I just got a new job as a hostess at Swanky Uptown Restaurant so I'm pretty busy nowadays. (Yes, I know I could do much better things with my degrees, blah blah thanks a lot for the support Mom. Also, where are my damn footslaves when I need them? 7 hours every other day of standing on hard wooden floors is really painful.) Sexy Englishman & I managed to fit in the movie on Monday, though. I like torture movies & lots of killing but this movie is ridiculous. Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh is clearly an absolute psychopath. Not to mention his crazy-ass Beatle haircut, possibly the worst hair I've ever seen (including on real people). He does an amazing job of portraying someone on a completely different wavelength from the rest of us, who enjoys killing just for the hell of it. He leaves almost no one in his path un-butchered. The emptiness in his eyes is almost as horrifying as his favorite, though not only, murder method. He carries around a pneumatic cattle air gun which shoots a bolt several inches forward before retracting. So when he puts it on someone's forehead, it's like shooting them in the head without the messy backsplatter or ear-shattering noise. It's awful.
At first, I thought Llewelyn Moss was an asshole for robbing dead bodies of their guns & suitcase of money. But as he tried his damnedest to get away from the pursuing Chigurh, I found myself cheering for him. Tommy Lee Jones is laconic as the sheriff on whose territory most of the murders happen, & Woody Harrelson has a nice little cameo as an assassin. I thought Mrs. Moss was hilarious, almost a caricature of a redneck wife, but she became sympathetic by the end too.
Do not, I repeat DO NOT, see this movie if you're sensitive to blood or murder. I kept squeaking in fright & so did our other friend. She was so scared she spilled a giant soft drink on her boyfriend right at the beginning. (It starts with a pneumatic air gun murder.) I had to hide my eyes at a couple parts & even though I liked the movie overall, it was incredibly grisly. If you can stomach all that, it's a really good movie. It made me think about what money can make people do & how easy it is to start sliding down that slippery slope.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Avery Fisher concert
I went to the 11/10 concert, which was rather disappointing. The first piece was some weird Chinese modernist thing, which frankly just sounded noisy. I wanted to like it - supporting my sort-of countrymen & all - but I didn't. Gimmicky orchestral stuff isn't my thing. The young composer is quite handsome though. I was excited about Vadim Repin playing the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole, one of the staples of the solo violin repertoire, and yet again disappointed. He was out of tune a lot. At first I blamed it on nerves, but as it kept happening I couldn't figure out a good excuse for him. Also, he was wearing some kind of weird Nehru jacket & suede shoes that made him look as though he was playing in his pajamas & socks.
The only unqualifiedly good thing about the program was Beethoven's Seventh. I recognized a lot of the melodies, which had been floating around in my head unattached to any particular work. Yes, I was a typical diva violinist, only paying attention to concertmaster solos & the violin repertoire. I also pretty much stopped listening to classical music after I got out from under my mother's thumb 7 years ago so whatever I did know about orchestral music got jumbled up or forgotten.
I liked the whole experience of going to the concert though. It felt very grown-up & cultured; dressing up, having champagne beforehand, reading the program notes, etc. We used to go to concerts almost every week when I was growing up. I hadn't been to a New York Philharmonic concert since I moved here several years ago, & the only times I'd been in Carnegie Hall or Avery Fisher were when I was playing. Fortunately Sexy Englishman quite liked it as well, so we'll probably go to another one.
Sadly, I can't say as much for the ballet. A few months ago I begged him to take me to Sleeping Beauty, which was much more old-fashioned than I expected, with lots of solos & irrelevant (though beautiful) parts, & he hated it. He refuses to go to the Balanchine retrospective thingy they're putting on soon. I keep explaining that it was choreographed at least 100 years later but he won't listen. Maybe my lovely friend Dancer wants to go...
The only unqualifiedly good thing about the program was Beethoven's Seventh. I recognized a lot of the melodies, which had been floating around in my head unattached to any particular work. Yes, I was a typical diva violinist, only paying attention to concertmaster solos & the violin repertoire. I also pretty much stopped listening to classical music after I got out from under my mother's thumb 7 years ago so whatever I did know about orchestral music got jumbled up or forgotten.
I liked the whole experience of going to the concert though. It felt very grown-up & cultured; dressing up, having champagne beforehand, reading the program notes, etc. We used to go to concerts almost every week when I was growing up. I hadn't been to a New York Philharmonic concert since I moved here several years ago, & the only times I'd been in Carnegie Hall or Avery Fisher were when I was playing. Fortunately Sexy Englishman quite liked it as well, so we'll probably go to another one.
Sadly, I can't say as much for the ballet. A few months ago I begged him to take me to Sleeping Beauty, which was much more old-fashioned than I expected, with lots of solos & irrelevant (though beautiful) parts, & he hated it. He refuses to go to the Balanchine retrospective thingy they're putting on soon. I keep explaining that it was choreographed at least 100 years later but he won't listen. Maybe my lovely friend Dancer wants to go...
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
trivia master
You know those Delta ads that say something like "Change is: being crowned cross-country trivia champion"? That's me! Delta sucks, but now that I kicked ass from Atlanta to the Bahamas I like them a bit more. (Yes, I know that is not technically cross-country.) Poor Sexy Englishman was overjoyed at beating me by a hair in the first game but I dominated the following 5. I also had the highest score for the entire flight. On a more serious note, Hurricane Noel screwed up our flight on Thursday & I have to say Delta was pretty on the ball about calling us & rebooking us on the next flight out. This is just one plus in their favor though - they've been completely shitty up until now.
This past President's Day weekend, when I flew to Colombia, people trying to check in were forced to stand in the bitter cold outside the terminal because the lines were so long & the staff couldn't figure out how to process people in a non-snail-like manner. They resorted to basically just calling the next flight & taking care of people haphazardly while delaying flights until they'd checked everyone in. Plus, since I was flying JFK to Atlanta to Bogotá, I got in the international line & 2 hours later was told I should have been in domestic. Which makes no sense, because my bags & I were going internationally, & it turned out that cretin was wrong anyway. I swore then I would never fly Delta again but, you know, sometimes one has to save money. I also don't like their weird PR campaign with the new Delta Sky Lounge bar in NYC (I'm not kidding, it's on 57th & 6th), making up new cocktails (!) & thinking that people want not-free movies & TV instead of decent service. All the money they've wasted on that crap, they could have put into improving existing services. I don't need a fancy Rande Gerber cocktail. I want some damn food when I'm sitting in first class from the Bahamas to NYC for 3 hours. Little cracker & cookie packs do not count. I want the flight to leave on time; I don't want a $5 movie on the tiny screen.
There is just no reason American airlines can't get their act together. We had better service & food in Africa than anywhere I've flown in the States. I really think the government bailing the airlines out every time they're about to go bankrupt is unwise. Some of them are bloated, inefficient & need to fail. I don't see why airlines should get special treatment when most other companies are allowed to stand & fall on their own merits. It's been shown over & over that competition is the best way to serve consumers, & it's about time we had some.
This past President's Day weekend, when I flew to Colombia, people trying to check in were forced to stand in the bitter cold outside the terminal because the lines were so long & the staff couldn't figure out how to process people in a non-snail-like manner. They resorted to basically just calling the next flight & taking care of people haphazardly while delaying flights until they'd checked everyone in. Plus, since I was flying JFK to Atlanta to Bogotá, I got in the international line & 2 hours later was told I should have been in domestic. Which makes no sense, because my bags & I were going internationally, & it turned out that cretin was wrong anyway. I swore then I would never fly Delta again but, you know, sometimes one has to save money. I also don't like their weird PR campaign with the new Delta Sky Lounge bar in NYC (I'm not kidding, it's on 57th & 6th), making up new cocktails (!) & thinking that people want not-free movies & TV instead of decent service. All the money they've wasted on that crap, they could have put into improving existing services. I don't need a fancy Rande Gerber cocktail. I want some damn food when I'm sitting in first class from the Bahamas to NYC for 3 hours. Little cracker & cookie packs do not count. I want the flight to leave on time; I don't want a $5 movie on the tiny screen.
There is just no reason American airlines can't get their act together. We had better service & food in Africa than anywhere I've flown in the States. I really think the government bailing the airlines out every time they're about to go bankrupt is unwise. Some of them are bloated, inefficient & need to fail. I don't see why airlines should get special treatment when most other companies are allowed to stand & fall on their own merits. It's been shown over & over that competition is the best way to serve consumers, & it's about time we had some.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
off again
The Halloween party was an epic success - so much so that Sexy Englishman & his housemates are no longer allowed to throw parties with more than about 20 people. We had 200 people show up! It was awesome. & one of our favorite people in the whole world made a surprise visit from London... I was furious at not being told beforehand but so so happy to see him. I couldn't decide whether to whip him or hug him. SE & I, along with Cute Gay Guy & a couple other people, partied through to Sunday morning & then started cleaning up. This was our "bar" at that point.
We had such a great time we're not even going out for Halloween tonight. Plus, we're flying out to the Bahamas tomorrow for his college friend's wedding, & we have to look nice for the über-posh people there. It's going to be at Lyford Cay. The dress code is 4 pages long, I am not kidding. They are so crazy, for breakfast they say that men don't have to wear panama hats but it's encouraged. I'm excited to wear my new dress from Selfridges though!!
We had such a great time we're not even going out for Halloween tonight. Plus, we're flying out to the Bahamas tomorrow for his college friend's wedding, & we have to look nice for the über-posh people there. It's going to be at Lyford Cay. The dress code is 4 pages long, I am not kidding. They are so crazy, for breakfast they say that men don't have to wear panama hats but it's encouraged. I'm excited to wear my new dress from Selfridges though!!
Friday, October 26, 2007
hanzoswords.com sucks ass
I decided to be Go Go from Kill Bill for Halloween, since I already have a slutty schoolgirl outfit & they have a ball & chain at the dungeon where I rent. I bought a mini samurai sword online from hanzoswords.com, because she had one & I always wanted a sword. It was $11 + $11 shipping so I was pretty happy. When it arrived, though it looked good, it couldn't be opened. I tried for a couple days but it was jammed. I left a voicemail for them, which wasn't returned, & then emailed. They replied in a few hours, telling me to get another person & try to open the sword that way. I thought that was kind of stupid, because if I can't open it on my own, regardless of my strength, the sword is useless. Who wants a prop sword they can't even pull out of the scabbard? & if I open it once with someone else, it's still inoperable all the other times. Anyhow, I told them I wanted a replacement by Saturday at the latest. This was Tuesday night. Sexy Englishman, his housemates & I are throwing a huge Halloween party on Saturday so I need it by then. They email back that it's no problem, they can do that. I ask again to confirm that they can guarantee it will get here by Saturday. They say yes, they just need a tracking # for the one I have when I send it back by 6:30 pm eastern time Wednesday.
On Wednesday, I take care of it by 3:30 for $20 because that's the cheapest way I can get a tracking #. I don't know much about shipping so I sigh & say, fine whatever send it FedEx as long as I get it out on time, just do the least expensive way. I email the site. No answer. I email again at 6:30 to make sure they got the first email, because I want that sword in the mail tonight. I get a reply at 9:30 saying "Oh sorry, didn't have time to check mail before I went to the post office this afternoon, we will have to send it express tomorrow (Thursday) & that will cost about $20, but we'll reimburse today's shipping costs since it was our mistake." I said fine just send it to SE's apartment because I won't be home much the next few days. I comment that they must have a great deal with the post office because it took me that much to send to them, & the unfriendly reply is "Oh. No. I did not ask you to send it express. 2 lbs should have been $7. I will only give you that much." I'm already pissed off at this person for not checking her email in time to send the thing out earlier, which is costing them more & entirely their fault. I don't know anything about parcels, the corner shipping store told me what they could do & $20 was my lowest option if I wanted the tracking # hanzoswords demanded.
I feel that I've been quite reasonable & clear up to this point. They send me a defective sword - I ask nicely for a new one. I said I wanted a new sword only if they guaranteed delivery by Saturday - they said yes. I shell out $20 without complaint & email the tracking # as requested, twice before the deadline - they mess that up, won't reimburse most of the shipping & act like I'm the one in the wrong. I email SE's address twice for them to send to - & today I come home to a notice from the US Postal Service saying "Sorry we missed you! You have an express mail package." TWICE I told her the address. I understand that they're busy for Halloween, but this was very simple & they fucked up repeatedly. This means I have to come back to my post office, among the myriad things we need to do to get SE's apartment ready for 300 partygoers, to pick up the damn sword that should have been ready two weeks ago. Fuckwits is a word that comes to mind.
Update: customer [dis]service tried to argue with me over email about this. I told them I wanted someone to call me last week since no one ever returned my voicemail. They said there was nothing to discuss, please pay the bill for shipping, we did everything we could. I explained succinctly & politely why that was not the case & got another dimwitted "please pay the bill, thanks for your business" message. I said I didn't want to keep going back & forth over email & to please call me. All I've gotten since Monday is PayPal reminders, which apparently they send out 3 at a time. Keep digging the hole deeper, dummies...
Update in March 2008: hanzoswords found this post & commented on their side of the story at length, but they used my name so I had to delete it. I told them they were welcome to re-post if they took out my name. It seems like they still don't quite understand what happened, but they canceled the PayPal bill for the shipping & at least made the effort to apologize to me, so maybe it's just their one employee who is messing things up.
On Wednesday, I take care of it by 3:30 for $20 because that's the cheapest way I can get a tracking #. I don't know much about shipping so I sigh & say, fine whatever send it FedEx as long as I get it out on time, just do the least expensive way. I email the site. No answer. I email again at 6:30 to make sure they got the first email, because I want that sword in the mail tonight. I get a reply at 9:30 saying "Oh sorry, didn't have time to check mail before I went to the post office this afternoon, we will have to send it express tomorrow (Thursday) & that will cost about $20, but we'll reimburse today's shipping costs since it was our mistake." I said fine just send it to SE's apartment because I won't be home much the next few days. I comment that they must have a great deal with the post office because it took me that much to send to them, & the unfriendly reply is "Oh. No. I did not ask you to send it express. 2 lbs should have been $7. I will only give you that much." I'm already pissed off at this person for not checking her email in time to send the thing out earlier, which is costing them more & entirely their fault. I don't know anything about parcels, the corner shipping store told me what they could do & $20 was my lowest option if I wanted the tracking # hanzoswords demanded.
I feel that I've been quite reasonable & clear up to this point. They send me a defective sword - I ask nicely for a new one. I said I wanted a new sword only if they guaranteed delivery by Saturday - they said yes. I shell out $20 without complaint & email the tracking # as requested, twice before the deadline - they mess that up, won't reimburse most of the shipping & act like I'm the one in the wrong. I email SE's address twice for them to send to - & today I come home to a notice from the US Postal Service saying "Sorry we missed you! You have an express mail package." TWICE I told her the address. I understand that they're busy for Halloween, but this was very simple & they fucked up repeatedly. This means I have to come back to my post office, among the myriad things we need to do to get SE's apartment ready for 300 partygoers, to pick up the damn sword that should have been ready two weeks ago. Fuckwits is a word that comes to mind.
