In need of a vacation…

Since it had been a month since my last trip, a week spent in Japan (yes, I gave up on blogging about Japan – sorry), I felt I deserved another vacation. After all, in that month, I had secured a summer internship, read some Strategy cases, did some homework, and made it to the gym a few times. It was time to relax. So I basically took the last 4 days off.

The mini-vacay started Wednesday night at the Dodgers-Giants game. The highlight of the game was without a doubt Barry Bonds’ 3-run home run in the top of the 1st inning. Unfortunately, we were still on the freeway at that point and only managed to catch the highlight on the radio and later on ESPNEWS. Other than that, the game was pretty much drinking and eating and watching the Dodgers futile efforts to come back fall short, as they lost 6-4.

After actually studying a little in the middle of my vacation on Thursday afternoon, we headed to Lakers-Suns Game 3 on Thursday evening. After 90 or so minutes of navigating Pico Blvd., Anuj and I finally made it Staples, parked the car, and caught the tail end of a radio show outside the arena, where we were pleased to meet Lindsey (below) and snap a quick photo with her. After a couple cocktails at the Fox Sports Bar, Atur and his fiancée, Sonal, arrived, only to find out that Sonal had accidentally bought tickets for Home Game 1 of Series D, not Series A. Well, Series D would be the NBA Finals, and it doesn’t look like there’s gonna be a Home Game 1 at Staples. Fortunately, Asim was nice enough to give Atur and Sonal his tickets (as a birthday gift to Atur), as Anuj and I just wandered into the arena to avoid the awkward situation. After the Suns jumped out to an 11-0 lead, it turned out to be a good game that the Lake Show ended up winning in the end. What really shocked me was how rowdy and excited all the Lakers’ fans were after the game, considering all the wins and championships in the team’s history. While I was admittedly happy for my Laker fan friends, as I told Anuj as we walked out, “Act like you’ve been there before.”


On Friday morning, I took a big step forward in my life – my first out-of-town trip with a girl I’m dating. The destination was kept a surprise from Seema (her guess was that I was taking her to f*cking Catalina – clearly I haven’t impressed her thus far) – we drove up to San Francisco and arrived to our hotel in Union Square at around 2pm. Spent a couple hours walking around in the blazing, atypical SF heat, reliving the Berkeley days where our most exciting excursions were Friday or Saturday afternoon trips to shop at Macy’s or the mall, or a birthday dinner at Cheesecake Factory. We had plans to meet T, his gf Kathleen, G, Aashish and Ronak for a drink before our 8pm dinner rezzie, which I knew was dangerous, but I figured Terence would keep everyone in check and make sure our schedule was met. However, by 7:30, only Aashish had shown up. I had changed dinner to 8:30 by that time, but the rest of the guys didn’t know that, so why were they dragging? Well, when they showed up, they informed me that they had taken the courtesy of calling the restaurant and changing our reservation for us, to 9pm. So thoughtful. The next hour consisted of wine and jokes made at my expense, most of which seemed designed to make sure I received no “benefits” from spending the time and money to plan a nice weekend away. Fortunately, Seema was buzzed enough that she laughed off and/or forgot most of it, and all was well – to this minute, I don’t know what exactly G was referring to when he texted me later in the evening, “Sorry for that bro.” Dinner was at Saha, which came on recommendation for Terence, and I will gladly recommend it to anyone else. Pretty reasonably priced - even more reasonable for me, since Seema paid for it :) - Arabic food, with excellent service in a very nice, casual setting at the Hotel Carlton.

On Saturday morning, we woke up to what is the worst feeling on a vacation – the wake-up call. We had to be in Calistoga (Napa Valley) at 10:45 sharp for a winery tour/tasting that I had booked. We made the drive and arrived right in the nick of time. As we waited in line, some douchebag ahead of us was bitching at the guy at the counter about a messed up reservation that was apparently not recorded properly. He made some comment about how, if the reservation wasn’t made properly by a certain employee, he was gonna “chew his ass”..poor choice of words by this dude (who exhibited other traits that led us to believe that ass-chewing was part of his, how do you say - repertoire), and we had a good laugh or two about this over the course of the weekend.

The reserve tour – at Sterling Vineyards – was very nice, highlighted by a tram ride that took us to the tasting rooms, an educational tour led by our friendly French guide (Jean Pierre, of course) and tasting probably 8-10 wines – whites, reds, the whole nine yards. The wine was fantastic – these guys make a special wine for the annual Academy Awards post-ceremony dinner. In hindsight, I realized this tour should have been the final stop rather than the first – since I was going to be driving all around Napa all afternoon, I refrained from finishing most of the glasses, and left far too much paid-for wine on the table.

