Monday, October 31, 2005

my wonton is better than yours

I wasn't able to sleep until six a.m., which made getting up at 9:30 to go to dim sum a little painful. Dim sum, as always, was well worth it--Tammy, Shedletsky, Claudia, and I had a v. fun, v. leisurely brunch, replete with all the favorites (har gar/shrimp dumplings, egg custard buns, shrimp in bean curd, deep fried shrimp w/mayo, pork buns, etc.). We had a long discussion of various issues facing us in the near- to mid-future, leading to Tammy declaring that she was going to have to take matters into her own hands and become my life coach. This is extremely ironic, since I'm already her life coach, and I don't think that such things can be reciprocal. Also, Tammy/Shed/Claude expressed annoyance that the staff at the restaurant only seem to notice them when I'm with them; they've gone several times while I was gone, and always gotten mediocre tables and complete apathy from the waiters, but I showed up and we got a great table near the second-floor windows, and one of the women came over and had a five-minute conversation with me/us about a new dim sum restaurant that has opened in Palo Alto. That made the whole experience sweeter, if not more ridiculous.

I don't think we're going to play a second round of the Shrimp or Feet game; Shedletsky often refuses to try whatever we end up with, and since there isn't a prize of any kind, there is no incentive to keep eating tripe or pigs' feet. I'm sad, but I'm also pleased that I will be able to eat tasty dim sum for the next year without worrying about whether I'll have room to eat whatever nasty stuff shows up on the cart of sadness.

When Claude and I got home, we both succumbed to the shrimp coma and took naps for a couple of hours. I went out tonight and bought the first season of 'Lost', but I have yet to finish it off; hopefully I'll find time to watch this week. I did some desultory tv-watching and internet-surfing, and now I should try to sleep. I've had a queasy-feeling headache ever since I got back, probably due to jetlag, and I'm hoping that it will go away soon. Goodnight, everyone!

Sunday, October 30, 2005

jetlag is my enemy

I woke up at seven a.m., decided this was silly, and went back to bed for what I thought would be an hour or so. Instead, I slept uninterrupted until nearly five p.m. I have no idea how that happened--I went to bed before two a.m. last night, which means that I slept for fifteen hours. Even better, it's the end of daylight savings time tonight, and so the clock is very unfairly changing yet again.

Anyway, welcome to my pseudo-new blog; I can't promise that I will post every single night, like I tried to do in Hyderabad, but I will do my best. I've been home less than a week, but I need to start figuring out what the next step is--I'm excited to take on different projects at work, and I should definitely unpack and put my life back in order at home. To encourage this, I baked chocolate chip chewies tonight, which should earn at least a little bit of love from my roommates (who suffered the same chocolate chip chewy drought as I did, although mine was exacerbated by the vast quantities of Indian food served in the cafeteria at work). I also read part of a romance novel, and so the combination of those two activities indicates that I am almost fully reacclimated to my American life.