News has been swirling around the rumored Google-Twitter hook up. Seems like it's losing steam and may eventually just become a regular business/product development deal. I'd say the later makes more sense given that Twitter doesn't need to be bought and is just dipping its toes in the world of revenue generation. Google's got the advertisers, Twitter's got the inventory so it makes more sense for Twitter to remain independent and see if it can't make some of its own dough. They can always go back to testing the sell out waters in another year or so. Given their momentum and traffic growth, they won't be losing market value by waiting. Plus if they can rope Yahoo into acquisition discussions next year (when the stock should have hopefully gone up a little more), it could only help stir up the froth. Also, let's not forget that Microsoft might be interested at that point.

I recently got off veggie (had a couple of make-good days). One of the first places I headed to was Vien Huong in Oakland. After reading fellow Posterous-er Maggie Cheung's post about ramen, I was seriously craving noodles. My comment on Maggie's blog was that I'm still looking for a good ramen place in the Bay Area. However, for hu tieu (or ho fun for my Chinese readers), I stopped looking about 25-30 years ago. This was the place that my parents took me when I was a kid, this was the place I cut class and took BART all the way from El Cerrito for, this was the place I took dates to and if I noticed they didn't want to eat here more than once week I quickly dropped, this is the place my wife and I eat at most frequently, and this is the place I'll take my future children to eat every weekend. I won't go into detail regarding the food. Suffice it to say, it's good and I pretty much never eat hu tieu anywhere else save at my mom's. And lest you think I've overhyped the place and you end up going there and feel disappointed, that's ok. That means you won't come back and they'll be less of a wait for us regulars. If you do go, it's light on service and cash only.

My cousin Hieu (a fellow Posterous-er), took this shot of a Costco-like store in Saigon called Metro (I think it's German-based). Vietnam has come a long way. Last time I was there in 2001, Saigon looked downright provincial. Now, it's fast becoming the next Shanghai or Beijing. Can't wait to visit again.