparently his skills have got advanced exponentially since then. Costco golf set is much cheaper. Just $250. Compared to Callaway, Taylormade, Titleist, 250 is a good deal.

But, if you get a Costco set, you will need to replace your Costco set with a high-end one once you advance to pro level. So, I don't know. Should I get a Costco set and practice with it? Should I spend $799 or so for a big name set? My skills are not that good enough for 18 holes. If I got a good set. I may just age some clubs since I will not have a chance to play with them. Then, would it be better to just spend 250 and sharp my skills first?

But, I don't like heavy clubs. I like something lighter. I prefergraphite than steel. Costco male set does not come with graphite. I assume Costco female set is the the same thing.

Ok, maybe I just try hard to get excuses not to get a Costco set. I think I already know the answer.

Ski in Heavenly

Heavenly, one of my favorite ski resorts

Some ski beginners never returned to ski. But, not me. I am so into ski.

My first ski experience was in January 2005. Friends and I went to Alpine. I recall it was Joseph who organized the trip. We beginners had a ski lesson. A group ski lesson. Did not think the lesson helped at all. We learned ski through practices.

We were all on a Green line. You saw several people from our group ski down fast. Not because we were good. No. Just because we did not know how to stop. We stopped when we fell. Not painful at all. Pretty excited.

At that day, I knew I would come back. I did. In the same season, I fulfilled this prediction many times.

Second time, I went to Heavenly with some other friends. These people were all good skiers. They did not have sympathy on beginners. They all said I did not need to start from Green. Blue would do. (I realized the truth at a later time - they just did not want to ski on Green) I did not know it was a trap. So I went to a Blue line with them with confidence.

A big OOPS

By no means I would arrive the end of the track without any fall. I had some very nice or impressive falls on this warm-up. But the frustration did not stop me. I continued skiing on other tracks. Green tracks. After one day, my body was so sore.

We planned to ski two days in a row. So, I needed to reduce my soreness at first night. I did not do it well. The second morning, I was barely able to lift my thighs. But I did not give up. I learned things from yesterday. I wanted to practice my skills. Haha. Amazing spirit.

On second day, I felt exhausted so quickly. Just after 1 hour ski I was super exhausted. So I paused. The view in Heavenly was great. You saw the snow, the trees, and the lake contribute to a harmonious picture. The tranquilness freshed my body.

After two days, my body preferred staying in a log condition. Why? Because the static motion was the best motion for my over-challenged body.

Zibbibo

Zibbibo, one of the 20 best American restaurants voted by Gourmet magazine's readers

Zibbibo was one of my project cases. According to my team, this restaurant was great. So we went there to convince the manager to give us an interview. We expected to have some nice treats when we were there. Services were good. The general manager was nice (I forgot his name). But they did not serve us food... At least I saw what Zibbibo was.

I told Totof about this project. He suggested to try Zibbibo. Why not? My team seemed to have high expectation on Zibbibo. I wanted to see why.

We spent a weekday night there. Zibbibo had high ceiling. The high ceiling made the restaurant looked spacious. The wood-based decoration and steal pipelines were quite modern. The big painting attracted me much. I would like to have this kind in my living room. We were brought to a table closed to the private room. The private room was isolated by glass. So you could still see through, either from inside to outside or from outside to inside. The private room had its own sky light. The sky light made the private room bright. I guessed the interior designer would like to take advantage of the sky light. The designer would like to have the light to go to the main dinning room as well. The private room was therefore partitioned by glass.

After we sit down, I noticed the background music was Jazz.

Menu was simple. We decided to take one salad, one appetizer, and two entrées. I could not remember the names since the first visit was in 2005. The vinaigrette was specially matched to spinach based salad. We had grilled rib eye steak and a seafood dish (we either ordered grilled Atlantic salmon or halibut) as entrées. The rib eye steak was sliced before it was served. The portion was elegant. The grill level was just right. The inner part was pink. Baby pink. The pink seemed to tell us "eat me". The steak was marvelous.

After entrées, we were close to 100% satisfaction. Should we order dessert to make the satisfaction higher? We still asked for the dessert menu. We ordered soufflé (the name might not be this). It came with Gelato. I ordered some espresso to go with. Totof was fine with dessert without a drink.

