South Street Seaport

This Saturday we drove into NYC to hang out with Phil's family in Chinatown. Our first stop was lunch at Joe's Shanghai. It's a chain restuarant that is well known for their soup-filled dumplings. We ate with Phil's parents, his Aunt Mommy and cousin Kevin.
Phil's other cousin Lucia joined us as we were finishing lunch, and since we had already eaten most of the food we ordered another dish for her. She had picked up some deformed looking tomatoes on her way to lunch, which are apparently very expensive and very good. They're called "heirloom tomatoes" and they cost about $5 a pound! Those are some expensive tomatoes...After lunch we said goodbye to Kevin and the rest of us headed over to the South Street Seaport to walk around and check out the four waterfalls that were recently put up in the city. They're a piece of temporary public art funded by The Public Art Fund in NY. The waterfalls are supposed to be up until October of this year. Phil is very against the waterfalls and thinks that they're a waste of tax payer money...so he basically just wanted to go and complain about their uselessness in person. While I think it's a nice contrast to the city around it I tend to agree with Phil. Especially with the current economy it seems like there are other things that this money could have been used for. But, again, still nice to look at. Behind me is one of the waterfalls which flows right beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
When you pan out you can see another one in the distance, off to the left, behind the Brooklyn Bridge.

And when you look down towards the lower east side you can see the 3rd one.
In case anyone's interested here's the official website for the waterfalls: http://www.nycwaterfalls.org/

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While we were looking at the bridges across the river we saw some Water Taxis. As if there weren't enough of them on the road, they put them in the water too. Here's Lucia and Phil (and the famous heirloom tomato) resting their feet.
Here's Phi's mom lounging on one of the chairs overlooking the water. Phil was tempted to take one of the chairs for our new home, but they were bolted to the ground.
The deck with the view of the water is part of a mall area with little shops and a food court. We had some ice cream at Häagen-Dazs, which was super sweet, but very yummy. They have these new things called "Dazzlers", which is basically some combination of ice cream, caramel/syrup and bananas or oreo cookie crumbs just piled into a plastic cup. It was tasty, but like Lucia said, probably something that would taste better if you made it yourself.

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While we were walking around inside the mall area we came acorss something called the World Voices Project. There was a whole area with headphones hanging from a metal grid where you could listen to human rights readings in various different languages. It was kind of interesting, although it would have been nice if they told you what they were actually saying. There were definitely some languages represented there that I'd never heard of before.

Here's Phil trying to deciper some Mongolian...After we left the South Street Seaport Phil went to get a haircut - his first haircut at an actual barber in over 6 years! Between his college roommate and me, Phil pretty much has gotten free haircuts for a while, but he caved in and decided to spend the $10 to get his hair cut by someone who actually knows what they're doing. ^__^

Look how short his hair is now...

BBQs with the Families

This past weekend we spent the whole weekend attending family BBQs. Saturday was a lunch BBQ that we attended with my mom at my cousin William's house in Princeton. My other cousin, Peter, came with his wife and 3 girls as well. We spent most of our time playing with the kids while William BBQ'd some corn, ribs, and some other kind of meat...possibly steak?

Here's a picture of my mom with Peter's daughter, Sarah. If your cousin has children are they considered cousins too? Or are they 2nd cousins? Or cousins once removed?...I have this discussion with my cousins all the time, but we've never quite figured it out...

Anyway, here are all 3 of Peter's girls: Leah, Sarah and Phoebe. Sarah and Phoebe are twins.

Here are the guys (minus Peter): William, his son Joseph, and Phil.
Me and baby Leah...Peter seemed shocked that she let me hold her since she doesn't take kindly to strangers, but she seemed OK with my sister last time they got together. I think it's just because we're family. ^__^

Phil was very popular with the kids. Here he is playing Wii bowling with Joseph.
And here he is again playing Sorry with the girls.

