Month: March 2007

AS returned to the land of the rising earthquake today. He was still experiencing culture shock as of last week, when we went to PJ Cooke’s, an American diner type place. He just flew back from Miami, and was having a little trouble reading the English menu, I guess because he’s been in Asia for like 7 years. I was trying to help him out with a little translating:

Waitress: What do you want to order?

AS: [Hopeless trying to read the menu, grunts, finger pointing]

FC: This part of the menu are the hamburgers and here are the brunch specials….

AS: Huh?

FC: Je ge hai ham bo pou…

AS:???

FC: Esto es hamburgesa con queso, y eso es huevos rancheros…

AS: Oh. [Having a double take] Wow, the menu actually says “huervos rancheros”!

…..

Went to Sobaya tonight with P- for Japanese Restaurant Week. I had the duck soba, and she had the chirashi udon. Both very good – rich broths, handmade noodles with bite – impressive. What was more impressive was the starters, especially the yuba “sushi”, which was bean curd skin wrapped around fresh soft tofu, and then offered with real wasabi and dumpling soy sauce. Outstanding, and 20% off this week. Recommended. Afterwards, P- had a chocolate craving, which was satisfied by going to Max Brenner’s Chocolate by the Bald Man, the neighborhood edition. This new cocoa outpost around the corner is way less crowded than the flagship store, but just as audacious. We had crepes to top off desert, but it was just way too rich. Maybe we should have had the ice cream at Sobaya instead.

Trip on Saturday to DC, woo hoo. P- gets a 5 day girls night out….

Saturday: Alma Mater’s Asian Alumni Lunar Banquet at Peking Park Restaurant, midtown. Food was okay; company was interesting.

February/March reading:

Gideon’s Trumpet, by Anthony Lewis, on the US Supreme Court’s Gideon v. Wainwright, right to counsel in a criminal trial. Lewis was at his best towards the end, in detailing the results and the growing dilemmas of the 1960’s – almost editorial, even if he was trying to be observational. And, even though it was published in 1964, it felt timeless – and yet very contemporaneous – clearly the feeling of reading a primary source, or at least a book that did not know or could be certain what the next 40 years might bring.

Monster Careers: Networking, by Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com, and Doug Hardy, editor in chief of Monster – liked this book. Broke down what is networking at a very basic level.

And, the passing of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., historian. I’ll spare blog readers of my idea of linking just about everything written so far in observance of Schlesinger (great stuff, I might add – Schelsinger being a scholar but also a participant of history), but I’ll note that American historians – particularly the Schlesingers (father and son), the Beards (Charles and Mary), Richard Hofstadter – were who I read when I was taking AP American History in high school – such great stuff that later inspired me to become an American History major in college, and – maybe? – what made me care about what this country may mean. I may not have always agreed with their outlook, but their writing and learning from their work made me think. As for Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., we might be missing a certain type of historian/intellectual/political participant; we all still have much to learn.