Hanging out with Boris in Hong Kong

Malcolm left for the far East yesterday morning.  For the next several months, Malcolm will be mostly in Shanghai to hang out with his Mom, visit relatives, and explore any business opportunities (i.e., high-end "replica" purse shopping for me!!!  Anyone want anything???).  However, Malcolm will be spending this weekend in Hong Kong to hang out with some friends and cousins.  


Malcolm is staying with his cousin Allen and Allen's wife Emily, and their adorable dog Boris in Hong Kong.  Malcolm landed just a few hours ago, and we had a chance to iChat this morning.


Please meet Boris.  He is a very sweet, snuggly, but very old doggie.  He is 11 human years old.  I think that means that Boris is 77 years old in doggie years.

Isn't he adorable??  While chatting with Malcolm this morning, I had a chance to see Boris walking around the apartment.  He is definitely a very handsome and well-behaved doggie.  But can you see what are on his hind paws??

Boris wears shoes!  I thought they were very fashion forward, but Malcolm explained that Boris has hip problems because of his age and the shoes help him with traction while he walks.  Poor thing.  But, I like how fashionable he is at the same time functional.

Here is Boris with his mom Emily.  Isn't he the sweetest?  Look at those hind paws!


I've asked Malcolm for more pictures during his HK trip.  Hopefully, he'll blog about his stay and activities there (hint, hint).  

Pumpkin Carving Party at Jeanne & Russ'

Jeanne and Russ graciously hosted a pumpkin carving party at their place!  Jeanne and Russ provided the main course (pumpkin curry), pumpkin carving tools, stencils for the pumpkins, and floor space.  Audrey brought newspaper so that we could get as messy as we wanted.

The pumpkins innocently waiting... unknowing of their future...

Malcolm wanted to show off his ... pumpkins.

But, before we started carving, we needed some sustenance.  Jason and Malcolm dug into the feast provided by Jeanne and Anita.  Jeanne warmed up some pita bread with humus, while Anita slaved over the hot stove preparing crab cakes and cheese/rice balls.  Coincidentally, they looked exactly like the ones from Trader Joe's!  ;)

Russ attempted his best Astro-boy flight over the group.  Not sure what Henry is doing.

Audrey and Henry, digging into their pumpkins.

Jeanne and Russ taping on their respective stencils onto their pumpkins.

Rather than choosing a stencil, Anita and Jason opted to create their own masterpieces.  

Anita hard at work on her pumpkin design.

Anita's pumpkin!  Can you guess what it is?

I was kind of Nazi about the pumpkin carving.  I let Malcolm help a little bit, but then I took it away from him again.  I apparently have pumpkin-carving control issues.

My pumpkin!  I mean ... our pumpkin!  Can you tell what it is?

Our pumpkin was of 3 wolves, howling.  Pretty cool, isn't it?

Anita's pumpkin: Hello Kitty!  Soooo cute!!

Audrey's pumpkin is a runner, just like she is!  Jason's was really scary.  

Russ's pumpkin is the pirate skull and cross-bones, Henry's is the smiley one in the middle, and Jeanne slaved over the haunted mansion.  Everyone did a great job!

As a p.s., totally unrelated to our pumpkin carving night, my neighbor has a ginormous golden retriever. He's at least 80 lbs, stands really tall, and is really just goofy.  This morning, he was outside, lying in the middle of the street with his owner crouching next to him.  I totally freaked out and thought that someone had hit him.  So I ran outside, and offered assistance.  Turns out, the dog had found a nice shady spot with cool breezes, and didn't want to go inside the house.  *Whew*  I think the dog and his owner were outside for another 10 minutes before the owner convinced silly doggie to go inside.


Isn't he cute though??

Cupcakes and pumpkins

Jeanne and Russ invited us to dinner and pumpkin carving at their house tonight, so we volunteered to take dessert, and spent last night baking and assembling desserts.


I've been reading all these fabulous blogs, mostly for weddings, but lots for baking and flower ideas.  One of my favorites is Bakerella.  Such great ideas on that blog!  So in combining ideas from Martha Stewart, the Barefoot Contessa and Bakerella, I decided to make chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting with spiderweb designs (it is a pumpkin carving dinner party!), and semi-homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches.  


For the ice cream cookie sandwiches, we baked chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia nuts cookies, and used mint chip and mocha almond fudge ice cream to make the sandwiches.  Malcolm spent many hours baking, sandwiching, and wrapping the ice cream sandwiches.  (Pictures to follow later).


