Today I got to meet Natalie for the first time. She was born in December so since we were on the other side of the world, I hadn’t had the chance to meet her yet. She’s the daughter of my ex-boss when I was a chemistry intern. She cried the first time I held her but got better after some time.

This is the year of babies and engagements. These things seriously come in waves, I know at least 3 engagements and 6 pregnancies in the past year. The year we got married, I think we attended at least 7 weddings! But it’s good, I enjoy celebrating these happy occasions with friends.

After meeting Natalie, we went out to lunch at BJ’s in Cupertino. It’s right near one of the Apple campuses so it was a bit busy so we decided to sit outside since there was no wait.

We had the chicken potstickers, on a nicely decorated plate.. it looks a bit nicer than it tastes. I’m not sure what the carrots are there for besides garnish, they didn’t go well with the dish.

I had this huge chili angus burger. It’s basically an open face hamburger with tons of chil and cheese. It’s served with potato wedge fries and onion rings. It was way too much for me to eat so I only had about 2/3 and left most of the bread and sides. It’s what you call comfort food.

Afterwards we went to the huge mall in Santa Clara called Valley Fair. I lived in Santa Clara for a year doing my internship but I didn’t frequent this mall as much as I thought I would. I guess I was too busy studying or working or something. The mall is huge though, it’s a bit of a maze but it’s good because it has all the essential stores that I like.

I headed up to San Francisco for dinner with my friends Vicki and Joyce. This time I was craving for something a little healthier… House of Prime Rib, Zachary’s Pizza, Fried Chicken, Chili Burger.. now it’s time for raw fish and salad, so we met up at Pacific Catch on 9th Avenue near Irving. They have a location in the Marina that I’d been to a few times and I really love their poke salad or wasabi bowl (almost the same as salad except it comes with rice). Poke is a marinated raw ahi tuna and is delicious here! Oh, it’s marinated with things like soy sauce, sesame seeds, green onions, and other things that I don’t know.

Vicki and Joyce are big on sharing so that they can sample more things, so they had the appetizer sampler, the sweet potato fries are very yummy.

Plus a side order of poke.

I had the poke salad and loved it! It was very refreshing and I love the half avocado on the top.

I kept both ladies from their significant others so we called it night after chatting a bit after dinner. They have a mochi ice cream fondue which sounded really appetizing but were a bit too full to eat more. Next time…

Today I visited lovely San Francisco and shared yummy meals with my friends. It was good to catch up but I wish we could have had more time…

I went to lunch with my friends Al and Jen. Since they both work at Kaiser SF, we went to a nearby restaurant called Zazang Korean Noodle. They both said their jajangmyun is good (a black bean onion pork sauce over noodles) and I wish I had listened and ordered that instead of the spicy seafood noodles. The noodles and seafood were a bit overcooked for my taste. But I tried not to waste all the expensive seafood and picked it out, leaving the noodles.

My friend Jen ordered the jajangmyun so I got to try some. It was pretty good, not to salty like it sometimes can be.

Since they both had to get to work, I went to find some way to entertain myself until my evening dinner date with my friend Tiffany. I had parked in the parking lot near Divisadero so decided to drop by my former workplace UCSF Mt. Zion Hospital and got to see a few of my friends and catch up.

I stayed a bit longer than intended and ended up paying $16 for parking! I’d forgotten how expensive SF parking can be.

I made my way to San Francisco Shopping Center since I didn’t get to visit the Sanrio store the last time I was there because it was already closed. I browsed to my heart’s content and also got myself a few things. I was tempted to buy this for my friend who is learning guitar and loves all things pink! But resisted since it was $230…

I wandered around the rest of the mall as well enjoying the familiarity of the shopping experience before heading out to meet my friend Tiff for dinner.

I wanted to go eat at San Tung Chinese Restaurant for their fabulous dried fried chicken. It’s something I only learned about in the last few years since working at UCSF. The sauce is sweet and delicious. I recommend the wings over the diced though since the diced tends to be more flour than chicken but it’s still good.

We also had the pork dumplings which were only okay for me.

The dried fried green beans is one of my favorites as well since they used the preserved vegetables to stir fry so it has this nice salty sour taste. Plus I think they use a lot of garlic.

Funny enough we also had jajang noodles but they are a bit different than the Korean one from lunch. For starters, it had fresh cucumbers, mushrooms, and seafood in it. I didn’t really like the noodles either, a bit thick. It’s sort of a Chinese version.

Here’s the dried fried chicken, diced. Look at all those yummy bite sized morsels!

I had a really nice fulfilling day…

Poor Ron is out attending his course during the days so I don’t see him at all. We may not see each other until Friday, that’s the only sad part, we’re not able to enjoy being home together.

This morning I didn’t wake up until almost 11… it was a good sleep. My parents’ guest room bed is very comfortable, soft but firm. I finally woke up once my brother came over and we all went to have brunch at the Bridges Golf Club, close to my parents’ house. They have quite a nice dining room and serve a good brunch.

I had the crab mango arugula salad with avocado dressing.

We sat outside on the balcony. It was quite nice and warm but not humid like Singapore. We enjoyed a nice brunch.

Ron had a meeting in SF so he headed out after brunch whereas I ended up back at my parents’ house and did some things before taking a nap from 2:30-4:30pm. It was really hard to get up, I was really exhausted. My dad took my mom to the airport since she was heading to Vegas so I had the house to myself and it was really quiet so that’s probably part of the reason I kept on sleeping.

