Category Archives: Food

Day 578 OUT OF Beijing: 201.1 and Just Run…

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201.1 and time to Just Run...

201.1 and time to Just Run…

 

Jill is in much better shape than I am right now.

She tends to keep the weight off and lose it more quickly than I do.

This is partially because I eat too much and partially just body type.

My dad has a belly and my brothers seem to have the same body type that holds that fat if we don’t eat healthy, exercise and take care of ourselves.

It is what we are born with but it is not an excuse.

It is a motivation.

That is how Jill and I see life: You can either use what you are given as an excuse to fail or as a reason to try harder and succeed.

Think about this: Jill has run a website, about travel and tourism in San Francisco, for the last 1.5 years in Beijing, China.

There is a reason she’s succeeded in this endeavor: She did a massive amount of groundwork before she came over.  She took so many pictures, visited so many places, and talked to so many people that she had a huge collection of information to keep building her site and her business while not being anywhere near it.  That takes skill and dedication.

Then, even with the daunting task of dealing with China’s “Great Firewall”, she continued to work and not give up, so that when we finally would come home, she could build the business into exactly what she wanted and make it possible for us to succeed and prosper.

We are building our second site, right now, and are looking forward to sharing that with everyone by the end of January.  I will also be selling my first ebook on it and we think it will be a fantastic new beginning for us as we continue to build the SF Tourism Tips site at the same time.

That is where exercise and Just Run… comes in for both of us.

Just Run… is a group that my friend, Bonnie Vasquez, put together for people that are inclined to get in shape and start running again.  She just decided she wanted to make a change and did it.  No excuses, no waiting until tomorrow and no other reasons needed.  Her choice.  Her change.

It isn’t for hard core runners, although they are welcome, it is just a group for us average folk trying to do a half marathon in the next few months and lose that extra weight, gain that extra confidence, and build a better mind and body.

Jill and I went for our first run a few days ago and I did 2.65 miles and she did about 2 miles.  She had a lot of lower body issues and so she took her time and rested so that she doesn’t injure herself.  I walked a block or two with her, in the middle of the run, and then took off by myself to finish it.

I felt great, other than a stitch in my side, but that is probably because I’m so out of shape and haven’t been drinking enough water.  So, when I got home, I drank a bunch of water and had a very healthy salad for dinner.  Jill and I made it together and it was a wonderful way to start a new year and start being the new people Jill and I want to be in 2015.

My plan is to do push ups in between the days that I’m running.  I’d like to get up to around 200 push ups a day doing 4 sets of 50 at a time.  This may take longer than 12 weeks but that is fine.  I have a plan and will stick to it as much as possible.  If I need to adjust it, I’ll do that.  A plan is just that: A plan.

Keep building your dream, working hard, and it will happen.  One never knows the path to a dream but it will be paved by you.

In case you are wondering what the 12 week week half marathon plan is, and want to join along, I’ve posted it as a picture here:

 

Our workout plan for half marathon within 12 weeks.

Our workout plan for half marathon within 12 weeks.

Day 576 OUT OF Beijing: Food. Delicious Food.

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A 32 oz Corona at Hecho. Jill's guilty pleasure is Corona beer.

A 32 oz Corona at Hecho. Jill’s guilty pleasure is Corona beer.

 

One of the many things that Jill and I missed was the fresh and delicious food that is so easily available in San Francisco and California.

California is the bread basket of the USA and we can get pretty much any food we want, fresh, at any time of the year.

Beijing isn’t horrible for this but it is a painful adjustment when the tomatoes there taste bland and so does pretty much everything else.

Our friends were able to find some amazing fruits and veggies for their restaurtants but Jill and I had trouble doing the same at home and we guess it was because they were all very good cooks and used fantastic sauces with them.  We were too lazy, and didn’t care enough, to figure out how to do that.  We just ate at their places instead.  I guess it is that we were efficient.

Either way, we are so happy to be home and be able to have a wonderful meal.

We’ve already gone to about 7 different restaurants in the 2 weeks we’ve been home and each one has been excellent.

They’ve ranged from Mexican, to Mediterranean, to burgers, to sub sandwiches, pizza, and pub food.  One of true benefits of SF Tourism Tips is that we can go to these restaurants because we need to be able to advise people whether they are worth eating at or not and we want to stay up to date with all the changes and advances in the SF restaurant world.  Jill is definitely more of a “foodie” than I am and she has decided to teach me more about the nuances and I’m enjoying it greatly.