We knew why my team had such a high expectation on Zibbibo after the dinner. We were on their side too.

Age sensitive

Girls have age sensitive symptom

I thought the age sensitive thing was only common for girls around 30. Not really. The age sensitive symptom does not have link to the real age. As long as you are a girl, no matter how young you are, no matter how old you are, you inherit this symptom. This symptom may not show when you are under 18.

How I discovered this fact? Today I went to a flu shot event. Not alone. With a female coworker. We were asked to fill out a form. If the form was normal, then I would not discover anything. This form was abnormal because it asked for age. I exclaimed "shisky" as soon as I saw that unwelcome question. I did not want to let my coworker know my true age. I was thinking hard about how to avoid any unnecessary moment... Apparently my coworker was thinking the same question. She told me from behind "I forgot something. I need to go. You can go ahead to have your flu shot. I may not be able to return in a minute." The crisis was gone. I discovered the age symptom was so true at every age.

Onion soup

So simple so healthy

Around a year ago, for some reasons, pressure cooker was mentioned. After a while, Totof told me he purchased a pressure cooker online.

We were excited when we received it. We wanted to try something with it. Luckily, this pressure cooker came with a recipe book. We read through it. Da la la. I wanted to try onion soup. The ingredient list looked simple. The preparation and cooking time looked reasonable. Ok. That was it. We went to Safeway to get all the necessary.

So excited. We were like two excited kids. We wanted to try our new toy.

Chef Totof chopped 5 medium onions. Put a tablespoon butter in a fried pan. The fun began. The recipe book said all onions needed to be cooked to golden brown (another golden brown. why golden brown is so popular in recipe books?) We followed the instruction and cooked onions around 20 min. Then, we moved all onions to our new toy - pressure cooker. On top of onions, we poured 6 cup chicken broth. We used high end chicken broth... Not because we were rich... Just because we purchased six packages organic chicken broth a week ago. We put pinch grind pepper inside. These were all we needed. Then we covered the cooker and locked it.

We used the second choice. This pressure cooker had 2 choices: 1 and 2. 1 took more time and 2 took less time. Of course we were eager to see the results. So, we agreed to use 2. The recipe book said it took 15 min to cook onion soup.

15 min waiting time. Not bad. So we turned on projector. Maybe we were playing Guitar Hero. Maybe we were watching an episode of something. Bang. The cook time alarmed went off. We went to kitchen. We heard the pressure cooker's si si sound. Please imagine the si si sound. Chef Totof turned to Physicist Totof. Physicist Totof said the si si sound was an indicator of the pressure cooker's condition. When a pressure cooker had a si si sound, it meant the pressure was about the threshold. You needed to release the pressure before you opened the lid. Otherwise you would be hurt by the high pressure.

I half believed half doubted Physicist Totof. But it did not matter. As long as the soup was tasty, I would not mind his bullshitting if he made up this explanation.

Physicist Totof released the pressure. The si si sound turned up to super si si sound. So loud. We needed to cover our ears when we were there. If you let yourself expose to this super si si sound for 30 min, you would turn to a deaf.

After the pressure were gone, Chef Totof unlocked the cooker. The smell was fantastic. The smell proved that our soup was successful. Was it? We setup the table and scooped some soup. The recipe said we needed Parmesan cheese. We did not have it. So we put some Mozzarella. We needed some couton. Safeway did not have it but it had some crispy Italian bread. Good enough. We got some. We took the bread package and opened it. We put one in each bowl. The soup was ready. Mission completed.

We could not wait any longer. We tasted. Oh la la. The soup was absolutely a hit.

So simple so healthy so delicious.

XYZ bar

This bar is as fancy as W Hotels


Feel bored on Friday night? XYZ bar will relieve you.

XYZ bar is inside W San Francisco. Let me know if you don't have a good time at XYZ.

