Dining Out - Burmese Cuisine at Yoma in Allston

Wednesday night, I was driving through Kenmore (source of this post about the bicyclists) for a meeting of the Boston International Dining Association.

This month, we had some delicious Burmese Cuisine at Yoma on North Beacon St. in Allston.

Burmese does have a better ring to it than Myanmarese. Nonetheless, the food was outstanding.

The restaurant is very small and casual. Probably ten tables in total. No booze. Sodas served from cans with cups of ice (you might have to ask for double ice if you want more than a cube). This week, Boston.com had an article about the effect of the cyclone on the Burmese community here in Boston, and they included a photo of Yoma's interior.

I even took a menu to remind me what we ate.

The flavors mixed amazingly. The highlights:

ThaYetTheeTho - a green mango salad with shredded cabbage, shallot, diced shrimp, ground peanut, garlic sauce, and cilantro

ShwePaYonTheeHin - sweet pumpkin with jumbo shrimp, tomato, ginger, shallot, lemongrass, and cilantro

AaThotSone - vermicelli, somen noodle, wheat flour noodle, rice, shredded cabbage, fried tofu, steamed bean sprouts, potato, ground peanut, chili flake, shallot, and dried shrimp

Coconut Rice - rice with coconut milk, jasmine rice, and shallot

I had never eaten Burmese cuisine before, but I'm always game for new dining options. When we sat down and reviewed the menu, we almost expected the food to taste like Thai. I can seem the similarities, but both Burmese and Thai are certainly distinct.

Yoma is having a benefit on Saturday from 12 noon - 4pm to benefit the victims of the cyclone in Myanmar. I'd go back if I wasn't wrapped up all day on Saturday already.

Mac Features / Weeding Out Contacts

Now that's I'm up and running with my Mac, I find some of the completely intuitive features necessary, and can't understand why Windows never integrated such actions. Thanks to my co-worker Sean, I assigned the action of "move cursor to the corner" with one of three functions - upper left is hide all applications and show desktop, upper right is show all open windows to select which one you want to use, and lower right (I think this one is default) is my widget dashboard. I just dipped my toe into the widget world, but love what I have installed already.

I'm still integrating data, and have determined that this is a terrific time to clean out my contacts. Just this morning over coffee, I was able to delete contacts who fit into one of the following buckets:

1. Left job, now MIA
2. Haven't spoken to in years
3. Will very likely never speak to again
4. Douchebag

It makes for weeding through contacts quite simple. If you're not in one of those categories, you're still in my Outlook (...I mean, Entourage...)

Boston Idiots on Bicycles

I love this service called Jott. Basically, I have it linked to my cell phone and email, so I can call it, "jott" myself (or others), and it turns my speech into text, archives the original voice message, and introduces a sharable element by making the URL to the audio public, should I so choose.

Often, I'm jotting notes to myself ("Don't forget Mother's Day") or wacky things that I think might make for interesting entries here ("Asparagus pee" or "What is the appropriateness of someone farting out loud while at the urinal when you're the only two people in the bathroom?") While I haven't followed up either of those related jotts with a posting here, I did jott something during my drive to dinner last night that I must post.

The weather was great yesterday, which seemed to cause more bikers to hit the roads. By bikers, I mean Trek and Schwinn, not Harley-Davidson and Suzuki.

Last I checked, bikers are responsible for abiding by the rules of the road, just as car drivers are.

Yesterday, in the span of a minute, two idiots blared through red lights in and around Kenmore. On both occasions, I was the first car stopped, so I had clear views. And on neither occasion was the light changing from yellow to red.

One guy bolted through a red light, literally through a stream of pedestrians. Two people had to jump back to avoid being hit.

At the very next light, another biker sped through a red light almost plowing into a poor little old lady crossing the street in her violet pants, sun hat, and cane. At that light, waiting right next to me, was a Boston police officer on a motorcycle. He did nothing. Yet, if I proceeded through that same light right in front of him...I'm guessing I would have been cited.

When on a bicycle, it's one thing to come to a dead stop at a red light, and then cautiously proceed through. While still illegal, it seems safer.

It's another to ride through at full speed.

Lights are there for reasons, guys. And while the cars usually win during bike vs. car collisions, it's the people that get hurt during bike vs. pedestrian.

