Capricious Me

I’m done. All the paperwork and all that – DONE. I’m officially Dr. Niu now, but not the useful kind of doctor who can save your life. I’m the kind of doctor that could possibly help you troubleshoot your computer problems.

So I’m off to China on the 14th before I start the next stage of my life – employment with Yahoo. This academic year’s been very travel heavy. Let’s see (for those trips that required a plane ticket)…

- Multiple trips to Seattle for interviews
- NYC in November
- Singapore and India in April
- Denmark and Germany in May (with an accidental excursion into Sweden)
- Boston in June

So that’s 4 countries, 3 american cities so far. This was probably my last year to travel as freely as I did… once I start working all this can no longer be. Siiiigh.

It’s been a good year though. Next year, I foresee a lot of Boston in my future. :)

Over Thanksgiving break, I was struck with a powerful desire for strawberry shortcake, or strawberry fruit cake, or an Asian style fruit cake brought by one I saw in Stanford Shopping center. Of course, I knew as a western style bakery, they wouldn’t have exactly what I was looking for. I wasn’t TOO picky – I simply wanted a small slice of a moist cake with light frosting that wasn’t too sweet and some fresh fruit. Mike was nice enough to indulge me as we searched. As luck would have it, all the Asian bakeries I went to either didn’t have the cake I wanted or only had it available as a whole cake. So I settled.

My first concession came at La Patisserie, a bakery close to the Marukai supermarket in Cupertino. I saw a green tea mousse cake, albeit with mango mousse on top. For some people, mango mousse is a plus, but I personally am not fond of mango flavored confections or pastries. And then I saw the lemon mousse with raspberries. Raspberry, strawberry… both are berries, I thought, so I gave these a try.

I was a little disappointed. The green tea mousse didn’t have the matcha taste I was looking for and the mango mousse was just OK. The lemon mousse was delicious and I love raspberries, but it wasn’t the strawberry cake I wanted.

The next day, we tried yet another Asian market. (At this point, we’d visited Marukai, La Patisserie, and Ranch 99.) NO luck. My precious strawberry cake and fruit cake were both sold out. Bah.

On the last day, before we left for Davis, I gave up and returned to Stanford shopping center. I went to La Baguette and Cocola and picked up a strawberry cake from each. And a hazelnut mousse cake. I can’t resist hazelnut.

The hazelnut was nothing too special, but it was good. The strawberry shortcake from La Baguette was my preferred cake of the two strawberry ones.

It was fluffy, light, not incredibly sweet – but there wasn’t enough strawberry to it. I was rather happy with it though.

Cocola Bakery’s strawberry fruit cake was visually stunning, but it wasn’t as delicious as it looked. The green marzipan with a bit of chocolate ruined it for me, I think. I was in the mood for light, fluffy and fruity, and the marzipan made it too heavy. In addition, the entire thing was a bit on the sweet side for me.

Verdict: La Baguette wins hands down, but the strawberry fruit cake from a small asian bakery in SF near Tom’s place and Satura’s strawberry shortcake are definitely superior. I’ll have to brave the downtown Palo Alto traffic to get some Satura cake over Christmas.

This quest may be complete, but I must re-do it to get complete satisfaction.

This, 凉皮 or 面皮, is one of my favorite street foods to eat. The noodles are chewy and the gluten is squishy. The sauce is just a little spicy with lots of sesame…. mmmmm….

Ghost Patrol this past weekend was so much fun. The little extra things the GC did really added up and made it my favorite Halloween thus far.

Having seen a lot of puzzles, ranging from great to terrible – I’m getting a sense of what makes a puzzle good. Hopefully this will help us in writing our puzzle in DASH 3… So what are key components to puzzles? In no particular order:
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I saw a jewelry store today called Pandora. Interesting name. Every time someone opens up one of the boxes, they’re opening a “Pandora’s box.” Do they mean to imply that the jewelry represents all the evils beset on humans, or was it just a cute name to them? Greed was one of the things to come out of Pandora’s box, and greed is what drives us to buy useless but pretty baubles like jewelry, after all. Maybe the owner of the store is a very cynical person who delights in satire.

Cambridge weather is unpredictable. It was sunny all day and then all of a sudden it was pouring. And then just as abruptly, it stopped.

I took a walk of the town and saw a few of the college grounds, including King’s College and Corpus Christi. And then I discovered the Grand Arcade – a small but well stocked mall.

I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect pair of creamy yellow shoes to go with my dark blue satin dress, and I came so close today. It was ever so slightly too big. And I was trying on the smallest pair there. Usually, 37 is my size, but not today…

What is it about Chinese restaurants being located right next to … shall we say, unsavory shops of a sexual nature?

I think I walked through the red light district today right after visiting a huge church. Location is everything, I suppose. I was walking through a street with a few Chinese shops and restaurants (Amsterdam Chinatown is in that area), when I noticed quite a few shops unabashedly advertising their wares. Turning the corner and then noticed that the uncovered windows had STOOLS by them. So I turned around and walked through an alleyway back the way I came. It was an interesting alleyway, with lots of similar windows and the occasional scantily clad woman.

