food and other stuff

this was a roasted salmon if i remember correctly.  it was really good but also a really large portion (as usual) and like most of the formal meals here (usually sunday dinner because the professor would take the time to talk about the coming week's program), i could not finish my food.

don't remember what this was but the presentation is nice yah?  some kind of pie or more likely a tart for dessert based on the sauce.  western egg tart!:)

one of my favourite types of meals, mexican!  the rice makes a nice change, as does the guacamole, tortilla and nachos and beans.

this was supposed to be laksa.  even if the noodles were not the right type, i could forgive anything if the sauce was correct.  and with prima ready-mix spices, what could possibly go wrong?  what went wrong was that the chef decided to improvise, and added lemongrass so that it tasted like tom yum.  even my thai friends thought it was tom yum. 

nothing wrong with tom yum but when you expect laksa, well it is a bit of an anti-climax.  ok, i wouldn't complain too much.  i had two bowls!  and did not eat anything else that was the actual main course that day.

another example of why they eat too much meat there!  look at the size of that pork chop.  i ate half.

my second discussion group decided to lunch out one day and someone who works for intel (diane) said she had heard of an interesting place full of history. the alpine inn apparently dates back to the days of the wild west when it was a saloon.

nothing fancy here.  you see marcio (from brazil) and yaz (from japan) queuing up to place their order at the end of the counter here.  basic food like hamburger, cheeseburger, double hamburger, double cheeseburger... you get the idea. 

and this is what my lunch looked like.  believe me, the picture does not do it justice.  it's a lot more and larger than it looks here.  i couldn't finish this either.  the bun was crispy, which made a nice change.

this is the alpine inn's other claim to fame.  i googled the first email message ever sent and according to most websites that reported it, the first email was sent by a scientist in a lab between two machines (computers) sitting side by side.  maybe there is some technical difference between the two.  you might wonder why scientists would choose a place like this to do their tests.  well, the alpine inn is a popular hangout for stanford people and comes to life after 11 pm on fridays and weekends.  i guess if you hang out there often enough, it does not seem so implausible that you might do a test there.

we asked the lady owner to help us take a picture and she snapped a few but i guess she did not really press the shutter properly and all we had was this last picture where marcio is already moving off:)  the others are (back row left to right) yousef (saudi arabia), yaz, diane (usa) (front row left to right) matt (usa - he rides in rodeos with his daughter!), me (duh!), voelker (germany) and gregg (new zealander - he is married to a singaporean).

gilroy part 1

after san francisco on saturday, it was time to do some serious shopping and a reunion with this place.

remember in and out burger?  it's really good.  too bad they are not interested in expanding so we will not get it in singapore.  in fact, i was told that you won't even find it further east (like outside california or nevada) in america.

we were really lucky cos we decided to have lunch a bit early.  i guess we were hungry after all that hard work shopping!  and right after we went in, the queue just went crazy and all of a sudden there were more than 10 people in line.  even the drive-through was crazy!

just to prove my point that shopping is hard work, take a look at our car at the end of the day.  or maybe it was somewhere in the middle of the day:)  luckily we were not driving the beetle anymore.  don't think we could have fit in the shopping.  we drove a ford explorer, which is very similar to my old honda crv.  just to clarify - the shopping here belongs to three people, not just me!

best of the rest of san francisco

among the many things san francisco is famous for, one of them is definitely the cable car.  and many tourists will ride the car and stand on the steps.  there is always a line for it and in fact vj and i  queued for a while and then gave up because it seemed like it would take some time before we could get on.

i like this picture because it seems to illustrate that old saying about london buses.  you wait ages for one and then 3 of them turn up at the same time:)  and you guys may find this video interesting - i don't recall that we saw this on our last two trips to sf.  

guess they have to do it this way cos the cable car has no reverse gears?  another interesting bit - swensens (as in we're so not going there?:)) used to have the cable car as a theme in its restaurants when it first started in singapore.  and you had sundaes named coit tower - in fact i think it is still on the menu.

isn't the mix of architectural styles in this picture amazing?

this firefighter statue (in washington square) was built with money bequeathed (donated) to the city by lillie hitchcock coit, the same lady who contributed to coit tower.  apparently, coit tower is supposed to look like the end of the firefighter's hose.

mummy told me about this place and i thought it was named witchcraft!  wonder if she wanted me to get a broom:)  but she did say it was opened by one of the top chef judges called tom colicchio - the bald one.   it was quite difficult to find because while the address says it is in a westfield mall in san francisco near union square, to get to it you have to come out of the back of the building!  then when i saw the name, i finally understood...'wichcraft, as in sandwich.  quite clever.  no prizes for guessing what they sell.  but since we already had lunch, we couldn't eat a sandwich but we did find something interesting on the menu.  and it would feel like an anti-climax not to eat something there when we had so much trouble finding the place.

this is a cream wich.  as in ice cream sandwich.  quite yummy.