Location:

181 3rd Street · San Francisco, California 94103 · United States

Gumbas Pizzeria

Family style pizzeria

You can taste Gumbas' passion from their pizza. Gumbas is a small family-run pizzeria. I used to like pizza from some fancy places. But now, I focus more on pizza itself than interior. After all, pizza is the main reason of why I go to a pizzeria.

Their pizza is thin crust type. I prefer this type than Chicago one. A small pizze will fit you well. Two medium pizza will make 2 - 3 people happy. A large pizza will relieve 3 - 4 people's hunger. One good thing is that you can ask Gumbas to have a half-half pizza which means you can have two flavors on one pizza: one half for a flavor and the other half for another flavor. If you would like to try something more than pizza, I recommend you to take their rib eye steak. Totof thinks Gumbas uses pizza stove and high heat to cook steak. That's why their steak is super tender. Don't expect they use fancy plates to serve you rib eye steak though. Remember, Gumbas is a family style pizzeria.

Location:

176 S Murphy Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086

iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index

A good ETF with emerging market target

Beginner Friendly ETF? Yes, EEM is. What do I mean by this? I meant this ETF is approachable even for beginners. All info regarding EEM is easy to obtain and beginners can use the info to make proper investment decisions.

Ticker: EEM
Full name: iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index
Recommended investment approach: long term (which means you need to hold EEM for more than a year)

V for Vendetta

Remember remember the fifth of November

Sounds familiar? This line was the first line in the movie of V for Vendetta.
I liked this movie for various reasons.

Did you notice? The music from the attached is a partial from Peter Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Right, my old time favorite.

The Stress Institute

These dots can tell if you are relaxed or not?

You don't want to be like this cat. Not everyday at least.

Stress sometimes is cool. But, you don't want to be that cool often. We all need to learn things like how to control our emotions, how to manage our stress, and how to get away from stress as we grow up.

Some companies are creative. For instance, the Stress Institute. They issue stress dots and claim these dots can help you measure your stress level. Is it true? According to the Stress Institute,

stress dots are small non-toxic completely safe circles of microencapsulated cholesteric liquid crystals, which can be used to demonstrate the relationship between our internal emotional states, and our physiological responses to those states.

I tried a stress dot yesterday. It was interesting.

Stanford Engineering Puzzle

Let's see how intelligent you are

Are you confident to say you are intelligent? Here is a puzzle website that allows you to frustrate yourself or doubt your intelligence.

http://soe.stanford.edu/alumni/puzzle.html

Half full

Someone mentioned "half full" during a conversation. I did not expect this phrase had any optimistic meanings at the beginning. I thought it meant a person needed to be modest not to show off or not to draw others' attention (like a half bottle making noisy sounds all the times). But the true meaning this person meant was way off than what I had in mind.

The person said "I am a half full type. I always look at the full part instead of the empty part. If something occurs, I will not see what I lack first. I tend to think positively. I look at what I have achieved first and then think what I need to do next. This attitude makes my life more manageable. This attitude makes me calm. This attitude allows me to accumulate my momentum and solve problems more quickly. This attitude helps me navigate through tough situations."

I'd like to share this positive thinking with all of you.

1812 Overture (II)

A Salute to Peter Tchaikivsky

1812 Overture (I)

My all time favorite

I knew this masterpiece through my seniors. I was in a Marching Band at that time. I was in Trumpet division. I was lucky to have two nice seniors who took care of me very much. One senior was Trumpet Solo and the other was Baritone Solo. We three usually gathered together after 5pm in front of the music instrument basement. At senior high it was rare to ignore homework but practice music. It was quite crazy. But we did not care. We took instruments out, sit on the field, and practiced. Music was all over. Of course, at that time nice music was by no means from me. I was a rookie. I learned how to appreciate music through them. My Trumpet senior knew a lot about brass. She had many collections. Most collections were Trumpet related. She was a Trumpet Solo and it made sense for her in favor of Trumpet when she shopped CDs. She liked to lend her CDs to us (good for us). At that time I barely knew anything about symphony and orchestra. I picked up knowledge through her opinions and her CDs.

I came across 1812 Overture and could not help loving it immediately. 1812 Overture has good amount of time in favor of Trumpets. You can hear Trumpet's signature masculine sound often especially in the climax of this overture.

