Best of Mountain View 2008

Best business:
http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=833

Best eating and drinking:
http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=832

2009 Summer concerts in Mountain View

Free Thursday evening concerts from 6:30 to 8pm:

http://www.ci.mtnview.ca.us/city_hall/comm_services/recreation_programs_and_services/community_events/summer_concert_series.asp

Mountain View Farmers' Market

Every Sunday from 9am to 1pm, there is the popular Farmers' market in Mountain View. You can find all kind of organically grown, fresh fruits and vegetables in addition to various homemade products. It's great and Min Lin has her favorite stand to buy really inexpensive Chinese vegetables.

At the entrance there is a huge basket sampling many of the products of the market. The woman at the stand told us: "Go ahead guys, fill it out - you have a great chance to win since there are few people that filled it out!".

So we did.

And we won.

They called us up a few minutes later while we were going to buy additional vegetables from the Chinese grocery on Castro. They told us "You won! Please fetch it in the next 45 minutes... oh, and don't come by bike, there's just too much!" - "...but...but"

... oh boy, trouble...

So now we had to figure out who to call up to share our new bounty. We eventually reached Wenbo; his family had just landed a day ago so were indeed in need of food. Even after just picking up the stuff we wanted and leaving him with a very heavy basket and bag of oranges, we filled out both of my bike saddle bags!

Karen, the person who had encouraged us to participate, was nice enough to help us with additional plastic bags to split the stuff. She also gave us the basket!

We talked for a bit; she works as an assistant-manager for the California Farmer's Market Association and they organize many markets in the region. She also mentioned to look out for the number on stickers of fruits and vegetables; #4 is conventionally grown, #8 is genetically modified and #9 is organic.

What was in the basket:

Shitake mushrooms, salads with edible flowers, baby spinach, zucchinis, Chinese eggplants, baby eggplants, lettuce, tomatoes, corn, broccoli, carrots, celery, various herbs, bok choy, strawberries, cucumbers, plums, peaches, apricots, oranges, potatoes, onions, blueberries from Triple Delight, organic fresh black raspberries from Prevedelli Farms, wildflower honey from Morganic Hilltop, sweet jalapeño marinade from Bolani, dried apricots from Apricot King and much more!!

Here's a summer garden soup made by Min Lin with fresh vegetables and herbs from the basket:

Recipe of Min Lin's summer garden soup:

Ingredients:

• 1 big tomato
• 1 baby green zucchini
  
• 1 yellow zucchini
  
• some fresh basil
• some fresh coriander
• some water, salt, pepper, ginger powder and extra virgin olive oil

Cooking directions:

• cut all vegetables, put all in a pot and gently cook until vegetables gets soften
• serve with a few drops of lemon juice
  
• good for 3 servings
  

Ricky + Min Lin Photos

Photos prises par un professionnel dans un studio à Taipei. Pas mal non?

Pictures taken in a studio in Taiwan by a professional photographer. Not bad right?

The place we took Glamor pictures is at a studio in Ximen Taipei (http://www.flower-waves.com.tw/personal/about.asp - website in Chinese only). Min Lin has negotiated the package and scheduled the photo session 3 weeks in advance. The package we paid was around US$400 with 20 photos and a nice album with our 20 photos of 6x8 size, package includes 3 styles, one on one photographer and stylist. The studio also have a selection of cloths, but it's recommended to bring your own cloths.

It took us around 4 hours for the glamor pictures session and after that it took us 2 hours to choose 20 pictures out of 120 pictures (the photographer and his assistants took at least 1 hour trying to convince us to buy extra pictures, US$25/photo for only digital version and US$40/photo with printed + digital version + nicer album). Overall, it was a nice experience, the only drawback was that final pictures and album was done only a month after.

Debunking Canadian health care myths

Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.

In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.

Coffee Drinks Illustrated

http://www.flickr.com/photos/two-eyes/1285147549/sizes/o/

Typing it old skool

My birthday gift from Matt: a "new" IBM Type M keyboard from the original mold but with a USB interface! Love the taka taka taka of the hard springs inside - reminds me of programming on an IBM PS/2!

Min Lin however is not so happy with the noise... Mouahaha

I'll have to bring it at work to try it out on my colleagues!

HTC Hero - First Look

Taiwanese (HTC) are really good at making lickable user interfaces for mobile phone ;-)