I even grabbed a nice video of everyone playing together. Somehow kids find it amusing tormenting Phil. They've all hung out together before at the Lin family reunion at Hershey Park last year, but when we first arrived for the BBQ and I asked the girls if they remembered Phil they said no. Well, I can say that they definitely remembered him by the end of the afternoon. Check out Phil's strategy for handling kids: http://www.youtube.com/v/2KDAyTwskgc

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After hanging out with my family in NJ on Saturday, we spent Sunday in NY.

First we went to see a matinee of the Dark Knight. I don't want to give anything away, but it was really good. Phil wasn't as "wow"ed by this one as he was with Batman Begins, but I think it's just because the movie made him think too much with all the details and plot twists. It was a really long movie, but well worth it.

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Afterwards we spent the rest of the day at Phil's parents' for their summer BBQ. It was mostly his mom's side of the family, with a few relatives from his dad's side, and a bunch of friends of the family. My mom was at our temple in Flushing and needed a ride home, so we picked her up and brought her back to the BBQ to meet Phil's extended family, see the house, and of course eat. The house was packed - most of the "kids" were upstairs playing games and eating, and the parents ("elders") were downstairs chatting and eating. And people were lined up in the garage to grab food from the grill. Can you tell there was a lot of eating going on?

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I slacked a little on the pictures Sunday, which stinks because Phil's dad does a good BBQ so I wish I had picutres. But just to give you an idea, they were planning for around 50 people, so they bought $200 worth of meat alone. They had shish kabobs, chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, cow tail, sweet seasame soup, watermelon...yum yum.

Corporate Housing

So we've been in corporate housing since last Monday. Since we'll be leaving in less than a month now we've decided not to unpack, so things are a bit messy. The place is pretty nice though, and the amenities in the complex are really good - a nice pool, decent fitness area, weekly maid service, and free breakfast Monday thru Friday. The best part is Phil's company is not only paying for the whole month of rent, but utilities too. And with the heat these past few days the central air has been greatly appreciated. We definitely can't complain.

I finally got around to taking some pictures so here they are. This is a picture of the complex.

This is the dining lounge area in the leasing office where they serve breakfast - very modern.

A view of the other side of the room. And why they have fires going in their fireplaces in the middle of the summer I have no idea...Yes, it's an actual fireplace with a fire going. And there's 2 more in the main lobby of the leasing area which are also running right now. Perhaps they left them running for effect, but it still seems silly...

And, now for the best part - the pool! (which we have yet to use...) This is the view from the back door of the leasing office. Looks decent, right?

But once you get a full view of the pool from the other side it looks much nicer. The fountain is a nice touch in my opinion. I don't know if you can see it in the picture, but in the pool area they have little jets on the side that shoot streams of water too. At some point, when we're not running around doing family stuff, Phil and I will have to spend some time here on the weekend.Now for some pictures of the apartment itself.
This is the view when you first walk into the apartment. There's a wall with a window into the formal dining room. When you turn to the right you enter the living room, with the very large windows.
Here's a view of the front door from the hallway.
And here's another view of the living room/dining room area. That little desk to the right is my "office" where I do all my work. You can kind of see into the kitchen from the desk. There's a little ledge of counter space, which isn't really functional because it's hidden behind the desk, but it does make the room feel more open.

And here is the kitchen...
Down the short hallway, past the kitchen, there is the bathroom to your left. The bathroom is very deep. I didn't think it was anything super special, but Phil really seemed to like it. It does have tons of counter space. There's a small piece of wall separating the toilet area, and next to the toilet is a door to the washer and dryer. I was going to include a picture, but I figured no one would want to look at a picture of the toilet...

One cool thing is that there's a door in the bathroom, across from the sink, that leads into the walk-in-closet!
And where does the other side of the walk-in-closet lead to you ask? The bedroom!The bedroom even comes with a tiny TV...

