Filipino party in San Ysidro

Last weekend, we attended a birthday party for my friend's daughter. They've been in this new house in San Ysidro for a little over a year now. Their place is on a hill overlooking the 905. You can see Mexico (far left)...the Pacific Ocean (middle)...up to Point Loma (hidden in this shot). There's a glare here because his fence is clear acrylic.
So check this out...the cleared area below was a spot where Caltrans wanted to dump trash. The neighbors complained so that idea was abandoned. That would have been an awful view...to see a makeship dump as if folks in San Ysidro wouldn't mind. Anyways, this is the canyon where there was a small fire earlier this week. It was supposedly started by some kids - yeah, pyros...Luckily the fire was contained before it spread to any houses, including my friend's.

You can see the Otay Mountains in the distance. Keep going east on the 905 freeway and you'll hit San Ysidro High School, Brown Field, Sony, Donovan State Prison and eventually, the border checkpoint.

As with any Filipino birthday party, you know there's gotta be food. His wife is a good cook and she always kicks ass with her food spread. What I like about her style is that she doesn't always dotraditional Filipino foods or serve a lot of fried stuff (well, two items were). You can see asparagus, toasted baguette slices with dip, sliced fresh fruits, and marinated vegetables. Not stuff that your normal auntie puts out on the table.

Along with the fresh fruits, she had sliced veggies for toppings, mini shanghai lumpia with sweet and sour dip as well as rice. I liked her presentation of the rice. No giant Zoijirushi orchid patterned rice cooker here (although I like those and I want one!)! She even had baked mini potatoes along with sliced honeybaked ham. Snacks not pictured were the boiled peanuts (yum!), assorted sliced cheeses and sausages plus chips and guacamole dip.

And yes...oh yes...the fried salt and pepper chicken wings! It ain't no partay unless you gots the wings! They also had sliced fruits for the chocolate fountain! For the younger kids they also had pizza but we made sure TC had a few bits of greenery! The only thing missing was pancit which, although Chinese in origin, is traditional to serve at Filipino birthday parties because long noodles symbolize long life.

Okay, does Filipino style spaghetti count? I'm not a fan of "sweet" spaghetti but Bert tried this and said it was pretty good. No sliced hotdogs in there though.

This is what I really enjoyed! The roast beef! My friend's dad, a retired Navyman and cook, made this. The curvy covered dish had the kickass gravy with mushrooms. This was just like my dad's! Gotta hand it to the Navy cooks, they really know how to do it right.

Last year they had a lechon, complete with decapitated head and apple in its mouth. This tasted just as good!

Coronado

Last week, on a beautiful gorgeous Friday, I attended a counselor training for the AVID program at the Coronado Community Center. The sky was so nice and clear and the weather quite pleasant (mid 70's). Little did we know what lay in store over the weekend.The Coronado Community Center is located next to Glorietta Bay, acroff from these high rise condos.

I took the "long" way, which was taking the Strand instead of the freeway to the Coronado Bridge. I don't know about you, but I do not like driving on bridges. I have nightmares about those things. Plus, I didn't want to deal with traffic from my house to the 805. I'm used to a 5 minute commute so anything over that sucks for me. My husband suggested taking the Strand since there wouldn't really be any traffic (well there was at the very end after passing the Navy Seal base). I ended up taking the Strand home as well. Again, my fear of traffic and having to drive over that damn bridge, as beautiful as it may be. Look below, you can see the Coronado Hotel peeking above the trees.

This was a sculpture called "Sea Passage" (2005) by James Hubbell.

Luckily for me, I missed grade day but I found out later that the machine that scores grades wasn't working. The students would get their grades the following Monday...As with every grading period come the inevitable phone calls from parents and complaints from students to switch out of certain teachers' classesand so on...Stuff I get to look forward to in the next few weeks!

The Answer to Greenbox #5

 And this painted utility box is located...

on the Northwest corner of 24th and National City Blvd (aka the "Mile of Cars"). Congratulations to Lotus. For her prize, she gets my old fruit and vegetable peelings for her mulch.
I need to make these harder!

Fried oysters

Yeah, that might sound a bit gross, but I really have a craving for deep fried panko coated oysters or 'oyster fry' as it's called on the package). I bought a small tray at the takeout counter in Mitsuwa a few weeks ago with TC. I think we'll go there tomorrow (since I have no work and she has no school) and pick up a few Japanese food items. The takoyaki we had wasn't so great but the fried oysters were.

