Copyright © 2004-2005 Anup Sekhar
I am so glad that Clint Eastwood won so many awards last night at the Oscars. Million $ Baby was phenomenal, in my opinion, and it deserved all the accolades that came its way. I feel sorry for Martin Scorcese though. Well, he is much younger than Eastwood and will have another chance, I am sure. I also liked the victories for Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank and Cate Blanchett, all deserving performances. I am sure Jamie Foxx deserved his too but I haven't seen Ray just yet. Since I am a die hard fan, I wish Johnny Depp had won though.
A good friend of mine has started blogging and he calls his blog - crewcut. Quite an appropriate name since I have never seen the guy with more than half an inch of hair on his head and I have known him for almost 20 years. You can find his nascent blog here.
Eug and I returned from L.A. on Friday. Since I had forgotten to take my change of clothes, we didn't stop anywhere else on the way as we had planned originally but just headed straight back home. It was so good to be back in the rush hour traffic of 101. L.A. is a literal mess as far as its traffic goes - any time of the day. I thank the city planners of Gilroy and Morgan Hill for expanding the number of lanes on 101 there. Its so much easier to head back now.
Eug and I headed down to L.A. today evening and we reached here around 10pm. We are staying at a cousin's place. I am here to get a tourist visa for Argentina as well as to see an aunt. After driving all the way here, I realized that I didn't bring the backpack in which I had packed my change of clothes. I will have to depend on my cousin-in-law to provide the clothes for tomorrow. We are not yet sure if we are going to head back home tomorrow or if we will stop somewhere enroute. Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo are options. Will decide tomorrow.
I was exhausted after the long drive on Monday and couldn't get much work done on Tuesday. I relaxed in the evening by watching a fabulous movie called El Crimen del padre Amaro starring the hottest Mexican actor, Gael Garcia Bernal (of the The Motorcycle Diaries fame). Bernal stars as a young priest who arrives at a small rural community to assist an older priest. There, he succumbs to temptation by falling in love with a local girl and complications ensue. This was a controversial movie when it came out and there was an outcry from the Catholic Church. The brouhaha backfired on the church and the ticket sales shot through the roof making it the highest grossing Mexican movie of all time.
Got back late last night from Death Valley. We had to drive through some severe storms to get back. It's a tiring and long 8 hour road trip from the park to back home. The trip was fabulous and except for monday, we hiked, ate like pigs and drank a lot. I would like to meet the folks who declared that death valley is the driest place in North America. It was far from that during this weekend. It was raining almost incessantly except for Sunday when we got a respite. It wasn't that intense on Saturday when we entered the park from Lone Pine and we did get to do a couple of small hikes (about 5 miles in total) including climbing the tallest of the sand dunes in the park.
Sunday was much better and we even got to see the Sun occasionally. We hiked a total of 8 miles on Sunday. The wildflower display was amazing because of all the rain they have been getting. We even got to see the rare desert five-spot flower which only blooms during winter rains. We ate most of the time in a fine restaurant called Corkscrew at the Furnace Creek Ranch. Both the nights we spend there, we camped in Mesquite Spring Campground about 50 miles from Furnace Creek. It was a bit of a drive but well worth it.
As soon as we had setup camp on Sunday night, the rain came pouring down and never stopped until we left the park the next day. We even had to party inside the rented van. On Monday, we took a tour of Scotty's Castle since we couldn't do much outdoors. It was a living history tour, meaning we were pretending this to be 1939 with the tour guide. It was a bit too long for me at 1.5 hrs. The whole thing could have been compacted into 20 minutes or so. The building itself was interesting and I liked the mission style architecture.
As has been the practice every other year or so, I am headed to the ominous sounding but spectacular national park called Death Valley in southeastern California. You can see a previous trip report here. The original plan called for car camping on Saturday and backpacking into one of the numerous canyons there on Sunday but it seems like the weather may not cooperate this time and we are planning to car camp both nights. I am going with 5 other friends. We are headed to the town of Lone Pine along the picturesque Hwy 395 today afternoon. We will spend the night there in a motel before heading to the valley on Sat morning. I have always loved this park and can't wait to get there. Will post photos once I return.
Tonight, Eug & I went to a fine Japanese eating establishment in SF called Hana Zen. We have been meaning to go here for a while because they are one of the 1000 points restaurants on opentable.com (more on this later) and also because besides sushi, they serve yakitori dishes.
Yakitori primarily refers to grilled chicken though they have other meats and vegetables served with the same preparation method. They use specially imported charcoal from Japan to do this and each serving consists of meat or vegetables in 2 skewers. In Japan, they have the Yakitori stands or yakitori-ya serving patrons in small shops with a few bar stools. We tried the chicken wings, filet mignon, garlic pork and green pepper yakitoris at Hana Zen and with the exception of the wings, they were all very tasty. Eug, being the sashimi lover ordered a dinner of the same. Hana Zen is a nice place located in the downtown area. There is a nice looking wine bar right next to it called First Crush which we will definitely check out soon.
If you have not checked out opentable.com, you should do so. We have been members for a few years and I have to say that we have never been disappointed with a restaurant we chose via them. We have even made reservations in Boston and New York via opentable. You can accumulate points per reservation and some of the restaurants get you 1000 points which roughly translates to $10.00. When you reach a certain level of points, they send you these dining checks which you can then use in lieu of cash at these restaurants. We used a $50 dining check today at Hana Zen.
It's been raining cats and dogs here in the Bay Area for the last few days. So much for sunny California. Next weekend is a long weekend because of President's day (monday) and I am headed to Death Valley National Park for camping/backpacking with 7 friends. Unfortunately the forecast is for showers (not rain) there. I hope we have enough breaks in between the downpour. This will be my 3rd trip to the park and the only wet one. Expect some photos soon.
We had a quiet dinner at home on Valentine's day and watched a fabulous German movie titled Nowhere in Africa. It's a bit long at 2 hours and 20 minutes but was quite moving. It's about the travails of a jewish family escaping the holocaust by moving to Kenya from Germany. You can read more about the movie here:
http://www.greencine.com/webCatalog?id=30350&element=nowhere+in+africa
We moved recently from Netflix to Greencine since they seem to have a bigger collection of indie and foreign movies. They also have porn. :-)
I am not really sure why I stopped blogging even before I left China last year. Here I am, almost a full year after I went to China, trying to resuscitate my blog. Hopefully, I will be more consistent this year.
After China, I spend a week in South Korea and then headed home in June. After a month here, I rejoined Eug in India and then we spend a week in Taiwan together before heading home again in July. Didn't have any more international trips last year but we did go backpacking and snowboarding quite a few times. I have been very lazy about processing my photos and putting them online but plan to do so in the coming months.
Happy Valentine's day, btw.
Copyright © 2004-2005 Anup Sekhar