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| Today when I went to Trader Joe’s I took along fishypie’s TJ’s picks, which I had printed out. Mike (my roommate) sometimes makes comments on how loyal of a TJ’s customer I am, and I think I’m winning him over, too. For example, he used to buy Mochi ice cream at ranch 99 for $4.59 a box, until I told him that TJ’s sells it for $2.99 a box. Anyway, I ended up buying 7/9 of Krissy’s TJ’s favorites today. Since I’m such a TJ’s fan, I’m going to share my list too (in order of increasing awesomeness): 9. Multigrain & flaxseed water crackers: I buy 1-2 packs of these a week, and they’re really good for munching on when I’m thinking about a problem (at work). They have enough taste that you actually feel like you’re eating something, but they’re light enough that you still feel like eating your next meal. Having these around has saved me many times from scrounging for free food at work, which usually tends to be unhealthy takeout food left over from lunch meetings. 8. French apple tart: This is a light dessert that’s really good with a little powdered sugar on top. It has the sweet/tart, soft/crunchy fusion going on, and it’s also not too filling. I think Catherine would rate this higher than #8. 7. Rio red grapefruit blend: Actually, I like a lot of the juice blends they have, and I rotate between them a lot. But rio red has this really interesting blend of flavors, without being too sweet. 6. Italian style turkey breast: This is one of the few lunch meats I can find where the meat is cut straight from the turkey, rather than processed and then later gelled together. This gives it a much more natural-feeling texture. Also, a serving only has 16% DV of sodium, compared to 25-30% for typical lunch meats. TJ’s also has lunch meats without sodium nitrate which are pretty good too (even though this isn’t one of them). 5. Wild Nova Smoked Sockeye Salmon: The amazing thing about this is that a serving is only 15% DV of sodium, when most smoked salmon has around 30% DV. This still has enough salmon flavor that you don’t feel like you’re missing something. This is a lot better for snacks than as the main meat item in a meal, since the flavor is so strong. (I once tried to eat a ghetto meal with this item as the “meat” group, but it didn’t work out too well b/c the flavor was too overpowering.) 4. Sliced lite cheddar cheese: This has a strong cheddar flavor, but it’s not sharp. And unlike most other cheeses, it doesn’t have an oily nature to it. If I buy cheese, it’s either this or the Jarlsberg lite. 3. Fine herbs & goat cheese potato chips: What really sets these chips apart is the naturalness of the flavor. It’s not some artificial-tasting flavor that the consumer brands tend to sell (like ranch or sour cream & onion). The herbs and cheese make it taste like you’re eating a specialty item rather than a mass-produced snack. They’re also light and not too oily. 2. Banana nut clusters: In general, I like TJ’s cereals because they don’t have all these weird ingredients like preservatives or freshness enhancers. I also like the fruity flavors more than the nutty flavors. The banana nut clusters have a really genuine banana taste, and when you pour in milk, there’s a really nice contrast of textures between the flakes, the clusters, and the nuts. The only reason I don’t buy this cereal exclusively is so it’s more special when I do eat it. (Hmm...that kind of sounds weird, but it’s actually true.) 1. Thai shrimp gyoza: These gyoza have amazing flavor and interesting texture, and they’re really versatile too. They can go with pretty much any combination of vegetables and pasta/rice, either as a main item or as a complimentary flavor. They’re a good meat substitute because they’re flavorful enough to “carry” the meal, but there’s a whole combination of other vegetables (like white cabbage, onion, chive, ginger, etc.) so that you’re not actually eating that much meat. This is another of Catherine’s favorites, and I’m kind of surprised that she hasn’t gotten tired of eating it yet (even though I haven’t either). | | |
| I guess it’s time for another update, and as usual, I’ll have to try and summarize a long period of time: - Here’s a picture of me with Yi and Harrison. This is my best discipleship group so far because both these guys are really good at discussing and really want to grow. We just finished “Mere Christianity” and now we’re reading “Desiring God.”
- Catherine organized a surprise party for my birthday and I was so surprised that I didn’t even know how to react. I was coming from a stressful situation to her house where I assumed I’d be having dinner with her family. But then all these people popped out of nowhere. This was a really fun night and the best part was when everyone started to gather around the piano and sing random songs.
- I went to Cal to interview some students for Qualcomm in mid-March. It was really interesting having a chance to talk with my former professors, and it reminded me of how cool their work is. One guy is focusing on microrobots and launching something into orbit as his next thing; another professor is going to try using microwave techniques to do medical imaging (rather than x-rays or MRI). I couldn’t stop thinking, “darn it – and all day I just design chips for cell phones.”
- When I was in Berkeley, I got Catherine a Cal shirt from the ASUC. She wore it for my birthday, but claims that it won’t make another appearance for a long time... We’ll see about that...
- I ate at La Burrita and Vietnam Village (Durant food court, back right), since I’d always go there as a student.
- A major conference in my field happens to be in Hawaii this year: http://www.rfic2007.org I submitted a paper with one of my co-workers which got accepted, so I get to go to Hawaii for the first time – on a work-sponsored conference. But here’s the real kicker: Catherine’s company is exhibiting at a related conference that’s at the same time! http://www.ims2007.org I’m still trying to come up with a good balance of fun activities and conference events.
