Saturday in NYC

Beautiful day. Internationally dressed people at the Immigrants Day Parade, some in groups of just a handful, usually a few dozen, but the Vietnamese, so many of them! Thousands, in groups of hundreds with banners like "Vietnamese of Germany" and "Vietnamese of Minnesota". They really made an event of it. And all waving the yellow-with-red-stripes flag of defeated South Korea!

Then there was finding a new roommate. If nothing else goes wrong, my abode will be joined by Fabio, from Italy.

Then dinner at Dirt Candy. The unusual name is a reference to veggies, as yummy things made of dirt, water, and sun. This vegetarian restaurant bills itself as not being another place designed to be healthy or eco-conscious, making fake meat dishes, but just a place that knows how to cook vegetables well. When I got there, I instantly recognized it by its hip sign and modern glass-and-glow look. The place was surprisingly tiny, just a few tables, barely a restaurant. The menu was brief, with four entrees. The selection seemed unusual -- a papardelle, a ragout, a paella, and grits. The papardelle and the paella were both extremely tasty. The portions weren't large (I was still hungry afterwards), and the prices rather high. The food wasn't anything new or amazing, just solid tasty food like you might find at any nice restaurant, nothing vegetarian-tasting about it.

Finally, a beautiful summer night in Union Square Park, where crowds of people were dancing to Michael Jackson Songs at midnight.

Buff in minutes

When my friend starting doing Crossfit, I was drawn to it just because it was an exhausting workout, but was further sold when I saw the great results she was experiencing. I tried it just once, and the theory was that by exercising as hard as you can for 20 seconds, and then resting for 10 seconds, you get the most benefit. Twenty seconds of exercise doesn't sound that hard, but after a few rounds you find yourself really tired.

The cool thing about this method is that workouts are very short. The one time I went included four exercises (push ups, sit ups, squats, and burpees), eight rounds each, for a total of just 16 minutes of exercise. And that was one of the longer routines, in many cases the entire exercise for the day is just four minutes! Can such a short exercise time really compete with people who spend the day at the gym?

Crossfit says yes, and this article in the New York Times says the science agrees. They forced rats to swim-or-drown, some for long period of times, and some for 20 seconds at a time with 10 seconds rest. The second group was weighed down to make them work really hard. Really mean, cruel stuff. But 4 1/2 minutes of hard swimming in short bouts gave the same benefits as six hours of normal rat swimming.

The moral is, you don't have to spend a lot of time on exercising. You can be super-fit in just minutes a week, as long as you make those minutes really exhausting ones!

Room available

So much to blog about...

The latest news is that my roommate is moving out at the end of the month. If you know anyone who might be interested in his large room, with private bathroom, right in the middle of everything in Jackson Heights, and less than a block from the express train minutes from Manhattan, let me know!

I saw the movie Up, which was highly entertaining, with the Pixar pathos that few cartoons approach. I also saw Angels and Demons, which was much better than the terrible book, and much better than the terrible prequel. It was a well put together film. That said, it was nothing special. Utterly devoid of deeper significance. Nothing controversial or anti-Catholic. The physics in the movie was turned into meaningless gobbledygook, which was unfortunate, because in reality antimatter is pretty cool.

Today I stepped out of my apartment to see the streets crowded so tight with people that one could hardly move. It was the Bangladesh Mela. Bangladeshis everywhere. Always a party in Jackson Heights. I should bring my camera...

Jackson Diner, Adelina, Super Dog, Rino Ceronte

It's been a while, time for another food post!

Let's start with my own neighborhood, where a visit to the Jackson Diner for a lunch buffet included the regular array of Indian food, not particularly remarkable, but also a dosa bar where a guy fries up dosai from batter right in front of you. It was the best dosa I've ever had. I usually don't like dosai, but I went back for more. This is the way to eat dosai.

I also tried Adelina, a new Italian place whose enormous sign says "Adelina: the first and only vegetarian italian restaurant" all in large capital letters. Alas, the sign's size does not change the fact that it is nearly invisible behind a large tree. Let's just say the place was disappointing. The ambience was low-key, not the fancy stuff typical of Italian, and the food was largely raw, which didn't impress. Especially the raw chocolate. Tasteless grainy stuff masquerading as chocolate.

