Holiday season

The year that started moving at a snail's pace now seems to be rushing headlong into 2022. 

It was a very strange year, starting with continuing fear of COVID, which eventually morphed into little bits of hope with the vaccine. I started off wary of the new mRNA technology then couldn't wait until I was eligible.

As the weather warmed, it started to seem like things could slowly open up, and we could slowly all start getting together again. Ballet classes continued with masks, first in small groups and only outside or in the large back studio. Eventually, classes all moved indoors, got bigger and expanded into all of the studios. 

I found myself talking to my fellow students more, including people I'd been in classes with for years and never bothered to say hi. A few of us started going to coffee after class, first at Blueys and then when they became too busy, at Cafe Ruisseau. 

It started to feel safer to meet people for meals, first outside, then slowly indoors. I am so grateful for the creativity it took for my neighbourhood restaurants to stay open. 

I got back on a plane in May to spend the weekend with Mei. We didn't do much but it was mostly about spending time together after over a year of Zoom only. June brought a welcome invitation from Mei to join them on Maui. Again, not a trip full of ticking off things to do, but we were all grateful for time together, eating good food (although super early) and basking in the HI sun. The stress of testing to go there was totally worth it.

My ballet friends and I went to Napa for a Roberto Bolle & Friends performance thanks to Kelly's initiative, driving up together. Another dance focused trip followed to Vail in August. These opportunities to see live dance really felt so special. While the weather in Vail was not great, we rejoiced in being back in a place we all love. 

We were supposed to be going back into the office in September, but Delta put a stop to that. We could choose to go back if we want but we had to be vaccinated to do so. I went back a few times but it was rarely worth the commute and only to see colleagues.

Thanksgiving was a return to the Bay area but without the large family gathering due to a non-vaccinated family member. Most of us got together for an easy outdoor hike followed by tacos, which was a great way to see everyone safely. 

Just when we thought this would be the first 'normal-ish' holiday, along comes Omicron. With all of the stress of worrying about what's happening, I am looking forward to finally seeing Ma and D's family in person. 

I also did some holiday baking for gifts. Since one of my ballet teachers is vegan, I set a challenge to find recipes with those limitations but which were just as tasty. The first one I tried was from LA Times recipe writer Ben Mims. His cherry-walnut fudge looked really good. However I used an old candy thermometer which caused the fudge to not set. After an informative Insta message exchange, I redid it and it worked like a charm! Super delicious, too! Definitely worth doing again, although expensive with Luxardo cherries. The second recipe I found was for lemon sugar cookies. I had a bunch of lemons left from various HelloFresh meals so wanted to use them up. The recipe called for vegan butter and silken tofu, which didn't feel like too much of a stretch (since I love tofu). These turned out so delicious! The texture is light but flavourful and definitely better than regular sugar cookies. I love that these experiments led to two new recipes to add to my collection.

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!

Thanksgiving

I drove up to the Bay Area to spend a week with Mei and family and join Gugu's Thanksgiving dinner. I was able to squeeze in a visit with Tegan across the Golden Gate and it was such a beautiful day I stopped to photograph it on the way back. I had my first American Girl shopping experience with Neve, did a Turkey Trot with Mei and the kids, and met some interesting new people at the Thanksgiving dinner.

Photos here.

SF Ballet Program 6

This program certainly covered the gamut of this company's talents. It started with Raymonda, Act 3. This is a classical, traditional ballet and is hardly ever performed as a whole. I'm not even really clear what the story is. Act 3 is a wedding scene set in medieval Hungary, which means we get the chance to see great variations and character dancing. The set is lavish and the costumes beautiful and glittery. Vanessa Zahorian handled the famed solo variation with a lot of panache. My toes hurt just watching all those bourrees.

The second piece is Raku, new from last year. The music is by a member of the SF Ballet Orchestra, the story set in ancient Japan based around a love triangle at a temple. We were lucky to see Yuan Yuan Tan perform the female role. She's remarkable for her flexibility as well as expressiveness. This is a beautiful, tragic piece with strong dancing by all three leads. The set uses moveable pieces with projection to good effect. This is a knockout newer piece for the company, in a contemporary vein but maintaining a story line.

The third piece is brand new this year and choreographed by the artistic director of the Scottish Ballet, who I saw last year and thoroughly enjoyed. The music is John Adams. Four pairs of dancers are highlighted in the piece, with various groups of corps dancers in the background. Everyone wears shorts unitards with varying colour schemes. The costumes were great for highlighting the dancers muscularity, but I found it hard to tell individuals apart and the soloists from the corps. The dancing was fantastic (the company is full of strong dancers) but the music wore on me after awhile. While this piece is contemporary like the second one, it's more abstract with very little sense of story (aside from whatever each individual audience member may read into it).

San Francisco at Christmas time

I spent the few days around Christmas up in the Bay area with Mei's family and we took a day to visit San Francisco, skating in Union Square, checking out the gingerbread and sugar castle at the Westin St. Francis, taking a cable car ride and eating ice cream at Ghirardelli's. It's been unseasonably cold but the day we visited was clear and sunny and beautiful. Here are some pictures I took over the weekend. There are also pictures of a giant silk lantern show from China and quite a few of the buche de noel (Yule log cake) that Mei and I made for the family Xmas eve dinner.

