Friday, April 22, 2005
After a "wonderful" bus ride from Boston, Brian and I met up with Elmer, Hoong-San and Mom for all you can eat sushi at Kinoko. Soooooo goooood! After all the times we've had sushi, this was the first time I've tried the hand rolls (We ended up ordering 18 of those, with Elmer leading with 5 - no surprise). Not bad. Like Brian said, it's like a sushi taco.
Filled to the gills, we headed back home to surprise my dad that we came to visit for the weekend and celebrate his birthday.
I had originally planned to finally change my name on my license, but Elmer told me I had to have "6 point-documentation" which wasn't on the website I saw, so the idea of getting up super early to get to the DMV was scrapped. I guess it was a good thing since the next day would be jam packed with activities.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Woke up to a brunch of eggs benedict and panini - filled with one of my favorite spreads, Nutella - courtesy of Mom (it's so good to come back home for such yummy treats). After running a few errands and waiting for Elmer to wake up from a food coma, we headed to NYC to go to an exhibit. Elmer did take us on a small detour to another exhibit first - "Artists for Tsunami Relief" where photographers donated work for auction and the proceeds goes to AmeriCares. There were some really interesting images, and not so. Many of the pieces were sold, and those that weren't still had their bidding sheets. There was one that had a minimum bid of $12,000, and the highest bid listed was at $8,500. On a side note, I was really surprised at how many of the prints had dents in them. I would think they would be more careful.
We then went to the "Ashes and Snow" exhibit by Gregory Colbert. Beautiful, magical, serene, and breathtaking are just a few words to describe it. Go check it out if you can. It ends June 6th. http://www.ashesandsnow.org/
Then we headed to Chelsea Piers for some bowling action. Mind you, none of us bowled in quite some time, but we had a blast. Here are some highlights of the last couple frames.
We had to wait for our chance to bowl, so Elmer, Hoong-San, Brian and I went to the arcade to play some games, but right after we changed some money into tokens, our turn to bowl came up. So after bowling, we went to play our tokens. After we tried some driving and shooting games, Hoong-San wanted to give "Dance Revolution" a whirl...
FUN! Thank goodness there wasn't such a huge crowd, but I guess I wouldn't have noticed, since you try to concentrate so much during the game.
We walked over to Chelsea Market, passing a group of tango dancers smooshed in one small corner, and had some treats at Amy's Bread - quiche, cinnamon challah, brownie, almond brioche toast, and walnut twists. Not quite the protein-packed meal we could and probably should have gone for, because everyone was feeling a bit tired and sluggish soon after.
We went back home for a quick stopover to drop off some things and have a bathroom break, during which Hoong-San decided to take a very quick nap, kinda like a 3-minute nap. Because our next stop would also be a surprise for Dad, Mom decided to park a couple blocks from the theater. We were going to see "Crazy for You" by at the John Harms Theater in Englewood, a new favorite place for Dad. On our walk, we made a must-needed stop at Starbucks for a mocha frappaccino (it didn't help me for I ended up dozing a couple times). Everyone enjoyed the show, humming, singing, and whistling "I Got Rhythm" while exiting the theater.
Well, rain was forecasted for the day, and it finally arrived as we left the theater, so parking more than two blocks away didn't turn out to be a good idea. But Elmer stepped up and got the car while the rest of us waited inside. The Thai restaurant nearby closed at 11pm, and it was minutes before then when we all finally got in the car. So what to do for dinner...
Somehow we ended up back in NYC. I guess Elmer and Hoong-San felt there wasn't a good restaurant open late near home in Jersey. We made our way to the lower east side to Congee Village, where the food was filling and the price was right. We ended up having the House Special Chicken, Sauteed Filet Beef with Chinese Broccoli, Chinese Green with Garlic, Seafood Chow Fun Noodles, and Rice Congee with something called a "Century Egg". I must say that the egg tasted like liver, which doesn't rank very high on my food scale, so it threw me off a bit. Everything else was tasty but ended up being rather salty, so I gobbled up the relatively mild noodles. The Seattle/Sacramento game was on a huge screen near our table, and we hung around after dinner and watched the last couple minutes of the game (actually, Mom had been watching the whole time, occasionally making noises throughout dinner, rooting for the SuperSonics). They ended up winning 87-82, quite to the dismay of some of the staff at the restaurant who ended up watching the last 30 seconds of the game.
We did plan to go on to karaoke, but well, it was pretty late, everyone was tired (almost everyone...), and Dad was still recovering from a cold, so we decided it was best to go back home.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Sometime during our drive back home, we must have run over something, because the car ended up having a flat tire. Thank goodness it didn't cause problems the night before while it was raining late at night. What a nightmare that would have been. We found out as we drove to church, as Elmer noticed an unfamiliar sound as he drove half a block.
We had our traditional dim sum lunch at Silver Pond and finished with a chocolate mousse-filled cake at home.
Brian and I gave Dad the "Finding Neverland" DVD (what a lovely movie), an Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong CD singing Gershwin (what a coincidence "Crazy for You" was Gershwin!), and a framed photo of this:
(from Mom's birthday...see August 2004)Brian and I then headed back to into NYC to catch a bus, which luckily left a half hour later than we thought since the A train was making ALL the local stops due to construction.
p.s. HS - "third nut" =D lol
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