can't quite recall what this was but i think it may have been coconut with raspberry.  

just like westfield valley fair, this westfield mall also has a food court.  

and to complete the singaporean theme, there's a restaurant inside called straits which serves singaporean food.  i heard though that it isn't quite authentic.  and it is a bit on the pricey side.

and finally, to round off the day, we headed to union square.  interesting sculptures.  i imagine these reflect the theme around the old song, "i left my heart in san francisco".

this is macy's at union square.   if you look closely you can see people eating up there (cheesecake factory is one of the restaurants) with a great view of the square.

coincidentally, there happened to be a free movie screening at the square that very night.  it is organized to help raise funds to save cinemas that are part of the history of the city.  the movie is free but there are volunteers who go round to collect donations.  the movie screened that night was the romantic comedy, when harry met sally.  lots of people turned up early, with their own chairs (as you can see below) or blankets with a picnic all laid out.

fisherman's wharf

after coit tower, we decided to walk to fisherman's wharf which is a famous tourist attraction.  i first went there in the early 90s with mummy and it was not so well developed then.  today it is a must-see on any tourist itinerary.

the name of this restaurant bubba shrimp may have come from the forest gump movie. forest gump is an interesting movie where they filmed tom hanks (who played gump) and put him into old footage of various scenes, including one where he shook hands with the former president john f. kennedy (one of the most iconic presidents because he launched the space program to put a man on the moon, and also made many stirring speeches including the one where he said, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country").  but anyway, in the movie, gump made friends with a fellow soldier in vietnam, a black man called bubba who always talked about shrimp and after the war, they went to work together on the shrimp farming business.

look!  a shop for left-handed people!  in case you are wondering what the fuss is about because none of you are left-handed, there are many things in the world that are made for the majority of us who are right-handed.  like scissors i think.  and left-handed people either can't use them or find it very difficult to.

on top, a panoramic shot of the sea in front of the wharf, and a close up of the infamous alcatraz island which used to house a prison. for many years, it maintained a proud record of having no one escaping from it - the water is very cold and you will freeze if you try to swim.  but eventually someone did.  tours there are very popular and someone in the class went to buy tickets and was told, that yes, they have tickets, but for a couple of days later.  alcatraz was featured very prominently in the movie, the rock.  it is also the location for a famous san francisco triathlon called escape from alcatraz.  i can't stand the cold, so no way will i do this one:)

the sea lions have become a big attraction here.  they make quite an interesting sound.

we walked on and then saw this street busker who was playing the blues on his guitar and he was really good.  i wish buskers back in singapore were as good.  one of the lecturers in stanford actually made a comment about the government campaign to allow buskers on the streets.  he said he spoke to a singaporean lecturer who said it was a campaign to introduce spontaneity and the stanford guy then told us that it was illogical to him to have a program trying to encourage spontaneity (like an oxymoron - two words that have opposite meanings used together e.g. pretty ugly, clearly confused).  actually he was wrong - it wasn't a campaign but a plan to have a lively or livelier street scene or atmosphere.  that's why we now have the flyer, the casinos and the shows like the lion king, and formula one.  but there are always people who are willing to believe examples that fit their mental image or stereotype of what singapore is about.  to be fair he did praise our efficiency and competency.

we had lunch here at boudin, where there is a window for you to see them making their famous sourdough bread.  do you like the alligator made of bread?:)

at boudin, you place your order at the counter and then wait to have your name called to pickup your food.  i just had the clam chowder in the bread bowl.  i could not finish the bread!  people here really can eat. or else there's just a lot of waste.  like back at schwab, there's lots of food left over everyday - but i heard there is a group of students or volunteers who distribute the leftovers to the needy.

these are the places that i recall from my first time here.  you just walk up, buy your clam chowder or whatever seafood you like and eat it standing up or on a bench somewhere.  i remember doing that with mummy back then.  

san francisco - uphill

our ride to san francisco.  the "old beetle".  volkswagen just launched a new model.  it's quite small but easy to drive.  though i couldn't figure out how to turn on the lights when driving back.  we parked at a very safe place, the carpark on vallejo street right across from central police station.

lots of great architecture in the city, including the classic buildings we always see in the movies, including some new interpretations of the designs. 

the box contains a telephone to be used by the police.  not sure if it is still in use though.

another classic view of the streets of san francisco.  that was the name of a police drama on tv a long time ago  - "the streets of san francisco".  the steep hills in which you see cars flying through the air in movies are another iconic image of the city.  this is the hill leading up to coit tower.

one of the remaining views from the hill on which coit tower is located.  unfortunately, the views of alcatraz is now blocked by trees.  strange.  why would they let the trees grow so tall?  

below, a plaque at the entrance to coit tower.

and finally on the theme "uphill", i thought i would include something sort of related.  it deals with heights, or rather, working from heights.  we were walking down from  coit tower when we saw these guys.  that's it for now. more on our san francisco adventure in the next posting.