Personal Dork Assistant

To The City

Went to SF to visit that busiest of busybodies, auntie Dai. Aunt drove so dad and I were just kind of extraneous bodies to fill the table at the restaurant. Kinda silly to take an S500 into SF and try to squeeze into a three-car garage meant for one-and-a-half, but mom didn't trust my navigation skills. She's staying at her daughter's place just off Geary in the Richmond. It was a convenient place to live while she was going to USF law school, and the mortgage makes for a nice tax break for the sister at Morgan Stanley (i.e. the one with money). It's a little sad to see all the nice houses in the area subdivided into a zillion little apartments, but how else are you going to cram all the people in? Besides, splitting up a house and selling it four ways probably nets you at least twice the money. It's a great area, though. A million little ethnic restaurants, Clement St. and New Chinatown is the next street over, and it's within walking distance of Golden Gate Park. Went to lunch at a nice Korean place down the street. The obligatory meats were nice, but had the tofu soups for the first time and they were quite tasty, especially over rice, which came in large clay pots, and you can't go wrong with the panchan. The fun bit was when they scooped out most of the rice from the big pot, they poured in some hot water which loosens up the burnt rice stuck to the bottom of the pot and made for a light soup when mixed with the leftover tofu.

Auntie Dai was here on her usual US-HK-Taiwan circuit, but Tom Lin and his family are here, too. Part of it is to visit his sister and mom, part is for a family vacation, partly for business, as he went over to New York for a few days to get briefed on his new job. It's good to get away from Taiwan once in a while anyway, and especially now just in case his old bosses decide to sue him for jumping ship. They have a little two-year old daughter who's active and cute and everything, but if you thought Taebee was a spoiled Asian princess, I'm afraid you ain't seen nothin' yet. That's what you get when you have a shopping fiend of a grandma (and lots of Filipina maids), I guess.