Update: customer [dis]service tried to argue with me over email about this. I told them I wanted someone to call me last week since no one ever returned my voicemail. They said there was nothing to discuss, please pay the bill for shipping, we did everything we could. I explained succinctly & politely why that was not the case & got another dimwitted "please pay the bill, thanks for your business" message. I said I didn't want to keep going back & forth over email & to please call me. All I've gotten since Monday is PayPal reminders, which apparently they send out 3 at a time. Keep digging the hole deeper, dummies...
Update in March 2008: hanzoswords found this post & commented on their side of the story at length, but they used my name so I had to delete it. I told them they were welcome to re-post if they took out my name. It seems like they still don't quite understand what happened, but they canceled the PayPal bill for the shipping & at least made the effort to apologize to me, so maybe it's just their one employee who is messing things up.
Monday, October 15, 2007
if you don't know what kind of asian I am...
don't fucking call me kim chee, idiot. Or say konichiwa or ni hao. (a) You're almost certain to guess wrong, (b) you know you can't possibly be saying it right, (c) that makes me want to talk to you even less & most importantly (d) that's not my damn name. Assholes.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
yay for boots!
Finally it is cold enough to wear boots again. I missed my beautiful black leather. Plus, since it's raining, it is a practical decision as well. Now, what to wear on top...
In other news, I finished the project at Giant Multinational Corporation so I no longer need to commute to yucky Jersey every day for work. It was 1.5 hours each way! Which comprised 3 trains & about 30 minutes of walking. Planning to cocktail &/or bartend, preferably the latter, though I need to learn how. Can you believe I could get paid more as a cocktail waitress than a lawyer?!?! I've been enjoying sleeping & going to the gym this week.
& most exciting of all, I cooked dinner for Sexy Englishman last night! I can follow a recipe fairly well but I pretty much use my kitchen to store books, boil ramen, or throw 10 things in a pot & call it soup. We go out to dinner 5 or 6 nights a week so it's not like I need to ever put on an apron. I wanted to show him how much I love & appreciate what a wonderful boyfriend he is, & was hankering for some shrimp fra diavolo, so I decided to make it & surprise him. It turned into shrimp & scallops fra diavolo with the help of about 7 internet recipes put together. I bought supplies at Citarella - if you live near one, it is so awesome for getting fresh everything - & went over to his place & plunged in. I have never made pasta that wasn't just boiled noodles with sauce on top so this was new to me. I had to peel & de-vein the shrimp myself, sauté them & the scallops while boiling the pasta, & then toss them all together. Fortunately I didn't try to make the sauce myself (thank you Rao's). SE was surprised & happy when he came home - he said it was very yummy. Next time I will boil the pasta & sauté everything less though. I underestimated how quickly seafood cooks. But overall, yay for my first proper attempt at cooking!
In other news, I finished the project at Giant Multinational Corporation so I no longer need to commute to yucky Jersey every day for work. It was 1.5 hours each way! Which comprised 3 trains & about 30 minutes of walking. Planning to cocktail &/or bartend, preferably the latter, though I need to learn how. Can you believe I could get paid more as a cocktail waitress than a lawyer?!?! I've been enjoying sleeping & going to the gym this week.
& most exciting of all, I cooked dinner for Sexy Englishman last night! I can follow a recipe fairly well but I pretty much use my kitchen to store books, boil ramen, or throw 10 things in a pot & call it soup. We go out to dinner 5 or 6 nights a week so it's not like I need to ever put on an apron. I wanted to show him how much I love & appreciate what a wonderful boyfriend he is, & was hankering for some shrimp fra diavolo, so I decided to make it & surprise him. It turned into shrimp & scallops fra diavolo with the help of about 7 internet recipes put together. I bought supplies at Citarella - if you live near one, it is so awesome for getting fresh everything - & went over to his place & plunged in. I have never made pasta that wasn't just boiled noodles with sauce on top so this was new to me. I had to peel & de-vein the shrimp myself, sauté them & the scallops while boiling the pasta, & then toss them all together. Fortunately I didn't try to make the sauce myself (thank you Rao's). SE was surprised & happy when he came home - he said it was very yummy. Next time I will boil the pasta & sauté everything less though. I underestimated how quickly seafood cooks. But overall, yay for my first proper attempt at cooking!
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Halo 3
My name is [RD], & I can't play Halo for shit. I can't play anything after Super Nintendo actually. I tried to play Gears of War with Sexy Englishman the other weekend, & thought I sucked because we were coming down from a marathon afterparty, but this past weekend I tried the new Halo & couldn't even get my guy to look at the right eye level, let alone direction. I spent most of the time looking for my team! I even got lost trying to find them. I was doing one of my inadvertent whirl-around-with-head-thrown-back exercises when I fell off a small cliff & got completely disoriented. I really want to learn how to play but SE & his housemate Young Entrepreneur are too good at it & I'm a complete beginner, so I guess I'll have to wait until they beat the game & then maybe they can teach me. I always thought of myself as a bit of tomboy who was pretty good at boy games so now I'm sad. You'd think all the years of violin would make my hand-eye coordination good but apparently not in this case.
Friday, September 28, 2007
I heart Roald Dahl
When I was little (& even now) Roald Dahl was one of my favorite authors. In honor of his birthday on September 13, Google made a special logo, how cute is that? If you haven't had the pleasure of acquaintance with his books you should go read them now. They're still awesome to me, 20 years later.
Monday, September 24, 2007
yet another trip
Sexy Englishman & I just got back from a week in London & Malta. I spent a lot of time wandering around London by myself, since SE had to work, & managed to only get lost a few times with the help of Google maps on my BlackBerry, a London map book & a Tube map. I have no sense of direction so it's pretty difficult navigating by myself. But after several days of doing it, I'm much better. We flew out Wednesday night, arriving early Thursday morning. SE went to work & I set off in search of Wagamama after a very long nap. I found the Kensington one after getting turned around a few times. My feeling of accomplishment quickly evaporated when I tried to get to Gaucho Grill (in Broadgate) to meet SE & some of his friends. He told me to take the Central Line from Bayswater to Liverpool St. Station. He should have said Lancaster Gate, & unfortunately I hadn't ever taken the Tube on my own at that point so I didn't know anything about it. After walking a long time in pretty but painful heels, I found Bayswater. When I told people where I was headed they directed me to the Circle Line, which also goes to Liverpool St. but is much slower. Are you confused yet? My BlackBerry had decided to stop recognizing the Vodaphone network, so I couldn't even get in touch with SE. One of his emails got through though, & he told me to hop in a cab. £20 ($40) later, I finally arrived. Fortunately, the steak was good, & SE's friends teased him until he apologized for giving me bad & un-detailed directions, so I cheered up.
Friday went better. I found a Ping Pong for dim sum & was fairly impressed. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the British Museum. I tried to go to the First Emperor Terracotta Soldier exhibit - supporting my peeps, you know - but it was sold out for the day & it cost £12 ($24) so I wasn't really sure I wanted to go. I had fun wandering around more thoroughly this time. I saw the other Egyptian rooms, the rest of the Asian rooms, the slavery photographs, Greek pottery, Assyrian jewelry, etc... that museum is ridiculously huge. This time I wore sensible sneakers but 3 hours of walking & learning all by myself was exhausting. Afterwards I sat in Hyde Park for a little while until I had to meet SE to go to the wedding in Malta.
We took the express train to Gatwick but couldn't find our flight. This turned out to be because it was at Heathrow, 40 miles away. With 1.5 hours to go, we managed to snag a cab for £81 ($162!!) & actually made it in 35 minutes. Despite some issues carrying on my violin & the tennis rackets, we got on board ok. Nerve-racking though. We had lunch with SE's parents Saturday before playing some lousy tennis. We both used to be pretty good but it's been a while. & serving is so much harder than it looks. We stopped after a very sweaty hour & I got ready super fast (for me) in an evening gown I first wore at age 18. Amazingly, it fits. Not sure how that can be - perhaps my dress follows its own laws of physics, as I'm still trying to lose the inches I gained in Africa.
SE's childhood friend was the groom, & the bride was Maltese. The Catholic ceremony at the church of St. Patrick in Sliema was beautiful. The standing wasn't great, nor the "lamb of God" stuff or the music but the bride & groom were obviously glowing with happiness & I love that part where they ask, "Do you take this woman, in sickness & in health," etc. I cried a bit. Plus now I know I definitely don't want to get married in a church & SE agrees completely. I just want to say that part of the rite. There was a lovely cream-colored Rolls Royce waiting for the newlyweds afterward, & we all trooped back to the hotel for the open bar portion of the night. I had way too many cocktails & glasses of champagne while trying to look sober for SE's parents. After they went upstairs SE & I tried out our new moves from ballroom dance class & got a little rambunctious - I ended up in the pool! We went to bed soon after that & couldn't drag ourselves out of bed until about 1:30 the next afternoon, & that was only because we had to leave for the airport around 2:45. We flew back to London without incident.
We'd stayed in the Queensway Hotel initially, but I wanted to switch so we booked the Rose Court for the second part of our London stay. Not good. We moved to the Edward Lear hotel on Seymour St. the next day, which was much better & whimsical besides. Lear was a nature illustrator & nonsense poet, most famous for "The Owl & the Pussycat." The whole place was being renovated & our room was absolutely charming. Everything was so cute & cozy I really wished I could stay longer just for that. Although it is much easier to delight in coziness when you just have 2 suitcases of stuff. The staff at the Lear are very friendly, it's in a great location (Marble Arch) & a double room with bathroom is under £100 even in the high season. It's a really good deal, I definitely recommend the place.
I'm impressed with the food in London. This time was very Indian-intensive - I ended up "having a curry" 4 days in a row. That just means eating Indian, not necessarily curry per se. Sunday night we went to La Porte des Indes. It's much bigger than it looks from outside. The cuisine is supposed to be French-influenced authentic from the Pondicherry region. We did the tasting menu & were blown away. It was almost as good as the Mughal Room in Cairo. The service was unobtrusive & excellent, while the space managed to be inviting despite its size, & I got an orchid sprig when we left. (They do that for all the ladies.) It was still alive when I flew home Wednesday; really wish I could've brought it home.
Monday I made a pilgrimage to Brick Lane after visiting the Old Spitalfields Market. At Famous Curry House I had an actual curry, which was quite small, so when I saw the 2007 Best Chef place Papadoms, I decided to try it too. Both were good; Papadoms was definitely better though. The chicken jalfrezi there was scrumptious. Later, when SE got home from work, we checked out Crazy Bear in Fitzrovia. It was a Thai fusion place recommended in some little guide I picked up in Heathrow. The drinks were fantastic & so was the food. It was a bit of an odd crowd in our section - I swear one couple was an oldish Thai escort & her long-term john - but we had a great time. The bathrooms alone are worth the trip. In fact, it's like being on a trip when you go inside. The room is hidden, first of all; you just push one of the wood panels in the hallway. Then you're inside a completely mirrored room. The only reason I found a stall was because those doors had knobs. The sink is a trough affair where you can reach across to the men's bathroom under the mirror. Very cool, though I bet a lot of inebriated customers get lost in there. Tuesday we had dinner with one of SE's friends at Bombay Palace in Westminster, which was also great. (Thanks to Google, now I know they have one here in NYC as well. Yay!) The boys got chicken murgh tikka, basically equivalent to tikka masala, & I got the chicken kohlapuri. Yummy yummy. So now after 2 very satisfying trips, I can confidently say that the restaurant scene in London is nothing for a New Yorker to sneeze at. The only drawback is the expense. Everything's pretty much the same price as here, except the price is in pounds so it's really double.
Since SE worked every weekday, I had to amuse myself a lot. I tried to avoid the department store Selfridges, because I have to be a bit sensible with money, but he insisted that it was really cool & I should look around. It was indeed really cool. I discovered my new favorite goth/domme jewelry brand, Chrome Hearts. I desperately wanted to buy something, but there were no price tags on the jewelry. So I astutely inferred from a tank top price tag of £100 that everything would be out of my reach. It's ok. One day. I wandered on, into the contemporary area, where I was waylaid by the prettiest dress ever. It was cream silk with black lace & embroidery flowers - I had to buy it. It was £90 ($180), not too bad. I got vinyl round-toed pumps for £40 & sexy buckled black leather gloves for £22. At which point I realized I had better leave before my wallet took another hit. The Old Spitalfields area was not very interesting since it's basically just a lot of semi-expensive yuppie shops now, but some of the restaurants looked cool. There was one store, Fairy Goth Mother, which had amazing corsets & goth/fetish-y clothes. I ended up buying a very pretty skirt there for only £20.
Tuesday was sightseeing instead of shopping. I started with the London Eye, which is quite expensive (£15) but a breathtaking view of a beautiful city. I always forget how much bigger London is than NYC. A nice English couple on the ride answered all my "What's that building?" questions - I think my favorite was Charing Cross Station. Afterward I made my way to the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Definitely not worth the £6. It's not even interesting to see Baker St., since it doesn't look Victorian anymore at all. The top floor of 221B was an extremely creepy wax museum of scenes from the stories. They were bad, but lifelike enough to make me reluctant to put more than my head close to any of them. My next stop, the Dickens Museum, was much better. It's in one of his actual houses at 48 Doughty St., & has a lot of paintings of him or people in his life, as well as some manuscripts, first editions & other Dickensiana. I loved his books as a child & I rediscovered how much fun his books are with Martin Chuzzlewit recently. Sure, the happy endings are always a bit too neat, but the journey there is always a great ride & it's so nice when things finally work out.
I really like London. SE has said several times that he'd like to live there part of the time in the future, & I think I'd be on board with that. They have got to sort out airport security though, that is a real pain in the ass. I hope in a few years planes will be flying faster as well. My flight turned out to be 7.5 hours of screaming &/or chair kicking from the little brat behind me. I love kids, but damn. I restrained from doing more than turning around to glare at her useless mother periodically. I figured if we started talking about it I'd get more pissed & the kid would get upset, which would be counterproductive. Anyhow, as much as I like London, it's good to be home.
Friday went better. I found a Ping Pong for dim sum & was fairly impressed. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the British Museum. I tried to go to the First Emperor Terracotta Soldier exhibit - supporting my peeps, you know - but it was sold out for the day & it cost £12 ($24) so I wasn't really sure I wanted to go. I had fun wandering around more thoroughly this time. I saw the other Egyptian rooms, the rest of the Asian rooms, the slavery photographs, Greek pottery, Assyrian jewelry, etc... that museum is ridiculously huge. This time I wore sensible sneakers but 3 hours of walking & learning all by myself was exhausting. Afterwards I sat in Hyde Park for a little while until I had to meet SE to go to the wedding in Malta.
