December 14th 2014: Badminton with Friends in Waltham

I started out early this morning in Watertown, eating breakfast at the New Yorker Diner, a small town diner at 39 Mount Auburn Street, where I got the Kielbasa and Eggs and a Hot Chocolate, as there was nothing else interesting on the menu.

Nothing special really, and I did not enjoy my meal at all.

It was then on to the MATTBC in Waltham, the badminton place I have not been to for several months now because the weather had gotten warmer until now.

I had a fun time playing badminton with my friends today, although we found out that we would have to pay $2 more to be able to play table tennis as well, which had been free the last time I was here. We are not sure if we want to return here to play in future.

Lunch was at Mulan as always, with some of the regular dishes being ordered,

Salted Crispy Chicken

Homemade Sausage and Spiced Beef

Stir Fried Peapod Stems with Minced Garlic

Ma Bo Beancurd

Shredded Pork with Baby Bamboo

Fish Fillet with Chili Pepper

and some new ones as well.

Stir Fried Rice Cakes with Pork

Chinese Squash with Mountain Naigamo and Bamboo

Everything was pretty good as always, except for the squash, which was just alright.

After lunch, I decided to head into Lexington,

Town Clock,

~1794 Massachusetts Avenue

going to watch "The Theory of Everything" at the theater in town, the Lexington Venue. Not a great theater to go to, but thankfully the movie about Stephen Hawking was pretty good.

After the movie, I headed into Cambridge to have dinner at Akai Ryu Shabu and Sushi Restaurant, a relatively new shabu shabu place in town. This place is definitely one of the fancier hotpot places I have been to,

and it even has a pretty novel concept of conveyor belt hotpot, in contrast to sushi.

Unfortunately, they are waiting until they have sufficient customer volume before they launch it, so it has not yet started.

For the broth, I decided to get the Chicken (light and silky chicken consomme) and Vegetable (vegetarian and vegan soup base) broths, both of which are free.

For food, I got the Akai Ryu Special (Mixed Seafood Platter with Sirloin and Sweet Potato Noodles)

and on the sushi side, I got the Porter Square Roll (sake, mango, cucumber, avocado, lettuce inside out roll with strawberry sauce)

Not bad. I hope this place does well.