Durian Galore...................

We spent Saturday hanging out with Jennie and Mei......we started with dim-sum at ABC Restaurant in Milpitas and then headed over for some shopping..:) Shopping was at Great Mall Shopping Outlet. There was really nothing much to buy, more or just checking out what's out there.

Shopping was cut short with everyone getting hungry and we hit Johnny Rockets for some fries, onion rings and grilled hotdogs!.... oh, and of course, we had to have milkshakes. yum!

We spent most of the morning talking about fresh durians. Jennie knew of a place in San Jose that sold FRESH DURIAN. I was really surprised, as I have only seen the frozen ones and those don't taste too good.

So, our next mission was to find the fresh durians. We found them on King St and Tully Rd in San Jose. The guy was just outside the mall area and he was selling fresh durian and jackfruit! He said that they were flown in from Thailand on 2-day air flight! WOW! He has like 15-20 durians and 5-6 huge jackfruits and he says he is there every weekend.

We did buy our durian. We were sticker shock...........................but, after talking about it, we had no choice but to buy it (Jennie and Mei LOVES durian!!!) The price.................$4.99/pound... and ou durian weight 7 pounds!..... urm.. USD35................

We headed home feeling very excited about the durian..:)

After some mahjong and card playing, we opened the durian..... it was a challenge to open the durian!!!. We probably took 30 minutes to open the durian... urm, beginners u know..:) and we could not find the right line to pry open the durian.

Finally, we opened the durian and we had around 10-12 seeds of durian!!! YUM!!! So, with fresh durian, supposedly it is more creamy and buttery... and I have to agree..:)

Our dinner was lasagna and dessert was durian..:)

We ended the night with more playing.:) We played "cho tai chi"... I guess it's chinese poker (i googled it but can't seem to find it) and we also played Blackjack. Lots of laughter.........:)

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Another weekend......:D

In an effort to make sure Gordon and I spend out weekends constructively and not just stay at home... we made our way over to Berkerley on Saturday.........


Our first stop was Vik's Chaat Corner. I blogged about this place before..... this place sits in a warehouse, but it attracts a lot of people including indian people living in the Bay Area. The women cooks are wearing sari's as they make the dosa.


We tried the Vege dosa, chicken briyani rice and samosa.... the rice was the best...:)

After eating most of the food, we headed over to 4th St, Berkerley to check out the stores... we made it a point to go into most of the stores just to browse and window shop..:)

After that, we called Ee Ling up to see what she was up to since we were in her neighborhood.... we self-invited ourselves to her house.... and just chit chatted with her and Eric. Ee Ling was suppose to be studying.. but I think we gave her an excuse no to......:D Dinner was at a japanese restaurant (I don't remember the name!)............

Sunday.................. more hanging out time for myself and Gordon. We headed over to try out the new Ramen place in Dublin. Not too bad....we tried the Spicy Pork Ramen and Pork Stew Ramen................we still like the ramen place in San Mateo.....:)

A very social weekend.

Seems that my blogs are only updated with things Gordon and I do on the weekend..

Last weekend was a very social one. Kept it very busy..:)

Saturday - We headed over to Jerry and Yvonne's home to celebrate Claire's first birthday. Claire was looking very cute and she was very friendly as well. She did not seem to care who was around her and played with everyone. Gordon landed himself in front of the Wii and showed everyone how to play tennis on the Wii...:) Claire had so much fun with the cake (i think her parents are into allowing her to try everything and allow messes if needed - interesting approach)... we hung out most of the afternoon over there and spoke to a bunch of nice people.:)

Saturday night - Ee Ling organized dinner with Audrey (yes, Audrey who used to study in Stanford and is now back in Monterey as her husband is studying in Monterey for 1.5 years) We had dinnner at Jayakarta. Have to say that we were impressed with the Indonesian food and will have to head back to try more food. We really liked the rendang and Mee Tek tek. We also tried the pepes fish, satay, oseng oseng, ayam gorend bumbu bali, ayam kalasan and others... unfortunately I forgot to take pictures. Dinner was followed by Naia Gelato.... yum!

Sunday - We were planning to head down to see baby Kaylyn, so i asked Lily what she was up too... she said dimsum and the mall, so we headed down for dimsum at HK Saigon and then to the mall... our mall visit was cut short as Jaden was getting tired..... it was funny to see both Jaden and Alissa wanting mommy at the same time..

Sunday afternoon - We finally saw Baby Kaylyn! She was mostly sleeping... but she looked so cute. I did not carry her since she was so small...maybe next time..:D She seems to be a little fiesty as well, especially if you disturb her from her sleep.

Gordon and I were planning to grab some dinner at Milpitas square, when we received a phone call from Simon and he said Lu Fun was cooking assam laksa!!! yum.. we totally could not resist and headed over to San Ramon... Assam laksa was super good.. she did it most from scratch.. both of us had two servings!! yum. Gordon spent most of the night playing video games with Kim and Ben.. I think they beat him flat..:P seems that Kim and Ben have been playing video games all summer...:D

Hanging Out..........

We attended Tyler's first bday (Timmy and Sirintorn's) baby on Saturday..the party was fun with us watching Finding Nemo, eating and watching Tyler open his presents. Timmy and Sirintorn had a separate birthday cake just for Tyler so that he can play with the cake after he blew out the candles.... however, when they put the cake in front of him, he cried.... supposedly he doesn't like sweet stuff..:)

Since we were free for dinner, we called up Anastasia and Percy and made dinner plans. They suggested San Francisco for an Italian restaurant in downtown (we were surprised they chose SF as we were all local in hayward/castro valley area). Since we know they usually pick good restaurants, we knew the italian restaurant would be good as well and made our drive to San Francisco.

The restaurant,

Chiaroscuro

is a very nice Italian restaurant located right opposite the Transamerica Building. The deco is simple but elegant. Percy and Anastasia had been here once before and they seem to know the owner and hostess (which was nice as we were treated very nicely and cordially)..:) Pecy even spoke Italian to the owner.

We were joined with Audrey (Anastasia's fren) and Durand (our good old friend from the Naaap days). Surprisingly, the noise level in the restaurant was high as it filled up.

The food was good as well. We started with 3 plates of Bruschetta appetizers (these were not the regular tomato bruschetta) - they came with five different toppings on five pieces of bread - olives spread, zuchinni, meat, red peppers and tomato. Definitely different and good! We also ordered a seafoood appetizer - yummy calamari.

For the main course, Gordon ordered pan seared halibut and I ordered the "Trilogia" pasta dish that consisted of three variations of pasta - another good dish I would recommend. Anastasia ordered the duck special and that was good as well.

We finally order dessert - Gordon got his favourite cream puffs (you will notice that he ordered this at Chez Pannise as well)

We definately had a great time hanging and chit chatting with everyone. We were there from 8 to about midnight!! oh... the chef came by at the end of the night to allow us to compliment him on his good cooking..:)

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Sunday, we watched Transformers and walked around the Metreon area as it was the Baseball All Star weekend...Pictures shown...We all had ice cream as they were giving out free Conetto's..:D:D:D::D::D::D