Monday, November 28, 2005

christmas decorating

Today the boss put me in charge of re-decorating the store for Christmas. So essentially, D and I spent the entire day cleaning, reorganizing, and decorating the store window. We ransacked the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations, ribbons, greenery, and etc leftover from the previous owner. After wading through some truly terrible stuff, we were able to scrounge up some nice wreaths, ornaments, berries, etc and began to make some decorations from scratch.
It was basically a craft day and tons of fun! So of course the day just flew by. I guess the couple days following Thanksgiving are slow so the boss let us decorate to our hearts delight. There’s still some finishing touches left, putting the lights up, etc, but I must say the store window looks quite nice.

After a nice meal of leftovers (ahh, great thing about Turkey Day), finding a restaurant to go to Wednesday night with a college friend, and cleaning up the kitchen, I’m about ready to crash!! I still have some emails (A.H., wonderful to hear from you and I miss you too- expect a nice long email your way!) and internet research to do, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow night or Wed when I'm better rested.

Another Lazy Sunday

After the group dispersed, I cleaned up and started to watch “Saving Face”. A movie about an Asian American doctor who lives in New York and hides the fact that she is a lesbian from her mother. Her mother, played by a still beautiful Joan Chen, becomes pregnant out of wedlock and therefore a disgrace to her father. She moved in with her daughter who has recently become involved with a ballet/modern dancer. Despite being a very good movie, and probably aided by the mulled wine, I fell asleep midway through.

I woke up this morning around 10 and finished watching it. Then I picked up my laundry, moved the roomie’s car to the other side of the street, and spent some time putting clothes away and organizing. I went for a run at McCarren park and by the time I was done it was already close to 3 p.m. My plans to go to the NY Public Library out the window, I decided to call up a friend to catch a movie.

We met up around 5pm and walked around Times Square, Bryant Park, etc. Stopped and bought a sandwich for the friend at Kosher Delight where I got an unexpected phone call from a friend. Turns out JPan is engaged!!!! I have never heard her sound so happy and excited!! Which makes me happy and excited! Congratulations Xiao Pang and JPan!!!

Sunday, November 27, 2005

A Smok’n Thanksgiving Pot-luck

So my new resolution is to make sure I buy groceries for a dinner party in advance!! I have never felt so flustered when preparing for a party. . .

I had originally planned to head back to Brooklyn on Friday morning after doing laundry. . .but being in the suburbs in a spacious home, comfy sofas, and hundreds of channels on t.v. sidetracked me. The roomie and I spent the better part of the morning finishing laundry and decided to try Geno’s cheesesteaks and hit up IKEA.

Sidenote: It really is a toss up between Pat’s and Geno’s as far as who has the best cheese steaks. The meat is in slices rather than shredded at Geno’s and the bread is better, but my provolone wasn’t fully melted, the onions were undercooked, and the cheese fries were not as good (although still quite good). To top it off, I overdid it with the hot sauce (which is the best hot sauce I’ve had, quite spicy and flavorful and packs a punch) so I couldn’t get a real taste of the meat.

In any case, I didn’t get back to Manhattan until around 9:30 p.m. and I was just too tired/lazy to go to Whole Foods. I woke up early and was at Whole Foods by 10 a.m. I was put in a state of mild panic when I found that they were out of oysters and duck breasts. So after getting some wild mushrooms and chives from the farmer’s market at Union Square, I high tailed it to Dean & Deluca’s. I talked to the guy working the seafood counter (great South African accent), and he told me that they had gone through bottles and bottles of shucked oysters but they were all sold out. After a bit of negotiating, he offered to shuck a little under a pound of oysters for me but it would take a couple of hours. I looked at my watch and it was already 11 a.m. and the dinner party was supposed to start at 5pm. Guessing that the situation would be the same at other grocery stores, I agreed. Luckily, they had the duck breasts too and I was able to get the majority of the other ingredients there.

I was out the door around 1pm and stopped at a local deli-mart to get flowers, a loaf of bread, before hitting the wine shop for a bottle of cooking wine and burgundy for mulled wine. I awkwardly lugged up my bulky bags up four flights of stairs and was in my apartment cooking by 1:30. As I was frantically chopping vegetables and preparing ingredients, I glanced at the clock and began to worry that I would not be finished cooking and tidying up the apartment by 5pm.