It is a tough life but someone has to do it.

Enjoy some of our pictures of our delicious meals!

 

Day 572 OUT OF Beijing: Happy New Year’s Eve!

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Goodbye Airpocalypse!

Goodbye Airpocalypse!

 

Jill and I have started our new life and are moving along swimmingly.

Today is New Year’s Eve and we are going to be celebrating with friends and doing a little salsa dancing.

We will probably drink a lot of champagne, eat amazing food, and have a truly incredible time since we are back home and things just feel “right” again.

We are definitely missing our friends back in Beijing and wishing them a wonderful New Year’s Day since they will have crossed the New Year’s Eve dateline before we do here.  We love you all and wish you were here to celebrate with us.

I have posted before about the Airpocalpyse app on my iPhone.

This will be the last time you, or I, see it since I deleted it.

I don’t plan on ever going back to Beijing, and I don’t want to be reminded of the pollution and conditions of living there, anymore.

Neither does Jill.

We are moving on to bigger and better things and want to focus on that.

I will be, however, writing a book about our experiences so we will be looking back at it.

But not right now.  Today is for the future and for enjoyment.

The air is clean in San Francisco and not a cloud in the sky.

Our website SF Tourism Tips is doing incredibly and we are working on our new site to help others live the life they want and figure out how to change what is in their way to being more content.

So, say goodbye to the Airpocalypse App.

Give it a good send off and a huge, “Thank you” for the laughs and the information that allowed Jill and me to figure out if we would leave our apartment on certain days or just stay home, order in, and watch Breaking Bad, 30 Rock or some movie that we’d have downloaded.

Happy New Years to all and I hope 2015 is the best year of your life so far.

I am sure it will be for Jill and me.

 

Day 564 OUT OF Beijing: Ladies Who Lunch? Nah, Buddies who Brunch!

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The wonderful flowers and J sparkling wine. We also ordered pomegranate mimosas.

The wonderful flowers and J sparkling wine. We also ordered pomegranate mimosas.

 

Jill’s friend, Leslie, was in town for a few days and wanted to catch up with us after our long trip in China.

Jill had lived with friends, or in AirBnbs, for the three years before I met her.  She didn’t have a “home” or an “apartment” because she wanted the freedom to move and travel whenever she wanted to.  That is one of the reasons she could move to China just 2 months after meeting me: Her AirBnb rental time was short term so she could leave and go where she wanted to go.  Leslie had let Jill live with her, on and off, in her house in Marin.  She lives in a small town there and it is very quiet and peaceful.  Sort of a wonderland escape from anything that might be stressful or anxiety provoking in the city.

Jill suggested we go to Kate’s Kitchen in the Lower Haight.  It was about a block from the AirBnb and house that I met her at a few blocks from our first date restaurant, Palmyra, that I blogged about a few days ago.

It was packed and the tables at Kate’s are fairly limited so we hung out and waited for Leslie to arrive.

The waitress seemed very familiar and I realized we used to salsa dance together back in the day.

Leslie arrived and brought us a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a bottle of “J” sparkling wine.  We were blown away with her generosity and kindness.

We sat down at our table and I said to our waitress, “You used to salsa dance, right?”  She answered, “Yep!  And you just got back, didn’t you?”  I told her we had just gotten back and asked her name.  “Erin” she replied and asked mine.  It was so nice to be connected to my old world and family of salsa dancers without even trying.  I love this group and the joy they bring to everyone they do in their lives.

Leslie, Jill and I talked about life and what had happened in the past 1.5 years.  Leslie also invited us to have a small engagement party at her house and we will be figuring that out for the summer as we get more clarity on where and when we will have our wedding.  At this point, we are thinking somewhere outside of the USA because we want to get married on a beach and we love traveling so much.  This all depends on many issues, including ability to people to fly down and travel, but it would be a dream wedding if we can do it.

It was wonderful to talk to Leslie, hear about her life, and meet more of Jill’s friends since we’ve mostly hung out with mine so far including my wonderful friends, Catherine and August last night at Taco Club in the Castro.

