http://kolinateng.com

Okay not really. But I made spam musubi! I never had it before even when I really was in Hawai’i, but it seemed easy enough.

Here I am finding out that spam is half-fat, half-sodium.

Here is the Baker’s Edge brownie pan doing double-duty as a spam musubi assembly.

Nom nom!

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’m a hypocrite.

Back in college, HK and I used to bash on the male population that bought flowers and stuffed animals for their significant others on Valentine’s Day. One year we even [facetiously] suggested that she decapitate the stuffed bear that an admirer had gifted her since she was known to be rather selective (that’s a nice way of putting it) and often scoffed at any cliché signs of affection directed at her. I know, I know - we’re horrible and don’t deserve anyone’s adoration, but Valentine’s usually leaves a bad taste mainly because of things like this:

Lover's Lane at Safeway

Yech!

Anyway, that was until last year, when she received a bouquet of roses and sheepishly admitted how thrilled she was. And then this weekend, Reid pulled out all the stops for our first Valentine’s and one-year anniversary. Now I’m the sheepish ball of sap.

First, we celebrated Chinese New Year on Saturday night with my parents and some extended family. Yay, good food and red envelopes!

Second, Reid surprised me with all the sappy stuff that I pretend to hate and then made a delicious brunch crab and avocado omelets with hollandaise sauce, mimosas, and bacon! We went to Tartine Bakery in the late afternoon, got a fresh loaf of bread right out of the oven (7×7’s 2010 list of things-to-eat item!), slathered it in creamy, sweet brillat-savrin cheese from Bi-Rite Market, and munched on it at Dolores Park. Granted, my suspicions were correct in that we would spend the day trying to get the Foursquare Valentine’s Day badge, and Tartine was one of the Foursquare stops, it was hands-down the best bread and cheese I have ever tasted, and it was a beautiful day in the Mission to enjoy it. We did have some time to kill before our dinner reservation, so we went to Absinthe to try the Galapagos cocktail (another item off the 7×7 list). I can’t say it wow’d me, but we’ll have to come back for the house-made hot dog that’s also on the 7×7 list.

And last, Reid took me to dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, which I have been excited about since he told me he made the reservation. The restaurant is hailed as the birthplace of California cuisine, was listed as one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, and was awarded a Michelin star for several years. I was particuarly impressed with the UN-pretentiousness of the restaurant and the friendliness of the wait/kitchen staff who invited us to explore their open kitchen at the end of the meal. I’m not a self-proclaimed foodie, nor can I speak with knowledge to quality of ingredients or cooking technique, but I can just say that the meal was absolutely delicious. It was definitely one of the best dining experiences I’ve had, but the caveat I must state with that proclaimation is that fine dining is only as good as the company dining with you. That said, I looked forward to making pasta with canned sauce, frozen meatballs, and leftover bread and cheese with Reid the following evening as much as I looked forward to our nice dinner out at Chez Panisse.

Okay, enough of the sap. Back to self-deprecating humor now.

Due to growing up in the Silicon Valley or my social circle of geeky tech friends, I’ve always been a wannabe-geek but without the shiny new gadgets that real geeks can show off. UNTIL NOW. Sure, it’s not the MacBook Wheel, but thanks to Reid, I have recently come into possession of the “Google phone” - the Nexus One! Since I’ve been using a free flip-phones with antennae (!) up to this point, this is a whole new horizon laid out for me. Amazing. Let me give you an example of what I can do with this bad boy.

Over the weekend, I met up with some girlfriends that work at Google (just another step towards Google HQ infiltration) for some tea at Palo Alto’s Tea Time. First, I had gotten a Google calendar invite (that Android pushes directly to my mobile Gmail). I was able to respond to it, and it syncs with my Google calendars.

I do a speech-to-text search for Tea Time since I can’t very well type while driving, and GPS navigation and text-to-voice directions help me get there since the Google God knows I have no sense of direction. Point in case: I parked in an underground garage, and when I emerged, I had no idea in which direction to walk. Out comes the phone! And I pinpoint my exact location and walk towards the little red dot marked Tea Time. BTW, this phone renders my $140 Garmin nuvi useless.

I meet the girls, and we’re all a-Twitter about this super cute place with super tiny I-need-5-of-these-to-be-full-cuz-I’m-about-as-dainty-as-a-pig English crumpets and sandwiches, so we all take out our Android phones and communally tweet about it via Twidroid. And then Foursquare check-in because… I don’t know. Because we CAN.

The Yelp application helps me decide which sandwich is most highly recommended.

And then some pictures are in order, using our 5 megapixel phone cameras (that also captures video).

Looks like I won't be needing my point-and-shoot anymore. On a different note: look at the tea cozies! I've never seen one before!

Then we chat/gossip about the upcoming Valentine’s Day, and we (or just me) joke that we can keep tabs on our significant others’ current locations via Latitude.

As I leave, I notice that I’ve missed a phone call from Mom and she’s left me a 2-minute message as she is prone to do, but have no fear, because Google Voice has transcribed the message so I can just read it quickly. Unfortunately, Mom speaks in Chinese, and Voice doesn’t do Chinese-transcription-to-English translation yet. Bummer.

Bummer #2: I can’t take screenshots of my phone to supplement my blog post here. But that’s okay because you can already read about them at much more reputable tech blogs.

Bummer #3: Still waiting on a widget/app for Google Buzz that was just released yesterday (which, I might add, still hasn’t shown up on in my Gmail yet…)

Yes, I realize these are all things you can do to some degree with various other smartphones, and in another year, this phone will probably be as obsolete as the G1 that came out almost exactly one year prior to the Nexus One. But let me bask in my new phone’s glory, OK? This is a huge step for me since I have been waiting to upgrade for a long time, but wanted to wait for an worthy phone. Ahh, all praise to the Google!!!