Labour Day Weekend

I can't believe the last weekend of summer is already approaching! I had a busy summer this year, which resulted in almost no blogging. Back in May, I had already planned almost every summer weekend until September. Surprisingly, not too many conflicts occurred this year, which was probably helped by joining just one softball league this year instead of the two I played in last year.

This weekend I wanted to go down to NYC to watch a Yankees game because the Blue Jays were visiting and this is the last year before they tear down Yankee Stadium. I also considered attending PAX this year as well, but I would have convince some people to go with me (It's in Seattle). Penny Arcade is going to organize an East Coast one in the future and I would love to attend that one. But the trump card was being invited to a wedding. I'm excited to go since a lot of people from out of town are flying in and it'll be good to see them all again.

So instead of going to NYC this weekend, I'm going in the middle of September to try to catch a game. Any advice on getting tickets for a Yankee game? I really hope we will be able to get in. Otherwise, anyone interested in going to PAX with me next year?

Vacation Time

I haven't been blogging much recently because I've been really busy. I find I blog less and less during the summer months, because I'd rather be outside or doing something instead of being indoors. I don't have a laptop yet, so I can't blog while outdoors.

This weekend I went to NYC to help move my sister into a new place. I had one free night, so I went to the 5th Avenue Mac store and picked up a Macbook Pro and an Ipod Touch. So far so good, I like what I'm seeing so far, but I'll know better when I have install more programs (eg virtualization).

Right now I'm preparing for my Dad's retirement party at our home. There is so much to prepare since there will be 40 guests in our tiny little townhouse.

The night of the party I'm leaving for California for 9 days. I'm attending a wedding in San Jose, and then driving down the coast to LA (catching a taping of Deal or No Deal). Unfortunately, there is a big fire at Big Sur right now, and I hope it clears up next week and Highway 1 opens again.

California, here I come!

Hong Kong Impressions

I visited Hong Kong six months ago and I haven't blogged about my trip, except for, obviously, the food pictures. I have a few thoughts about Hong Kong that I wrote down soon after returning, but never got around to posting and I'll share them now.

The most noticeable difference is the sheer number of people. I thought New York was densely populated, but Hong Kong is denser by several orders. Everywhere you go, there are crowds and crowds of people, which doesn't even compare to a busy weekend in Toronto. Imagine a popular festival or crowded event at Nathan Philips or Dundas Square and then imagine if it was like that all the time all over the place. That is what Hong Kong is like.

A lot of people means a lot of pollution. The air is noticeably worse in Hong Kong, and I can't imagine how much worse Beijing can be. It's unavoidable that packing so many people together in such a small space will result in pollution. But at the same time, having such a densely populated area enables them to have a good transit system. And it's not only goverment sponsored, but since so many people ride transit there are private companies providing competing services. Although I didn't have a bad experience on the private buses, I wonder how the public transit is regulated, because I had the worse public bus driver in my life. I was literally falling out of my seat onto the ground because the driving was so rough. Regardless, people in Hong Kong don't need to drive and rely on pulic transit. Plus, I heard that there's a 100% import tax on cars. No wonder HK immigrants buy expensive cars when they come to Canada....it's already discounted 50%!

What makes the pollution worse is the really hot and humid weather. As many of you know, I prefer hot weather and I'm deathly afraid of the cold. I visited near the end of August, when it is still in the hot season, but I didn't mind so much except for the humidity. The toughest part is dressing for the indoors; buildings all blast the A/C, meaning dressing in shorts is too cold for me indoors. The craziest thing about the HK natives is that many of them are wearing sweaters in the middle of summer. It could be 35 degrees out with 100 humidity and people would still be wearing sweaters!

Maybe when they sweat through them, they'll just buy a new one. That is not a joke. The clothing industry is completely different in HK. Maybe because it's so hot, all the clothing is very thin and seemingly of lower quality. It is also much cheaper in price than Canada. This means there is a culture where people can buy clothes just for the current season and toss it next season. It also means people are "more fashionable" because they can afford to keep up with the latest fashions. From a Canadian perspective, I wasn't interested in the cheap clothing because of the low quality, and clothing with acceptable quality had similar prices to Canada anyway. I did find one store I liked, G2000, and the advantage in Hong Kong is that they hem the pants for free or a small nominal fee.

