Steven Kam celebrated his 27th birthday today. We surprised him at his favorite hangout, Lucy’s Teahouse in Mountain View, following his stint as substitute instructor at Stanford Wushu class (the normal instructors were on vacation or playing hooky!). Felicia organized the party, which featured his friends from college, work, and wushu. Among the partygoers were people like Eric, Sophia, Bill, Susan, Rae, John Louie, and Andy Shen, whom I haven’t seen since my days at the French House!
In the spirit of Star Wars, I drew Steven a birthday card featuring him as a Padawan Learner with a lightsabre. I forgot to scan in the image, so I can’t display it here on my web site. Oops! Felicia bought him an entire care package for his next adventure as a Law School student.
Amabelle and Felicia baked him two cakes which we ate after consuming the delectable entrées at Lucy’s. I would not have wanted to be working in the kitchen at Lucy’s tonight; they had to make so many pork specials and peach teas! Here’s a sound clip of us singing Happy Birthday to Steven, right before he blew out the candles on the cakes.
Vienna was playing at the Red Rock Coffee Company on Castro Street tonight, so a few of us took a break from the festivities to stop by and say hello. When we walked in, she was playing her customary final tune, Lullabye For A Stormy Night. Vienna’s just like The Jeffersons in that she’s “moving on up!” I think Boris has displaced me as Vienna’s number one fan, at least in the Mountain View area. Speaking of fans, where are the other Vienna Teng fan club web sites?
After seeing Vienna, we went back and forth between the two pearl milk teahouses before settling down at Lucy’s for card games and Scrabble. Eric and I ran into Bob Murata, whom I last saw at the MacWorld San Francisco Conference this past January. He and his wife just had a delicious and filling dinner at Chez TJ’s. I’m going to have to go there one of these days, as I’ve heard very good things about that restaurant.
In other news, last Tuesday, Rae, Susan, and I went to see Teknolust, a movie by Lynn Hershman-Leeson, at the Park Theater in Menlo Park. Tilda Swinton plays Rosetta Stone, a brilliant yet lonely scientist who clones three copies of herself to keep her company. As you might expect, things go awry quickly in the movie, which was filmed on HD24. The quality from shooting digitally was clearly evident in the film, even though it was transferred to 35mm.
Before the movie, I had dinner with Randy at Cook’s Seafood in Menlo Park. With the help of Randy and Susan, I surprised Rae at the theater, who didn’t think that I would be making it. Earlier in the day, Randy forwarded me an email telling me that they were giving out free tickets to the Teknolust screening. How cool is that?
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