Freebird in Guitar Hero

What's wrong with this person? He got 99% in this monster song

Freebird, everyone wants to beat freebird to claim s/he rocks Guitar Hero 2. But, as the level goes up, the difficulty becomes more and more impossible. Totof and I looked for some hints on YouTube one day and came across some clips. This attached one rocks.

You may noticed that I removed the previous one. The previous one did not have good sound quality. So I replaced it by request.

Rock you like a Hurricane

It was all Guitar Hero's fault

Suddenly, I started listening rock music. Suddenly, I knew how to appreciate Scorpions' music.

I heard Rock you like a Hurricane through Guitar Hero 3's preview. I loved its rhythm and melody. So, I went to YouTube and looked into Scorpions. I came across several video clips about Rock you like a Hurricane. Among them, the one I attached below has better sound quality.

You may need to turn up volume since this video clip's sound is dim.

Crêpe Recipe

Want to make some crêpes at home?

You should not miss this post if your answer is positive. As usual, we have Chef Totof to show everyone how to make sweet crêpes.

Preparation for Crêpes Sucrées

3 eggs

750 millilitre milk

3 cup all-purpose flour

Vanilla extract

Brandy (Whisky or similar kind good liquor)

1 tablespoon oil

1 tablespoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

How to make crêpes

1. Mix all ingredients mentioned above.

2. Let the dough stand for couple hours (one day old dough will make better crêpes).

3. Get a flat pan.

4. Put some oil on it and use napkin to even out the oil.

5. After the pan is hot, scoop some dough into the pan.

6. Cook both sides to golden brown

You can add your favorite toppings or fillings on just-finished crêpes. We normally add Nutella, strawberry jam, honey, maple syrup, sugar on our crêpes. Chef Totof likes the combination of Nutella and strawberry jam very much. Just putting sugar and butter on crêpes is classic. You can let your imagination go wild by adding some creative toppings. Your crêpes will turn out delicious as long as you do put some extreme toppings.

Power Grid

Cannot say no to German games any more

German board games are so fun.

Emily and Danny introduced this game to Totof and me. It was at a game night at Emily's place. Emily and Danny are advanced gamers. So, whenever they show you something, it must mean this something is sophisticated enough and fun enough.

We had six people. Emily, Danny, Jason (Danny's college roommate), Dan, and us. Apparently Steve was also a professional gamer. It seemed like tonight would be tough.

Let's power up

The goal of Power Grid is to supply the most cities with power. You have six maps to choose: German, Italy, US, France, Central Euroupe, and Lux. Each map is designed marvelously. You do not feel you play in the same game when you change your map. You need to change your strategies and approaches to the winner position.

The first part is auction. You obtain a power plant by auction. You do not need to get one if you do not want. As plants are purchased, newer more efficient plants become available so you're potentially allowing others to access to superior equipment merely by purchasing at all. The second part is to acquire materials for your power plants. Players must acquire the raw materials, like coal, oil, garbage, or uranium to power up their power plants. Unless your power plants use green energy like wind, you need to feed your plants materials. Some materials are more costly than others. For various reasons. More demand even though it is a common material. More efficient. More rare. Sometimes costly materials return you more pleasant results. For example, you just need to have one power plant to power 5 cities while another player needs two power plants to power his 5 cities. The third part is to buy cities. There is no limit on number of cities you can get at one turn. It depends purely on your budget.

The fun part of this game is that you need to think all strategies in parallel. You bump into financial crisis often. You struggle to upgrade power plants for maximum efficiency while you want to retain enough wealth to acquire materials or cities. You want to expand your network without spending too much. So you try hard to find a cheap route. But other players can see it too. They block you. Otherwise they go for the same route too. So there comes competition. In the first auction part, you do not want to lose your wealth. But you want others to lose their wealth. You need to position yourself carefully in order to get other people to pay more so they will not have enough money to compete with you in later stages. For material acquisitions, you can buy more than you need at this turn to let other pay more on their desired materials. But if you do not need those materials at next round, you will get a backfire. Those materials will go away and you cant stop it. Player order is important too. You do not want to show all your strengths immediately otherwise you will get the last order all the time. The last order would let you lose all your advantages dramatically.

