This New York age puts you into a middle category between young and old (but not “middle age” per se). Be proud. You’ve got a nice balance between going out hard-core and staying in. You care about culture but also like some quiet nights. Keep it up, but think about expanding your horizons in the other directions. Head to Studio B or Anthology Film Archives for the first time, or finally check out the Village Vanguard or Elaine’s for a dose of old-school NYC.
Soundtrack for the week: an American Sign Language version of Fort Minor – “Where’d You Go”.
Sorry for the lack of updates – I’ve just been beat from this last trip to Toronto, as well as beat up. I’ll briefly recap the past week.
Starting from last Wednesday night, I pulled an all-nighter packing for a 7:30 am flight from LaGuardia to Toronto. My mom was over the apartment so that we could leave together. It was her first flight on a plane since 9/11, so we had to educate her on what had to be done to get through security.
We arrived on time at about 10:00 in Toronto, and took a taxi to the Sheraton Centre, in Downtown Toronto. The room is available when we get there so we slept in. We jumped into a Zipcar (yes they’re in Toronto, and it was the best choice we made – where gas is $4/gallon, something that has gas included has to be a deal) in the afternoon to get to my uncle’s apartment in Scarborough. The rehearsal was at St. Rose of Lima Church, followed by a nice steak dinner at the Blackhorn Dining Room where we got to meet the in-laws to be.
Friday, we spent an easy day exploring the PATH – the underground shopping mall underneath downtown. Lunch at Akco – a Japanese/Korean restaurant. P got her nails done. That night, the rest of the family came in and we had a family dinner at my uncle’s favorite dim sum restaurant, Dragon Dynasty, which was to be one of the best dim sum restaurants in Toronto. Our set menu was very well done. Afterwards, P and I went to the lakefront to see the Luminato festival which was loads of fun, and some nice quality time for just the two of us.
Saturday, the wedding day, P got me out of bed early to get coffee. We only made it 50 feet out of the hotel where I suddenly found myself on the ground splayed over the curb. A Mountie was actually coming down the street and asked if I was all right, and I waved him off. After making it to the Tim Horton’s I could see that it was swelling up quite a bit. Getting back to the hotel room, P put some ice packs on the injury. After some pain killers, we all hobbled to the Zipcar and drove to the church.
The ceremony was nice and relatively simple, hewing to the traditional Catholic playbook. Then we drove to the reception hall, the Shangri-la Convention Centre . The meal was a traditional Chinese banquet, with the substitution of salmon fillet for whole fish for the groom’s party, premium shark fin soup (very obviously the real thing), and cake and pastries table at the end. Despite the “No Shooters” sign, the cousins all did anyway. The cake had custom-made bobble head figurines of my cousin and her husband which were really funny. The party ended at 1 am. P got to drive back.
The next day, we check out and go shopping at the Eaton Centre. We have Greek food that was quite nice, and made a few choice purchases. We didn’t need to rush to the airport, as the flight was delayed one hour, and then ground stopped for 2 and a half more hours as the remnants of a tropical storm was crossing New York. We got at about 10:30 pm.
The next day, Monday, was alma mater’s graduation, and exactly 10 years to the day of my law school graduation. The honoree was a supreme court justice from Canada who was a Holocaust survivor. The saddest event of the proceedings was the awarding of a posthumous JD to U.S. Army Staff Sergent Kyu Chay, a Korean-American who was killed by a road bomb while deployed in Afghanistan. He had only 3 credits left. His father and brother accepted the diploma for him.
We’re not getting out early today but later on P and I are going to Korean Costco (aka Assi Plaza in Flushing) for food shopping for tomorrow’s bbq. P’s sister is yoyoing the country – got delayed in dallas and missed her connection.
I’ve given into the ball and chain and agreed to get a Blackberry from work. The big plusses are that I won’t have to pay for my sms messages anymore (a really big deal since my personal cingular account doesn’t have free receive like my old at&t account did. They gave me an 8800 which is quite sweet – the full keyboard is very usable. I also added some remote terminal software so I can do about 80% of my work without taking my laptop, and got IM+, a third party Skype hookup, working. It’s really nice.
I will have to figure out what to do with my personal phone. I do want to keep my old number, but I’ll have to figure out what new plan to get as my contract is up.
Was giving tech support over Skype the other day, and I was asked about a database search that seemed really complicated, but after simplifying, it turned out to be an Inner Join (check out Wikipedia if you want to get the official definition). Suffice to say, it means to pick out the stuff that matches without duplicating, and discard what doesn’t.
Went to 2 reunions – my 10 year from law school, and my 15 year from college. It was good to go – not because there would be a lot of people going from my year (there weren’t) — but for my inner feeling of belonging. For the ones that showed up, it was enough for me.
Had to do evaluations for the staff that I supervise; the fact is that all of my words have been distilled into one number. It’s very hard for me because I think that people are much more complex than just a number, but this is what we all have to work with.
I’ve finally caved in, and I’m going to get a Blackberry from work. In one way, I don’t want to deal with the ball and chain, but on the other hand, it will give me a lot more ability to be mobile and/or omnipresent, and I’m going to need more of it.