But wait - that's not all! There is one more piece of the apartment that is severly underused at the moment because, well we're not going to be here much longer and there's no sense using this area. It's a little loft that overlooks the living room. There's a flight of stairs to the left of the front door that leads up to an extra room. It's a little dark because one of our lamps is broken, but you get the idea...This picture is taken from the door to yet another walk-in-closet, which is probably 2~3 times larger than the one in the master bedroom.
And here's the view to the first level from the loft...
And that's our temporary home until the 12th... ^__^

Goodbye Ohio. Hello NJ!

It's time for the Jersey posts to begin. On Friday, while I was at work, Phil and his parents were making their way across hilly PA to help haul away the rest of our things. The moving company already took the majority of our stuff before the Seattle trip. All we had left was a couple boxes of clothes, a TV and an air mattress.

After I got off work all 4 of us went to "chinatown" to have dinner with Phil's mom's childhood friend one last time. Going out to dinner with them always promises mounds of food. The husband and wife know the owners of most of the chinese restaurants in the area, but they normally take us to one called Li Wah. Everytime we go the cook always comes out to tell us what's good, and the table is usually so full they have to stack plates on top of each other. We were so busy eating we forgot to take pictures of all the food. So you'll have to settle for pictures of people.

In the back are Phil's parents, and in the front are his mom's friend, her husband and her mom.

And here is a picture of our friend May and her baby girl Su-Kyi!

May, her husband Anthony and Su-Kyi joined us at Li Wah for dinner. Phil's parents went crazy over Su-Kyi. I'm still convinced that Phil's mom would have taken Su-Kyi home, but then again I probably would too. She's such a cutie ^__^

After we slept off the Chinese food we started packing up the 2 cars and started the long trip to NJ. 7 long hours driving in the car listening to the mp3 player. I was in and out of sleep for most of the trip. Less because I was tired and more because there was nothing to do, and the rocking of the car tends to make you sleepy anyway. I would wake up to make sure Phil wasn't getting tired, but he was always wide awake...
This was what our view was for most of the trip. That's the butt of Phil's dad's car.
After we arrived in NJ we stopped by my family's house to drop off some of our stuff. And since it was almost dinner time we decided to all go out to eat before Phil, his parents and I headed to Phil's house in Queens. My mom and sister took us to a Malaysian restaurant called Penang.

Here is Phil and his parents outside the restaurant. And that's my sister making funny faces on the other side of the glass door behind Phil...Can you tell Phil is getting hungry?

Penang is a pretty popular restaurant. The inside was fairly big, but there were still tons of people waiting to get a table. While we waited I was going to walk across the parking lot with Phil and his parents to check out the Asian food market, Kam Man Food. But just as we started walking over there was a huge cloud of smoke that seemed to come out of nowhere. And we're not talking about a light puff of smoke, we're talking thick "where the heck am I" kind of smoke. People were turning back from the food store saying something about a fire, and a minute later the fire trucks arrived. Phil's dad seemed to think it was a man hole fire. How exactly that happened I'm not so sure.

Here are the fire trucks pulling into the parking lot across from the restaurant. Probably wondering what this silly Asian girl is doing taking pictures... After all that excitement we finally got seated in the restaurant.
The food was very tasty. And the best part is there was a birthday celebration at one of the tables. Now, instead of doing the standard bring out a dessert and sing, they actually turned out the lights in the entire restaurant, brought out the dessert and sang Happy Birthday along with a recording that they played over the speakers. It was so amusing I have decided this is going to be the location of Phil's next birthday, for some good old fashioned birthday embarrasement. And since he's not big on surprises you are all my witnesses that he has been given fair warning.

Anyway, this time I remembered to take pictures of all the dishes. I don't remember the names of all the food, so I'll just let you look at all the yummy pictures.

And a happy group photo with both families.

From left to right: Phil, Phil's dad, Phil's mom, my sister (Mandy), me, and my mom

Farewell Dinner

I am a little behind on my posts, but last Thursday I went out with a few coworkers as a farewell dinner. It started out as just 3 of us and we ended up with 6. We went to a newer restaurant in Crocker Park called Agave. It's an American-Mexican restaurant/bar. We didn't really eat very much, so I can't give a proper review on their food, but they had good margaritas! I even got to have a little salsa dancing before I left.