We took the express train to Gatwick but couldn't find our flight. This turned out to be because it was at Heathrow, 40 miles away. With 1.5 hours to go, we managed to snag a cab for £81 ($162!!) & actually made it in 35 minutes. Despite some issues carrying on my violin & the tennis rackets, we got on board ok. Nerve-racking though. We had lunch with SE's parents Saturday before playing some lousy tennis. We both used to be pretty good but it's been a while. & serving is so much harder than it looks. We stopped after a very sweaty hour & I got ready super fast (for me) in an evening gown I first wore at age 18. Amazingly, it fits. Not sure how that can be - perhaps my dress follows its own laws of physics, as I'm still trying to lose the inches I gained in Africa.
SE's childhood friend was the groom, & the bride was Maltese. The Catholic ceremony at the church of St. Patrick in Sliema was beautiful. The standing wasn't great, nor the "lamb of God" stuff or the music but the bride & groom were obviously glowing with happiness & I love that part where they ask, "Do you take this woman, in sickness & in health," etc. I cried a bit. Plus now I know I definitely don't want to get married in a church & SE agrees completely. I just want to say that part of the rite. There was a lovely cream-colored Rolls Royce waiting for the newlyweds afterward, & we all trooped back to the hotel for the open bar portion of the night. I had way too many cocktails & glasses of champagne while trying to look sober for SE's parents. After they went upstairs SE & I tried out our new moves from ballroom dance class & got a little rambunctious - I ended up in the pool! We went to bed soon after that & couldn't drag ourselves out of bed until about 1:30 the next afternoon, & that was only because we had to leave for the airport around 2:45. We flew back to London without incident.
We'd stayed in the Queensway Hotel initially, but I wanted to switch so we booked the Rose Court for the second part of our London stay. Not good. We moved to the Edward Lear hotel on Seymour St. the next day, which was much better & whimsical besides. Lear was a nature illustrator & nonsense poet, most famous for "The Owl & the Pussycat." The whole place was being renovated & our room was absolutely charming. Everything was so cute & cozy I really wished I could stay longer just for that. Although it is much easier to delight in coziness when you just have 2 suitcases of stuff. The staff at the Lear are very friendly, it's in a great location (Marble Arch) & a double room with bathroom is under £100 even in the high season. It's a really good deal, I definitely recommend the place.
I'm impressed with the food in London. This time was very Indian-intensive - I ended up "having a curry" 4 days in a row. That just means eating Indian, not necessarily curry per se. Sunday night we went to La Porte des Indes. It's much bigger than it looks from outside. The cuisine is supposed to be French-influenced authentic from the Pondicherry region. We did the tasting menu & were blown away. It was almost as good as the Mughal Room in Cairo. The service was unobtrusive & excellent, while the space managed to be inviting despite its size, & I got an orchid sprig when we left. (They do that for all the ladies.) It was still alive when I flew home Wednesday; really wish I could've brought it home.
Monday I made a pilgrimage to Brick Lane after visiting the Old Spitalfields Market. At Famous Curry House I had an actual curry, which was quite small, so when I saw the 2007 Best Chef place Papadoms, I decided to try it too. Both were good; Papadoms was definitely better though. The chicken jalfrezi there was scrumptious. Later, when SE got home from work, we checked out Crazy Bear in Fitzrovia. It was a Thai fusion place recommended in some little guide I picked up in Heathrow. The drinks were fantastic & so was the food. It was a bit of an odd crowd in our section - I swear one couple was an oldish Thai escort & her long-term john - but we had a great time. The bathrooms alone are worth the trip. In fact, it's like being on a trip when you go inside. The room is hidden, first of all; you just push one of the wood panels in the hallway. Then you're inside a completely mirrored room. The only reason I found a stall was because those doors had knobs. The sink is a trough affair where you can reach across to the men's bathroom under the mirror. Very cool, though I bet a lot of inebriated customers get lost in there. Tuesday we had dinner with one of SE's friends at Bombay Palace in Westminster, which was also great. (Thanks to Google, now I know they have one here in NYC as well. Yay!) The boys got chicken murgh tikka, basically equivalent to tikka masala, & I got the chicken kohlapuri. Yummy yummy. So now after 2 very satisfying trips, I can confidently say that the restaurant scene in London is nothing for a New Yorker to sneeze at. The only drawback is the expense. Everything's pretty much the same price as here, except the price is in pounds so it's really double.
Since SE worked every weekday, I had to amuse myself a lot. I tried to avoid the department store Selfridges, because I have to be a bit sensible with money, but he insisted that it was really cool & I should look around. It was indeed really cool. I discovered my new favorite goth/domme jewelry brand, Chrome Hearts. I desperately wanted to buy something, but there were no price tags on the jewelry. So I astutely inferred from a tank top price tag of £100 that everything would be out of my reach. It's ok. One day. I wandered on, into the contemporary area, where I was waylaid by the prettiest dress ever. It was cream silk with black lace & embroidery flowers - I had to buy it. It was £90 ($180), not too bad. I got vinyl round-toed pumps for £40 & sexy buckled black leather gloves for £22. At which point I realized I had better leave before my wallet took another hit. The Old Spitalfields area was not very interesting since it's basically just a lot of semi-expensive yuppie shops now, but some of the restaurants looked cool. There was one store, Fairy Goth Mother, which had amazing corsets & goth/fetish-y clothes. I ended up buying a very pretty skirt there for only £20.
Tuesday was sightseeing instead of shopping. I started with the London Eye, which is quite expensive (£15) but a breathtaking view of a beautiful city. I always forget how much bigger London is than NYC. A nice English couple on the ride answered all my "What's that building?" questions - I think my favorite was Charing Cross Station. Afterward I made my way to the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Definitely not worth the £6. It's not even interesting to see Baker St., since it doesn't look Victorian anymore at all. The top floor of 221B was an extremely creepy wax museum of scenes from the stories. They were bad, but lifelike enough to make me reluctant to put more than my head close to any of them. My next stop, the Dickens Museum, was much better. It's in one of his actual houses at 48 Doughty St., & has a lot of paintings of him or people in his life, as well as some manuscripts, first editions & other Dickensiana. I loved his books as a child & I rediscovered how much fun his books are with Martin Chuzzlewit recently. Sure, the happy endings are always a bit too neat, but the journey there is always a great ride & it's so nice when things finally work out.
I really like London. SE has said several times that he'd like to live there part of the time in the future, & I think I'd be on board with that. They have got to sort out airport security though, that is a real pain in the ass. I hope in a few years planes will be flying faster as well. My flight turned out to be 7.5 hours of screaming &/or chair kicking from the little brat behind me. I love kids, but damn. I restrained from doing more than turning around to glare at her useless mother periodically. I figured if we started talking about it I'd get more pissed & the kid would get upset, which would be counterproductive. Anyhow, as much as I like London, it's good to be home.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
stupid ads
Saw this next to a Daily Candy email. I like it, it's funny; much better than the silly Sunsilk ads that said "My frizz is so wild even a dominatrix couldn't tame it" & "My hair has more splits than a pole-dancer," among other stupid things. I realize they were trying to be cute but I think they tried too hard with the similes.Speaking of dumb advertising, Sprint made an unfunny attempt for the World Edition BlackBerry. I probably parsed the ad more carefully than they intended, but basically it says the Sprint W.E. is the most expensive phone ever! (Like that's a good thing.) You can buy it for $10 million, & they'll throw in an island! The way it's written is just retarded. It's not funny or tongue-in-cheek, though I think that's what they were going for. The fine print also says that this offer is only available to the 100 wealthiest people in the world. So nobody else can buy a BlackBerry from them? Retards.
The country of Georgia is also pissing me off. They've got these "Georgia vs. [more well-known country]" ads that utilize spurious logic, such as saying that 3000 years ago they came up with wine, & since their economy has outstripped France's for the last 5 years, people should instead support Georgian viniculture. & since China is only the 4th most reformed economy in the world, while Georgia is the first, the latter is the clear investment choice. I barely drink wine but seriously, if you're going to invest in only one of the countries, it would be very stupid to go with the one that nobody even knows makes wine. & "most reformed"? What the hell kind of economic measurement is that? In the first place, reform implies that it is a comparison. If one went from 0 to 60 & the other went from 50 to 100, the first is more reformed but not better. & my biggest concern if I were investing would be that little Georgia is next to giant Russia, which has been doing a lot of saber-rattling & chest-pounding recently. China, on the other hand, is the giant in its neighborhood. Anyway, I'm probably paying too much attention to detail. I caught up on some sleep during our trip (see next post) but I went right back to staying up super late as soon as I got home, so I'm tired & cranky.
Update August 2008: See, I was right. That business with Russia invading Georgia's province of South Ossetia would never have happened if it belonged to China. China would have looked at Russia & been like, "Bitch, are you trippin'?"
Monday, September 10, 2007
All hail Federer
I spent a very enjoyable 3 hours watching Federer slowly but surely crush Djokovic's resistance yesterday... I wanted the latter to win, since I'd watched him in real life at the Open last weekend, but after the first set I was pretty sure Darth Federer was going to conquer. D put up a hell of a fight though, & of course it's easy for me to say from the comfort of the sofa, but I think when he figures out how to calm himself & re-focus when things don't go his way, he'll be even more formidable. Throwing his racket wasn't exactly very mature. Anyway, in case you wanted to know, the score was 7-6 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-4. There was one point in the 2nd set when D was up 4-1 but that lead disappeared soon thereafter. Now I really really can't wait to play with SE after all this tennis excitement!!
Monday, September 03, 2007
vodka comparison
On Friday, as I was organizing my apartment, I came upon a little limoncello that I brought back from Rome 5 years ago & forgot about. (I was there to play a concert, stayed a week with just my accompanist - learned how to shop, order wine with dinner & I even met a guy. So much better than family vacations. Plus I nailed the horrifically difficult & nearly atonal sonata to the composer's countrymen's liking.) I decided to try drinking at home for the first time & bought a little bottle of Ciroc to make lemon drops. When I was at the liquor store the guy was discussing vodkas with me, & I've been a diehard Grey Goose girl after a blind taste test between that, Belvedere & Ketel straight, but his "ewww" reaction to GG made me think about trying something new. He suggested Imperia & Ciroc as very smooth & nice so I tried the Ciroc since it comes in a small bottle. As I mentioned before, I can't really taste alcohol until it's about 80% of the drink so that little 250 mL limoncello bottle lasted about 3 martinis. By which time I was surprisingly quite hammered, especially after being a tidy tornado in my house - physical exertion speeds up alcohol absorption - so I went to the store again to get a bottle of Imperia before they closed. That Africa detox & sober-weekdays-while-working policy were clearly not a good idea, as they have lowered my tolerance appreciably. Anyhow, after tasting the Ciroc & Imperia straight, I have to say I agree with the liquor store guy. I don't think it'd matter much in a vodka soda, but they do truly go down a lot more smoothly than Grey Goose. & today at Citarella I found bellini mix from Cipriani's ("good with vodka, gin, white rum & sparkling wine"), which of course I had to try. Fortunately Imperia comes in a nice big bottle & I have a lot of chores for myself tonight, so I should stay fairly well-behaved. Plus I'm practicing now which forces my brain to stay focused. Wish me luck!
Sunday, September 02, 2007
My sister is sponsored!
My baby sister got a sponsorship deal with Prince! Apparently she is one hell of a tennis prodigy; her coaches called some people & the rest is history. I know very little about the deal, but I am just fit to burst with pride for her. She's barely in double-digit ages & everyone sees a very rosy future. The family came to NYC for the the US Open this weekend & I went with them one day - I just know she's going to be there, kicking ass & taking names, one day soon. She certainly beats me handily whenever we play. :)
Saturday, September 01, 2007
movie reviews
We've seen 4 movies in 2 weekends since we got back. We wanted to see Superbad but it was sold out so we saw Knocked Up, Judd Apatow's earlier film. I thought it was really funny in parts but I didn't love it. My biggest problem was the lack of explanation for why she decides to keep the baby. It basically cuts from her mom telling her to get rid of it to her telling the guy she's keeping it. An on-air presenter at E! in LA & she wants to get fat? When they specifically asked her to start going to the gym? Not plausible. I also found their love a bit of a stretch. The most incredible part was Ben deciding to step up, grow up & take responsibility for the kid. There may be one 23-year-old unemployed pothead in recent history (since people that age started being considered still kids) who did this in real life, though I doubt it. Those objections aside, it's pretty funny. The dopes Ben lives with are ridiculous & convincing. Debbie (knocked-up Alison's sister) & Pete's marriage is a bit scary but it looks real too. Plus, you can see through Debbie's bitchiness to the deep insecurities underneath. & I like the scene in Vegas where Pete realizes that his problem is he can't accept his wife's love for what it is & has to run away from it. Paul Rudd, who plays Pete, was easily my favorite character in the movie. He's so yummy-looking & just a great actor. & as unrealistic as it is, I can't help cheering for Ben in his transformation from stoner to responsible adult. Thank you Mr. A, for thumbing your nose at the Lost Boys convention of current cinema & making Ben grow up to be a man. 7/10.
The Simpsons movie was really fun. Spiderpig might be the next big meme - I still can't stop laughing when I think of the song. The story wasn't the most logical, but it hung together pretty well. So many good one-liners - "I was elected to lead, not to read," being my favorite. I liked the détente between Bart & Flanders as well. I found Homer's selfish asshole behavior a bit hard to believe, but overall it was funny & worth seeing. Make sure to stay through the credits, they throw in some extra scenes. 8.5/10
The Bourne Ultimatum was jam-packed with action. At this point he pretty much seems magical - whatever he touches does what he wants without putting up too much fuss, whether it be a door, a safe, etc. I did not understand the thing with Julia Stiles; were they together before? That should have been explained, or recapped if it's from the second movie. I loved the action scenes, especially the fight in Morocco where Bourne finally tussles with someone worthy instead of easy henchmen. It was frustrating but realistic to watch Director Vosen (David Strathairn) bulldoze over people's objections & reasoning, insisting that Bourne must have some byzantine plan instead of drawing the logical conclusion that he was anmesiac. Reminds me of a certain issue with WMDs... The movie wrapped up some questions from before but I'll have to read the books I think. I hate that song they play for the credits, it's the musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard for me. Actually that's exactly what it sounds like. 8.5/10
I saved the best for last. Shoot 'Em Up is so good, it catapulted to my top 5 movies of all time immediately. Comes out Sept 7 - we saw it at a free advance screening. (Don't tell them I told you; we're supposed to keep quiet about it until then. Though I'm pretty sure it's all a cynical ploy to build up word-of-mouth, it's so good I don't care & will happily plug their movie for free.) I've been a huge Clive Owen fan since his debut in the BMW short films & I'm glad he's such a big star now. Oooh, speaking of great drivers - how hot would it be if he had a drive-off & battle movie with Jason Statham? Yum. So this story is completely over the top. Smith (Owen) is drawn into a gun fight to protect a pregnant stranger he sees running for her life. The ensuing firefight is the first scene of the movie & already at that point I knew this movie was something special. He kills one guy with a carrot! Obviously, the shooting isn't terribly realistic, as I know from trying it in Vegas, but the fluidity of the choreograhy is engaging & just breathtaking. When it's over he wants to forget about the baby but he can't, & enlists the help of DQ (Monica Bellucci), a dominatrix specializing in infantilism, because she has milk. He's being tailed by Hertz (Paul Giamatti), who seems to be a crooked police chief. They first meet in the brothel where DQ works (the writer seems to have confused dommes & prostitutes) & exchange some hilarious trash talk after Smith decimates the entire goon squad. Smith fends off increasing numbers of henchmen throughout the movie, trying to follow the clues back to the source, as Hertz gets more & more frustrated - at one point he screams in fury, "Do we suck or is this guy just that good?!" I don't want to give away too much, so I'll just say that this has some of the most creative fight scenes ever ever EVER!!! I can't believe no one's thought of them before. Bellucci is luscious, almost spilling out of her tight clothes, & a perfect foil to Owen's rugged 'tall dark silent' hero. I never liked Giamatti because he's ugly & I detested Sideways with a passion but he's a great villain in this & gained a lot of points with me for finding the perfect blend of camp & serious evil. Be warned, though, there is a tough torture scene towards the end - definitely a finger-peeker. People were cheering & clapping at lots of scenes, it was so great. If you like guns, shootouts, heroes saving people at considerable personal cost because they just can't coldly abandon them, deliciously evil villains & their well-earned come-uppances, creative fights, comedy, or super hot sex scenes, this is so the movie for you. 10/10!
