Blog

YC: I tried sending email to you and it didn’t work. Maybe I should use your YC address. Anyway I need to give you a call about hotel in Ipoh and getting my butt through Singapore — want to try Skype? I won’t be home tomorrow because of the wedding.

I just plunked down a wad of money to go to YC’s wedding. It’s not the world’s greatest itinerary and I couldn’t get the date I wanted going into KL, but it’s the cheap $895 flight compared against the $1300 alternatives:

KE 84Q 25AUG 1155P JFK->ICH 27AUG 325A
KE 641Q 27AUG 1:05P ICH->SIN 27 AUG 625P

I was thinking that maybe I would hate a really long layover; at least that’s what the travel agent was saying.Going to Seoul is out of the question — it’s 2 hours by bus to get there. But then, it’s Korea, and the word is that they have a really good transit hotel that has 2 Korean restaurants. Can we say time to go crazy? At least it will give me an opportunity to shower before the next leg of the trip. The flight will be also on Korean Air. The word is that the seats are tight, and they don’t have personal entertainment screens. However, the service is supposed to be good, and the Korean food is supposed to be excellent.

ABA E-Journal reports on “What Young Lawyers Think,” and apparently, the young lawyers (or lawyers new to the profession – in their first 10 years – since we can’t always be sure about their ages anyway) are more stressed out in the big firms requiring more hours and more billing and all that other stuff. I.e., it’s about the quality of life, not the quantity. Not entirely a surprise to me.

There’s the story in the news that the Illinois Republicans are trying to recruit Alan Keyes to run against Barack Obama in the Illinois US Senate race – even though Keyes doesn’t even live in Illinois. That bothered me, until I remembered that even Hilary Clinton wasn’t really from NY when she ran – but at least she had a year of preparation/listening tour/buying that Chappaqua house before Election Day. Keyes, if he is the candidate, has only three months to go. Slate.com’s Explainer explains how it is possible for Keyes to do this (apparently, he just has to live in Illinois by Election Day).

Flipping through the pages of the latest Entertainment Weekly – and, gasp, saw the ad for the DVD of the 1st season of… “Happy Days.” Fonzie, Potsie, Ralph, and Richie (plus appearances of Richie’s long lost brother) in digital format. Ayy… What isn’t a DVD by now? (umm, actually lots of stuff aren’t on DVD, but I just wish some of this stuff was still in reruns on regular tv like they used to be rather than me paying bucks for DVD’s).

WEEKEND.

Recent pics: Rhode Island, Korean Costco, Apple Restaurant

Another wedding tomorrow…

Had major problems today with the network — spent mundo quality time with our new network admin dude in the upstairs server room. He had botched setting up a new switch stack, and I got called in.

Anyway, happy birthday to YC! My travel agent has lined up a ticket to Malaysia for $895 on Korean Air JFK->ICH->KUL departing 8/27, returning 9/3. Is that a good deal?

Statue of Liberty re-opens… (see YC’s Tues. post below).

The post office across the street from World Trade Center finally re-opens (it has been 9/11/01 since the closure/damages).

Bob Murphy, longtime voice of the NY Mets, passed away. Amusing yet poignant note: I listened to parts of the Mets v. Milwaukee Brewers on the radio, wherein the current voices, Gary Cohen and Howie Rose, reminisced about Murph moments. They then realized that every time they relayed on the air a Murph memory, the Mets made hits – and Cohen and Rose wonder if Bob Murphy was lending a hand from up in heaven. Either way, they were impressed that the Mets were playing well. So, the Mets ended today’s game on a happy note: 12-3 victory. A “happy recap” (as Murphy would say) will be in the newspaper or tv or radio. Mets fans need a little cheer, even in these times.

Bill Clinton’s appearance on Letterman’s show was a good watch (I didn’t even realize that he’d be on; I was just channel-changing and there he was. Promoting Kerry and Hilary? Geez, Bill Clinton).

An interesting story on Slate.com about the Citigroup building.