Bert's going to go in for work tomorrow. I have some errands to do anyways, like buy Halloween candy and paper towels. Too bad there aren't any decent PG movies out there. They all pretty much suck. Lately, we've been watching the Harry Potter flicks on dvd. "Order of the Phoenix" comes out in early December. The best and darkest movie yet.

Update

Good news. The Harris fire is pretty much died down. The winds blew the other way. No danger to Eastlake, Bonita, etc...Our place was far from the fiery danger but we spent last night at Bert's mom's place just to be safe. Even though we can go back tonight, we'll be there another night. Plus, TC gets to spend time with her Lola that way. All schools, as I thought, have cancelled classes this whole week which means I don't work for this whole week either. Two of my coworkers went on the educators trip to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. They sure picked a good week to be out. Lucky for them, their neighborhoods aren't in danger. My bro in law has a friend whose parents' house was spared by the fire in Rancho Bernardo. You know how they had those scrolling bars down at the bottom of the tv screen...listing streets and addresses of the burnt homes? Well, several homes on that particular street were burned including a neighbor two houses away, but their house was either saved or untouched by the fire. It's wierd how these things happen.

Fire

I went home early today because of the massive wildfires all over San Diego county. All classified and certificated staff were dismissed at 1:30 pm by our Principal. The only people who were to stay were the Administrators. Although east Chula Vista is not in direct danger from the fire, the air quality was (and still is) so bad that no one was allowed outside, PE was cancelled, etc. Parents were picking up their students en masse at the main office so they ended up moving kids to the cafeteria and gym to get picked up. It was pretty crazy. I had to see a student in a classroom to give him his college letter of recommendation. I heard and saw kids coughing, wheezing and looking miserable. The district has cancelled school for tomorrow but we are on call for Wednesday. Four years ago school (and work for me) was cancelled for one whole week.

What a day this was. I woke up to the sound of the howling wind. We live on a hill and our bedroom window faces east. Our palm tree in the back yard was whipping back and forth. Leaves everywhere in the front yard. After the sun rose, you could see the dark ominous cloud rising above the mountains. It was strange seeing parts of the sky crystal clear at 6:30 am but towards the southeast, dark and cloudy. I keep thinking back to the fires from four years ago. The sky was dark as were the clouds. Yesterday and today (and tomorrow) - hot (80 degrees), sunny in parts, but hazy, and windy. It's going to be in the 90's tomorrow and that won't help these awful conditions. Bert's work called him and told him to stay home. The freeways are pretty much closed as well. TC went to school but the kids were dismissed by noon. I have a feeling that school/work will be cancelled for the week. Scary, these fires! There's one in San Ysidro but that is contained from what I heard. It's a few miles near my parents place. Ironically the fire, allegedly set by some kids, started in a canyon near a friend's new home in Ocean View Hills in San Ysidro. We were just there for his daughter's birthday party. His backyard has an awesome view of Mexico up to Point Loma.

There is also a small fire on East Otay Lakes Road 5 miles past the Woods at Eastlake. Nothing really close to our place, but it's scary for us since we live near a small canyon and there WAS a small fire there several years ago. For more info on the wildfires, check the news .

Update - 5 pm
Eastlake, Bonita, San Miguel Ranch and Rolling Hills are under voluntary evacuation so at this point, it's just a precaution. Same with my bro and sis and they live in the Heritage area of Otay Ranch. We live on the other side in Rancho del Rey. Seriously, we packed our clothes, toiletries, got our important documents, photo albums, plus food and water just in case we need to get the hell out. Bert's sis is up in the Mt. Carmel area and haven't been told to evacuate yet. Packing our stuff really made me think about what's really important. We're lucky since we're not in a life and death situation where we have to get out with no time to think and reflect on what we need to bring.

Update 7:50 pm
Okay, we're going to Bert's mom's place. My bro and sis are going to our parents house in Otay Mesa. The fire jumped Proctor Valley Road and although it's pretty far from their place and our place (10 miles or so), it's still too close for comfort. Those embers can still travel and end up near us. People that live in Bella Lago (new home development in East Chula Vista) and in the Woods now have mandatory evacuation. Soooo, we'd rather be safe than sorry. I'd hate to be sleeping, then find out that the fire is in our backyard!

Greenbox #5

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Guess the location of this greenbox. There are a few clues in the photo... Answer to post next week.