One more thing: Live Free or Die Hard was fucking awesome. I'm sure everyone's seen it by now, so I'll just say that I'm a little Asian bitch who likes to kick people, & yippee ki yay motherfucker it was incredibly cool.
The Simpsons movie was really fun. Spiderpig might be the next big meme - I still can't stop laughing when I think of the song. The story wasn't the most logical, but it hung together pretty well. So many good one-liners - "I was elected to lead, not to read," being my favorite. I liked the détente between Bart & Flanders as well. I found Homer's selfish asshole behavior a bit hard to believe, but overall it was funny & worth seeing. Make sure to stay through the credits, they throw in some extra scenes. 8.5/10
The Bourne Ultimatum was jam-packed with action. At this point he pretty much seems magical - whatever he touches does what he wants without putting up too much fuss, whether it be a door, a safe, etc. I did not understand the thing with Julia Stiles; were they together before? That should have been explained, or recapped if it's from the second movie. I loved the action scenes, especially the fight in Morocco where Bourne finally tussles with someone worthy instead of easy henchmen. It was frustrating but realistic to watch Director Vosen (David Strathairn) bulldoze over people's objections & reasoning, insisting that Bourne must have some byzantine plan instead of drawing the logical conclusion that he was anmesiac. Reminds me of a certain issue with WMDs... The movie wrapped up some questions from before but I'll have to read the books I think. I hate that song they play for the credits, it's the musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard for me. Actually that's exactly what it sounds like. 8.5/10
I saved the best for last. Shoot 'Em Up is so good, it catapulted to my top 5 movies of all time immediately. Comes out Sept 7 - we saw it at a free advance screening. (Don't tell them I told you; we're supposed to keep quiet about it until then. Though I'm pretty sure it's all a cynical ploy to build up word-of-mouth, it's so good I don't care & will happily plug their movie for free.) I've been a huge Clive Owen fan since his debut in the BMW short films & I'm glad he's such a big star now. Oooh, speaking of great drivers - how hot would it be if he had a drive-off & battle movie with Jason Statham? Yum. So this story is completely over the top. Smith (Owen) is drawn into a gun fight to protect a pregnant stranger he sees running for her life. The ensuing firefight is the first scene of the movie & already at that point I knew this movie was something special. He kills one guy with a carrot! Obviously, the shooting isn't terribly realistic, as I know from trying it in Vegas, but the fluidity of the choreograhy is engaging & just breathtaking. When it's over he wants to forget about the baby but he can't, & enlists the help of DQ (Monica Bellucci), a dominatrix specializing in infantilism, because she has milk. He's being tailed by Hertz (Paul Giamatti), who seems to be a crooked police chief. They first meet in the brothel where DQ works (the writer seems to have confused dommes & prostitutes) & exchange some hilarious trash talk after Smith decimates the entire goon squad. Smith fends off increasing numbers of henchmen throughout the movie, trying to follow the clues back to the source, as Hertz gets more & more frustrated - at one point he screams in fury, "Do we suck or is this guy just that good?!" I don't want to give away too much, so I'll just say that this has some of the most creative fight scenes ever ever EVER!!! I can't believe no one's thought of them before. Bellucci is luscious, almost spilling out of her tight clothes, & a perfect foil to Owen's rugged 'tall dark silent' hero. I never liked Giamatti because he's ugly & I detested Sideways with a passion but he's a great villain in this & gained a lot of points with me for finding the perfect blend of camp & serious evil. Be warned, though, there is a tough torture scene towards the end - definitely a finger-peeker. People were cheering & clapping at lots of scenes, it was so great. If you like guns, shootouts, heroes saving people at considerable personal cost because they just can't coldly abandon them, deliciously evil villains & their well-earned come-uppances, creative fights, comedy, or super hot sex scenes, this is so the movie for you. 10/10!
One more thing: Live Free or Die Hard was fucking awesome. I'm sure everyone's seen it by now, so I'll just say that I'm a little Asian bitch who likes to kick people, & yippee ki yay motherfucker it was incredibly cool.
US = money
Check out this map: It replaces each US state name with that of the country whose GDP it most closely matches. (I tried to put the picture here but it turned out quite badly.) If you scroll down it goes into a bit more detail about the GDP rankings. Our 50 states plus DC match the top 101 GDPs in the world. The top 45 states match the top 61 economies. Total American GDP is almost as much as #2-5 combined. Amazing.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Will Shortz is my new bff
I am extremely proud of myself. I finished today's Friday NY Times crossword! Plus I finished last week's Friday as well! Before, I could only do Fridays very rarely but it looks like I am improving. (Newspaper puzzles increase in difficulty from Monday to Saturday, with Sunday being bigger but about a Thursday difficulty.) All those crosswords while we were on vacation really paid off. Last week I was so clever I didn't even look anything up. I had to this week - didn't know a hockey player named Tverdovsky, a wrestler named Flair, or any songs from the '60s - but generally I would just stare at a word & think, or run the alphabet in my head, & I made some inspired guesses. Those clues are hard. I won't give away the answers if anyone is working on it, but what do you think the 8-letter answer is for 16-across, "Exchange for something you really want?" The 10-down "Skin pics?" answer I still don't understand. The worst part about late-week crosswords is trying to figure out what exactly they're driving at. Usually it could be several different things, & there aren't enough words in the clue to let you know which one until you've got some letters. I like how much crosswords exercise my brain though - which reminds me, I need to go pick up some physics textbooks. :)
London: 9.5/10
[This post has been sitting on my desk in longhand all week - typing is much faster than writing, but it also requires more time than you'd think.] I never thought I'd welcome drizzle! London was a bit damp & after the frying heat of Sharm, I was quite glad of it. We took the very nice Heathrow Express train into Paddington. I don't understand why we can't have trains out to NYC airports like that. The AirTrain to JFK is good, but the pain of getting to Queens for it completely negates its benefits. Anyhow, we met about 10 of his friends at Carluccio's for dinner. Their style of humor, consisting mainly of teasing each other non-stop, took some getting used to, but I immediately understood why SE does it to me all the time. & it's funny when it happens to other people. His friends were really sweet to me & all said a variant of "I've heard so much about you," which is always music to a girlfriend's ears. I liked them a lot. It being a Thursday, everyone went home after dinner. People don't seem to do the weekday party thing as much as here.
Friday SE had some visa issues to sort out at the embassy so I had to amuse myself all day. After breakfast & getting very specific directions from place to place on the tube, , I set off on my explorations. First stop: British Library. I got distracted by Top Shop in Oxford Circus though. I'd read that it's a high street store & that Kate Moss had a line there, so of course I had to see for myself. (Sadly, her stuff was a bit out of budget.) I ended up with a cute polka-dot dress & black lace leggings. SE later explained to me that "high street" doesn't mean really good, as I'd thought, it means the shop is on every high street (meaning "main street"). Basically it's a more stylish H&M. After an hour I dragged myself away & onto the Tube. We love to complain about the subway in NYC but we still only pay $2/ride here & $7 for an all-day pass. The Tube is £4/ride & £5.10/day - that's $8 & $10.20 respectively! They have an unlimited Oyster card which is generally £1.50/ride, but I can't buy one online unless I have a London address so it's still much more expensive for visitors. The trains do come a lot more often, but there's no air conditioning on the trains & they are generally much further underground. I saw electric signs in every station keeping passengers updated about which lines were working, which hints at frequent problems, & though I didn't experience delays myself all the Londoners I talked to complained about unreliability. It's more of a problem there because cabs are also much pricier, so when there's a Tube issue, jumping in a cab is not as easy. Although the cabs are so much nicer I almost think they're worth it. They look really cool, like better PT Cruisers; they're roomy inside, so 5 people or fewer plus luggage can get in comfortably; you can have privacy or talk to the driver by pressing a button; lots of the cars have phones inside, like on an airplane except free; & there are often phone & iPod chargers built into a side panel. I want LTI, the carmaker, to come over here.
So where was I? Right, on my way to the British Library. It's a beautiful building inside & out. There's a very interesting exhibit called Sacred, about ancient manuscripts of Judaism, Islam & Christianity, especially the Torah, Qu'ran & Bible. I've always thought Arabic a lovely-looking language. & seeing it with gold leaf, calligraphy & painstakingly drawn details made quite an impression. I wish I could get a tattoo in Arabic but that would probably be a bit silly. As much as I love the concept of libraries, they get kind of boring after ~5 minutes if I'm not reading so when I was done wandering around the exhibits I made my way to the British Museum. I meandered around the Chinese, Central America, Japanese, Enlightenment & various other rooms. I checked on the Egyptian mummies, too - we didn't see any in the Egyptian Museum, go figure. They are super creepy & I stayed about 4 seconds, long enough to read the description, before I was too nervous to stay touching-distance from a very lifelike dead body. Eventually I got tired of walking around & being by myself in a strange city & decided to go home. I got off the Tube at Oxford Circus & that's when I realized that I hadn't asked SE how to walk from there to the apartment. I couldn't remember how I got to the station initially because I'd gotten lost & asked about 5 people. Plus my sense of direction is nonexistent. I didn't have a map & thought the apartment was northwest of the station when it was actually northeast & didn't recognize landmarks correctly so I spent about 2 hours walking around in circles with painful shoes. I couldn't call SE & was so clueless that when he called to see if I was coming home, I mistakenly thought I was almost there & didn't ask for help so I was unnecessarily lost for another half hour. At length I found the right street & got safely home. Fortunately we had a bit of time for me to gather my wits before meeting some of his friends at an All Bar One (it's a chain) on Henrietta St.
A few glasses of champagne sorted me out nicely. We went to Bar Shu on Frith St. to meet SE's old colleague & his current girlfriend. Bar Shu is an absolutely fantastic Szechuan restaurant, better than in New York - I was so happy. We all got along very well & continued on to Milk & Honey for a drink, where another friend of SE's met us. Since it was a Friday night SE wanted to see how the London club scene was doing & off we 5 went to Paper. We got a bottle of vodka - if you think NYC clubs are bad, imagine paying the same price in £s (= 2 x $s) - & one of Kahlua so we could continue with the Black Russians. Party girls in London aren't as cute as here, but they're as persistent & freeloading. Some slags attempted to pour themselves drinks from our bottles though we didn't know them. Plus they kept trying to talk to SE & slinking away if I came within eyeshot. I've been working on my jealousy & trusting SE more, so after the initial impulse to kick their flabby asses, I found the humor in the situation. The music was pretty good, I really liked SE's friends, & vodka + Kahlua + Red Bull is a nice potent cocktail. I tend to make crazy drinks if left to my own devices, since I can't really taste alcohol unless it's about 80% of the drink. Pretty odd considering my pickiness with food tastes.
We had a great night & came home at maybe 2:30. I couldn't sleep right away & dove back into Harry Potter. SE was woken up by sobbing then & 5 hours later when I woke up ridiculously early (as usual after drinking) & was finishing the book. I must have spent a good 1/3 of it bawling, which is not necessarily because sad things happen - don't want to spoil it for anyone - but how intense & emotionally involving it is.
The next morning one of SE's college friends took us on a walking tour of Westminster which was really interesting. We did some pub-hopping afterwards, saw my friend who moved to London 2 years ago, & had a nice casual dinner at Busaba Eathai on Wardour St. Thai food is hugely popular in London. I think people see it the way we New Yorkers look at Japanese - healthy, yummy & tasty. There are Japanese restaurants but not so many as in NYC. SE & I were very tired, so we went home in the rain instead of staying out even though it was Saturday.
We took a train from Victoria Station to his parents' in Sussex - I was pretty nervous since I'd never stayed at a boyfriend's family home before. They were very sweet & I tried to be helpful. His mother made toad-in-the-hole one night because I'd read about it in a book as a kid, Dahl's Danny the Champion of the World, & never had it. Sausages baked in batter, nothin' wrong with that. SE showed me around the neighborhood, his old school, the trees he used to climb, paths he used to ride his bike on, stuff like that; really cute. I can just imagine him as a boy getting into trouble & outwitting the other kids. He also took me to Brighton, which was cool because I've read about it in lots of books. I met one of SE's childhood friends with his new wife - good example for SE - & they were delightful, plus I learned some embarrassing things about SE when he was little. I'm happy I finally have some stuff to tease him about.
Tuesday morning we went back to London for lunch with his friend who's getting married in November. SE had told me lots about her, how they went to college together, were roommates with 2 other girls & he had a crush on her for a long time so I was a little jealous but once I met her I thought she was lovely & we got along very well. Later we met one of SE's old work colleagues at Ronnie Scott's, a famous jazz club on Frith which makes amazing drinks, before dim sum at the very fancy Yauatcha on Broadwick. It was quite good, maybe the not best in the world but they did a great congee & once I spoke Chinese to the waiters they were falling all over themselves to make sure we were happy. Then one of the best parts of our London trip - we went to Stringfellows after dinner! It's a very upscale strip club & girls can get naked in London, top AND bottom! I had a dance from a wife & wife team (or so they said) & some other hotties. Plus those girls know how to work a pole, oh boy. Flashdancers except better & much hotter. We had a really good night.
The next day SE did some touristy stuff with me; we wanted to go on the London Eye but the line looked too long. The Aquarium is right there as well [see right] - they have storm troopers on the roof! There was some crazy Star Wars exhibit going on.
There was also a Dalí exhibit in the same building so they had sculptures of Dalí paintings outside.