Plus, on a non-related (yet still about Citigroup) note, Slate.com’s latest “Ad Report” grades the latest Citigroup ads. Seth Stevenson notes that these ads, wherein people make huge errors (one woman mistakes her friend’s weight for a pregnancy; a man tries to duck out of his girlfriend’s request to discuss marriage) and then confuse their friends/significant others by just saying, “Thank you” out of nowhere. As Stevenson puts it: “‘Thank you!’ blurts the first woman, in a total non sequitur. Magically, the insult is forgotten. Says the announcer, ‘It’s amazing what a simple “thank you” can do.’” Apparently, the ads are Citigroup’s attempt to get people to join in some bonus points program.

Stevenson gives Citigroup credit for being “honest”; he says, “Maybe Citi thinks they can win our respect with a no-nonsense take on the situation: They’re going to treat us badly—and we know it—so why not at least get some tchotchkes out of the deal?” He gives the ads a D+ because he really doesn’t like it when the big corps rub it in.

Personally, I thought the dumb boyfriend ad was funny (his suddenly saying “thank you” actually thrills his girlfriend; apparently, he lacked good manners, forget the capacity to commit – methinks that relationship will either end soon or else continue in limbo). The ad where the woman bursts into “thanks” after mistakenly thinking her friend was pregnant – that was just plain stupid; it wasn’t entertaining but embarrassing. Where did Citigroup come up with that one?

So it goes…

The South tried it, the Carolinas and Virginas achieved it, Hong Kong and Singapore manage to make it work. This New York Magazine article throws out the idea of New York City seceding on the basis of taxation equity, as well as making common sense for us downstaters.

From what it should divorce itself from is an open question. From the US entirely is out of the question. Definately from the state — upstate is really a totally different animal from downstate. A 51st state would be rather nice, but a territory like Puerto Rico would make equal sense for a city that is an international capitol.

On paper it seems like it would work. NYC has twice the Gross Domestic Product of Hong Kong and three times that of Singapore (it’s slightly less than Taiwan). It has more people than Switzerland. Our standing security forces — NYPD and FDNY — are larger and better equiped than many countries (we have tanks, water and air craft). Unlike pre-1997 Hong Kong, we get to keep our northern water reserves, because someone with foresight bought the land for the City.

The question of New York secession first came up in 1861, under circumstances that showed just this kind of ruthless pragmatism, when Mayor Fernando Wood hoped to preserve the right to trade with both the North and the South. Most other New York City secession proposals have focused on becoming a separate state. In 1788, Alexander Hamilton warned that the city’s secession was “inevitable” if the state failed to ratify the Constitution. In 1969, Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin ran on a mayoral platform arguing that the city, needing local control of its services and finances, should become the 51st state. The most inspired part of their proposal contended that the city had dibs on the name “New York.” The rest of the state, they suggested, should be renamed “Buffalo.”

That was really funny.
I’m still for a United States of America; New York City ought to be a discrete part of it.

It’s not a good feeling when you wake up in the morning, thinking, “Oh, I’ll just sleep in; it’s Sunday,” and then – thwack – uh, no, it’s Monday; you have to get to work. Ugh…

More police officers in downtown Manhattan. This is the new normal, I guess.

In a previous post, I referred to this NY Times’ Travel article profiling NYC for the tourists and recommending that people do the Staten Island Yankees since it’s extremely hard to do the Brooklyn Cyclones. It occurred to me that part of the reason why the Cyclones have been tremendously popular as they have been is because of that baseball legacy in Brooklyn, the one cursed (or blessed) upon us by the Dodgers.

But, the real question is, has the Cyclones been that great for Brooklyn, or more particularly, Coney Island? NY Times’ Lydia Polgreen explores the answers (if any) to the question. Apparently, people would come, maybe buy a hotdog at Nathan’s next door, but ultimately leave. They’re not staying to really revitalize the neighborhood. And, all plans to rebuild anything remain plans. The subway terminal is almost done, but the people driving in aren’t going to stick around. Troubling. We can be optimistic, but it’s troubling to me.

NY Times’ James Barron tries out a fascinating experiment: Send a piece of mail to Leonard Bernstein Place (aka West 65th Street) and will it get there? Barron reports that the US Postal Service “says it recognizes the city’s alternate street names, just as it recognizes streets that New Yorkers still call by their older, snappier names, like Sixth Avenue, which became Avenue of the Americas in 1945” and the findings are that the Postal Service sort of does it. Kind of:

To add the slightest trace of scientific methodology to the experiment, letters with the conventional street addresses were mailed at the same time. So two letters went to each addressee. All the letters were mailed from Midtown Manhattan at the same time, on a weekday afternoon. Of the ones that reached their destinations, most arrived two days later.