While Malcolm was assembling ice cream sandwiches, I was baking cupcakes, making chocolate ganache, and piping white spiderweb designs with cream cheese frosting.

If you look on the top left, there is a spiderweb cupcake.  After piping spiderwebs on 12 cupcakes, I kind of got bored and made some other ones.  Like the Bob hearts Malcolm one.  But the kitty cupcake is all Malcolm.

I think I'm done baking for awhile.  But we'll see...there's always more ideas on Bakerella!!

Star Wars!!

Last night, Malcolm and I met up with my dear friend Nancy, her husband John, and their adorable boys (and ring bearers!) Justin and Dylan.  It's been such a long time since I've seen them and we had such a great time!  =)  We met up at Guppie Teahouse in Hacienda Heights.


While Nancy and I got the chance to catch up over popcorn chicken, salad, hawaiian fried rice, seafood noodle, brick toast, and boba, John and Malcolm were in charge of watching over the talkative and hilarious Justin and Dylan.  Justin and Malcolm bonded over "Stars Wars" and Dylan did his best to join in on the conversation.  I now understand why Dylan's nickname is Stitch!  He is so adorable!


Justin is going to be Luke Skywalker in his pilot's suit for Halloween, while Dylan is going to be Buzz Lightyear.  Malcolm decided to be Darth Maul while John said that I could be Princess Leia when she is Jabba the Hut's slave.  Thanks, John.   When I asked Justin what his mom and dad were going to be, Jusin told me, "My parents aren't Halloween people."  LOL!


Sadly, I didn't get a chance to take pictures of the adorable boys, but I had such a great time with them!  I can't wait to see all of them soon!  Thanks, Nancy and John for coming out and spending time with us!

Stefan!!!

For all of you who watch "Top Chef," Stefan from Season 5 just opened his own restaurant, Stefan's at LA Farm in Santa Monica, California.  Our friend Mr. Chen found out about the restaurant, and being a "Top Chef" fan himself (although he did accuse me of being "gay" when I recommended the show!), he immediately booked a reservation.  So while Mr. Chen did do everything right -- send out an email inviting his friends to dine with him, get a final head count, and make a reservation -- Mr. Chen chose for our reservation the only night that Stefan has taken off from work.  Our server told us that Stefan has been at the restaurant every day and every night for every single day of the past 2 months.  Except tonight.  Good job, Mr. Chen!


The restaurant is beautiful, with a great ambiance.  The food was good but not exceptional.  (I expected AMAZING!)  The small plates on the menu are REALLY small.  I ordered the oyster with absinthe jello as an appetizer.  It should be called an amuse-bouche.  Then I wouldn't have been disappointed.  Because it was one oyster.  Really.  Just one.  For $3.  But it really was yummy.  Too bad it was just one.  

The green square on top?  That's the absinthe jello.  


Malcolm ordered the Like a Big Mac burger for his appetizer.  

Looks delicious, doesn't it?  Let me give you a size reference:

Our waitress told Malcolm that the burger was good for 3 bites.  I think Malcolm could've shoved it up his one nostril.  Which thankfully he didn't.  Malcolm was on his best behavior and took 2 bites to eat it.  Tasty, but small.


Some of the other small plates ordered were tater tots, lobster bisque, white fish, and something else?  Jeanne and Adrienne both ordered salad with rabbit.  But I was sad about Thumper so I didn't take a picture of it.

To commemorate our Top Chef dinner, we took couple group pictures in and in front of the restaurant.  As always, good friends and food make a great ending to the weekend.

LA Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel

Malcolm's brother Theo was gracious enough to get us symphony tickets as our engagement present.  For those of you who aren't too familiar with the LA Philharmonic, the LA Phil has become a world-class symphony, thanks mostly to Maestro Esa Pekka Salonen, LA Phil's prior conductor and music director.  Under Maestro Salonen's masterful direction, LA Phil has become a symphony of such high caliber that international musicians have come to Los Angeles to perform.  With Salonen's retirement from LA Phil at the end of the 2008 season, LA Phil hired Gustavo Dudamel, child prodigy and genius from Venezuela.

At 28, Maestro Dudamel is able to direct the musicians LA Phil, many of whom are decades older than Dudamel, with confidence, brilliance, and gusto.  It is very very very rare for someone who is 28 years old to conduct a symphony of LA Phil's caliber.  To put this in perspective, even a genius like Maestro Leonard Bernstein didn't get his first conducting gig until 35, and it was by accident.  Also, Dudamel memorized the entire music score.  Dudamel is incredibly, wonderfully, a genius.