We decided to check out the London Dungeon, which looked delightfully scary. Fortunately we got a FastPass by the Aquarium & didn't have to wait too long. Now, it's quite cheesy & funny but if you're easily startled like me, it's terrifying. The actors jump out at you & wear ghoulish face paint that makes them look dead &/or severely injured so even when they're just walking around they're still awful. We learned about the Great Plague, torture techniques, the Great Fire, Sweeney Todd & Jack the Ripper. I enjoyed the real torture instruments on display but everything else was a re-creation. I was so scared that during the Sweeney Todd part, I refused to lean back in my chair as directed & missed the faux throat-slitting. Not a problem. At the end there's a "free fall" ride. After 1.5 hours of looking around nervously & getting the crap scared or startled out of me every 5 minutes I was completely demoralized, & although it was only a small drop, I screamed like a banshee. Of course they took a picture at that moment & I wish I could show you, because it's the most terrified look I've ever seen on my or anyone else's face. My eyes are popping out & my mouth is open so wide my jaw seems ready to fall off. SE recognized its comic gold & bought it, & every time we look at it we still crack up, it's so ridiculous.
SE showed me around Canary Wharf & the City (the financial area of London) after that. We rode the Docklands Light Railway & I saw bankers in their current preferred habitat. Business is increasingly flowing to the City - the dollar's weakness is really fucking NYC. I like the architecture there, especially the Gherkin, properly known as the Swiss RE building at 30 St. Mary's Axe.
We had dinner with another childhood playmate of SE's at the best kosher restaurant in the city, Bevis Marks, because the friend is converting to Orthodox Judaism. I didn't know much about kosher & just figured it would be crappy like vegetarian food, but this place was great. The Thai crispy beef salad, matzoh ball soup, lamb & salmon were all amazing. Kosherness doesn't seem to make a difference in taste, it just restricts the kinds of foods you can put together.
Thursday, our last full day, we went shopping. First Harvey Nichols, where I had a severe case of sticker shock. Everything is so much more expensive there, they think a rack of £900 ($1800) & under is "on sale." My favorite wish was a luscious pair of leather ankle boots by McQueen with python trim & a skull zipper detail (sorry, Treo takes bad pix) that I really wanted... told my footslave about them. Obviously I didn't buy anything, & got bored perambulating so I went to check on SE who had succumbed to temptation & got a $100 Evisu t-shirt. Silly boy. We then visited the eyesore that is Harrod's - clearly money doesn't buy taste. Although, it's kind of fun looking at the horrible stuff & guessing what outlandish price it is. The most disgusting part was a Dodi & Princess Diana memorial that had an unwashed wine glass from their last night & the engagement ring he got for her the day before. That thing was an utter monstrosity. It's almost the size of my fist & covered in pavé diamonds with an enormous rock in the middle. The placard underneath said this was "proof of their love." Proof of bad taste & Daddy being a billionaire, more like. I would only call that proper proof if Dodi bought it on a janitor's salary. SE was annoyed with the spurious reasoning, though his opinions are a bit skewed when it comes to jewelry & big gifts like that since he's a banker & sees colleagues make those hollow gestures all the time while cheating on their wives. I don't know - I still believe you can do nice things & mean them. We're both cynical romantics but he leans more to the cynical side than I do.
Around 4 we met up with SE's college buddy who just got married (SE was best man & threw him a bachelor weekend in Krakow). He's really cool. Plus I heard some more stories about stupid or asshole things SE did, which wasn't always very comforting - I worry if he's really a changed man now - but hilarious nonetheless. We gathered more friends as we moved from bar to bar, ending up at a Wagamama. It's a yummy UK noodle chain that strongly reminds me of Republic in Union Square. SE said the one we went to was not representative of their normally high quality but I quite liked my ramen. Sadly, in America only Boston has the pleasure of Wagamamas at this point. We went to one more pub after dinner & then everyone headed home.
The next morning SE got birthday sex & I took him out to lunch & the Transformers movie. Liked the first 2 a lot. The Transformers were a little before my time & I hardly knew what they were growing up so I wasn't as into the movie as SE was. The story was also achingly stupid, but I thought the transformations were super cool & the leading ladies very yummy. That Megan Fox has a heartbreaking pair of legs. & Rachael Taylor was what I'd want to look like if I were blonde. SE was excited as a little boy & it was worth the £19.50 ($39, London is crazy!) to see that smile on his face. & that, boys & girls, was the conclusion of our grand tour.
Friday SE had some visa issues to sort out at the embassy so I had to amuse myself all day. After breakfast & getting very specific directions from place to place on the tube, , I set off on my explorations. First stop: British Library. I got distracted by Top Shop in Oxford Circus though. I'd read that it's a high street store & that Kate Moss had a line there, so of course I had to see for myself. (Sadly, her stuff was a bit out of budget.) I ended up with a cute polka-dot dress & black lace leggings. SE later explained to me that "high street" doesn't mean really good, as I'd thought, it means the shop is on every high street (meaning "main street"). Basically it's a more stylish H&M. After an hour I dragged myself away & onto the Tube. We love to complain about the subway in NYC but we still only pay $2/ride here & $7 for an all-day pass. The Tube is £4/ride & £5.10/day - that's $8 & $10.20 respectively! They have an unlimited Oyster card which is generally £1.50/ride, but I can't buy one online unless I have a London address so it's still much more expensive for visitors. The trains do come a lot more often, but there's no air conditioning on the trains & they are generally much further underground. I saw electric signs in every station keeping passengers updated about which lines were working, which hints at frequent problems, & though I didn't experience delays myself all the Londoners I talked to complained about unreliability. It's more of a problem there because cabs are also much pricier, so when there's a Tube issue, jumping in a cab is not as easy. Although the cabs are so much nicer I almost think they're worth it. They look really cool, like better PT Cruisers; they're roomy inside, so 5 people or fewer plus luggage can get in comfortably; you can have privacy or talk to the driver by pressing a button; lots of the cars have phones inside, like on an airplane except free; & there are often phone & iPod chargers built into a side panel. I want LTI, the carmaker, to come over here.
So where was I? Right, on my way to the British Library. It's a beautiful building inside & out. There's a very interesting exhibit called Sacred, about ancient manuscripts of Judaism, Islam & Christianity, especially the Torah, Qu'ran & Bible. I've always thought Arabic a lovely-looking language. & seeing it with gold leaf, calligraphy & painstakingly drawn details made quite an impression. I wish I could get a tattoo in Arabic but that would probably be a bit silly. As much as I love the concept of libraries, they get kind of boring after ~5 minutes if I'm not reading so when I was done wandering around the exhibits I made my way to the British Museum. I meandered around the Chinese, Central America, Japanese, Enlightenment & various other rooms. I checked on the Egyptian mummies, too - we didn't see any in the Egyptian Museum, go figure. They are super creepy & I stayed about 4 seconds, long enough to read the description, before I was too nervous to stay touching-distance from a very lifelike dead body. Eventually I got tired of walking around & being by myself in a strange city & decided to go home. I got off the Tube at Oxford Circus & that's when I realized that I hadn't asked SE how to walk from there to the apartment. I couldn't remember how I got to the station initially because I'd gotten lost & asked about 5 people. Plus my sense of direction is nonexistent. I didn't have a map & thought the apartment was northwest of the station when it was actually northeast & didn't recognize landmarks correctly so I spent about 2 hours walking around in circles with painful shoes. I couldn't call SE & was so clueless that when he called to see if I was coming home, I mistakenly thought I was almost there & didn't ask for help so I was unnecessarily lost for another half hour. At length I found the right street & got safely home. Fortunately we had a bit of time for me to gather my wits before meeting some of his friends at an All Bar One (it's a chain) on Henrietta St.
A few glasses of champagne sorted me out nicely. We went to Bar Shu on Frith St. to meet SE's old colleague & his current girlfriend. Bar Shu is an absolutely fantastic Szechuan restaurant, better than in New York - I was so happy. We all got along very well & continued on to Milk & Honey for a drink, where another friend of SE's met us. Since it was a Friday night SE wanted to see how the London club scene was doing & off we 5 went to Paper. We got a bottle of vodka - if you think NYC clubs are bad, imagine paying the same price in £s (= 2 x $s) - & one of Kahlua so we could continue with the Black Russians. Party girls in London aren't as cute as here, but they're as persistent & freeloading. Some slags attempted to pour themselves drinks from our bottles though we didn't know them. Plus they kept trying to talk to SE & slinking away if I came within eyeshot. I've been working on my jealousy & trusting SE more, so after the initial impulse to kick their flabby asses, I found the humor in the situation. The music was pretty good, I really liked SE's friends, & vodka + Kahlua + Red Bull is a nice potent cocktail. I tend to make crazy drinks if left to my own devices, since I can't really taste alcohol unless it's about 80% of the drink. Pretty odd considering my pickiness with food tastes.
We had a great night & came home at maybe 2:30. I couldn't sleep right away & dove back into Harry Potter. SE was woken up by sobbing then & 5 hours later when I woke up ridiculously early (as usual after drinking) & was finishing the book. I must have spent a good 1/3 of it bawling, which is not necessarily because sad things happen - don't want to spoil it for anyone - but how intense & emotionally involving it is.
The next morning one of SE's college friends took us on a walking tour of Westminster which was really interesting. We did some pub-hopping afterwards, saw my friend who moved to London 2 years ago, & had a nice casual dinner at Busaba Eathai on Wardour St. Thai food is hugely popular in London. I think people see it the way we New Yorkers look at Japanese - healthy, yummy & tasty. There are Japanese restaurants but not so many as in NYC. SE & I were very tired, so we went home in the rain instead of staying out even though it was Saturday.
We took a train from Victoria Station to his parents' in Sussex - I was pretty nervous since I'd never stayed at a boyfriend's family home before. They were very sweet & I tried to be helpful. His mother made toad-in-the-hole one night because I'd read about it in a book as a kid, Dahl's Danny the Champion of the World, & never had it. Sausages baked in batter, nothin' wrong with that. SE showed me around the neighborhood, his old school, the trees he used to climb, paths he used to ride his bike on, stuff like that; really cute. I can just imagine him as a boy getting into trouble & outwitting the other kids. He also took me to Brighton, which was cool because I've read about it in lots of books. I met one of SE's childhood friends with his new wife - good example for SE - & they were delightful, plus I learned some embarrassing things about SE when he was little. I'm happy I finally have some stuff to tease him about.
Tuesday morning we went back to London for lunch with his friend who's getting married in November. SE had told me lots about her, how they went to college together, were roommates with 2 other girls & he had a crush on her for a long time so I was a little jealous but once I met her I thought she was lovely & we got along very well. Later we met one of SE's old work colleagues at Ronnie Scott's, a famous jazz club on Frith which makes amazing drinks, before dim sum at the very fancy Yauatcha on Broadwick. It was quite good, maybe the not best in the world but they did a great congee & once I spoke Chinese to the waiters they were falling all over themselves to make sure we were happy. Then one of the best parts of our London trip - we went to Stringfellows after dinner! It's a very upscale strip club & girls can get naked in London, top AND bottom! I had a dance from a wife & wife team (or so they said) & some other hotties. Plus those girls know how to work a pole, oh boy. Flashdancers except better & much hotter. We had a really good night.
The next day SE did some touristy stuff with me; we wanted to go on the London Eye but the line looked too long. The Aquarium is right there as well [see right] - they have storm troopers on the roof! There was some crazy Star Wars exhibit going on.
There was also a Dalí exhibit in the same building so they had sculptures of Dalí paintings outside.We decided to check out the London Dungeon, which looked delightfully scary. Fortunately we got a FastPass by the Aquarium & didn't have to wait too long. Now, it's quite cheesy & funny but if you're easily startled like me, it's terrifying. The actors jump out at you & wear ghoulish face paint that makes them look dead &/or severely injured so even when they're just walking around they're still awful. We learned about the Great Plague, torture techniques, the Great Fire, Sweeney Todd & Jack the Ripper. I enjoyed the real torture instruments on display but everything else was a re-creation. I was so scared that during the Sweeney Todd part, I refused to lean back in my chair as directed & missed the faux throat-slitting. Not a problem. At the end there's a "free fall" ride. After 1.5 hours of looking around nervously & getting the crap scared or startled out of me every 5 minutes I was completely demoralized, & although it was only a small drop, I screamed like a banshee. Of course they took a picture at that moment & I wish I could show you, because it's the most terrified look I've ever seen on my or anyone else's face. My eyes are popping out & my mouth is open so wide my jaw seems ready to fall off. SE recognized its comic gold & bought it, & every time we look at it we still crack up, it's so ridiculous.
SE showed me around Canary Wharf & the City (the financial area of London) after that. We rode the Docklands Light Railway & I saw bankers in their current preferred habitat. Business is increasingly flowing to the City - the dollar's weakness is really fucking NYC. I like the architecture there, especially the Gherkin, properly known as the Swiss RE building at 30 St. Mary's Axe.
We had dinner with another childhood playmate of SE's at the best kosher restaurant in the city, Bevis Marks, because the friend is converting to Orthodox Judaism. I didn't know much about kosher & just figured it would be crappy like vegetarian food, but this place was great. The Thai crispy beef salad, matzoh ball soup, lamb & salmon were all amazing. Kosherness doesn't seem to make a difference in taste, it just restricts the kinds of foods you can put together.
Thursday, our last full day, we went shopping. First Harvey Nichols, where I had a severe case of sticker shock. Everything is so much more expensive there, they think a rack of £900 ($1800) & under is "on sale." My favorite wish was a luscious pair of leather ankle boots by McQueen with python trim & a skull zipper detail (sorry, Treo takes bad pix) that I really wanted... told my footslave about them. Obviously I didn't buy anything, & got bored perambulating so I went to check on SE who had succumbed to temptation & got a $100 Evisu t-shirt. Silly boy. We then visited the eyesore that is Harrod's - clearly money doesn't buy taste. Although, it's kind of fun looking at the horrible stuff & guessing what outlandish price it is. The most disgusting part was a Dodi & Princess Diana memorial that had an unwashed wine glass from their last night & the engagement ring he got for her the day before. That thing was an utter monstrosity. It's almost the size of my fist & covered in pavé diamonds with an enormous rock in the middle. The placard underneath said this was "proof of their love." Proof of bad taste & Daddy being a billionaire, more like. I would only call that proper proof if Dodi bought it on a janitor's salary. SE was annoyed with the spurious reasoning, though his opinions are a bit skewed when it comes to jewelry & big gifts like that since he's a banker & sees colleagues make those hollow gestures all the time while cheating on their wives. I don't know - I still believe you can do nice things & mean them. We're both cynical romantics but he leans more to the cynical side than I do.Around 4 we met up with SE's college buddy who just got married (SE was best man & threw him a bachelor weekend in Krakow). He's really cool. Plus I heard some more stories about stupid or asshole things SE did, which wasn't always very comforting - I worry if he's really a changed man now - but hilarious nonetheless. We gathered more friends as we moved from bar to bar, ending up at a Wagamama. It's a yummy UK noodle chain that strongly reminds me of Republic in Union Square. SE said the one we went to was not representative of their normally high quality but I quite liked my ramen. Sadly, in America only Boston has the pleasure of Wagamamas at this point. We went to one more pub after dinner & then everyone headed home.
