This Past Weekend

Friday, March 13, 2009.
S and I met up after I got out of school, and we took a look at his hotel room over at the Beverly Heritage Hotel. It seemed to be much better than the Hyatt in Santa Clara, and there was free Internet. I tried to persuade S to go to a performance of Monteverdi's Venetian Vespers at the Stanford Memorial Church. But he really wanted to go to San Francisco and hang around North Beach, and he had a craving for beef chow fun. I was thinking of taking him to T28 after midnight. I think his favorite food must be Italian, and we looked up some Italian restaurants serving decent seafood dishes, using both the computer and his Iphone, which he enjoys using.

So, we started driving towards San Francisco. But he hadn't eaten all day, and we ended up going to Palo Alto for dinner. We walked around a while, looking at the various restaurants. I don't think I would want to try Madison & 5th. S hadn't tried the Cheesecake Factory yet, but we decided not to go there. We ended up picking Strada in downtown Palo Alto. The food was fine, but the grilled salmon seemed overpriced. Grilled salmon? It was fresh at least. But how hard can it be to grill salmon well? Café Rosso & Bianco is out of business--someone at the table next to ours was talking about it and the reasons why, but I didn't catch all of them. There is Mr. Coppola's Cafe Zoetrope in San Francisco, which I have not visited yet.

Afterwards, we walked around downtown Palo Alto, and saw Red Mango, which was opened by Yul from Survivor. They offer frozen yogurt (2 or 3 flavors) with various toppings. Is it better than the frozen yogurt place at Vallco? I have no idea. I'd rather have sorbert or sherbert than frozen yogurt. We dropped by the Apple Store, too. Plenty of customers there.

Then we went by car to the concert over at Stanford. It was being performed by the Stanford Early Music Singers, under the direction of Dr. William Mahrt, along with Whole Noyse
and guests. I was glad to have the opportunity to hear Monteverdi, but I don't understand how his music can be considered appropriate for the liturgy (like Bach or even Mozart). We were listening to the Heiligenkreuz Cistercian chant on the Chant: Music for the Soul cd while we were driving to Palo Alto-- what a difference!

S remarked after seeing some of the students there that Stanford University felt like HS. It was the same way at Berkeley for me, except that I was of one of those who still had a HS mentality, since I matured late. Christendom, too? That's how the school, at which I enrolled 3 years after I left Cal, seemed to me. Is TAC any different?

The university also has its own Sheriff's Department? Instead of the normal campus police? Is there an actual difference with regards to the department? It seems to be a part of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department. Not inspiring, but perhaps Sarge's friend Bridge can get a job there.

We didn't have any luck looking for a nearby Cold Stone on the Iphone and drove back to Milpitas. S had heard about In and Out, so we went to the one in Milpitas at 11:50, to give them some time to prepare the hamburgers so we could eat them after 12. S could not enjoy the meal though because of the other patrons at the restaurant.

We were feeling rather tired, but S had wanted to go to downtown San Jose to see his friend Herb, who was on duty. I've been missing out on all the fun there! Well, I must admit that there were a lot of attractive Latinas and Asians (mostly Vietnamese?) walking around--most with their boyfriends, but some with just their female friends. We managed to drive by Herb's patrol car, and we were loitering for a while, waiting for Herb to look up from his map. His FTO noticed us, and eventually S was able to get his attention. We snapped a photo with Herb, and then went back to the hotel. (That photo will be up on FB.) S isn't much into clubbing, but maybe I'll drag him down to downtown San Jose next time.


Links:
The Whole Noyse
The Office for Religious Life at Stanford University
The Catholic Community at Stanford

I believe the Dominicans have charge of the Catholic community at the university.

The Tudor Consort

Saturday, March 14, 2009
Today we drove up to Lodi to see S's friend Bridge, who is a LEO for a nearby department. It was my first time in the city--traffic stopped near Tracy for some reason, possibly because of an accident. There are a lot of wind farms in the area. Fairfield, Sacramento, Modesto aren't far...

Lunch was at Strings (I didn't know it was a chain!) The cafe salad was quite good, and I liked the chicken lombardy. Was it worth the price? I'm not sure. Italian restaurants tend to be somewhat expensive, and the portion sizes are not very big. That doesn't mean that Bucca di Beppo would be a good choice for Italian, though. We chatted with Bridge for a while; he may be laid off, but let us pray that it does not happen. S told me that Bridge was Catholic, which surprised me. He is also rather apathetic with respect to politics, which wasn't a surprise--he's a good guy, and we should keep him in our prayers.

Afterwards, we drove down to San Francisco, so we could go to North Beach and Chinatown. We passed by The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco, but it was closed by the time we got out of the car. (We did find a parking spot in North Beach though, so the 10-minute wait until 6 P.M. was worth it.) The young people were celebrating St. Patrick's Day early in San Francisco. Some must have started in the afternoon, before we had gotten there, given their state of inebriation. S was rather disgusted by the drunkeness he witnessed that afternoon and evening. There were a lot of dumb girls walking around; how many walk of shames on Sunday morning? We even saw two people fall on the street. (puk gai!) The scene made us appreciate virtuous Catholic women more. Why look for anything else? It is almost an obligation, for serious Catholic men to only consider serious Catholic women--don't they deserve to make good match? Why deprive them of a scarce resource by dating and marrying a non-Catholic or a lukewarm Catholic?

