Amabelle arrived today from Chicago for a weekend visit! She sat around in my office for a bit while I finished up for the day, and shortly after, we walked up to Chinatown to eat at Joe Shanghai’s — which we had heard so much about from people who swear by their “xiao long bao.”

Well guys, I have to say: I’ve had better. In fact, even the xia long bao at Koi Palace are better. These had been abnormally injected with way too much fatty juice, and as I picked them up with the tongs and placed them on my soup spoon, my mind couldn’t resist conjuring up images of eating tiny Jabba the Huts — each overflowing over the edges of the spoon. The skins were slightly brownish, and were a little soggy from trying to hold in so much juice.

Amabelle ate three, which left five for me. I had to drain the last two I ate into my plate in order to force them down. (read more »)

The subway ride from the financial district up to 110th St. during rush hour took 50 minutes. It’s amazingly uncomfortable being crammed in a subway car shouulder to shoulder with people, carrying a big camera bag. Mexican food up at 103rd St. with Isaac, Kris, Ian, and Tiffany:

I paid for it this morning at 5am, curled up in fetal position (in pain) on my little mattress on the floor. That’s what I get for eating Mexican food in New York, I guess. :) I miss the days when I could play chamber music for hours every day. Being with Isaac and Tiffany reminded me of those days. Oh – Tiffany emailed me two old photos of Geoff and Barry when the SLSQ was the resident grad group at Juilliard. She found them in a drawer somewhere in the Juilliard administrative offices. They’re very funny. :)

After work yesterday I met up with Pat to check out the World Trade Center site. There’s really not much to see anymore, except for the memorials and chaos immediately surrounding it. The wall around the church across the street from the site (on Broadway) is covered with memorials, including photographs of some of the victims. You can still feel the positive vibes towards law policement and firemen down here, although apparently it has diminished a lot since September (for example, no one applauds when they see them anymore). There’s almost literally an officer on every corner.

Pat called up Jean, who works just across the site on the 22nd floor, and she graciously gave us a tour of her workspace and bought us fruit smoothies from the cafeteria on the ground floor. Large institutionalized work environments scare me, but they can have amazing views. :)

In the evening, we met up with Joe to get a bite to eat at a local Italian place (local to his place). The host was really touchy (physically, I mean) and greeted us in Italian. The food was good; mine even had some extra flavor bestowed upon it from air-conditioning unit drippage. :) Anyway, here are some photos: (read more »)

I’ve never really seen someone snore themself awake. Well, not close up, anyway. This dude in the office does it every day as he sits there napping at his computer. He can nap for hours at a time, and was almost caught by boss-man the other day.

Eric was talking about lenticular clouds the other day, so I took a photo of some I saw up in Napa this past weekend. Neat-o.

Hmmm. There’s more snoring going on. It’s loud. (read more »)

Tough weekend.

I’m back in New York now after shelling out an exhorbitant amount of money to be home for Memorial Day weekend. Getting tickets for this weekend — if not planned well before — can be painful.

I’m incredulous at New Yorks’ ability to assault the senses. I arrived here at 6am and hopped into a cab. I walked through a plume of unidentifiable, acrid white smoke billowing out of a building to my left on my way to work. The human feces smell also seems to be getting worse as it warms up. I hear it’s really bad in July.

I’ll have some pictures to post soon. I took a few this weekend, but was generally uninspired to raise the camera to my face. I have to stay optimistic, too. Otherwise… what’s the point?

Oh! This is cool. While I was here in NY, Livia dropped off Osvaldo Golijov and the St. Lawrence String Quartet’s latest CD, “Yiddishbbuk,” which features two of my photographs. The background photo in the CD book’s two-page inner-front and inner-back cover are both mine. :)

I went out for some great Chinese food at Congee Village (on the outskirts of Chinatown) last night to celebrate Tony‘s law school graduation with his family/friends. Had a good time — it felt like the good ol’ days, where parents talk about you like you aren’t there. In this case, Tony’s parents were my surrogate parents; they’ve known me for a long time. :)

After work today, I met up with Joe, Rachel, and Adam and Carolyn, who are in town for a few days to attend a wedding. We ended up having some good food and then going to Tangerine (10th and Bleaker) for a drink. Actually, we met at the Yale Club, near Grand Central. What a stuffy place. They have a dress code and stuff.

I’m up late doing laundry, and am fairly incoherent at the moment. Here are some pics. (read more »)

Joe and Rachel picked me up last night for dinner, and before we knew it, we were stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge (oops). Rachel called “Ro” (who is apparently a friend’s mother) for advice on where to eat, and we ended up at a “French” place called Patois Bulez or something. The staff was rude, and it took forever for us to get our crappy food. Maybe it was because Rachel was wearing sweats, and Joe and I were both in t-shirts. :)

On the way back to my place, we were routed onto a street immediately next to ground zero — it seems like it’s the closest you can get to the site (the barrier was a foot away). It is a big frickin’ hole in the ground. I didn’t realize that it was so big.

I went up on the rooftop last night while on a building tour with Judy. Now I’ve officially seen the laundry facilities, the gym, and the two outdoor terraces. :)

For those of you who have been inquiring, I have not relocated to New York permanently. I’m just out here for a little while for a project. You’d have to be crazy to move away from San Francisco, anyway. :) Photos below. (read more »)

What a strange day. Joe called me just before lunch to see if I wanted to head out to Long Island for some RC racing (it’s an old hobby of his). I had nothing else to do, so I decided to go. We visited his home in Queens, where his Dad was making steamed veggie buns from scratch, and then continued out to Long Island to eat at EAST Buffet & Restaurant, which was as close to the big Taiwan hotel buffets as I’ve come across in the States — except for the size, of course. The food was good. I especially liked the “Steamed Bums.”

