New Providence, NJ

New Providence is covered in snow!
The families here like to put out fake candles lit from each window. We've shoveled the patio twice, the driveway once. The rain freezes over and the ground gets icy. I like the squeaking of snow beneath my shoes. The doggie Jessie accidentally cuts her tender paws when she walks on ice to pee outside (poor thing!). A few gusts of wind on our way from the subway station to the Guggenheim Museum froze our noses & made our eyes water. We've probably seen at least 10 different outdoor nativity scenes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania
Since being back from Pennsylvania, a bit of snow has melted and the grass peeks out from underneath. The grass supposedly hibernates when it snows. How does grass hibernate?
On our way back from Pennsylvania, Robby and his parents had a heated discussion about evolution, creationism, religion, and faith. Jeanne sat silently and listened, occasionally sighing very loudly. Without going into it too much, a few parties became seemingly apoplectic.

NJ, NYC, and PA Food

Robby and I have been in New Jersey visiting his dad and stepmom since Dec. 21st.
Here is what we've eaten:

1. 1.5-lb steamed lobster with a sherry garlic sauce (Legal Seafood @ Short Hills Mall)
2. Papardelle Bolognese (@ Del Maio)
3. grilled cheese sandwiches (homemade! Sara Lee 7-grain sliced bread, white American cheese, & sliced turkey)
4. Potato & spinach knish & vegetable soup (@ Grand Central Station's eatery)
5. apple cider (@ Bryant Park)
6. chicken & stuffing casserole with canned creamy chicken soup (homemade)
7. layered red Jello with whipped cream (@ Prestige Diner)
8. Christmas Eve dinner (homemade!: meatballs, pasta, deviled eggs, potato salad, green salad
9. Christmas dinner (homemade!): honey-baked ham, pot roast, baked asparagus, mashed potatoes (with a full container of sour cream mixed in), cookies, cookies, cookies
10. cinnamon coffee cake (homemade)
11. cream of potato soup (Prestige Cafe)
12. one egg, country potatoes, & OJ (Broadway Diner)
13. Turkey, cranberry sauce, Russian salad sandwich (diner in Pennsylvania)
14. oven-baken lamb, aloo gohbi, fried rice with pineapple and other fruits, fried tilapia, chicken tikka masala (@ Mendhi Restaurant in Morristown, NJ - plus, Robby and Jeanne got mendhi done on their hands)

15. onion & potato dosa, vegetable dosa, rasam soup, chapathi, thali (@ Saravana Bhavan in Edison, NJ)
16. "sloppy joe" sandwiches from the Town Deli in New Providence ("sloppy joe" is turkey and cole slaw)
17. thin crust New York pizza
18. Falafals from South Street, Pennsylvania, and Greenwich Village, NYC

19. Magnolia cupcakes from the Village (definitely overrated. Kara's Cupcakes in the Town and Country Village of Palo Alto, CA, is better)


This is an indication of how we eat out here. Different than California, huh?
Let's guess how much weight Robby and Jeanne have gained over Xmas break!

Birthday Pictures

What did we do for my birthday?

1. We had breakfast at S&W with my parents and our lovely neighbors
2. Robby taught my parents how to play Wii tennis and Rock Band at his video games "lab" at USC.
3. We went for a short hike at the Griffith Observatory. It was a clear day, and my parents made new friends: a Korean couple whose last name was the same as ours ("Nah" in Korean).
4. Robby and I went to Bed, Bath, & Beyond to buy a wedding gift.
5. CAKE & singing!

December 14, 2008, 7am

Happy birthday, me!

Thank you, Mommy & Deddy, for conceiving me! How un-momentous birthdays can be. I'm in a robe, sitting at the kitchen table with a to-do checklist beside me...the sky is getting light outside, and I can hear crows shouting incessantly at each other; in the background is the steady hum of the 405 freeway. A birthday is just another day. I've sensed that in Chinese culture, they're no biggie, unless you turn 100 days, 80, or 90 years old. Every day is someone's birthday. How cool & how common is that?

Last year, Robby planned the best birthday party for me ever. It started on Friday night, when Robby showed up at my sister's for dinner. He had left Los Angeles 6 hours before he said he would; I expected him to arrive in the middle of the night.

Then, he planned a surprise morning tour of the Baylands in Palo Alto, and my sisters and cousin showed up. A volunteer guide took us on a walk around the bird reserve and we watched all sorts of them hanging out and looking for food. Then we had dim sum nearby at Ming's Restaurant and took a walk on the Dish, a 3.5-mile loop on Stanford campus. After an afternoon nap, we headed out to Three Seasons for dinner with mostly Robby's friends (because I have so few friends and they all live somewhere else - Robby teases me and likes to say that I have no friends). We ate a sumptuous meal: sea bass, shaking beef, caramelized grilled shrimp, spring rolls with mango and duck. Mmmmm. Sure, Three Seasons is overpriced, but tasty! Then we headed to the place where Robby and I had our first "date": Molly Magee's in Mountain View. I put quotation marks around "date" because I didn't know we were on a day and Robby did. When it comes to blossoming romance, I'm always clueless and one step behind.

So, my 30th birthday was a day-and-a-half-long celebration, and I told Robby that he never need to plan anything else as elaborate as that for another 10 years!

