Crazy Busy!

I know I've been kinda lacking with posts lately ... but life has been crazy busy! Work, family, blahblahblah... though overall really good, just busy. Hope you are all doing great too, hehehe, I am always happy to know that my kitty pals are doing well, healthy and happy.... xoxo, Cat!

Crazy Wind!

Crazy wind here in the LA area... felt like I was working in a boat today with our high rise office building swaying back and forth... on the way back, almost got blown away, if you see a kitty cat hanging onto a tree in the news tonight, it's most likely yours truly hanging onto her dear life... crazy crazy world!

Habanero Chiles...

Awww, such cute innocent looking peppers... MUNCH... Ahhhhhhh!!!!!! Run to the fridge, grab yoghurt and soy milk, GULP GULP GULP! WARNING: never ever eat habanero chiles raw!

Negotiations 101: Pink Power

It's so hard being a (very pretty, hehe) girl lawyer working in a boy dominated world, especially when I have to negotiate against big and burly guys...ewe. But alas, I've developed a secret three step program to success and here I'll share with you... do not tell anyone else, K?

Step 1: Pucker your lips and bat your lashes... about 50% of the boys usually melt by this point and raise the white flag and surrender.

Step 2: if step 1 for any reason doesn't work, then open your eyes wide, and fill them with a pool of innocent tears, like this, most men will be like -- oh it'd be so un-chivalrous to be mean to a poor helpless little kitteh... hehe, suckers!

Step 3: well there are some evil men out there, so if step 1 and step 2 do not work... you need to show your true colors and go Hiiiiiyaaaaaaahhhh! And beat the @%%#% out of them! Trust me, it's worked every time.

Lawry's

Prime rib was good... but the sides were hideous... the famous spinning salad, laughable, it's like a few wilted romaine lettuce topped with supermarket thousand island dressing, creamed corn, haha, frozen corn from Trader Joe's mixed with some cream, and it cost 6 bucks for a little side... overall, I'd give it a B... KBBQ so much better.

Hibernation Update

Hi peeps! Head poking out of kitty cove... still hibernating, ttyl... arrrgh, actually been hibernating in my office... so busy lately.

Brrrrr....

It's cloudy and 65 degrees in LA, 65 degrees! In LA temp speaking, it's the equivalent of minus 100 degrees... so given the arctic blast, I am off to hibernate in my little kitty cove... see you guys next spring! Zzzzzzzz.... Snooooree....

Bravo Gustavo!

K had an extra ticket to see the LA Philharmonic, so we dressed to the nines and went to get cultured, however, when I got there, I promptly got scolded by some teenage usher for taking pictures inside the concert hall (of course never during the performance)... in revenge, I took another picture when the concert ended... can you see our new charismatic conductor Gustavo Dudamel? He is somewhere down there... and he was awesome! And to the usher, here is a big :-P

Earthquake Relief Effort

Last year, a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan Province in China. Since our company has customers in China, we decided that we ought to do something to help the relief efforts. To that end, we made a donation to support the reconstruction of an elementary school in one of the worst affected areas. Here is the fruit of our donation, a new building for the school. Little ones, I hope you like your new classroom, please grow up tall and strong, like the newly planted trees on the school ground.

Dinner Possible!

Fried rice with eggs, scallop and asparagus.

Gentrification of a Long Tang

Long Tangs are the Shanghainese equivalent of the Beijing Hu Tong. They are residential complexes that house dozens and dozens of families. Typically, there is a main Long Tang (or alley), with smaller branch Long Tangs leading to separate residences. I love this picture, I think I deserve a photography award for it, self congratulatory pat on the back, hehe.

For a while, Shanghai was in a skyscraper building frenzy, but now they've realized foreigners tend to prefer sites with more local characters... so the current movement in Shanghai is to renovate old Long Tangs, so that foreign tourists can have the prvilege of walking under the local's undergarments...
Look at the beautiful moulding around the door... reminds me of a Vermeer painting.

Lots of cafes, restaurants, wine bars, small shops, galleries...

We went to this one, Cafe Dan... I believe it's owned by a Japanese ex-pat.

Look at the beautiful view from our table... the owner planted lots of herby plants in the windowsill.

I think this is Dan. Never mind, just googled the store, and Dan's real name is Taka Niuya. Mr. Niuya was a physicist prior to his life as a cafe owner in trendy Shanghai.

This is what we had, homemade youghurt and coffee... if you are ever in Shanghai make sure you check out Dan's Cafe on Taikang Road.

This is the same scene as the first picture, but taken from the opposite direction.

Reunion with N

N and I went to first grade together. She is now working in Shanghai so we met up for the first time in about 25 years. Of course, what's a reunion without food? We went to a popular Shanghainese chain restaurant called Charme... sigh, what can I say, even a chain restaurant in China is nicer than most restaurants here...look at the pretty menu...

...and the neat (if bland) decor (it's a chain mall restaurant after all).

The appetizer: bowing shrimpies.

Fresh fish steamed with Chinese ham and Si melon, not photogenic but tasty.

Here are the rest of the dishes, too busy eating to take individual pictures... there is minced squid stuffed in fried dough (surprisingly good), sauteed pea shoots (my go-to veggie dish), very good soup of the day (Cantonese type of soup with all sorts of herby stuff), mushroom casserole (casserole without the heavy cream, just light and flavorful)...

This was the star of the evening... practically every table had one. It's a "bread pudding" dessert, what they do is they carve the inside of the bread out and cut it into neat cubes, then they put a layer of cream in the hallowed out bread, and stack the bread cubes back, and then put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top... it must be the Asian bread (not overly sweet but milky and fragrant), it was soooo good, I could not stop eating, it was of course nice to see N after all those years, but I could not stop eating, N must've thought we were going through famine in America!

After dinner, we took a stroll along the Bund...

For a fee, you can even dress up in period pieces and pretend that you are in a rickshaw roaming the Bund and rubbing shoulders with gangsters...

Crab Roe and Si Melon Noodle Soup

We had a left over Dazha crab from our lunch, so we plucked the crabmeat and saved it for a later meal. The next day, a neighbor gave us some Si melon from her garden and my aunt decided to make a noodle soup with the crab meat and the melon.

Look at the final product. Btw, that is not grease floating on top, it's the natural oil from the crab roe, so good! The noodles are Shanghainese Yang Chun noodles, love it!

Here is my aunt in her kitchen. Thanks, Nian Nian. We Shanghainese call our paternal aunts Nian Nian, as opposed to Gu Gu in Mandarin, and we call our older brothers, Gu Gu...yeah, we are weird, in addition to being superficial and conceited. But nevertheless, we are still better than all other Chinese, now take that :-P

Grandma Ardi

Ok, I've decided to take a break from torturing J with yummy food posts... I was doing some genealogy research in Shanghai on the Cat family and here is a picture of my great-great-great-great...etc...etc...great-grandmother Ardi... what an exciting find. Read all about my great-etc-grandmama here.