Did you pack the surfboard?

Only in Australia... would booking an airport shuttle ask you if you're bringing along any surfboards...

Gmail = Smart

Forgetting to include an attachment on an email. Happens to the best of us. Luckily Google has devised a solution for this! I stumbled across this error message on one of my emails and saved myself the embarrassing follow-up email. Thanks Gmail!

Knife Shaved Beef Noodles

Memories of Taiwan... delicious knife-shaved noodles into Taiwanese Beef Soup. Kudos to Lotus Restaurant for this one. In case you were wondering, the noodles are peeled into the soup and since it has an uneven texture you get a mixture of soft/chewy noodle texture. Mmm..

Marco...

Polo! First polo match today was everything I could have expected... and more! Nacho Figueras of Ralph Lauren's Black Watch team stole the show and scored 5 goals. The game was exciting and interesting and definitely had its moments of suspense.

My favorite part, as a newcomer to the sport, was the halftime ritual of stomping the dirt clods. The horses chalked up the field with all their running back and forth, so just as the third chukker ended, the crowd got up and spent the 15-minute halftime stomping the field of clods back into the grass - all of course, in their Sunday best and big floppy hats.

Singanei... Brunpore...

A few years ago when I visited Brunei and Singapore, I learned that their currencies are interchangeable. So a twenty dollar Brunei bill could be used in Singapore as if it were a twenty dollar Singapore bill. This has been going on since the 60's. But... how cool is this? A limited edition twenty dollar bill that is Singapore on one side.. and Brunei on the other! (Thanks Dad!)

Sliders & Cotton Candy

Trying to avoid making this a mega-foodie blog, but somehow food keeps coming up. So I'm combining two fun food things I found into one upload:

1. Vizzi Food Truck: Call it their hidden menu, but you can order a sampler of their sliders for $8. Organic chickpea, Chicken, and Wagyu-braised Beef - all topped with chimichurri-creme fraiche sauce, cilantro and green onions. Served on a bed of seasoned popcorn.

2. Cotton Candy. Boa (Steakhouse.) Picture tells it all...

Mushroom Fries

We all know you can make anything yummy by frying it, but I think Bottega Louie nailed it with their Portabella Fries. Strips of portabella mushroom, deep fried into juicy goodness. Mmmm... Long wait for a table, but completely worth it!

Lemonade LA

This was a fun place after I finally figured out how to order. If you go, you should probably check out the menu and decide what you want before you arrive. Otherwise the pressure of everyone standing in line behind you while you attempt to read 20+ different options such as "Ginger duck with swiss chard, pineapple, chili, cashew, and coriander" or "Grass fed 'Piedmont' skirt steak with balsamic bermuda onions" ends up becoming really stressful. To give you an idea of what this looks like...



Luckily it doesn't seem like you can go wrong... But to make things more confusing, each order is $4 and is about half of your place, which is way too much of any one side. But you can split the side and pick 2 sides for $4, so for $8, you can get 4 sides. I went with...
1. Watermelon radish with ahi tuna, snap peas, and sesame
2. Beets, pickled red onions, hazelnut vinaigrette
3. Rainbow kale, sherry, creme fraiche
4. Sweet potatos and pistachios

And last but not least, there's a reason it's called Lemonade LA. If you like SUPER sweet drinks, more-sweet than a sweet tea, then you'll probably dig the lemonade more than I did. The cucumber mint lemonade was yum but a little too sugary for my taste.

Pussywillows

Never realized that pussywillows are actually flowers. Always thought of them as decoration. Anyway, I have a vase of them and not only did they sprout leaves, but they "bloomed!"

Bike Parking. Fail

Went to BevMo today to stock up and noticed that their bike parking has been trumped by shopping carts.