Seattle Day 1 (Day 16 total)

Decided to hit Seattle during the weekend to visit Philippe, who is Tina's husband and a very close friend. The biggest highlight of Seattle was meeting up with their dog, Link who looks like a bear but is the bestest, friendliest dog EVER!

We ate Malaysian food... at the Malay Satay Hut because we sort of missed it already.

We went to downtown Seattle and walked around Pike Place Market. My ultimate favourite place to hangout, because the atmosphere is so alive. We spent a lot of time at the Pike's Place fish market which can be intriguing for the tourist as the yell and throw a lot of fish around.

Me in front of the famous Pike's Place fish market

Some of the colours at Pike's Place

Some peppers on sale at Pike's Place

After that we went to Gasworks Park for an amazing view of Seattle.

Spot Mr Turtle!

Philippe and me

Day 11... Annie-Maniacs

I went to paddle with the Anniemaniacs after not paddling for 3 months. It was a slightly challenging practice for me as they were peaking in performance for the Victoria race this coming weekend but I hung in there and paddled hard. I know I will hurt the next day. This practice we took out two boat with a video camera on each so we could tape the session.

After practice, we went to a fancy seafood restaurant called McCormick and Schmick's. I've had seafood there before and wasn't entire impressed. Although I hear they had a superb happy hour because they had $1.95 cheeseburgers. Happy Hour in Portland works different from Malaysia. It is normally more of a food deal than a drink deal. Most of the time with one drink, you are entitled of some really cheap and good food. Which explains my $4.95 rib eye steak that came with roasted red peppers and garlic with parmesan fries. I washed that down with one of my absolute favourite beer, a Deschutes Black Butte Porter.

Rib eye with roasted red peppers and garlic with parmesan fries

Rib eye with the porter

Day 9... let's run some more

I decided I am to run from my hotel on Shute Road to the Nike Campus in Beaverton, approximately 6miles (10km) from my hotel. Then when I reach the Nike Campus I would do two loops around making my total run about 10miles (16km). Yan Nee, my co-worker was going to meet me at the Nike Campus to run the loops with me and then I will grab a ride back with her. So I was doing a pretty decent pace about 5:20 to 5:30 min/km. The roads were actually not flat, in fact quite a gradient. I died a little doing loops around Nike but was so excited to end because I was getting thirsty and needed water. I finished at around 9.20pm and I did not see Yan Nee's car at all. I was a bit peeved.

So I decided to get out on the main road to search for a grocery store to buy some Gatorade and I figured Yan Nee will see me if I walked on the main road. Even after a 5 minute walk to the grocery store, she was nowhere in sight. So I ran in bought a small bottle of Gatorade, got some change and headed to the payphone to call her hotel. No answer after 3 tries. So I sucked it in and decided to run home. I managed 5km home before Yan Nee pulled up beside me and apologize for waking up late. I hopped in and we went to Noah's Bagel for bagels, juice and coffee. YUM!

My runs uploaded:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/533502
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/533505


Ended the day at the "Bite of Oregon", Oregon's premier food festival and was a bit wasted by drinking too much beer and tasting too much wine. Went home to completely pass out on my bed. Later that night Yan Nee came over with antiacids and mushroom flavoured Cintan mee. I managed to recover a bit. Thanks Yan Nee! Even though you stranded me! :p

Le Pigeon

Le Pigeon (http://www.lepigeon.com/) is a French restaurant operated by a 26-year old chef called Gabriel Rucker. I first ate at Le Pigeon with my culinary partner, Jose. Wait time for a table then was one hour. It was at the end of 2006. A couple months later Gabriel Rucker was named Best New Chef by Food and Wine magazine. His restaurant has now won Best Restaurant in Portland. The wait time for a table is now an hour and forty five minutes. You pretty much leave your name on a list and then go shopping until they call you to come back for your table.

The menu at Le Pigeon is simplistic. It has five appetisers and five entrees and four desserts. However, the menu changes pretty frequently. I went there with a co-worker. She had the pork with green beans, mushrooms, crème fraîche and I had the quail with squash, marrow, cherry tomatoes. Both were absolutely amazing! But the pork simply blew me away. How I wish I had gotten that instead! With that we had a bottle of Patton Valley Vineyard Pinot Noir, a local vineyard.