Marukai

A few days ago, TC and I went to check out this new Japanese $1.50 store, Marukai.
It's on the corner of Balboa and Mercury, right off the163 exit aaaaand, just a few seconds away from Mitsuwa

There are going to be two other Marukai/Daiso stores, one for groceries and one for home furnishings. We went at 11 am so there was parking, but the lot is sooo small. Good luck going there when everyone and their mom is there. I didn't take any pictures inside because I felt too self conscious, plus the clerks were watching everyone like hawks. The floors are kind of fkd up. They put in this laminate flooring which has a raised seam in some areas. Feels wierd walking on it. Almost everything there is $1.50, unless marked otherwise.

So, if you like to get cheap ass shit like knick knacks, home items, toiletries, plastic wares, doo dads and cheap toys, this is the place. I bought two lipliner pencils, plus some unintentially hilarious Japanese stationary with "Engrish" . For example, I bought a packet that had a little girl and a red dog on it which proclaimed, "We love park of the day of rain" and in big letters, "Rainy Strolling". WTF!!!! But it was so cute, I had to have it. Another packet had the envelopes depicting a fuzzy toy bear climbing a tree. Those said "It is a coming here" and "Bear is Life - May the fortunate occurrence start to you" and if that weren't enough,also had this nugget of advice, "Happiness is waiting at the point. You will take a trip fortunate together with me."!!!!!

Pei Wei revisited

[Update - Closed and is now a bank]

This past Saturday, we met Bert's mom and his brother for lunch. Bert just came in from his haircut, while his bro and mom were in the area doing errands and such. It was my second time and Bert's first there. Here's the self serve area.

We ordered three different dishes. We ended up getting two wrong dishes and got one whole new dish as well as a $10 giftcard for their fkup. The first dish was the lemon and black pepper chicken with white rice. I didn't really like this. I don't like eating chicken in restaurants. Always too salty. This dish wasn't really memorable for me because it was so generic tasting.
This was SUPPOSED to be the Ginger Garlic Beef with Broccoli and brown rice. Instead, they gave us the Mongolian Beef which has neither broccoli nor ginger in it. This was the first mistake I noticed. We ended up liking the Mongolian beef but asked them to just give us the broccoli on the side. That took forever and we only got five pieces. I hope they weren't like the chefs in the movie "Waiting"...

This was the third dish and the second mistake. We ordered the Honey Glazed Shrimp. When I first saw this, I thought, "Damn, that's some pretty big and chunky shrimp." Yeah, shrimp on steroids. It was actually chicken. We checked the receipt which clearly said "shrimp". So Bert pointed this out to the flustered waitress (and there was only one), who then got the manager. He apologized, got us a new order and gave our table a $10 giftcard.

Prior to our table's order mixup, we heard and saw another family at a table meet the same fate. They too got a wrong dish and complained about it. The manager had to go out to kiss their ass too and give them a gift card. Suffice it to say, I don't really want to go here again. Their food is dumbed down Chinese food just like PF Changs. And just to let you know, we weren't a-holes about this. It was puzzling since the restaurant wasn't packed. There were only 2 or 3 other tables filled when we got there. I know this is a new place, give them a break, yadda yadda. But two mixups when it was clearly ordered? The cooks must have been asleep or on auto pilot.

This is the shrimp now...

Wait a minute, maybe those pictures are reversed! Either way, they both looked the same. The shrimp was better tasting than the chicken and that was polished off quickly. Pei Wei again? No way!

