Tale of Two (softball) Cities

Last summer, I had a great time playing organized softball. I was on the same team as four of my high school friends, which made it even more fun. After being unable to convince any of my friends to join again this year, I decided to make up for it by joining two different leagues!

I joined a CCSA team with Joanne and a MCBCSL team with my sister and Andrea.

The problem is that one league is in Mississauga and the other is in Scarborough. So far, the schedule seems to work out in my favour in that there are very few (zero?) conflicts. CCSA starts much earlier (mid May), while MCBCSL starts late June. MCBCSL games are usually Saturdays, while my CCSA games in July are usually on Sundays. Looks like I'll be in Toronto every weekend and doing a lot of driving!

Another big difference between the leagues is the level of competition. MCBCSL is open to people of all ages, so I'll be playing against high school students. Our "no practice" team with older players will likely have some advantage. Our "no practice" team last year did well, but came up short in the championship game. That's a whole other blog entry for another time. In CCSA, the players are older and all hardcore...even the girls. As a result, the defence is generally better and also means fewer at -bats. At my first CCSA game last weekend, I only batted twice in an 8 inning game! We also have a large team, so this could have an effect.

The only negative besides the travel is that I won't have as much time for other summer activities. Oh well. Regardless, I'm really, really looking forward to playing softball this summer!

My Toronto is...Picture it your way.

The results are in, and my friend Selina won! Congrats!

I was driving somewhere along the DVP and suddenly came across her design on a billboard. It was a bit of a surprise to see it IRL, but it looked really good. You can find the locations of the billboards in the press release. They are up until mid June, so keep an eye out for them!

The press release really harps on the fact that 5,152 residents voted. To me, that's a small number. Ian posted a FB note about how the Facebook Toronto Network is the largest city network, beating out New York City, Chicago, LA, etc. If they effectively advertised this on Facebook, I bet it would get 10 times more votes!

Congratulations Selina!

DS Flash Cart

If you read my lengthy entry on my New York City trip over the long weekend, you'll know that I bought a Nintendo DS. It's a great device, especially when you only have a few minutes and want something quick to play. For example, while waiting in line for my free Harvey's Original Hamburger this weekend, I pulled it out and play a few quick games of Tetris.

It's also great for multi-player. Yesterday, I had a Wii party in Waterloo, and had more than 4 people show up. The other people played multi-player Tetris DS instead. One of the best features of the DS is the ability to quickly get a wireless multiplayer game going.

Anyway, the whole point of this entry is to find out if anyone wants to get in on our order for a DS flash cart. A lot of people recommended the DS-X, but I think we're going to go with the R4 instead. We're up to 5 people already! So let me know ASAP if you want in!

Weekend in NYC: Part 2

If you want a pictorial version of this long boring entry, Kevin, Ben and I have uploaded a bunch of pics on Facebook.

Day 3 "Let's Roll"

After getting up late at 9:30AM, our sleepy room was out by around 11AM, two hours late. Once again Kevin and Pauline had to wait for us. At least the shower was working after a call to the front desk the previous day. It was sunny and warm, in stark contrast to the previous day. We hit up the PATH and went directly to the WTC subway stop.

At the subway stop, Victor wanted to play DS together. He let us know his desire by saying "Let's Roll". That became the running joke of the weekend along with Richard packing more stuff than the girls combined, and Richard and Victor sleeping together.

The WTC site is a big construction area. There was an informative display with a timeline and photos. After taking a few photos, we came across Century 21 and went in. Century 21 is like a larger version of Winners with more brand names. Kev and Richard got bored quickly and left to explore the surrounding area. Ben went crazy and spent $400. The girls had a good time too, but bought very little in comparison. I picked up a pair of running shoes and a few shirts. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to try the running shoes extensively before purchasing because there was a plastic tie keeping them together. After I tried it in the hotel I found that there was not enough arch support and it felt like my knees were coming together unnaturally. Hopefully it'll be better when I break them in.

After extending our time shopping we headed off to wander some more. We headed in the direction of New York City Hall. Someone suggested Burger King for lunch, but I quickly vetoed it, since I've never in my life eaten anything decent there. We ended up at an Eatery, called Olivia's. I had a light lunch of a panini sandwich because I knew I would be having some Katz Deli soon. We began to walk around the park and the surrounding area. Ben soon got tired of carrying all his stuff so he had to head back and drop it off in the hotel.

