The American Way

As the years go by

One thing you realize as the years go by is that each birthday is less significant as the one before it. Remember when you were, like 10 years old ? You couldn't sleep the night before your birthday ! You'd be drooling in your dreams about that birthday cake, the friends comin' over, and the presents you would get. The day was fundamentally about you, and a hail to the fabric of your existence.

As the years go by, the significance of this day returns to the world of the mundane. The routine. The expectation. Thoughts occur to you, such as,  "hmmm. time flies" , or "wow. is it my birthday ? already ? god i'm getting old...".

Now some will tell you that this is part of the natural aging process ("that's just the way it, mate !"). And some will help you fight the fight and keep your "birthday" senses on edge.

Manon is one of those people. To use an expression that someone told me just yesterday about her (and you'll understand why later)... "I've got a keeper ! ;-) ".

She managed to turn a perfectly generic, normal working day into a day full of surprises. Resourceful, she managed to surprise me at every corner, taking me to discover places that I did not know about, and that she intrinsically knew that I would love. She coordinated a complex strategy to get me in and out of work during the day, setting up "fake" meetings with some of my colleagues and myself to make sure that "real" meetings wouldn't get in the way, so that she could shoo me in and out of what she had planned.

Not many people do this. She managed to turn just another day into a day that I will never forget.

Like they say, I've got a keeper.

US bans Vegemite | The Courier-Mail

Link: US bans Vegemite | The Courier-Mail.

Ok, for those of you who don't know what vegemite is, just go ahead and skip this post... but I know that there are some Aussie-phile readers out there, and this post is for you hard core vegemite fans out there.

The US has decided to ban vegemite, and it is no longer imported here. This basically means that thousands of Aussie's have to resort to either a) black market vegemite, or b) marmite as a substitute. Apparently, it's got something to do with US FDA regulations only allowing folate ( a key ingredient in vegemite ) in breads and cereals...

You have to wonder at the stupidity of all of this...

The worst thing is... Vegemite is made by KRAFT, which is an American cie... so it's not really serving any trade barrier purposes either....

Vung Tau... I love Vietnamese food.

VUNG TAU, Vietnamese Restaurant

 

So today, spent the afternoon at the Dr Martin Luther King Library doing some work (yeah, I know it's Sunday). It was pretty productive, and they have this great coffee shop downstairs that serves a mean Mocha shake (not too sweet, perfect).

We ended up walking to Wallgreen's to get some shopping (Wallgreen's is like Boot's in the UK, or a big parapharmacy in France), and stopped by a Vietnamese restraurant, "Vung Tau ". I'd read amazing reviews about this place, and we decided to take out, and eat Vietnamese for the evening. You'll find my review on my Yelp site. We loved it.

 

Gilroy Garlic Fest...

When Max and I were researching San Jose, 6 months before we actually moved we came across a festival that we both knew we just had to check once we got here. The annual Garlic Festival in Gilroy, just 40 miles south of San Jose...

The festival occurs the last weekend in July, and so this morning, together with Wes and Yolanda (who spent the night at our place last night), we got up at dawn, and made our way there. The pictures are available here.

So the festival's really about food... you can find all things garlic here - garlic tacos, garlic fries, stuffed garlic mushroom, garlic & cheeze pizza... which is all pretty normal. You can also find stuff like Garlic Ice Cream, which is a bit too much for my liking, much as I love garlic.

But the festival has its drawbacks as well - it's extremely commercialized, with "live" infomercials that lead from the festival's entrance to the main fair grounds (we got "trapped" into wasting 1.5 hours listening to a guy sell cookware for 5000$... worse than timeshare, believe me).

Also... the prices are a bit outrageous - 12$ entry fee, then 12$ for meal, 5$ for a tepid glass of beer, and/or 6$ for a teeny weenee taste of wine...

Anyway - we got to do it once, and we can say we've done it. I doubt we'll be going back any time soon.

Lucca... fabulous Italian Restaurant

Oh. My. God. Rare is the time when I sit down in a restaurant and think - I'd come back to this city, just for this place -. But this is what happened tonight between me, and Lucca, a fantastic slightly up market Italian restaurant in the little italy (called "North End") of Boston. You can read the detailed review on my yelp profile. All I'll say is that this restaurant kicks ass, and I will definitely come back to Boston because of this place, and next time, I'm bringing Max. She really would have liked it here. I've got to figure out a way for her to join me on these biz trips.

The Left Bank...