Brimful of Asha

I know there's a ton of songs in my regular iTunes rotation that are far off the radars of 99.44% of others, but are part of my usual every day entertainment....

"Devil's Diary" by The Caulfields
"Work For Food" by Dramarama
"Do You Remember the First Time?" by Pulp
"Jeepster" by T. Rex
"Let the Day Begin" by The Call

..and on...

This is usually the soundtrack of my day, mixed of course with some more familiar and current music.

I'm citing off-the-beaten path music because I heard a great song from the 90's not once, but twice in the past few days - on two separate radio stations.

One local, 101.7 WFNX
One Internet, RadioIO Alt Rock Classics (via iTunes radio)

That song is "Brimful of Asha" by Cornershop, bearer of one of the best lyrics from the 90's:

"Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, everybody needs a bosom."

I bought this CD back in 97, and it's not terrible. But over the years, it just kind of drifted away from regular rotation.

When I heard FNX play it this weekend, I was surprised. It's not the kind of song you hear much of from terrestrial radio. But, FNX is still pretty cool, so kudos to them. I turned up the radio and sang out loud.

Internet radio, however, is a different animal. I discovered this RadioIO Alt Rock Classic channel last week, and the music is basically everything I remember from my days in radio from 91-96. Lots of weird stuff that, at the time, was in rotation on my radio station back then...

"Ruined in a Day" by New Order
"Get Out of Control" by Daniel Ash
"Groovy Train" by The Farm
"X, Y, and Zee" by Pop Will Eat Itself
"Real, Real, Real" by Jesus Jones

Songs that live mostly in my memory and my iTunes. It would be great to find some others who remember and still love this generation of music.

Jamaica Plain Pub Crawl

Well, it was certainly a weekend of excess, capped off with an unofficial pub crawl through part of Jamaica Plain on Saturday. Brian and Kelly are soon going to become new parents, and about 8 of us (bros, not....ladies) got together to celebrate one of his final weekends before dirty diapers and middle-of-the-night wakeups.

I had never been on the Samuel Adams Brewery Tour, but that is where we began our adventure. Our guide seemed pleased and mellow during the entire tour. I wonder what's really in those hops?









At the end of the tour, they hoarded us into the tasting room, where we sampled three 7 ounce glasses of draft beer - the mainstay Boston Lager, the Summer Ale, and a third one whose name escapes me (though we were told it is not available on draft anywhere else, and is only sold as part of a sample pack).

As many of the tour attendees were from out-of-town, they recommended that folks could continue their drinking at Doyle's. While that's almost always a good idea, we opted for a different next step - Brendan Behan.

I hadn't been there in quite some time, but Brian reminded me that once before, he, Kelly, Meghan, and I came up with our famous idea for a store that mixes cereal together, and served it in a casual setting. Of our list of names (including "Wheat Make You Breakfast," thanks to Brian himself), we settled on "Cereality."

Too bad that exact concept and exact name had already been operational and franchised. Whoops.

No grandiose ideas this time, simply a few pints of excellent microbrew IPA's - they have about 10-12 really interesting beers on tap that you don't see in many places - and our viewing of the Kentucky Derby. Before the race, someone collected 10 bucks from 20 people, then assigned numbers for horses. One of the guys in our party won, and soon after had an envelope of $200 in front of him. Not a bad investment!

Onward across the street to The Milky Way. It's a shame that this place is closing - it's always busy and has tons of character. The candlepin bowling was pretty busy, and it would have been a long wait for a lane. Good thing, I'm not all that skilled at candlepin. So we stayed for a few pizzas and more beer. By then, our band of merry men had whittled from eight to six.

We walked over to The Alchemist, a restaurant I had been to once before. I think it's such a cool environment inside, with the high ceilings, exposed brick, and casual atmosphere. I'm not sure how many pints we had there, but am guessing I left after the second one.

In all, JP is a great place to drink - a wide variety of beers and friendly environments within stumbling distance of one another. It would be nice if the places in Southie ventured off the tap beer beaten path, and included a number of excellent microbrews.

No hangover whatsoever...thanks to staying within my limits and my friend, Advil.

Nobody Under 26 Allowed

We noticed this sign today at Ankara Cafe, a small sandwich place in Kenmore.

Is the sign simply that old, or is this truly a place for the 26-43 year old crowd?

