Author: F C

Some TV shows:

Commander in Chief: timely discussion about the death penalty with the Virgina commutation of a death sentence. In reality, the U.S. President doesn’t have the power to commute a state crime such as murder, only federal ones.

Amazing Race, Family Edition: I’m finding it hard to follow what is going on. With 4 teams remaining going into the home stretch, you still have to keep track of 16 people, which is a lot more than you normally have at this stage of the race. Also, keeping track of the host Phil, who showed up at the end of the episode someplace in Arizona. Two teams ran themselves rugged to the mat only to be told by Phil that they had not reached the pit stop. It’s like, to be continued, here’s the next clue, see you at the end of the next episode. The groans….

Just one more thing — to the people who keep coming up with the slogan backdrops, like the one today for “Plan for Victory” — you are freaking out the public. What’s the next one, “War is Peace“?

I renewed the domain name for this blog today, as it was going to run out tomorrow for another two years on register.com . They are not the cheapest, but I did get to talk to a human in a reasonable amount of time as I had forgotten the password for the account. I also got four nag phone calls from them to renew, which was in one sense good because I was putting it off, but on principle, I don’t give out credit card numbers to people that call me.

In other news, there is talk about allowing single letter domain names. As of now, all single letter and number domains are reserved, except i, q, x, and z, which were grandfathered. I like to use a@b.com in forms that randomly ask for an email address when I’m not interested in junk mail.

Saw in Metro NY (the free morning newspaper) about Fotolia, a stock photo website that lets you buy and sell digital photos. The Fotolia currency is a “credit”, which is equal to US$1. You can exchange them for PayPal dollars for a 2% ($1 min) commission. Photos can go for $1 upwards, or you can give exclusive rights. Sounds fascinating.

Had a double Thanksgiving this weekend – Thursday at P’s parent’s house, and on Saturday, I cooked at my mom’s house. P’s mom, as a former housekeeper, did the complete Martha Stewart deal, including a perfectly rosted turkey, mushroom sausage stuffing with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, yams, pumpkin pie — you get the picture. On Saturday, I pulled off my godmother’s baked ham recipe that my mom was given, and a big tray of lasagna. Good eats for at least a few more days.

I didn’t buy anything on Black Friday, but instead we had to swap our Time Warner cable box. This was the second Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 that broke on us. Web reviews had mentioned that the DVR had quite a return rate — had heat problems, hard drive problems and an underpowered CPU. I asked if they had anything else, and they upgraded us to an 8300. Hopefully this one will be better. It doesn’t have the heat problems, and it does change channels faster. Also, it has keyword search of the listings, which is fantastic for finding things.

The box came up with several new channels, including the ImaginAsian channel, which seems to go head-to-head with the AZN (nee International) channel, and the chinese channels were not scrambled. However, the free In-Demand channels didn’t work. We’re up to 1014 channels!

Another interesting Chinese cooking show on Discovery Living: Kylie Kwong, a chef who is a 5th generation Australian Chinese. She looks like a thirty-something version of my aunt from Trinidad, and her accent is just as thick. Usually, I’m pretty good at figuring out Commonwealth English, but at some points I had to turn on the closed captioning to figure out what she was saying – definately a sheila. But the food was quite nice — if we ever make it to Sydney, we’ll have to check out her restaurant.

Before anything, tonight’s Lost was really messed up. Even more than the “someone’s going to die” teaser episode last week, this week Ana Lucida is just turning out to be such a totally despicable person — and everybody knows it, and they have to spend the forseeable future with her on the island. Geez.

Ted Koppel’s last night on Nightline focused not on self-congratulations, but on Tuesdays with Morrie, a reprise of a three episode series three years ago about a Brandeis sociology professor dealing with his own process of death by Lou Gehrig’s disease. To paraphrase, the distance between life and death is not a chasm, but a bridge over a little brook – not far at all. I plan on getting the book.

Today’s Nightline post-Koppel was on Thanksgiving traditions. The most amusing were the turducken and the canned cranberry. Also, there was a focus on Norman Rockwell’s series of paintings depicting Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, including the archtypical Thanksgiving scene. The pictures are somewhat dated, but they are still part of this country’s mythology of political faith, and surely what we ought to be thankful for. Have a good Thanksgiving, folks.

Busy birthday weekend…

Saturday, one of my friends passed the New York and New Jersey Bars. While there is a whole another part of the bar application that is required in New York, in New Jersey, once you pass the only thing left is to be sworn in. In one of those quaint but nice things in New Jersey, New Jersey attorneys have the authority to administer the oath to new attorneys, so Saturday night we went to Arthur’s Tavern in Hoboken to perform the deed and have some steaks, both of which went well.

