On Sunday, I had two dates…or so I thought. After breakfast, I received a message on OKCupid cancelling the TeaTop @ 2pm, leaving only one.
The date that remained was a reunion with my dad’s mom’s brother’s daughter Pat Wang, who recently moved to Cupertino for her job as an Apple manager @ AMR Recycling Operations. The plan was to meet + eat @ Soupterra at 11:30am, but things were changed last minute when Pat discovered that Soupterra only allows take-out. Instead, the four of us (my brother Chris was allowed to be exempt) ended up at the Tasty Pot in the same plaza.
Before the pandemic, Tasty Pot was a regular dining destination for the Kang family and it was nice to be back. From start to finish, the meal lasted an hour and a half. My mom was the main person making small talk, but I jutted in from time to time. (My high caffeine levels that day allowed me to be more sociable.)
Pat’s plan is to buy a house and settle down in the Cupertino area. The high housing prices are daunting, but she feels paying rent instead of mortgage is a waste of hard earned money. Her price range of ~$850k makes finding a place difficult so I wish her the best of luck! (Pat mentioned that a 20% down payment on a $1mil home would take her another year to earn. More likely than not, that means this 45-year-old relative has less saved than me.)
After the meal, my parents and I headed home; Pat walked over to H-mart to browse around. One interesting thing was that the hot pot meal did not take me off keto. The morning after, my reagent strips still changed color. What makes that especially surprising is how much leeway I gave myself that day. In addition to drinking the sugary cup of iced tea, I ate almost everything inside my lamb hot soup. The only thing I skipped was the bowl of rice on the side.
PS: did the right thing and allowed my brother Chris to take over my Garmin Fenix 5X
