Author: F C

Went to dinner yesterday with P- at Noodle Pudding, a classic “hidden spot” at the northern end of the North Heights. We were there courtesy of the moot court team that I was coaching – they gave us a very nice gift certificate. Fantastic Italian food (yes, it’s Italian, not Jewish) – you might think it’s crazy to say that it brought back flavors of childhood, especially with my Chinese background, but it is true. Appertisers: Grilled octopus and Spanish white beans, fried fresh anchovy and calamari. Pasta: Tagatelli Bolognese, Gnochi al Pomodero. Mains: Osso Buco with spinich and polenta, sliced lamb with pumpkin. The grilled octopus reminded me of octopus that we used to grill over the stove, my dad’s fried fish, and the marrow filled bones that were in stew. They passed my gnocchi test with flying colors – soft, pillowy, completely cooked and flavored. Everything is actually very affordable — no credit cards, no reservations taken. Highly recommended.

Because no reservations are taken at Noodle Pudding, there is often a wait. We waited for 45 minutes, so we went down the street to The Blue Pig, which is a boutique ice cream shop. We shared a combo Pumpkin and “Pig Food” which is a dark chocloate ice cream with fudge and cookie pieces. We could only make it through half when massive winds and rains came down – it was literally a typhoon for a good 30-45 minutes. That just made the dinner that much more rewarding when we got a very nice table against the back wall, where we could see everying feasting.

Weird capitalist Christmas: I don’t know why the local Key Food supermarket has 6 different brands of egg nog. They only carry 3 different brands of milk, so that doesn’t make sense. Three of them are pictured in the flickr bar above. I bought the Lactaid version, and it wasn’t bad at all, and no gastrointestinal revenge afterwards.

If you would believe it, there is actually a legal definition of egg nog. Apparently under FDA rules, it is illegal to add yellow food coloring to egg nog, because it can give the impression that there is more egg yolk in the product than actually has been included.

Brooklyn Youth Chorus is having their holiday concert next Saturday in Brooklyn Heights. I went last year and this Grammy winning children’s singing group is always wonderful.

I love a capella in general and I tried searching around YouTube for some performances. Apparently U Penn has a gazillion a capella groups, including ones that do exclusively Chinese (PennYo), Korean (PennSori), and Indian songs (Penn Masala). I really liked PennYo’s covers of Jay Chou songs. They were full of expression and excitement.

PennYo: Jay Chou – Jian Dan Ai/Savage Garden – Truly Madly Deeply melody

They also did an Infernal Affairs spoof:

They had a performance in New York in October – I wished that I knew about it.

Monday P- took me to Lupa, Mario Batali’s Roman themed restaurant, for my birthday. We ordered the antipasti, which were Batali’s homemade sliced meats, as well as an array of seafood salads. They were wonderful – it’s one thing to have things like sardines from a can, and a whole other thing when they are prepared fresh. We followed with pasta – she had tripe sauce with rigotini, and I had tagatale with pork ragu. Didn’t seem so big, but boy were they filling! The desert was concord grape sorbet and ricotta gelato. Far more delicate than you would think. Definitely worth it.

Thanksgiving dinner today was at P’s mom’s house. It was early because P’s brother had to go to work at 6. We had all of the traditional foods – she even made cranberry sauce from scratch – we’re so full.

Amazing Race 10 – The Cho Bros turn out to be too nice and get dumped by Team Alabama. It’s too bad – I really liked them. I also got to see the first 2 episodes of Amazing Race Asia – pretty good. They put the non-elimination in the first leg, which is great because we get at least two episodes to get acquainted with everyone. I’m rooting for the M & M brothers fro Jakarta, Mardy and Marsio. Not exactly the most athletic team, they have to play smart instead.

Maybe I’ll be able to wake up early and go with P to Macy’s tomorrow. We’ll see if I can manage it.

Digging menus out of some of the old boxes… 2 cool spots –

The Crab Pot, Pier 57, Alaskan Way, Seattle, WA – SeaFeasts — Yum!
Hon’s Wu-Tun House, 108-268 Keefer St. Vancouver, BC – good wontons and dumplings.

More feasting tomorrow…..

We were in Barnes and Noble seeking to buy a book, any book. We had a 10% coupon, but after 2 hours, we just couldn’t get ourselves to buy anything.

