mom's going to be mad at me...

you never want to upset your mother. why? not only is it bad karma, which always slaps you up side the head at a later date... but an angry mother means ain't no one happy. angry mother means angry daddy, means that if angry mother cooks, the food doesn't taste as good; when angry mother distributes allowance, somehow it's not quite as big as it usually is; when angry mother gives you a love pat on the head, it becomes a love ass kicking, typically with a bat. with rusted nails.

well, here i go upsetting my mother again, with a super post. so if you don't hear from me again, it's probably because angry mother has displaced me. to another planet.

but you really have to hand it to people who somehow manage to post every single day of their lives. first off, hats off to you for your diligence and hard work. but seriously, how do you do it? these people must absolutely love their computers. it must be a joy for them to sit down in front of their computers and blog (work). they must run back home (while knocking down helpless old people and causing all sorts of traffic havoc on their jaywalks), knock their door down, jump over their coffee table, and curse their computers for loading so slow.

as a consultant, who spends the majority of time in front of a computer screen... i'm sorry. this is something that i cannot do. sitting down in front of my computer at times when i don't have to (remember, fantasy sports and sports-related content reading does not count), causes an allergic reaction whereby my body gets confused because it thinks it's at work, when the eyes show that they're at home. this causes me to immediately open up a browser, throw down some espn, and read something, anything, even WNBA articles, in calming the body down in ensuring it that it's not doing any work, but is in fact, doing something pleasureable and personal. only after enough sports-related content is infused in the body does it become temporarily immune to do more work-related items on the computer during personal time. like blogging.

April 10th-12th
i'm now immune to bad airport incidences trying to get to CDG. i'm 2 for 2 in harrowing, hair-tearing, incidences trying to get on a plane out of paris. the next time, we're camping out at that airport overnight before our flight, and MAYBE, we might be able to get there before the plane takes off. read grace's blog here -> CLICK ME!
we spent the weekend chilling with grace's family in Toronto to celebrate her grandmother's 90th!!! birthday! it was fun, i got to meet the rest of grace's cool cousins, where the two of us then proceeded to take all of their money at the poker table :) deeko, kuya, eric, it was child's play ;)

April 13-14th
after wasting a day on the airplane, we got back to paris on noon on Monday, and passed out. i'd post a picture of pure darkness if i wasn't so lazy, to give you a sense of what we did that day (wait... two days)

April 15th
i met grace for lunch as she had a break for class. cafe pasteur which is on her way to school... and the funny thing about living here, is you get to try out these little no nothing brasseries that you'd probably never try out unless you lived here. and they're DELICIOUS!

grace's dish on the left, which is a salad. in theory. i think it's more like potatoes, eggs, and goat cheese on bread, over some greens as garnish. that somehow got miscategorized as a salad. you say po-tay-toe, i say po-tah-toe.
i went original, like usual, and got the steak. just like i originally and uniquely order the steak at every other brasseries we go.

April 16th
Random picture taking day. today's theme is "the louvre"


no chang soo, the kid is not going poo.






that last one isn't the louvre, but Saint Eustache, right next door to our home.

April 17th
Grace and i went to check out berthillon again, except we confused ourselves and went... somewhere else. but we had berthillon ice cream anyway


yes... it may look like poo. but it really is ice cream :p

April 18th
even though we had ice cream the day before, grace somehow managed to still have an ice cream kick (i think it has to do with a recessive gene that lies on the "X" chromosome called 'icecreameverydayoftheyear' gene. which would be why it only affets women as the recessive trait is counteracted by the male's "Y" chromosome called "screwtheicecreamwheresthesteak" gene).

we then went to see "duplicity" which would have been 1,000 times better if highlight below to read:
if they got the money in the end. or it was a double take, and they like knew they were getting screwed and ended up shorting the bad company's stock and made millions more than the 35mm they were supposed to get from the swiss company. then it would have been badass.

but that's just me.

April 19th
we got pho. and it was good.


it had to be done, i see most of you readers are nodding, and as you can see in the last picture... we were happy. and full. and bloated. (thank you MSG).