The RC crowd was friendly, but it was funny to co-mingle with old dudes in camo pants and 14 year old kids with spiked hair at the same time. Diverse, in a strange way.

When I returned I went out to see Star Wars II with Wendy, Justin, and Pat at the DLP theater in the AMC 25 near Time Square. Did you know that if you want to descend a floor, you have to go all the way down to the street and then back up? The theater is 13 floors, so it can be quite a trek. I figured that out on my own, unfortunately. :) DLP theaters are cool. During the Powerpoint-esque ads before the movie, I was afraid that the screen-door effect would dominate the visuals of the movie, but the picture during the movie itself turned out to be fantastic. Seeing the STAR WARS opening text scroll up the big screen without shaking around violently and being attacked by little dust pieces was neat. :) I enjoyed the movie, and thought the special effects were very good. Yoda kicks ass! Now, if they could just get a good script, and maybe a few more good actors… (read more »)

Guess what that is? I finally was able to get my machine to boot (after securing the hard disk support with some 6/32 stove bolts and zip ties) by poking around randomly inside (I’m still not sure why it decided to start up). The display showed this lovely masterpiece, which I took a picture of. It appears that either my fancy GeForce4 is busted (it is warped from the hard disks slamming into it, and sits fairly loosely in the AGP slot), or the AGP slot itself is fried. I’m going to buy a cheapie one tomorrow and do some tests. What a lovely way to spend a weekend. UPS will PAY!

We (Joe, Rachel, her friend, Pat, ex-Trilogy dude Michael, and his two friends) went wandering around Chinatown today, and ate at a dim sum place at 18 E. Broadway. I forgot what it was called. It was pretty good, but it wasn’t as good as Koi Palace. The chang fun (however you romanize it) was all shriveled up, and we were forced to eat beef ones because they were initially out of shrimp ones. I haven’t had any food here that is better than the food I usually have in San Francisco, but I’m sure I’ll run into some pretty soon. :) I also bought a $29.97 computer desk at some huge discount store. I threw it into the back of a taxi to get it back to my place. Still need a chair, though. I’m sitting on an upside-down monitor box. :) (read more »)

Some photos for ya at the end of this entry. I’m sorry that I’ve been out of touch. It’s been crazy for the past couple weeks.

Yesterday I wanted to get to bed early to make this nasty cough go away, but Joechang and Rachel convinced me to get some dinner with them at the Boat Basin on the upper west side. It turned out to be CLOSED for some event. By the end of the evening, we had both eaten and driven near full circuits of Manhattan, twice. A four hour dinner was definitely not I needed to kick this bug. :)

Time for bed. We’re exploring Chinatown tomorrow morning. (read more »)

I can’t believe they broke my computer. UPS sucks! The entire lower hard disk assembly was free to crash around the inside of the machine, all the way to New York from San Francisco. I had better get something for this. (read more »)

May 12: On Saturday, Dave Fleetham, Andy Sallmon and I met up at 8:15am in Mission Bay to go shark diving with SD Shark Diving. It was actually a beautiful day, but fate railed hard against us. After cruising out ten miles and chumming for hours and hours, a single 4-5 ft blue shark appeared, swam around for a few minutes, and then fled the scene. No more sharks appeared. We did see some seals, sea lions, a large squadron of seagulls, a siphonophore, and a pod of Risso’s dolphins (with bottlenose dolphins mixed in). Apparently, Risso’s are very rare, so all of the people in the know were excited. Doc doned his chainmail suit at around 4pm and descended to the shark cage to wave around bait aimlessly at the dirty blue (visibility was 15′-30′), but he was unable to bring in any more sharks. The swell battered the boat, and almost everyone on board threw up at least once. I had just downed twelve ounces of Hawaiian Punch; I think I won the strangest-looking-hurl award that day. :) After hearing stories of Mako sharks ramming people during the entire boat ride out, I was rather disappointed. Maybe next time.

For Mother’s Day we partook in a 3-hour brunch at a nice hotel in Del Mar. Del Mar is so beautiful. The food was pretty good, but my taste buds have been revolting lately as my body tries to fight off a nasty flu. The clientele in the fancy part of Del Mar was uppity and homogenous, as usual. There were many older women who seem to have perfected the art of painting on their faces with layers and layers of make-up. It doesn’t work, by the way. Graceful aging is much more classy.

I’m now sitting at the San Diego airport waiting for yet another delayed flight on Southwest. Are these airplanes ever on time?? I think not.

I recently closed an account with JPMorgan Chase H&Q (how’s that for falling economy mergers?) which had three shares of EPNY left in it. Today, I received an overnight priority FedEx with a stock certificate — for three shares! At today’s valuation, those shares are worth a whopping $14.97, minus any taxes I’d have to pay if I sold them.

When I was a senior in high school, I was enrolled half time at UCSD for math and computer science classes. I remember that they under-billed me, which resulted in them sending me another bill for $.10. Yep. I wrote a check for ten cents and mailed it back to them. What a ridiculous system. I guess the mail couriers are the winners.

I’ve finally posted some photographs from Mike and Erin’s wedding. Some of them are cute. :) [See the pictures!]