Jury duty

I had my first experience being on a jury this past week. It was quite eye opening. The case was misdemeanor charges of assault and related counts.
The first interesting aspect of the experience was voir dire. It's astonishing how many potential jurors knew family or friends with DUIs, at least 1/2 the panel. Many of the folks seem to have poor abilities separating legal concepts vs every day speech.
The actual trial was both extremely tedious and enlightening. There is A LOT of waiting around. So inefficient! Questioning witnesses is an ordeal when a witness has low language levels but you can pick up a lot from body language and demeanor.
The jury discussion was actually very fulfilling. First I was surprised by how different people's initial opinions were (silly me, they don't all think like me...) but I also found the ideas and questions from the other jurors to be very useful.
It was a diverse group of people, by gender and race. Some of them were a landscape architect, a mobile phone employee, an advertising person who did portrait sketches during testimony, a person who ran two car related YouTube sites, and a person who is interested in geographic mapping.
Overall it was rather exhausting but a worthy experience. However I could do without another one for awhile.

Xmas & New Year's

This year, as usual, Xmas was spent in Mountain View with Mei and the gang. Unlike last December, the weather took a turn and it was quite cold. The week flew by with a LOT of eating some really great food (much of it not very healthy, ugh). We had a giant family feast on Xmas eve, a proper English Christmas dinner on the Day, and watched quite a few Harry Potter movies, as Neve has read all of the books and Mason is wanting to catch up on the story! We managed to squeeze in a ballet class and a couple of walks to help burn off all the Xmas goodies! We also had a chance to stop by the 3's new home in Palo Alto (beautiful!) and check out some fancy Xmas lights around town.

We managed to get in a couple of fun days in SF, walking around Chinatown, discussing how long one would be willing to wait for fantastic dan ta (for me, not long, unless they were giant pie size dan ta), skating in Union Square (terrifying, Californians have no idea how to behave in a rink and are bad skaters), and taking in some of the store windows. Our first night, Mei the kids and I had dinner at E & O Kitchen and Bar. We had seats at the counter in front of one of the kitchens (apparently there are several!) and watched the cooks do their thing (chopping, tossing, lots of flames, very exciting) and drooling over the food coming out for delivery to tables. The food was fantastic, great flavours and ingredients, service while nice was a little spotty, seems we were easily overlooked back there. After dinner, we managed to catch the last Nutcracker Under the Dome at San Francisco Center (projected ballet with music) and shared a massive Ghirardelli sundae for dessert. The next day, after a nice breakfast buffet at the hotel, we walked to a less crowded intersection to catch a cable car up to Nob Hill to check out the gingerbread house (Shen Shen had mentioned it a few tines). This is the hotel featured in the old '80s era TV series Hotel, and it was spectacularly decorated for the holidays. The gingerbread house is gigantic, no mere toy house! We took advantage of being in the neighbourhood to check out Grace Cathedral. There is a nice labyrinth and beautiful stained glass windows and paintings. A gorgeous rose window on one side of the altar had a golden coloured stone of some kind instead of stained glass, and the sun was perfectly positioned so that the light coming in bathed the whole area in a beautiful golden glow, including their nativity.

After a nice walk back to the hotel, I dropped Mei and family off at the train station and drove to the Civic Center area, where I met Debbie to view the Looking East exhibit, which showed the influence of Japanese are on the Impressionists in both France and the US. I particularly loved the more graphic and poster art, which clearly took cues from wood block prints. After the exhibit, I walked to the other side of the square to meet up with Annette and her friend Olivia, who are working on installing the inaugural entryway art for the new SF Art Commission gallery. Annette and I caught up over dinner at Chez Maman.

The next day, back in Silicon Valley, Edie and her family came over for a yummy breakfast, before I headed to the airport and back home.

The next day, I joined the Alexander sisters (Annie and Courtney) for their little shindig at Hungry Cat Santa Monica. We had a private upstairs room (looked like a mini hunting lodge) and an amazing meal with a view of the ocean and fireworks just down the beach. The food was incredible, great service and a really fun crowd. I headed out with a couple of other folks before the turning of the year, and was home in time for 2016.

Here is a link to some pics:
SF: https://flic.kr/s/aHskrcPZS7
NYE: https://flic.kr/s/aHskrZqchz

I managed to catch a cold while in SF and have basically been laying low for the last few days,

I hope 2016 brings much joy, camarederie and inspiration to everyone!