Nowadays people don’t buy books or magazines to learn things – it’s more like joining a club for self-affirmation. Book titles are now so imperative: Make 7 figures in 7 years, Impeach Bush, Take back America, Expose Liberals Gone Wild, I hate Ann Coulter, Why we want you to be rich. Other how to books don’t really have any practical advice you couldn’t figure out yourself – for example, the Automatic Millionaire, or Suzie Orman – if you can’t follow their advice for wealth, you might as well make them rich. The worst are cookbooks that are entirely impossible for the average home cook to pull off, but are a nice fantasy anyway. The Nobu cookbooks are the most obvious offender –unless you happen to be a sushi master that apprenticed for at least 7 years in Japan, the books are just going to sit on your coffee table. Magazines are even worst – pick the most esoteric pastime, and someone will have a magazine for it.

I’ve got half a dozen books on computer programming, project management, and an anthology of ethnic Chinese writers of English in Hong Kong on deck as well as 3 wedding planning books, so I that’s what I’m going try to get through that this week for my birthday and Thanksgiving. And maybe a game of Civilization IV or two….

Lupa is on deck for tonight — let’s see if Mario Batali comes through again.

I get the occasional request to research unusual things. This time it was for seeking a Pinoy Filipino Scrabble set. To save the effort for people in search of it, here is what I found:

The makers of Scrabble in the Phillipines is

Henry J. Estrella, , Mabuhay Educational Center Inc., 3 Agno St., Quezon City Metro Manila, PHILIPPINES
Mabuhay@uplink.com.ph

There appears no way to order it online, and there are no sets on ebay right now.

This is what it looks like:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2893/377/1600/PinoyScrabble.jpg

The Phillipines set actually uses the same number and distribution of letter tiles as the English set, except you can use Tagalog words, so there is no advantage to getting the “Pinoy” set unless you need the rules in Tagalog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions#English

Philly addresses I didn’t get to put in the last time:
Chinese restaurant: Shiao Lan Kung, 930 Race St. 19107
Gelato: Capogiro, 117 South 20th Street, 10107

Chatted with YC this morning, which was nice. He’s headed to the Philippines today.

Back from a fun-filled weekend. Here’s the short list:
Breakfast at the Amish Corner at the Reading Terminal Market. One of the recent shooting victims had worked at the Amish diner here.
Touring throughout downtown.
The old Wanamaker Department store, now a Macy’s, with the world’s largest pipe organ.
CapoGyro Gelato (really nice since the temps jumped into the 70s.
Rittenhouse Square (sort of like the Village)
Early Chinese dinner in Chinatown (will add the name of the place – very good Cantonese food, the way it used to be)
Moot Court Awards ceremony (two people I know walked away with Bar/Bri gift certificates)
Back to Chinatown, barely making the bus back to New York.
The next day, law school friend’s Catholic Indian wedding (fascinating ceremony), followed by a stupendous reception (350 guests, must have been at least $50K)
Bro from SF is visiting this week – cooking an early Thanksgiving tonight.

The election starts in about 3 hours. I’m going to be a pessimist and say that the Dems will only tie in the Senate, while sweeping the House.

Much of the recent political momentum is due to videos published on YouTube, which was recently cited by Time magazine as the Invention of the year. This was the next step from the Rodney King video; now everyone’s Rodney King videos have instant worldwide distribution. I’ve tried the upload interface and it is really uncomplicated – you upload whatever video file you have, and YouTube figures out all of the conversion, resizing, streaming, and all that other hard stuff about videos.

The other slick thing is the legal team that figured out how to use the DCMA in their favor; unlike Napster, as long as it stays in the DCMA’s common carrier safe harbor by doing what it has to do, YouTube is pretty much immune from lawsuits no matter what people put up on the site.

The other great thing about YouTube is not just it lets you catch up on the last 20 years of pirated broadcast history, but it is a revival of the lost art of parody, and also is an education in what is “real”.

For example, this guy makes the observation that one of Jolin Tsai’s Mandarin Chinese songs sounds a lot like English. (click on the pictures to play the videos).

Katers17, who is part Native American and works for a video game store chain in England, blows away the competition in an online video date-off, apparently only with a webcam:

After the founders of YouTube hit the jackpot, they did, of course post a video:

That invited the NoHo Girls (a group from North Hollywood apparently experimenting with creating an online soap opera) to goof on the YouTube guys:

The Vietnamese chick in that video, Berry “Blue” Nguyen (we’re not really sure it’s her real name), had her own intro video. It wasn’t clear whether her Valley Girl act was real or staged:

That led communitychannel, a 20-year-old Chinese-Australian from New South Wales to parody Blue’s act:

YouTube has become the killer video app, not just because of technical advances, but it is providing the vocabulary and mores for the average person to communicate using video in the same way that letter writing was in the last century. It’s about time.

Remember to vote today!