I called Q2 and pondered about whether I should postpone the pot-luck until 6pm. . She reasoned that most people would be late and no one would mind if things didn’t start on time. By 4 pm, I was in a groove and had time to clean up the apartment and myself.

There was a slight miscalculation with the duck recipe. I had doubled the recipe and the cooking time suggested was clearly not long enough (8 minutes on the stove was supposed to get the duck medium rare but it looked rare to me). Following the recipe, I put the sautéed mushrooms in a large dish and cut the duck in slices and placed it on top. Then I put the plate in the oven so the duck could cook some more. . unfortunately, fat drippings from the duck flowed down to the bottom of the oven and the entire apartment got smoky. Luckily Chan came to the rescue and cleaned it up and we opened up all the windows to air out the apartment.

Despite not being ready quite on time, the oyster leek stuffing and duck with wild mushrooms in a fig-red wine reduction came out okay (slightly overdone perhaps, but it’s my first time cooking duck), and the mulled wine was a hit with both the ladies and men.

After several rounds of mafia/cops/civilians we all called it a drunken night. As usual, a great low-key evening (except for self-inflicted stress). . .but I learned my lesson and will make sure to have all the ingredients bought in advance!

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Lazy Sunday

The party wiped me out. I didn’t get back home until 3:30 a.m. and slept until noon!! For those that know me well, that is pretty unheard of!

Roomie and I went to Teddy’s for brunch and then RMA, a Buddhist art museum around Chelsea. The presentation was excellent and the art work was quite amazing. The museum was also pretty interactive with thorough descriptions and live music. Quite nice and I think I’ll start making a bigger effort to visit the art galleries, museums, and performances that NYC has to offer.

After debating what we were going to do for dinner- usual conversation goes something like this:

Roomie: Do you want to cook, or eat out?

Me: I don’t care either way. What do you want to do?

Roomie: I don’t know. Where would you want to eat out if we eat out?

Me: I’m craving Asian. What about dumplings or something?

Roomie: You always crave Asian- sushi, Vietnamese, Chinese- It is probably cheaper to eat in.

Me: Well, let’s eat in then. We should probably have to go to the grocery store then.

Roomie: What are we going to make?

Me: I have to think about it. There’s frozen chicken and fish but we probably have to stop and buy some more things.

Roomie: Do you want to eat out or make something at home?

Me: I don’t’ care.

So after circling around the issue for a few minutes, we decided to go to Planet Thai since I’d never been there and just feeling to lazy to cook (yes, it happens from time to time). I had the spicy noodles, not bad, but probably not as good as the Sea’s drunken noodles. In any case, I’m glad I finally had the chance to go and see how it compared.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

One Hour Commute- Woo Hoo!!!

My roomie let me borrow his car to drive to Huntington today for work. . .I was nervous about driving in New York but since I wasn’t driving in the city and it was all mostly highway driving and suburbs so it was completely manageable. It took me just under an hour to get there!!! Far better than the usual 2.5 hours it takes me through mass transit. . of course, traffic was less congested since it was a weekend.

I was in much better spirits and much less tired by the end of the workday. Work was slow so I ended up washing buckets and sweeping a lot. Pretty uneventful.

I got home from work around 4pm and lazed around a bit before cooking dinner. Around 8pm I headed out to meet some friends to go to a party in the Upper West Side. We stopped for a couple drinks at the Dive Bar (I thought it was kind of amusing that the name of the restaurant was actually called “dive bar” but I guess there was some sort of nautical theme going on. The party was fun. The crowd was mostly anthropologists (99.99%) but luckily I knew a few people there already and so I wasn’t too far out of my element. I guess at the end of the day, once everyone starts drinking, it doesn’t matter too much.

Blistering Cold

Today I temped at Marie Claire. The work was pretty mindless- as temp work seems to go- but it was fun just being able to work at a fashion magazine. Not surprisingly the majority of the staff was female, casually dressed in jeans and cute tops. Essentially my job was to prepare the December magazine mailings to Marie Claire’s agents and clients. This means I went through and bookmarked all the ads for each client/agent. Pretty time consuming, but a smart business-sales move.

