2009-03-29

Fortune Garden

I had lunch with Oscar at his friend's new restaurant. It's called Fortune Garden (雙燕樓) and located on Steven's Creek in Cupertino.

We tried a few dishes:





The shrimp and beef dishes were sweet although they were supposed to be spicy. The flavours were similar and I would describe both as 'orange shrimp' and 'orange beef' but I think the menu named them differently. The waiter that took our order should have mentioned that both dishes were similar. The restaurant was almost full while we dined there and remained that way for most of our meal. Unfortunately this was because service was slow and there was not a lot of turnover. Most of the customers were in large groups of 6+ people. It took us about an hour and a half to finish and I think only one table had to be cleared for new customers by the time we left.

Their specialty is Roast Peking Duck and it has to be ordered an hour in advance. I think we'll try that the next time we go there.

2009-03-14

Buns

Andrew showed us how to make buns from scratch. I mostly observed and took pictures. Here are some that we made:

From 090314


Some buns were filled with a meat mixture:

From 090314

2009-03-08

Lethargic

I spent the day mostly watching TV and napping. I also worked a bit, did laundry, and swept the main floor.

I had pasta soup with chive and pork dumplings for dinner. The dumplings are from Kingdom of Dumplings in San Francisco and are made by hand.

From food


Oscar coincidentally gave me the same type and brand of taro pastry that Eva also gave me. However he gave me one 'daddy' pastry that was around three times the size of the smaller ones from Eva. It did not survive the trip as nicely.

From food

2009-03-07

Work/Downtime

Lately I've been very busy with work. Part of my current project is being handled in Japan and it has not gone smoothly. It's frustrating when distance creates visibility and control issues. It's disappointing when company politics and policies harm schedules and progress.

For unknown reasons our company in Japan has implemented a strict policy on working hours. Employees go home at 7pm and do not work on the weekends. Locally we have no such policies and we have to bear the brunt of our customer's wrath when progress is slow. With the type of ASIC engineering work that I'm involved with, setting strict working hours does not always make sense. Our goal is to finish the project quickly so that customers can meet their time to market demands. Efficiency is easily lost because of the long runtimes of our tools. Freedom to arrange our own work schedules is highly desirable.

It's hard to keep a high level of concentration for days, weeks, and even months. Days start to run together and there is nothing to look forward to. I was able to find a few hours of relief today by having brunch with friends at Stacks. I had only been to the one in Menlo Park before but today we went to the location in Campbell. I tried the smoked salmon frittata. A friend commented that my egg was a bit hard but I thought it was ok and explained to her that frittatas were cooked in an oven unlike an omelette.

After lunch we went to see a new townhouse before going back to my friend's place. I stayed a bit to play with their guinea pig before heading back to work. I only stayed at the office around 4 hours today and received 2 calls from a coworker about the project.

For dinner I had portobello mushroom ravioli with a simple dressing. I paired it with a glass of chardonnay.

From food


I hope my project will be finished soon and I can find more downtime.