Fun, absolutely.

Organic produce distributors

You are what you eat

An old saying. And I start to believe it.

I did not care much about my meals. As long as they are tasty, I did not pay attention on the nutrition side. Until this year... I heard people talked about organic more and more. Before, I thought organic was just a marketing slogan. Just a new way to promote products. Just a new touch to attract educated people. Just another way to justify your expenditure. I was cynical.

I met more and more people eating organic food. Some people were picky and would just want to purchase organic produce regardless of its price. People like my sister will replace their toothpaste with organic toothpaste. I am not sure how manufacturers produce organic toothpaste. I just knew the organic toothpaste used less petroleum and used more natural ingredients. I tried the organic toothpaste once. I felt the same. Anyhow, my sister was happy with her organic toothpaste.

In a friend gathering, people talked about fresh produce distribution. I heard you could get fresh food produced from Sonoma Valley once a week. You could not choose specific produce combination. But you could say what you would dislike. They would just give you what was available. The produce was seasonal. They delivered to your home once a week.

I suddenly wanted to try fresh produce. I knew it is not economic for people like me to subscribe this kind. Because I barely cook. But, it is for the health. You are what you eat. I am afraid this saying is true.

I found a website that might help you if you also want to try organic fresh produce.

http://www.omorganics.org/page.php?pageid=207

Surfing in Santa Cruz

Do you know how people in 50s surfed?

A picture of Santa Cruz Surfing Club. The picture was taken in June 1941

I came across this picture when I tried to find some materials for my surfing post. I remember seeing this picture in a local Santa Cruz mueseum.

$10 lesson

Some companies know how to have fun. For example, DemandTech

Charles and John asked me if I wanted to play Poker. I said why not. So, Totof and I went to DemandTech after work. The company looked nice. We were brought to a conference room. Apparently, this Poker night is business as usual. How nice.

Unlike my previous Poker experience, this game was play-for-money. You needed to pay 10 to buy in. We had 7 people in the game. Most people were Charles and John's coworkers. They seemed nice and friendly. People were not aggressive. I liked it.

Small blind was 25 cents and big blind was 50 cents. People apparently were quite familiar with Poker. The girl on my left (Karen) and the girl on my right (Tara) played professionally. I was frightened. In the first round I got a King and a Jack. Not bad. People raised and I followed. I thought I had a good hand. Before the last was revealed, we saw the table had a Ten, a Queen, a Three, and a Six. Karen raised a lot. I called because I thought I would have the chance to have a straight. I did not win. I lost 2+ dollars in my first game.

After few rounds, my stack got low. I needed to be more careful. I got a pair of 10s. I was confident. Karen again. She raised 1 dollar at each turn. I called at each turn. The table so far had a Queen, a Nine, and 2 crappy cards. Karen raised 2 dollars. I was hesitant. Did she have a Queen? What if she had? She looked like she had something good. Should I put 2 dollars in the pot? Should I quit or should I stay? I quit. I was chickened out.

My stack got so low. Only 3 dollars left. Looked around. People except for John had high stack. I was losing. I clearly realized that my strategies were wrong. I used the same strategies I learned from play-for-fun Poker. Apparently, not every strategy worked at play-for-money Poker.

I did not revive myself. I wanted to observe people. It was fun to watch people and know their styles.

Siz (?) was quite calm. At some point Totof had a Spade flush but he did not realize that. Because he only paid attention on Jack (he had a pair of Jacks). He turned his hand face down when John claimed his victory. Siz asked Totof bluntly "don't you have a Spade?" He turned his hand face up and realized he WON. If Siz did not remind him of Spade, he would lose at least 4 dollars. Technically, he would not win that game. But, people were nice to him. So he got around 15 dollars back in this game.

Charles and John were funny. Totof and I did not know if Charles was bluffing. Charles liked to raise a lot at early turns then reduced or checked at later turns. This kind of raise would scare me away. But apparently not many people were scared away. Maybe because they were all familiar with Charles' style.