Sunday for my actual birthday, P and I went to see the new Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire matinee at the local theater. Yes, it was $4 cheaper, but it seemed that there was only one projection guy running three rooms, because there were long delays between the pre-previews, the previews, and the actual show. Much swearing, but the movie finally got on track. Not spilling too many things from the movie, but it was good but dark, and at 2.5 hours, really butt-breaking. It was sort of something of a cross of an intermediate episode of Lord of the Rings with Judy Blume. A lot of horror perhaps more appropriate for October 31 than November, and a lot more adolescent angst perhaps more appropriate for a summer movie. There were several Asian actresses in this one, including the Indian double dates for Harry and Ron, and the unrequited I don’t-know-what scene between Harry and Cho Chang, played by Scottish-Chinese Katie Leung, which lasted all of 5 minutes. I guess I shouldn’t talk, because I have a strong Brooklyn accent and my relatives have strong Carribean accents, but wow, that Scottish brogue was really on. She pretty much looked like my cousin from Toronto, but with long hair. Good movie, but there is obviously more to come.

For dinner, P took me to Babbo, Mario Batali’s flagship restaurant near Washington Square Park. Some restaurants are just marketing — this place actually delivers. Here’s what we had:
1. Free: marinated herbal chickpea crustini – had a garlic-cumin flavor.
2. Babbo salumi antipasti plate – a variety of cured meats made by Mario’s father salami store Salumi in Seattle.
3. Gnocchi with stewed oxtail – amazing! Every cuisine has a archtypical benchmark dish to determine if the kitchen is any good: for Italian food, it’s gnocchi – a dumpling-style pasta. If not prepared carefully, it can either be library paste or rock hard. Prepared well, gnocchi are light, fluffy pillows of pasta flavor. The oxtail is ragu-ed into a stew, and the bones are removed, and then melded with properly prepared gnocchi, and then topped with, as Mario says on his show, “The King of All Cheeses”, grated Parmigiano Reggiano.
4. P had Grilled Lamb Chops with Eggplant and Lemon Yogurt; I had the Duck with persimmion and aged balsamic vinegar. Both were very well made.
5. For dessert, I had a saffron panecotta with cinnamon gelatti, and P had the assorted gelatti and sorbetto. P said that the flavor was very similar to what she had inItaly. They slipped a short candle and a Happy Birthday piped along the top of the plate.
We had a small caraffe (250 ml) of wine, a Montegradella Valpolicella Classico Superiore 2001. According to some websites that I saw, the Valpolicella wines are so underrated, that wineries usually print the appellation in very small print. This was an amazing red wine — it shifted as the courses went along. First it was strong and full bodied; then when we had the gnocchi, all of a sudden, it became spicy with wood notes; then for our main dish, it was fruity and palette cleansing.

Overall, we were very impressed, and a very nice birthday treat by P. Thanks!

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originally uploaded by triscribe.

Mega Millions was $315 million on Tuesday. Came this close — got the first 3 numbers — 2, 4, 5 — which is worth US$7.

I’m back in Brooklyn safe and sound with P-. Here’s the last part of the travel recap; some summary thoughts to come this weekend.

Tuesday: Can’t get a late checkout, so we have to get packed before noon. I get my laundry done early, chatting with a couple from Florida and a guy from Minnesota. Then the clothes are compressed with Travel Space Bags that we got from the As Seen on TV store at the Ward Center Mall (they actually work – you roll the bags, forcing the air out a valve at the end, that creates a vaccum and compresses your clothes.)

Get on the road by 11 am. We take Interstate H1 to Interstate H2 (just think about that one for a moment), and then up the Kamehameha Highway to the North Coast. We make a pit stop at the Dole Plantation and spend an hour trying to get out of the world’s largest outdoor maze (this was a roadblock on the Amazing Race one season). Continued further north to Haleiwa and the row of shave ice stores including the famed Matsumoto (all the Japanese tour buses go ther) and competing store Aoki (pretty much the same, except nobody goes there — personally IMHO, I think that Waiola makes the best shave ice with the finest ice crystals – Matsumoto and Aoki are too much like snowcones for my taste.) Had lunch at Haleiwa Joe’s on their outdoor deck and spent most of the time swatting at flies that wanted a free lunch. Saw a monster rainbow over the nearby bridge; drove farther up the road and had a clear unobstructed shot at it.

Drove back and got off at exit 2 on H2 to load up on gas at Costco. $2.59/gallon is much cheaper. While waiting on the gas line, saw an extremely rare double rainbow – see the pictures.

Got back to the hotel, where they let us use a hospitality suite to take a shower, and then we went to the Ala Moana Mall for last minute shopping, a haircut (the Vietnamese-Chinese hairdresser on the ground floor pulled off an excellent haircut in 7 minutes for only $11!) and buying an airplane/cig lighter adapter for my laptop to replace my lost adapter. Race to the airport, blowing past the rental car lot – made a quick U turn and made it in. We check in, and P-‘s baggage is 6 pounds overweight. After a quick redistribution, we get it just within 50 lbs.

Meal #1 = turkey sandwich from the airport. P- gets the AA snack pack, which makes me sick. We get into LAX, and I get Burger King crossandwiches, which is the only thing open at 6 in the morning. This no food thing just sucks if you’re in a rush. I don’t know what’s up with the seats either, but after 12 hours, my tailbone was just in so much pain. At our final landing at JFK, we hit the ground pretty hard – a couple of the gas masks fell out of the ceiling in the forward right compartment. In any case, we were 1 hour ahead of schedule and got back safe, so not too much to complain about.