So Max had a great idea today - catch a bit of jazz in this part of town called Santana Row. Santana Row is kinda weird & scary, probably cos' it really tries to emulate a bit of Venice, Paris, Rome, Barcelona... and is almost successful at it.

The fact is, I kinda like it. Several restaurants, cafes, outdoor concerts, wine bars, boutiques, in all has a very "St Germain des Pres" feel, without the river seine... we ended up watchin' a bit of a concert, stepped into starbux, where max picked up a - get this - tall decaf' soy milk no foam extra hot latte... (no less ;-). I'm surprised I even remembered what she asked for. No doubt, she's adjusted to the American Way :-)... It could have been worse, I've seen people order Venti Decaf' Soy No Foam Shot of Sugarless Hazelnut Shot Extra Hot... and get away with. Try this in Paris and see what happens !!!

In any case, we ended up in a French brasserie, called the Left Bank, where we - get this - ended up ordering steak tartare - and it was good. It was blended with Capers, onions, real "moutarde de dijon" and topped with a raw quail egg... (must admit that the touch of the quail egg is unusual... but definitely adds to the cool factor !!!!). Max interjects at this point, and wishes to highlight that the steak tartare we ordered was actually a starter... so they needed to use a smaller egg because it was a smaller portion, hence "quail". Next time, we'll ask if we can super size this !

A tad bit of an expensive wine list, but the food seems good, and the atmosphere is pretty "francais".

We'll definitely be back to Santana Row... less snotty than I thought. Left Bank: 7/10 for the steak tartare... you lose points for your pseudo expensive and uninteresting wine list, impersonal service, and a bit of a flat choice in terms of their "piece de resistance...."....

Mount Hamilton, Round 2

This evening, Manon and I went back to Mount Hamilton (remember, this is one of the first places we "discovered" upon arriving in San Jose). We finally decided to have dinner there, as the weather is getting warmer, and the potential of a beautiful sunset was too high to miss. The food they serve is pretty homey fare: Manon had the veal scaloppini with capers, and I had a chicken breast smothered with garlic, olives, diced tomatoes and paprika served on a consomme of white wine. Very nice !

Our server (they use the term server here, not waitress or waiter... I'll have to put this on the Odd things about the USA list...) was a lovely ol' lady, and something strange happened: when I ordered a dark heineken beer, she said with a slight French accent "it tastes like carrraaamel" ! It turns out she was French from near St Tropez, and her name was Rosette, and she had been living here for 50 years (she must have been in her late 60's). She was very sweet, and pretended it was Manon's birthday, and gave us some of her homemade Raspberry Cheesecake (Kevin... I ate this for you man, that's how much of a friend I am :-) ).

We had a gorgeous view while we ate dinner, and left, satiated and happy. On the way back though (and this is a long winding road down to San Jose on route 130), a deer suddenly jumped out of nowhere ! Max pumped her breaks, and we slowed down, but still bumped into the deer! Thank God, she had managed to seriously slow down (probably 15 miles / hr), and even though we hit the deer, we weren't going fast enough to hurt it. It stared at us reproachfully for a few seconds, and jumped back into the moutain. Needless to say, Max and I were pretty freaked out, we got out of the car to make sure the deer was indeed ok. Meanwhile, the Park Rangers were right behind us the whole time ! Max went to speak to the rangers while I checked the car, which thank god, didn't have anything. It's not so much the car that I was worried about, but more the fact that if there was no blood or dents, then the deer would be fine. The Rangers confirmed this as well, and we went on our way, scared, but relieved.

We were so wired up by the time we got home that we decided to get into our cossies and head out to our residential spa and sit in the hot tub and swim a few laps in the heated pool... that calmed us down!

Tomorrow, we go to Big Basin Redwoods State Park near Santa Cruz. Looking forward to it! Then it's Shoreline golf course in Mountainview on Sunday morning, and possibly celebrating Queen's Day (Konningen Dag) in true "Oranje" style at Menlo Park, near Palo Alto. In the midst of all that, I'll need to work on my product planning slides (I leave for Israel next Friday), and other work stuff. Busy weekend in perspective !

Signing off,

Shy

Summer is here !!!

The weather has finally turned around... we hit the mid 70's today in San Jose (that would be around 24 degrees Celsius), and it was bright, sunny and absolutely gorgeous. I like Friday's a lot, because it usually means that I can sleep in; by this, I mean that I don't have any calls with Israel or Europe, and instead of waking up at 5.45 or 6 am, I can sleep in and wake up at 7.45. My first appointment of the day is with K*C*, who is the product marketing manager for some of my products, primarily the ones dealing with our high tech/manufacturing/non telecoms customers (logistics management, work force management and a few others). It was a short call, as we've both been really busy with our product planning activities. After that, off to work, Starbucks with Manon, some work, lunch with the team, some more work... and then WEEKEND !!!!!