The next morning SE got birthday sex & I took him out to lunch & the Transformers movie. Liked the first 2 a lot. The Transformers were a little before my time & I hardly knew what they were growing up so I wasn't as into the movie as SE was. The story was also achingly stupid, but I thought the transformations were super cool & the leading ladies very yummy. That Megan Fox has a heartbreaking pair of legs. & Rachael Taylor was what I'd want to look like if I were blonde. SE was excited as a little boy & it was worth the £19.50 ($39, London is crazy!) to see that smile on his face. & that, boys & girls, was the conclusion of our grand tour.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Crackberry posting
A) I'm very bored & b) I like playing with my crackberry so I'm testing out the browser. The keyboard isn't quite as sensitive as the Treo's, & I spent 2 HOURS on the phone (different line, of course) with Verizon this morning getting 'Berry synced to my calendar, address book, etc. Had to go through Outlook eventually. When it finally worked, I had another hour on the phone trying to make the BB display my calendar properly in the past as well as now. I ended up discovering the problem myself - under configuration 2 screens into the sync program, I had to check off the option for syncing past as well as future, something like that. Jesus tap-dancing Christ. Too bad the Verizon guy didn't think to check all configurations at first.
Difficulties aside, I am very impressed with their customer service & tech support. Yesterday both techs were awesome & helpful - today's 2 people were wonderful as well. The only way they could be better is if they made house calls. It kinda sucks that I had to spend about 5 hours getting the 'Berry to work because of issues that should have been addressed in the manual, but that was the most pleasant customer service experience I've ever had.
In other news, today's NY Times crossword is cute like a Thursday. By cute I mean "You think you cute! Bitch I'm gonna whip your ass" not "oh cute puppy." Thursdays frequently have one word that fits in one box & is repeated throughout the puzzle. I won't give away any more.
Last night SE & I had a date but our friends had an extra ticket to the Yankees game he'd been supposed to go to, so off he went. I was a less-than-happy camper but whatever, he was going to go before anyway. I was home sorting out the BlackBerry with tech support when my doorbell rings & there's SE with pretty pink lilies & Tasti-Delite! (After the game.) I was totally floored. Just when I think he's a normal guy he reminds me of why he's my Prince Charming. :)
Difficulties aside, I am very impressed with their customer service & tech support. Yesterday both techs were awesome & helpful - today's 2 people were wonderful as well. The only way they could be better is if they made house calls. It kinda sucks that I had to spend about 5 hours getting the 'Berry to work because of issues that should have been addressed in the manual, but that was the most pleasant customer service experience I've ever had.
In other news, today's NY Times crossword is cute like a Thursday. By cute I mean "You think you cute! Bitch I'm gonna whip your ass" not "oh cute puppy." Thursdays frequently have one word that fits in one box & is repeated throughout the puzzle. I won't give away any more.
Last night SE & I had a date but our friends had an extra ticket to the Yankees game he'd been supposed to go to, so off he went. I was a less-than-happy camper but whatever, he was going to go before anyway. I was home sorting out the BlackBerry with tech support when my doorbell rings & there's SE with pretty pink lilies & Tasti-Delite! (After the game.) I was totally floored. Just when I think he's a normal guy he reminds me of why he's my Prince Charming. :)
It's lonely being a skeptical empiricist
They like to play the lottery at my work, because we hate it here so much. Almost everyone puts in $2 or $5. The jackpot is currently ~$250 million but today I thought of The Black Swan (great, go read it & his first book) & didn't waste my meager lunch money. It's so seductive though. I can't help thinking how much I could use $10 million & how wonderful it'd be if I won, despite knowing perfectly well that I have 30 times more chance of being struck by lightning than winning. Of course, Taleb's discussion is of the black swans that do happen, but this is the flip side of people's wishful belief that crazy stuff won't occur. I liked the idea he champions of being a skeptical empiricist - it's just hard to fight human nature, which wants to find patterns & reasons in random things. Anyway, I hope as a nice person that my colleagues win, but I also hope like hell that they don't because I'll feel like the biggest fool.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
A Farewell to Palms
I finally gave up on my Treo. I cannot stand it freezing or randomly restarting any more. I've had a Palm for 12 years, so it was quite a wrench. In 1995 my parents got me an m505 (the most basic kind) for xmas. I upgraded over the years, culminating in a Treo 600 2 years ago & a 700 this year, & have loved & hated them ever since. The design has gotten better & better; Treos are great to keep things organized, but the software problems with Verizon were awful. I've had to replace the Treo probably 5 or 6 times in 2 years, none of which was ever because I lost it, was robbed or damaged it. I don't know what Verizon's problem is. It's unacceptable for a PDA to freeze if I send a couple texts in rapid succession, or if someone texts me while I'm typing. I understand that many of these problems are supposed to be a result of insufficient memory, flash or something. Whatever. Before you sell a phone you should make sure it works under normal usage, otherwise your job is not done.
All that said, I loved the user-friendly format & well-thought-out little details Palm excels at. A couple things the Treo does better than the BlackBerry: calendar events compress the hours. The BB continues to show a line for every hour regardless, which sometimes makes it annoying to see what I have for a whole day. E.g., when I work at Giant Multinational Corporation, 8:30-6 should be one line, not 10. & if I have a recurring event, I can't change one & make the future ones reflect that change, I can only change all or one. I sorely miss the categories in my to-do list. I miss dedicated buttons for calendar, memo, texts, tasks, phone & keyboard lock. The 'Berry only has 1. At the moment I can't get the Treo-'Berry sync wizard to work, but assuming that gets sorted out, the BlackBerry is great & everyone I know who got the same 8830 loves it. But I miss my faithful (if not always able) buddy. *sniffle*Update: it does have categories. You hit the BB key, go to Filters, & if you've got your stuff sorted like I do, from the Treo, you can pick a category you want to view & voilà! Really glad I fiddled around & discovered that.
Sharm el-Sheikh: 7.5/10
In the Economist I kept reading about the recent US - Middle Eastern summit about Iraq in Sharm & finally we were there ourselves. It's absolutely lovely. It was summer, though, & noticeably hotter than Cairo. Lonely Planet (LP) had led us to expect we'd be dying in 40°C (104°F) heat there but it wasn't actually that hot. Sharm, despite the Red Sea, was around that temperature & felt it. Going outside was like putting on a heated blanket. We'd step outside in as little clothing as possible & be like, "How far is it? 5 yards? Gah, too far!" Lying in the shade by the pool was only bearable with periodic dips in the water, it was that sizzling out. We had a nice shady room with plentiful air conditioning though. & a very very friendly cleaning man who is wasting his flower-arranging talents there.
This was waiting for us when we checked in. I happened to meet Mohammed later in my bikini, which seemed to make a big impression on him even though I was mostly behind our door. His arrangements became increasingly elaborate each day:
He was extremely attentive during our stay, always asking me or Sexy Englishman how the other was & checking on me when I got lost once, but it definitively tipped over into creepiness when we checked out. We were doing last-minute packing. He came to say goodbye & ask for SE's address, cell phone number & then our picture. Really bizarre. Especially when he gave us his address as Housekeeping at Hilton Fayrouz. We did really enjoy our flowers though, & marveled at the feat of engineering which is the peacock at the end. The blue neck is a towel, artfully folded to stand up.
Our first night, Saturday, we were too hot to do anything except have dinner & go to sleep. We lounged by the pool in the morning while deciding on activities, & went quad driving in the desert later that night. It's so cool! They're little ATVs that go about 20 mph, which feels fast & exciting when you're bouncing over ruts & can hear & feel the engine revving. We had to go in single file but on the way out they let us go pretty fast. We stopped in a couple places to look at scenery & the only part I didn't like was when some teenage punks kept riding my tail on the way back. The asshole directly behind me actually bumped me once. I couldn't go any faster, since we had to follow the guide strictly & were kept in line by other guides on motorbikes. It was super fun - I'd love to just rent one & go explore by myself. We had dinner at Safsafa in the Na'ama Center mall complex (see LP for more info about most places I mention here) which was pretty good. That whole area of Na'ama Bay was hopping every night, even though it was the low season. It was nice to be able to walk around & see what was going on without getting in a cab. Although running the gauntlet of hawkers was a trial every time. Generally we just tried not to get drawn into conversation.
On Monday we did a snorkeling trip into Ras Mohammed, the national park protecting the reef. I can't believe how beautiful it is! The reefs starts just right there off the shore, barely a foot below the surface. We saw so many incredible creatures especially a lionfish, lots of colorful parrotfish, pikefish, etc. I got over my fear of snorkeling too. I used to be a swim champion & I've always panicked at breathing underwater. Just couldn't get used to it. This time the fish & coral distracted me, & once I got the hang of it I could let go of the blind panic & concentrate on looking around. Very happy about that. We snorkeled for hours, so much that I actually got the first sunburn of my life. I refused to believe that was what it was when SE pointed it out - I scoffed until I realized that it hurt & was red & generally exhibited the same characteristics as SE's frequent burns (he has classic fair English skin). We had so much fun we decided to SCUBA the next day. He has his PADI open water certification but hasn't done it in 5 years, & I'd never done it at all, so I just did a beginner dive from the boat & he came along to snorkel, opting out of the rather time-consuming refresher course. It's pretty cool. I had a hard time keeping the breather thing in my mouth & those tanks are awfully heavy but it's so cool to just swim right down to whatever's interesting & not have to come up for air after a minute like when snorkeling. I finally figured out how to equalize pressure in my head properly (hadn't quite got it the day before) & had a lovely time. Unfortunately I ended up with an ear infection later. When we woke up from our nap I noticed an earache. We started playing Scrabble waiting for the heat to lessen so we could have dinner, & the throbbing increased to metal spike level. I was whimpering & couldn't concentrate so we called the hotel doctor. He prescribed me nose drops, antibiotics & 2 types of ear drops for my "major ear infection." The drops, Advil & Excedrin made me feel ok enough to venture out for dinner.
We went to Da Franco (as LP suggested), close to the Hilton on the road by the beach, which was all right. The night before we went to Pomodoro at the Camel Hotel because it was the busiest restaurant on that strip but that didn't pan out either - it wasn't very good except for the potato leek soup. I could happily eat a gallon of that. We kept wanting to try Pacha Sharm but couldn't tell from outside if it'd be good, plus we figured it'd be the same as Pacha NYC with the overpriced, watered down drinks. & it's always more fun with a group of friends than just 2 of us anyway. Wednesday, our last full day, we met an American couple by the pool who were amazingly similar to us. They'd taken practically the same trip to South Africa before, they were from NYC, the list went on & on. We got along so well we made plans to hang out later. SE & I spent a lazy day between pool & a/c'd room, since I couldn't go in the ocean to protect my ear & SE was too hot. We had a few drinks with Cute American Couple at the Pirates Bar in the hotel & then wandered over to Na'ama Bay & settled on Fawanes for dinner. This was again courtesy of LP, but CAGirl & I were decidedly unamused by the cockroach that scuttled over our pita bread towards the end! The food was ok, not great - SE & I concluded that LP generally has a bias towards backpackers & their lean wallets, because their descriptions of most restaurants turned out to be exaggerated to us, coming from NYC & haute cuisine as we were. We soothed our feelings with a sheesha (water pipe) at Viva on the beach after the scary bug incident. CAC were really nice & hopefully next time we go out to Cali, where they just moved, we'll hang out with them again.
We had another cabbie incident on the way to the airport which was the final straw for SE. This one tried to tell us the fare was double - £100 - what the hotel said it was - £50 - & SE lost his temper. We had trouble getting to the right terminal what with our new-fangled e-tickets & me accused of being "China" again for about 5 minutes. I don't understand the problem, we saw a lot of American-Asian tourists, it can't be that weird to them. When we did at length get to the right place they were completely confounded by the e-tickets. We got them to accept that the tickets were real by showing them the itinerary SE had drawn up for us, although they would keep flipping to irrelevant pages over & over despite our attempts to keep them focused. "No, no, just this flight here, Sharm to Vienna to London - no we already did all this [first 6 pages], we're not going to South Africa." It turned out when we got to Austria that we didn't actually have e-tickets. They'd FedExed the paper tickets to Cairo for some unfathomable reason. We managed to get everything straightened out, luckily.
In Vienna I couldn't resist buying Chanel nail polish at duty free, since I hadn't found a salon in Sharm & wanted to look presentable for SE's friends. Sand, ocean & general traveling really take a lot out of paint. Most importantly, I picked up Harry Potter (& was probably the only person to pay full price that week - €30 = ~$40! Should have waited for the London price of £6.) I've been a fan since I read the first one, & if you haven't read it yet, you're in for a lot of crying. SE kept looking at my leaky eyes & trying not to laugh. In any case we made it safely to London in time for dinner.
This was waiting for us when we checked in. I happened to meet Mohammed later in my bikini, which seemed to make a big impression on him even though I was mostly behind our door. His arrangements became increasingly elaborate each day:
He was extremely attentive during our stay, always asking me or Sexy Englishman how the other was & checking on me when I got lost once, but it definitively tipped over into creepiness when we checked out. We were doing last-minute packing. He came to say goodbye & ask for SE's address, cell phone number & then our picture. Really bizarre. Especially when he gave us his address as Housekeeping at Hilton Fayrouz. We did really enjoy our flowers though, & marveled at the feat of engineering which is the peacock at the end. The blue neck is a towel, artfully folded to stand up.Our first night, Saturday, we were too hot to do anything except have dinner & go to sleep. We lounged by the pool in the morning while deciding on activities, & went quad driving in the desert later that night. It's so cool! They're little ATVs that go about 20 mph, which feels fast & exciting when you're bouncing over ruts & can hear & feel the engine revving. We had to go in single file but on the way out they let us go pretty fast. We stopped in a couple places to look at scenery & the only part I didn't like was when some teenage punks kept riding my tail on the way back. The asshole directly behind me actually bumped me once. I couldn't go any faster, since we had to follow the guide strictly & were kept in line by other guides on motorbikes. It was super fun - I'd love to just rent one & go explore by myself. We had dinner at Safsafa in the Na'ama Center mall complex (see LP for more info about most places I mention here) which was pretty good. That whole area of Na'ama Bay was hopping every night, even though it was the low season. It was nice to be able to walk around & see what was going on without getting in a cab. Although running the gauntlet of hawkers was a trial every time. Generally we just tried not to get drawn into conversation.
