astradele

This entry was supposed to be about Hiro Sushi. Sadly, I got to the King and Jarvis restaurant to find it closed, with a remarkably friendly and sincere note that they had to close for that particularly day. I racked my brain for somewhere interesting to go, and remembered the Thai restaurant Linda. I was there not too long ago with friends and greatly enjoyed it, though I forgot my camera that time. A note: Linda prefers reservations, no matter the size of your party.

An interesting note about Linda is its relation to Salad King downstairs. The owner is the same, but Salad King is very much like a college cafeteria, albeit with unusually good food. Linda, however, is much more pleasing to the eye. The menu is also quite different, being much more unusual and creative than Salad King’s.

I seem to get more unusual events when solo dining with my camera. This time, probably because I was struggling to get legible menu pictures without a flash, the owner (Linda?) remarked that I seemed to have an interest in menus. I explained myself, but I tend to feel a little embarrassed, even though I don’t think I should be. Oh well.

I also had a neighbouring table that remarked on my choice of entree. I heartily recommended it, saying that it’s what I specifically came here for. Unfortunately, my recommendation was taken, but not enjoyed, judging from overheard comments.

I started off with Young Coconut Water (2.75) for a beverage. No picture, it looks very much like water, especially in low light. The beverage is the same as the Asian white/beige coconuts that can be drunk out of directly: light, sweet, a little of the fatty richness of coconut milk. I was also provided some free appetizers, salted, roasted peanuts with salted, dried shrimp:

The appetizer I ordered was a Lettuce Wrap (5.00), minced chicken, shrimp, crispy bean vermicelli, lime leaf, cashew nut, yellow beans chili sauce.:

The ingredients were fresh, and it was unlike the similar dish at Chinese restaurants, perhaps because of the difference in sauce. There was a hint of sourness (the lime?), and the lettuce and vermicelli made it very crispy. I found it satisfying, although not that remarkable except for the presentation.

The entree (that I recommended to the neighbouring table) was Lychee Lobster (22.95), shells of lobster tail with lychee, saffron, creamy sweet and sour sauce:

This is what I had the first time here, and I enjoyed it greatly that time. The second time, however, I noticed that it was hard to finish, as the sauce is very sweet and rich. Like curry, I really needed the rice with to dilute the taste, but rice is also filling. I took half of it home. I guess the novelty enhanced my enjoyment the first time, although I still like it.

I really shouldn’t have, but the problem with this restaurant exploration is that it imbues me with a devil-may-care attitude when ordering food, both to costs and to how full I am. So I had the Deep friend bananas and ice cream (6.75), with mango and papaya flavours:

It was a good dessert, that I would have appreciated even more if I hadn’t been full and sweetness tastebuds saturated by my entree. Ice cream was its normal creamy, flavourful self, and the deep fried bananas were crispy on the outside and deliciously bad for me. I did have to wait awhile for it, though – but it was a packed restaurant at that point.

I intend to go back to Linda again (and again). The environment looks nice, service is good, and the menu is creative and not astronomically expensive (what I ordered was both a lot and on the higher end). I don’t even fault the waiter for filling my glass of Young Coconut Water with ice water. ^_^ An acquaintance I bumped into on the way home shared my enthusiasm for the restaurant, and although he felt the Lychee Lobster was too sweet, he recommended the Fish Curry (I think), which is a Chef’s Recommendation on the front of the menu. I’ll try to remember that.

Next up: Hiro Sushi.

I always get surprised by how far the Windows console shell has progressed since Windows 2000. It’s no zsh, but it’s certainly tolerable. I wish the syntax to the tricks were a little more consistent, but I guess they were operating under backwards compatibility constraints.

Today, I learned that the Windows shell has the equivalent of the UNIX pwd. For Windows 2000 and up, %CD% always evaluates to the current directory. My thanks to Google and the blog entry about getting the current directory on Windows.

A coworker recently brought up an entertaining question, although we both agreed that it was unimportant overall: what do you name your factory methods?

Some observations:

• The java.xml.* package uses newXXX() for the factories, e.g. DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(), DocumentBuilder.newDocument().
• The java.xml.* package uses createXXX() for the builders, e.g. Document.createXXX().
• java.lang.Class.newInstance().
• java.lang.Array.newInstance().
• Design Patterns, the GoF book, uses createXXX().
• .NET uses System.Activator.createInstance().
• COM uses CoCreateInstance().
• The Wikipedia article on Abstract Factory uses create.

We traded some ideas, but we soon found that the criteria we used were often too vague or hard to use. In the end, we agreed that create was probably the best for everything, because:

1. It’s a simple rule, with no exceptions, i.e. avoid thinking effort on something so minor.
2. createXXX() is more versatile than newXXX(). There are cases where newXXX() sounds a little awkward (perhaps because “new” is an adjective)

createXXX also follows the common principle that method names are verbs, class names are nouns.

A fun exercise, but I hope no one actually spends that much time on issues like these – rather, I wish people didn’t, since I know some people do.