Pampas Anniversary Dinner

To celebrate a "dual" anniversary of Duong's and Johnny's and Tung's and my old anniversary in March before we got married, the four of us went to Pampas in Palo Alto, a Rodizzio-style restaurant where waiters bear large cuts of meats around. Some interesting things on the menu include marinaded chicken hearts and roasted pineapples, the latter being surprisingly bursting with juicy flavor. I'm inspired to pop my own pineapples on the grill from now on.

Salad buffet with generous fixins'

Meat, meat, and more meat!

The spicy "Frango Picante," chicken marinated with garlic, chile, and vinegar, was one of my favorites

Wine from home. A good Cab to go with all that meat.

Anniversary couple #1

Anniversary couple #2

Season of Cherry Blossoms

I love it when the cherry blossoms bloom. Since adopting Odin, I've been taking him on daily morning walks, all the more reason to appreciate these ephemeral petals. Winter is a bland season, with trees bare-naked and resting, devoid of colors and scents. In springtime, the birds burst into song, with the bright buds of the cherry blossoms heralding the coming of newness. The air is subtly marked with the sweet scent of flowers; greens, pinks, and reds start to dot the streets along my walk. One day they are but tight buds furled on brown branches:

And before you know, it, they bloom forth in color, striking against an incomparably blue spring sky:

The pink trees are the most prolific, paper-thin petals so numerous that they cake the branches:

The branches reach upward toward the sun, the warm source that drives their built-in clocks, coaxing them to come forth.

 There had always been a fantastical source to my admiration of cherry blossoms. When I see a cluster of trees, I am reminded of a favorite childhood epic saga, The Condor Heroes, set in China, filmed in Hong Kong, and dubbed in Vietnamese. My dad used to rent the 10 to 20 VHS tapes of different sword-fighting sagas to keep me entertained, and in The Condor Heroes, the heroine, Hoang Dung lives on a well-fortified island, Dao Dao Hoa (Island of the Cherry Blossoms) with her father. When she sneaks off to Mainland China to see the world, she meets her husband-to-be, Quoc Tinh. The two have many adventures together in a fun, carefree, slightly awkward teenage-first-love-coming-of-age story, until he angers her one day and she runs back to hide on her home island. There is a certain way to walk through the maze of cherry blossom trees surrounding the periphery of the island, and without knowing the correct path, one could get lost and disoriented, never finding the way out. Hoang Dung traps Quoc Tinh in the maze for a time before finally reluctantly forgiving him and helping him out.

There is a Vietnamese old wives' tale cautioning people against planting cherry blossoms in their front yard if they have a daughter. Chances are, a rogue boy will become enamored with the cherry blossoms' beauty, symbolic of the frail demeanor and innocent beauty of daughters, and steal her away from her family.

The cherry blossom is a Japanese icon, and annual festivals celebrate Japanese-American sister cities, hearkening to the 1912 gift of cherry blossom trees from Tokyo to Washington D.C. as a gesture of friendship.

 White cherry blossom trees are striking, too, a soft snow robe draping delicately on dark tree branches:

Most of all, cherry blossoms are symbolic of the swift and ephemeral human life, here and gone in the blink of an eye. The swiftly blooming, swiftly fading blossoms give way within just a few weeks' time to dark leaves that hang on the tree for the rest of the year until winter winds cause them to shed. Pathways are littered with the pink flowers, and soft springtime breezes blow the delicate petals in the air, raining pink confetti on me as I walk.

As Ezra Pound writes about their evanescence:

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough."

Office Blinds

It's nice to watch the sunset from our office window that gives us a glimpse of the red orb sinking into the west. The clouds turn a blazing pink as trees and roof lines are silhouetted.

We replaced our fabric curtains that didn't slide so well on the rods with horizontal blinds that we had cut to size at Home Depot.

Fabric curtains from before



What we used to have to do for sunlight



Tung takes measurements before hanging the blinds



Le done!


Project completed 2 days before Christmas in December 2012. In time to see those upcoming golden summer sunsets.

