still before Christmas

Hi all,

It’s me again. I took a nap and got my second wind. Here are some more pictures.

We went out for happy hours at Departure Lounge. This is at the Macy building downtown, it was renovated and the upper floors were turned into a hotel. It was pretty nice, but the food was just ok at best. It was another Asian inspired place, meh.. So we went to Ping afterward for a 2nd happy hours. We had uegar lamb skewer, Sai oui (chiang mai sausage) and nam prik num, and short ribs marinated in ngoc nam. The food was good in general, but they are all a little off. This is another “white people do ethnic food” place. The lamb was over spiced with cummin. The sausage had a bit too much kaffir lime and was too finely grounded. But all in all, better than Departure lounge.

 

Today we went out to hang out around town. This was right after we got a haircut, there were a bunch of rouge Santas out to go drinking.

 

This is the zoo bomber bikes. Those guys take these bikes up to the zoo and ride down in the dark once a month or something like that.

 

Michelle really likes her haircut. We went to Rudy’s a barber shop in the Pearl. This is in front of Cacoa, I went to get a chocolate bar for Julia, a friend.

 

I like my haircut a lot too.

 

more rowdy santas.

 

ok, signing off. more after Christmas. I’m taking one week off between Christmas and New Year.

before Christmas update

Hi everyone,

Wow, it is almost Christmas. Can you believe another year has passed by? Sorry, I haven’t update the blog since Nik’s wedding. There is not much going on in Portland in Winter time.

I made Nacho from scratch the night before Thanksgiving. It was really good!

Michelle spend the whole morning making Turkey, ranch style potatoes, asparagus risotto, green beans and carrots, and stuffing. She did a great job this year and we opened a bottle of Williamette Valley Pinot Gris to go with the meal.

 

I got a pair of speakers and the box they came in made a perfect fort/scratching post for Lily and Zoey.

 

Director park just opened. It took forever to finish this park, but it looks great. It will be very nice in the summer.

The Portland Christmas tree is up in Pioneer Square. There were a bunch of booths that day selling Christmas stuffs.

 

Pioneer place II, the mall downtown. The Christmas tree here is cool and they had fake snow swirling down. The fake snow looks cool until they touch your head, then they look like what I imagine asbestos to look like – little white threads.

I made Nam Prik Ong one evening. Sticky rice, veggie and Kab Moo. This was really good, Michelle liked it a lot too.

close up.

ok, that’s it for now. I’ll post more pictures in a few days. We went to get congee (joke), get hair cut and hang out downtown today. It’s not as cold now so we can handle going outside.

testing Windows Live Writer

Hi everyone,

I installed Windows 7 and want to test out this Windows Live Writer. I can update the blog on my computer and upload it. This is much easier than using the web blogger tool.

Joe and Amber. Michelle said she looks like me. :)

We went to the Portland Trailblazers VS San Antonio Spurs this Friday. It was a good game, we won. yay!

 

nik's wedding

Pictures and video from Nik's wedding!!


Michelle and Joe at Nik's apartment


Chris and Vanessa

Casa Real is the venue for the wedding, it is a vineyard in Pleasanton.

Nik walking down the aisle and Harsha, his best man, behind him.
Amy and her dad Larry Huang

Amy and Nik, the priest is blocking this shot though.
Nik give the ring to Amy


kissy face


Joe and Larry are the two witnesses


Present Dr. Nik and Amy Udompanyanan!
Yayayyyy!!!
banquet hall

Nik gave a very good speech

Harsha gave a really good speech as well. They are very good friends.

Joe and Matt practiced for the upcoming performance.



Video of me and Matt (Amy's younger brother) performing Somewhere Over the Rainbow!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu1oKdmkyGE


bye for now, more to come later.

Bungy at Taupo

Here is the link to my bungy at Lake Taupo in New Zealand!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9a7pj73_aw

September 09

Wowo, it's Fall! The weather is sunny, crisp and cool in Portland. Things are going ok, not much going on, we are just hanging out near Portland this month.

The new green line opened in September. This runs from Clackamas town center to PSU. The section I care about is from downtown to PSU. This is really great because it is free downtown and we can take this to Chinatown to get some chow. The one on the left is the MAX, the green one on the right is the street car. This stops right near our condo and the new PSU rec cen is right near by as well.

The annual free symphony at the waterfront park. Great show this year as usual.
Michelle packed us a picnic dinner and we had a great time.

fireworks after the music

One weekend, we went kayaking in the Willamette river. This spot is popular now, I've seen many people rowing almost everyday. We rented a tandem kayak (2 people) for 4 hours - $30.

We kayak to Ross Island, round trip is 5 miles. It was really calm and peaceful that day, not a lot of power boats or barges. We saw some deers on the Island, that's a surprise. We can see the island from our balcony and it is in a pretty urban area.
blue heron

OMSI submarine
South Waterfront area. The condo price came down a lot now. A 1200 sq feet, 1 bed room condo at John Ross is about $300k. That's an ok price, it used to be much more expensive.

