Anand "teh ai" I.'s Profile

I haven't met a doctor in the last 10 years (since I moved to the Bay Area) who has spent more than 10 minutes - that's a stretch - 5 minutes with me about an issue.

OneMedical prides itself on their ability to respond to emails, but in the last 6 months, 3 (of my 5) emails to my primary care doctor were auto-response messages saying my doctor was on vacation.

My wife and I were seriously considering leaving One Medical because we weren't sure about our primary care physicians - in fact we weren't even sure how we got stuck with them. After suffering with some serious sinus and allergy issues for over 6 weeks this summer, I hopped on the phone with Gabriella Cardi on a Saturday morning. She spent 29 minutes (yes, you read that right) with me on the phone. She was caring, considerate and extremely thoughtful.

I don't know if the advice Dr. Cardi has given me will pan out. But let me tell you that I feel mentally better knowing that she cared to even listen to me. My wife and I are both considering making her our primary care doctor.

Like many others who have been here and reviewed this, I've been coming here for years. I didn't pay a lot of attention to the customer service - I would drop my clothes off, I'd pick them up a few days later and I didn't have any issues. The service was acceptable and that was that. On a couple of occasions, the clothes weren't ready when I was told they would be, but no biggie. But what happened in December 2010 *really* pissed me off..

December 7 - I was late this winter. I realized I hadn't dry cleaned my winter wardrobe till early December, so I took 16 of my sweaters and jackets to Clothespin and dropped them off. A few days later, my fiancee (who had a cold at the time) picked them up for me. I come home, see the clothes there, and try one of my sweaters on, and instantly realize that there's a NASTY STENCH on the sweater. It was so bad, I gagged. I smelled the other 15 items, they all stank like crazy. The clothes were so bad that we had to leave them in our living room, and the living room started to stink. Yep, that bad.

December 14 - I take them back to Clothespin. I was told that "bad bacteria in the solvent" that Clothespin used that prior week had caused this smell. "BAD BACTERIA"? I suddenly felt nauseous and got goosebumps. I had tried on a couple of my clothes that had the "bad bacteria" - I got all psychosomatic and felt the urge to itch my skin off. Anyhow, the smell would come right off I was told - "come back in 2 days". And I was also told to not worry that my skin wouldn't peel off or anything.

December 16 - Clothes not ready yet. Bah.

December 18 - I head over to pick up the clothes. The clothes STILL stink. I was starting to lose my patience while getting a little nervous that my clothes were likely not gonna make it. And these were expensive jackets and sweaters. I was told to try "one more time" and also that we weren't the only ones to run into this issue - several other customers's clothes had also been run through the same solvent. That was supposed to make me feel better somehow. Anyhow, I left the clothes behind again.

December 21 - I go back, still no luck. Clothes STILL STINK. The lady at Clothespin asks me to take it to another dry cleaners. She said she'd reimburse me for the whole affair if the smell comes off. I take it to Laundry Locker (fortunately we have one where we live). I drop it off the same day, and get it back from LL the next with a note that pretty much said that I was SOL - my clothes would never smell fine again. At this point I'm down several hundred dollars.

December 22 - My fiancee goes in to clothespin with our receipts from Laundry locker and our clothes. All this time, btw, since early-Dec the lady who works the counter at Clothespin has "had a cold". She claims she can smell nothing. Not that she can't smell the stench, she just can't smell, period. Interesting. Anyhow - we tell it to her as is - that our clothes are destroyed. They have been through 4 dry clean cycles. We're tired of running around. She begs us for one more shot to dry clean the "bad bacteria" off the clothes. I say, no. Enough is enough. My fiancee and I had spent several hours chasing this down. We want to be reimbursed for our clothes. She says OK, and that she would mail us a check.

January 19 - NO CHECK. My fiancee and I realize that the holidays have come and gone. I go back to the store asking about our check. She acts puzzled and claims the bank must have lost our check. She says, stop payment will be done on the last check, and a new check mailed in.

Feb 3 - STILL NO CHECK. I go back to the store. She says, she mailed the check out the week prior and was told the check would be there in 5-7 biz days. At this point as you can imagine, I was starting to lose my faith. It's funny how the lady at Clothespin keeps a straight face when she says things like, "oh, the check's in the mail" and it's a blatant lie. We've received W2s and wedding invitations in the mail, but a check mailed from a local bank (Wells Fargo, apparently) gets lost. TWICE.

As you can tell, it's been a couple of months since this began, and I'm now tired and have given up on this situation. Collectively we've spent many many hours on this situation, and several hundred dollars and pretty much lost my entire winter wardrobe.

I hope you will empathize with me and make a conscious decision to NOT go to a dry cleaner who will royally screw you over if things were to go wrong. Try Laundry Locker instead - so far they seem to have worked really well for me.

My fiancée and I were looking to get our engagement pictures taken. We were referred to Euan and we are SO glad we were.

Euan is a rare breed of photographer - not only is he talented as a photographer and editor (trust me, we needed the editing ;) but he is also personable. We're not actors by any stretch of the imagination, but you need to be able to pose if you want some good pictures taken. Long story short - he made the entire evening remarkably easy for us.

Something our friends had warned us about was the amount of time certain photographers take to turn our pictures around. We had our pictures turned around to us in hours.

