December Travels - The First Leg

I hopped on a bunch of planes over the last couple weeks (and I'm sure I'll be on a bunch more before the end of the month). Let me show you, part by part, where I visited.

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It all started, belatedly, with a shaving of the Mo.

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You know, when you even it all out, it doesn't look that creepy bad (well, maybe just slightly less so).

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All back to normal...so to speak. Clean and proper and ready for air travel!

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6:00 AM flight out of SFO. A bit too early for my tastes but a good feeling nonetheless to be back on a plane.

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I found myself, on the other end of that flight, in New Jersey. Not wanting to waste a perfectly beautiful afternoon (and my several hour long layover) in the Garden State, I promptly hopped on a train and got myself into New York City to meet up with some old friends. You can see us (Traci, Kurt and I) posing for a pic here as we strolled through the High Line Park. For those of you who haven't heard of it, the High Line used to be an elevated freight rail line that ran through part of Manhattan, which recently got converted into a park/walkway.

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Kurt, Myself and Phil (who also found time to come out for a visit) enjoying some crisp December air (and keeping our hands nice and warm in our respective jackets).

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Can't really argue about how beautiful the High Line looks with the golden hue of the setting sun.

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All four of us near the southern terminus at the end of our walk. In addition to having the opportunity to catch up with good friends, I also appreciated being able to stretch out the legs in preparation for another several hours worth of sitting on the plane.

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And of course it would be a shame to go all the way to one of the great food cities of the world and not partake in a bit of caloric consumption. We dined at the Lobster Place in Chelsea Market where we helped ourselves to the following delectable treats: Tarragon shrimp roll, tray of fresh oysters on the half shell, lobster bisque and scallop & bacon chowder. All delicious. Worth a stop off if you happen to be craving seafood. We also stopped by the Tuck shop on the way out to grab an Aussie pie for the road (which I later consumed on the plane).

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Then right back on the train, back to EWR and back onto a (very full) plane heading to my final destination.

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I had this meal (vegetarian kofta curry) part way through the flight and it'll give you a little bit of a hint as to where I might be headed next.

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Thank you very much to Traci, Kurt and Phil for keeping me company during my layover. Great to see each of you even if only for a couple hours. Keep checking back in for the next part of the epic trip. Hopefully I'll get around to posting it sooner rather than later.

Thanksgiving 2K11

I'm gonna rush this post a bit because I gotta get to bed, but I wanted to share these pics of my glorious Thanksgiving break for you all.

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So, Abbott gave me a turkey and I decided I should be a "grown-up" this holiday season and cook it. Here is step one of the cooking process: brining to ensure the meat is juicy and flavorful.

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Tearing up the day old french bread loaf in preparation for making the stuffing.

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In to the oven goes the turkey. Just a light coating of butter on the skin and a few chopped vegetables lining the inside of the pan and stuffed into the body cavity.

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Our glorious turkey about half way through cooking during the second baste. Starting to look nice and browned with help from the delicious butter coating and generous basting.

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And the final product! Nice and crispy skin, juicy meat. Very, very good by my standards and I think a pretty good job for a first go.

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Mum's mac nut stuffing recipe to the rescue! Simply celery, onions, bread, mac nuts, dried cranberries and vegetable stock. A huge hit with the guests.

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Doing a final brush with the juices just before carving up the turkey. A happy chef.

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Crazy table full of hungry guests as the food starts to come out of the kitchen. You can see some holiday favorites in this pic including mashed sweet potatoes, gravy, turkey, cranberry sauce (from the can), salad and stuffing.

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Charles, Sang (not pictured is baby Keri who was sound asleep in my room), Amelia, Mari and Alyssa. Nick, Priyanshu and myself were otherwise busy getting all the final details ready.

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My dinner plate (Temuka pottery!) with all the delicious food! Yum.

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And I even saved a bit of room for dessert: dutch apple pie, homemade pumpkin pie, vanilla ice cream and a homemade pear & brie tart.

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We did well, but there's still plenty o'meat on that turkey. Guess what I've been eating all week...

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Thank you most of all to Nick, my sous chef, for helping immensely with the prep/cooking. Priyanshu came early and leant a hand too. Finally, thanks to all the guests for coming by to help me eat all the food (or at least most of it). Happy holidays all! I've got more pictures coming at some point but I think I'll be a bit busy this coming week. Take care everyone and see ya next time!

