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March 31, 2003 08:07 PM Food & Wine  |   Comments (0)  |   Link
Dining with Caltrain

I've been talking to friends over the past few months about a new project I'm planning to begin in the next month or so. I will be trying to have dinners or lunches along the Caltrain path. Along with having those meals, I'm going to write up a review. Since I'm a vegetarian, it will probably be limited to non-meat dishes, but I figured it's a good start. Perhaps I'll build another blog just for those restaurants so others can also post their reviews.

Some known areas to dine:
4th & King
Burlingame
San Mateo
Hillsdale
Palo Alto
California Ave (Palo Alto)
Menlo Park
Mountain View(Castro Street)
Sunnyvale

My goal is to provide weary travelers a plethora of options to choose from if their main form of transportation is Caltrain. This project would not take as long if the trains were running on the weekend, oh well.



Food & Wine  |   Link
Eating with a fork & spoon

Sometimes when I eat at an Asian restaurant and I see that spoon placed on the right side of my plate, I feel at home. I don't care anymore if I'm in public. Growing up I used to think eating with my spoon was so backwards and that it was only acceptable at home. Now if I see it there, I get excited and I use it like I was at home. In most cases it is not big enough to be a serving spoon so I use it.

I remember when I was Catholic school, I think in the 3rd grade, one of my filipino friends brought left overs from dinner for lunch. Of course she came to school with that nice adobo chicken or some crispy pata(pork shoulder) with a nice helping of rice, nothing like that could compare to a ham & cheese sandwich. During Lent she actually gave up eating with a spoon at school, thinking it was a sacrifice. Thinking back, I think that was wrong. She would equate eating with a spoon as a sacrifice. Gosh what kind of hardship is that. I guess it's like asking someone who has always eaten with chopsticks to give them up for some reason to eat with only a fork.

So now I wonder, why does it give me so much comfort to eat with a fork and spoon. Heck it's just easier to shovel the food on a spoon especially if the dish is some kind of stew with rice, then to have to balance grains of rice with hardly any of the nice stewlike sauce over it. Or maybe because I don't eat filipino food anymore(because it's basically non-vegetarian) that when I eat somewhere asian with a spoon readily available, I feel like I'm at home again.

Cultural issue? Not really when you live in the Bay Area. I even have my husband prefering a fork & spoon combination during a meal rather than chopsticks. I actually don't care, if people stare at me with my spoon. I don't chow down like a pig or anything, I just think I'm more graceful with a spoon.



March 28, 2003 08:53 PM Cars  |   Comments (0)  |   Link
CW's Convertible

Ok. Christina has convinced me about something I've been thinking about for a few years now...it's time to really check out convertibles. The passion she described in driving her new car around made me relive the rush I felt driving Jeff's porsche during auto-cross, but perhaps I'll check out some used cabrio porsches. I've heard the prices are coming down. Or maybe I can cruise along with a used miata, z3, or sl500. Oh what joy to have a convertible and the weather is so nice these coming few days.



Information Architecture  |   Link
IA Summit 2003 Photos

Didn't take as many photos as last year, but this years IA Summit in Portland, OR was the best of all the IA summits I've attended; rich content, great networking opportunity, and a really nice town with lots of books.

IA Summit 2003 Photos
IA Summit 2002 Photos
IA Slash - IA Summit Round ups

Some of my summaries will probably show up somewhere in Boxes & Arrows in the next issue. I'll probably write more contemplative comments shortly after that issue is published.



March 11, 2003 10:11 PM Information Architecture  |   Link
Happy Birthday Boxes & Arrows

Today is the 1st birthday for Boxes & Arrows.

What's inside: Christina reflects on the year with some snippets of process, content, and people. George talks about immersive experiences including a new piece of cubical wall art. Dan does a great analysis of how to utilize the knowledge/experiences in the books that may be on an IA's bookshelf.

I look forward to great content to help push the learning in IA for years to come and hopfully I'll be able to wrangle more volunteers to help build it even more!



Whine  |   Link
Update: Foot

The foot is healing nicely. I was in a wheelchair fo 2.5 weeks and crutches for 1.5 weeks. Last week was the first week walking without an aid and with real shoes, but I suffered greatly with fatigue and limitations to walking distance. The stitches came out sometime the end of February. The wound has healed and I'm just trying to gain more energy to go further around campus.