May 30, 2004

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.

Menu at Mustard's Grill

Bread at Mustard's

Tuna at Mustard's

No more tuna

Wedding rehearsal at V. Sattui

Casks with unlit votives at V. Sattui

Empty patio at Franciscan

Fermenting wine at Domaine Chandon

Sun through an old oak at Domaine Chandon

Catholic church in Piedmont

Patio at Chez Simone

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

May 28, 2004

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.

May 27, 2004

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. :)

May 25, 2004

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

May 16, 2004

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