Food for this past week: Wednesday at Chelsea Piers’ Lighthouse (very good appetizers as SSW noted, but the bite-sized desserts were killer). Park Slope Chipshop (smaller selection of brews, but they have a choice of lamb curry or cranberry turkey stew – both awesome). I actually had the haddock and chips – wonderful flakiness. They also carry a full line of British groceries – Walker’s crisps were on sale – Marmite flavour is my favorite.
This was my alma mater’s reunion weekend, and at my college’s luncheon we honored the “dean of travel experts”, Arthur Frommer, from the class of 1950. This coincided with the 50th anniversary of his guidebook “Europe on $5 a Day”. (To get in that law angle, after going to Yale Law School, he was a litigation associate with Paul Weiss before he left to pursue a career in travel.)
Why is he a hero? While in the U.S. Army in Germany, he figured out how not to be the Ugly American – be respectful of the people and places visited, go off of the well-worn track to obtain authentic experiences, and of course, have your money go farther and smarter. In my experience taking trips overseas starting in college, I’ve tried to take these principles to heart. Fifty years later, he still has a lot to teach us.
The Queen visits Virginia; all sorts of shock and awe ensues. What makes her third visit to the U.S. significant is the changes and interchanges between America and Britain. Not crushing domination on either part, but a gradual blending as the Mother Country’s stewing multicultural melting pot still longs for the idyllic country town featured in Hot Fuzz (seen with SSW last weekend). On the other hand, Brit humor makes a comeback via the comedy of Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s) and John Hodgman (Mr. PC in the Mac commercials). The straight-laced and stiff-upper-lipped throwbacks to 21st Century Victorian mores make a distinctly American version; what makes it not dry is the sense of discovery, wonder and ultimately charity.
Eggers started a non-profit group called 826 that seeks to teach young people the wonder of creative and expository writing. The New York branch, 826 NYC, is based in Brooklyn, hidden behind their front store, the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. (and yes this is a real storefront – I’m not making this up). Sales from their crime-fighting store help fund tutoring for Brooklyn elementary and high school students. Check them out at 372 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn.
For the complete British experience, visit the Park Slope ChipShop across the street at 383 Fifth Avenue for their fish and chips, and fried just about everything (including Twinkies and various candy bars). Fried mac and cheese balls are awesome, and fried pizza is just something you have to try.
Sorry I’ve been OL the last few days. Hay fever got the worst of me this weekend. I stayed home from work on Monday. Here’s lots of catchup:
Happy Bday to AS and MJ!
In random order, Taste of Chinatown was on Saturday. Peking Duck House gets their act together, and we were able to snag a 5-pack of those delectable Peking Duck rolls. Checked out H2 Cards – an East-West wedding invitation card store. Found my friend’s wedding invite in the catalog. Not a bad price either.
Last weekend’s Atlantic City trip was nice. We had a group of three carshare down from the city. We passed what we thought was the accident site of NJ Gov. Corzine – the troopers were still searching for the guy in a red pickup truck, which turned out to be a casino worker. Keynote speaker NYC Council Member John Liu pointed out that Sharpton used Liu’s playbook in the Hot 97 tsunami song protest , but Sharpton was much more effective sooner in putting on the pressure on Don Imus. (Liu got to put the plan in effect again this week with another incident with CBS radio.)
Where to begin with the VT massacre? It will take years to over-analyze how this happened, from every angle (Asian/foreigner thing? no – 2 asian and 5 foreign victims; video games? no- Cho didn’t really play video games; gun control? mental health? school security? instant messaging? magnitude – do you count it as 32 or 33 victims? worse mass shooting (at a school? ever in the U.S. since the Civil War? – but this level of carnage happens in Iraq every day.)
This is today’s information version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: either you muddle aimlessly through the fog of war, but can divine a guiding theory that explains all, or you have access to all knowledge, but there is so much detail that it is impossible to discern or learn.
The best that we can do is remember, and try to keep our connections to those that we love.
We drove back from Atlantic City last Sunday in the middle of the nor’easter. We were in the car together, watching this other guy trying to drive a three-wheeled motorcycle encased in a plastic poncho through the wall of water. A little faith goes a long way.
Wow, what a week. This week a number of us 10 years out reflected on a variety of positive and negative role models in the legal profession: one broke into the next level, one is at the pinacle of the profession, and one reflecting on the next generation. On the other, one hid all, one revealed all, and one fell to their demise. I don’t know sometimes — it is just too much.
In about 2 hours, I’ll be in a car on the way to Atlantic City for a one day conference, staying overnight in the Sheraton. Should be fun. It’s also going to be the first trip that I don’t take the laptop – that’s a little scary.
Week’s recap: lots of eating out this past week. Trying out Google’s new My Maps feature: I’ve made a map of the places I’ve been this past week and a half. I’ll make another map with the places I’m just booked trips to. Next Saturday is a conference in Atlantic City, which I’ve actually never been to before. In June, I’m taking P and my mom to my cousin’s wedding in Toronto.
Had to do a mass mailing this past week (not email – the old-fashioned U.S. mail kind.) It’s really a lot of work doing it by hand. P helped out a lot.
Speaking of mailing, USPS is coming out with new Star Wars stamps!!! Very nice. They are going to be sold at 41 cents, which will be the new first class rate come May 1.
