Douglas and Emily at Koi Palace

Douglas Seifert and Emily are in town for the holidays, and as has been tradition for years (with Douglas, anyway), we went out to eat dim sum. I’ve basically stopped eating shrimp because of the horrible way in which it is fished, but I am embarrassed to say that I do still have a bit of it when out for dim sum. Luckily, it’s only once or twice a year…

We chose to go to Koi Palace because it is pretty much right between Oakland and Half Moon Bay. I knew it would be busy, but when we arrived, it was PACKED with people, and we discovered that our ticket placed us 48 tables behind in the queue. Just as we resigned ourselves to waiting for a long time, a guy wearing a “MIT 2006″ sweatshirt walked up to me and asked, “are you Eric?”

It turned out to be Calvin, a fellow Vienna Teng fan who goes by the handle tanthalas on the VT forums. Calvin and his family know everything there is to know about how things work at Koi Palace, and as a result, Douglas, Emily and I were seated in the side room less than 10 minutes later. The two were suitably impressed by the incident, and Douglas declared right then that I was to be his dim sum friend for life.

I’m starting to like this pseudo-celebrity thing, especially when dim sum is involved (and by “pseudo” I mean pseudo to the highest degree)! :)

(thank you, Calvin!)