Cruising Weekend

With CE doing a semester-long overseas college stint in Korea and WT well-ensconced in Gainesville to work with his professor in preparation for Grad school in the coming Spring, Wify and I are having a rare time of being a two-some, just like a pair of newly-wed, at least in spirit.

Now, how does a pair of “newly-wed” spend their weekend? Well, ours is not a good, may not even be credible at all, example. But this is what we did.

Yesterday was spent on visiting WT at Gainesville, what else? Today, we decided to cruise around town. We took I-275 toward downtown, but swang by Tampa Bay Park, wanting to revisit the water lily pond located by the side of M.L. King Jr. Blvd. I pass by it every working day and know that the sprouting season is on.

The first inkling of something was not right when our digital camera failed to respond when the on switch was pressed. And I guessed it right, I forgot to reload the batteries. We always remove the batteries when the camera is not in use, to prevent power leakage from the non-chargeable variety that we have been using. So we found a CVS store not far down the road on Dale Mabry. And it was back to the Park again.

We managed to shoot a few scenes around where we parked and were moving across the road to the pond when somebody called us from a distance. It was a security guard in a buggy. Well, the place is a private property after all, and we needed the approval from the property owner even to be on the premises. On our defense, the place is a business park and not gated, and we were here the last time around with no incident. However, we did miss a sign by the road side that says cars will be towed. So all we ended up with to show for the visit are the photos below, before we were asked to leave.

Some nice reflections from the office glass facade at Tampa Bay Park. There is the white cloud (top panel), and there is the Tampa Bay Bucaneers' (NFL team) Flag (bottom panel, left). Then there are the reed plants just being themselves, abiding by the wind, and some low-level palms.

Wify standing in front of the reed plant community.

Wify by the railing, and there is the Bucaneers' flag again, fluttering in the wind; but this is no reflection.

Yellow flowers, the same kind that abounds in Malaysia, as Wify intoned.

It was around lunch time, and we decided to cruise along Dale Mabry looking for a lunch place. And we found the Golden Phoenix Restaurant, offering Vietnamese and HongKong cuisine. Wify had seafood noodle, and me, golden beach fried rice. Plus three servings of the dim sum, two marked in blue circles in the dim sum menu below (stuffed eggplant and steamed spareribs) and a third, a tofu (similar to the Yong Tau Foo in Malaysia) dish that is not on the menu (the full menu can be found here).

The front of the Golden Phoenix Restaurant located at 8199 N. Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33614.

The dim sum menu showing our choices for the lunch dessert in blue circles (stuffed eggplant and steamed spareribs).

The ambience was great, the service top-notched, and the food, tasty. We left behind a handsome tip, at least by our standard. Then it was some grocery shopping followed by some routine home-bound activities like me blogging (with the College Football SEC Preview on TV on the same time) and Wify catching up with the world's ongoing through Internet, followed by a brief nap and later, painting. Then it's the beginning of another work week.