After work, I went back to Willie-B to get dressed up for dinner. Q2 and some friends and I were meeting up at the Bridge Café at the South Street Seaport for dinner. I took the train to the Brooklyn Bridge stop. Unfortunately, I had decided to wear a cute dress and heels. . but the walk was long and bitterly cold and by the end of the 45 minutes it took me (very high heels, I might add) to get to the restaurant, I was cursing up a storm and angry at myself.

But once I got inside the restaurant, had a drink to warm me up, and was in the company of good friends I was fine. I can already tell though that it’s going to take a lot of willpower to get myself to go out when the weather gets even colder!

Thursday, November 17, 2005

day off

Haven’t heard from the temp agency so it looks like I’ll have another day off. . not that I mind. Yesterday I was able to go for a nice 5 mile run and enjoy the weather! Went to C-town with Mikey and got some groceries and just hung out.

I’m cooking dinner for a couple of friends tonight. I had four different menus planned out and had to get VK (and the grocery store’s selection) narrow things down for me a bit. . I’ll be making:

Spinach and pear salad

Mussels and Shallots in a White Wine Sauce

Garlic Fries

Grilled Asparagus in a Balsamic Sauce
I’m always a little nervous cooking for someone for the first time so I like to make at least one dish that I’ve prepared before. Since I normally don’t cook elaborate meals for myself, this makes the rate of trying new recipes a little slow. . Luckily, Thanksgiving is around the corner so I’ll have a chance to experiment a little more!

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

*this* close to quitting

i had a bad day at work yesterday. very bad. when i walked into the florist, i immediately sensed that something was wrong. then D pulled me to the side and whispered that the store manager had been fired that morning. as my boss re-told the story an hour later, the store manager – A - had an attitude problem so he had told her to take a month off and he’d probably re-hire her then.

mondays are normally busy days because that’s when the big flower orders are delivered. on top of that, there were quite a few orders and funeral arrangements. . without the store manager, the most experienced/talented/capable floral designer at the florist, it made for a very busy day. in the end, the owner ended up rolling up his sleeves and doing his share of the arranging and he was able to get another floral designer to come in after hours to take care of the more elaborate funeral arrangements.

during the day, more of the details of A’s firing came out. i guess A was going through a tough break up and was allowing that to affect her performance at work. moreover she was slacking on the job. the owner thought A had poor work ethics, treated the driver badly, and had a dark side. turns out the owner had planned on hiring another part-timer to help during the holiday seasons and to work on saturdays. . somehow it was believed that A had told the woman that there was no need for her to come in afterall.

D and i were on edge the entire day. . trying not to be too loud or annoy the owner too much. to top off all that mess, when i got to the train station, i found out that all trains headed east and westbound to penn station were not working because there were fires. . around 8:30 p.m. the trains were working again and i was able to catch a train around 9:33 and get back home around 11:30.

i guess this is the first time in my life where i have not had a car and had to rely on public transportation. . and i found myself really disliking the feeling of having to rely on other people for help. . .in any case, during my wait for the train and on that train ride home, i was really hating the commute from brooklyn to long island and thinking of quitting and finding a florist closer to home to work at.

but after getting some rest and realizing that i am learning a lot and i like the work environment and the owner’s work philosophy and vision, i decided to wait things out. doesn’t mean i won’t keep my eyes open for other positions though. . .

Friday, November 11, 2005

Dumplings and Data Work

Just got back from having dumplings with R in C-town followed by delicious tiramisu in Little Italy . . . can I say again just how much I love NYC? Anyways, the Shanghainese soup dumplings hit the spot!! Also got some pan-friend ones and a side of greens stirfried in a garlicky sauce! Decided to call it an early night since I have data work I promised my boss and which I’ve been procrastinating with!

Very excited about Eddie *one of my best male friends* visiting this weekend!! He arrives tomorrow around 3pm and I was able to arrange it so I can get off work at 4 p.m. and meet him in Willie-B. Should be a fun weekend with lots of good eating (of course)!

