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May 4, 2005
Birthday Thanks, Big Wienies, and Mai Village
Birthdays
We had a small gathering for my mother's birthday last week. As I said at the table, if somebody would have told me that for my & my mother's 25th and 52nd birthdays that we would have all been sitting around the same table, sharing food we've made and wine we've stored having a plesant conversation I probably would have fallen over dead. There is nobody I would have rather dined with last week than you guys. It was fabulous!
Thank you too dad for coming into town!
A big "thank you!" is also in order to all of my friends that came to my birthday party last Saturday. It was fabulous to see so many of the people I love and admire in one room!
An even bigger "thank you!!" is in order for the people that organized the party. Aimee, Will & Jane, Mom: thank you so very much! I had a great time!
The party was held at Marquette Place, Will & Jane's apartment building, downtown in the party room at the top of the building. The view from the top was amazing. One of the best views of the Minneapolis skyline I had ever seen. I'm sure I'll post at least one of the images in my Photoblog soon.
It was a lovely time, I was able to eat vast quantities of my favorite food (Malaysian curry chicken with potatoes [M1] from K-Wok restaurant on the U of MN campus), drink, and dance. A bucket was passed around labelled "donate to Jordan's save the whale pods fund" which was used to purchase a brand new 30GB iPod photo for my birthday. Thank you all very much again!
It's true, the iPod's are a great product. They might not have fancy visualizations or OLED screens or play OGG files, but they are well constructed, stylish, sound great, and have a decent battery life.
My only complaint so far is that I have had some initial problems getting the device to syncronize properly with iTunes on my computer that only supports USB 1.1. I've heard from friends and read elsewhere that this is a somewhat common problem. I think I'll be getting a FireWire interface for my PC soon. Yes, I am now officially another wieny with an iPod.
Big Wienies
Speaking of wienies, my friend Ms. Amy Williams had a rather interesting experience with a rather large wieny in the parking lot of Rudolph's restaurant:
...my smile must have signaled something to you, nicely dressed, white male with drunken smile because after you pulled out of the lot and we just happened to be going the same way as you, you stuck something huge and flesh colored out of the passenger side window. I thought it was your arm and you were waving a friendly hello in your drunken stupor.
Then, my friend who was driving screamed, "OH MY GOD IS THAT A DILDO?!" And why yes, yes it was not your arm bending and swaying in the breeze, but a huge floppy dildo.
Amy, I hope you receive an answer to life's persistent questions.
Mai Village
Summary: 7.5 / 10
Last night I ate with Aimee and Jeremy at Mai Village restaurant. In short, it was good. As others have mentioned, it wasn't good in the down-home simple and cheap eats department as other restaurants such as Quang, Pho 79, or Jasmine Deli but I would still go back and give it another shot.
They obviously spent a lot of money sprucing up the place to attract a higher echelon of customers than what is typically seen driving through the 'hood. There are real orchids, dark wood carved furniture, and even a water fall leading to a koi pond that you pass over while being led into the dining area. This atmosphere obviously comes at a cost: I didn't see a lot of southeast asian neighborhood locals dining there which initially made me suspicious of the food. Too many white people in one spot is generally a bad indication for me when it comes to eating at certain venues.
This suspicion was in part confirmed when I saw the menu listed pages and pages of American Chinese favorites such as "Chicken Almond Ding." I steered away from those dishes as if they were depth charges on sonar. It seemed all the things I was interested, the house specials, were listed on the first page and the last page.
I wanted to order the 7 courses of beef (Mon Bo), but changed to the cook-it-yourself sliced seasoned beef with vegetables and rice paper wrappers when I was informed that if ordering the Mon Bo 7 yourself you actually only get 6 courses for the same price.
The beef was fresh and well seasoned. The plate of vegetables were fresh and clean, but nothing to write home about. The pineapple given for the wraps was obviously from a can.
The little grill the bring to your table is a lot of fun. sadly, the grill had to be turned down because it began to smoke...I wanted to achieve real browning but had to settle simply for cooking until done.
The ginger sauce served along with wraps was fresh-tasting and delicious. Warm tones of ginger bit at me gently while a chorus of asian flavors such as soy and sesame played in the background. I could have drunk that sauce with a straw.
For the three of us to eat it was roughly $80. An expensive weekday night out for certain but not a bad experience. We'll be going back probably to try the 7 course beef dinner when there are more of us there to order beef.
Posted by jordanh at May 4, 2005 1:25 PM
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