Today we had our
every-few-months West Coast lunch at Umeko in San Francisco's Japan
Town. We've been there before, it's all you can eat buffet-style
Japanese food with some Chinese food also. Not a huge selection but
fairly good. I had three plates of stuff. But I tend to eat too much
rice and less expensive foods that I'm familiar with. I did have lots
of sushi. And there was mango ice cream (plus three other kinds) for
dessert.
On to the gossip. West Coast was bought by BSG maybe a year ago so I
must have mentioned it before. Different departments at West Coast HQ
have been shut down in favor of BSG which headquartered in Texas. By
March the West Coast HQ will be the warehouse, four IT people, and a
few other people. Steve Chan and probably Dave Hayes will still be
working. Unfortunately they're letting Sam Kyu, our veteran programmer,
go.
Bea had already left because she had fallen out of favor with the
current head of the IT department, who is Indian. Apparently he's a
racist Indian who only talks to his Indian friends and workers and
nobody else likes him. Anyway, she has gotten a job at Jelly Belly
right near where she lives and is happy there. I know she married Brian
(Singer?) and they had a boy which makes it three boys for her. Gosh,
her oldest boy is about to go to college and I met him when he was
seven.
Greg Welliver is taking classes at Golden Gate University. I suppose
he's retraining himself for a future job. Meanwhile he couldn't make
this lunch because he's in Hawaii. Fred is still living somewhere out
of state with his parents working at a government job, which surprised
everyone but since I don't know him that well it didn't surprise me.
Fred might visit this March and we'll probably have another lunch there.
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Chris Chin-Wong is still
working at Jimboree, who moved their headquarters to San Francisco at
1st and Howard. It's too bad for her since it used to be a 15-minute
drive. Now she has to commute with her brothers, who work 9 hour days.
Rita is enjoying her retirement and apparently not getting much done.
Peter had just come from his daughter's recital or something like that.
He's working with a Nextel subsidiary or partner or some small company
that dependson Nextel, which was just bought by Sprint a few weeks ago.
Sam's health is better. I'm not sure what he's going to do after West
Coast. I guess try to get a job since Jesse submitted his resume to
Oracle. But now with the PeopleSoft thing I doubt we'll be hiring for
the next few months, which is bad for Sam. I've always worried about
him since he's kind of old and has these elite VMS skills which are
obsolete but I supposed he was also working on the Oracle stuff in the
last couple of years.
Jesse went to Mexico in October. He had some pictures for us to see and
he's a fairly good photographer from all the trips he's taken. And
apparently Jesse knows Simon because he was asking about him. There's
much more stuff about the Clarks, who owned West Coast before selling
out, and other people that I don't remember which I'll skip.
It was good to see people. I talked a bit more than I usually do but I
just like listening to what's going on. Makes me feel as if I have
friends. I'm looking forward to the next lunch.
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