It has been so humbling to come back and have so many wonderful people want to see us, catch up and share our lives with us again.  It is also interesting to see how people have changed while we’ve been gone and how San Francisco has changed.  There are a lot more of the “glass and steel” buildings and it is a bit of a disappointment becuase those buildings have such little personality and it means that classic San Francisco buildings have been destroyed to put them up.  However, after watching so many buildings that are culturally relevant destroyed in Beijing, San Francisco still is very much it’s own city and has it’s own style.

The food, by the way, was amazing.  I had corned beef hash, Jill had biscuits in gravy and Leslie had scrambled eggs with bacon.  So delicious and so much more reminding us that we are home.  In every way.

 

Day 563 OUT OF Beijing: Greece Comes to San Francisco!

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Our first drink at Palia Kameni.

Our first drink at Palia Kameni.

 

Jill and I spent a few nights in little town of Fira on the island of Santorini, Greece after we got engaged.

We had been to Mykonos, Naxos and Paros and were worried Santorini would be too crowded and expensive.

Imagine our surprise when it was actually about the same price as the lesser known islands and not crowded at all.

We walked around Fira and found this amazing bar named Palia Kameni Cocktail Bar.

It was facing towards the caldera and where the sun would set later that night.

We decided to sit down, have a drink and hang out.

One of the waiters, from the UK, talked to us for a bit and seemed like a nice guy.

After our drinks came, the owner, Vassilias came up to talk to us as the waiter told him we had just come from China and were engaged.

We talked for about 1-2 hours and discussed how he came to own this bar at such a young age (he was 28 years old), how to live the life we want to live, and how to achieve financial freedom as soon as possible to be able to travel and see the world.

Vassilias told us that he took the bar over from his dad and he is slowly making changes. One of the changes was to pay his staff enough that he, and they, could shut down for the 6 month winter break, and be able to live without fear of running out of money.  For Vassilias, that also includes going to visit his girlfriend, Soneth, who is a speech therapist in San Francisco and Los Angeles this winter.  We told him that we will be back in SF and wanted to meet up with him.  He agreed and we came back the next night to watch the sunset again.

We just got back to SF on December 15th and Vassilias told us he was leaving on the 20th for LA and we decided to meet up at the Squat and Gobble in the Castro Area.  We had a wonderful time talking and figuring out future plans and how we can support each other as he builds his business and we build ours.

It is everything we love about owning our own business, being able to travel, and living a life that is less structured and more independent.

It is not for everyone, but there is no way we want to live any other way, at least not at this point in our lives.

I’ve include pictures taken from his restaurant in Fira.  If you ever go to Santorini, please say hello to him and enjoy the sunset from there.  It is life changing.

 

Day 562 OUT OF Beijing: First Date Re-Dux.

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Happiness.

Happiness.

 

Jill and I met at the SF Carnaval in May of 2013.

I was waiting to see my friends dance in the parade and she was waiting to take pictures for her site, SF Tourism Tips.

My friend, Jon-David, and I were going to meet up and hang out as I was leaving in 8 days and most likely wouldn’t be returning for the next 3 years.

Jon-David and I worked together at Family Service Agency as social workers and we knew the second we met we’d be great friends.  We have the same twisted sense of humor and ability to laugh at life’s insanity.

As I waited for the parade to start, I became hungry, so I left my seat sitting on the curb, and went to eat a burrito.  When I returned, Jill was sitting there and I asked her if I could sit beside her.  She agreed and then we started talking for an hour or more.  Jon-David was running late so we had a lot of time to talk about life, what we want to do, and that we were both single.

After the parade, Jon-David, Jill and I ate some Mexican food and we headed off our separate ways.  Before Jill went home, I asked her to go on a date with me and she said, “Sure!”  Even after knowing I was leaving in 8 days.  Pretty amazing.

The next day we went to Palmyra, a Syrian restaurant in the Lower Haight where she was staying in an AirBnb.  After lunch, we sat on the roof of her place, had a bottle of wine, and talked for hours.  After making sure we were sober, we drove over to Elevation 66 and had dinner and a few of their amazing craft beers.  I dropped her back at her place and asked her out on another date for the next day.  Next thing you know, we had 8 dates in 8 days and she was planning to visit me in Beijing and getting ready to buy her ticket a month later.