S had a craving for Chinese food, and so we stayed in Chinatown--we settled on Man Dzai for dinner. Unfortunately, the beef chow fun was overcooked, and tasted burnt. I won't be ordering that again at Man Dzai. Next time I'll have to take S to T28. The Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area are rather disappointing.

On the way back to Milpitas, we stopped by the Cold Stone on San Antonio Road in Mountain View. We could have gone to the Krispy Kreme in Daly City, but S wasn't that interested in it. (Are there any other locations in the Bay Area?)

Misc. Links:
St. Antonius Coptic Orthodox Church
St. Anthony's Monastery
St. Antony Coptic Orthodox Monastery, California
Welcome to St. Anthony Monastery Website

Sunday, March 15, 2009
This morning we attended Mass at the oratory, though later than we had expected. This was followed by lunch at Bombay Garden. I enjoyed the fried bread once again, but the lamb sausage was spicier than usual. S liked the buffet lunch, so it was a good choice.

After lunch, we visited a school since it was having an open house. The office staff seemed rather nice. I met the principal briefly, and then talked with some of the middle school teachers. My impressions? First of all, the school is associated with a certain order (about which various blog posts and articles have appeared on this blog).

The school is not a perfect match -- their curriculum is very much like that of a diocesan school, with the main difference being the religion classes, which involve more material being covered at this school. I'd prefer a school with a classical liberal arts approach--and I don't think I could in good consciene teach elementary or secondary science. It would be indoctrination through memorization, but not perfective of the intellect, and wrong to let the students think otherwise.

It was rather discouraging to hear that the diocese expects its teachers to have a credential, or to be enrolled in a program at least, before it considers them for employment. (Though this was not necessarily the case 12 years ago, if a school was desperately seeking to fill a vacant position.) Is this also true of the high schools? After all, what useful learning does a M. Ed. add to a Master's degree in the subject?

So what sort of lesson can be drawn from this? That our society lacks a proper division of labor and allocation of human resources, and that people cannot find the work that is suited for them, because of the sins of others? But that would involve ascribing too much importance to myself, and estimating my abilities too highly. Undoubtedly there is some sort of punishment involved, and I can't say that I am exempt. Exploiting one's Faith to find work, as opposed to making the best decisions and living out one's vocation, does not appear to yield any success, and it is likely the wrong thing to do--my priority should be something else. I'll still fill out the HS application, but I don't expect anything to come out of it. I'd like to stay local, but it is difficult to see what I can do locally that would make use of what meager talents I have.

I wanted to take S to see Santana Row and Valley Fair so we drove to Santana Row next. When we arrived, we passed by CineArts, so we looked at what was showing. I wasn't in the mood to watch The Wrestler, so we picked Crossing Over instead, the immigration movie with Harrison Ford. We got tickets for the 10:05 showing, and then left to see the rest of Santana Row.

There was a mariachi band performing at the end of the street. Interesting--do they ever have bluegrass musicians performing there? Patrons were enjoying the music, but is this just another example of the consumption of entertainment, rather than a true cultural enrichment?

We made our way to Valley Fair, and watching the people doing their shopping, I thought about our political economy--the division of labor, all for the sake of conspicuous consumption for the sake of being entertained. There were even more people visiting the Apple Store. If we did not have cheap energy, would all of our advanced technology be of any use? Without our political and military superiority, could we secure supplies of cheap energy? And how could we obtain our wealth without that energy? If we pursued a more sustainable and agrarian way of life, would as many people still want to immigrate here?

As we had some time to kill, we strolled around the mall for a while, but my back was giving me problems so we left for Milpitas.

We took a peek at Target Masters in Milpitas. S couldn't believe the prices there. He continued to encourage me to move to North Carolina, or to the South at least... the People's Republic of California, really.

After a short break at the hotel, we went to Red Robin in San Jose for dinner -- we should have gone to Counter instead? The mozarella cheese sticks were overcooked, and the hamburgers were not that spectacular, though better than the burgers we had at In and Out. I had the monster burger but it wasn't that good. After dinner we headed back to Santana Row. It was rather deserted; many of the restaurants were closed. Straits was still open, but there weren't many customers. We went inside Borders, which was open until 11--does the store get that many customers that late? Any local residents?

My review of Crossing Over.

Monday, March 16, 2009
We had lunch with S's friend Herb, who is with SJPD, at the Macaroni Grill in Milpitas. While we were waiting for Herb to arrive, we drove over to the nearby Jamba Juice for some smoothies. S enjoyed his. Herb had some good stories to tell about work. The day shift is usually uneventful... I don't think I will be going back to Macaroni Grill--the portion is just small for the price, both for the entree and the salad... at least at Carino's you can have unlimited salad or soup.
I saw HCK's gf there, she was at the table next to ours. I didn't notice her until after we had sat down for some time. I said hi to her as she was leaving.

All in all, it was a very good weekend, and I was glad that S could come out. We'll try to get him to come out again this Summer.