On Monday we did a snorkeling trip into Ras Mohammed, the national park protecting the reef. I can't believe how beautiful it is! The reefs starts just right there off the shore, barely a foot below the surface. We saw so many incredible creatures especially a lionfish, lots of colorful parrotfish, pikefish, etc. I got over my fear of snorkeling too. I used to be a swim champion & I've always panicked at breathing underwater. Just couldn't get used to it. This time the fish & coral distracted me, & once I got the hang of it I could let go of the blind panic & concentrate on looking around. Very happy about that. We snorkeled for hours, so much that I actually got the first sunburn of my life. I refused to believe that was what it was when SE pointed it out - I scoffed until I realized that it hurt & was red & generally exhibited the same characteristics as SE's frequent burns (he has classic fair English skin). We had so much fun we decided to SCUBA the next day. He has his PADI open water certification but hasn't done it in 5 years, & I'd never done it at all, so I just did a beginner dive from the boat & he came along to snorkel, opting out of the rather time-consuming refresher course. It's pretty cool. I had a hard time keeping the breather thing in my mouth & those tanks are awfully heavy but it's so cool to just swim right down to whatever's interesting & not have to come up for air after a minute like when snorkeling. I finally figured out how to equalize pressure in my head properly (hadn't quite got it the day before) & had a lovely time. Unfortunately I ended up with an ear infection later. When we woke up from our nap I noticed an earache. We started playing Scrabble waiting for the heat to lessen so we could have dinner, & the throbbing increased to metal spike level. I was whimpering & couldn't concentrate so we called the hotel doctor. He prescribed me nose drops, antibiotics & 2 types of ear drops for my "major ear infection." The drops, Advil & Excedrin made me feel ok enough to venture out for dinner.
We went to Da Franco (as LP suggested), close to the Hilton on the road by the beach, which was all right. The night before we went to Pomodoro at the Camel Hotel because it was the busiest restaurant on that strip but that didn't pan out either - it wasn't very good except for the potato leek soup. I could happily eat a gallon of that. We kept wanting to try Pacha Sharm but couldn't tell from outside if it'd be good, plus we figured it'd be the same as Pacha NYC with the overpriced, watered down drinks. & it's always more fun with a group of friends than just 2 of us anyway. Wednesday, our last full day, we met an American couple by the pool who were amazingly similar to us. They'd taken practically the same trip to South Africa before, they were from NYC, the list went on & on. We got along so well we made plans to hang out later. SE & I spent a lazy day between pool & a/c'd room, since I couldn't go in the ocean to protect my ear & SE was too hot. We had a few drinks with Cute American Couple at the Pirates Bar in the hotel & then wandered over to Na'ama Bay & settled on Fawanes for dinner. This was again courtesy of LP, but CAGirl & I were decidedly unamused by the cockroach that scuttled over our pita bread towards the end! The food was ok, not great - SE & I concluded that LP generally has a bias towards backpackers & their lean wallets, because their descriptions of most restaurants turned out to be exaggerated to us, coming from NYC & haute cuisine as we were. We soothed our feelings with a sheesha (water pipe) at Viva on the beach after the scary bug incident. CAC were really nice & hopefully next time we go out to Cali, where they just moved, we'll hang out with them again.
We had another cabbie incident on the way to the airport which was the final straw for SE. This one tried to tell us the fare was double - £100 - what the hotel said it was - £50 - & SE lost his temper. We had trouble getting to the right terminal what with our new-fangled e-tickets & me accused of being "China" again for about 5 minutes. I don't understand the problem, we saw a lot of American-Asian tourists, it can't be that weird to them. When we did at length get to the right place they were completely confounded by the e-tickets. We got them to accept that the tickets were real by showing them the itinerary SE had drawn up for us, although they would keep flipping to irrelevant pages over & over despite our attempts to keep them focused. "No, no, just this flight here, Sharm to Vienna to London - no we already did all this [first 6 pages], we're not going to South Africa." It turned out when we got to Austria that we didn't actually have e-tickets. They'd FedExed the paper tickets to Cairo for some unfathomable reason. We managed to get everything straightened out, luckily.
In Vienna I couldn't resist buying Chanel nail polish at duty free, since I hadn't found a salon in Sharm & wanted to look presentable for SE's friends. Sand, ocean & general traveling really take a lot out of paint. Most importantly, I picked up Harry Potter (& was probably the only person to pay full price that week - €30 = ~$40! Should have waited for the London price of £6.) I've been a fan since I read the first one, & if you haven't read it yet, you're in for a lot of crying. SE kept looking at my leaky eyes & trying not to laugh. In any case we made it safely to London in time for dinner.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Cairo: 7.5/10
I'm so bored at work that I'm writing these posts out longhand & typing them when I have time, which is why I'm posting a lot more than I thought I would. Continuing on... We arrived in Egypt very early & were greeted by someone our hotel sent. He didn't have to wait outside baggage claim; he walked us through customs in what would have been record time if the official hadn't looked at me & kept insisting "you China!" despite my American passport. After frightening me for a while he said he was joking & let us through. How amusing. At long last we were driven to the Mena House Oberoi, a lovely old palatial hunting lodge-turned-hotel. It is literally across the street from the Pyramids, as Giza is now an area of Cairo. We got a Pyramid view room. Basically, when we woke up each morning it was like, "Oh look honey, out the window!" We had a lovely spacious room with lounge area & lots of space for our bags. There were balconies for our French doors as well. It was fun to walk into the heat in the mornings then go back into air conditioning. I was pretty good this trip - for four weeks I packed a big suitcase & a tiny one only. Usually I need the big one for just a week so I was very restrained. We were exhausted after all the jumping off bridges & baiting great white sharks with ourselves so we had a very quiet first day by the pool. Other than the maddeningly persistent flies, it was lovely. The pool is an enormous oval & there's a guitarist who plays all afternoon. Sexy Englishman dozed & read The Elegant Universe, a gift from me, while I caught up on more Economists & Mind Performance Hacks.
I don't understand how Arab women can stand being so hot in those burqas. It was about 95° & I couldn't bear wearing much more than a bikini! (Although I did, of course, I'm not stupid.) I find it odd that a religion mandating so much black clothing popped up in the desert of all places, instead of Scandinavia or something. I guess it's because people wanted to wear so little that men had to be "protected" from temptation. Learn some self-control, boys, jeez. According to the Lonely Planet guide (LP), it is wise for a woman traveler to just say her male companion is her husband, because they respect married women much more. Since a good Muslim girl has to be a virgin for her wedding night, foreign women are their chance for easy pussy. LP also said to keep as much of myself covered as possible. SE wasn't quite ready for a Mrs. SE but my safety won out. He'd made fun of me all through South Africa for packing so many long-sleeved shirts & pants & I was finally vindicated when man after man stopped & turned to stare at me regardless. One guy even tripped in the street while walking backwards, staring. To be fair, I think part of it may have been that they never see any young attractive Asian women, only old Japanese & Chinese tourists, but it was still disconcerting & made me nervous. It was much funnier when hawkers jokingly tried to buy me from SE for outrageous numbers of camels - the highest offer he got was 100 million. Each one is worth ~$1000 so it's lucky the 7-year-old kid didn't seem to actually have any camels or I'd be trapped in some harem right now.
That first night we went to the Sound & Light Show "narrated" by the Sphinx. It's super cheesy & pompous, although it's cool to see the Pyramids & Sphinx lit up at night. We had dinner at the Mughal Room in the hotel which was probably the best Indian food I've ever had. We did the tasting course & each one was more scrumptious than the last. The mains, especially, were so good we wanted to keep eating even though we were totally full. Partly as a result of that plus all the sunshine earlier, we decided to take a disco nap before the belly dancing show at the hotel's nightclub later. LP said Cairo was the birthplace of belly dancing & had the best dancers in the world so I was extremely excited. I was so sleepy though, when SE woke me up at 2am I couldn't be bothered. The next morning we had a tour bright & early with Sharif of Abercrombie & Kent Tours. We grabbed some delicious (& amazingly cheap at E£3 = $0.55 for 4 sandwiches) falafel from Felfela & visited the Pyramids. We went to the 3 big ones by us, Khufu, Khafre & Menkaure.
They look a bit like step pyramids now because their limestone coverings & some of the inner limestone was taken to build other things, but they're still massive. Each block is about 1 meter x 3m & although Sharif explained how they were put together, it's mind-boggling. The current consensus is internal & external ramps winding around & around the pyramid & then disassembled. Contrary to what I'd read as a child, the workers weren't slaves, they were farmers keeping busy during the fallow season, given the very high honor of building Pharaoh's tomb. I guess if you want to call it that. We climbed inside the Great Pyramid & the most amazing thing was how smooth the walls were. I can't even get my head around the amount of labor it must have taken. When we'd had our fill of giant rock monuments, Sharif took us to a Papyrus store which was quite interesting & its curio shop which was not. Stuff in Egypt can look so tacky.
We stopped for lunch at Abou Tarek, which specialized in kushari, a noodle-type dish with spices which is pretty good. Then it was time for the Egyptian Museum. Sharif was in his element - he was a fount of information on the highlights of the Museum, as we obviously couldn't see every single thing in 2 hours. A bit overwhelming, actually - 2 hours of relentless lectures & not much walking around makes my eyes droop. My favorite exhibit was the diorite statue. Sharif said diorite is the second hardest material in the world, behind only diamond. & yet the ancient Egyptians carved 23 statues out of it. The weird thing is, we can't figure out how they did it. Apparently the only way they've been able to make a dent in diorite nowadays is with lasers, & they can't manage that level of detail either (nostrils, eyelids, etc.). Very mysterious. (A quick Google search revealed that Sharif was perhaps more patriotic than knowledgeable, as diorite is only a 6/10 on the Moh hardness scale & it is certainly not only lasers that can carve it.) It was also interesting to learn that silver was actually much more valuable in ancient Egypt because it had to be imported, whereas gold was so plentiful they buried their pharaohs with tons of it. Even a weak, short-lived king like Tutankhamen had a several gilded sarcophagi & a treasury's worth of gold. Maybe that's why their jewelry now is surprisingly expensive - they locked most of it away with dead people. My favorite part was the small pond outside the building with reeds & lilies which represented the papyrus & lotus of the kingdoms of Upper & Lower Egypt.
For dinner we went to Bird Cage at the Semiramis InterContinental, touted as the best Thai in Cairo. I don't know if that's true but it was certainly the best Thai I've ever had. We tried the chicken satay, crab & corn soup & crispy shrimp appetizers - then chicken cashew & spicy beef something after that, which were all fantastic. I could eat there every night. There was a belly dancer coming on later that night in the same hotel so we went across the street to El Mojito at the Nile Hilton to wait for her. However, we'd eaten too early - 8pm - & after 2 hours we were too bored to wait until 1 am for the show. We went home & I think we just played Scrabble.
On Friday we were really lazy, got up late & ended up sitting by the pool again. We tried Abu Sid, highly recommended by LP, & were extremely disappointed. It is not sumptuous or fit for a pasha & the food was ok but certainly nothing special, while the service was glacial & mixed up. I've had better meals at Le Souk in NYC. As it was our last night in Cairo, I was absolutely hell-bent on seeing a dancer before we left. SE was tired & tried to beg off but I convinced him by arguing that we'd probably never come back to Cairo & thus would miss out forever, & also I needed protection from the men. Fortunately for us lazy bums, the hotel night club was having a performance so all we had to to do was stay awake. When we got down there the audience totaled 12 people - including us. The singer soon finished & musicians began pouring out. it was like the circus act with the clowns popping out of a VW. We counted 19 people on stage! At long last the dancer herself came out. She was terrible. She had some basic moves, the requisite smile & was even pretty cute, but there was no rhythm or passion. Maybe she was a novice, I don't know. I was so disappointed I cried a little on our way back to the room. To his credit, SE comforted me instead of saying told you so.
Saturday we realized that we had forgotten to go shopping. We decided on the Khan Al Khalili bazaar as suggested by LP but when we told the cabbie where we wanted to go, he told us it was at least an hour there, plus Cairo traffic is horrible so probably it would be longer. We only had 2.5 hours total before we had to be at the airport so we were happy to take his suggestion of shopping near the hotel. I got some sheets, since people are always talking about Egyptian cotton, & we bought some cute clothes & jewelry. We managed to cross the street without getting run over - you think jaywalking is bad in NYC, you'd be horrified at Cairo. People basically walk whenever & wherever they feel like it, & there are hardly any stoplights. In any case we got what we wanted, although we didn't have time to get proper shawarma before our flight as I'd hoped. Our cabbie took it upon himself to stop & get us some, & wouldn't let us give him money. SE only had E£100 ($18.18) bills & said so when the driver stopped to get us drinks, but again he insisted it was his hospitality & that he had change for the fare of E£50, no worries. When we arrived SE gave him the E£100 & the guy just said thanks & started walking away. SE was like, No, I need change, you said you had it. It turned out he only had E£12 so we had to take that. This was one of the more egregious examples of how annoying baksheesh (tipping) is in Egypt. He clearly wanted us to tip him a lot, which is reasonable, but it sucks when people try to manipulate you into it. We might have just given him the extra 50 if it weren't for the fake "hospitality" & the bullshit about change. Don't call it hospitality when you have an agenda. We were also frustrated by how hard it was to get change. Whenever we wanted to break a bill they always asked if we had smaller, & on the frequent occasions when we didn't they were quite happy to pocket the excess unless SE got annoyed & walked away. LP said baksheesh is the custom for any kind of service but we got really tired of feeling fleeced all the time. In any case, we made it through both security gates (I suppose just in case we'd created a weapon in the 100 feet between the 1st X-ray/metal detector & the 2nd) & onto our flight to Sharm safely.
I don't understand how Arab women can stand being so hot in those burqas. It was about 95° & I couldn't bear wearing much more than a bikini! (Although I did, of course, I'm not stupid.) I find it odd that a religion mandating so much black clothing popped up in the desert of all places, instead of Scandinavia or something. I guess it's because people wanted to wear so little that men had to be "protected" from temptation. Learn some self-control, boys, jeez. According to the Lonely Planet guide (LP), it is wise for a woman traveler to just say her male companion is her husband, because they respect married women much more. Since a good Muslim girl has to be a virgin for her wedding night, foreign women are their chance for easy pussy. LP also said to keep as much of myself covered as possible. SE wasn't quite ready for a Mrs. SE but my safety won out. He'd made fun of me all through South Africa for packing so many long-sleeved shirts & pants & I was finally vindicated when man after man stopped & turned to stare at me regardless. One guy even tripped in the street while walking backwards, staring. To be fair, I think part of it may have been that they never see any young attractive Asian women, only old Japanese & Chinese tourists, but it was still disconcerting & made me nervous. It was much funnier when hawkers jokingly tried to buy me from SE for outrageous numbers of camels - the highest offer he got was 100 million. Each one is worth ~$1000 so it's lucky the 7-year-old kid didn't seem to actually have any camels or I'd be trapped in some harem right now.
That first night we went to the Sound & Light Show "narrated" by the Sphinx. It's super cheesy & pompous, although it's cool to see the Pyramids & Sphinx lit up at night. We had dinner at the Mughal Room in the hotel which was probably the best Indian food I've ever had. We did the tasting course & each one was more scrumptious than the last. The mains, especially, were so good we wanted to keep eating even though we were totally full. Partly as a result of that plus all the sunshine earlier, we decided to take a disco nap before the belly dancing show at the hotel's nightclub later. LP said Cairo was the birthplace of belly dancing & had the best dancers in the world so I was extremely excited. I was so sleepy though, when SE woke me up at 2am I couldn't be bothered. The next morning we had a tour bright & early with Sharif of Abercrombie & Kent Tours. We grabbed some delicious (& amazingly cheap at E£3 = $0.55 for 4 sandwiches) falafel from Felfela & visited the Pyramids. We went to the 3 big ones by us, Khufu, Khafre & Menkaure.
