How to spend 3 days in SF: Day 2

After hitting the major tourist spots in the city on day 1, we switched our focus to THE "Silicon Valley", which I loosely defined as places between SF and San Jose that are related to computer technology. My friends started their day walking around Fisherman's Wharf, Union Square and China town. Then I drove them down South 101. Our first destination was the headquarter of Oracle at Redwood Shores. It was a pretty day with the fountain operating and the BMW Oracle Racing Yacht USA-17 on display at "Lake Ellison" We have also visited the campus of another Silicon Valley heavyweight: Google! While Oracle's HQ had that big corporation feel, Google's was more in line with the stereotypical "free-thinking" IT workers. We saw a few families playing at Google's beach volleyball court that Sunday. And we drove by (didn't go in) Steve Job's house in Palo Alto. Of course, we needed to visit his company at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino (their security guys were very hard working and immediately asked us to leave the parking lot) Finally, we went to where all these Silicon Valley ideas were originated from: Stanford University. (No exaggeration! Stanford's Dr. Terman was widely known as the Father of Silicon Valley) We had a good walk around the campus and reminisced about our college days. Finally we headed back north to Burlingame and had a good prime rib dinner at Broadway Prime. Stay tuned for Day 3!

[Update: found a visitor's guide to Silicon Valley, which is quite similar to what I mentioned]

How to spend 3 days in SF: Day 1

That's what I did last weekend 'coz my friends Eric and Lea (my best friend from high school!) visited from out of town. They followed my advices and booked a hotel at Fisherman's Wharf. The first place I took them to after they got off the plane, was a Hong Kong style restaurant in Millbrae for lunch (yeah, the airlines are so cheap these days and actually charge for those horrible airplane meals) Then I drove them to checkin to hotel. And I suggested them to take the cablecar from Fisherman's Wharf to downtown (Powell & Market) Unfortunately none of the cablecar (from Taylor or Beach St) worked and they ended up just walked around Ghiradelli Square. The next stop was Cliff House (and we stopped before Golden Gate Bridge since it's on the way anyway) and the beautiful pacific ocean, where we saw a bit of the sunset. Finally, we had dinner at Thanh Long, famous for its Vietnamese crab made with its secret recipe. It was really crowded of course (To be continued...)

Sports highlights: Packers did it again

Green Bay Packers are not my favourite sports team but they have been #2 on my NFL list since 1993. (Well, if they win a few more super bowls before the Cowboys getting their act together, I might need to switch my allegiance!) I'm really happy to see them winning this year (I picked Pittsburgh to win even though they were the underdog. I thought their experience would have helped a lot.) One person I have to thank is Clay Matthews Jr, father of Green Bay Linebacker Clay Matthews III. He has been to 2 NCAA National Championship games that his sons have played in (USC vs Texas and Oregon vs Auburn) and the Titans vs Rams Super Bowl that his brother played in. We all knew the outcome (not to mentioned the few AFC Championship games himself played in, against the ultimate winner, Denver Broncos) So he decided enough was enough and did NOT attend this one.

And I agree with this Rolling Stones (Magazine) review that the halftime show was BAD. I have nothing against Black Eyed Peas but sometimes too much is too much. Their trademark exaggerated looks and moves might be cool in a music video but I'm not sure if it fits into a major sports event. Judging from the better reviews of past performances by the likes of U2 and the Who, I think they should ask Genesis next year.