Honeymoon: Auckland, New Zealand

Travel Dates: December 4, 2012 to December 6, 2012

It is always raining in Auckland. It's like there's a giant rain cloud over the entire city, even in the summer, souring the weather and the moods of the rushy population with it. Seriously, we passed through this city 4 times along our trip, and it was raining every damn time. Auckland has got to be my least favorite New Zealand city. It's like a down-south version of the Silicon Valley in terms of bumper-to-bumper traffic, rude commuters, less-than-stellar customer service, and dismal RAIN to top it off. We passed by the not-too-impressive silhouette of Sky Tower against the sky line.

You can take a guided tour on the outside of Sky Tower's top rim with safety ropes and even skydive off its highest point

No food joints within walking distance of our hotel in Auckland, but a short drive led us to a downtown area with lots of restaurants. The painful part was parking and merging on the main street to get back to our hotel with the constant, oncoming cars.

Had this hand-made pizza baked in a brick oven

Tung's spaghetti

An hour's drive north of Auckland is Warkworth, home of Sheep World. They offer two showings of sheep-shearing/herd dogs a day, and you can freely browse the farm and eco-discovery trail on the vast land.

Sheep dyed pink in front of Sheep World

Tung with the wooden, Lego-like sheep

Interesting facts around the discovery center of Sheep World

Holy sheep! Never knew there were so many varieties.

Spectrum of sheep

Black sheep! Reminds me of my English-major self in my more math/science-oriented family.

The sheep-herding dogs, Coco (top) and Jess (bottom) rest between demos. Jess is a purebred, New-Zealand native sheep dog worth $5,000 NZD. Why do the sheep shearers pay so much for her? Because on her own, she could herd 300 sheep to their pens quickly so they could be sheared. Over a brief time, she more than earns her worth compared to hiring humans to do the round-up.

When the dogs are chained up, it's their cue to relax in between the hard work of running in the field and herding sheep. New Zealand law declares that a dog found on private property who is harassing farm animals can be legally shot by the land owner. Since their herding drive is so strong, chaining up the dogs when their owners cannot watch over them could also save their lives.

Our demonstrator, Rob, educates us on his sheep dogs. The shearers spend an enormous amount of time training their dogs each day. Instead of commands like, "Go left" or "Go right," each dog is taught a unique command with those intended meanings. For Jess, "Please" means "Go left," and "Thank you" means, "Go right." This is so the handlers could have 3-5 dogs in the field at once, herding an enormous amount of sheep, with each dog responding to his or her unique command so as not to be confusing. The sight and herd dogs work together, controlling the front and back of the flocks, nipping and barking to communicate with the sheep as to where to go. The handlers would also use different whistle tones to effectively drive the flocks.

Here comes the flock, after Jess successfully rounds them up. Being a young dog susceptible to ADD, she managed to chase around some geese before getting back down to business.

The sheep are marked by colors on their foreheads to give tourists a clear visual of how they are sorted. In reality, they are identified by the nocks on their ears, similar to branding on cows. They are led to individual pens based on gender, age, which farm they belong to, etc.

An audience member is recruited to sort the sheep into different pens based on their head color as the dogs drive them in. I could see why it would be a challenge since there's a stampede-like rush as the sheep are herded.

Next, Rob demonstrates how to shear a rather wooly sheep. Moccasins must be worn since the sharp shearing equipment cannot penetrate the tough skin.

Once a sheep gets on its back, it cannot get up without assistance (like a turtle!). Shearers use pressure points to help the sheep relax and stretch the skin taught during the shearing process so the animal comes out with minimal scratches. A sheep shearer who nicks too many sheep can lose his job if farmers complain or keep requesting other shearers to do the job.

All done! One naked sheep.

Next is everyone's favorite part: time to feed the lambs! We each get a bottle of milk as the lambs are let out of their pen and eagerly run to find something on which to suckle. They sure went to town on that milk.

Lamb coddling. Of course, the black sheep runs to me.