April 20th
so we have this cool thing where if we together don't spend over 50 euros for a day, the excess goes into a slush fund for some savings that will turn into a fine dinner. so since we saved a good amount, we went to David Lebowitz's recommendation the best steak tartare in town, Les Fines Gueules. both of us got a little dressier and...

i looked... aiite. but she looked... breathtaking. i am... a very. very. VERY lucky man.


since their menu changes daily, they write their menu on a chalkboard, and let you read it to your hearts content. when you've confused yourself enough trying to read the french, and after enough time of despair, they then come by to take your order and speak to you in perfect english. i should have seen that coming.


following my statements of originality, i got the steak.
she got the beef tartare. life was really really good until...

the fromage plate.

yes. that's fuzz on the blue cheese. it was so alive, it almost walked itself into our mouthes, we didn't even need forks.

and that's it for now! until next time!

grace's day off

no pictures today, a short blog (your welcome mom...)

a pretty relaxing day, grace and i got out of the apt around 11:30 and headed to rue de buci for lunch at a restaurant that... of course... had potatoes. apparently when we were with diana and brian for lunch, grace spied the menu at this place and noted that they had salads... with POTATOES! and therefore made it to the top 2 places she needed to check out immediately. i of course, being the wise man in my years, nodded vigorously at her suggestions.

we ate at 'sage' where she had her salad and i had my steak with foie gras sauce.

let's dissect these meals.
her 'salad' did have potatoes, but also had a good amount of duck filets and gizzards, and a big hunk of foie gras.
my steak was covered in what looked to be a foie gras and butter sauce. plus it came with fried potatoes.

all in all, that meal set us back about... a year. or 7.

we headed over to the gorgeous park called the Luxembourg Gardens, home to the senate (they have it GOOD). it's absolutely beautiful, with newly laid tulips, and flowers everywhere. on a sunny day, i will take my dSLR and have fantastic pictures for you to all see. hang tight.

to top it all off, we headed to a famous parisian gastronomy house (i called it... by cardinal mistake... a chocolatier), called Dalloyau (i've never heard of it, of which grace was astonished. this is a common theme when it comes to all things chocolate related). she had hot chocolate and i had an espresso (that almost ate the cup it was in), and we hung out there, chatting, working on stuff (i brought my trusty mac), and enjoying paris as it should be enjoyed. relaxing.

so apparently dalloyau invented a cake called the opera cake. which is the justification that grace verbalized as to why we need to go back there again to try it out. somehow i see through all of this and i understand that there is no real reason that a woman needs to justify going back to any type of chocolatier aside from one cold hard fact...

it exists.

ahhh how i have become wise with my years...

mmmm korean food!!!

mental note: hale (with a little ^ over the a) means tanning. so when you see it on body lotion, and if you're not looking to tan... DON'T BUY IT!

let's just say, that after a couple of days of putting on what we thought was body lotion, and then freaking out because we thought we were getting jaundice and our livers were failing... we came to a stark realization that... our lotion... was a tanning lotion.

i'm not sure what dawned on us harder. relief that we're not going through liver failure? or the awareness that we're complete... idiots.

either way, we are in the middle of our own lost in translation movie, and this is probably not going to be the last snafu we encounter on this trip. stay tuned for more idiocy entertainment.

moving on.

craving korean food, grace got this recommendation from a friend of a friend ('s cousin's uncle's neice's nephew's second-step-father-in-law...) and so we went to a korean restaurant near invalides... that... wait for it... WAIT FOR IT...



had... good... service.



my korean friends first warned me about the fact that korean waiters and waitresses aren't known to chat up with their customers, and that they can be... abrupt. i've come to expect this, and actually i like it, since sometimes service that's too chatty gets... irritating to the point of homicidal. but here, service was impeccable and it was like the twilight zone compared to the States. but this place was AMAZING! it wasn't so much authentic korean food of mounds of meat, and mounts of fried rice, as it was artistic. the service was impeccable, and plated with beauty and care.





it was... a little pricey... at 18 euros a head, but the food was exquisite, with fantastic ingredients... and definitely i could not complain.

i present you... Samiin. Chris, you definitely need to go here.


i walked grace to her to the street that leads her to class, and with time to spare, i went out and took some pictures.

the railroad tracks of the subway leading from underneath to above ground

an artistic impression of the eiffel tower

coming home, grace and i decided to open up the bottle of wine we had, get some cheese from the local cheese shop and chow down our dessert.

we put on a fastastic pixar movie (much better than anything dreamworks could put together, of course Michelle Chung). it should be obvious which movie it was... being we're in paris, grace is cooking up delicious gourmet meals, and i'm an ugly rodent. ratatouille!

so with grace lying down on the sofa, we proceed to watch the movie. about 3/4 of the way, grace proceeded to go into 'listen only' mode, which lasted all of 5 minutes before 'listen only' mode... unbeknowest to me, actually evolves into a 'listen only' mode with a plug-in called 'softly snoring.'