The concert started with a modern composition by Korean composer (and a woman!  very rare in the classical field) Unsuk Chin, which featured the traditional Chinese mouth harp.  Proud as I am that a fellow countrywoman has won many prestigious awards for her composition, I've got to say that the music was really weird.  After that piece, the philharmonic played Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1.  While I am not a huge fan of Mahler, his first symphony is really beautiful.  Also, for all you Star Wars geeks out there, Mahler's first symphony was the inspiration for John Williams' soundtrack for the original "Star Wars" and it's 2 sequels.

If you get a chance to see LA Phil and/or Maestro Dudamel, I highly recommend it!  Especially if you've never been to Disney Concert Hall.  It's a gorgeous building.

Groomsmen

Hi everyone, this is my first post ever so bare with me.  For those that don’t know me, you wouldn’t be reading this blog anyways but I will give some insight about myself. I was born in Buffalo, NY and mainly grew up in the Los Angeles area and yes, I am a Laker, Raider fan and for whatever reason, I am also a Dallas Cowboys fan.  As a young child, I was involved with a lot of video games so it wasn’t until high school at Whitney HS that I got involved with tennis and soccer and actually saw some sunlight.  I attended Whitney HS where I met and keep in touch with many of my current friends. After HS, I spent 4 glorious years as a UCLA Bruin studying Economics.  Afterwards, I ended up in NYC with several other friends doing banking.  I had a brief 10 month stint, I felt I had to join the dot.com boom and moved to SF.  This is where I met new friends who were East Coasters (ie also Laker haters).  I spent 3.5 years in SF and had the pleasure to meet Haeli back in 2003 through my buddy Brendan (also a groomsman).  Shortly after we started to date, I then moved to NYC to take a job opportunity.  We continued to date via long-distances with some bumps and bruises but ended up working through them.

I also wanted to spend some time to introduce my closest friends over the past 15 years that I have had the pleasure to get to know, spend time with and support me in my strangeness actions. I will start off with the co-best men, 1) Eric and 2) Henry C. and follow up with 3) Frank, 4) Alex, 5) Brendan, 6) Jeff and 7) Henry W.

Eric the "Bottom-less Stomach"

I have known Eric since freshman year at Whitney High School in Cerritos.  We actually didn't have alot of classes together but had multiple evening excursions as seniors.  Key highlights were: 1) midget-ville: visited the land of midgets where we witnessed door knobs at knee levels and midgets chasing us with baseball bats, 2) haunted school: visited an abandoned private school where allegedly children were buried in the school grounds, 3) Mr. Turek's Mars Simulation: we allegedly attempted to visit Mars via a nearby park and inspect the local wildlife and 4) Raw Beats: late night practices as dancers for the senior talent show. Ahhhh, the memories...

We also attended UCLA together where Eric and Henry C. started out as 1^st year roommates. UCLA past times included hours of Warcraft 2 and N64 Bond shooter, weekend trips to Las Vegas Treasure Island for blackjack and eye patches, and countless of hours of pick-up basketball at the Wooden Center. I soon realized that Eric’s eating disorder that enables a 135 lbs person to eating 4x an average person. This includes multiple Yoshinoya beef bowls, fried chicken sandwiches and tacos at Jack-in-the Box.

At UCLA, we both started off as Economic majors but Eric soon departed to the science world.  Eric continued his never-ending education vacation at NYU Ph’d program for neuro-science. As I decided to move back to NYC for a new employment opportunity in 2003, it was nice to know that Eric and my other groomsman (Jeff) were living in NYC.  Eric and his family has always been my second family and its been a pleasure being friends. Even Eric’s Dad (Mr. Chang) has called me his “son” as if I was his first born son.   Eric continues to live in NYC and has a Tasmanian dog named Petey. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS9AyKQtTZc).

Henry C. the Human

Henry C. and I knew each other before high school.  As many do not know, Henry and I have family ties that go back several generations.  His Grandpa was my Grandpa's friend in Taichung, Taiwan and may they both rest in peace.  We also went to Whitney HS and UCLA together.  He was even my roommate for 3 years at UCLA.  As you live with someone for an extended amount of time, we go through the bumps. I still don’t understand how Henry can splash water everywhere outside the sink. Henry is a special friend as he is a man of no words...he may appear mute but he is not…just a man of deep thought.  I even introduced Henry to his lovely Taiwanese girlfriend of 2 year now and fulfilled his man-hood.  Henry is a good and extremely loyal friend. Henry does have his quirky ways as he sings Celine Dion and Taylor Swift songs and does not watch movies with Adam Sandler (WTF?!?) but is a 10 of 10 on the friend scale.  Henry C currently lives in LA and is in the brink of moving out of his parents house.

