mountain cuisine

In Taiwan, the food is described in many ways. There's differentiation by culture-- Taiwanese, Hokkai, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, etc. And there's differentiation by content-- vegetarian, carbs, seafood, etc. One thing I had never heard of was "mountain cuisine". It's the food that people who live in the mountains, mainly the aborigines, eat. These include things such as wild boar, deer, rabbit, squirels, etc. The seafood consists of what you'd find in streams, eg. small fish and shrimp, and a very long fish that's very eel like, but seems almost lamprey. So on the way down the mountain, we stopped at one such village. Among other things, we had some sort of bird, 竹雞 (bamboo chicken), crickets, and bee larvae

.

mating butterflies

spent the weekend in the mountains in southern Taiwan. Was walking along a path when we passed by this pair of mating butterflies. They weren't very happy about being disturbed. How have we changed the fate of mankind?

another iPad2 bug

We discovered another iPad2 bug, which was related to the one that we discovered back in April. What was happening is that somehow, normalizing the value meant we were losing resolution. But it only happens on the iPad2, and only for iOS4. Again, it took us a while to figure out, but we have a solution and should be releasing a new version soon.

iPad2 screenshot

simulator screenshot

breakfast in cambodia

spent the week in cambodia. this was my breakfast every morning. couldn't get enough of it.

paris/saigon

We decided to go for a nice dinner while in Cambodia. Found this great French/Vietnamese restaurant. The owner is French, and married a Vietnamese woman, and opened this restaurant in Siem Reap. It was a great meal, and very affordable too! (by our standards. it was 2 months avg salary for their standards)

While we were in Siem Reap, the city was flooded. At the end of the meal, a couple came in and asked to be seated. Before they entered, the man took off his shoes and poured water out of the shoes. They were from Portugal, had just motorbiked over from Laos-- which they bough from $250. They had gone everywhere with that motorbike over the past 2 months. Sounds like they were having a great adventure.

10 years in a new world

10 years ago i was in bed, in a house in los altos, listening when the radio alarm turned on, and i thought the radio djs were joking about some plane crash. it finally dawned on me that they weren't kidding, and i rushed out to the living room to see images of the burning world trade center towers on cnn.

a lot has changed in 10 years...

the social security ponzi scheme

i've said for years that social security is a ponzi scheme. i'm glad that a big name politician (ie rick perry) is now saying the same thing, pushing the issue to the national forefront. to the point that even chris matthews (liberal pundit) is agreeing (video).

update to our app

Our iPad2s finally arrived last week. Of course, we immediately tried to run our app on it. And subsequently discovered that there's a bug, ie nothing displays. Took us a while to track down the cause of the issue.

So we have an v1.0.1 update in the app store.

medical imaging app now in the app store

After a lot of work (about 10 months), we've put together an app and it's now on sale in the app store.

Totoraku

Totoraku is the secret yakiniku in West Los Angeles. You have to know the owner Kaz (or someone who knows the owner) to get a reservation. Luckily, my friend Zai knows someone who knows someone who knows the owner :)

There were about 10 meat courses, each of them better than the others. I won't go into detail about them, because everyone else already has done so on their blogs.

What I will mention is the ridiculous quantity and quality of wine at the table. There were about 14 people, and 20 bottles of wine. I brought a 1999 Beaucastel, and that was probably one of, if not, the cheapest. Wines included
* 1- 1999 Beaucastel (mine)
* 1- 1977 Stags Leap Lot 2 (probably my fav of the night)
* 1- 1978 Stags Leap Lot 2 (runner up to my fav of the night)
* 1- The Boot (never heard of it, but it was pretty good)
* 1- 1972 Ridge York Creek Petit Syrah
* 1- 2004 Chateau Margauz
* 1- Insignia (I believe that it was a 1991)
* 2- 1990 Pichon Longueville Comtesse
* 1- 2007 Pahlmeyer
* 1- Lynch Bages (I believe that it was a 2006)
* 1- Brunello di Montalcino
* 1- 1975 Malle Sauternes (dessert wine)

Even more ridiculous was that the Frenchman at the table had a sip of the first Comtesse and proclaimed it undrinkable. I tried it, and liked it! In any case, the rest of the table moved onto the other bottle.

And of course, like everyone else, I have to brag that I got Kaz's business card, and can now make reservations. It was quite expensive, but I can't wait to go again.

20110404 totoraku

Aiguablava

Aiguablava means "blue water" in Catalan. Stayed there one night, the views were beautiful. Being the off season, however, meant that the winds were strong and cold, and swimming was out of the question :( And there was not much around in terms of civilization. Which could be either good or bad. At least I was able to find Mas Comangau a good restaurant (the only one!) near by serving some traditional Catalan cuisine. The server was very nice and attentive, and I loved that he was from Senegal and talked about immigrating to Spain. All in Spanish, of course. Ordered the house special, which is a Catalan style lobster paella. Yum.

20110228 aiguablava

le petit prince

arrived in paris. went to this neighborhood bistro called le petit prince for dinner. the pictures didn't come out too well. food was tasty, and the service was... french. i started chatting up the table next to us. but their english wasn't that great, and i barely know any french, so we chatted in spanish! turns out the guy spent 6 months in mexico doing some research.

20110219 le petit prince

---

2008 lalande de pomerol
chateau le jard

zucchini and scallop flan, with truffle oil?

tapas of foie gras and smoked magret de canard
- arugula, smoked magret, foie gras bread
- pickled asparagus, foie, bread
- mango and foie
- daikon radish and foie
- ginger and mango puree

ostrich steak with sweet garlic cream

roasted pork loin au champignon

horrible sommelier at craft

we went to craft for dinner, with my best friend from college and my best friend from grad school.  had really high hopes, because craft la is one of my fav restaurants in la, and they always have impeccable service.  things didn't go as well.  the 4th person was really annoying and talked nonstop, so that didnt help.    what really pissed me off was that we asked to decant the bottle we ordered, and were forcibly told by the sommelier "you don't need to decant this bottle."  and for our second bottle, tried to make a recommendation by saying, "if you're looking for something in the same price range..."  needless to say, i asked him to leave, with a rudeness that matched his attitude.

escaped!

caught one of the last flights out of boston, just as the biggest storm to hit chicago in history (30"+) was about to hit boston.  that was close.

marliave

after a long wait at the hospital friday night, met up with my best friend from college, who just finished his last day of his rotation visiting harvard's brigham and women's hospital. we went to marliave, which has been open since the 1800s, and had some amazing food (include happy hour oysters and littleneck clams on the halfshell). don't have pics of the clams, but some of them were half the size of my palm. yum!

Rabbit tenderloin and sausage

Tiger shrimp linguine

boston cold

you know how i complained about taipei going below 50f and being cold?  try 10f in boston.  gah

pain au chocolate milk stout grains

Just finished brewing a milk stout stout with chocolate grains.  used those grains to bake some bread.  it came out amazing!  i'll have to stop using oats-- these chocolate grains give it so much more flavor! the 3 of us finished an entire loaf for breakfast.

林東芳牛肉麵 (beef noodles at Lin Dong Fang)

one of my favorite beef noodle places in all of Taiwan. Had to go the night before I returned stateside...

Stewed beef intestine.  Wanted to try it, but not quite as good as the beef noodles itself.

The beef noodles.  Simple yet so good.

nye 2010

our friends bruce and lilian invited us to the nye banquet at the american club in taipei.  it was a lot of fun, and we even won a business class roundtrip ticket to tokyo!

20101231 nye banquet

Me accepting the raffle prize