Air Traffic Control

The past week has been dizzying, not the least because I had (have) one of those nasty colds, which is down to an annoying cough. My brother went off to San Francisco to make his fortune. P– and I have been making random progress with our Japan/Taiwan trip in March. We’re emailing to Taiwan, skyping to Malaysia, and writing letters to my councilman from Bensenhurst in Inuyama. My cousin T- is in on a flythrough, lamenting on the lack of IP materials available in Chinese law schools. We went to Doyers Vietnamese, which is basically the Vietnamese version of Wo Hop — in the middle of the most secluded place in Manhattan’s Chinatown, but incredibly cheap food. So cheap in fact that we actually spent more money on dessert at Cha Cha’s In Bocca Al Lupo Cafe in Little Italy afterwards.

At least it’s not the Amazing Race, which ended last week in a relatively disappointing fashion. Well, we’ll have a whole new set of people in 2 weeks. They’re casting for Race number 8, which will have teams composed of 4 family members. We tossed around the idea of me with P–, P–‘s sister and her husband. Boy, that would be something!

V-day was spent in our tradition of going to Kam Suh, a Korean restaurant on E 32nd St. For some reason, there was no problem getting a table. We had oyster pancakes (we could have done without because the free pan chan appertizers also included them), bulgogi, kalbi, and kimchi gigae. We finished the whole thing — I don’t know how. P- had done some Crate and Barrel shopping, finding some nice throw rugs, as well as a really cute Valentine’s Day card.

Riding the Circuit

These past two weeks were spent showing up. A couple of meetings with the alumni association, mostly dealing with benefits. I got to buy drinks for Dale Minami, who was being honored at the Waldorf. I saw Salman Rushdie at another dinner at Chelsea Piers, who made a witty comment about being the subject of a fatwah by the Ayatollah Khomeini – “only one of us is alive today”.

In between all of these compulsory appearances, my dad was in the hospital with pneumonia until last Saturday. He’s better now, but I really hope the weather warms up asap. Although that’s not likely with the upcoming northeaster tomorrow.

Oh yeah, happy new year! I’m taking the day off, but not doing anything wild because I have a cold. I have another dinner on Thursday at Jing Fong honoring Glen Lau Kee. Friday is “Table 11”. Saturday is dinner with my cousin T-. Monday of course is V-day with P-. I am planning a trip with P- to Japan and Taiwan in March — more details soon.