Charles and John had some bloody games. You could sense the atmosphere was violent. We sometimes were afraid if Charles went a bit over. But apparently this interaction was common between them two. We did not know how John felt exactly. But to us, the way he irritated John was amazing and entertaining.

In the end, beyond my expectation, Totof won. He got 35 dollars. We left and went to a Japanese place for dinner.

It was a nice Poker night. I used $10 in exchange of some strategies. A good $10 lesson.

The Widow of Saint-Pierre

LaVeuve de Saint-Pierre

That night was for a party initially. Totof got an invitation and we decided to check it out. The party location was in an international school in Palo Alto. Interesting location. Not many buildings around the school. A bit deserted. When we saw the reception table, we suddenly had a thought that this party might be quite different from what we expected. We were right. The party was not something with high tech and fancy lighting. The party was more like a community party. It had welcome and warm atmosphere. Nice music. Good authentic French appetizers. Various cheese. Various pâtés and terrines. Of course, French were all over the place.

We circled around. We met Fabian and Lucile there. They arrived earlier than us. Apparently this party was well organized. Around 8pm, there was a welcome speech. The speech was followed by professional ballroom dancing. The dance was nice. Then Navaline arrived. We could see her disappointment immediately. She dressed up (not for a community party). We chatted and enjoyed some dancing. Then, we decided to leave and go clubbing.

At the time we left, the night was still young. So, we decided to stop by Navaline's place first to kill some time. She has some DVD's. We came across The Widow of Saint-Pierre and thought it might be worth to watch it. We did.

The movie was in French with English subtitle. I would be toast otherwise. I could just recognize two people on the movie cast: Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil. I knew Daniel Auteuil from Le Valet, another movie. You will see a post about Le valet.

The movie was narrated by Juliette Binoche. The story began with a murder in Saint Pierre. One murderer was hit and died immediately when a riot occurred. The other murderer was survived and put to the building next to Juliette and Daniel's place. In the movie, Daniel was the captain of Saint Pierre and Juliette was the wife of the captain. Emir Kusturica was the survived murderer.

The wife apparently believed that this murderer was not a bad person. She was totally a humanist. So that she asked Captain to have Emir to help her with gardening. Since the Captain loved her wife so much, he made a deal with Emir. Emir could go out of his cell with the condition that he needed to comply with Juliette's every order. You saw Juliette rehabilitate Emir. Taught him to read, taught him to plant, taught him to help people... Some dialogues and interactions between Juliette and Emir were well performed. These absolutely enriched the movie. Juliette tried to let Saint Pierre's residents understand Emir. Emir became a small town hero at some point. Of course, by law, Emir was still a murderer. As movie went, you saw some dark politics in Saint Pierre. The governor wanted to use a guillotine to kill Emir. But since Paris was busy with its own problems (history), Paris government could not handle Saint Pierre's guillotine issue fast. The people in Saint Pierre started liking Emir and wanted to protect him. No one wanted to be the executor. Many good scenes were there. Those scenes made the movie real. Of course the governor was pissed by people's reaction. So He plotted. He set the Captain up. The Captain and his wife were carried away to Martinique for mutiny. The Captain was executed.

You saw love in this movie as well. The love between the Captain and his wife was highlighted. How the Captain used his eyes to show the devotion in an official meeting for high level people and their wives. Also how the captain protected his wife when others questioned her deed. Daniel acted these parts well.

The interactions between Juliette and Daniel were also subtle but detail enough to send the audience right message.

AFTERTHOUGHT:

You will like this movie if you want to spend some time to appreciate a story and good acting. This movie will not entertain you. But, it makes you think.

Happy birthday to Pei-Chen

A birthday is always a good excuse to indulge yourself

We went to Korean Palace BBQ on Friday night to celebrate Pei-Chen's birthday. We wanted to avoid a long wait so we decided to meet there at 6. Totof apparently tried very hard to meet the time since he was the first one to arrive...

Palace BBQ is always a good choice when you want to indulge yourself with good quality meat. Nice marinated meat. I always want to find out what secrets Palace has in marination sauce. The sauce makes Palace's meat stands out among the bay area Korean BBQ places.

