Variety is the spice of life you know...

Today is the long awaited first official entry on my New York City trip from April of this year and some of the delicious cuisine I ate there. NYC is of course world renowned for its food, from some of the best low key street food and hidden local spots to literally some of the most expensive four starred places to eat on the planet. The amount of restaurants and cafes and bars and is simply ridiculous - you could easily spend over a lifetime in that city without eating at the same place twice. The variety is also incredibly extensive, as seen in this nice map here of the different types of restaurants that dominate each zip code of the five NYC boroughs according to the Village Voice. All of this is fairly overwhelming, and as a result, while I definitely try and eat at a new place each time I go, I also find myself falling back on old reliable places that it has become kind of a traditional for myself and my family to visit every single time. They're always good.

On my first day, Wednesday April 21st , I was pretty jet-lagged from taking a red eye flight from San Jose to LaGuardia, so didn't do much. After checking into my interesting budget hotel the Jane, I took a nap, called one of my cousins who lives in NYC, and eventually decided I was hungry enough to find something in the area to eat. I had unnaturally good luck on this entire trip despite it being planned last minute and during a time of personal crisis, so of course my hotel was only a few minutes away from one of my favorite food related places to visit in NYC - The Chelsea Market. I'd first learned about it a few years ago when one of my cousins took my Dad, brother and I to inspect their artisan bread shop. I could probably spend an entire entry or more on The Chelsea Market alone, and I may in the future, but basically it is an old Nabisco factory converted into high end apartments and such, and on the first floor is an array of vendors selling all types of food; a miniature NYC condensed into one floor with a very industrial feel given its history. It truly makes for a very unique experience, and on top of that you can get a decent meal for a good price. I opted for the simply named "Chelsea Thai" and had their version of crispy chicken with broccoli.

It wasn't bad - a little heavy for me since my stomach hadn't settled yet, but the broccoli was fresh, the Jasmine rice tasted like it was supposed to, and the chicken had a very unique flavor that I still can't quite place. Definitely neither the most authentic nor the best Thai I've ever had but for the price and the atmosphere, not bad at all.

Seems I failed to take any other photos of the Chelsea Market...hm...instead, here is a photo of the view from my room on the 4th floor of the Jane.
I may have been staying in a budget hotel, but I was still in the trendy West Village area, and I could actually see the Statue of Liberty from my windows. I was pretty excited.

Well, that was what I did Thursday at any rate and I think covering all the things I ate in NYC is going to take more than one post if I want any sleep, so further meals will have to wait to allow me to state the obvious: to be continued...

Ugh

Well, Winnie is still sick, so she gets a free pass on her blog updates until she recovers, but I am going to try and sneak in another entry on time before I get too tired.

First, some non-food related issues I would like to get out of my system before the food appreciation begins. It's just that lately it seems that life does not like me very much. Hence the stomach problems and the entry being titled "ugh". Earlier this week, on Monday, between job recruiters calling and the usual stress at work, I was distracted enough that I managed to misplace my Motorola Droid. It was a very bad time to lose my cell phone. I had just spent the past few days actively applying for jobs and sending out resumes. I was fortunate to have a Cisco employee find it and turn it in to the lost and found the next day, but I was not a happy person for about 16 hours.

Despite all of that I did still successfully schedule an interview with a recruiter for earlier today, which went fine, but about 15 minutes before my interview I discovered that there was a gigantic hole in my skirt. I was able to finagle my skirt into still looking decent by changing the hole into a slit on the side of one leg...however, the length of that slit was really not appropriate for an interview. Maybe for a club or evening dance, but definitely not an interview. Oh well. I recognize these are small gripes, but the timing was just so bad for both of my problems that it led to decent amounts of stress and frustration on my part. And this is why it is important to take time to relax and eat delicious things.

Immediately after the interview, I met Matt at a restaurant, Honba Sushi, and ate this Tonkatsu (pork cutlet). It wasn't bad, pretty light actually, and I felt much better afterward.

