Testimony Acapella at FBC

Stanford's Testimony A Capella, a Christian a capella signing group led by our church's own Jennifer Kim, dropped by the church to perform. It was a fabulous evening of music, skits, and heartfelt worship. Thanks to each member of the group for using their musical and dramatic talents for God's glory.

The concert featured hilarious skits re-enacting various stories from the Bible (from creation to the apocalypse in less than 30 minutes, I believe the concert flyer said). Here you see the group with their take on the building of the Tower of Babel.

More pics when you click on the title link or here.

Buy their albums here (you can probably also get them at the Stanford Bookstore on campus).

Watch this video

I was introduced to Mark Bittman, food writer of the New York Times, by my Tivo (of all things). Since then, I've become a fan of his direct, non-fussy, food-loving videos.

Mr. Bittman's talk at the December 2007 TED Conference was just published, and I highly encourage you to watch it. It's the Reader's Digest version of Fast Food Nation, Super Size Me, and The Omnivore's Dilemna, and many other recent books about how the way we eat is killing us, our neighbors, and our planet.

Most people know that I'm very passionate about food issues -- how we eat, how we get food, government policy surrounding food. After you balloon to the size I did a few years ago, it's a no-brainer. If you didn't know about this passion of mine, well, now you know. :-)

Like many TEDTalks, this 20-minute video is astounding for many reasons:

• The message is hugely important -- personally, locally and globally.
  
• It's passionate and powerful -- and brief.
  
• It's a world-class seminar on how to present persuasively: watch how he uses PowerPoint and count the number of bulleted text slides (hint: there are none).
  

In case you couldn't find her

Here she is in her tutu and hair-in-a-bun 'do standing next to Margaret and Margaret's sister. She was quite pleased with the entire effect, as you might suspect.

Katie's first dance recital

Katie's been dancing with a a class sponsored by the our fair city. I had no idea that the teacher actually taught lots and lots of classes at all age levels (including adults). Miss Terry's annual dance recital cleared up my misunderstanding: it featured 28 acts with fabulous costumes, great music, and a lot of (mostly) girls doing all manner of dance.

See if you can find Katie.

Our first baseball game

Thanks to John and Amy, the boys and I had the opportunity to go watch the San Francisco Giants play the Chicago White Sox at AT&T Park on a gorgeous sunny afternoon this weekend. (Katye had to reprise her first dance recital so couldn't make it -- more on that in the next post.)

 And even though:

• The game was a little hard to follow, and
• The Giants lost, and
• Colin lost his title as Official Lucky Charm for the Home Team, this being the first sporting event he's attended where the home team lost
  

...the boys had a blast, because:

• We got to ride the Caltrain, including one of the shiny and quiet new ones on the way home, and
• We got Gordon Biersch garlic fries with chicken nuggets, and
• It was a beautiful day in a fabulous ballpark
• Both teams were popping home runs as if they were playing Wii Sports

See the entire afternoon in pictures if you're so inclined.

Teddy Bear Museum

Believe it or not, the tiny island of Jeju features an enormous teddy bear museum. Needless to say, the kids thoroughly enjoyed it. Surprisingly, we managed to emerge with no new animal friends.

Yum!

We enjoyed several fabulous meals in Korea. Now I'm spoiled and the local Korean restaurants won't be the same anymore. Here you see an enourmous assortment of appetizers clustered around the main course -- though who can tell the difference between appetizer and main course with so many dishes scattered about? :-)

See here for more food pics.

Tim and Sumin's wedding

It was a beautiful ceremony on a gorgeous resort called The Shilla on Jeju Island.

To accommodate the day trip crowd flying in from the main Korean peninsula, they also timed everything down to the second: pictures at 1:15 pm, the ceremony at 3 pm, a cocktail reception at 3:45, dinner by 4:30 or so, and the whole shooting match done by 6:30 pm or so.

At our wedding, you wouldn't even have seen your first appetizer! Given that part Cameron was running a bit of a fever and never adjusted to local Korea time, we were very thankful for the precision wedding.

More pics here (or just click the blog post title).

Korea adventure

We're just back from our week-long trip to Korea where I did a little work (in the tallest HP building I've ever been in -- a skyscraper which houses over 1,000 people!), Fedora and kids had a great time sightseeing, and we all enjoyed attending Tim and Sumin's wedding. Lots of pictures to share, so visit our Smugmug gallery to see them.

I'll publish separate albums for the wedding and the delicious food (though the kids probably enjoyed it less than me, as much of it was mmm mmm spicy).