As we walked around San Francisco today, taking pictures and smiling at everyone we saw, I mentioned we should go to the same restaurant and tell the owner what had happened.  He had been very sweet and the food had been amazing.

We decided to do that and the owner, who is an immigrant and speaks with a wonderful Middle Eastern accent, asked if Jill, “Do you have a sister for my son?”  We started laughing and were once again grateful to be back in San Francisco and able to connect with people in such an easy manner.

We ordered the mezze platter and sat down.  The owner came by, gave us our food, and said, “God bless you both.  I’m glad you met and have found love with each other.  This is wonderful!”

We thanked him and gave blessing back to him and realized we are right where we should be, in every way, and this is heaven to us.

The food, I have to say, was out of this world.  It tasted amazing and everything was so fresh.  We have realized, as we are back, that the food in Beijing had been quite bland compared to food here.  Everything is so fresh and easily available.  It is like we are tasting food for the first time and we almost started crying when we had the tahini sauce with lemon.  It was that good.  We are going to enjoy re-experiencing San Francisco, and all it has to offer, in the next 3 months.

 

Day 556 OUT OF Beijing: Bye Bye Beijing.

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Jill, the cake, and me.

Jill and I are ready to have some Bye Bye Beijing cake!

 

Jill and I are somewhere over the Pacific Ocean right now.

We are flying home and hopefully we are peacefully asleep as you all read this.

We are out of Beijing and on to our continued adventures as mobile vagabonds.

In the last 1.5 years we have had so many amazing experiences, made so many friends, and seen so much that this blog barely touches the surface our our time abroad.

I will be, in the future, writing a book about it and going very deeply into what it is like to live in China, be a therapist here, and how it has affected both Jill and me.

However, at this moment, I just want to thank all my amazing friends who Jill and I have met here in Beijing and in China.

This also includes our friends we’ve met on our travels to Malaysia, Singapore, Mongolia, Greece and Turkey during the past 1.5 year here.

We decided we’d have a little Bye Bye Beijing party and it was fantastic.  We had it at The Local and it was a perfect way to say goodbye and start to move on.

Being an expat can be difficult because people are constantly moving and appearing or disappearing from your life. We know this is part of the joy and the sadness.  I had to say goodbye to a lot of clients also and that is a tough part of being a therapist.  You help people through their most difficult times in life, see them change, and then have to say goodbye.  It is both a joyful experience and a loss.  Maybe that is why I’m okay with being an expat and seeing so many people come and go.  I can accept that they will leave, I enjoy the time I have with them, and then I know that something else will appear and I’ll learn more or see a new way of thinking.

I also hope that these friends, and the many others we’ve made, will come visit us wherever we are and keep in contact.

As for plans, we expect to be in San Francisco Bay Area for the next 3 months.  Jill has an amazing website, San Francisco Tourism Tips, and we need to be there to support it and our livelihood.  If you haven’t see her site, please click the link above and subscribe or like it on Facebook.  Also share it with anyone you know that might be interested.  It is made for travelers and locals and Jill has done an amazing job.  I’m absolutely amazed at how hard she works and how professional she is regarding this business.

During our stay in San Francisco, we will see my sister Stacy’s family, and my dad, in Walnut Creek.  During this time, we will visit my brother Dave’s family in Portland.  After that, we will head down to Los Angeles to see friends and family for about a month.  During that month, we will make a quick jump down to Cancun to see Jill’s sister Julie and her family.  Then over to Santa Fe, NM to see my mom Judy and her husband, Phil.  Lastly, we will hit Nebraska to see Jill’s parents, Emma and Bill.

After that?

We are thinking we will live in Costa Rica or possibly Colombia.  We have a lot of options and it could even include moving to Turkey or Greece.

It is a hard life but somebody has to live it.  🙂

We are also building a new website that will be unveiled in the next month or two.  It will focus on helping others live their dream life, figuring out what that exactly is, how to plan it, deal with problems that come up, and then inspire others to do the same.  Keep your eyes open for it because it is a life dream for us to help others make their dreams become reality.  This includes you, our dear readers!

Thank you for being a part of this journey as we’ve reached 556 days in Beijing.  I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have.

We look forward to seeing everyone back at home, or wherever you are, and continuing to write the story of our lives as it moves ahead.

Enjoy our final post from Beijing and pictures of the party.