They look a bit like step pyramids now because their limestone coverings & some of the inner limestone was taken to build other things, but they're still massive. Each block is about 1 meter x 3m & although Sharif explained how they were put together, it's mind-boggling. The current consensus is internal & external ramps winding around & around the pyramid & then disassembled. Contrary to what I'd read as a child, the workers weren't slaves, they were farmers keeping busy during the fallow season, given the very high honor of building Pharaoh's tomb. I guess if you want to call it that. We climbed inside the Great Pyramid & the most amazing thing was how smooth the walls were. I can't even get my head around the amount of labor it must have taken. When we'd had our fill of giant rock monuments, Sharif took us to a Papyrus store which was quite interesting & its curio shop which was not. Stuff in Egypt can look so tacky.We stopped for lunch at Abou Tarek, which specialized in kushari, a noodle-type dish with spices which is pretty good. Then it was time for the Egyptian Museum. Sharif was in his element - he was a fount of information on the highlights of the Museum, as we obviously couldn't see every single thing in 2 hours. A bit overwhelming, actually - 2 hours of relentless lectures & not much walking around makes my eyes droop. My favorite exhibit was the diorite statue. Sharif said diorite is the second hardest material in the world, behind only diamond. & yet the ancient Egyptians carved 23 statues out of it. The weird thing is, we can't figure out how they did it. Apparently the only way they've been able to make a dent in diorite nowadays is with lasers, & they can't manage that level of detail either (nostrils, eyelids, etc.). Very mysterious. (A quick Google search revealed that Sharif was perhaps more patriotic than knowledgeable, as diorite is only a 6/10 on the Moh hardness scale & it is certainly not only lasers that can carve it.) It was also interesting to learn that silver was actually much more valuable in ancient Egypt because it had to be imported, whereas gold was so plentiful they buried their pharaohs with tons of it. Even a weak, short-lived king like Tutankhamen had a several gilded sarcophagi & a treasury's worth of gold. Maybe that's why their jewelry now is surprisingly expensive - they locked most of it away with dead people. My favorite part was the small pond outside the building with reeds & lilies which represented the papyrus & lotus of the kingdoms of Upper & Lower Egypt.
For dinner we went to Bird Cage at the Semiramis InterContinental, touted as the best Thai in Cairo. I don't know if that's true but it was certainly the best Thai I've ever had. We tried the chicken satay, crab & corn soup & crispy shrimp appetizers - then chicken cashew & spicy beef something after that, which were all fantastic. I could eat there every night. There was a belly dancer coming on later that night in the same hotel so we went across the street to El Mojito at the Nile Hilton to wait for her. However, we'd eaten too early - 8pm - & after 2 hours we were too bored to wait until 1 am for the show. We went home & I think we just played Scrabble.
On Friday we were really lazy, got up late & ended up sitting by the pool again. We tried Abu Sid, highly recommended by LP, & were extremely disappointed. It is not sumptuous or fit for a pasha & the food was ok but certainly nothing special, while the service was glacial & mixed up. I've had better meals at Le Souk in NYC. As it was our last night in Cairo, I was absolutely hell-bent on seeing a dancer before we left. SE was tired & tried to beg off but I convinced him by arguing that we'd probably never come back to Cairo & thus would miss out forever, & also I needed protection from the men. Fortunately for us lazy bums, the hotel night club was having a performance so all we had to to do was stay awake. When we got down there the audience totaled 12 people - including us. The singer soon finished & musicians began pouring out. it was like the circus act with the clowns popping out of a VW. We counted 19 people on stage! At long last the dancer herself came out. She was terrible. She had some basic moves, the requisite smile & was even pretty cute, but there was no rhythm or passion. Maybe she was a novice, I don't know. I was so disappointed I cried a little on our way back to the room. To his credit, SE comforted me instead of saying told you so.
Saturday we realized that we had forgotten to go shopping. We decided on the Khan Al Khalili bazaar as suggested by LP but when we told the cabbie where we wanted to go, he told us it was at least an hour there, plus Cairo traffic is horrible so probably it would be longer. We only had 2.5 hours total before we had to be at the airport so we were happy to take his suggestion of shopping near the hotel. I got some sheets, since people are always talking about Egyptian cotton, & we bought some cute clothes & jewelry. We managed to cross the street without getting run over - you think jaywalking is bad in NYC, you'd be horrified at Cairo. People basically walk whenever & wherever they feel like it, & there are hardly any stoplights. In any case we got what we wanted, although we didn't have time to get proper shawarma before our flight as I'd hoped. Our cabbie took it upon himself to stop & get us some, & wouldn't let us give him money. SE only had E£100 ($18.18) bills & said so when the driver stopped to get us drinks, but again he insisted it was his hospitality & that he had change for the fare of E£50, no worries. When we arrived SE gave him the E£100 & the guy just said thanks & started walking away. SE was like, No, I need change, you said you had it. It turned out he only had E£12 so we had to take that. This was one of the more egregious examples of how annoying baksheesh (tipping) is in Egypt. He clearly wanted us to tip him a lot, which is reasonable, but it sucks when people try to manipulate you into it. We might have just given him the extra 50 if it weren't for the fake "hospitality" & the bullshit about change. Don't call it hospitality when you have an agenda. We were also frustrated by how hard it was to get change. Whenever we wanted to break a bill they always asked if we had smaller, & on the frequent occasions when we didn't they were quite happy to pocket the excess unless SE got annoyed & walked away. LP said baksheesh is the custom for any kind of service but we got really tired of feeling fleeced all the time. In any case, we made it through both security gates (I suppose just in case we'd created a weapon in the 100 feet between the 1st X-ray/metal detector & the 2nd) & onto our flight to Sharm safely.
Cape Town: 9.5/10
We flew Vic Falls to Jo'burg to Cape Town on Sunday. I'm not sure, but it seems that all flights in South Africa have to go through Jo'burg. Which is a pain, because it's a badly designed airport with horribly misleading signs. To get between terminals requires going through the parking garage. Even if they are on adjoining floors. The signs are useless; we frequently followed a sign one way only to get confused at the dead end & then catch sight of another saying to go back the way we came. This happened at least 3 times. Also, the South African Airways (SAA) people were particularly unhelpful. Every time we talked to them it looked like they were solving Mensa problems on their computers. They always needed help from their colleagues, too. The worst part was the look of absolute blank bewilderment we'd get in response to perfectly reasonable, comprehensible questions such as, "Can I put points on my Star Alliance [of which SAA is a member] card for this [SAA] flight?" They would say "Huh?!?!?!" as befuddledly as though SE had asked to recharge his banana in midair. This happened every time! & it wasn't because they didn't speak English - they do, very well. It was was almost as puzzling as frustrating.
Anyway, we managed to make it through to Cape Town. We'd heard lots of good things about it & it didn't disappoint. We stayed at the Extreme Hotel which is hands down the coolest hotel ever. It's affiliated with the Extreme Sports Channel, which they have playing all the time. The elevators & bathrooms are themed - for instance, one elevator is a shark-diving cage. Outside each room is a light that is red or blue to indicate "privacy" or not. The rooms themselves aren't very big but everything is fitted together in such a way that it doesn't seem small. The bed was huge & fluffy & there were UK & Australian charger plates right in the wall. There's a Bose clock radio in every room, free wireless internet, plus an outlet in the safe so you can charge laptops, phones etc. inside. Cabs waited outside & fares could be put on our room. The breakfast buffet was the best we had anywhere in Africa, the bar reminded us strongly of the Hudson Hotel in NYC, & all of this was for ~US$150 per night. Plus all the employees were super nice & helpful. We finally managed to stop swooning over every new awesome thing we noticed & go to dinner at Blues in Camps Bay, an upscale section of town. It wasn't as lively as we expected but we did arrive at 9 pm on an off-season Sunday. We got the recommended seafood-for-2 platter & it was so good. I've never liked non-fried calamari because I find it rubbery but this was amazingly tender in scrumptious sauce. We had some tiger & queen prawns, which would be called shrimp in America, as well as fish, lobster & crayfish. They should do seafood towers like that in the States. I don't much like oysters or mussels & they always put so many in a tower, it rarely makes sense for me to order one. & stuff from the raw bar is good but it's so nice to have it hot & flavored as well. Dipping things in sauce just isn't the same. Afterwards, we were too tired from struggling with airlines all day to enjoy the nightlife so we went to bed.
The next day, after careful consideration, we hired a driver to show us around Cape Town. We rode the cable car up Table Mountain, which is gorgeous. The Cape area is its own unique floral region, fynbos, because of the cold Benguela & warm Agulhas currents that collide there. The Indian & Atlantic Oceans also meet at Cape Point. There are about 6000 plants & some animals in the area that are found nowhere else in the world. The African penguins at Boulder Park are not as cute as the emperors down in Antarctica but they are still adorable.
It's bizarre to see them without a backdrop of snow or glaciers. We also went to the Cape of Good Hope & Cape Point Lighthouse. On our way back to the hotel we met some overfriendly baboons. One of them tried to open the doors of the car parked in front of us!
Our guide said they've even been known to break into houses looking for food. After our extensive day of sightseeing we checked out Long Street, which is a pretty hip & young crowd. We decided on Mama Africa where we tried ostrich, crocodile, kudu & springbok (we got the mixed grill, we're not piggies) for the first time & actually liked them very much. I think that may have had more to do with the excellence of the chef than the taste of the meat, though, since we'd tried some springbok biltong (jerky) in Kruger & hated it. Crocodile & ostrich taste like stronger-flavored chicken, while kudu & springbok remind me of beef. I also had a crazy drink called the Wagon Wheel or something. It was tequila & Tia Maria with a shot of Bailey's & some other creamy liqueur dumped in at the end. Kind of like a really alcoholic Irish car bomb, plus it was on fire. I was quite tipsy afterwards as you can imagine. We just went home though, because we had to get up early for shark diving!
Cape Town is known for its dive tours with great white sharks. We went on Great White Ecoventures with maybe 15 other people. They took us out to a boat from Gansbaai. I was nauseous half the time & the wetsuits were cold & clammy but it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. You just put on a goggle mask & get in the cage with a few other people & go underwater when the spotter yells out. The sharks swim right by & try to eat the bait, it's mind-blowing.
We saw about 8 separate sharks continuously for 2 hours which was very lucky, according to our captain, since it's quite common not to see any at all or just for 5 minutes. SE & I watched them until we were too cold. We should have stayed in a little longer though, because the biggest shark actually bit the cage! That was a fantastic end to our day. We rushed back to the hotel to get our bags & stressed out extremely trying to get to our flight on time. I thought superstitiously that we'd been so lucky all day that we couldn't miss it & I was right this time. We had to fly through Jo'burg again (5th time in a week!) & then took the overnight to Cairo.
Anyway, we managed to make it through to Cape Town. We'd heard lots of good things about it & it didn't disappoint. We stayed at the Extreme Hotel which is hands down the coolest hotel ever. It's affiliated with the Extreme Sports Channel, which they have playing all the time. The elevators & bathrooms are themed - for instance, one elevator is a shark-diving cage. Outside each room is a light that is red or blue to indicate "privacy" or not. The rooms themselves aren't very big but everything is fitted together in such a way that it doesn't seem small. The bed was huge & fluffy & there were UK & Australian charger plates right in the wall. There's a Bose clock radio in every room, free wireless internet, plus an outlet in the safe so you can charge laptops, phones etc. inside. Cabs waited outside & fares could be put on our room. The breakfast buffet was the best we had anywhere in Africa, the bar reminded us strongly of the Hudson Hotel in NYC, & all of this was for ~US$150 per night. Plus all the employees were super nice & helpful. We finally managed to stop swooning over every new awesome thing we noticed & go to dinner at Blues in Camps Bay, an upscale section of town. It wasn't as lively as we expected but we did arrive at 9 pm on an off-season Sunday. We got the recommended seafood-for-2 platter & it was so good. I've never liked non-fried calamari because I find it rubbery but this was amazingly tender in scrumptious sauce. We had some tiger & queen prawns, which would be called shrimp in America, as well as fish, lobster & crayfish. They should do seafood towers like that in the States. I don't much like oysters or mussels & they always put so many in a tower, it rarely makes sense for me to order one. & stuff from the raw bar is good but it's so nice to have it hot & flavored as well. Dipping things in sauce just isn't the same. Afterwards, we were too tired from struggling with airlines all day to enjoy the nightlife so we went to bed.
The next day, after careful consideration, we hired a driver to show us around Cape Town. We rode the cable car up Table Mountain, which is gorgeous. The Cape area is its own unique floral region, fynbos, because of the cold Benguela & warm Agulhas currents that collide there. The Indian & Atlantic Oceans also meet at Cape Point. There are about 6000 plants & some animals in the area that are found nowhere else in the world. The African penguins at Boulder Park are not as cute as the emperors down in Antarctica but they are still adorable.
It's bizarre to see them without a backdrop of snow or glaciers. We also went to the Cape of Good Hope & Cape Point Lighthouse. On our way back to the hotel we met some overfriendly baboons. One of them tried to open the doors of the car parked in front of us!
Our guide said they've even been known to break into houses looking for food. After our extensive day of sightseeing we checked out Long Street, which is a pretty hip & young crowd. We decided on Mama Africa where we tried ostrich, crocodile, kudu & springbok (we got the mixed grill, we're not piggies) for the first time & actually liked them very much. I think that may have had more to do with the excellence of the chef than the taste of the meat, though, since we'd tried some springbok biltong (jerky) in Kruger & hated it. Crocodile & ostrich taste like stronger-flavored chicken, while kudu & springbok remind me of beef. I also had a crazy drink called the Wagon Wheel or something. It was tequila & Tia Maria with a shot of Bailey's & some other creamy liqueur dumped in at the end. Kind of like a really alcoholic Irish car bomb, plus it was on fire. I was quite tipsy afterwards as you can imagine. We just went home though, because we had to get up early for shark diving!Cape Town is known for its dive tours with great white sharks. We went on Great White Ecoventures with maybe 15 other people. They took us out to a boat from Gansbaai. I was nauseous half the time & the wetsuits were cold & clammy but it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. You just put on a goggle mask & get in the cage with a few other people & go underwater when the spotter yells out. The sharks swim right by & try to eat the bait, it's mind-blowing.
We saw about 8 separate sharks continuously for 2 hours which was very lucky, according to our captain, since it's quite common not to see any at all or just for 5 minutes. SE & I watched them until we were too cold. We should have stayed in a little longer though, because the biggest shark actually bit the cage! That was a fantastic end to our day. We rushed back to the hotel to get our bags & stressed out extremely trying to get to our flight on time. I thought superstitiously that we'd been so lucky all day that we couldn't miss it & I was right this time. We had to fly through Jo'burg again (5th time in a week!) & then took the overnight to Cairo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)