The Schedule:

Friday- Brooklyn Brewery for pre-dinner drinking and catching up
Dinner at the Sea Thai Bistro
Bar Hopping

Saturday- Bus Tour of Manhattan and wandering the streets
Brunch at Essex or Lunch at Momofuku
Tapas Dinner at Pintxos
(More drinking?)

So will update you on the weekend festivities next week. Now I'm off to do my data work!

Thursday, November 10, 2005

(almost) too exhausted to blog

So I have a new work schedule that is leaving me exhausted!!! On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays I commute 2 hours each way to Long Island to work at the florist. Wednesdays through Fridays I do as much temping as possible.

Thus far, I’ve loved working at the florist. The people that work there are really nice and fun and the work environment, though I’m sure can get quite hectic and stressful, is pretty laid back and casual. On Monday, the store manager showed me the basics on plant/flower care, upkeep of the shop, etc. On Tuesday, I was able to even do my first flower arrangement in a basket. It’s not much, but I had a wonderful time doing it and the owner liked it because it’s non-traditional.



Luckily both days were relatively slow so there was more time to train me. Nevertheless, because I spend 8 hours on my feet and then 4 hours on public transport, by the time I get home, I’m just starving and plum work out. Luckily on Monday the roommie helped me cook dinner. . but Tuesday was a sad day when I just ate white rice with dried pork and some cheese left over from the party.

Perhaps taking pity on my long commutes, the owner drove me to the train station on Monday and picked me up from it Tuesday morning. He was generous enough to drive me all the way to the LES Tuesday night after the store closed early. As usual, we had interesting conversations. On Tuesday morning he grilled me on what my weaknesses were. I didn’t have a ready response- left me thinking about it for the rest of the day. Then we talked about politics and animosity between the Japanese and Chinese. He’s Japanese married to a Chinese woman so it was interesting to hear about his personal experience with discrimination. We also talked about business, how women are more attractive after age 30 (supposedly then they are worthwhile to talk to? Less shallow ), about principles, etc. Definitely a hell of a lot more interesting than riding the train/subway by myself zoning out to my iPod.

Wednesday was a mindless day of helping the real estate investment company prepare for a mass mailing. Today and tomorrow will be more of the same. Mostly I just go into autopilot, which is good because lately I’ve been sleep deprived and my brain hasn’t been functioning as well.

After work I’ll grab some pan-fried dumplings with R and possibly drinks with an old college friend, her husband, and his law school friends.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Busy Weekend

Saturday night Q2 and I threw a wine and cheese tasting party at my apartment. I spent the majority of the day getting ready for the party- picked up candles from Bed, Bath, & Beyond, bought mini pumpkins, decorative corn, crab apples, and mini pears from the farmer’s market, and hit the grocery store.

The roomie and I cleaned up the apartment and re-arranged the furniture to create a more lounge-y type space. Then I spent the better part of the day cleaning and arranging fruit, making swiss cheese bread and shrimp wrapped with prosciutto and zucchini skewers.




Q2, her boy, and his friends came over a little after 4 to help with the set-up. B did an excellent job with the cheese tray and the apartment looked great with the dozens of tealights scattered around the apartment. The turnout was pretty decent, over 20 people stuffed into the kitchen and living room. All the makings of a nice party: lots of good wine, conversation, and food. . . It was great to see some old friends again and make some new ones.

Luckily, Sunday was a lazy day. Got up late-ish and went to Teddy’s for brunch with the roomie. They have the *best* bloody mary’s by the way. Yummy breakfast of pork sausage and baked cheese grits- great hangover food but left me feeling sluggish the rest of the day. Then we walked a block over to watch the trail end of the marathon. Made me realize how much I miss training and cemented my desire to run the NY Marathon in the near future.

The rest of the afternoon I whiled away surfing the net, editing a CV, and IM’ing with friends. My roomie joked that we’ve managed to replace the t.v. with our laptops. . kinda sad but true. . .

Friday, November 04, 2005

First Day of Temping

So it’s only 11 pm and I’m exhausted! I had my first ever temp job today, essentially what amounted to a data entry/internet research job. Mindless typing for 8 hours straight!!! But hey, money is money, right?

