Old books

Some people like to be scared, some like to sunbathe, some others enjoy getting up early. Morning persons, they say. One of the kids at New Student Conference today chooses to have 8 am classes all 5 days of the week, except one of them, a running class, starts at 7. He assured me he’s a morning person; now I’ve heard that before, and I’ll be eager to hear what he’ll say at the end of the semester. There’s just something about being in academia. After a while you can’t go to bed when you should/want to, and can’t stay up when you should/want to either. I digress… So, yeah, everyone has something they enjoy doing. Something that makes them breathe in a refreshing thought, something that gives them the chill and the comfort at the same time. Well, I don’t know if I should quite breathe in physically while I’m at it, but I like to sit between the high book shelves of a library. Dusty you may say. The smell of old paper longing to be touched since decades ago. Old books

Lunch log

Lunch today, at Pie Are Square: Yes, that was my lunch in its entirety (minus a bite). Continue reading Lunch log

Rosie’s Pho – part 2

Vietnamese The pho was good. The broth was beefy and the noodle was brothy. Every twirl you manage to pick up with the pair of disposable bamboo chopsticks was worth inhaling a deep breath for the flavor to soak your taste buds and dally with your turbinate. The tripe and the sweet onion rings texture-wise taste about the same to me (see, tripe tastes just fine!), which is good, since I’m soft-tongued and those little zings of spiciness can easily bring me to tears. Tendon and Flank were, frankly, tender, but still a good change of texture from the lean brisket consistency and the rice noodle naivete. Rosie’s Pho does not serve just pho. It serves a whollota things. Mudpie once amusedly predicted that one day its menu will include pizza and hamburgers. But no, it has stopped expanding, at a menu large enough that I had to carouse over for 5 minutes to find my order amidst various noodle and rice dishes. But my dad didn’t take that long, and he didn’t even have glasses on. So here’s his order: Continue reading Rosie’s Pho – part 2

Rosie’s Pho

Vietnamese There is no Hong Kong Market or Bellaire (or 99 Ranch Market or Bolsa, if you are Californian) in College Station, but there is Vietnamese food here. Rosie’s Pho (noodle soup) opened about two years ago. We were among their first customers, and the owner of the place, Ms Hồng, even remembered me when I came back a few months later with my friends. Talk about hospitality. (Guess how we know she’s the owner: hồng means rose in Vietnamese.) Continue reading Rosie’s Pho

What do I do at night?

This is what I’ll be up against in the next 4 weeks, plus two other papers that are still snuggling cozily in the library. Continue reading What do I do at night?

Square One Bistro

On her road trip from Boulder, CO to Miami, FL, my friend Aimee and her friend Sunny were kind enough to swing by little College Station to visit me today. 🙂 It’s embarrassing being the hostess and all as I told them the wrong thing to look for when we were trying to find Square One Bistro in Bryan. I told them it’s a red brick building, but it was white. But, I have my excuses. The place was standing next to a red brick building, and has no visible sign. I mean it has a sign on the door, about the size of a DVD case, and visible from like 4 feet away from the door. There has been not one occasion that my companies and I didn’t have to drive around the block a few times to find it, granted today was the 3rd or 4th time I’ve eaten there. Square One plays hide-n-seek with me. The food is definitely worth it, though. Aimee and Sunny enjoyed it (I hope they weren’t just being nice), and finished everything. The three of us got Chipotle Beef Pasta, Cranberry Turkey sandwich, Penne Florentine, and 3 desserts. We […]

Continue reading Square One Bistro

Pie Are Square

Vietnamese In an attempt to minimize contact with the fire pouring sun yesterday, ubercmuc opted for going to lunch at Pie Are Square, across the street from the physics building. It’s not a popular place in the summer. At 11 I could see less than 20 customers sitting in the dining area. Maybe that’s why the choice of food is skim as well. I could choose a sandwich from Pickles Deli, or Mexican food from Olla Roja, but I’ve always gone for Lucky 8 Chinese. Lucky 8 Chinese yesterday, however, didn’t have Chinese. The only dish it offered was spaghetti & meatball. Oh well, noodles are noodles. Nice lid for the to-go plate. Much better than polysterene box. I had to eat my dessert first because as I was busy taking picture it started to melt and become lop-sided. A white blob dripped on my white pants and gradually changed to an earthy brown dot. Argh.The guy fixing my spaghetti let us put parmesan cheese on for ourselves. Normally I don’t put cheese on my spaghetti, but I don’t know […]

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Kem ống (Tubular ice cream)

Vietnamese Around noon time, in front of the smaller-than-a house’s door gate of the old Pho Thong Nang Khieu high school (notice they don’t show you the gate in that picture…), came an ice cream man. The typical street vendor, with a big styrofoam box on a bike, maybe a couple of buckets on the sides, I’m not sure if I remember correctly the details here. He sold kem ong, i.e. ice cream tubes. It’s something I’d never had before and possibly will never see again. His ice cream had a skinny tubular shape, about a foot long, stick to a long skinny bamboo stick. The ice cream is actually contained in aluminum tubes, from which he quickly pulled out when we asked to buy. I usually went for the jackfruit kind (kem mit), where you have little strips of jackfruit hidden inside the ice cream, quite a treasure to chew as the vanilla milky bits melt on your tongue. For VND1000 a stick, the kem mit was sold out within 15 minutes or so. He also had kem dau xanh (mung bean ice cream), kem dau do (red bean ice cream), and a […]

Continue reading Kem ống (Tubular ice cream)

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