Southie Wild Turkey

I completely forgot to mention this during my post about the sweaty bus/T ride to work on Tuesday, but on the #11 bus, driving up Dorchester St., we were halted for about 15 seconds by a giant wild turkey making its way across the street. I seem to recall half-standing up from my seat, and pointing at the turkey for all who cared to be roused from their ipods, which was likely nobody.

I swear I read a mention of a Southie wild turkey on Universal Hub, but can't seem to find that posting now.

Nonetheless, I have no photo, as I was seated toward the rear of the bus, perspiring profusely. People behind me were probably wondering "who is this sweaty crazy guy pointing at an alleged turkey in Southie?"

Digging my MacBook Pro

I am totally digging this MacBook Pro - I think I need just a few more days with it before I'm entirely comfortable with the differences between this and a Windows-based machine.

The quick keys are intuitive and easy to remember (where's my bookmarks? Oh, Command-B. Need a new browser tab? Command-T. Cut/copy/paste? Command-X-C-V... just like windows). The lack of a right mouse button is still a bit weird to me, but I am quickly remembering that Control-Click is the way to go.

One of the most awesome design features is that the keyboard illuminates in darker environments. What a simple yet useful idea - backlight the keys and the characters on the keys. No I can computer in pitch black and save on my energy bill.

This laptop is also super fast, and will make my work much more efficient. My Dell had reached such a snail's pace that I was ready to throw it over the balcony had our office's ceiling not permitted the rain to fall onto my desk.

Once my data is fully integrated, I'll be thrilled. There are some frustrating elements of the data migration, such as MS Entourage not allowing for simple integration of a .pst file from MS Outlook. I believe there's an add-on which we're going to purchase today.

For now, I have a few projects I must forge through today and tomorrow.

It Rained on My Laptop

Today has been an interesting one to say the least.


I started my out-of-home experience today on the bus, bumping into my neighbor who is quite fond of Rosie, so we have a common interest. Somehow, the conversation turned into her former downstairs neighbors, and if I ever "heard" them, to which I replied no, but I did tell her two highly inappropriate stories about them based on what I saw. Lovely Red Line morning conversation. I tried to be quiet about it, but in the rush-hour sardine can that is the morning Red Line, I'm sure a few nosy passengers heard earfuls.


During the entire chat with her, all I could think about was the MBTA's personal ecosystem of 100% humidity. I sweat in humidity. No exceptions. I even recall glancing around at others - guys in jackets and ties, women primped with hair in place, wondering why I was lucky enough to have received this sweat gene. Good thing it was indeed raining, I think that provided a sufficient excuse for me.

I showed up at work, greeted my co-workers, and walked into my office to find paper towels strewn across by desk. Upon a more careful inspection, I found water under my computer and mouse, and papers crinkled as if they had been wet and then air-dried.

Mother f&*ker, the ceiling leaked onto my laptop.

It's rare that I leave my laptop at work, but did so last night because I didn't feel like carting it back and forth on the T and bus in the rain. And above all, I'm usually commuting to work via car, which was in the shop overnight. Perfect timing.

When I leave my laptop at work, usually I just save my files, leave them in the toolbar, and shut the top, leaving it turned on. That was one of my fatal flaws.

Immediately, I tried backing up files, but my computer quickly displayed a blue screen of doom, and no longer recognized an operating system.

Lovely. 85% of what I do is with Excel, our database, Outlook, or a few web apps.

I scrambled to call our computer consultant, who said that she would come in later and try to salvage the hard drive. My data was backed up through April 4th, so it's not a total loss. But my Outlook email, calendar, and contacts were only backed up through last November. Our technical infrastructure isn't the best, and I'm lucky I backed up what I did, though probably should have been backing up much more regularly. Grrr.

Of course, you also don't expect your laptop to be rained upon when it's at your desk. But it was.

My Dell had grown increasingly more sluggish over the past few months, and when combined with our excruciatingly slow network, made for lots of angry and frustrated working hours. The silver lining here is that I was scheduled for a laptop upgrade in the coming months, and we were 99% sure I was switching to Apple.

Well, the coming months became today. We drove to the Apple store in Chestnut Hill, and my MacBook Pro is now at work (sitting on someone else's desk that's not underneath a leaky roof). The files I had backed up are being transferred this evening.