Movember 2K11: Week 4

So here I am at the last few days of this glorious month of facial follicular growth. I have had a number of generous donors contribute recently, many of whom have desired to see some impressive progress. I hope that my mo' meets those desires. Thanks to those of you that have given so far. And those who haven't given yet, we still have time for additional donations!

http://mobro.co/wes2225

LA Auto Show 2011

So, with the busy Thanksgiving weekend just about completed (and all the eating that entailed), I'm a bit behind with my blogging. Anyways, so here I am posting about last weekend's quick trip to LA for the Los Angeles International Auto Show.

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The trip starts, as with many other trips, at SFO. I had a great opportunity to check out the current SFO museum exhibit of vintage Italian Motorcycles from the '50s and '60s. Molto bene.

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Upon arrival at LAX, GKO airport shuttle (aka Grant) picked me up and whisked me off to dinner at "The Balcony" in Irvine. First up, sizzling black pepper beef.

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Accompanied by spicy tomato garlic chicken. I'd give the food a thumbs up if you happen to be looking for a good "Asian fusion" kind of restaurant in the OC. They also have a good shaved snow kind of dessert that tasted pretty good but we ate too quickly without capturing an image.

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On to the important things. The next day, we sat in traffic for over an hour before getting to downtown to check out the cars. Apologies to Josh for only being able to say hello and goodbye. Pictured above is a Morgan Aero Supersport. I've been really liking Morgan's design ethos as of late with their throwback styling yet incorporation of modern materials and performance specs. Very impressive for a relatively small company.

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Another favorite of mine currently, Lotus makes some great modern cars. I had an opportunity to sit in an Evora, like that one pictured above before, and it is a lovely sports car. Unfortunately, just a bit out of my price range at the moment.

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Mercedes Benz' brand new C63 AMG Black Series coupe. What a fiercely fast looking vehicle.

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One of the great things about the LA Auto show, compared to a smaller show like SF or San Jose, is their ability to attract new car unveilings and one-off concept cars like the Jaguar CX16 shown above. I think it's got some real promise and proves that Jags aren't just the boring choice for old rich geezers.

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Quite possibly my favorite from the whole show was the unveiling of the Subaru BRZ concept car which shows Subaru's vision for the new sports car they've jointly developed with Toyota. The car utilizes a chassis designed by Toyota, coupled with an engine and real wheel drivetrain developed by Subaru. I love the Rally Blue color and aggressive, STI styling even if the rear wing screams "boy racer".

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And a pic of the back so that you can see the beautifully styled taillights.

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New Beetle R. Faster, but still no chance of being my next car. Sorry.

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I finally got to see the car I've been coveting for the past year: the VW Golf R. Unfortunately, I left with the feeling that the features you get do not justify the $15k more you pay for this over the standard GTI.

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And now for Toyota's version of the car they jointly developed with Subaru. It will be sold in the US as a Scion and called the FR-S. This concept car is a beauty to behold, but having seen pictures of what the actual production car will look like, it's a lot less attractive than what you see above. Mainly, they really dropped the ball on the tail and made it look much cheaper than the elegant lights of the concept car.

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Congratulations to Sebastian Vettel for another dominant Formula 1 season. All hail the beautiful car which he drove to so many victories on the GP circuit. What a beautiful piece of modern, automobile engineering. And many thanks to Infiniti for bringing us a F1 car to drool over.

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The day after that, Grant & I managed to fit in a mountain biking session in Aliso Viejo with his buddies. The weather wasn't that great (windy and spitting rain) but we managed to have a pretty good time. Here we are at the halfway point (before I broke a bike chain and had to walk part of the way back).

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Okay, on to the crazy part of the trip. Due to the heavy rain that So Cal experienced that weekend, the Sepulveda Blvd tunnel underneath the southern runways got flooded (see the above pic) and resulted in the most insane airport traffic I've ever seen. It took us almost an hour to get from the I-105 freeway exit to Terminal 1 (I was departing from Terminal 7)! I ended up hopping out of the car at Terminal 1 fifteen minutes before my departure time, getting yelled at by a police officer for walking in traffic in the process and sprinting all the way across the airport to Terminal 7 on the other side, through security and to my gate. Luckily things inside the terminal were a lot less hectic and it seemed as if most everyone was jammed up outside trying to get to the airport rather than crowding it up inside. Thankfully I can tell this story now and laugh about it because I didn't end up missing my flight (made it with a minute to spare), but at the time, it was pretty nuts.

