Gilroy Garlic Festival 2009

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Originally uploaded by Andrew Lan

Every year around the end of July, Gilroy hosts the Garlic Festival. This is the third time I've been there and it was quite entertaining and fun.

I like the food related festivals in summer in addition to the Art & Wine ones. The Art & Wine is held in many cities in the Bay Area throughout the summer and frankly speaking, all of them are quite similar and the Foster City one is one of the biggest. The specialty festivals, like Gilroy's Garlic Festival, is more unique and more fun.

In Taiwan, every city has its own famous food. You can buy a lot of it and every vendor claims to be the original. It's not like that in the United States. You don't see that on a daily basis. But once or twice a year, there will be festivals held for that specialty for the area. For example, Lobster Festivals in Maine, Oyster Festivals in San Francisco and Atlanta, Chocolate Festival in San Francisco, Mustard Festival in Napa Valley (not wine, surprisingly), and of course the Garlic Festival in Gilroy.

This kind of festivals usually come with lots of food stands, shows, and the theme food oriented cook off contests. In the Garlic Festival, the garlic flavor ice cream is a hit. It's basically a vanilla ice cream with added garlic flavor. It is quite mild, but with clear kick of garlic flavor in the end. In addition to that, there are also tons of other food stands, garlic sausages, garlic shrimp, garlic chicken, garlic bbq, garlic dip, etc.

There are usually performance as well. They are all local artists or performing groups playing on 4 different stages in the festival. It's lots of entertainments. I like the belly dancers and country singers the best. It's quite relaxing and is a good way to spend a day with family.

They also sell garlics in the festival. My friends told me that their garlics are so good that they are on a different level than your everyday supermarket garlics, especially now many garlics are plain made in China weird stuffs. I've never actually bought any before but this time I determined to give it a try. I am really glad that I did.

I bought 3 pounds of garlics for $3.00. You can feel the different the moment you remove the cloves. The cloves are actually juicy. You don't see that too often in the supermarket ones, which are usually a bit too dry. I diced it up and mixed with soy sauce for my dumplings and it made the sauce a bit sticky and lots lots of flavors. I've tried several other dishes and all of them are quite different from my usual cooking. I am a believer now.

Next time you visit US, check out whether there are any specialty festivals going on. You would have a good time there.

Corruption~~~

The last time I had a new phone was about more than 5 years ago. It was because I decided to change to the family plan to give Abby a kid's phone so that I could keep in touch with her. The detail was a long story that I'd rather not getting into.

Anyway, whenever people asked me what kind of phone I would want to get, my answer has always been the same, "a simple one that does nothing but calling." I rarely used cell phone since I don't have family here and I keep in touch with most of my friends online. The browser before the smart-phone era was very crappy, you couldn't see a thing from that tiny screen. Texting was also painful with the number buttons. So, I just didn't see the needs to have those fancy functions and I kind of thinking all those people walking around looking at their smartphone screens are corrupted by the modern technology.

It seems to be my turn. After using Facebook and Twitter for a while, I decided to get a smart phone. (Yeah, I am weak like that) Apple's iPhone 3Gs was my choice. As a phone, it's just okay, nothing special. As a mobile device, I'd say that I enjoy it every single day since its arrival. There are things that don't make much sense on the computer, such as Twitter, but on a smart phone it makes a lot of sense. It opens a brand new window for me.

I am happy to be corrupted, I think...

Bad Dog~~~

Two days ago, I came home from work to wait to go to the airport to pick up my cousins. They are going to Boston to visit my auntie and is transferring in SFO so that I invited them to stay for the weekend to tour around. So, I had a couple of hours to kill. I decided to make myself a sandwich and watched the recorded KFC World Cup of Softball, USA vs Netherlands.

I pane fried some bacon, toasted some toasts, and started to make my gourmet sandwich. It was not a BLT since I didn't have tomatoes. But it was nicely stacked with dijon mustard, lettuce, ham, cheese, over-easy egg, and the juicy bacon. I put it on the coffee table, turned on the TV and went to my bedroom to change to something more comfortable.

When I came back to the living room, I saw my maltese Oreo dragged 2 stripes out of the 4 bacon and cheeses on the floor and really enjoyed them. When he saw me staring at him, he tried even harder to swallow in the 2nd one and then went to the corner, sit down and looked at me. Real sharp, Oreo, well done.

Facts or Opinions

Sometimes, Abby gets homework assignments called "Facts or Opinions". It usually comes with some reading materials - news articles, current event articles, or something from Time for Kids. There would be a set of sentences regarding things mentioned in the reading materials. The assignments are to determine whether each sentence being a "fact" or an "opinion". It is quite simple to us grown-ups, but for kids it could be challenging. However, I like this assignment because I think it is important, no matter how much imagination the kids are, to be able to tell facts from opinions.

The problem in Taiwan today, in my perspective, is that there are way too many opinions and only few facts on almost every single subjects. The politicians try to use opinions to influence people and have them overlook the facts. They should be ashamed of themselves. I am surprised (not really) that some of the well educated people, my relatives included, are so narrow minded and blinded to buy those opinionated craps. If Taiwan really wants to improve and progress to be a mature society, people have to judge things on more facts and less opinions.

Foster City Force - Burlingame Billie Sue Tournament

Foster City Force - Burlingame Tournament
Originally uploaded by Andrew Lan

During the father's day weekend, Foster City's 8U Girl's Softball Team went to Burlingame to play the Billie Sue Tournament. It was a nice and sunny weekend. For us fathers, it was an entertaining and fun father's day.

This was the last tournament this summer for the girls in the team. Many of them, including Abby, will move up to the 10U division after the summer. So that this would be their last 8U games too. Moving from 8U to 10U is a big change. The ball gets harder, no more coach feeding, there will be stealing, walk, and all kinds of strategies. It is much more fun for girls who really enjoy the game, but probably would be a big shocker for some.

The Burlingame tournament went well. The girls had some really nice plays that made us grown-ups really proud. Our girls were also the only team among the 12 participating teams that got a "Team Spirit Award" trophies, the one with a yellow ball on top, for having the best positive attitude and good sportsmanship. One of the parents sent the pictures to Foster City Islander, the local news paper. Guess what, their tournament story and picture got put in the front page of the July 1st edition. As a proud parent, I of course went to pick up several copies. :)