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They don’t play double features in movie theaters these days, certainly not anywhere in the Bay Area that I know of. The fun began on Friday night after I got back from Vienna’s performance in Saratoga. I wanted to spend the morning and afternoon cleaning my house, so I got an early start by washing my clothes Friday night. I went to sleep around 2:00 am Saturday morning and got up at 8:30 am. Je devrais avoir faire la grasse matinee! Mais, c’etait le week-end, et j’avais beaucoup de choses a faire. I cleaned the entire place, including the kitchen, bathroom, closet, and living room.

I threw out about 5-6 garbage bags of junk and trash. Among the discarded were things like my wallet from high school and college and various computer accessory boxes. I asked myself the question, “In 10 years time, would you be sad if you didn’t have this item?” when holding an article up for sentencing. If I said yes, it stayed, but if I said no, it went right into the garbage bag!

My cleanup was complete after I vacuumed around 3:30 pm. I then hopped into the car to Palo Alto, where I did a little window shopping at Keeble and Shucat and Fry’s Electronics. I took a look at some lenses and accessories for my Leica M2, but I didn’t pick anything up. I’ve been running through a lot of CD-R’s lately and needed to replenish my supplies, so I bought a 100-pack of Memorex CD-R’s from Fry’s. After that, I drove over to Stanford to check my mail and peruse the books in the Bookstore before heading over to Hunan Homes for dinner with Chrisy and Emily. At the bookstore, I looked for a book that was recently published, Palm OS Web Applications Developer’s Guide. Unfortunately, the book was on order, so they didn’t have anything in stock. Instead, I looked at the lovely 17-inch Studio Display from Apple. 1280×1024 resolution… very nice indeed! It’s as tall as the Cinema Display, but not as wide. I would love to have the Cinema, but that puppy is too expensive at $2499 for simply a monitor.

As I was leaving the bookstore, I ran into Yuji. I last saw him at Vienna’s recital over at Eric’s place in the City. I first met Yuji, I believe, at the Teahouse at Stanford. He was living in Okada my freshman year when I was a manager at the Teahouse. He used to eat lots of sui mai’s, if I remember correctly! He also knew Christy from Stanford too, via Dave Tanaka, whom I didn’t know. Everyone seems to know everybody else through some six degrees of separation!

Hunan Homes with Christy and Emily

Christy had invited me to dinner tonight when we saw each other in Saratoga on Friday. She was getting together with Emily Chu, who recently moved to the Bay Area from the Midwest. Emily is having a time adjusting to the laid-back culture and atmosphere in California and the Bay Area. I bet that it’s a shock to anyone who isn’t natively from California to come here and start living. Give her a year, however, and I can assure you, you won’t be able to tell that she’s from anywhere but California! The great thing about this state is the fact that it’s a giant melting pot.

Since Emily’s going to be working at Stanford for the next few years, it’s going to be fun to look back on the pictures that I took this evening to see the differences that will evolve over time in Emily. A new place, new location, new opportunities. I remember changing so much when I was living in Paris, France. Midwest to California might not seem like as big a shift as USA to France, but it’s still a significant one.

We had a pretty big dinner, filled with garlic eggplant, hot and sour soup, beef with broccoli, walnut shrimp, and mu shu pork. The food wasn’t as good as it has been before at Hunan Homes. It was okay, mind you, but not spectacular. I think that I can make better versions of these dishes at home! Earlier in the day, I went to the market to get some raw supplies for the coming week, including eggplant, salmon, and shrimp. We’ll test that hypothesis sometime this week, I figure.

Lucy’s with the Sze Sibilings

Amabelle gave me a call during dinner, telling us that they were going to be at Lucy’s Teahouse later that evening. After dinner, we drove over to the Teahouse and had loads of fun playing Nuclear War, a game that I brought back with me from San Diego. I met up with Amabelle’s sisters, Felicia and Theresa, along with brother, Hoyt. Bill also came by to Lucy’s. It was neat to see the siblings, minus Bryant, all interacting together. It’s been several months since my siblings have gotten together all at once, though that’ll be happening shortly when I fly out to Minnesota next week.

Nuclear War is an exciting card game from Flying Buffalo that pits you against 2-6 players in a battle to see who’s the last one standing (if any!). The game begins with the players using propaganda to sway the enemies population to their own country until someone launches the first missile. War is declared, and for the next 20-30 minutes, players hurl megatons and megatons on each other, launched from Poseidon, Atlas, Titan and MX missiles or from B-70 or B-1 bombers. I used to play this game with my siblings and friends before I went to college. It had been in San Diego for a few years now, and I’m happy that I rescued it from disuse.

People new to Nuclear War are always a little slow on the first game, but subsequent playings prove to be much faster, deadlier, and more fun. The next time we play with the same group, there’s going to be some crazy tactics and schemes going on! In the game that we played, it went down to the wire between Theresa and Christy. In the end, however, Theresa’s deadly B-70 Bomber put a swift end to Christy’s remaining 1,000,000 population card. As for me, I was wiped out by Bill’s propaganda cards, before the game even got started!

Nuclear War is definitely a product of the Cold War, but it’s not a violent game. More often than not, the game does invite you to look at the massive destruction that one can levy on another country with weapons of mass destruction. The game cards are fun and sometimes hiliarious (i.e. the super-ghost or the nuclear reactor meltdown card!). It’s a great game that I’m looking forward to playing more often with my friends here!

We left Lucy’s around 10:00 pm, with everyone driving to their respective homes in the South Bay or in the City. A long day, filled with two separate feature stories, cleaning the house and hanging out. Double features can be tiring though, as I collapsed in bed later that night exhausted… but only after finishing up this photojournal!