 

Day 521 In Beijing: Blue Tour In Cappadocia, Lunch time!

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A vase, wine bottles and the cellar.

A vase, wine bottles and the cellar.

 

After we saw that pottery exhibition, the tour was set to have lunch.

Jill and I aren’t big fans of Beijing Chinese food.  It is usually quite greasy and very oily.

It tastes like the food is quite slimy and the vegetables don’t have a lot of flavor.

Since we tend towards vegetarian, it makes our choices quite limited or very expensive since the imported veggies and fruits cost so much more than the domestic products.

Since we’ve both been to Turkey before, we knew that we were in for a wonderful meal every time we sat down to eat and we weren’t disappointed.

The very cute restaurant we went to had a nice balcony overlooking the valley but the owners told us to sit inside since the bees were flying around outside and they’d bother us.

We took their advice and ordered our food.

Our group consisted of our friends from Colombia, three women from Holland, and then us.

Our guide, Sukru, took off and we all just hung out, eat and discussed our lives.

The food, as we guessed, was fantastic.

Jill’s main course was mushrooms with cheese on top of it and mine was a clay pot full of veggies in a red sauce.

And, of course, to top it off, we had baklava for dessert.

As we left, we realize that the wine cellar for the restaurant was dug out of the walls, just like our room back at our hotel.

 

Day 481 In Beijing: Xian and The Muslim Quarter.

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Annie, Jill, me, Eleni, Alena and Phil in front of the Xian Drum Tower.

Annie, Jill, me, Eleni, Alena and Phil in front of the Xian Drum Tower.

Jill, the rest of the group, and I really enjoyed riding around on the wall.

Since it was flat, it wasn’t very strenuous and it was fun.

We had to be done by 6:50 otherwise we couldn’t return our bikes so we spend through the last corner and turned them in.

We also then met up with Emre, from Turkey and Alena, from Russia.

We headed down the stairs and into the walled city so we could meet up with a few other people that were attending the conference and check out the Muslin Quarter and have some dinner.

After taking a few pictures, we were able to find Catarina, from Portugal and Sarah, from Germany.

We also met our “host” Marco, who is from Germany but has lived in Xian for the past 9 years.

He knew every nook and cranny of this city and made sure to show us a good time.

Marco was even kind enough to lead me and Jill on a hunt for good vegetarian food because the dinner place everyone else chose only had meat.  We ended up bringing our food back and enjoying it with them.

We all went out to dinner and then went to a crazy restaurant named, “Mexico” since we wanted to hang out and it is one of Marco’s favorite places.

Jill and I ordered Micheladas and they were quite good, other than being served in beer glasses instead of mugs, but that is where the fun started.  Our friends ordered mojitos that seemed to have been made with Sprite and vodka.  Everyone else said their drinks were fine and we were more than happy with our Micheladas.

We also ordered chips and….honey mustard dressing?  Yep, the chips came with that as a sauce and also with ketsup.  Not really how I remember them being served when I went to Mexico, but, when in China…

Anyway, it was a great night and we had a lot of fun.

Best of all, we made a bunch of new friends, from all over the world, and were able to experience a brand new city.

 

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Day 470 In Beijing: A Carrefour By Any Other Name…

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And, as mentioned before, the desserts were to die for.

And, as mentioned before, the desserts were to die for.

Jill and I have a Carrefour near us in Beijing.

If you don’t know, and if you are from the USA you probably don’t, Carrefour is a French supermarket.

They actually have about 3 or 4 here in Beijing and we love going to them because the food is fantastic and they have an excellent selection of wines.

They are actually the 4th largest market conglomerate in the world.

One of the other reasons is that they have an “all you can drink” 4 day wine tasting party every 6 months.

The latest one was just in April and we met a bunch of wine makers, mostly from France, and partied with them for about 4 days straight.

Although, after 4 days of partying, we were pretty crooked and straight it not the word I’d use for any of us.

Anyway, Andac lives right near a Carrefour and we decided to stop by and pick up some wine, cheese and bread for our dinner one night.

We also bought some desserts as the Turkish desserts are out of this world.

Baklava is a famous one but there are so many and they are all amazing.

Just so you can see some of the delights that we had to choose from, I took some pictures.

If anything catches your fancy, let me know!

 

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