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It's been a busy weekend. Substituted my Friday off next week so Nic and I could go to Nik's house to masak masak (with Lay Keow as well) making curry puffs and the pink peach shaped rice cakes that Carynn used to love so much as a kid. We had a lot of fun. The first batch of dough for both items were disasters, too dry and just impossible to shape. So Nik left us in the backyard under her canopy and banned us from the kitchen while she made a second batch of both. With those, we were able to turn out very decent looking puffs and rice cakes. The Man and a Half joined us late because of some tennis event they had to attend, We had the usual banter sessions and sinful amounts of food and left as usual close to the witching hour. But so enjoyable.

Next day, we were off to the Stead tennis open at Moraga. Tom and Thilma were there but we did not stay as long as I would have liked because of a certain complaining young man. It was my first real tennis tournament and the quality of play, though not like the grand slams were very high. The competitors were mainly from the college circuits so they were highly competitive. I hope we go to more tournaments.

And today, Sunday, we were off to Union City near James Logan High School for the tennis competition organized by the association that runs the Half Man's Chinese classes. You can tell the calibre was just not the same as yesterday's. The Man had two plays. The Half Man was competing for the first time, if we discount the other time when he played in San Ramon with a bunch of young kids. Butterflies notwithstanding, he did okay. It;s not about the winning at this point, just the exposure and having the experience and the fun of competing. The weather was merciless though. Temperatures were in the 90's and there was no real place to sit where we could get shade so we ended up, like most other parents crouching in the walkways between the courts where fortunately, the tennis courts' wind screens afforded good enough shade and there was actually a good breeze blowing through. But we were starting to get real lethargic from the heat. So after the competition, we drove a half mile to the nearest shopping square and had us some icy shaves and pau pau cha. And on reaching home, I just had to catch a short snooze even though it was close to 5:00 pm and at the risk of disrupting my normal sleep tonight.

Busy weekend, but so much fun. Tomorrow is going to be hot with parts of East Bay going into the triple digit temperatures but you can tell the long days of summer are already waning because the lights have to come on slightly earlier each night.