From there we walked to NYC Chinatown. NYC has the largest concentration of Chinese people in the Western hemisphere. This was reflected by their large Chinatown. And like all other Chinatowns, it was dirty, smelly and full of garbage and good deals. We bought a few oranges and Kitty and Victor hunted around for some bbtea. They eventually found a place selling smoothies with real fruit. It was very tasty.

We passed by a small section that I was told later was Little Italy. The section we went through consisted of a few blocks of furniture and lighting shops. We were getting close to Katz's, but early for the rendezvous time with Ben. We decided to walk west on Houston for a bit and came across an Adidas store. We went in for some comfy seats and AC. The Adidas store conveniently had touch screen monitors with games. We spent a while there, watching Victor and Richard try to beat the German's high score at snake. They were unsuccessful.

We headed out back toward's Katz's deli. On the way, we heard some music playing, so we headed in that direction to find out what it was about. We were in the Bargain District of NYC. The neighbourhood had a bohemian feel to it, especially when we discovered the source of the music. It was just some dude blasting (very loud) music from his apartment and people had congregated outside on the street. A lot of shops were selling their wares as well. A little dissapointed, we headed back to Katz's.

When you get into Katz, you are forced to take a ticket to record what you ordered. Think Marche for an equivalent analogy. From what I could tell, their most famous sandwiches were the pastrami, corned beef and salami. After waiting in line (or budding in front to where my friends were), I ordered a pastrami. The meat cutter first gives you sample to taste and then you wait for him to cut up the meat. The sandwiches were quite expensive, going for about $12-13 a sandwich, but they are quite large. The pastrami on rye was excellent and I thought it was better than Schwartz's in Montreal (although 3 times more expensive). At Schwatz's, there were chunks of fat in the sandwich, that I didn't enjoy so much (I ordered a medium fat Montreal Smoked Meat Sandwich), but at Katz's, the fat was more evenly distributed. After washing it down with a Dr. Brown's root beer, we were off to see Rent.

Kitty had ordered tickets the previous week to see Rent, so we didn't have to use TKTS, which was recommended by so many people. Richard and Victor didn't want to see Rent and ended up at TKTS and watched Spelling Bee (according to Victor not as good as Spellbound). We met up with Joanna, Judy and her friend Steve and proceeded to enter the theatre. In yet another strange coincidence, Judy's friend Steve knew Kevin because they lived in V1 (Waterloo dorm) together.

Whenever I think of Rent, the first thing that comes to mind is the spoof in Team America of Rent. It was fitting that we were in East Village earlier in the day, which I think the play was set in. I had a bit of trouble picking up what the documentary guy was saying at times, but the rest of the cast was good. Ben kept raving about the cross dresser's performance.

After that, Joanna and Steve headed off and we walked through Times Square to the Virgin Megastore to meet up with Richard and Victor. I taught Judy how to play some guitar hero and also walked around Times Square a bit. Some of us wanted to stay in Times Square and others wanted to go to a Cheesecake place. Kevin met up with his friend John and with Pauline, decided to stick around Times Square. Ben, Victor, Richard Kitty and I headed off to the far away Cheesecake place.

Unfortunately it was already pretty late on a Sunday night and when we arrived, at Veniero's, the seating had already closed. We ordered some takeout and decided to head back. On the way, Ben and Richard couldn't resist getting some Popeye's Fried Chicken. We couldn't think of anywhere to go that would still be open on a Sunday night, so with our unhealthy food, we headed back to the hotel.

We got back, unwrapped our food and starting eating and chatting. Eventually we cracked out our DSs (we had four after borrowing Joanna's) and started playing some Team Tetris. I sucked badly (I was tired) and played until 3:30 AM. Kitty had gone downstairs to pack so she could be ready for more shopping the next day.

Day 4: More Shopping

Kitty and Pauline had planned to get up really early in the morning and go back into Manhattan to do some more shopping. They hit up Century 21 and Forever 21. I slept. We eventually got out of bed at around 11AM and proceeded to pack and get out of the hotel. We met up in a mall across from the hotel and did some more shopping. The girls eventually came back and met up with us and they also continued shopping. After a quick meal at the food court (Popeye's for me) and getting berated for leaving my DS in the car we started our drive back.