- Here’s the first phone to hit the market that contains a chip I worked on. This came to market in November, but unlike in CDMA2000 where Qualcomm dominates the GSM/EDGE/UMTS market has so many phones that I still don’t see many people with it. http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/lg/cu400.html
- Kind of surprising. I guess they got rid of the rib-b-que. http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/04/12_dining.shtml
- I really liked watching the “Fast Food Nation” movie. http://www.foxsearchlight.com/fastfoodnation/ This film did a really good job of weaving in lots of different story lines and showing how they’re all connected to the same industry: Mexican immigrants, high school students, marketing executives. I think a lot of people react with disgust to seeing the workings of a cattle slaughterhouse. For me, I don’t think slaughterhouses are that much grosser than killing cattle the traditional way; slaughterhouses are just more efficient. This movie’s still very thought-provoking in that it makes you think about whether eating meat is really that important to you. With the growing population in the western US, water’s becoming a problem, but not because of cities, surprisingly. It turns out that cities use only about 10% of the water that’s taken from rivers; the rest goes to watering crops, and most of those crops get fed not to humans but to animals. Do I still eat meat? Yes, but a lot less now. For more extreme websites, see: http://www.meat.org/
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| Hmm... for some reason I thought that switching to xanga would help me to post more often but I guess that's not turning out to be true. One issue is the fact that I don't have a set time of the week to update, so there's never a time when I regularly think about it. Maybe some of you guys who update all the time can tell me how you deal with this. Having said that, let me try to think of whatever comes to mind: - I went to the Buick Invitational with Catherine and Vince. We got to follow Tiger Woods for an entire round, which was cool. He even walked right in front of us, but he pretty much has to ignore everyone (including the people who yell stuff like "you're the man!" and "yeah Tiger!") to concentrate on his game. He pretty much was hitting out of the sand all day, but he still finished the day at -3 which was pretty impressive.
- It seems like I get a call from technical recruiters every week or so. I'm presently not looking for a new job, but some of these guys are really persistent. It's kind of weird, and I kind of want to ask some of them how much money they'll get if I really do end up working for whatever company is paying them to recruit people. One guy was trying to get me interested in a company and he goes, "they're a *great* company." I asked him if he could quantify that in any way (financial performance, IP, benefits), but it seemed like he didn't really know how to answer that question. Kind of sketchy.
- One thing I've been thinking about recently is the meaning of "inspiration", when it comes to the Bible. To some people, it means that God inspires every word (in the original language), whereas to others it means that God speaks to us through the Bible though there is also a very prominent human aspect to it as well. I'm realizing that a lot of the hard-to-defend "tenents" of evangelical Christianity (like special creation and age of the earth) only become issues when you hold a certain view of what "inspiration" means and interpret the Bible in a certain way. I could go on about this, but maybe I'll save that for later.
- Check out the picture below of my refrigerator and tell me what stands out to you. My roommate Mike opened it one day and he goes, "you know, the first thing I thought of when I saw that grapefruit was that it reminded me of one of my patients' scrotum that I saw today." I was like "what?!? how can it be that big?" Apparently, the guy had some fluid buildup down there but said it didn't bother him too much, except when he tried to play tennis.
Check out this really good article on learning lessons from history. Unfortunately, you have to be a NY times subscriber to view it: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30E16FA3C540C738FDDA00894DE404482 | | |
| Wow, I didn't know so many people would find my xanga so fast. I figured I'd secretly write a bunch of posts before people found it... I've noticed that for the last 5+ years, I've been getting more serious as a person. When I read other people's xanga posts, I tend to be most entertained by random posts with lots of pictures. For some reason, I can't reach down and find that randomness as easily. So yeah, sorry to disappoint you guys.  The last few months, I've had a lot more inspiration to just try stuff in my cooking. For about a year, I was stuck in a rut with no inspiration to try cooking new stuff, since I figured it wasn't worth spending so much effort just to cook for myself. But trying stuff is pretty fun - especially when I learn new techniques or when I learn where to buy a certain ingredient that I rarely see. To me, the most interesting thing is trying to reproduce some simple dishes I see at Chinese restaurants, but I've also tried some non-Chinese stuff. Check out a few of the latest:  
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| I've recently rediscovered the joy of playing tennis. This might sound weird coming from someone who spent a lot of time as a kid playing so much, but the last time I've played this consistently was senior year of high school. I usually play with people from Lighthouse or Catherine and Vince. This weekend, I played with Jason (Wong), a teammate on the tennis team during all 4 of my years at Mills. In high school we'd always hang out together and we were also really competitive at tennis. In practice we wouldn't just hit - we'd try to see who could hit more winners off the other person. The last time I played with him was probably the summer of 1999, so it had been 7 years. (Even though he's been in SD longer than me, we've never played tennis with each other.) Overall, I think he's a little better than me now, since he played on the team for 4 years at Caltech. What's weird is that as competitive as we were in high school, there was a lot of mutual admiration (for lack of a better word) for each others' game, since the other people we play don't hit as hard or get to as many balls. When I e-mailed him, he wrote "I can't believe you're asking me to play tennis. Maybe you'll make me like it again." Based on the fact that he asked when I'm free to play again, I think I did make him like it again. | | |
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