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As always, thanks very much to Grant for hosting me, providing transportation and spending your weekend with me. I also apologize for you having to sit through all that airport traffic to drop me off. I guess it was something neither of us could have predicted. Hope you all enjoy the pics. Take care and keep an eye out for my Thanksgiving post...coming soon(ish)!

Movember 2K11: Week 3

Entering into the last half of the month! I'm particularly pumped because I've been getting encouraging comments from friends saying the mo looks much fuller than previous years. There might be hope for me yet to fully join both sides of my "fu man chu"! Anyways, I sent out my one mass email of the year and got a few more kind donations. Hopefully there will be a few more yet as we get through this Thanksgiving holiday period. Thanks to the generous donators! Until next week.

Movember 2K11: Week 2

So, here I am at week two. A little bit more of a mo and a few more donations to the cause. Thanks again to those who gave. We've got a couple more weeks yet in this journey.

TCT 2011

This past week, I had the privilege of attending the 2011 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics conference (aka TCT) held this year in San Francisco. Abbott gave us engineers each a day pass to go listen to physicians speak about current/future medical device products, procedures and pathologies. They also had industry booths and live cases streaming that showed challenging procedures being performed or innovative devices being used. Check out a few of the pics I managed to snap:

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Welcome to TCT 2011!

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They had an exhibit called "Hands on Hearts" that allowed individuals an opportunity to handle cadaver hearts that had been pre-dissected to show specific disease states (and occasionally any previously implanted devices). Very interesting to see (up close no less) the kinds of things that go wrong with hearts that we (as an industry) work so hard to treat.

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A neat diversion from the seriousness of the conference, the "Art from the Heart" exhibit showed one artist's interpretation of the inspiration of hearts through sculpture (including marble, bronze and wood mediums).

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While the last several TCT conferences have alternated between SF and Washington DC, it looks like next year's will be in Miami. As much as I'd like to go, I won't be holding my breath for Abbott to send me.

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The R&D group met up at Thirsty Bear near the Moscone Center for some after-TCT libation refreshment. I enjoyed a cheese/beer pairing called "bucheret" which matched a soft cheese from Redwood Hill Dairy in Sonoma, CA with a Thirsty Bear's golden vanilla beer (ale infused with vanilla beans). Yum.

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I got to hear a lot of feedback from physicians regarding the product I work on, MitraClip, and also about mitral valve treatments in general. Also a good opportunity to catch up with former co-workers at other companies as well. Cheerio!

Movember 2K11: Week One

One week in and the mo has, more or less, just started to show. Hard to tell whether it's growing in better, worse or the same as last year but we'll see in due time. What I can tell you for sure, though, is that my first donation of the 2011 Campaign has come in (anonymously). Thanks Donor #1! Keep the contributions coming. It's all going to a good cause. That's it for now. Signing off...

On the Menu: Slice of Pie

Just thought I'd continue the recent post binge by showing you all my dinner for this week: Sweet potato shepherd's pie. Subbed in ground turkey, which presumably made things a bit healthier than ground beef (but arguably less tasty). Topping included a mix of organic sweet potatoes and some cheddar/jack cheese. Overall, pretty yummy! Thumbs up for the "Food for Flatters" cookbook once again coming through.

Yuzu Sushi & Grill

Just a quick food post to show some pics of last night's dinner (w/Nick) at a nice, hole-in-the-wall sushi place in San Mateo. Check it out.

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Spicy Pork Salad. Nothing special about the salad (just lettuce, 1000 island-style dressing) but the slices of pork had an amazing flavor and just the right touch of spice.

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Nick has a weakness for beef tongue so we ordered this beef tongue stew. Nice, sauce-y stew that complemented the tender beef tongue very nicely.

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A selection of sashimi: hamachi (yellow fin), shiromi (some sort of white fish), maguro (tuna) and sake (salmon). Very delicious, especially the shiromi which I could not identify as a fish I have had before.

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Apparently not content with the food we had eaten up to that point, we also indulged in a bit of dessert as well. Black sesame crème brûlée (tasty in a new sort of way), green tea ice cream and sliced kiwifruit (unknown origin...didn't come with a Zespri label).

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Overall, quite a delicious meal and while the food tasted great, it ended up being pricey enough that I won't be coming regularly. I thought we got pretty decent service throughout the evening from the jolly Japanese lady. Give this place a try if you happen to be craving sushi in San Mateo!