This was a delicious and messy gyro with tzatziki from a nearby nicely inexpensive Greek place that my coworker Bing recommended. We ate outside as the weather was nice.


Bing and I have kind of become lunch partners now as we try to go to lots of new places as an excuse to take a long lunch and escape Cisco for a while. Next week we're going to try and go to have southern Shanghai style Chinese food.

My coworkers and I also find excuses to take a break from work while at the office as well. Earlier this week we had cheesecake to celebrate one coworker's birthday, and today we had more traditional cake to celebrate the birthday of another coworker, Olga. I've been told she kind of looks like me, but I don't know.

I'm sure Cisco appreciates me putting photos of some of their office space and lockers on my blog. The cake was from a local Chinese bakery and absolutely delicious. Fantastic batter and lightly whipped icing. Good strawberries too.

Okay, I'm pretty tired now and the cat wants her food, so I think that's a pretty good update of what's been going on with me lately. New York City photos should be next week. Good night.

Traveling

Okay, it's time for another irregularly scheduled update.

Recently, my stomach has been very very bad, I guess from stress at work, so I haven't been eating out as much, and when I do, it tends to be very mild and simple things such as sandwiches. I love sandwiches, but unless they are a particularly unusual sandwich or I am trying to highlight an certain attribute (like for any I may have posted before) I usually devour them before even thinking about taking out the camera. So probably not much in the way of new eating out/cooking pictures until I fix my stomach issues which is fine, as I have hundreds of much more interesting food photos to talk about.

Today's theme is traveling. When people go traveling, regardless of their budget, there is often an special emphasis on the food that is eaten during that time. One of the main categories in any travel guide highlights local places to eat and famous cuisine for the chosen area of travel. A traveler might eat out beyond their normal means at a very fancy restaurant just for fun, try to eat at the small places the locals eat at, or even eat at home with the locals themselves. All are excellent ways to discover new culinary experiences.

Logic would dictate that I should write about my most recent travels as an example for my blog, but as the New York City photos still need some sorting, it is with some excitement that I bring you my next featured meals...from the beautiful state of Maine! When my dad, brother and I went up to Richmond, Maine to visit my cousins Alex, Maryliyn and Alex Jr. From the summer of 2008.

I thought I had lost all of these photos because I could not for the life of me figure out where I had saved them, but one day my brother miraculously discovered that I had saved them on his mini-SD card that he usually uses for his GPS unit. After that was lost, and found again, he finally e-mailed them to me. The reason I wanted these so badly?

This:
What Maine is famous for. Succulent lobster, caught the day before, cooked the same day by my cousin Alex who is an excellent chef, and eaten with the traditional tools and bib. Delicious.

Lots of lobster. Yum.

Another restaurant I would like to feature also had excellent seafood, like these shrimp,

but was also unique in that you could dock your boat near the restaurant instead of parking your car. Which is what we did using my cousin's boat, the Palm Beach.

The blue building in the background to the left is the restaurant. The boat in the foreground with the people standing next to it is the Palm Beach. This was actually from the town of Bath and we were headed back on the Kennebec River because it was starting to rain hard (but not storm).

Here are some scenic photos of the Atlantic Ocean from a beach in Maine.


Beautiful, right? But extremely cold water, even this late in summer (end of July).

I could go on and on about how excellent the food is in Maine and what a great time I had there and how it was one of my best summer vacations ever but I think will save some parts for another entry when I go back, as I most certainly will someday. Have a good night.

So much eating out...

I'm not even going to try to come up with an excuse for what happened to my blog this past month...it would take too long. But a friend and I are both going to try and post at least one entry in our blogs every week to see if that doesn't help us both update more regularly.

My next reflecting series is also going to have to wait until I find the correct SD card and I'd rather summarize the past few weeks using recent pictures of food anyway.
So this entry is instead brought to you by the letter S.