We were greeted with traffic trying to leave NJ, but eventually made it out. This time the ride back consisted of more C-pop, hearing about Ben's experience being the #1 Street Fight player in Canada, sleep and playing DS. We met up with the other car at the exact same McD's as before and had a leisurely dinner. We discussed our favourite part about the trip, which I have posted below:

Kitty: Rent
Ben: Rent
Richard: Dunno, (sleeping with Victor?)
Kevin: Dunno, (Apple Store?)
Victor: Katz's Deli
Nelson: Nintendo World Store
Pauline: Shoe Shopping

On the way back, we ran into some traffic getting into Toronto. That's when the other car got on the Walkie Talkie and declared "Let's Roll!". So we started playing 4 player DS between the two cars. That was fun, but kinda sucked when it started lagging due to the increasing distance. Eventually our DSs ran out of batteries and the traffic cleared up. We met up in Scarborough Town Center at around 1AM to redistribute the people for optimal home delivery and concluded our weekend of fun.

Weekend in NYC: Part 1

Warning: this entry is kinda long and boring, so you may want to skip it...

Day 1

I spent the long weekend down in NYC. Any particular reason? No. Someone suggested it, we planned it with a shitload of emails and then took off.

Well sorta took off. We wanted to leave Friday afternoon to try to get ahead of the long weekend traffic and get to the hotel at a reasonable hour. I even took a half day off since I was coming in from Waterloo and picked up Kitty (with a quick stop at Christie's Cookie Factory Outlet), Richard (Thanks for lunch, your company sells awesome sandwiches) and Pauline (from Woodlands, my childhood Chinese school), but Ben forgot where he put his passport. We ended up waiting for him at Coffee Time/Dairy Queen/Chuck E. Cheese. We played X-Men, but the red video component was missing and the controllers were broken. By the time we got going, we were into rush hour traffic, but it wasn't too bad, since it only delayed us by half an hour.

Thanks to some fast driving by Ben and Victor (Thanks guys!), it took us about 9 hours to get down to NYC, which was faster than I expected. We only made three stops: once at the border, once at McDonald's and once for gas. The ride down consisted of hours upon hours of Mandarin C-pop between bouts of sleep, messing with the GPS and gossip (I was riding with the gossip queens, Ben and Kitty after all).

We finally arrived at our Doubletree hotel in Jersey City at 3AM in the morning. We proceeded to check into our room for four people, which unfortunately consisted of a Queen size bed, couch, cot, smoke and a dripping shower head. It was still pretty decent! But then again I didn't sleep on the coffee table/couch like Ben did the first night.

Day 2

Our room (Ben Joanna, Kitty and I), woke up at 9AM, took some dripping water showers and got out of the hotel by around 10AM. Kevin & Pauline got up at 7:30 and were bored to death waiting for us. We were fortunately located right next to the PATH station to get into Manhatten (Pavonia/Newport). Unfortunately, due to some miscommunication, we were delayed a bit waiting for Tim to meet up with us. He was staying in a completely empty condo minutes away from our hotel. Richard stayed behind and we went ahead and went into Manhattan.

We travelled on the dirty and smelly NYC subway system and came out somewhere in Manhattan. Somewhat atypical for me, I didn't look at the maps and just let others take care of getting around. We walked around NYC for a while looking for a place to eat, coming across some sort of farmer's market. We decided to keep moving and found a TGIF, sat down, ordered water, looked at the crazy menu prices and then got up and left. Damn tourists. We eventually made our way to Grand Central Station, where Tim and Richard caught up with us and we met up with Judy (Kitty's University friend working at EY in NYC). We finally decided on Junior's inside the station and had lunch. They serve representative/stereotypical "New York" types of food. I had a Reuben sandwich and it was damn good.

We subwayed up 5th Ave to the Guggenheim, but unfortunately it was under renovations. We walked down until we reached the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We split up, with half continuing to walk down 5th Ave while Tim, Richard, Kitty and I stayed to check out the Met. It seemed like it was about to rain, so I figured hitting up the museum would be a good idea. We bumped into some random people exiting that gave us their pin, but the price of admission is just a recommended donation. We went to check out the Egyptian temple first, then got lost in the American section. There was a section for American colonial furniture and I felt like I was trapped in an episode of Antiques Road Show. I looked around to find the famous painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware. Kitty really liked the still lifes by William Michael Harnett, Alexander Pope and John F. Peto (I looked that up on their website). We wandering around the Japanese art section before heading out to catch the a tour of Modern Art. Thankfully it was not too modern (the most modern it got was a Picasso) and mostly focused on Impressionist paintings (my favourite). Richard was falling asleep while standing. I found it interesting and even though I was familiar with most of the material already, the Met had a lot of famous pieces. I also found it coincidental how the Impressionist Wing's building design was exactly like that of the Louvre's, except smaller.

