It’s Saturday (almost Sunday now), so that means I played basketball today. I’ve been playing with the same group of guys in Palo Alto for about 13 years. They have been playing together even longer (from their college days at Stanford). They call themselves SMH (Saturday Morning Hoops). I forgot to set my alarm for this morning, and ended up being 15 minutes late. When I got there we had 7 in total, but we eventually had 10 for 5-5. Good fun and good exercise.

After basketball I went to the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival. They have a lot of cultural exhibits like origami, taiko (drums), sumo, karate, traditional dance, etc. They also have some food booths serving various types of Japanese (fast) food. Today I ate some teriyaki chicken, soba (noodle soup), teriyaki burger, and tried some teriyaki corn on the cob. I saw some bonsai tree displays, which were pretty cool, as were some origami and brush painting and writing demonstrations. I also saw a bit of a sumo demonstration, but the guys were pretty small compared with the professionals in Japan. Afterward I got some funnel cake to work on my sumo physique! I also saw a taiko show which is pretty cool.

From the Cherry Blossom festival, I went to Palo Alto for dinner (more food!). I went to a place called Mediterranean Wraps in the business area of Palo Alto. I had a combo plate which was huge! It came with tabouli, dolmas, babganoush, hummus, falafel, pita, salad, and shawerma! Man, I was stuffed!

After dinner I went to a gospel concert, the All Faiths Gospel Music Festival. It is a charity event put on by an organization called INCH. Their main focus is helping low income mid-peninsula families. They have this gospel festival every year with a variety of performers. This year I saw four performers: Jamie Davis, Foothill Gospel Choir, Avery Stafford, and Maranatha Hope of Glory Mass Choir. Maranatha is usually my favorite, and this year was no different. Even though they had a smaller choir than usual, they are always so powerful and energetic. Here are some (poor quality) video clips I took with my phone:

Jamie Davis singing Amazing Grace
Jamie Davis singing What a Wonderful World
Maranatha Hope of Glory Mass Choir (clip 1)
Maranatha Hope of Glory Mass Choir (clip 2)

They are 3gp format, which is a cell phone standard. You should be able to play them with Quicktime by either right-clicking the link and saving to disk, or just click the link and see if you have an embedded Quicktime player in your browser.

Well, it’s after midnight; I guess I should think about calling it a day…