So, I'm thrilled to have joined the Apple cult with my MacBook Pro. I feel immediately cooler, and no reserve the right to look down upon PC users, wondering when they'll get with the program and make the move away from Windows.

I'm cautiously optimistic that my data is not gone for good.

And I'm happy to have my car back, albeit with $2,100 less in my bank account.

I celebrated my funky day with some ice cream at JP Licks while waiting for the car dealership's shuttle from Davis Square. That hit the spot.

Open Apology to My Fantasy Baseball League

Dear Friends,

I apologize for sucking once again this season. More accurately, I apologize for sucking more than I have ever sucked before, and for adding my sucky bad luck to my sucky poor fantasy baseball skills to make one large pile of suck.

Of course, I wouldn't suck as much if:

1. Big Papi did not bat half of his weight.
2. Robinson Cano did not bat half of Big Papi's weight.
3. Justin Verlander did not give up 5 or more runs in half of his starts (1-4, 6.50 ERA, 20 K's)
4. I did not trade Chien-Ming Wang (5-0, 3.23 ERA, 1.18 WHIP) for Roy Oswalt (2-3, 5.75 ERA, 1.53 WHIP) during the pre-season

I'm left playing a bunch of bench warmers and now relying on free agents to clean up the mess of the season I have begun.

Once upon a time, my fantasy baseball skills did not smell of utter suck. I won a league once, and finished second or third the following year, both times in non-keeper leagues (i.e. I didn't keep the best players for season after season).

It's easy to blame all of this on Big Papi, which I intend to do. But lord, that boneheaded trade has bugged me all day the more that I think of it.

Omnibot 2000 - Blast From My Past

Oh, Omnibot 2000. Robot of my past. A 1980's view of the future. And a toy sitting in my parents' basement.

Why am I suddenly thinking about the Omnibot 2000?

I'm catching up on a few weeks of shows in the DVR, and knocked out a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother last night.

There is a recurring story arc about Robin, one of the main characters. Apparently, as a teenager, she was a Canadian pop star from the late 80's named "Robin Sparkles." When this was revealed on a past episode, her friends dug up the previously unknown-to-them video of her hit "Let's Go To The Mall."

So funny. Screams of Tiffany and Debbie Gibson.

Well, the episode that I just watched suggested that a second video existed. They showed part of it, and then flashed a MySpace page for Robin Sparkles.

When I landed at that URL, I saw this photo of Robin, denim jacket and all, dancing up behind an Omnibot 2000.

I received Omnibot 2000 as a Christmas gift one year. It appears that the story behind the gift is a mad dash by my father to every electronics store in Rockland and Bergen counties, until he finally found one in The Bronx. Oddly enough, he was not under duress from my mother to find it for me, but rather made it a person mission after he could not locate one in the first few stores he checked.

We were still 10-15 years away from major e-commerce websites, which would have been a much easier solution had it been available.

I remember one of Omnibot 2000's major cool functions was its ability to pour drinks from a can and serve them on its tray. Of course, that involved setting up Omnibot 2000 with a soda can and cups, and then directing it from its remote control.

A bit of a process, but cool nonetheless.

I should dig up Omnibot 2000 and bring him up to Boston. He could keep Rosie company while I'm at work.

On second thought, given the fact that the vacuum cleaner freaks her out, I would guess that if a robot's yellow eyes started lighting up, and it started rolling her way, she would majorly freak out.

My Weevils

Yesterday morning, I decided that I wanted to make pancakes.

I'm not a regular pancake maker, but had been sticking to Bisquick during recent batch preparations. I remembered that I had this oat bran pancake mix in my cupboard, and wanted to try that instead.

So I grabbed the paper bag of mix, ignored the expiration date from 2006 (it's grains...how can they expire?), and started preparing.

One egg, lightly beaten.

Canola oil.

Pancake mix

After scooping 1/3 cup of the mix into the bowl, I saw what looked like a small moth-bug. Yuck! Must have landed in the bowl somehow. How could I have missed that? I should have inspected the bowl more closely.

So, I rinsed out the bowl and started over.

Only this time, I looked into the pancake mix.

The top layer of mix was covered with those black-ish small moth bug. It took me a good 30 seconds, and my digging deeper into the mix to see the actual refined oat bran, to realize that these things were not whole grains. They were bugs.

