I HAD A GOOD WEEK...BUT

This will not be a terrific week for me, as on Thursday I need to drink a gallon of water, go on a fast and undertake the dreaded colonoscopy exam on Friday.  For various reasons, I've avoided this agony for twelve years.

So in anticipation, I was especially kind to my body this past week.  Note that I miss the equivalent  of $18/meal, what we would pay for a guest at 15 Craigside, to not use our dining room where I only go around 25 of the 90 meals/month.  But life is too short to only eat there.  To begin, on Tuesday I picked up a mini garlic tuna bento at L&L and went to Diamond Head Lookout for lunch, which came with a view:

Wednesday afternoon I presented a talk of my 42-day Orient trip in the theater at 15 Craigside.  I gave away a bunch of hats, an assortment of bags First/Business class gives you on a plane and three of my tailored Bangkok vests.  It's always a challenge to hook up my computer to the 15C audio-visual system, but it somehow works every time.  Then I had dinner at 15C with the gang I always join on Wednesday nights

Thursday evening a small group of us from 15C had a dinner outing to Mexico Restaurant.  A van transports us there and back, with a Programs staffer accompanying us so no one gets lost.  At 4:30PM the place was packed.

The queso I had was fabulous.  Normally, this is a dip for chips, but they seared it in a sizzling pan, topping with chorizos, tomatoes and onion, to which I liberally added two kinds of really hot salsa, and had too many tortilla pieces.

About the poster in the restaurant shown below, sure, everyone knows El Cordobes, the highest paid matador in history, who is now 83, but recently performed with female bullfighter Conchi Rios in Spain, but Richard Wong?

There is a documentary, El Chino, about Bill Wong, a Chinese American, who in the late 1950's left his Cal-Berkeley engineering career in California to become a bullfighter in Spain.  Here, 45 minutes of music for the film.  

Read this 1990 New York Times article on a book for children, illustrated by Allen Say, entitled El Chino, which must have influenced the production of the movie.

Friday, my neighbor, John, and I went golfing at the Ala Wai Golf Course.  On the way home we stopped by J-Shop to buy a pound of Japanese Wagyu Beef and some sashimi.  The cost was $150/pound for the meat and around $30 for the fish.  However, the cutter was not there and was coming back in a hour.  So we left, and instead went to Foodland, where we bought two pieces of American Rib Eye, plus a pound of Hawaiian poke.  The total cost of everything was close to what we would have paid for just the tuna at J-Shop.  John did the BBQing and we had quite a feast using our dining room.

Saturday went to the movies, and in between John Wick 3 and Long Shot, ate lunch at 

This restaurant is new to the Ward Complex, and at 1:30 there was a line outside, which I avoided by sitting at the sushi counter.  Remembering how incredibly wonderful the Pork Tonkatsu was in Nagasaki, I ordered this dish:

If Nagasaki's version (left) was 100 and the typical Honolulu variety 35, I would give Rinka a rating of 60.  The latter was not as crispy on the outside, thinner, with the pork being only just okay.  However, while the tab added up to around $30, the person serving me said in this soft opening, all I needed to pay was $21.  So I left him a $9 tip.  Perhaps I was influenced by his comment that he really loved the vest I was wearing, which was a recent addition from Bangkok.

Then yesterday for lunch I did a complete makeover for the spaghetti and meatballs I took out, first slicing and crisping six cloves of garlic, and frying in the meatballs (they're kind of tiny), tossing in broccoli and tomato, then the spaghetti, and finally some cheese with basil leaves from my lanai.  I had a beer with the remains of the $75 Stanford Pinot Noir from the Friday night steak dinner.

Laine Hardy was crowned the 2019 American Idol, as I predicted in my posting yesterday (scroll down to the next article):

Hear him with Flame, the song to be released, and Jambalaya.  Watch him, he has gained a nice swagger.  A star was born.

First from Louisiana to ever win this competition.  I spent nearly four years of my life here, where there must be some kind of festival nearly every weekend somewhere in driving distance.  There is the Gonzales Jambalaya Festival, which is on this weekend, the Mansura Cochon De Lait Festival (see photo to the left, which you just missed last weekend) and all those crawfish festivals (something like 400 annually somewhere in the state...no kidding):

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