We left the musuem and started walking down museum mile (with a quick Starbucks stop). Unfortunately, it started to rain. We deliberated whether to walk or take the subway to Rockefeller and decided to keep walking. I got my shoes/socks wet at this point. We walked by a bunch of stores (Apple, FAO Schwartz, Gucci, LV) without going in so we could meet up with the other group. Judy had gone home for a nap and we met up with her again near North America's largest Catholic Church. We arrived at the rendevous point in Rockefeller Concourse at yet another Starbucks. At this point we learned that Victor had gone back to the hotel to rest because he was sick. We had previously wanted to take a boat cruise at this point, but since it was raining, we decided to split up again and wander around.

I, along with Tim, Judy, Ben and Kitty headed to the Nintendo World Store. We spent the hour there where everyone except Ben and I were probably bored out of their minds - I thought it was the highlight of the trip :) It was a really nice store, with a lot of demo stations all over for Wii and DS games. There was a large crowd at the Tiger Woods game and a bunch of people playing Pokemon for DS. They had a museum of sorts upstairs showing off old systems and accessories. They also had a clothing section where I proceeded to pick up two T-shirts. I was excited to be there and couldn't resist making purchases. Ben tried to convince me to get a DS because it's cheaper in the US with the favourable exchange rate and lack of taxes. I was eventually going to get one, so I was weak and gave in. I ended up saving about $24. Ben proceeded to buy two, a pink one for himself and a black one for his brother. I bought a white one to match my Wii. I also picked up Tetris, because I heard from Keith and Tsu that the multiplayer was fun.



We met up again and decided to go back to the hotel to change and drop off our stuff. Kitty went back to Judy's. We were running late for dinner, so we decided to call for a cab. Turns out that there is no such thing as a cab from New Jersey to NYC and we had called for an "underground cab". It was also a ripoff. We only found out later that the PATH trains to NJ run all night long. Anyway, we met up with Ben's friend William (and his gf) at Virgils BBQ at 9PM for dinner. It turns out that Judy and William know each other because they work at the same company. What a coincidence! After a smokey, meaty meal of ribs, it was off to the club.

We rode a taxi down to the the Meat Packing District for some clubbing. We got there around midnight and left at 2AM. In Toronto, I typically go on Asian nights, but this time in NYC it had a real different feeling. There were a lot of black, white and asians, so it had a different vibe. DJ was pretty decent too (although I think the DJ at Bomber is pretty good as well). The club was also really pricey. $20 USD cover and $10 drinks. After Pauline had a little trouble with the alcohol we headed back to the hotel after a long, exhausting day......to play Tetris DS!

NYC Bound

I'm heading down to New York City for the long weekend. We don't have any specific plans yet, so maybe you can help me. I've been to New York at least twice in my life and have done most of the major touristy type activities. I need some ideas of what to do:

• I want to visit the Nintendo World Store, just to see what it's like.
  
• I really wanted to see a baseball game, but it's the subway series that weekend and tickets are sold out.
  
• I'm definitely going to Katz's deli.
  
• My sister suggested I go to Iron Chef Japan's restaurant, but apparently you need to make reservations 4 weeks ahead.
  
• I tried getting Letterman/Leno/SNL/Conan O'Brien tickets, but those are tough to get and the best chance is to wait outside the studios the day of.
  
• I've never been to a Broadway show, so Kitty is arranging for us to go see Rent.
  
• Kottke is always talking about a good Noodle Bar, so maybe that'll be worth checking out
  
• Museum(s). Any recommendation? I don't think I've been to many of the museums in NYC actually, but it seems like it might be too time consuming for such a short trip
  
• I would like to see the World Trade Center Site.
  
• Central Park is very large and I would like to visit, but I'm not sure what exactly to see.
  
• I'm likely going shopping too....one guess as to how that got into the schedule.
  
• Tim and Judy will be in NYC as well, so I'll likely see them at some point.
  

Anyone got any advice for me?

Everybody Votes

An interesting result that came back from the Wii Everybody Votes Channel was whether people had used public transit in the last month. The result was that about 44% had. A little lower than I expected, but the most interesting result was that only one province in Canada had a majority that had used public transit. Comment on which one you think it was and I'll reveal the answer on Wednesday/Thursday.