Evil Charlie Brown

Here's Bert (I'm cropped out) at the Bday/Halloween costume party last night.
Poor Bert - he came all decked out in his glow-in-the dark scary skull mask and gloves, and almost made the birthday girl's little sister cry. One of TC's classmate's had a bday/costume party which was hosted by her grandparents who live a few streets up from us. Man, did they have their whole house (inside and out) decked out for this party! Anyhow, Bert's hooded robe was closed (so you couldn't see his Charlie Brown shirt) and he came in with a skulking stance and the little girl was kind of freaking out, so he took off his mask so she wouldn't be as scared. Wrong costume for the wrong crowd! He was going to wear all black, but I thought it would be funny if he wore his Charlie Brown shirt with shorts. A few years ago, he wore this black mullet wig I bought for him and went as a trashy rocker dude. One teenaged kid asked him if he was "Uncle Jesse" - we had to let that sink in for a minute before it registered in our old farty minds. The kid was referring to "Uncle Jesse" which is John Stamos' character in "Full House" (hated that show!). Well, it wasn't this Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard!
The costumes included one pirate, one girl mummy, one Mulan, one witch (TC), one Shar Pei (from "High School Musical" - hey, dont' ask me, I don't watch or listen to that shit), one Ariel the Mermaid, and two girls wearing a 50's style outfit. The birthday girl was wearing a red cheongsam and had chopsticks in her hair. Her parents were Fred and Wilma Flintstone. The grandpa was a "tacky American tourist" complete with a loud Hawaiian shirt with nekkid chicks on it and the grandma (the mastermind of the party) was a bum. She had on a loose shirt and her "britches" were literally help up by rope. Her hair was all messy and sticking up in different directions. She really did look like she would have been at home sleeping on sidewalk in the East Village.
I came as a witch, my standard outfit for the past five years, except for last year when I went as Joe Elliott from Def Leppard, circa the "Photograph" video (I still loooove that song!). Bits and pieces of my outfit for this year are still arriving in the mail. I originally wanted to go as Angus Young of AC/DC but I procrastinated and I may have to do that one next year instead. I don't have enough time to go out and shop for boy's suits and then alter them to fit me. Plus, I'd have to buy a matching cap and tie and get an AC/DC patch. Too much work. This year, I'll be a member of the House of Slytherin (the "bad" house in Hogwarts, from the Harry Potter series).

Rally's and Asia Cafe

Yesterday was a busy day.

TC had her CCD class then afterward we had a quick bite to eat at Rally Burgers in Imperial Beach before heading off to her troupe's dance performance near the 32nd St. Navy base. It was for a Filipino organization's celebration for the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.

Back to Rally's on Palm Avenue in IB. Yeah, yeah, it's fast food! Gasp! You know, we just had a hankering for these burgers. Before we went to NYC this summer, we thought these were pretty good. What the hell were we thinking? Compared to Shake Shack's, these puppies suck big ole gorilla balls with a raging case of elephantitis! We're never going here again. But then again, we know full well that we shouldn't expect gourmet quality when the burgers are only 99 cents, eh!

This was my "plain" hamburger which wasn't plain at all, despite Bert's request. It had pickles and mustard. Ugh. But I picked 'em out and we were in a hurry to get to her practice and performance on time so I didn't care that much.
Bert's chicken sandwich...standard. TC's Cheeseburger. Same as mine was but with cheese. She takes after me - she doesn't like pickles either.
We got to her practice on time and went to her performance at a park near the naval base. Looked like everyone was having a great time time - kids playing games and winning prizes and the old people sitting in the shade eating bbq and Filipino food. Luckily TC only had to do one dance. She and another girl were supposed to do two, but it was simplified to one. After the kids' performances, TC was hungry. We decided to have Laotian food, so we took the long way to Asia Cafe. We warily drove from park back onto Main Street and onto National Blvd...

Oops, this was actually on our way to Asia Cafe after leaving TC's performance (out of order shot!). You can see this place from the 5 freeway in National City. I've always wondered what it's like to have your palm read, but I'm always afraid to find out.

We ended up taking Division to 47th and onto the corner of 47th and Market where Asia Cafe is located. Bert had the iced coffee and I tried the Coconut Juice. That's part of TC's mug having a taste. I ended up giving her the coconut meat (3 big pieces) that were in my drink.

We had two orders of fresh spring rolls (they're not on the menu). One is missing from the plate. There's the Nem Khao (Laotian fried rice) with the lettuce leaves and cilantro.

The BBQ chicken appetizer which, unfortunately, was a bit burnt. I knew we weren't going to finish this - it was meant to take home and enjoy the next day. Check out that chicken spine. That skin was soo good!

Here's a closer look at that Nem Khao. What is the cook's secret? How does she get it so nice and crunchy without burning it? It tastes so good with tiny bits of peanuts, thinly sliced green onions, cilantro and that stringy sour sausage.

We (mostly I, ha ha) polished off the fried rice and took home our sticky rice and BBQ Laotian style chicken to go. Before we left, I also bought a bag of their crunchy fried pork rinds ($2.00) and their fried bananas ($5.00). I plan to make a sugar syrup to drizzle on the bananas.

On our way home, Bert reminded me that we still had a Bday/Halloween costume party to attend! Sheeyit - I had forgotten about that. No rest and relaxation for me today despite being ill.