So Sick

I am home today instead of in the office, trying to recover from a bout of whoknowswhat. It was terrible yesterday - humongous headache that refused to vanish into neverland and constant feeling of blottedness and nausea. And no, I am not pregnant again - the factory floor shut down long ago (4 is enough!). Ate bare minimum to keep alive so today, I am like full of wind. Drifting in and out of a hugely unrestful sleep all day long and into the night. And Ryan was a naughty boy all day yesterday, refusing to do chores and carry out requests. He is growing into a teen too fast and memories of what my other teens were like make me apprehensive. I am sure this will bring on tirades from youknowho.

The better half was also sick but not as bad and he has just made me chicken soup! With lots of pepper to drive out the wind. We think it has something to do with the lunch we had at Oakland Chinatown. We decided to take a look at this other Chinatown after Ryan's golf lesson and managed to buy some groceries. But methinks the price of that lunch is wee bit too high.

Nic will be here soon. I cannot thank all the siblings enough for all the love and care they showered on her in our absence. I could not have asked for a better family. So thank you all from the Teys.

I am going to post all the photos from San Diego onto a site like flickr instead of this blog. It just takes too long and the site is flaky so I often have to reload and with the number of pictures, it will take me a long time. Suffice to say, Ryan enjoyed himself and we are all looking forward to December when we will have a family reunion of sorts.

I am a little worried about my job - it has been 3 months since we arrived and expectations are that I am going to start making changes and I am not sure I am all that prepared to do that just yet. The people here work so differently from what I am used to in Asia and Africa. Wish me luck.

Preview Pics

Yes, we are in San Diego. Yesterday was a short trip to the world famous Torrey Pines Golf Course early in the morning followed by Sea World. Today, we did the tour of the famous zoo followed by a short trip to Old Town for a Mexican dinner. When I have more time, I will write more but here are some tid bits to whet the appetite.

Happy Holidays

Yep, San Diego it is. Booked a package this morning for hotel plus tickets to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo for the 3 of us from Monday to Friday. Will be leaving early tomorrow morning, returning Friday. Weather there seems better than here - high 70's during the day and mid-40's at the lowest (when we should be snug in bed).

Maybe we will drive back through Santa Barbara just to see why people keep saying it is a beautiful place. Or maybe we won't - depends on whether we remain in a good mood through the holidays or not. This is a very grouchy family :-). Printed out a whole bunch of driving instructions and some information about Santa Barbara. Be in touch when we return. Meanwhile, happy thanksgiving (as if it means anything to us) but when in Rome, ...

Which Way?

How time flies. Another Saturday is waning and I can barely recall what I have done all week. There is a whole week before us because school is out for the Thanksgiving break and I have to consume my vacation days or lose them. It has been difficult trying to get consensus on what we should be doing. Planning vacations seems to be such a challenge with youknowwho and it gets worse year on year. They say M is all about give and take. Yes, but... did the wisemen say which in which direction?

We may just drive down to San Diego. It is over 530 miles or 9 hours' drive south going through Santa Barbara. Much shorter - 470 miles or so and somewhat over 7 hours going straight using I-5. Because the boy has not been to Sea World. We will probably just pass through LA - he has been to Disneyland though not Knotts Berry Farm or Universal Studio. Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon were on the cards but we think we will hold that for when Nic is here. By then, the fantastic circular glass walkway over the canyon should also be ready. Won't be cheap I suspect but then, which park here is?

Morning was golf lesson again but with a different coach. Took some shots from the golf school of the mist-enveloped hills against which our house nestles and of the San Ramon golf course while the one and a half men were practising. San Ramon is very pretty and I wanted to capture some of the fall colors before they all disappear into the cold of winter. For memory's sake.

And here are some pictures of some male bonding moments...

And just some miscellaneous shots of no particular significance.

Birthday Bash?

Happy Birthday to Ming and Siew Mun. We wish you every happiness and may joy and cheer follow you everywhere.

Love from the Teys!

And I can smell the spices from the man cooking downstairs. He wanted to make sure the curry would come out right before he cooks for the office potluck. Hee hee. After this, we are bringing the little man to the library. He has been on a reading frenzy since we arrived. Must have read some 50 books so far. If he wants to go to the library, we pretty much have to bring him there if we are to have some peace. Whining is so aggravating to the soul, don't you agree?

Street Signs

The trip to Chinatown was smoother than I had anticipated. I had printed off driving directions from maps google and spent Ryan's golf lesson hour in the car pouring over the street directory to make sure I knew the way well. And except for a little bit of confusion over finding the public car park because while I had researched the car parks and rates, I had just looked for one of the public car parks and neglected to have a backup. Complicated, isn't it? Almost like planning for disaster recovery in the IT world.