The wine

The quail

The pork

For dessert we honey, bacon, apricot cornbread with maple ice cream. You must be thinking bacon with dessert? But I tell you, it works and it was fabulous.

The dessert

All in all a complete satisfying dinner.

Day 8... Nike World Campus

Nike's was founded in Oregon by University of Oregon track athlete Philip Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman. It has its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.

Yan Nee and I decided to run a wood-chip trail that surrounds the Nike World Campus in Beavorton. Each loop was approximately 2.2miles. The run is littered with the amazing scenery of the Nike campus, which has its own basketball courts, football field and a huge multi-storey carpark.

The football field

The multi-storey carpark

I ran the first half of the loop together with Yan Nee at a pretty steady pace. I did the second half a tad bit faster and I did my fist half. And on the second loop around I went all out at like 5:13 min/km pace.

Yan Nee doing here thing

Spot me!

Me at the end of my run

Here is the run route:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/527742

-Chin Chin-

Day 7... burgers and more beer!

My senior manager was in town and invited us all to dinner at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse. The CPR as it is more fondly called is the hotspot for gatherings of my American co-workers as well as a favourite company event venue. The CPR is owned by the McMenamins brother, two very enterprising siblings who buy delapited properties and convert them into bars. They also produce very nicely crafted beers and is most famous for their Terminator Stout, which I almost always have when I am at a McMemanin's.

The day was fine and the weather was warm so we ended up outside in the lawn are on picnic tables. I had Wilbur's Jumbo Deluxe Burger which had bacon, Tillamook (brand of Oregon cheese) cheddar and a fried egg on top. It was coupled nicely by a few pints of Terminator Stout.

A pint of Terminator stout with restaurant menu

Hummus platter

Wilbur's Jumbo Deluxe Burger

Thanks to my senior manager for the generous dinner!
-Chin Chin-

Day 6... the ultimate Portland Philly cheesesteak

I apologize if all my run data is now in miles because that's all I have to work with now.

I decided to run Forest Park (http://www.forestparkconservancy.org/) which is a huge network of trails for hiking, running and biking at the northwest park of the city. Simply amazing that a city can have such a huge park nearby. Annie had once ran the 30-mile trail here. I did my 20-miler here as well, almost 2 years ago when I was training for Portland Marathon. This time I return on Thursday evening to do Lief Eirckson trail which was 11.4miles in total length, one way. I decided to run as far as I could one way for 45mins and then turn around. It wasn't meant to be a tough one, just challenging enough. The run was great! I enjoyed it tremendously, there were enough people and bikers not to feel creeped out but they were so spread out it didn't intrude on your running privacy.

After the run I met up with some Maniacs, Brett and Asian John and we went to Tributes, for some awesome Philly cheesesteak, probably the best that Portland has to offer and I have Ben who is a true Philadelpher to vouch for that.

Philly cheesesteak with the works - peppers, onions, Swiss cheese and mushroom with hot sauce on the side

After that we headed off to one of my favourite local microbrewery, the Lucky Labrador for a pint. I had the Nitro Porta.

-Chin Chin-

Day 5... Beer and the Maniacs...

I hooked up with John Lee (Asian John) who gave me info about my ex-dragonboat team's practise day and time. So I turned up at the docks to surprise them as they came back in. Annie was the first to spot me and her face crinkled a little as she said aloud, "Is that who I think it is?". And before you know it I was being greeted in chorus by the Anniemaniacs (http://www.anniemaniacs.com/) , the dragonboat team who made me a real paddler.

Secretly I planned which Asian John to invite them out for food and drinks after practise so we could go out and enjoy. So after they pulled up and we have exchanged hugs and pleasantries, we headed off the our regular happy hour place, Stanfords where after 9pm you can get really really cheap food with a purchase of ANY drink. Is that a deal or what? Despite knowing American portions, I was too greedy and ordered a plate of chicken strips with fries and fried calamari with basil aoili. Which of course was enough to feed a whole Asian family. Together with it I had two microbrews, a Mirror Pond Pale Ale and a Widmer Brother's Hefweizen. Both are locally brewed beers. Oregon is THE home to microbreweries and I am going to eat, drink and run my heart out here.