Odd things about the USA...

So Max and I thought it'd be a good idea to keep track of some the weird, different, exceptional things about our new home, the US of A. So just for fun, we started drawing up a list. If any of you (americans, europeans, asians, africans, south americans, antarctians, eskimos, any one, really) reading this post want to add to our list, PLEASE DO SO! I'm curious to hear what others think.

Please note, although we are saying "US" this and "US" that, our frame of reference is California, which, as I understand it, is a different country altogether (kinda' like Texas). So a different perspective is welcome and requested!

So far, we have this:

• We haven't noticed toothpicks or mints in US restaurants, whereas in Austral-Asia, you see this more often than not
• The tap water served in US restaurants is absolutely awful... BUT YOU ALWAYS GET SERVED A GLASS OF WATER
• The amount of ice American waiters serve their customers is completely disproporionate to the amount of drink (try... 2/3 ICE, 1/3 drink).
• We love the bottomless cup of coffee, and the fact that even posh restaurants adhere to this policy
• The coffee is actually pretty good (or we've gotten over euro-snobbism through countless trips to Pete's Coffee & the ubiquitous Starbucks)
• County jail buses... in France, we never see the buses that take prisoners to Jail, over here, it seems that I see one a week... with the big iron barred windows.... just like in the movies.
• The salt in salt shakers never gets stuck... whassup with that? Why is it that in the rest of the world, getting salt out of a shaker requires us to follow a draconian training regime to develop upper body strength?
• Ketchup bottles are spotless
• You get 2 or 3 different brands of sweetener as an option for you coffee. Not just ONE. At least 2, and mostly 3: Equal, Sweet'n Low, and Splenda (which is my personal favourite).
• Senior discounts aren't a myth or urban legend: they are REAL, and pretty substantial. By comparison, France sucks at providing discounts in retail or restaurants, you can forget about anything like that happening in India, and Australians are pretty good at this policy.
• The sun doesn't always shine in California (TRUE MYTH)
• Not everyone uses the term "Dude" in California (also another TRUE MYTH)
• One portion feeds 2 people (especially Salads)
• US Salads are good, not bad (as someone told me before I moved)
• There are more SUV's (Sports Utility Vehicles) than Sedans. Wow.

So curious to here what you think about our list, do you agree, disagree? Thoughts/Comments?

Max's Birthday, Round 2 !

Food: ****
Wine: ****
Service: ****
Atmosphere: *****

This is actually a surprisingly very good Italian... why surprising ? Well... I never quite trust the "chain effect", and where I come from, chains are generally "snobbed" upon. Not being snobs ourselves, and having heard such wonderful things about this place, I decided to book it for Round 2 of Max's birthday (the actual night of her birthday). We did not regret it at all !

The food was absolutely divine. I had a carpaccio ($9.95) for starters, which was very good, served with fresh bread, arugula, 5 year aged balsamic and lemon oil, and shaved Parmesan... YUM. Manon had Grigliata Costa Smeralda  (Grilled scallops, calamari and shrimp served with parsley sauce for $10.95).Needless to say, we were both in heaven at this point in time. This was accompanied by a nice Italian bubbly dry wine.

For our entrees, I had the Turtei con Aragosta ($18.95), which are ravioli filled with fresh Maine lobster and in house baked bread topped with shrimp and diced tomato and lobster cream sauce, while Manon had the Spigola con Funghi di Campo ($26.95), a Mediterranean sea bass baked with Yukon gold potatoes, roasted garlic, thyme, white wine and field mushrooms...

We finished the evening with a delicious Crema al Doppio Gusto ($6.95, Fennel infused custard with chocolate mousse and caramelized sugar topping) for Manon, and the standard fare Tiramisu (also 6.95) for myself. I must say that Tiramisu was slight disappointing (drenched in too much coffee, making the biscuits way too moist for my liking).

All in all, a wonderful evening, in a lovely decor. We'll definitely come back here again, the prices are definitely reasonable if you stick to the everyday items on the menu, some of the specials are definitely a bit more pricey! What's great about this place is that it draws up an additional regional menu for the first 2 weeks of every month... so that you can discover Italian fare that you would not usually have the opportunity to eat otherwise.

Great stuff,

Shy