Cookie the Cavalier

Nikon D810, 200-500mm lens, somewhere near the Farallon Islands Once or twice a year I try to get on a boat out to the Farallon Islands with birders in the Bay Area. Pelagic birding is my absolute favorite type of birding: being able to get out in the ocean and see a huge amount of sea life of all types is a treat. In June this year I had the...

I love the Mission. Specifically, I love the less gentrified parts of it. There's still so much life and culture; DJs spinning records on the street, bands playing live Latin jazz, record stores where you can explore cumbria, and Indigenous dance groups that perform at the many plazas. Despite its many problems, the Mission is where I default to...

I have a weird story about scallion pancakes. It goes like this. Around this time last year, I was walking down my street in San Francisco when a woman waved something at me. I thought she needed help with something, so I went closer. Instead, she clicked something (she was waving a torch, the kind you ignite gas stoves with), and she held the...

Now that I live so far from home, I have to make my own half-boiled eggs. Half boiled eggs are not the same as soft boiled eggs: they come out of the shell almost in a liquid form, not in the shape of an egg that is starting to firm. So it's less cooked than a typical soft boiled egg. Growing up in Singapore and Malaysia, this was a typical...