All the recipients received the letters with conventional addresses. But of the letters with the alternate street names, 4 of the 10 did not reach their destinations.

The Postal Service returned two addressed to people on Josh Rosenthal Way (72nd Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West). It marked one “Returned for Better Address.” On the other, it put a yellow sticker with R.T.S. in big letters and, for those who do not know their postal abbreviations, “return to sender” in small letters. Of three options on the sticker, one was checked: “Not deliverable as addressed – unable to forward.”

Nor did the Postal Service deliver letters to people on David Ben-Gurion Place (East 43rd Street between Vanderbilt and Madison Avenues) or Joe Horvath Street (West 52nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues)…

But letters went through to addressees on Alvin Ailey Place (West 61st Street between West End and Amsterdam Avenues), Leonard Bernstein Place (West 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, beside Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center), Isaac Bashevis Singer Boulevard (West 86th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue) and Edgar Allan Poe Street (West 84th Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive). Nevermind that the envelope misspelled Poe’s middle name with a tell-tale ‘E’ in place of the second ‘A.’

Plus, a very interesting article on what it means to be Japanese-American, when the children of the nissei (second generation) are now sansei (third generation) yonsei (fourth) and gosei (fifth)? One becomes more identified as American, culturally at least, considering the drive for assimilation during the years after World War II; and has to recognize the need for instilling cultural education of the hapas (because, if you don’t count the hapas, the idea of “Japanese-American” gets harder to count).

So glad to have finally gotten “Entertainment Weekly” today. EW thought well of “Harold and Kumar” as it transcends stereotypes while still doing the pothead thing. EW also rated the dvd release of the 1st season of… Knight Rider. (oh, geez, there goes the flashbacks of watching mucho Knight Rider and each instance of KITT driving at faster speeds to rescue the day). But, EW was behind on the news on James Bond – so I understood it, Eric Bana is the new Bond (or really close to it). Personally, I still liked Clive Owen, but at least he can go do other projects. Eric Bana is not as chiseled looking, or as famous (“Troy,” “Hulk”), so I guess the folks behind Bond thought that made him a great pick. Plus, a very cute EW interview with Anderson Cooper (EW happily notes that he’s a Celebrity Jeopardy winner who ought to go up against perpetual Jeopardy winner Ken Jennings). Ah…

We had Ron Reagan Jr. speak at the Democratic Convention. Now Democratic Senator Zell Miller (D-Ga) will speak at the Republican Convention. What the hell is going on?

And you know that Barack Obama? His speech got it right.

Still beat after driving 600 miles to and from Rhode Island with P–. This was for a regional convention meeting at Roger Williams Law School. We actually stayed at Johnson & Wales Inn, the student run hotel just over the border somewhere near the MA and CT borders.

The drive up was miserable. It rained, and if you know anything about Interstate 95 in the Northeast, it’s a really lousy road to drive in a rainstorm. Add 4 construction sites and a really bad 5 mile stretch of grooved pavement that looked like a phonograph record and sounded like a needle scratching across it, and you have the ingredients for a bad drive. We got to the hotel at 1:30 in the morning after missing the exit and making a few bad turns.

I have to say I was disappointed at the food. The inn food (we had 2 breakfasts) were pretty good — and they pulled off an excellent Eggs Benedict. The seafood was passable — the clam boil at the school was so-so, and Friday’s fish choices were good but not anything one couldn’t get in New York.

Mansions in Newport were impressive, though. All of the monied families of the late 19th and early 20th century all had luxorious “summer cottages” (“Marble House” cost $11 million in 1928 dollars) on small plots of land (the smallest at least 3 acres).

Coming back, we hit a lot of traffic, and got back 1 hour after we were supposed to, which was bad. After returning the car, we had pretty good sushi.

By the way, the Scion xB is underrated. It looks like a milk truck, but it handles a lot better. It’s roomy on the inside, has front bucket seats that recline almost completely flat for those power naps, and the driver is about 1 foot taller than regular cars. It also gets 35 MPH. The only complaint would be that it should have a few more cup holders.