From there, we spent the rest of the afternoon at a couple other wineries – Silver Oak (all Cab’s – my favorite), and Mumm – a sparkling wine place. It was a beautiful, albeit a bit TOO hot, afternoon in Napa, and we thoroughly enjoyed all the wine, as well as the pizza spot where we had lunch. Seema also thoroughly enjoyed the company of Ignacio, the waiter at Mumm who she decided it was OK to flirt with despite me sitting right there. I guess I should have paid for that dinner at Saha. Or not constantly sent and received text messages to stay on top of the NFL Draft (thanks Aashish). Lesson learned.

We spent the evening at Vintage Inn, a beautiful B&B-type place in Yountville, and had dinner at Mustard’s Grill, which, like pretty much every other spot on our journey, is highly recommended to anyone going to Napa in the future (but try to avoid sitting next to the jerkoff who was shouting nonsense at his date all evening – I even heard the term “EBIT” come out of his mouth at one point). Excellent ribs, fish, wine, and service. (Sidebar: The service all weekend was FANTASTIC. It’s something I’m very particular about and have been generally dissapointed with in LA – maybe if all these losers worried less about their soon-to-be-failed acting careers, they could do a better job of actually waiting tables and earning their 15+%).

Sunday was the depressing end of a wonderful 4-day vacation, spent driving home for about 6 ½ hours, capped by studying (sort of) for tomorrow’s HR/OB midterm and watching Dallas blow yet another game to the Warriors.

In Union Square:

Dinner at Saha:

A Bevy of Wines at Sterling Vineyards:

At Mumm:


Dinner at Mustard's Grill:

Re-defining the word "terror"

At this point, there's no need to post a link to any of the articles about the tragic shootings on the Va Tech campus - surely you have all read them or seen the story on TV by now. Here's a quote I read from a WSJ email of the day's top headlines:

"FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said there was currently no evidence to suggest that the incident was a terrorist attack, but said "all avenues will be explored.""

(Major disclaimer: there's no direct quote with the word terrorism or terror in here, just the WSJ email suggesting that this was said by the FBI spokesman...I haven't been able to verify this quote)

This seemed like an idiotic comment to me, so I looked up the definition of "terror" on thefreedictionary.com to make sure I wasn't jumping to any inappropriate conclusions. Here's what I found:

ter·ror
n.
1. Intense, overpowering fear. See Synonyms at fear.
2. One that instills intense fear: a rabid dog that became the terror of the neighborhood.
3. The ability to instill intense fear: the terror of jackboots pounding down the street.
4. Violence committed or threatened by a group to intimidate or coerce a population, as for military or political purposes.
5. Informal An annoying or intolerable pest: that little terror of a child.

Basically all the definitions revolve around "intense fear" and the instilling of it. Now, some quotes from a cnn.com article on the story (still in developing stages):

"Amie Steele, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, said one of her reporters at the dormitory reported "mass chaos.""

"The reporter said there were "lots of students running around, going crazy,"

"Waldron described the scene on campus as "mayhem." "

And the doozy: ""It was kind of scary," he said. "These two kids I guess had panicked and jumped out of the top-story window and the one kid broke his ankle and the other girl was not in good shape just lying on the ground." "

I don't know about you, but when people are jumping out of windows (we all remember those crazy pics of people jumping out of the WTC 6 years ago), there's some fear going on. Big-time.

So, if "terror" is supposed to be that which "instills intense fear", then why isn't this labeled a "terrorist attack"? I wonder - did 9/11 change the definition of "terror" or a "terrorist attack" to factor in who commits the act? This is obviously a rhetorical question that bears some thoughtful consideration.

Times-a-changin?

This article caught my eye this afternoon. Looks like the Dems are, much to my surprise, way out ahead of the Republicans early on in the fundraising race, Hillary in particular. There's obviously a lot of time to go, but it seems the Republican stronghold on spending might be diminishing, at least for this particular election. None of us can deny how (sadly) important money is in winning votes in today's 2-party environment - we all remember those Swift-Boat attacks on Kerry and there's no doubt in my mind they cost him on election day. So it'll be interesting to see whether this holds through next November, and, if so, what impact it has on the 2008 Presidential Election. Of course, Hillary's candidacy is totally changing the game from a whole host of perspectives, so money might not be the only aspect of politics put on display over the next year-and-a-half.

Ouch...

Here's a quote from the WSJ regarding Citigroup's recent cost-cutting announcement:

"In addition to job reductions, coming mostly through layoffs...about 9,500 jobs will be moved to lower-cost locations such as Buffalo, N.Y., and Poland."

First Willis McGahee, now the Journal. Where you at Buffalo?

P.S. Still working on the Japan post. Hopefully up within a couple days.