Sonoma Chicken Coop


On Saturday, May 22nd, my Uncle Bill and Aunt A'delle from Sacramento, CA came down to San Jose to celebrate my birthday (actual date May 31st, but I already had plans for that day). They picked the primarily California based chain Sonoma Chicken Coop. It wasn't bad - I'd heard it was expensive, but for this area, I really thought their prices were pretty good. This was one of their specials for dinner that day - the Thai Peanut Chicken Wrap. I was really full from earlier that day from eating at...Applebee's I believe, so I wanted something lighter and this was perfect. Tender chicken, lots of vegetables, jasmine rice, and a nice peanut sauce made for a solid if less traditional American chicken restaurant entry. I think the rest of my party had Italian style dishes.

Steak

This steak represents the 2nd most expensive meal I have ever had and paid for by myself. This meal also included mashed potatos, wine, and Italian seltzer (don't ask), but as it was eaten at a Morton's the Steakhouse I believe it is fair to concentrate exclusively on the steak. This was their small (yes, small) rib-eye, cooked medium rare and it was a very very good steak. I actually can't say outright that it was the best steak I have ever had because of this grocery store called Dorothy Lane Market and their steak...but it is now very very high up there on my list. I went with a bunch of Matt's friends during Memorial Day weekend, along with one Japanese guest that was there for that weekend's FanimeCon. My Japanese is getting so bad though...
Worth going once for the atmosphere, service, company, and food, but I think it will be a while before I go to this expensive of a restaurant again. Or at least until I find a better job or something.

Sushi

Since people seem to like photos of sushi, here is another one. One of my-coworkers, Bing, and I eat out together practically every day now as an excuse to escape the horribly depressing Cisco environment. This is where we went for on Monday, June 7 - a pretty good sushi place called Sen Dai Sushi. A small place, but apparently always busy, we shared these two delicious and reasonably priced sushi rolls there and also ran into some current and former co-workers there, two of whom are still at Cisco, but no longer with our department. It was a good lunch.

Okay, I think that was a pretty good update entry for now. I might try and find some people pictures to accompany these food pictures, but it is getting late and I still have "work" tomorrow. Good night!

Reflecting Part 1

After yesterday's very personal blog entry, I decided I wanted to dedicate this next series of entries to my coworkers at Cisco, my godmother in NYC, and others who have kept me sane and well fed over the past couple of months. I may not have time to finish this particular part until later this afternoon as I believe some current and former coworkers and I are going out to lunch again today.

These first parts will catalog my eating excursions (besides Bocce ball) with my coworkers. Fortunately for me, most of my coworkers are as interested in global cuisine as I am, so I have eaten at a good variety of places since arriving at Cisco - some expensive and fancy, some very cheap and casual. Very shortly after I was hired, I was invited to a holiday gift swap with my female coworkers which took place at the nearby Pasta Pomodoro. http://www.pastapomodoro.com/ They are a chain native to California that serves Italian and seafood dishes.

Penne with tomato sauce and cheese and stuff. It was okay. Kind of overpriced for basic pasta - I can probably make it better and for a lot less than the restaurant price.


Some of my coworkers then. Everyone but Eve (far left) is still here...for now. I didn't even know anyone's name for a while...I am so bad with names. Next to Eve is Bing, then Valentina, then Olga, and on the very right side is Lia.

For my gift swap Olga and I wound up having each others names, and I received a very nice wine set (bottle opener and 4 stoppers) while I gave her some Christmas cookie baking sets and a puzzle, which wound up working very well because she was planning on visiting and baking with her young nieces later that day. I still have and use the wine set.

I guess I will feature one restaurant/event/day so this will be in more parts than I originally planned, but I guess this gives each one its own time to shine and me a way to update more regularly and efficiently. Until tomorrow then...