One of the questions this week was: Which expression do Canadians use the most?

"Sorry" or "Eh"

I think that's an interesting question and I look forward to finding out the result!

Happy Mother's Day!

Gluttony Tax

Today, Freakonomics posted about AYCE sushi restaurants charging for uneaten food. It's obviously a new concept to him, but here in Toronto, we've had this concept for at least five years if not longer. It's everywhere in Toronto, and even Waterloo/Kitchener has a AYCE sushi place (that is usually full of students probably originally from Toronto)!

I really wonder whether it's because Toronto (or maybe Vancouver) came up with this idea first and it's slowly spreading elsewhere? Or is it because the author is white and isn't exposed to this sort of thing?

He argues that "this creates an incentive to eat a lot but to order in the right measure." Even though I've never had to resort to it, what he doesn't realize is that it also creates incentive to hide sushi in the teapot ;)

Link Update

I did a little spring cleaning on the Bloglines (an RSS reader) links that I have on the right.

Promotions:

Kottke.org: One of those A-list bloggers. He mostly just posts high quality links. His tagline, "Home of fine hypertext products" is quite clever and also true.

Joke a Day: self-explainatory

Demotions:

A La Cuisine: I actually met the guy IRL, which is strange to meet a fairly popular blogger. Unfortunately, he stopped updating his site! So he will get demoted to my secondary links...for now.

The Daily Tiffin: I used to like this site just to see Soren's (the author's son) lunchbox everyday, but she stopped that. Instead it's a site with general articles and recipes, which, although fairly high in quality, is too lengthy for my tastes. Also it's very "mommy" oriented, which kinda turns me off from it.

That's it for now...

Lastly, a funny video spoofing Web 2.0, called Supermarket 2.0:

glumbert.com - Supermarket 2.0

Smells like Spring

And by spring I really mean Shit.

If you've ever been in Waterloo during the summer months you'll know what I'm talking about. Apparently, the KW area has some of the worse air in Ontario, because we are in a slight depression where the air doesn't move. Add that to the fact the farmers all around like to spread shit on their fields right around this time (when students come in for the summer term).

But now, after about a week, I can't smell the shit anymore, and I don't know whether it's because I'm desensitized or the smell has gone away. Regardless, I'm happy that warmer weather is here. Anyone want to find a Dragonboat team to join? I already have my first softball practice this week!

Basketball Playoffs

I watched the Dallas - Golden State game last night and wow. What an amazing game. When I first starting watching the Suns with Steve Nash, it was a revelation in how much fun watching basketball could be. I got that same feeling last night.

Golden State runs and runs all the time. All five players run, are athletic and can shoot the ball. They push the ball as fast as possible, quite often making a half court pass to the lead man even if outnumbered. Everyone has a green light to shoot, and their offense is dependent on movement and quick passing. It makes for fun basketball to watch. Dallas looks scared and unprepared to play this way. I fully expect Golden State to close out Dallas at home, which would be a huge upset (8th vs 1st seed).

I have a feeling Dirk will be voted the MVP this year, an award he doesn't deserve. If he hadn't of shown up in the last 3 minutes last night, he would be the one to blame. Bill Simmon's really sums it up quite nicely.

One of the best parts of the series is the coaching matchup - the protege vs the mentor. The two have completely different styles as well. Nelson is laid back and Avery is not. Nelson looks like he's enjoying himself watching the game, while Avery looks like he's about to have a heart attack. Even the owner vs the ex-coach angle is interesting and like Steve Kerr says, they need to show more of Mark Cuban (and it'd be nice if he started blogging about basketball again).

TNT didn't put their best broadcasting team on the series. Reggie Miller and Dick Stockton were calling the game, and the best line was Reggie saying GS was "going to throw the whole kitchen book at Dirk".

Oh yeah, Raptors played last night too. Vince Carter has thin skin, and had a largely forgettable game, even though he scored 30 points. The Raptor's offense is based around PG penetration and posting up Bosh. With injured PGs and NJ defense on Bosh, we'll have nothing left for offense. If they can somehow miraculously win in NJ (1% chance), they should be able to win game 7. Also a short note about the announcers...apparently TNT has Marv Albert and Steve Kerr on the Raptor/Nets series, which is their #1 team, but we are stuck with fucking Leo Rautins and Swirsky, whom I hate. Sucks.

Last year's playoffs were amazing and hopefully this year's will be just as good. Next GS-Mavs game is Thursday, don't miss it!