Book Review: The Vacationers by Emma Straub

Summary: This book is about a family, the Posts, who go to vacation in Mallorca for 2 weeks, along with another couple, Charles and Lawrence. Everyone in the family has secrets, there is much unhappiness, and the book details those two weeks.

My Review: (And, of course, spoiler alert).
In one word, this book was shallow. There are four members of the Post family, Jim and Franny (the parents), Bobby, who's dating Carmen, who was also on the trip, and Sylvia, who's about to go to college. Like in many other books, one of the conflicts revolves around one partner cheating on the other. Another conflict - one kid's out of money, and oh surprise! The mom doesn't like the girlfriend. And one kid is concerned with re-inventing herself before she goes to college, and with losing her virginity before August. What better way to have that happen then to introduce a super hot Spanish tutor! Because, as we all know, on two week summer vacations, every kid wants to take language lessons.

This conflicts, and the resolutions, were predictable. How characters reacted - predictable. Even parts of the dialogue were predictable.

I would definitely not recommend this book. 

Review of Vicoletto

So tonight, the new grads of Airbnb all went out to dinner at a relatively nice place because it was San Francisco's Restaurant Week! We went to a place called Vicoletto in North Beach.

We all ordered the 3 course fixed price menu. The upper left corner is the appetizer, which was mozzarella burrata on top of arugula and tomatoes. It was really delicious burrata, although there was a little too much olive oil on the dish which made it feel greasy. The arugula also didn't taste great with the other two ingredients. I would probably give it a 5/10.

The next course is in the upper right corner, and unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the dish. Fortunately, though, after a quick google search it looks as though this pasta isn't on the normal menu. It was a vegetarian pasta, with ricotta cheese stuffed inside the little pasta balls. The sauce was creamy and a little nutty, but delicious.  8/10

Finally, the last (and biggest picture) is the chocolate lava cake and vanilla gelato. Hands down the best part of the meal. This lava cake was different in that rather than the lava being hidden inside the cake, you could actually see it from the top. So when you took your first bite, you got a little bit of lava with the cake, and you would see the lava gracefully falling over the side of the cake, just like an actual volcano. 9/10

I'm unsure if I would come back to this place during not SF Restaurant Week, because it was a little pricey, but it's definitely worth a visit. 

Rainbow Grocery Experience

First off, apologies of the lack of posting, things have been crazy for the past six months.

Anyway, the other day on my wonderfully curated Facebook feed (no really, 90% of the ads that I see are actually relevant to my interests) I saw an ad for an article regarding how an NYU student was able to eliminate most of her waste. Clicking through on the article, there was a video of her describing her process and showing how she was able to fit all the waste that she had generated over the past two years in one mason jar. Which is amazing. The amount of garbage I generate on a daily basis could not fit into a mason jar. And so I decided to read some of her tips on how to cut down on waste.

One thing she mentioned was trying to purchase things in bulk (pasta, lentils, etc) because a lot of stores that sell things in bulk allow you to bring your own containers, which helps cut down on all of the plastic packaging. I decided to try and find a store in San Francisco that would allow for this, and I stumbled upon Rainbow Grocery (http://www.rainbow.coop/). I visited the store on Saturday, and was blown away with the number of things that you could buy in bulk. Everything from lentils to pasta to all different types of oil to soap and lotion. It was amazing. Granted, I didn't have a lot of containers to put things in, and I was afraid that the process by which I was filling my containers up was wrong (according to their video, you're supposed to weight the empty container and then put a sticker on it with the weight of the empty container and the unique number of the product), so I only filled up two containers (one with oil and the other with soap), but I was impressed with the amount of products available for bulk shopping. The plastic bags that you could use if you didn't have your own containers were compostable though, which made me feel a lot better about using them.

Price wise, this was fairly comparable to TJs and Whole Foods (365 Brand), and bulk shopping is supposed to be cheaper (if you're actually buying in bulk, which I was not), which is the icing on top.

10/10 I would visit this place again!

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

 I just finished reading Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson, and because it was unlike any other book I've ever read, I decided I would a write a sort of book review on it.

Why was it unlike any other book I've ever read? Because everything only clicks after about 80% of the book has gone through. In most books, there's a plot line that carries the reader through. While the reader may not know exactly what will happen at the end of the book, there are enough clues that the reader can have a blurry picture of the resolution of the conflict in the book. Not so in Cryptonomicon. The lack of clarity with regards to the plot line did two things:

1. When everything finally clicks, there's this moment of absolute clarity. It's the mother of all "AHA" moments.

2. You spend 79% of the book trying to figure out what you're reading and how it's connected. Which makes it hard to motivate yourself to actually read the book.