Stanford's Happy Hour menu

The chicken strips and fries with honey mustard and BBQ sauce

My friend, Brett's cheeseburger and chicken strips!

Deep fried calamari with basil aoili

-Chin-

Day 4... record high temperatures

Portland early morning news reported that the city will be seeing record high temperatures today. Something around 33 degress celsuis with high humidity. Pooh! Only 33 degrees? Humidity? I thought I had it beat as I set off on my attempt at a 6-mile round around the Tom McCall Waterfront to the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade.

Before I begin, Portland was voted top 25 best running cities by Runner's World magazine.
http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-243-362--10142-0,00.html

And the Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade is one of their recommended runs. One loop is 3miles and I intended to do 2 loops. I started out pretty fast, which is always a bad idea. I wanted to run hard and I thought I could deal with the heat but I couldn't. It was scorching heat unlike the humidity of Malaysian hit. My skin burned from the sun on it. I ended up pushing myself real and hard doing only 5km, of with I felt almost like passing out.

This is where I start running from.

Then across the Hawthorne bridge

This is the docks where we dragonboat from!

-Chin Chin-

Day 3... the eat fest continues

Ok, before I forget. THANK YOU KENNETH LIM for loaning me your camera on this trip!

So the thing I like about Oregon is that I know places having lived here. I can drive out and not get lost. I know where to run. I know where to eat. I have friends, so I am not lonely.

Today I did a 10-miler (about 17km on my GPS watch) around the Portland waterfront in friggin 11 degrees celsuis in my shorts! Because you know why? It is supposed to be summer and warm and I didn't pack warm things . The first km I was shivering from head-to-toe and my legs wouldn't move because they were pretty much frozen. I think my ears hurt from the cold wind. And I saw two women running in tank tops! HAR?!?

Check out my run data here:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/486829



Lunch: Byways Cafe, your typical American diner, you can't get more American than that.

Had the classic American breakfast, eggs sunny side up, sausages, bacon, potatoes and toast with coffee.

Dinner: I had dinner at my favourite Cajun place, Le Bistro Montage. This restaurant is run by lots of artsy people so it is a lot of fun. Plus one unique thing about this place is that there are no individual tables. Think back to eating arrangements like in your school canteen days. A bunch of table joined together to form a long row and you seat wherever.



I had the spicy macaroni and cheese with grilled chicken. I think this is the only place I would eat mac and cheese. Because the cheese doesn't overpower the dish. I also had a bottle of Mickey's beer and a glass of Tempranillo.

-Chin Chin-

Day 2... Oregon revisited

Morning: Portland's Farmers Market at Portland State University
My ultimate place to go on Saturday especially after a long run. Berries are in season so there were abundance of strawberries, blueberries, marionberries (a hybrid created in Oregon), etc. Ann, Yan Nee and I had some juicy blueberries. These are sweet not sour like those you get in Malaysia.

I had my standard spicy Italian sausage on a hoagie roll with spicy honey mustard. YUM!

Evening:
Skipped lunch as breakfast was late. We had dinner where we were doing some massive shopping, at Quiznoz Sub. I had the Black Angus steak sub sandwich on Swiss cheese. Too hungry I forgot to take pics.

Supper:
Dessert at my favourite dessert place, voted by chefs in Portland Monthly as best dessert place. I had their award winning Amelie and a glass of Tokaji.

-Chin Chin-

Back to Oregon... again

Hi,

It is time I take the reigns of the blog as my blog partner has lodged a complaint against me for not updating the blog :p. I am on business trip to Portland, Oregon to attend some technical conference and to have a series of meetings with my counterparts.

I arrived really late on July 31st via a domestic flight from LA.

Me and LAX in the background (spot the Turtle!)

I have previously lived and worked in Oregon for 2 years (2005-2006) so coming here is GREAT. Lots of people to see and lots of food to eat. Plus I can drive on the other side of the road and know my way around.

Stay tuned! Will be updating my day to day adventures in Oregon for the next 3 weeks.

-Chin-