Hmm, so what have I been up to since Jeebusmas? Really, in a sense, not much.
I've watched a lot of movies, including Sherlock Holmes (which was okay, not fantastic) and I've eaten a lot of food, including some of it my own cooking.
Entertainment wise, I went outlet mall shopping with some friends, we went to the Elizabeth Gardens, New Jersey Outlet Mall, next to Newark Aiport on the west side of the Hudson river. This place was pretty darn big, two floors in a "H" formation, which had it's own power grid connection. We wandered through this place over the space of about 6 hours, yes, 6 hours. I ended up spending quite a bit of money on some shirts from Saks Off 5th Ave, a suit from Brooks Brothers, and two suitcases from the Samsonite shop.
Oh, before that, the day before actually, I went to B&H Photography and Video, on the West Side of Manhattan. It's this multilevel shop, technologically advanced in proceedure, that sells photography, video, audio, optics, electronics, consumer goodies and gadgets, and professional things too. After wandering through and speaking to some of the sales people, I came away with a heavier credit card, a pair of Audio Technica M50 headphones, and a Casio Exilim FC-100 (in white, though it's technically silver). So instead of my dSLR, I've been using the FC-100. It's easy to use, 9MP, and compact. I haven't seen any of the images off the camera, so I don't know how they look yet.
Anyway, getting back to things, after outlet mall shopping, we had dinner at an Indian place in Flushing, a lot of food, not too badly priced, reasonable taste, and a lot of "freebies". It was pretty empty so they probably gave them to us since otherwise they'd have to toss it out.
The weather has been okay here, some days are bone-chilling cold with knife edged winds, others, "warm" by comparison. We had snow appear on New Years Day, and snow the day before and yesterday though it is all melted now.
Other things that happened, like New Years Eve. Well, it was cold and wet so we stayed in and watched the broadcast online. It seemed actually fairly boring lol.. perhaps I'm getting old >_<. There were some crazy people shirtless in the virtually freezing rain.... not for me... not for me. We had gone to Trader Joe's on 14th and Union Square (it's like Aldi) and the lines were huge, they went snaking around the aisles before you got to the counter... But we got some food and what not so we could cook something.
New Years Day itself was pretty packed out in Times Square also. There was still confetti bits floating in the air, bits that had been caught on building tops, that were being blown around and recirculated by the air. Cruised through the Hersheys and M&M stores to get some chocolate, before heading down to Koreatown for dinner with some friends. The place we ate, Kunjip, seemed to be the busiest place on the strip since it had a line of customers outside it, in the cold, willing to wait their 20 minutes to get inside. It took us about that time to get inside the building, where the line continued around the edge of the eating tables, so when you ate, you had people watching eating, with the feeling of, hurry up! lol. I got a ricecake and mandoo (dumpling) soup, which was okay (only 3 mandoo!) but there was plenty of side dishes at least.
After dinner, we eventually (LOL, all these places listed on Google Maps don't exist no more) found a billiards/pool parlour on the 12th Floor of a place in Koreatown, and we played for an hour ($17 for a table/hr), max 4 people, min $10 charge if less than 1hr) before heading up a few blocks and singing two hours at Karaoke Duet, a Japanese run Karaoke bar upstairs on the 2nd floor. During that, the friends ordered drinks and I ended up with a Long Island Ice Tea, my first time having it. It didn't actually feel or taste that strong, just as people had said, it's one of those cocktails that you can get hammered on very easily since it's hard to tell how much alcohol you are imbibing. Anyway, at the end of the night, I still had most of it left, and I threw it down with some water, only to find about 20minutes later, my voice was going, possibly from the alcohol >_< interesting experience to say so.
The only others of note. City Crab and Company on 19th and Park Ave South is a nice crab place. $24 gets you 2lbs of garlic sauteed crabs. 2lb = 900g, doesn't seem much? It's a lot... There is like 6 half crabs in the fridge right now lol. My crab allergy seems to still be around, but I have a better tolerance of it since I managed to habve 3 half crabs before it kicked in.
Today, we're going to Queens to New York Paintball. It's an indoor facility for paintball, easy access via the 7 train and a few blocks walk. The prices are fairly cheap ($42 for mask, marker, gas, and 500 paintballs, $6 for disposable overalls, $55 for 1000 paintballs) compared to the prices back at home. You can even buy markers from their pro-shop with basic tippermans starting around $65 apparently! LOL. Should be fun methinks.
Tomorrow, I shall be back in a taxi to the airport, and thus end my trip for this time. Oh, I can't remmeber if I mentioned the Samurai exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, well if I did, sorry, if I didn't, we went there too and looked at a lot of Taichi, Katana, some Kodachi, Wakazashi, bogu, and other funky things like Saya's and banners.
I didn't really play tourist this trip, I don't feel the need to be a tourist. I mean yes I could have been, but if I kind of plan and attempt to be living and working here at some point in the future, I need to be seeing and experience life as a regular person. I think I got a lot of that here by going grocery shopping a lot more and cooking (in a tiny terrible kitchen).
One thing for sure is if I get a place here, I'll need a bigger fridge, new stove, and a separate freezer. I'd also get some new knives and cookware for sure.....
So, now as I finish this, going to go look for a Jack's 99c store to buy a lock to use at the paintball place (otherwise they sell locks for $3). Ciao~
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