Point number 2 is definitely one of the biggest cons of the book. There were times in the initial 79% of the book where I just wanted to quit. Put the book down and never look at it again. The reason I kept going is because the people who recommended it to me said that this was a perfectly normal feeling to be having when reading one of Stephenson's books, and that eventually it will all make sense. To be fair, they were correct. But I'm not sure that spending 79% of the book in frustration and confusion is something I would like to repeat.

That being said, there are a lot of pros to the book. One, it interweaves two stories very well. The first story concerns the code-breaking efforts in World War II (along with other military efforts), and the second is a story in the present day about a group of people starting a financial corporation. One thing that I really liked was that Stephenson rotated between five different characters to tell the story. Each of the characters had a distinct personality which made for some interesting chapters. There were also many other characters present in the story - which made it difficult to to keep track all of them, but also allowed for a lot of great interactions between characters. Example quote from one of these conversations - "Plato's Cave - the Veg-o-matic of metaphors".

Overall, go ahead and read this book. You will learn more about cryptography and computer systems than you probably expect (or want). You've now also been warned - the first 80% of the book will be a struggle to get through.

#imnoangel

This morning, Lane Bryant started a hashtag/modeling campaign entitled "#imnoangel" (read about it here).

I'm all for body diversity, but I dislike campaigns like these that seem to put down people who do have the Victoria Secret models' physique. If, for example, there was a hashtag campaign that did the opposite of this hashtag - say, #imnotplussized, there would be a huge uproar. Society would scream and shout and say that this was a completely ridiculous campaign that was hurting the body image of people who were plus sized and making them feel bad. So why is it okay for people to make it seem as though it's a bad thing to be skinny or to "be an angel"?

Just like some people can't lose weight for x,y, and z reasons, not everyone wishes to be this skinny (and have a boyish physique). Believe me. 

Nopalito's

Saturday night, the bf, fambam and some family friends of the bf, and I all decided to head to Nopalito's for dinner.

Now Nopalito's is a self-described "sustainable organic Mexican kitchen" located in Inner Sunset. Obviously, I love Mexican food, and so I was excited to try this place that looked nicer than your average taqueria.

We began with an appetizer of Totopos con Chile, which was a classier version of nachos, minus the beans, guacamole, and jalapeños. I know that was a lot of minuses, but it was pretty good! The chips themselves were coated in some sort of spice, which meant that you didn't really want (or need) the jalapeños for the kick.

For the main course, the bf and I shared the Tacos Dorados de Papa (potato taquitos), Panucho de Pollo al Pibil (some sort of chicken on top of a crispy taco that was filled with a black bean mash, topped with cabbage and salsa), and this shrimp enchilada thing (which I couldn't find on the menu, which is why you get the description rather than the actual name of the dish). The potato taquitos were the best - the outside was perfectly crispy while the inside had the consistency of mashed potatoes.

I didn't like the other two dishes - the panucho had pulled chicken, which I tend to not like anyway, and not only that, the way the pulled chicken was marinated was not very yummy. As for the shrimp, it wasn't very flavorful, and the flavors didn't mesh together very well.

I do love Mexican food, but I did not love Nopalito's. And this may be because I don't like "high class" Mexican food. When I think of Mexican food, I think of taquerias, and my mind wants taqueria burritos and quesadilla, which Nopalito's was most definitely not. It might have just been an issue of reality not meeting expectations, because the expectations weren't reasonable. Regardless, I don't think I'll be coming here again. 

uberPool

I work for a company that whole-heartedly believes in the sharing economy, and yet I refused to take an uberPool because I didn't know what it would be like to share a car with a stranger. And yet companies like Airbnb are asking people to do more - they're asking people to open their homes to complete strangers. What's amazing is that people actually do it. And so if people can open their residences and share with strangers, I figured I could share a stranger's car with another stranger.

I'll be honest, I was a little apprehensive when I saw that there would be another rider sharing the car - would they be weird (it's San Francisco)? Would they be quiet or chatty? Would they be nosy? After watching too many crime shows, my overactive imagination was acting up. But thankfully, I had nothing to worry about. The woman I was sharing the uberPool was a nice, sweet person, who had lots of advice on various yoga and pilates studios after I mentioned to her that I was looking to start going to barre class. In fact, she highly recommended a place that I was looking at (and that I have an employee discount too), so WIN.

Taking an uber out the event I had tonight was $18.37, but taking an uberPool back was a flat $7. With that kind of pricing, I can't complain.