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Name: neener
School: USC Marshall School of Business
Status: Employed...finally
E-mail: Click here!
Reason for blogging: I'm incredibly self-absorbed. |
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I'm listening to...
::"Stay Beautiful," The Last Goodnight
::"Spaceman," The Killers
::"Green Light," John Legend
::"Superstar," Lupe Fiasco
I'm watching...
::24
::The Office
I'm reading...
::Taiwan, A Political History, by Denny Roy
::The Devil and Miss Prym, by Paulo Coehlo
I've just seen...
::Slumdog Millionaire
::I Love You, Man
::The Reader
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This Is My Kind of Town, Chicago Is. Yes, I made a Sinatra reference! I got back from a fun but very humid Memorial Day weekend in Chicago. For someone who loves buildings and parks, Chicago is awesome (except for during the winter)! The city is very well planned compared to the sprawl that is my hometown of Los Angeles, with lots of gorgeous green parks.
Of course, it was not a trip with my girls without lots of comedy and memorable moments. I will remember...
Cur shouting at us, "Look at my boobs!" despite our protests that she cease.
Cur sleeping in the Cultural Center.
Lil arriving at Alinea shoeless because my description of the dress code said "no jeans and t-shirts" but made no reference to sneakers.
Cur hiding from us at Buckingham Fountain.
Cur, who doesn't really have an indoor voice, exclaiming something about "white people" in the Art Institute cafe that was full of, you guessed it, white people.
Discovering the "Chocolate Cake Shake" at Portillo's.
Cur saying that she will "defriend" me (ahem, the person with whom she is traveling!) because I did not update my "Maybe" status to her invite, while she will keep as friends people she barely knows simply because they replied with either a "yes" or a "no."
Gems from our last conversation at the airport, including the following exchange:
Cur: "People should just listen to me because my way is efficient!"
Em: "Efficient in the way a dictatorship is efficient."
Good times!Labels: travel
The World Is My Oyster. Or is it the other way around? Well, on a recent Saturday, it did seem like the other way around. After a long stretch of rainy, overcast days, we finally got a beautiful sunny day in the Bay Area. YJ drove Megs, Lan, and me to Point Reyes National Seashore for some hiking and Tomales Bay oysters. We chose a relatively flat, five-mile hike (300 ft in elevation) called the Coast Trail - Laguna Loop. As the name suggests, the trail takes you to the coast, and you can access the beach via a small path off of the trail.
There were wooded areas at the beginning and end of the loop, but the coast areas were mostly just grass. According to their hiking guide, technically there is a "riparian zone," which I looked up because I don't know what it means (it means near the banks of a stream), in addition to coastal scrub and grassland.
Even though Megs was recovering from an injured ankle, she still booked it and was way ahead of the rest of us. Thanks for making me feel lame, Megs. Anyway, we took a snack break at the beach and started heading back to the trailhead. At one point, a bunch of big birds appeared. At first I couldn't figure out what they were, but I could make out their big beaks. I thought maybe they were pelicans, but I wasn't sure because the word brings to my mind a cartoonish version of a bird with a bunch of fish in its beak pouch thing. But after looking at a picture of them at one of the signs near the trail, I concluded that they were, indeed pelicans.
So we kept walking. And walking. And walking. And at one point, I was thinking that maybe we had missed a turn. It just so happened that we bumped into a fellow hiker, who told us we had missed our turn. He said we could either double-back and finish the trail as planned, or we could turn at a different spot and take a different path back that had "the best views" and had an elevation of 1,000 ft. I told him that one person in our party had a recovering injury, so we would probably take our original route. But to be honest, my non-injured self wasn't really feeling walking 1,000 ft up. He shrugged and said, possibly with a hint of disdain for our non-athletic ways, "You'll have fun either way." Out loud, I said, "Thanks," but I actually was thinking, "I really think I'll have way more fun on the flat path versus the giant hill."
So we doubled back and ended up walking maybe 6 miles instead of 5 miles. The way back to the car was not without its moments. There was a point in the ascent where my mind went into the "I don't think I can climb any more but I refuse to be this lame" zone, and then at another point we had to traverse this extremely muddy patch. I ended up sinking in the mud and getting it all over my pants and shoes. Good times.