Even though I personally didn't have a great time shopping, Hong Kong really is a shopper's paradise. Everywhere you go is basically a mall. The whole subway system is one large mall. And right beside all that shopping is the eating. Everywhere you go, there is food to buy. There are the 7-11's on every block selling everything you could want, the fancy restaurants on the upper levels of every building, the street eat stalls that are now mandated to be on a piece of property and not just on the street, the plentiful dessert places advertising their sweet delicacies to passerbys, the casual cheap diners constantly packed with people and loud chatter, the bubble tea hangouts, the bakeries which draw you in with their smell, the list goes on and on. Hong Kong people eat out for every meal. That is their culture. Their living quarters are too small to cook, and the food that you can buy is so cheap it is not worth cooking yourself. Plus all these places to eat are just an elevator ride downstairs away. You can find lunch for $2 CAD and dinner for $3 CAD if you wanted. Now I understand why Hong Kong people don't know how to cook (sorry, broad generalization which I know is not true, but it has some truth to it).

Cheap, plentiful and convenient food should mean a large waistlines. This is not the case. Most people in Hong Kong are quite slender, especially the females and especially when compared to North America. I loved the desserts over there, partly because they were new to me and partly because they were so refreshing in the heat. What I did notice is that the whole city is plastered with advertising (even more so than New York) and a lot of the ads are for slimming products. I can only assume that it's a good business there. But a better reason is probably that their portions are smaller and there is less emphasis on overeating - AYCE style.

Anyway, Hong Kong was fun to visit and it was by far the most urbanizied place I have ever been. It's a paradise for eating and shopping and the attraction of the city is the city itself. A few of you have gone recently, are there right now, or will be going soon. Any thoughts?

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day. I spent tonight in a classroom and came home to an empty house, but it's all good. Kitty and I will postpone Valentine's since we're in different cities. Keeping with tradition, here's a Nintendo themed Valentine Day card.



This set is not as good as last year's, but it is a lot better than this horrendous set. This is an example of Capcom whoring out their IP in the worse possible way.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year, it's 2008! I rang in the New Year sick and not drinking, but still out partying. Fortunately, this year everyone made it past coat check (after a brief stopover in a cop car).

I plan on returning to blogging regularly and I figure I'd start in the new year. I don't have much to say yet, but I'm just starting to get back in the flow of thinking about topics and writing about them.

Also, on BiteMe, I'm posting food pics from my trip to Hong Kong. Check that out if you are in the hungry mood.

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?

World Travel

Tsu posted this on his blog. It's a website that highlights the different countries of the world you've been to. Mine is not so impressive :(




Sorry about the formatting. I think my United States travel history is a little better:




If you really wanted to, you could visit all 50 US states include Hawaii and Alaska in just one week!

Happy Chinese New Year

Year of the Golden Boar this year, and from what I've hear, the "golden" part of it only comes around once in 600 odd years.

I work indirectly with some people in China, and over there they get the whole week off. Actually they are suppose to work on Saturday and then they get Sunday to Saturday off. That's a long time of consecutive days off!

At work, I also happen to get Monday off for "Heritage Day". Not sure why we get it off, perhaps a relic from the past, but I'm not complaining. It also happens to be President's day in the US, so maybe that's part of the reason. It just so happens to fall on the same weekend as Chinese New Year, so maybe Heritage day is appropriate for me this year.

---

On a different topic, my post about sharing passwords generated a lot of comments.

Here are some highlights:

"I think being "family" has more to do with it than how many years you have been together"

"there's the whole "persona" thing, if I give you my password, then my persona is not necessary consistent."

"I don't see what the big deal is, meddling and trust are related no? You have to trust them not to meddle and change your settings too."

"I want to limit my liability by not having access to their private account."

"real trust means that you trust your partner to act responsibly as her own person; one must learn to accept that."

"the strongest and best relationships and marriages are ones that respect the rights and autonomy of both members equally."

"All in all, it's not a trust thing, but a guy (geek) thing."

When I first wrote the entry, I had no idea that it would divide so strongly along gender lines. Maybe it's a matter of commenting bias, that is males who identify with my position feel strong enough to comment and males who don't agree rather not comment and similarly with females. In the end, I think it was a matter of trust imbalance that caused conflict. I don't have access to her Xanga account anymore and hopefully that will be the end of the story. Although, please feel welcome to continue commenting.

Even though I got twice as many hits blogging about relationships, I can now go back to blogging about the Wii (do I hear groans?). I try to diversify my blogging topics, but usually I just blog what most easily comes to mind and, unfortunately, recently it's been the Wii. Anyway, Happy New Year!