Of funerals, food festivals, and markdowns

Or how my weekend went.



Funeral:

On Saturday, I was dragged to a funeral of someone I don't know, one I never met. Sorry to use the word drag but that's precisely what it was. My husband's ex-coworker had expired and Saturday was the funeral. I have nothing against going to my husband's company functions. In fact I have done so many times. But this was a funeral of someone I have never met in any of these functions before. And there is something about funeral that I dread when I go. To make me more peeved I found out that I was the only spouse present. Why can my husband go to these things by himself????

And so it was a wonderful ceremony, although a tad long I'd say. It was a Buddhist rite and except for the chanting which was Sanskrit, the language used was Lao. The atmosphere was somber and me and my soft heart (pusong mamom) I shed a tear. I HATED THAT. I dislike the fact that I was shedding tear when I don't know the dead.

Anyway, it was a solemn ceremony, a first for me. I do pray that he will be with his creator at peace.

FOOD FESTIVAL:

Oakland's Jack London Square was the site of the REAL FOOD festival featuring - food trucks. Food trucks all over Jack London Square. Food trucks by the fountain, food trucks next to the waterfront, food trucks every where. How delectable is that?

I heard this was the second year in a row that this festival is being held. On Friday, they had the breweries out. Not on Sat when we went. Nevertheless we alloted $40 dollars for the event. Most of the food were either $3 or $5 each. We saw SPENCER ON THE GO at the entrance of the festival - tis a free festival, but their truck was the first one to get to coming from the parking lot. And because of that, we didn't get anything they had to offer as we wanted to round the entire place and scout which one we wanted to eat.

I saw 2-3 trucks of Filipino cuisine. There was nachos with sisig on top (did not taste), sisig taco (not technically sisig but they're calling it sisig, however it was yummy), and the usual lumpiang shanghai. There is one booth - not truck - that sells adobo over rice. The $5 adobo serving was not worth the price, I thought. Of course I didn't taste that.

Many different cuisines were there: Mexican, Indian, Mediterranean, El Salvadoran, Cajun, Chinese, Korean (they are selling the original korean taco *grin*), etc.

Our $40 dollars filled us to the gills. We had a whole lot of food. We even took home a jerk fish sandwich from the truck GET JERKED and a Cuban sandwich which we ate for dinner the next day.

Next year, I'd organize a group to go and stay longer and take more photos. I will post photos in another blog.

MARKDOWNS:

Have you ever encountered superior customer service? I have. From Fry's Electronics last week. The tv that we have been lusting after and waiting for months to go on sale, finally went on sale to a price we could stomach. So we hurried off after work to purchase said tv. We were helped by a wonderful tv guy named Pat who patiently answered every question we had and helped us with the purchase and made sure we could get the best deal possible. He was very friendly and we felt like we were treated like family. It certainly was the best we've been treated in a store before.

But his assistance did not end there. Two days after our purchase, the store brought the price down another $200. We saw the newspaper ads. And we also got a call from Pat asking us to return to store to get our adjustments. And again, when we returned he was there by our side the entire time until the transaction was completed. We really felt like we have been right all these years in patronizing this store.