Jeanne's Last Day of Being 30

I will be turning 31 tomorrow morning at 6:55am. How does it feel to be (close to) 31?

1. It feels groggy some days. My body creaks and groans a little more than it did a few years ago.
2. It feels like a body settling into stagnancy (doing push-ups and sit-ups every day just doesn't cut it anymore).
3. It feels like I should hear kids running around, but there aren't.
4. It feels like a warm slice of chocolate cake with a thin layer of icing.
5. It's not really caring there will be a cake for me on my birthday.
6. It's loving to be in my pajamas and drinking tea all morning and afternoon.
7. It's getting excited to make a trip to Target.
8. It's noticing the disappearance of elasticity and appearance of veins in the skin on the back of my hands.
9. It's going to Trader Joe's every week, knowing that we should be cooking fresh produce but not yet ready to.
10. It's using the anti-aging cream that my mom bought for me on my 30th birthday.
11. It's walking around the apartment in wool slippers.
12. It's oatmeal with cereal mixed in every morning.
13. It's waking up as the sun rises every morning.
14. It's picking up the daily paper from the walkway and tossing it onto our porch every morning.
15. It's wanting to pull out the stationery and write letters, but conceding to sending an email once in awhile.
16. It's having a gmail account, but not knowing how to use all its features.
17. It's complaining about every grammatical error I see in writing.
18. It's waking up never having to wake up alone again...
19. Though sometimes it's waking up with a bent elbow on my face.
20. It's not that bad!

DJ Recommendation: DJ Jeremy is da Bomb

We'd like to plug our wedding DJ, Jeremy Downing. He is fantastic! Robby already wrote a glowing review for him on yelp.com, but we think he deserves more attention. He did a great job at our wedding. Robby and I wanted danceable hip hop that wasn't mainstream; please, no Usher, no E-40, no Too Short, no gangsta rap (Dr. Dre or Snoop), no Bill Idol, no chicken dance, no macarena, no "Love Shack", no "Celebrate", or no "We are Family,". DJ Jeremy was very flexible in meeting our requests. We were able to email him a list of last-minute song requests too.

We really wanted Frontline's "What I Am", and even though NOBODY knew the song (on the dance floor, one of Robby's cousins raised his arms and yelled, "What is this?!"), he played it anyway. They're from his 'hood, Richmond, and they never really made it big, even though they are talented. He was also willing to play Jurassic 5 and Talib Kwali. After the wedding, he send us a CD of all our wedding songs.

And recently, he sent us about an hours worth of mash-up, a new style that some clubs in San Francisco are playing. Mash-up combines two genres, usually a rock and hip hop song. He does an awesome job sampling different kinds of songs with similar beats. It's fun to try to recognize the '80s song sampled under a popular hip hop song. The most unusual mix is Kanye West's "Gold Digger" sampled on top of Beethoven's symphony No. 6, I think. Hip hop and classical? It works!

Currently, DJ Jeremy works at Asian SF, a touristy restaurant/bar/nightclub in downtown S.F. that features glamorous transvestite performers and serves Asian fusion food. Robby and I hope that he gets BIG gigs in the future because we both think he's extra-talented. Okay, enough praising for now!

And, to think, we found Jeremy on craigslist.org!!

Here is a link to his website.

Our Wedding Dance

Hi, everyone. Robby finally uploaded our silly wedding dance on youtube.com. It is broken into two parts. It's made up of a medley of 10 songs, and we choreographed it ourselves. It's a mixture of my rock and Robby's hip hop choices. We do a little polka (badly!), some hip hop dance moves that we learned from Palo Alto High School's dance group Hipnotik (thanks, Amanda & Kelvin!), and some interpretive dance to Lauryn Hill.
Sure, you'll laugh - it was darn embarrassing, but fun. Everyone there got a good laugh from it.

Enjoy!

Part I
Part II

Nose to the Grind

Robby has started his qualifying exams. His exams started yesterday, and he has been typing for hours on end. His work day was 14 hours yesterday. 14 hours of sitting in the same chair, churning out pages and pages of writing.

I've been busying myself with holiday duties: mostly wrapping the endless gifts piled in our bedroom (now there is a large pile of silver boxes in the living room) and assembling wedding albums.

I have five more weeks of school until the semester ends, and I just entered 15-week grades tonight. In my two most difficult classes, the class averages are 43% and 65%. The other three classes are honors, and the class averages are not so atrocious. They range from 75-85%. I strictly go by the traditional grade cut offs: 90% and above is an A, 80% & above is a B, 70% & above is a C, and 60% and above is a D. I've discovered that some teachers at my school are more lenient about giving out Ds. Some teachers lower the D cut-off percentage at 55%. Or, if the class is very difficult, some teachers consider an 87% and A. I'm not sure how I feel about those methods. Since a student can graduate with all Ds and don't need to retake a class if they earned a D in it previously, I guess teachers are motivated to give out more Ds, so that the F students don't have to return to the same classes next year. But does the student deserve this boon? And does a D mean that the student deserves to graduate from high school?

I have been more strict about sticking to my cut-off percentages. I don't think I should soften my grading policy in order to help inflate the number of students who are graduating from high school. Many kids are graduating who shouldn't be. Many students aren't learning. Ahhhh...the education system...

Sometimes there's so much to think about that my head starts hurting...