serene’s posterous

The TV show I enjoy the most now.  Yes, it is super cheesy, and probably takes place in an alternate universe where inappropriate songs are sung by high school kids.  But it is great fun, and there's lots of good singing.  Lea Michele has a lovely voice (Cory Monteith as Finn suffers in comparison).  My favorites so far are the covers of Journey's Don't Stop Believin' and Queen's Somebody to Love. 

We had the tastiest thosai (also known as dosa) in a while at the morning reception (after the wedding dinner the night before) of our friends' wedding in LA.  The groom's parents had hired caterer to make thosai for the guests on request, in addition to other tasty Indian food (mostly south Indian food I think).  The spiced potato filling (does that mean it is a masala thosai?) was particularly flavorful. 

I haven't had thosai in a while, but I sometimes purchase it for breakfast in the weekends when I am in Singapore.  It was great to get a taste of home!  Now it is time to look for a place that sells tasty thosais in the Bay Area...it would be several more months before I get to go back to Singapore for a visit.

And congrats to Aarthi and Vijay!

Saw this article on NYtimes.  It seems it is now fashionable to wander around New York sipping from a freshly opened young coconut.  Eu-Jin used to buy coconuts from the Chinese supermarket and hack them open for us to enjoy.  And now the coconut water is a health food too?

I was pretty excited about taking this new fitness class at school - Functional Integrated Training.  I like the teacher and it seems interesting to learn about exercises and movement that help develop functional strength.  There's also a recent NYTimes article about developing functional fitness.  Unfortunately...it seems that there is a far higher demand for an Abs and Glutes class - over 70 persons showed up for it versus less than 10 for the F.I.T. class.  After 2 reasonably interesting classes (amazingly, tennis balls are really good at working out the tightness in my hip area), the F.I.T. class is going to switch to Abs and Glutes to reduce the load on the other class.  Are Abs and Glutes workouts the in-thing these days?

Push had horrible reviews, and didn't do all that well in the box office.  But surprisingly, I really enjoyed the movie.  It was exciting, since we really didn't know what was going to happen (unlike Wolverine, which was completely predictable).  The action scenes were good and more grounded because there was little CGI employed.  And having it set and filmed in Hong Kong makes it cooler too.  And in terms of acting, only Camilla Belle, as Kira, stuck out as being horribly anemic and boring.

Now that we now live so close to California Ave, it just seems to make sense to pop by to the farmers' market on Sunday a little more often.  Last Sunday was the first time we had gone to the market since we moved.  And it was more because a friend was visiting us, and is a big fan of farmers' markets.  There were lots of cooked food stands and produce stands, and also craft stands on the side closer to El Camino.  As expected, the produce looked really good but is also really expensive.  The selection was also probably better earlier in the day.  I only succumbed to buying 2 pomegranates for a dollar each, just because the samples were so sweet and tasty.  I wanted to get some of the pluots that I had also sampled, but they were just too pricey.  One of the highlights of the market was looking at the cats that were up for adoption from Nine Lives Foundation.

It was an OK action/ comicsuperhero movie.  It was pretty generic and not all that exciting - since we know what is going to happen, given that it is a presequel + origin story.  At least I was entertained.  That's probably because Hugh Jackman takes his role as Wolverine very seriously, and Liev Schreiber was good as his snarling brother.

We went there for lunch this week since it was less than 2 blocks away from our apartment and it always looks crowded.  We had the lunch special which was red snapper ceviche on tostada, shared salsa and chips, and agua fresca jamaica.  Overall I liked the food, but my tostada was burnt tasting, and the salad that came with the lunch special came only after we had finished eating the rest of the food.

I guess we picked this movie to watch because of the presence of Jason Statham and we had vague memories of the first movie.  This is the type of role that suits him the best.  He has to play it such that he is completely serious, otherwise the movie would just fall apart.  The movie is just too over the top and bizarre.  But I guess that's the whole point.

I liked this memoir by Azadeh Moaveni about her two years in Iran.  She was reporting for Time magazine, fell in love, got pregnant, then got married and had a baby in those two years.  The book gave some insight on the lives of the regular Iranian people and their Persian culture.  It seems that the author, as she grew up in California, had a generally idealistic view of her faith and Iran, but her extended time in Iran perhaps made her less idealistic.  I must be hard to straddle between the two cultures, her Western upbringing and the Persian and Muslim traditions.  I think this memoir at least gives us an idea about the psyche of the Iranian people.