Another weekend, Michelle took us to the Mcminnville aviation museum.


Tiny plane behind Michelle. There are some very cool planes here, WWI and WWII planes are really neat.

F14 Tomcat is parked outside.
The star of the show - the Spruce Goose, the largest "flying boat" ever built. This means taking off and landing in water. Michelle was this in Long Beach when she was a kid, but she said this display is much better laid out.
Closing with a few cooking pictures.
Shisohito - like a mojito, but with shiso leaves instead of mints. Great summer drink.
Spicy creamy scallop sushi, Michelle' s favorite.

Sauteed king oyster mushrooms and scallops. yummmy. 8)



Everything is good in Portland, the weather is still nice in October and we'll go down to Nik's wedding in 2 weeks or so. bye for now!!!!

august 2009

Hi Everyone,
I can't believe August is over. It's labor day weekend and it's raining in Portland already. We had a few hot days this summer, but it's all over now... 8(

Michelle went to skydiving. I did it once a while ago and didn't want to pay $$ this time so I just drove her.

Pink parachute

Mission Accomplished. Michelle liked skydiving a lot and want to go again.
We went to our annual zoo concert after work. The zoo sold out so we thought we would go to the free concert at the rose garden instead, but we got lucky and I was able to buy two tickets from a guy. His kid wasn't feeling well so they decided to not go. The Wailers was a lot of fun. They played some old classic and we had a lot of fun.

We went to Chinatown check out the Jewish historical museum in Chinatown. It was First Thursday in the Pearl so the museum was free that day. They didn't have much at the museum though, pretty small. We had a falafel at a cart and it was the best falafel in Portland. We didn't eat at the spud locker, but they had a cool cart.

Looks like one of those Triad Chinese Association building.

Hobi cat taking a rest from a full day of work.


The Bite of Oregon. We went to on Sunday evening, the last day, so they had a discount on entry fee and the food were discounted too. We haven't gone for quite a few years because the food was getting a little boring. The food is better now, they are trying to make the Bite more food oriented now. We had some food at North 45.

surf and turf was quite good and mussels were really good too.
Grilled salmon one night


We won a wine tasting tour from Williamette Valley Vineyard. They are the third largest winery in Oregon. The biggest is A to Z and second is King Estate. I don't know much about A to Z, but King Estate was built by a family with a communication fortune (satellite or something.) Williamette Valley was a one man operation that grew by going public. The wine was really good too. They make one of our favorite sparkling wine - the Frizzante. We packed a picnic lunch and had a great time there. We invited Harrison and his family, but one of the kid got sick so Harrison came with us by himself. We'll see his family today actually, BBQ at this place.
After the wine tasting we went to the Thai Temple around the corner. They are raising money to build an actual temple, this is just in a house. They also are going to have an event on September 27. We went last time and they ran out of food really quickly. We'll definitely go early this time.
Salmon Tacos, yummm..


This year we finally made it to the Street of Dream this year. This year, they are having it in the Pearl. They are showing some penthouses and other smaller condos. On the way we saw the new building with wind generator on top. This is the first building with windmills on it in Portland. The building next to our condo is also going to put 4 windmills on it too.
The 937 building in the Pearl. This one had a tiny balcony.
city view

The best condo is also in the 937 building. This one has a huge balcony and has a great sliding door that opens up all the way and really integrate the balcony with the living space. They had a really great jacuzzi too.
Artwork at the waterfront Pearl. The other buildings were not very impressive.
We went to the Saturday Market afterward. They just finished building the new Saturday market stalls. It is much nicer now, but I don't know how well protected they are from the rain. We'll see.

Artwork at the PSU campus next to the new MAX track.
Michelle had a great idea. 8)
Michelle went down to San Diego for training for a week. I went down Thursday night to hang out. We stayed at the Gaslamp district, it was pretty cool, but busy. We went to happy hours at La Fiesta. Michelle endorse Talula hot sauce.
Joe likes Tapatio.
We had caviche, fish tacos, shrimp diable tacos, and taco al pastor. I liked the al pastor the best, it is marinated pork. very good actually.
Point Loma with the view of San Diego and Coronado. The Navy base in the background.
The lighthouse at point loma. It was so hot in San Diego that weekend. It was high 90s near the beach and 100s in land.
little stair case in the light house.
San Diego beach was so crowded. It was so hot too, we can't really handle it for too long.


Chrystal pier - you can stay on the pier.
Balboa park in San Diego was really nice. Classic cars. There are like 3 weddings here that day.

The sailboats were really cool as we were going over the Coronado bridge.
The famous Coronado hotel.


Ok, that all for August. I'm all tired now...
Continue next month in rainy Portland.