Frank the Tank

Frank is the Korean kid that not only I went to Whitney HS but he also lived down the street.  Frank literally lived about 45 second walking distance from my house so we did alot of things: play basketball, tennis, Techno-Bowl 1&2, Madden and any other sports games.  Frank also went to UCLA with me so we hung out alot at the dorms and playing basketball at Wooden.  Soon after I moved to SF to work in finance, he also ended up there doing banking and we ended up hanging out some more but by this time, I was in drinking mode.  I still remember Frank and I taking down close to a 20 pack of beer while watching Sunday football but of course Frank took down at least 70%.  As Frank has several drinks he can get belligerent with friends, foe and strangers so buy the man some drinks.

Note that Frank is the only guy I know with the deepest voice but when he argues, his voice will squeak and crack.  And he does argue a lot.  Frank lives in SF and recently married and is enjoying married life (I think…not really sure but I guess that is the right thing to say).

Alex the "Un-dog Whisper"

Alex and I attended Montessori pre-school and reunited in high school. Alex also joined the late night excursions with Eric and I.  Those nights were dangerous as we put our lives on the line to explore LA.  Alex also attended UCLA and was the integral player of the intramural basketball team which won the championship our junior year.  Note I also was able to score 7 points and 3 rebounds coming off the bench after we had a 21-0 lead.  We also did various in-house apartment activities that can not be elaborated at this point….but it was a good time.  Alex lives in Cerritos and married to lovely wife Adrienne and with two dogs…1 trained and 1 definitely still un-trained.

Brendan the "Shady Bruin"

Brendan was my next door neighbor at the UCLA Sunset dorms. He was the guy that just looked years older that everyone else and is a hard core sports lover. For whatever reason, we only hung out playing basketball/football IM’s at UCLA but we kept in touch post UCLA. We both ended up working in finance and enjoying much of the same things: watching and playing sports and going to gamble in Las Vegas.  Brendan did introduce me to Haeli that I must give him credit for.  I was visiting LA for a weekend and had Brendan come out to a bar for drinks and he dragged out Haeli and the maid-of-honor Wendy.  Then the magic happened from there.  Brendan lives in the middle of no-where (ie Phoenix) and is married with one dog.

Jeff the "New Friend"

Jeff was the first guy I met in SF.  We met through my friend Chao who trained together at the CSFB training program.  He seemed like a decent guy so I called him up for drinks when I moved to SF for the dot.com boom. Typically we would grab drinks and shoot some pool. Jeff was the first real friend who grew up outside of LA area.  Jeff lived at Rincon Towers in the city and I would come into the city (before owning a car) via BART station...so after a night of drinking, he would be nice enough to drive me back to Emeryville.

Anyways, as I moved back to NYC for a job opportunity in 2003, we hung out a lot to explore the NYC lifestyle. We eventually spent quality time overseas in Japan, HK and China as our work schedules overlapped.  As different as Jeff may seem, we have similar backgrounds: he is the eldest of 3 sons as I am the youngest of 3 sons and both our Mom’s lived in Shanghai at one point. Jeff lives in NYC and recently married and is enjoying married life.

Henry W. the "Koala Bear" (also know as Rob Kim)

I met Henry W. through the 2nd guy i met in SF (Julian Siaw) and can u believe i actually helped him move into his new pimp apartment that faced Alcatraz...I just met the guy!!! Henry seemed like a pompous asshole but turned out to be a pretty genuine guy.  I just remembered this conversation below.  

MS: "hey, nice to meet you"

HW: "hey"

MS: "How's it going?"

HW: "Okay"

MS: "What do you do in SF?"

HW: "I work at a bank"

MS: "cool, which bank?"

HW: "I work at an investment bank"

MS: thinking **wtf is wrong with this guy**

MS: "which investment bank?"

HW: "Goldman"

MS: thinking **what a prick, can’t this guy just give me a straight answer?**

Henry is like fine wine, it just takes time for him to open up and he comes a great friend.  After Henry's business school training, he has been renewed as "Rob Kim".  Henry currently lives in the dorms in NYC and is engaged.

Feel free to say hello to these handsome guys at the wedding.