Anyway. I started out the day with a visit to the Amsterdam Hermitage, where I saw lots of paintings by Matisse, Picasso, and their peers. Not much besides that… despite the size of the building. After that I walked to Waterlooplein flea market and got myself some fries with mayonnaise.

My next stop was the Dutch Resistance Museum, across from a zoo. It was a really awesome setup with lots of props and audio. Unfortunately, there were tons of little boys running around being loud and annoying. What’s interesting about the Dutch resistance, to me, at least, is that there was a lot of church encouragement from both Protestants and Catholics to resist and even to help hide the Jews. This is in stark contrast to the churches in Germany, according to the book I’m reading (Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust) in which churches actually protested when the Nazis wouldn’t let them use the swastika as a symbol anymore.

From there, I walked to the Hortus Botanicus, where I saw a butterfly coming out of its cocoon. Very neat.

Next, I headed over to the tulip museum, which was actually just one room recounting the history of the tulip. From there, it was a quick walk to Nieuwe Kerk, a huge church across from the Royal Palace (currently surrounded by scaffolding and construction and closed on Mondays). After that is when I started wandering around and found the red light district.

Finally, I went to the Anne Frank house. It was a pretty depressing tour…

Tomorrow is souvenir hunting! And then the day after is my day trip to Brussels.

First things first: I bought my train tickets for a day trip to Brussels. Wooooo. I have plans to visit the Cantillon brewery, which makes some lambics.

Some observations:

• People here are ridiculously tall. They tower above me. I feel incredibly short.
• It rains a lot. But not all the time. There were at least two periods of bright sunshine before it poured again.
• People like to have big windows that aren’t covered by curtains. I walk by and see everything inside. Tim says that’s a leftover from the old Protestant way of life, in which they wanted the open windows to show that nothing improper was going on inside.
• There’s museum after museum. On one street, I went to 3. Two canal houses and a not so great photo gallery.
• I went to 5 museums today, all for “free” because of the I Amsterdam city card. I have two more days of unlimited travel and museums! Today I went to : Van Loon House, FOAM gallery, Geelvinck house, a Bags and Purses museum (seriously. historical overviews and everything.), and finally – the Rembrandt House.
• My plan initially was to go to the Rembrandt house first and then walk to stuff around it, but I got lost. Hence new order of museums.

It’s hot. and humid. I’ve never appreciated a cool breeze more… or guzzled down so much water without needing to make a stop every 10 minutes. Davis in the summer is nothing compared to Bangkok. But that’s about the only thing causing me discomfort.

Davis Thai food is forever ruined for me, because I’ve tasted the real thing (for a fraction of the cost) and I can’t go back. Seriously. Highlights include: roasted chicken liver, fried quail eggs with a dash of maggi seasoning and white pepper, slightly pickled guava, crunchy green mango dipped in a mixture of crushed shrimp, salt, and red pepper flakes, spicy catfish salad, and EVERYTHING from tonight’s meal.

The traffic is terrifying, though not nearly as chaotic as China. Motorcycles zip by without a care as to which lane they’re in, which direction traffic is coming from, and how many people are on the damn thing.

So far, we’ve wandered around some shopping areas, visited several temples and palaces, and made obligatory trips to the touristy areas. Bhume is an excellent host, and his house is amazing. It’s built in the Thai style (see here for an example) and is connected by small wooden gates to houses of several of his family members. Nearby is a cafe his sister and cousin own, his family’s gym, and his aunt’s restaurant (where we ate tonight). There’s a hospital literally across the street, so as a result there’s usually two street food vendors by the gate to his house. It’s understandable that people in the hospital would prefer that food to the Sodexo offerings in the hospital. Oh yes, Sodexo, as in the same awful caterer we have on the UCD campus.

There’s lots of rumors and apprehension regarding the Red Shirt rallies planned for this weekend. Military personnel are everywhere in the major tourist attractions and near government buildings. Some of the major areas will be closed starting tomorrow – including the areas we just saw today. Lucky us.

I spent a lot more time than usual this year in Palo Alto over winter break because my cousin was visiting and Grace came for a second visit. (Personally, I think Grace should just give up the East Coast and move over here so she can eat yogurt and good asian food all the time…)

We tried out Little Sheep Hot Pot, which I’d been looking forward to for a very long time because of the promise of hot pot (duh) and 羊肉串 (lamb skewers). The hot pot was Mongolian style, supposedly, so it didn’t have the 麻辣 flavor that I’ve been craving. However, this did make the broth very drinkable. I despair of ever finding the sichuan hot pot that will make me hate and love my meal at the same time in this country.

Mike and I did the usual food visits – pho, beef noodles, sichuan, etc. My cousin, Grace and I watched K-dramas by night and went out to eat (always on the lookout for the perfect pot of 水煮鱼) and shop during the day. Not to mention, worst of all, I’ve fallen to the wiles of Torchlight.

All this means I wasn’t as productive in my own work as I wanted to be, although I did spend some time at Parc before Grace came. There’s a lot I need to do in January. It’s going to be a pretty short amount of time to do all the writing and data crunching that needs to be done in time for the Feb deadlines, but what’s life without challenges?

I think I’m too cynical to make resolutions, but I will endeavor to be a better grad student and graduate before I’m too old to remember anything before grad school.