despite claims from the suspect that the 'softly snoring' plug-in can be used in CONJUNCTION with the 'listen only' mode... i have my doubts and suspect that... instead... she was actually... passed the heck out.

but, like the x-files... there's a government conspiracy and coverup so I guess i'll never know.

slow day

this was probably one of the slowest days i've had since i've been here. woke up late, couldn't get myself out of the apartment, and loafed around. it kinda sucks wasting a day here in paris, but i guess everyone can use a day like these where you let your mind go and don't do squat diddly.

so i was pretty grateful when grace got back and gave me an excuse to get the heck out of the apartment (like stale bread getting a fresh breath of air... or nutella).

as we were pretty hungry, and didn't really feel like spending exorbitant amounts on food (plus Grace had a booboo at work today, and falafels are one of her favs here), off we went to marais for some Mi-Va-Mi falafels. it's amazing, we've been here a month and have already had 4 falafels. oops.

no pictures today, short post :) are you happy mom??? (she complained about the post that turned out to be a novel... if you read comments from "blue hair" in french, yeah. that's her :) )

welcome back brian and diana!

March 4, 2009
well, as it turns out, brian and diana missed us SO much, that they decided to come BACK to paris and visit... they were coming here anyway? so... they weren't coming back for us... whaddya mean we're not the center of the living galaxy? psch.. like... so much of whatever.

March 5, 2009
anyway, brian and diana came back from a wonderful trip from bordeaux, and despite what was probably a tiring trip, they came and visited us that night! so we gave them the grand tour of our apartment (all 40m2 of it), and had some delicious wine, pastries from Maison Joivan, and great company. apparently St. Emillon in Bordeaux is the 'shizznets!' so it's definitely high on our 'must-check-out' places to go.

the next day, we all met up for lunch, and went to rue de buci.

random pictures before the kids got to us, and some of the food we ate.

it was a nice... 2 hour lunch, of which i unfortunately don't have any pictures of all of us together. the poor waiter had to almost crawl over a table to take one picture with diana's camera so... giving him my camera would have probably caused a catastrophe. once i get the pictures from briana (short for brian and diana), i'll post em here.

afterwards, since dinner apparently wasn't enough caloric content (i.e. we're fatties), grace and i decided to hop on over to cocao de chocolat for a hot chocolate. ahhh well, there goes all of the weight we lost.

looking mischivously delighted eh?

afterwards, we were comatose from all of the food, and therefore we had no choice, but to go watch a movie. wanting to watch a thrilling drama, we of course went to watch one of the biggest, known as...
MONSTERS VERSUS ALIENS!!!
oh wait... it's a cartoon? a comedy? it's not... a drama? ... well it was fantastic! not as great as pixar's stuff of course (disclaimer, this was inserted so that i survive my next encounter from Michelle Chung. who works for pixar.)

procrastination... results in laziness and massive posts.

procrastination is a beautiful thing. as my comrades at despair.com so eloquently state: "hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now."

the problem is, the laziness pays off later too. with a big can of whoopass. aka the recap blog. so without further ado, the recap blog. feel free to skip this sucker, it's long, unwieldly, really states nothing of huge interest, and has a ton of pictures that will clog up your corporation's internet connection. some of you might find that fun, i take no responsibility (the wonders of disclaimers).

the nice thing about grace's classes, are that some of them have breaks at around lunch time. so after waking up about 5 minutes before the very last second i need to get ready, and walk there without being too late... we went to 'le bistro landais' which is a michelin star restau... no? we can't afford a michelin... hmmm so it was a random bistro that grace encountered on her 3 mile walk to school. the wonderful thing about actually LIVING in paris instead of visiting for vacation, is that you can visit random locations like this, without having to worry about not getting a full vacational experience.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......

more mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

and of course, after she left to go be productive, i... didn't have anything to do. so i took out my camera, went for a walk, and snapped a couple of cool photos (post processed to hell of course).

this is your typical parisian cafe... full with little tables that sit you outside (almost no one sits inside)... and of course... menus. obviously.

more random pictures


more random pictures


keeping theme here... more random pictures


a typical parisian metaphor. the beauty of the flower, overshadowed by smokers. smokers everywhere.


see what i mean?

grace then had a three day weekend, and the weather was nice, so what better time to head out to champagne? grace was really really excited and happy about the trip (this is despite having to wake up early in the morning!) and so, purchasing a couple of high-speed rail tickets, we trucked off to epernay. first stop, perrier jouet and moet chandon!

if i were to put this picture into the MOMA, it would be aptly named:
"the winds of time as they blow through the minds of a birds eye as it perches on a tree waiting for for the worm which is just a figment of it's imagination."