After work, btw, it did feel good to be working again, I met up with VK in Brooklyn for dinner. . went to Tacu Tacu which I expected to be a Mexican or Latin American restaurant but winded up being some sort of strange Latin American/Asian fusion. . the dishes were hit or miss. VK’s Saigon Salmon was pretty tasty but my red snapper was not so great. Kind of disappointing. But I guess the only way to discover good restaurants is through trial and error.

Tomorrow will be temping again at the same place. Hopefully I canl finish the job that I started on today. It isn’t too bad really, easy mindless work, I just let my mind coast while I was typing away. . . But it would be really sad to have a job like that for life. . ugh. . but it’s a means to an end.

A reader asked what I’m doing with my life. . afterall, I was on the path to a phD in Economics and now I’m talking about floral design jobs and temping!! Well, I decided that at the end of the day and personally speaking, it’s important for me to find a career that I look forward to every day and that I’m passionate about. . and honestly, I just couldn’t see that happening with my previous career path. Now, I’m just trying to find and pursue my passion. And while it’s not always glamorous or fun and sometimes it’s damn scary, I’m so much happier now that I have been in the past three years.

I’ve gotten a lot of comments about how brave (or crazy) my life changes have been, but really I’ve just been following my heart and instincts. Simply I wasn’t happen with where my life was going and I realized that all I had to do to change it was to just go for it.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

scary movie

Last night the roomie and I went to the Halloween Parade in the village. We left the apartment a little before 8 pm and walked around a bit until we found some wooden street dividers. A bunch of people were already standing on top of them but I was able to sneak my way onto the edge of one (good thing I’m small!).

From there, I was able to get a pretty good view of the parade. . it was the most amazing parade I’ve ever seen. There was a great vibe in the air, 90% of the onlookers were dressed up in various costumes, and the parade seemed to go on and on. In addition to the normal slutty (put whatever character/career that you can think of) costumes there were some imaginative ones as well. My favorite was probably the Mona Lisa with frame and everything.

After watching for an hour, we decided to head back to Williamsburg and rent a movie. For those that know me well, I can be indecisive at times (I like to think of it as being laid back) but paired with my equally indecisive roommate, it took us over half an hour to pick a movie. We ended up watching Ringu which was pretty good. I will be the first one to admit that I am a scaredy cat so needless to say, watching horror movies is a rare occasion for me.
This morning, I went to another temp agency and went through the whole testing/interview process again. . hopefully something will turn up soon. The rest of the afternoon I’ll be surfing the net for jobs, making a menu for dinner I’m cooking for George and the roomie tomorrow night, and maybe making a quick trip to Tops.

happy halloween

I was able to drag my butt kinda late out of bed Saturday morning. I went into the city to get the remaining parts of my costume- black gloves and some black plastic bracelets. I found them at Claire’s near Union Square.

By the time I got back to my apartment, it was time to start getting ready. I turned on my i-tunes and started blasting the Immaculate Conception to get into character. Did the smoky eye, red lips, drew a mole above my lips. After pinning my hair up in braids, I put the rest of my costume in a bag and headed over to Q2’s. I finished getting dressed there and then it was time to meet up with the rest of the group for dinner at Havana.



It was a large group of people, around 20, turns out it was a half Halloween half birthday celebration for T’s cousin. A young group averaging in at 24, I had difficulty relating to most of them. . . but I threw back some mojitos and did my best to make small talk. Dinner was decent, certainly not the best or most authentic Cuban food I have had. . but it was in a convenient location. Perhaps because of the long wait for the food, the relaxing music, and too heavy food I was feeling more ready for a nap than to go party it up.

Nonetheless, after finishing up dinner, we braved the blistering cold and headed to Roseland. Once we were finally let inside, it was incredible, certainly the most Asian people I’ve ever seen dressed up in various costumes. . of course, most of the girls went as “sexy” versions of everything under the sun and guys had a pretty typical array of costumes. . perhaps the most memorable was the delivery guy with a package literally attached to the front of his pants. . got a good chuckle over that.

The music eventually got better and our group started dancing. But by 1 a.m., Q2 and I were ready to call it a night. All in all, a fun Halloween, but I must say the process of getting in costume and the anticipation of the party was better than the actual thing. Maybe I’m too old for this sorta thing afterall.
madonna