Also, Euan spent no less than 6 hours with us (YES, 6 HOURS!). He drove around with us all over the city, from SOMA to Pacific Heights to the Marina and we got the best pictures taken. The best part - his prices are really affordable.

All in all, I couldn't be more happy with the work that Euan did. He is a hidden gem of a photographer and I strongly recommend working with him. We'll forever remember the memories Euan has helped create.

Wow. Seriously, wow.

My polkers obsession began a couple of months ago when I was seriously craving some seared ahi tuna. My buddy who lives in Russian Hill recommended this place, and I have not looked back since.

I must caution you that my review caters to just the one item on their menu - the Seared Ahi Tuna salad. That's it. I've been back to this place about once a week since the day my friend recommended this place, and I've gotten just the one thing on the menu although quite frankly EVERYTHING looks freaking delish.

So, if you stumbled upon this review because like me you were craving some Ahi Tuna and Yelp'd Ahi Tuna (with some greens, avacado, lemon vinegarette, with some mild wasabi sauce), then look no further. Just make sure they're open before you head over there - I've heard they close sporadically every now and then.

I'm writing this review as I'm on hold with the Buttes' accounting department for the 3rd time this week. I've never had an experience this bad at any hotel. period.

The first night that I checked in, I was put in a room with a murphy bed (that's right). It was late, I was tired. I accepted. It was around 12.30am. At around 1.45am, I noticed that I was sweating from my feet. It was ridiculously hot (Tempe in the fall is apparently no different from Tempe in the summer). I called the front-desk to let them know the air conditioning wasn't working, and apparently there wasn't an engineer on site, and there were no other rooms available. So, I sweated it out.

6am, I get a rude awakening from an engineer who tries to fix the air conditioning. He blames me for having set the air conditioning to 67F (apparently 69 is what is recommended). But the temperature in the room the time that he measured it was 78F. Anyhow, he fixes the AC, and off I go.

I come back that night, only to find out the AC is bust AGAIN. I call the front desk, the engineers spend a half hour trying to fix it. And they claim they have. But exactly a half hour later at 9.30pm, the AC dies again. I call the front desk, ask them to move me, and guess what - they're out of rooms. So I walk out of the hotel, and move to a cozy Hilton a sweet 1.5 miles away.

Now, I've been on the phone with Caroline from Butte's Accoutning, and she claims that front desk moved me to "several different rooms" at which point I was "uncooperative". I don't usually go out of my way to write a review this crazy, but when I'm called a liar, a switch flips in my head. And for an establishment of this size, to call me a liar, a customer who has diligently paid money (around $250 a night with taxes), is just preposterous. All I'm trying to do right now, is get my money back which is looking unlikely. I've spent about an hour with Customer Serivce and Accounting.

Please, don't stay here. There is a nice Hilton by the airport 1.5 miles away. Do yourself a favor and avoid these pricks.

Is it a men's spa? A bar? A barbershop? A shoe-shining place?

This is truly a man's retreat in the FiDi. I mainly went there today to get my hair cut. But would you believe it that they had no (useful) mirrors around the hairdressing area? I had no idea how my hairdresser was doing. At all. In fact, I almost had to ask her to see a mirror before I left. I found that a bit weird.

MR definitely makes you second guess yourself when you walk in because its a swanky joint and you're not exactly sure how to navigate it. I felt a little apprehensive today as I walked in.

The clientele this afternoon comprised of mostly middle-aged men. Not sure if that's a common theme though.

The staff is great. The service was really good. And I'm happy with my hair. Looking forward to coming back here for happy hour some time.

Nice, I like.

I was telling my friend earlier today that I went to Eos. I was asked to describe the cuisine, and I was stumped. They have everything from shitake mushroom dumplings to madras curry chicken. Go figure.

You almost want to go to this place with a giant party. The dinner portions are small tapas sized. The wait was excusable, but the bartenders at the bar could work on their attitude a tad.

Definitely recommended.

overrated

I was running around one day looking for what I thought could be a good gift. Are flowers are too old school now? I dunno.

Anyhow, I was running around pretty aimlessly for something to occur to me when I drove by Hoogasian - right next to Room and Board. This place seems like a flea market for flowers, of sorts. I wasn't really sure what I was doing there, of I was even supposed to be *in* there. I I was greeted by a "flower elf" in a few moments. Soon, after seeing the really really fresh collection of flowers, I was telling them exactly what I wanted. And this guy created this awesome arrangement right in front of me in about 10 minutes. *I* thought the whole ensemble looked really good.

I liked how they walked me through my options and told me what does and does not work together. Well done. Being a no0b in the flower world, I was impressed. I recommend this place if you don't want to just get somtehing off of http://ftd.com and want to get your own arrangement together.

Hoogasian is also a http://FTD.com florist, btw.

This is probably the best tapas place in the city. That's a strong statement, but find me another place that's this good.

The beauty of tapas is that you can try several several plates before you actually convince yourself that you need to stop eating. There's very little on the menu that I haven't tried, and there's nothing there that I haven't liked.

Except this one time we had a waiter who very rudely cut my friend off (he literally said, excuse me, stop talking) or something... But that was very much a one-time isolated incident (worth taking one star off).

I love the fact that if you're gonna be waiting a while, you can actually get a carafe of sangria and wait outside. That's amazing to me!

Oh also, do NOT leave without having tried the lamb chops. Trust me. :)