on the train, grace checks out her awesome pictures of the day


and finally we made it to champagne!!!

so for those of you thinking about taking a romantic trip to epernay and reims in visiting the beautiful areas of champagne... be forewarned. it's not the pretty vineyards of napa or sonoma. it's nowhere remotely close to it. think... the middle of oakland. the bad side of oakland. epernay not so much as reims, both towns are more city-like, and there's not a grape vine to be seen. it's where they do all the cellaring when they bring the bottles from the vineyards. and that's it, other than that... it's a city like any other.

so our first destination was moet chandon, but we got there a little early (9AM, it opens at 9:30), so we hiked the long walk over to perriet jouet (aka next door), and we were snubbly told that... 'excusez moi. no... no... ve do not do these... tours. no... no... you need resevations just to enter store. goodbye.'

bleh... so we walked back to moet chandon, which was fortunately just opening... and... we got a private tour! just the two of us! into the dark cellars of moet we went (after coughing up a butt load of cash).

grace looking forward to her bubbly


the cellars are massive. 18 miles worth of cellars. and a good portion of the 18 miles of cellars is... xx miles of... dom perignon. i wanted to cry. especially when she pointed at some nondescript bottles (lines and lines of bottles) and nonchalantly said, "mmm yeah, vintage doms. let's move on."




and most importantly, the tasting.



you don't find a ton of vintage champagnes around in the states, but we tasted the non vintages next to the vintages, and... ruined ourselves. we will never be able to drink a non vintage champagne again. it's like... going to japan and eating the freshest sushi at the tsukiji fish market. you're just never the same.



she feels at home.


yeah. they make dom. tons and tons of dom. i swear, if grace wasn't giving me 'the look' i probably would have swipped one (or 70) from the cellars.


but we ended up buying two vintage champagnes and calling it a day (since we were then broke.)


so, deciding we were only cash broke, and hadn't quite maxed out our credit cards, we ate a deLICIOUS meal at Patrick Michelons, within the hotel Les Berceaux. it started off with crab (we didn't even order it...)


and followed by another 'from the chef' beef platter. the square thingie of beef tasted like a beef stew, except without the stew. and it was incredible.


quinn got the steak with the 7 lb foie gras (which he had to sign a waiver form for), and grace got the fish. quinn thinks he got the better end of the deal.


and of course... dessert.

we then took a train to reims (they pronounce it rahNce... kinda like France without the F... uh... yeah. what the...). Reims to reiterate, not pretty. epernay is mildly cute as it's a smaller town, but reims? it's probably the pittsburgh of france (aka the armpit). we headed to Mumms house, and there's a stark contrast between the two houses. mumm tries very hard to prove to the world that they have good champagne. you can tell by their cycling movie at the entrance which shows their champagnes being used as winner champagne at races, being used with different celebrities, being used at massive extravagant parties. even the outlay of that place is extravagant, and modern. you can definitely tell they are trying to prove they are great. where as moet? moet chandon doesn't do any of that. they are pure opulence and grace. they don't need to prove to anyone that they are great. they just are. i guess when you have dom... what else is there to say? the tasting at mumms was good, not fantastic, i am now a moet chandon man.

after a thrilling day at champagne, we boarded the train back home. which for some reason, decided, 'hey wouldn't it be fun to go 5 mph for an hour and see what our customers do?' we're still not sure exactly what happened since 1) we couldn't speak french... and 2) we couldn't understand the conductor's announcement because... we couldn't speak french... but the lady that shared our cabin dropped the french equivalent to the F-bomb (merd...) so... yeah we assumed it was... not good. after a crummy train ride, we, desperate to end the day off on a good note, went back home and... cooked us some spam eggs and rice. seriously, the world just needs spam eggs and rice and all of the world's ails would be solved with gelatinous, giggly, pink, processed, meat. SPAM. Scientifically Processed Animal Matter. My ambrosia.

we finished our weekend checking out a new cafe that's down the street from where we live, and oddly enough, grace selected a place that had good looking potatoes. i say oddly enough because it seems to me that every single place she recommends... oddly enough, has good looking potatoes. i firmly am now a believer that indeed, it doesn't matter what the menu, crowd, or ambiance of a place looks like... as long as they have potatoes, it gets a 'recommended to check out' in grace's book... and of course the correct answer to such recommendations is obviously...
'oui chef!'
like my dad so instilled in me, and is a shining example of... when the chef is happy, you still get to eat. keep the chef happy.

breathe. relax. we are finally done.