Gross.

I looked in the cupboard and saw a couple of them on the shelf. So I cleaned everything out of the cupboard (it's a very small one), threw out all other items that expired before 2008 (um...no comment), and gave it a thorough cleaning.

I went about my day and was pleased with my extermination skills.

Later, I decided to whip up ziti and a quick tomato sauce for dinner. I bought a large bag of pine nuts at BJ's earlier this year, and thought some toasted pine nuts would go well in the sauce. I went back to the aforementioned cupboard, and retrieved those.

I figured a sealed bag was safe.

I opened the bag to find not moth bugs, but rather a cobweb-ish lattice covering the top layer, and what appeared to be some larvae.

Gross.

I don't know if these incidents are connected or not, but it's clear to me that not all of my grain comestibles are dead.

Keeping the Nalgene

I forgot how in came up in conversation. but this morning, I had a passing recollection of hearing how my Nalgene bottles are toxic.

I didn't understand how that could be true, but then did a bit of searching this morning to confirm that the company itself is "phasing out" the production of consumer bottle containing BPA.

Thanks to our neighbors up north for discovering this.

It appears, though, that I don't have to go tossing out my Nalgene bottles with such fury and speed. It seems to be fine as long as I don't mix and boiling or hot water inside the bottle and give the resulting formula to an infant.

Given that I didn't plan to do that any time soon, onward with the Nalgene.

Finding Her Voice

Rosie has been barking a lot more recently. Her barks, however, have not been indiscriminate. On occasion, we're out for a walk, and she will see another dog that causes her to say something. Not all dogs, but simply a select few. Perhaps they are planning book club.

More often, Rosie has woken me at some inappropriate hour (1:30am, 3am, 4am, etc) to let out a few barks / freak outs. I have been sleeping with the bedroom window open a crack, and have kept the shades raised by about the same height. Rosie has taken to staring out the window from her bed (check that, MY bed...but who am I fooling now), simply surveying the land.

Usually when she spots something worthy of her ferocious chatter, she jumps up in bed and lets out a few well-timed barks. I don't believe she's targeting burglars, drug deals, or other mean dogs. She doesn't seem to do this during the daylight hours, so her night vision could play into this equation as well.

But I wonder if the entire time I'm in bed sleeping, she's now awake staring. Perhaps my raising the window shade has created such a paranoid infatuation of Rosie that she sleeps all day and monitors all night.

I'm assuming that a simple solution will be sleeping with the shades down.

Legal Prostitution in Massachusetts?

I received this menu in my mailbox yesterday.

I suppose it's good that they're not the "old ho toy"

Upon reinterpreting this in a much less noble fashion, all of the words take on completely new and inappropriate meanings!

The Lion-Dog

Rosie has been a bit jump-ity on here evening walks of late.

A couple weeks ago, we were walking along a nearby block upon which we must never have walked before.

We were walking along on the sidewalk, me minding nothing in particular, Rosie sniffing just about everything, as usual.

We came about 50 feet from what Rosie thought was another dog. The dog was seated alongside a few steps, and well-behaved. In fact, the dog's sibling was also seated beside those steps on the other side.

Only problem? They were decorative dog statues.

Rosie surveyed the dogs carefully, but for some reason wanted NO part of them. Usually she sees other dogs and wants to go say hello.

These dogs must have been too well behaved. She ran out into the street and began barking at them, but never approached them.

Fast forward to today. We're walking back from the usual bathroom area. As we walked by a dark home undergoing external improvements, a large black dog suddenly popped its entire from half of its body out an open first-floor window, and let out a ferocious growl directed at both of us, described as nothing short of a lion's roar.

I'm not sure who jumped and scurried away faster, Rosie or me.

Needless to say, the short walk back to my home was swift.

Working From Home

I thought better of attempting to work from an office a block away from Kenmore Square, given the thousands of runners passing through today.

So, I'm working from home, and have already begun my day. My gut tells me that a focused day of work away from the throngs of athletes and onlookers, and with an Internet connection that's faster than a dial-up connection from 1997 (such as the one, at times, in our current office) will make for a pleasant work day.

Being that we should see temps near 70 today, it's going to be difficult to avoid the obligatory Patriot's Day mid-afternoon downtown drinking outdoors in the Back Bay.