Questioning

Well, it's been a while again. I was so ready for a return to writing regularly after that last short mobile post, but then so many things in my life changed. Some people prefer to update quickly as events unfold; a desire made easier with the advent of forums such as Facebook and Twitter, but I prefer to let everything finish and calm down so I have time to reflect and look back on everything as a whole. I haven't felt emotionally comfortable with writing what has happened to me in the past couple of months, particularly when I find it a lot easier to write about success and fun food excursions rather than what right now feels like failure. I decided it was better that I wait until I really felt the need to write, and after going through what to say over and over again in my head, that has finally happened. As such, after making another long excuse for not writing again, I will give a quick update on my life.

On April 5th, after enjoying a wonderful week touring the bay area with my brother, Dad, and Matt, I returned to my job at Cisco Systems only to learn that the majority of my department was being outsourced overseas. I was probably going to lose my job by the end of April, just a few months after I had started. I was devastated, and along with most of my coworkers, began to go through the five stages of grief. I even refused to believe my Japanese co-worker, Sakura, the first day because everything just seemed so sudden and unreal, even though looking back, it is not uncommon at all these days for tech jobs to be outsourced to cheaper labor markets.

Then, on April 15th, Matt and I decided that our relationship was not working particularly well and that we should end it. I know I have been immensely private during this relationship, so while this was not a surprise to me, it may have been or still be to some of my friends. We had not been doing well at all; neither of us had been happy or even feeling much like a couple for quite a while. I had even previously spoken to my dad just a couple days before the 15th to tell him I didn't think this relationship would last much longer. My dad said to give it time, so I had been, but ultimately Matt brought it up before I had even decided when might be best. There really is no best time to do it anyway. To answer the inevitable question of why we broke up, without going into ranting specifics, suffice to say that we currently have very different goals in life and that we both feel we have a lot of things we need to accomplish before settling into a relationship where we are unsure of the future of said relationship.

Hopefully this will clarify some of my statements and actions on Facebook about being lost and single. I don't really mind being single and I am still on good terms with Matt, it was just a lot to go through between that and the fear of losing my job at Cisco. I decided to handle my mounting stress in the ways I know best - by traveling and eating good food. One day after Matt and I broke up, I booked a flight to visit New York City for four days to reflect, eat lots of delicious food, tour unique places, and go shopping in Soho. More to come on that later. After returning to San Jose, I learned that Cisco had extended my and some of my coworkers' contracts by three months, until the end of July. We all promptly spent the entire last weeks of April partying and eating out every single day. I felt like I was back in college. More to come on that later as well. I don't particularly feel that this serious blog entry should feature mood-lightening food.

So, as my entry title states, lately I have been questioning everything, particularly who I am as a person and where I want to go in life from here. I know that in the long run when I look back I probably will say that coming out here wasn't a complete failure. I have been learning a lot about myself, I am gaining experience at Cisco, meeting lots of new people and so on, but right now I am just kind of frustrated at everything and still mostly lost. However, things could be a lot worse in life - I still have my job at Cisco, and I am still living with Matt until the end of July when both our apartment contract and my work contract come up. And most importantly I have still found plenty of time to enjoy parts of my life, even if they are the simple events of talking to my supportive friends and family, seeing a movie, going places with coworkers, and of course, eating and cooking lots of good food.

My adventures with food return tomorrow morning. Featuring NYC pizza and local San Jose/Milpitas restaurants! Stay tuned.

Pixel Pipe

I'm trying out this application for Android called PixelPipe that always me to send blog posts and photos from my phone, but I'm using the free version, so I'm not sure how well it works. Since St. Patrick's Day is on a Wednesday, we celebrated early with Matt's parents with some homemade, traditional food. It was filling, warm, and delicious.

*update* So, seems PixelPipelite is great for uploading pictures to the blog, but not so great for posts. I'm going to look into some other applications for blogging on the go, but otherwise I can probably just use the browser, or wait until I get home. *end update*