serene’s posterous

This is riffed off one of of my mom's regular dishes.  She would stir fry shrimp and squid with onions, peppers and tomatoes with a touch of sweet and sour sauce.  Since Eu-Jin doesn't eat shell fish or shrimp, this would be something I cook for myself only.

I don't have any sweet and sour sauce so my sauce is a tomatoey combination with tomato sauce, some sweet mirin, soy sauce and a touch of Sriracha sauce.  I stir fried the shrimp (no squid because I am too lazy to buy and prepare squid) to set aside first.  Then I stir fried garlic, onions, orange peppers and broccoli.  When the veggies were almost done, I added the cooked shrimp and tomatoes, as well as the pre-prepared sauce.

Attended a lovely wedding in Los Gatos today.  I just like the sentiment at weddings.  The commitment to love and honor each other, for better or for worse.  The promise of new experiences together...

Congrats to Bob and Felicia.

Entertaining.  Better than The Day the Earth Stood Still, which we
watched yesterday.  This movie was quite exciting, but nothing really
special or extraordinary.  I did like the neat montage in the opening
titles that describes the origin story.  And the Hulk is scarier when
he was in shadows - at the first transformation - before you know how
he looks like.  Liv Tyler had some bad lines, but at least she and
Edward Norton had some chemistry.
 
Also, there were funny bits about how tiresome it is to rip up clothes
- "más stretchy!"

The movie starts out quite strong (although Eu-Jin complains that there are no crampons in 1928 and points out that the ice axe is too short), but in the latter parts of the movie there were a lot of silly pyrotechnics and pointless action scenes.  The ending is sort of an anti-climax too.  The movie didn't make a lot of sense but at least it was sort of entertaining.

Keanu Reeves is well cast...his usual wooden acting skills are appropriately alien-like.  The kid (Jaden Smith) is quite annoying, and Jennifer Connelly has the thankless role as the female scientist.  John Cleese had a good cameo - and gave an impassioned argument on the behalf of humans...

Saw this article on NYtimes on sriracha sauce.  I love the garlicky chili taste of the sauce, because it reminds me of the garlic chili sauce we get in Singapore, kinda like the cousin to tomato sauce.  I got a bottle of the sauce recently from the Chinese grocery store, and have been using it liberally on all sorts of stuff.  I recently mixed some sriracha sauce with plain yogurt to make a weird egg salad.  It was strangely satisfying to have a pinkish slightly spicy egg salad.

Read this book by Tracy Chevalier during the flight to Kauai.  This is the second novel in the row I have read that has been made into a movie (and I haven't watched this movie either).  I like historical novels, and this one really immersed me in the world of the 1660s Delft, Holland.  It is also a neat idea...imagining how Vermeer came to paint this portrait of this girl with a pearl earring.  I think I have another of her novels lying around in the apartment, so I may read that next.

I am more of a tea person, but sometimes I just want some coffee for an extra caffeine fix.  My version of ghetto mocha is to mix some Trader Joe's freeze-dried instant coffee and some powdered Milo (thanks Vince!) in a small amount of hot water and then to add low-fat milk to the brim of the mug.  I would then just heat the drink in the microwave if I want something hot.

The movie was good fun.  Indeed, it was somewhat like a series of action sequences strung together.  But the action scenes are very well done and it was more intelligent than the usual run-of-the-mill action movies.  It was probably quite difficult for the young actors to fill in the roles that probably would forever be associated with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy etc.  I think the actors, particularly Chris Pine and Karl Urban, largely did a commendable job of capturing the essence of the characters without mimicry.  It does seem like there potentially will be many new movies to come with this new cast of characters.

* Spoiler Alert  *

This is one way of "rebooting" the series with the same characters and having Leonard Nimoy play Spock again...but I don't really like time travel plot devices.  There are just too many potential paradoxes in messing around with the timeline.

Instead of going to Big Dance on Friday night this year (because I was too tired after a week of a lot of lab and not enough sleep, and didn't get around to getting tickets), I watched Star Trek II with friends before watching the new Star Trek reboot later in the evening.

Admittedly, I have very little familiarity with the Star Trek lore.  I don't think I have watched any of the old TV series or the movies.  I may have caught a few episodes of the Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Enterprise, but I was not big fan.  It was probably a good thing to catch Star Trek II first because it made the new Star Trek movie more enjoyable later in the evening - I could appreciate some of the things the director/writers added just for the fans.

Star Trek II shows its age, since it is from 1982.  Ignoring the cheesy special effects, it was a reasonably good and suspenseful movie with the running theme about growing old and had some great lines.  I liked that the villain, Khan, was brilliantly over the top (plus that silly exposed decolletage of his costume).  The setup was a tad slow, but once the movie got going, it never got very dull again.

I found the movie okay.  I think Kevin Smith made a Judd Apatow-like movie (or was it the other way around, since Kevin Smith came first?).  I think he was trying too hard, with a ton of profanity and a lot of pushing of barriers and nudity.  The movie was still reasonably sweet and funny in spite of this.  Seth Rogan is probably typecast.  And I don't quite believe in the romance between the lead characters, which makes the ending less satisfying.  Remember to wait through the credits...