The first restaurant we saw as we walked away from the car park to Grant Street was - a Singapore restaurant. In a fit of nostalgia, we went in and ordered Hainanese chicken rice for Ryan, char kway teow for Bert and prawn noodle soup for moi. Not quite what you get in the hawker centers and definitely a lot more costly, but we were satisfied. Rather pathetic on hindsight.

So we picked up some ingredients for me to bring for a potluck event in the office on Nov 16 (date sounds familiar?!) but we could not find good curry powder, lime leaves or blue ginger. We toyed with the idea of cooking bubu cha cha but it was hard finding yam and sago - except today, we found sago at a Chinese grocery store near Stoneridge Mall and found it to be tapioca pearls which were so plentiful in Chinatown. Bert thought sago was made from some kind of palm! So even the best cook can make mistakes :D.

So here are some shots of us in Chinatown. One of them is obviously of someone in shock :).

After Chinatown, it was off to the party but guess what. Although I had planned the exit from Chinatown to the bd boy's house, navigating the way I had planned was not done well courtesy of passenger seat driver. Circled round Chinatown couple of times before we found Market Street and was on our way. Driving on Market Street is challenging as well because the road is also used by the muni whose tracks use one of the two lanes. Plus there were hordes of people, especially at and around Union Square where the tourists congregate. Hard to see the traffic lights too.

There were tonnes of people at the party. To my immense relief, the one and a half men were not bored or uncomfortable mixing with people they don't know in a culture so different from our own. The smaller man found amusement playing with Rufus, the dog. Whether Rufus found him amusing is another matter. I think the expressions on Rufus' long snouted face tended to portray long suffering and tolerance of a pesky little fella. There were some colleagues at the party and they were quite willing to engage Bert in conversation so the party turned out to be enjoyable for him. We had always been critical of our expats in Singapore who kept to the American club and their own society and I did not want us to be like that. We should take the opportunity to immense in local culture and society to get the most out of the time here.

When we first arrived at the house, I would not let anyone out of the car until we knew how to go home. Well, the best planning can always go wrong. So while we were clever about hitting Highway 280, we got confused by the road signs on reaching San Francisco downtown looking for Bay Bridge. So round and round again we go, till we finally figured out how to read the street signs.

And this is why I had always dreaded going into town.

Trip to Town

Fall is here and there are some fall colors in California but nothing like what I recall to be the fall colors of Vancouver. Still it is pretty in many places. San Ramon has many parks and the area has a lot of trees, albeit fairly short ones with smaller crowns compared to what we have in Singapore. But the mix of green, red, orange and yellow is something you will never find in Singapore. The hills are still brown but the first rains are here and I expect the hills will turn green soon. Today is a rather cool day. The weatherman is predicting rain towards morning. Ryan's golf school called to say check with them before coming in case the class is postponed because of rain. You can already feel the chill in the air. I had to climb out of bed at 4:30am early this morning to turn on the central heating because the cold was getting to me.

Tomorrow we plan to go to Chinatown in Frisco after the golf class. This will be our first trip to town since we arrived over two months ago. We need to get spices, herbs and stuff to cook. Although you can find Asian foodstuff here and there like at Ranch 99 in Fremont, the choices are limited. I generally don't like to go into town because SF is so hard to drive around and park in. The roads are narrow and confusing and most times there is no left turn so for people like me who don't know the city that well, it becomes quite a navigation nightmare. Still for nightlife, great food and Asian groceries, you don't get the variety elsewhere in the Bay Area. I cannot even begin to count how many times I have been lost cruising up and down the narrow and crowded streets of San Francisco over the past 13 years. And the parking is such a challenge and so expensive.

Then in the evening, we go to my friend's birthday party. My friend and his partner, Dan, live in San Francisco and he invited me to his 50th bd bash months ago. The last time I was invited to his house was 3 years ago almost to the month when he asked a group of close friends over for a crab dinner. It was my first experience with the gay fraternity and truth be told, I found it very interesting. They were really very intellectual, all well read professionals, funny and unanimously anti-Bush. The introvert that I am, I was very nervous and uncomfortable at first and almost wanted to bail out of the dinner. In the end I was glad I went. It gave me a new experience and showed me the side of San Francisco that someone like me only sees on the big screen.

I cannot wait to see how the one and a half men will enjoy their first brush with what San Francisco is also famous for. I think it will be fun.

Going Golfing

Took the one and a half men to Vacaville yesterday to do more outlet shopping. After Ryan's first golf lesson and after lunch at Country Waffles near our home. Men are very taxing and vexing - the one hates shopping and whines constantly and the other is very sensitive to the slightest hint of non-respect, real or imagined, almost all imagined. Then sinks into days of cold war. Urggghhh.
Anyway, the coach was somewhat impressed with Ryan - said he has good balance and nice swing.