I woke up and discovered no one home so went to play with my cats and the dog. The kitties became a little more warm. They became more curious about me… as you can see they are approaching warily.. Misu is on the left and Mochi is on the right.

But shortly after, Mochi crawled back underneath the bed and I couldn’t do anything to coax her out…

Misu though became his usual self and crawled into my lap for a while… it made me really happy he started to purr…

After playing with them a bit and hanging out with my dad, I headed to the BART station to take it in to SF. I didn’t want to try to drive to SF and find parking. We had made plans for dinner with our friends Susan and Ken. They recently got engaged so we wanted to congratulate them. Ron and I have been craving some good beef so we made a reservation at House of Prime Rib for dinner. It was definitely worth it but I’m feeling still feeling super stuffed. I hope my stomach can digest all the prime rib I ate.

I enjoyed the House Cut, of course with the side salad, baked potato, Yorshire pudding, and creamed spinach (although I didn’t finish all the sides…). Yum!

Baked potato with all the fixin’s: butter, sour cream, bacon, and chives!

All of us happily full after our meal:

I took the BART home since Ron starts his course tomorrow so he headed to stay in Millbrae at his parents’ house. Ken took the BART with me partway since he was heading down to Fremont so at least I didn’t have to ride the train all the way alone. BART versus MRT at 9:30pm is much different. In the Singapore MRT, it’ll still have quite a few people that you may still need to stand (like after my Chinese course) while BART is almost empty, there were only 6 people in the car of the 4-car train. Plus now it costs $9USD round-trip from Walnut Creek to San Francisco! Yikes, so expensive.

But it took me back to Walnut Creek safely and from there I drove back to San Ramon. This evening on the way to the station, I dropped by a Petco to buy my kitties a new toy. I figured bribery may work and I was right. I played with them for an hour and they seemed more animated and friendly. I guess it just takes time for them to remember you and forgive you.

Now I can’t quite sleep since it’s late afternoon in Singapore but am going to try to head to bed so I can get up early to make plans for the rest of the week… it’s so good to be home.

I had a nice nap after writing the draft to my last post. I figured it’d be okay to sleep to help me adjust my schedule. I stayed up for the last few hours of the flight. They served us breakfast about an hour and a half before we landed.

Had some yummy yogurt.

Breakfast of very fatty bacon, veggies, and mushy rice patty.

An American guy was sitting next to me and he was like my personal aisle monitor. I guess I’m pretty clueless when it comes to flight attendants coming to collect things in the aisle so he always helped me to either pass my tray or just to let me know they were on their way by. It was funny too, the flight attendants seemed to think I was Japanese so on both flights they spoke to me in Japanese but I’d answer in English and I’d get a bit of a perplexed look. They did it through the entire flight.

I arrived around 11am and went through immigration quickly but my luggage was slow. I was so glad to exit and see the following sign:

Ron came to pick me up and we visited his dad at work to say hi before heading to have dim sum with my parents in Dublin. They wanted to take us to Koi Garden, which is related to one of their favorite restaurants in Daly City called Koi Palace. They now have 4 restaurants, the original in Daly City, one at Thunder Valley Casino, and these 2 in Dublin called Koi Garden and Just Koi. We had some interesting dishes when we were there.

On was the Swallow’s Nest Egg-White Tart. Swallow’s Nest is supposed to be good for your health. Since it was also made only of egg-whites, I guess it is pretty healthy. It was quite tasty too.

We also had lobster for lunch. The fry the lobster but use the tail meat to make lobster and shrimp dumplings. It was quite a large dish but very tasty.

The shrimps inside the dumplings weren’t shrimp paste but actually large shrimp cut up in small pieces. Although Singapore has a lot of seafood, I don’t know where you can get stuff like this there.

My dad also ordered this Scallop with Sea Urchin Cheese Rice. It may sound a bit gross but actually with the cheese, it was really good. But by this time, we were so stuffed because we also had other dim sum and beef hor fun as well. We brought home a lot of leftovers.

Here are my Mom and Dad:

Afterwards, we went to hang out for a while at their house, this is the beautiful day we had and some views from their backyard.

I got to meet their dog, Happy, for the first time. She has this bad habit of peeing everywhere when she gets excited. Seeing me for the first time was no exception. When she came into the house to greet me, she peed all the way, all over the kitchen floor. She’s a very friendly dog though, very hyperactive, but very cute.

My cats weren’t to happy to see us though. I think they were a bit scared or maybe a bit upset with us. They wouldn’t come out of hiding underneath the bed. Tomorrow I’ll spend more time trying to coax them out and make friends with them. I was so looking forward to seeing them, it made me a bit sad they weren’t as glad to see me…

In the evening, it just happened our friends Christie and Conan were having a BBQ at their new apartment in Pacifica so we decided to drop by and say hello. They live in this beautiful apartment right near the beach in Pacifica. We got there just in time for the sunset.

I got the chance to catch up with some friends and also to hear about the current situation at UCSF. It was good to catch up with friends and enjoy some good American food. We had chips, fresh salsa, spinach dip, fresh green salad, hummus… yum. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you miss things unless you have them again.

It’s about time to get to sleep now. It’s been a very long day, it’s really like I had 2 Saturdays… but I guess when I get back to Singapore, I will lose Monday. Oh well… gonna try to make the most of my time here while I’ve still got time.