After the sheep show, we leisurely browsed the farm to see all the cute, cuddly animals.

Black bunny wabbit

Tung and the Alpacas. These guys can live 20 years or more, and they love cats! They will follow cats around.

Petting a ram with a flock of ducks following me around. They must think I have food, but I'm just holding a souvenir ball of wool from the sheep shearing demo.

D'aaawwww! Too cute.

Bristly-furred hawgs

Miniature pony

Goat getting his horns stuck between the fence after curiously investigating me

Emu: Ostrich-like birds

Doh! A deer. A female deer!

Enjoying the Eco-Discovery Trail

We followed up with lunch at the Sheep World cafe after our farm-life excursion. New Zealand has the yummiest ice cream! A favorite beverage is ginger beer--non-alcoholic, like root beer. I'm not a fan of ginger, but there's something refreshing about this sweet, effervescent soft drink.

For our last few days in Auckland, we toured Sylvia Park, one of the major malls in the city. The central plaza was decked out for Christmas. Annoying side note: Parking lots surround the circular mall, and the quickest way to get to each lot/garage is to cut through the center of the mall. However, when it's closing time, the central mall gates get closed, barring access as-the-crow-flies. You therefore would have to go around the outside of the mall, sometimes trekking where there is no sidewalk, to get to where you originally parked. It would be wise to bring an umbrella or raincoat as it ALWAYS rains in Auckland!

Christmas elves hung on Sylvia Park's ceiling

We dropped by this chocolate shop in the mall, attracted by very colorful chocolates filled with creamy, intense, fruity flavors. The girl who worked there was fascinated that we were from America and was more than perplexed as to why we chose "ordinary" New Zealand for our honeymoon destination. She talked a mile a minute to find out what we found to be new and strange about her country and was aghast that we had never heard of the feijoa fruit. She even offered to bring us some from her garden, had we stayed longer. There goes another chance to try a new tropical fruit.

Last dinner at Wagamama, a restaurant in Sylvia Park dishing up yakisoba and other Japanese-influenced noodle dishes.

"Wagamama" in Maori means "Unruly Child"

Last breakfast at a French pastry shop in Downtown Auckland. We thought we'd end with more butter to go full-circle in our trip.

Auckland Takeaways:

• Rain.
• Roundabouts everywhere. Driving in the city was more challenging because of the (what we think is) more complex layout of roundabouts. The killer part was figuring which lane to enter when getting into a roundabout so that you don't miss your exit. I never thought I'd miss a traffic light til now.
• New Zealand has 40 million sheep, more than any country except for Australia. There are 11 sheep for every person in New Zealand.
• Shearing sheep could save their lives. They get sheered not only so their wool could be exported, but it keeps them from developing Blow Flies that would kill them from infection and disease.
• At Sheep World, an annual contest is held for who can shear sheep the fastest in a given amount of time. A teenage girl has been the winner for many years straight, and the local boys are dropping out of the competition because they are tired of being shown up by her! 
• Since sheep could easily learn a routine, to keep the show "fresh" and real, shearers at Sheep World would offer to sheer sheep off other farms. 
• As you drive along the main highways, you will see signs and billboards advertising chiropractic clinics. Why is this such a big thing? Because sheep shearing is a major profession, and it's very hard on the back to drag heavy sheep, stoop down, hold it in position, and spending the day shearing.
• Rugby has a huge fan base in New Zealand. Before international games, the NZ team would perform a ritual called "haka," a Maori traditional war cry/dance to intimidate the competition.
• The New Zealand kiwi is a hard-to-spot nocturnal bird, but there are reserves where you can go and camp out under the direction of a tour guide for kiwi sightings.
• Feijoa: New Zealand-native fruit that we had not heard of before this trip. Used to make vodka and confections.
• If you arrive on Air New Zealand, you will get the chance to view a safety video done in the manner of Lord of the Rings, complete with elves, wizards, and dwarves as actors, showing you how to properly put on your seat belt and how to respond in case of emergencies.