Then there are two places, side-by-side, across the street from (and with the same owner as)Food Fight, in the heart of NYU on MacDougal street (which should really be called Little Israel, since the stores--these two included--all seem to be run by Israelis): Superdog and Rino Ceronte. These are tiny places, and yet, like Food Fight, the decor screams with mood--so much effort at hipness in a small space that it's almost headache-inducing (but appreciated!).

Superdog is a hotdog place that offers toppings like bruschetta and fruit, and sells both beef and veggie dogs. The vegetarian option appears to be the stuff you get at the store, and F&B güdtfood is still my favorite, but I have to appreciate the concept.

Even better is Rino Ceronte, which bills itself as a sandwicherie. In fact, the sandwiches come as wraps -- which I usually hate -- but these wraps don't use tortilla. The cook up some kind of really soft and delicious flat bread. For vegetarians, there's portabello mushrooms, and then an array of toppings and sauces. It's delicious. Big thumbs up. The name of the place, by the way, is the name of a fictional character with an 1800's mustache and hat who fictionally founded the place, put whose name in fact means rhinoceros in Spanish.

Skyscraper Update

The recently completed Shanghai World Financial Center has the tallest rooftop of any building, although it comes in second in height to Taipei 101's spire. Interesting with its rectangle cut out of the top, but not beautiful.
Not satisfied, they have broken ground on Shanghai Tower next door, which will not only tower over that building, but also looks like relatively cool.
Dubai Tower, which will be well over twice the size of the Empire State Building, is not complete but is already the world's biggest building at more than a half-mile high.
I guess the real point of this is, we're being left behind! Why don't we get the awesome skyscrapers? Why are we stuck with the ridiculously mediocre 1 World Trade Center (which isn't as cheesy as its former name Freedom Tower but is still an awful name)? Ugh!

Birthday Dinner

Yesterday I had my birthday dinner at Gobo.
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There are plenty more pictures where those came from. If you want some, let me know...

Happy Birthday

Wish me a happy one :)

六四事件

Today is the 20th anniversary of the June 4th Incident, aka the Tiananmen Massacre. Let's not forget. China has 1.4 billion people, a quarter of the earth's population. That's a lot of people without freedom.

Kajitsu

I'm excited at the opening of a new restaurant. Kajitsu serves shojin cuisine -- that is, Japanese Buddhist food, therefore cruelty-free. The food looks amazing. Unfortunately, with a prix fixe starting at $50, it'll have to wait for some special occasion. (That and 4 course vegan, the restaurant open just once a week at a secret location. Of course, I've known about that for about two years, and haven't found my special occasion yet.)

Still if you ever want to take me somewhere special... :

(As an aside, I don't know what Kajitsu means, but shockingly, when I type it into Google images, it brings up what appears to be anime porn! I wonder if any Japanese-speaking readers can explain what kind of a restaurant name that might be.)

Washington Square Park

Yesterday I visited the newly reconstructed Washington Square Park. The changes are, well, they're all positive touches, but they're all so minor. The park feels almost exactly like it felt before. They dismantled the entire fountain only to reconstruct it identically just a few feet over to the side. I couldn't help but think, why all the trouble for this? They could have done so much with the park, and this is all they've got?

Still, as long as the music and chess keeps on a-goin', it's still a great park.

On the creepy side, did you know that the remains of more than 20,000 bodies like under Washington Square Park? Like Bryant Park and Madison Square Park, this park was until 1825 a potter's field -- that is, a burial spot for unknown or indigent people. Washington Square Park was also used to bury victims of yellow fever during an epidemic in the early 1800s.

My birthday is on Friday... so exciting... !

Noguchi Museum

Last week I went to the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. I'm not generally a big museum fan, but as soon as I walked in to this one, I said, "This is great!" I hadn't heard of Isamu Noguchi, admittedly, but the artist lived in New York and created his own museum here, which sounds pretty -- er -- self-confident. But I'm glad he did.
Interestingly enough, (The first one is an actual slide; you can go up the stairs at the middle and slide down it.) (Note that only the second picture is from the museum. I didn't have good pics of stuff at the museum.)

I later discovered that Noguchi was the creator of a prominent piece of art at Yale. I always used to see his donut-cube-and-pyramid in a below-ground-level plaza by the Beineke rare book library. I always thought that it was stupid. I'm shocked to realize that this is the same guy whose other stuff is awesome. I guess sometimes you swing and hit, and sometimes you miss...

Anyway, I recommend this museum.