Supnormal evening

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It's been a few weeks since I last got together with the Specialist, as both of us had been studying hard for our exams.  As I was done with my exam and she needed to take a break from her studies, we figured we should gather the troops for a night out.  After debating through different venue possibilities, the Specialist settled on the new Sup 1, which has now re-opened on the western end of town after being booted out from Gough Street thanks to skyrocketing rent.

This was meant to be my lone cheat meal this week, but things didn't exactly go according to plan last night.  I was still gonna eat whatever I wanted tonight, but figured I could at least cut down on the quantity.

Not surprisingly we started with some sashimi, and I took a piece of the sea urchin and squid roll…

The party crasher

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I've been studying for an exam for the last couple of weeks, and today was the big day.  I was kinda borderline failing the mock exam I took last night, so I got a little nervous and spent most of the workday hiding in a conference room studying.  While failing the exam wouldn't be the end of the world, I didn't exactly wanna look like an idiot in front of my boss.

So it was a little distracting when I received not one, but two invitations to dinner mere hours before my exam.  One of them came from my friend David Lai, who dangled the prospect of white truffles and who knows what else in front of me.  I thanked him but turned him down.  This is the last week of my 3-month weight-loss program, and I was already gonna have a cheat meal tomorrow.  No, I need to be a good boy.

After passing my exam in the afternoon, I finished up in the office and decided to head to On Lot 10 to make a delivery.  After dropping off the package with one of the guests, I made sure to thank David for his kind invitation, but said I was going home.  I needed to be a good boy, and besides, I didn't really know the guest of honor and most of the crowd.

That's when David said the magic words: "rice birds".

Now I knew I was staying for dinner.

The other Italian

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It was supposed to be a casual business lunch, and with a big group of us I was kinda expecting Cantonese.  However the partner at my service provider kinda realized that I enjoy my food, and decided to take us to L'Altro - the Italian restaurant not far from my office which has earned themselves a little macaron last year.  Given that I'd never been here before, it was an unexpected chance to check it out.

Going to a new restaurant is always a challenge while I'm on my diet, and the problem gets worse when it's a limited menu.  My colleague and I took some time trying to pick out the "lighter" choices from the list, although I think he had an easier time… since he didn't need to make sure he got all the food groups in.

A quiet Friday evening

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It's been a while since I last caught up with Rice and his wife, and I wanted to see them to celebrate their anniversary, however belatedly.  Rice was busy galloping around the world for the last few weeks, and finally had time to meet up tonight.  As he left the choice of venue to me, I decided to revisit someplace that I'd been wanting to return to.

When I stopped by Island East Markets last Sunday to pick up weekly ration of organic veggies and bread, I purposely pretended not to see Grégoire even though I know he had spotted me.  He was chatting with Jeremy from Mirror, and since I had already booked Mirror as the venue for tonight, I chose to stay away.  I wasn't sure if Jeremy would recognize me, but I rather preferred to be dining incognito tonight.  Most of my friends haven't been back to the restaurant since its early days, and I wanted to see whether things have changed, as they've gone through the gaining (and subsequent losing) of a macaron.

Well, turns out that Jeremy wasn't even in town!  He'd flown up to Shanghai for something, and announced it on FB.  Incognito it is.

I arrived to find the restaurant mostly empty and quiet, and in fact it stayed that way on this Friday night, with all of 12 covers.  I suppose that was good for us, as there was no problem getting anyone's attention.

Living with my Basis

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When I first started my diet/nutritional program, a friend suggested that I get myself a new fitness toy, as a way to motivate myself.  I was looking around at the usual suspects from Nike, Fitbit, Jawbone, Garmin…etc.  But nothing I saw really appealed to me.  Having a GPS would be real nice, but that severely limited my choices.  Yes, I wanted a heart rate monitor, but didn't want to strap anything to my chest while I ran.  There didn't seem to be a single solution which combined a GPS with a wrist-based HRM.

Then someone posted a story about Soylent on my Facebook timeline.  While the story was interesting (I would never want to replace eating with drinking Soylent) what really caught my eye was a little gadget called Basis B1.  The thought of wearing something 24 hours a day and then analyzing how your body behaves suddenly seemed intriguing.  After doing some research online and reading a few reviews, I suddenly wanted one.  Since Basis themselves were kinda back ordered and wouldn't have shipped directly to Hong Kong anyway, I found someone on eBay who would.  The premium I paid was justifiable in my mind, so I bid on it, won, and patiently waited for the seller shipped it from the US via USPS…

There was a public holiday during my waiting period, and I took a few days off to spend it with my family back in Taipei.  After returning to HK, I eagerly checked my mailbox at work and finally found the package after some three weeks' of waiting…