I'll stick with my home-brewed coffee. Maybe I'll add a nip of amaretto a bit later...

Back from Vegas

We made it back alive from Las Vegas. The redeye isn't a terrible idea, actually. It's a bit luck of the draw with passengers on the plane, though. I had the pleasure of sitting next to some teenage or 20-something girl who would not stop wriggling around, banging the arm rest, and pushing her knees into my small leg space. Her dad was next to her, and at one point, she was propped up against him, angled toward me. I almost pounded on her foot but refrained.

The drawback to the redeye is the cramped neck I'm now left with, which is a bit of a bummer because I splurged for an hour massage yesterday. The Spa at MGM was just OK, I've been to much nicer at some of the other casinos.

I had a fight upon checkout. Not worth the trouble of a full story here, but the front desk attendant (or manager, so he claimed) did not budge on the two egregious errors on my folio. As I didn't book the room, I'm encouraging our front office to stop payment on the charge, or, in a more sensical approach, call our sales contact at the hotel to get the matters straightened out. It's tough when you have no status with a property, didn't book the room yourself, and are simply one of 3,000 people checking out that day. Grrr.

The war of words put me in the wrong mindset for a round of poker, but I was able to forge through my final $40 all-in, double up with a set of 5's, and eventually and turn it into $390, I believe. It certainly helps when you're holding pocket Aces and you're re-raised all in before the flop by someone holding pocket Kings. That was a nice situation to be in.

Last Day in Vegas

Well, the actual NAB convention was quite a sight. I expected more of a focus on the actual idea side of content creation, for some reason. Instead, the convention floor was all equipment, technical, software, and hardware. Still, a great experience to better understand what the convention was all about. I'm amazed at some of the booths that were constructed. It's almost like the ice hotels that pop up in the winter time. One minute, nothing there...then a hotel....then it's gone.

Last night, we ate at Nobu, an excellent Japanese fusion restaurant at the Hard Rock. Ten of us were there, and I don't want to guess at the tab. We basically had them keep bringing us food for the table, and it eventually ended with a bill.

Just a few more hours to tool around Vegas tonight until our flight. Somehow I was dragged to the craps tables a few night ago, and my quick disposal of $100 reminded me of why I only play poker these days.

Back in Las Vegas

It’s hard not to love jetBlue’s free DirecTV. Even on long, full flights like the one to Las Vegas today, it makes the time pass much more quickly. At home, I fall into TV-watching ruts, relying primarily on my DVR’s To-Do list. I have always believed that one of the by products of a DVR, which I wouldn’t trade for the world, is the loss of channel surfing. I just don’t do it any more.

But on a 5 ½ hour flight, there’s plenty of time to find something new.

As a huge music fan, I think VH1 Classic is a great network. I just never seem to watch it except when I’m on jetBlue. I watched a video by Winger, from 1988 or so. It made me think how dated the song sounded, but the music from Pearl Jam and Nirvana released just 3 years later still sounds relevant.

I caught a few episodes of Cash Cab, which I have seen before, but just in passing. It’s such a simple concept, and so well done – they probably don’t air the contestants who aren’t entertaining, but you can’t help but play along and root for the players. I forget the host’s name (Ben something?), but he’s perfect in that role.

Discovery showed a promo for Alaska Week, which I’m going to have to check out. For some reason, I’m quite interested in travel to cold places – Alaska, Nunavut and Yellowknife (Canada), Iceland, and Greenland – I have planned mock flight itineraries to all of those places…I don’t know why, probably just to see how to get there.

There’s also some show called Verminators. It’s about pest control and exterminators. I feel compelled to watch it, but know I will be incredibly creeped out by what I will see.

VH1 is running a reality series called Viva Hollywood! With Maria Conchita Alonzo and a cast of unknown Latin actors competing for a slot on a Telemundo telenovela. I’m thinking of resuming my Spanish classes, and in some warped way, think that telenovelas might help with my comprehension of spoken Spanish, which is always more difficult for me than reading the language (I think that’s normal). The show is a bit over the top – the first episode had the contestants completing Telemundo fight scenes (water thrown in the face, lots of hair pulling, face slaps). Very entertaining.

Finally, channel surfing reintroduces TV commercials back into my life. For how long have animated lizards doing the Thriller dance for Sobe Life Water??