Totof and I like their side dishes. For me, I like their kimchi, noodles, radish, bok choy, and spinach. For Totof, he prefers kimchi, bok choy, noodles, meat ball, and rice. We barely try their crab meat, tofu, squeeze and jelly fish.

The first round we got two plates filled with beef and two plates filled with side dishes. Yongjin was good at picking meat. As our dinner went, a question was raised. We saw Yongjin's plate was filled with raw crabs. So we asked why. He and Pei-Chen told us that crabs in Korea were very expensive. Therefore, he liked to get some crabs. We did not try any crabs due to their spiciness. But according to Pei-Chen and Yongjin, these crabs were good. Palace apparently had done a good job at making these crabs. Just one drawback, the crab size is too small. Yongjin said they should serve larger crabs.

We talked about surfing. One day Totof told me he bumped into Yongjin in the water in Santa Cruz. So Totof asked Yongjing how his surfing was going. These two big boys were enthusiastic at surfing. We talked about the length of surf boards, talking about the skills, talking about the performance difference between surf boards, and talking about locals.

Then the topic turned to focus on stock market. I recall that Pei-Chen mentioned the Wave Theory. The Wave Theory said that in long term, any stock price movement can be generalized by five step up and three step down. Stock prices need to have momentum to go up. When stock prices are low, it means the stocks are accumulating energy. When a stock's energy tank is full, the energy will then push the stock price to go up. All healthy stocks therefore in long term moves up.

We had so many rounds. As usual, we feel the fullness was up to our throat. But we still like to visit Palace and make ourselves suffered a bit. Maybe this suffer also produces a kind of satisfaction. Dinner went well. Everyone was happy. Happy atmosphere. Happy meat. Happy belly.

After dinner, let's play games

The initial plan was to go to Totof's place to play a board game. Pei-Chen, Yongjin and I arrived 10 min after Totof because Pei-Chen needed to refill. So, you could imagine Totof already turned on the projector and watched some cool stuff with nice sound. We sit on the sofa and watched Totof showed off some cool Linux features. Linux was filled with astonish features.

We then talked about Guitar Hero. Pei-Chen played Guitar Hero 2 before. But not with the guitar, just with the controller. We turned on XBox 360 and BANGed, Guitar Hero 2. I could tell Yongjin knew how to play music instruments immediately. Yongjin tried playing Rancid's Salvation and Cheap Trick's Surrender. The way he placed his fingers and moved his fingers showed this fact out loud. He did not perform the songs like the first time to play. He got some nice scores. Pretty good.

Then, Pei-Chen tried it. Accidentally she got a medium level on Pearl Jam's Life Wasted. Totof and I thought we needed to restart the song. It turned out we did not need to. Pei-Chen missed several notes at beginning phrase. It did not matter. She quickly understood how to play and got the Mojo. She moved her fingers on frets accordingly. She strummed with perfect rhythm sense.

She did not fail. In stead, she rocked. Totally, she rocked.

Her performance revealed that she must have a great music training.

Pei-Chen and Yongjin, this couple, truly amazed Totof and me. We have seen so many people. This was our first time to see a couple can nail down songs like this in first try. We stunned.

They went to every level. They were unstoppable. Toadies' Possum Kindom and Cheap Trick's Surrender were like a piece of cake. Warrant's Cherry Pie and Iggy Pop and and Stooges' Search and Destroy were defeated immediately. Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine and Police's Message in a Bottle were completed without any difficulty. Deep Purple's Hush and Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name of were nicely performed. Dick Dale's Misirlou was also challenged.

Besides, Pei-Chen and Yongjin has tried some bonus songs. For instance, Freezepop's Less Talk and More Rock.

When Yongjin played Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine, he told us a story. He had this CD when he was in Junior High. He liked to listen to this CD, esp this song. Somehow, his dad did not like him to spend time on rock music. So, one day, when his dad found out what Yongjin was listening to. His dad threw his CD away.

In the end, we did not play board games. We could not stop playing Guitar Hero.

Pei-Chen and Yongjin, you are awesome.

Korean Palace BBQ

1092 E El Camino Real # 1, Sunnyvale, CA