We rushed back to the car and started driving very quickly because we were afraid we wouldn't make it to any of the Tomales Bay oyster places, which close pretty early. Hog Island Oyster Company was closed, so we high-tailed it to Tomales Bay Oyster Company. We got there just in time with less than an hour before closing. Even though we had discussed in the car that we should not buy too many oysters, we still ended up buying the bag of 50 --- that's right, FIVE-OH --- because the per unit savings was too much for our Asian selves to resist. We got back to the car, opened the mini-cooler, and encountered a problem. My mini-cooler couldn't accommodate all 50 oysters.
What to do? Eat the overflow until we can close the damn cooler. So Megs (the expert shucker) and YJ start shucking, and all four of us, standing by the trunk of YJ's car parked alongside the road, start slurping away.
Not the most sophisticated ambiance, but you gotta do what you gotta do. After we'd eaten enough so that the bag fit in the cooler, we drove back through Point Reyes and made a snack stop, and then headed back to my pad.
I made a quick salad with a balsamic vinaigrette plus some mignonette sauce, Megs washed my dishes to make room for shucking, and Lan and YJ got some more grub at Trader Joe's and Zachary's Pizza. After a lot of shucking and prep, we sat down to dinner: raw oysters on the half shell, Zachary's chicken pizza, a simple salad, plus soda and beer. It was a wonderful meal. What could be better than good food and good friends?Labels: food, hiking, nature, travel
So This Is Love. Being unemployed can suck. There's that pesky "money" thing. But as I've said in previous posts, it gives you a lot of time. And if you have some savings, you can do something you usually can't do when you're employed: travel.
And that is how I ended up driving a little Citroën Picasso smelling of cigarette smoke (unfortunately, the only automatic that the car rental company had) through the Basque countryside with YJ and LT, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do when I see a road sign with a picture of a headlight and a question mark. (I'm still not sure, so if anyone can enlighten me, please do.)
After a misstep or two, we arrived at our destination: Axpe, described by some as a hamlet and by many as "the middle of nowhere." Surrounded by rolling green hills and with snow-capped mountains as a nice backdrop sat a small town square with a church in the center. Some structures that looked like farmhouses dotted the landscape here and there, but for the most part, all we could see was green. Here, in this humble-looking destination, is where I ended up falling in love...as I ate one of the best meals of my life.
At Extebarri, a Spanish asador, Victor Arguinzoniz has taken grilling to another level. Every morning, he and his sous-chef make their own charcoal from a variety of woods, and they come up with creative ways to cook foods you normally don't associate with a grill. A slab of beef? Sure, they cook beef. And since this is Spain, if you want some grilled baby octopus, you can get that too.
But would you ever expect to order caviar? Smoked butter? And how about some baby eels? Ah, the marvelous baby eels. The baby eels are the one "must have" dish at Extebarri, when they're available. Sous-chef Lennox told us the romantic story about how the eels are born in the Sargasso Sea, way out by the Caribbean, and travel all the way around the world to Europe. They are caught by the light of the moon, and then he started talking about a waterfall (I think they keep them there once they are caught?), but by then my mind was wandering as I imagined ingesting them. All romance aside, they are just plain good. The texture may be like spaghetti, but they're so full of flavor and simply delicious.
Our meal ended up being 4 hours long, and we had a wide variety of dishes, from meats like chorizo and chuleta to seafood like giant palomar shrimp and oysters. As we neared the end of the meal, I was feeling incredibly full and unable to eat anymore. And then they brought out dessert, a smoked milk ice cream with a berry sauce, and just like magic, I found space in my stomach again.
The food at Extebarri is the epitome of my favorite kind of food: unpretentious, cooked perfectly, and prepared and seasoned so that you can savor the taste of the main ingredient. Oh, Extebarri, I love you.Labels: food, places, travel
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When I learn a new word, I'll put it here so you can learn too!
EBITAS (noun):
Abbreviation for "Earnings Before Income Tax, Amortization, and SGARA." Next week, find out what SGARA is.
Click here for previous "new words." |
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