My last outing as a resident of Ohio...*sigh*

Back to front and left to right we have: Russ, Jaime, Marcos, me, Markeeta, and Alex.
I'll miss you guys!...

Cousins' Reunion '08 - Day 4

We've finally made it to the last day of our Seattle trip - at least for Phil and me. Alex took us to downtown Seattle to see the sights. Our first stop was the Public Market Center, home of the first Starbucks. And as advised by someone...(Phil)...I will introduce the cousins.


From left to right we have: Chris, Lea, (Winnie - held by Lea), Lydia, Ray, Lucia, Phil, Kevin, and Alex. We stopped by a few places in the market before heading off to lunch, including the fish market. The famous place you hear about on the food network where they throw fish, yell things to each other and in general entertain while they work. Sadly for us there was not so much fish throwing. Although we did see them throw a couple bundles of crabs...

That brings us to lunch. We ate at a french restaurant in the market, whose name I can't remember. What I do remember is mussels...lots and lots of mussels. Buckets of mussels in fact. I'm not quite sure how I missed getting a picture of the buckets and buckets of mussels, but I do have a consolation picture of Chris mourning the absence of Winnie, Phil's sister. She's in Maine for a good portion of the summer, so she wasn't able to join us, but that didn't stop the cousins from taking her to see all the sites!

And what would a stop at the Public Market be without seeing the first Starbucks. Aside from the unusually large crowd and the singing performers outside it looked pretty much like any other Starbucks. Although they did have a lovely plaque inside to let you know this was the first Starbucks store. I was able to take a quick picture before I got squeezed out the door.

Rather than waiting on the long line at the first Starbucks to get coffee we stopped at a place called Tully's a couple blocks down and got some blueberry coffee. I had never heard of blueberry flavored coffee before, so I assumed that it was a Seattle thing, but a couple days ago we stopped by Bruegger's Bagels in Cleveland with Phil's parents and they had it too. It must be a trend...I guess I'm not hip to the coffee scene anymore.

And here's a random picture of Phil on a fake green dog... Our next stop for the afternoon was at the Space Needle. No trip to Seattle would be complete without stopping here. Of course we didn't actually go up to the top, but we did spend some quality time in the gift shop on the first floor.

And right around the side of the Space Needle there was a small amusement park/carnival type area with carnival games and kiddie rides. There were definitely some rounds of Skee Ball and balloon popping going on. Not to mention a very long ride of bumper cars, which Chris and I caught on video! But it's too long to show here, so you'll just have to use your imagination. And we had some tickets left over from bumper cars that we all used to take a ride down the giant inflatable slide.

Here's a dejected picture of Phil at the slide...

Next we stopped at a place called Crab Pot for dinner.

This place was pretty popular because of its unique atmosphere. You get a small cutting board, a mallet, and a bib plus a whole table of seafood (with some corn and potatoes mixed in for good measure). Basically the waitress brings out a bucket of seafood, or in our case 3, and just dumps it all on the table. I'm not much of a seafood person myself, and neither is Phil, but it was pretty good. And good atmosphere with good company makes for a good time!

Here's a look at the table of seafood... Here's a look at the demolished table of seafood...

But even after all the eating everyone was still in high spirits.

Kevin, Alex, Lucia and Chris doing their post meal happy dance. Ok, maybe I made the happy dance part up, but it does kind of look like they're doing a happy dance...

And Lucia, Chris and Lea with their crab mallets.

Then after dinner and a quick stop by a bubble tea shop Phil and I headed off to our red eye flight back to Cleveland. And that brings us to the end of our Seattle trip. If I can actually get a video uploaded here I can show you the post crab mallet drum off! If not, you'll just have to wait for it on YouTube. ^__~