San Francisco Ballet

I went to a performance of San Francisco Ballet last Friday with my mom. Tickets here are expensive, so we were up in the first balcony. The program consisted of 3 ballets performed to Tchaikovsky's music. The first piece was Balanchine's Theme and Variations. This is a notoriously difficult piece. Frances Chung and Taras Domitro were in the lead roles and they handled the difficult and very fast steps admirably.

The second piece was Kenneth MacMillan's Winter Dreams. I love MacMillan's choreography in Romeo and Juliet. This was a premiere of this piece at SFB. The story is based on Chekov's "Three Sisters". The program didn't give a lot of detailed information on who all the characters were, even though they were all listed by cast in the program. It would've been nice to get some kind of summary for those of us who are not so versed in Russian theatre. The role of the sisters were performed by Sofiane Sylve, Maria Kochetkova and Lorena Feijoo. The ballet did have a very strong theatrical feel to it and even without knowing the story, you could see that this was a family of people and they were not a happy bunch. The heart of the story is sister Masha and Sofiane Sylve was exceptional in the role. This ballet was performed on a dark floor with very low lighting, which unfortunately made the men, in their dark costumes, very difficult to see from our seats.

The final piece was a new one by SFB's Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. This piece was lighter, brighter and a lot of fun. It's divided into 3 sections, based on Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence, with a slower middle section. Sarah Van Patten was wonderful in this part, with her two partners, Tilt Helimets and Vito Mazzeo. The costumes in this piece were beautiful.

Coyote Point Recreation Area

I visited this place with my sister and her two kids (4 1/2 and 2 1/2) and we all really enjoyed it. We spend most of our time at the Museum, which is focused on environmental education. They have an animal rehabilitation area, and displays for animals that are not able to be released into the wild. The animals are all natives, which means no exotic critters, but the natives are pretty cool too, including a badger, otter, bobcat, frogs, raptors and lots of different snakes. The daily keeper talk was on the resident great horned owl, which had a broken wing. The other part of the museum has various mechanical gadgets that kids can turn, push, or otherwise manipulate to make something interesting happen. The kids may also learn about gears, lights, air pressure, but mostly they have fun. The recreation area is located near SFO and there are picnic areas near the water, and views of airplanes landing at the airport. There is a marina, playgrounds, and trails along the beach. This looks like a nice place to spend a hot summer day. There's also a golf course near the entrance if none of the other attractions are up your alley.

Academy of Science

I went to visit this new museum with my sister and her kids. Apparently about a gajillion other families in the area had the exact same idea. The place was completely packed. The building is as impressive as all the reviews say they are. However, I'm going to hazard a guess that the architectural critics were given a special tour. They should try visiting the place with a real holiday crowd. The design is terrible for finding your way around with young kids and strollers. The building is also very loud. Most of the materials are hard-glass, stone, concrete. Throw a pack of children in there and it's pretty much impossible to hear anything. Line ups for the rainforest are long and end up cutting across the main passage from the front to the back. There are two separate elevators to get to the downstairs aquarium and the upstairs living roof (pictured), which are two of the primary attractions. The penguins are stuck at the end of a stone hallway, guaranteeing large packs of people blocking exits during the feedings. Seriously folks, form follows function, doesn't it?

My favourite ingredient is flour

I spent the long weekend up in Mountain View to celebrate my and Mei's February birthdays. Cooking seemed like a good way to spend time together without requiring a lot of logistics (to get two kids out the door). Everything we made had flour in it. We made dumplings (shui jiao) from my mom's recipe. Turned out pretty darn good, although we decided the filling needed to be a little saltier and could have used more napa cabbage. We baked a chocolate cake from a Cook's Illustrated recipe, which was sooooo good, chocolate with whipped cream frosting. And finally we made pizza with fresh made dough, which makes such a difference. I love baking and making dough, there is something so satisfying about seeing something double in size all on its own! And since I love almost all dough based products, the eating is fun too!

I also got a chance to visit Tegan and Patrick at their new home in San Rafael. Annette and Toshi were also there for a wonderful dinner and the conversation was amazing, fun, deep, grownup, silly. We were there until quite late and could have continued talking for hours more (if it wasn't for needing our beauty sleep).

Last but in no way least, the kids were great. Mason is fully alert and really curious about his surroundings. He really doesn't like to be left out of the action and wants to be able to see what everyone is doing. Neve is talking a blue streak, loves playing with her various baby dolls and doing puzzles. She's still shy around new people, but I think she remembered me from Christmas, because she warmed up very quickly.

Turkey Day

Thanksgiving tends to be my preferred holiday. Lots of food, no religious etiquette to be concerned about, and my aunt Yvonne (otherwise known as Gugu) always has interesting people at her annual dinner. This year, I went up early to spend the week with my sister, brother-in-law and Neve. She just turned one and is starting to get the hang of walking. As my sister says, she looks like she's drunk.

The crowd at Gugu and Al's was smaller than in the past. Several of the Thanksgiving regulars were there. Newbies Daragh and Hilary have just moved here from Ireland and it was fun to hear how they are getting the hang of living in California.

I didn't do any sightseeing in the city this time. I did spend time with a few friends who now live in the area. It's been years since Tegan, Annette and I were all in LA (in the design biz) so it was wonderful to have dinner with them. And I had tea with Deborah (from graduate school) at the Mark Hopkins. It was a beautiful day in the city (clear, no fog, but cold) and after tea, we walked around the area. I took this photo of the Transamerica building at twilight by holding my camera against a phone pole (trying to stop my hands from shivering).