Full day

Cam called around 10:40 this morning. He wanted to have dim sum, his friends canceled, asked if I had time to go. Sure. I was planning on seeing Sylvia and Judy today, but the only event confirmed now was meet at this new karaoke place at 3.

Cam and I at first were to go to Empress Harbor, then before we hit Valley, we changed our decision to The Kitchen. We parked a block behind and walked to the restaurant. The New Year Festival Parade was happening on the other side of the street. We didn't have to wait for a table. That was good, and bad. Usually there would be waiting, it could take a few min to an hour or more to get a table at a good dim sum restaurant. We didn't have to wait today and I was surprised.

In total we ordered 8 dishes, half of them were off. Cha Siu Bao's bread was too heavy. It stuck on the teeth and became unpleasant to eat. Our gai lan was paired with a clear light sauce on the side. I was used to the traditional thick soy sauce drizzled on top. The turnip with XO sauce was messy and unfocused. I was not happy with either the use of XO sauce or flavor of turnip. The rice noodle roll with beef was strangely crunchy. Cam said it tasted like it had water chestnut in the meat paste. He was right. I would understand if the water chestnut was less pronounced, but it was loud. I didn't get it.

I came home briefly and left. I went to Shi Lai Temple to worship, pray, thank for the progress made last year, wish for good positive things for this year. There was a lot of tourists today. I paid my respect and left to meet up with Judy & Sylvia.

It turned out the karaoke place was very popular and we wouldn't be able to get a room this afternoon. Sylvia went home, since she wasn't feeling well. Judy and I decided to go to a movie instead. She wanted to see Fool's Gold. I had heard it was not a good movie but I thought it might be one of those "the audience loves but critics hate" movies.

I was wrong. The movie has very little adventure, or action, or romance comedy, even though it tries to bring all of them together. The subplot between the old man and spoiled daughter is unnecessary. If they trimmed down 1/2 an hour and added one or two more action sequences it would be a fun or more entertaining commercial movie. The movie does show lots of MMc's chisel cut body. But that only works a little while.

For dinner Judy and I went to this Chinese cafe-style restaurant near the mall. I didn't memorize their name, it was something Kaffe, next to a hair salon inside the Nijiya Market plaza. It was horrible. The porridge we had was the worst. The rice was still clumpy in the soup. The chicken roll fell apart right after it got to our table. The sausage was served in measly, scattered, pieces. The only good thing was the meat sauce on top of the steamed vegetable. Needless to say we won't be going back.

Dave and Jose called during my dinner with Judy. They wanted to come have dinner. Judy and I finished and talked a bit more before I took off around 8:15. It was certainly a better dinner at Vegetarian Wok, but I was already full with lousy Chinese food so I just sampled. Dave ordered mushroom chicken, eggplant with basil, and fish in hot sauce. I wouldn't say this place had the best vegetarian place, but it was decent. Kind of like Happy Family, but without the all-you-can-eat menu.

We drove around to see if we could find a place to sit and have tea. We ended up in Piece of Cake on Las Tunas. It was a cozy warm small place. We got to sit on a tall table with high chairs. All of us liked the teas we ordered, and Dave really liked the cup set he got served with. Jose knew where the cafe bought most of their furnishings. He studied IKEA and Target merchandise well.

I'm still full from all that tea and bad Chinese food. Spent a lot today too. Time to get ready for bed.