sjamesho.v3

this was one of those days for me when you wake up and because the bed feels so good you decide to just stay in it for a while. and then “a while” becomes a couple of hours. oh well. what to do? i guess you make the most of the time you have awake. so i jumped on Jessica’s desktop computer to do some diagnosing and cleaning because she had been experiencing some pop-up problems. i set up her new external harddive for good backup practices and then updated her “crap”-ware definitions before scrubbing her drive which found about 5 spyware instantances. after that it was time to ahead on out.

while aunty Mag was having her nails done, Justin and i hung out and ate pastries at this Chinese bakery called Taipan and it was very busy. actually, i learned that this bakery is always busy till it closes which i guess is good for business. we were going to meet up with Jannine and Nathan for an early dinner so after the bakery and nails, we drove into Mahattan where we picked up Jessica, Jannine, and Nathan at Lincoln Center and the four of us squeezed in in the backseat of the Subaru Forester. Continue reading

i was able to sleep in for a little bit today before we headed once again to Manhattan. aunty Mag dropped Jessica off for a faculty lunch at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital while she took Justin and i to this Vietnamese place called “Saigon Grill” for lunch. the pictures of the food in the menu were quite deceiving because when my order arrived it was tremendously larger than what my stomach was preppared to eat. i only ate a little more than half my portion before my body refused to take in any more. the food was quite tasty and the prices are very, very reasonable.

after lunch we headed back to where Jessica was because Justin had a job interview there. there was some time to kill before his meeting so i made a quick stop at Duane Reede (a drug store chain that’s all over NY) for chapstick and lotion. i’ve heard that NY can get rather humid during the summer, but i wasn’t anticipating how dry it can be outside of that season. we got to the building where Justin was to have the interview and while he was doing that i made myself comfortable in the waiting area. for some reason i started feeling nauseous soon thereafter. it wasn’t nausea from the food earlier, but the kind from motion-sickness which i have been experiencing frequently since i’ve been here which was probably due to the unfamiliarity of NY traffic motion and so forth. sleep usually takes over as a reaction when i get nausea. so i dozed off for i don’t know how long and woke up feeling better. i then proceeded to entertain my brain with a Family-oriented magazine in the lobby. but then about 20 minutes into reading i started feeling nauseaous again. i had just put down the magazine and closed my eyes when Justin tapped me on the shoulder. oh well. so much for that idea however i was good to get walking again. Continue reading

Jessica had to do some stuff at school so when we got to the Penn Station, her brother Justin and i went through Times Square to pick up tickets to see Doubt for the next day. while going through Times Square i saw for the first time the Naked Cowboy. ok… he really wasn’t naked but other than shoes he wore a hat and tighty-whiteys and accessorized with a guitar. a lot of tourists took pictures with him. i found him odd yet amusing. after picking up the tickets we headed to Bodies… the Exhibition. though the presentation reminded me of what an anatomy display would look like, it was quite facinating how the body as a whole was posed and its layers exposed to emphasize certain organ systems and their function. for example, to illustrate the balance of the skeletal and muscular system, the skeleton was removed from the muscles and was posed as if it was holding with its two hands the other two hands of the remaining muscules. then the two “bodies” leaned away from each other. there were other whole body poses like running, basketball, etc. the part of the exhibit i thought was pretty cool was the circulatory system where a substance/process called corrosive compound was injected into a body’s blood vessels. this substance would then solidify and then the rest of the flesh would be dissolved leaving just the vessels intact. the presentation was visually striking. anyway, after Justin and i finished up with the exhibit we met Jessica at Union Square then waited at Starbucks for Jannine to once again go and eat because we do seem to do that pretty well. we met up with Jessica’s friend Anthony at Go where we had some good Japanese food. somehow time goes by so fast and so we all headed home.

total walked miles: 6.11

the last time i was in New York was around 1997. i don’t remember much on that trip because for one thing, i didn’t have a cool place like this to journal my daily adventures. and also it was a trip of going here and there really fast. i think the only thing that i remember was visiting the Statue of Liberty, riding in the passenger seat of uncle Ron’s car (he used to be a taxi driver so it was quite exhilirating), and watching Princess Diana’s funeral event on TV. so today, after having dim sum at this pretty tasty Chinese vegetarian restaurant, my uncle, Jessica, and i headed into Manhattan to pound pavement. (i was interested to find out how many miles i would walk so i put on my pedometer before we left the house). there really wasn’t a plan to do or see anything in particular which was a good thing. i enjoyed walking around the city as an overview of sorts. in our meanderings, we went into a Disney Store to look for snow globes but Jessica didn’t find the kind she was hoping for, we stopped at Lincoln Center, checked out St. Patrick’s Cathedral, strolled through Central Park and then up the west side to meet up with my other cousin Jannine when she got off work. my uncle had some things to do so he headed back while Jessica and i continued till we got to the restaurant made famous by the sitcom Seinfeld. we thought it was this corner that Jannine was going to meet us but a phone call confirmed that it was on the opposite corner of the same block. Jannine took us through the campus of Columbia University and then we met up with Jessica’s friend Jennifer (this group is now an amazing connection of persons whose names start with “J”) and headed for dinner at Pisticci where i had the Rigatoni Melanzane followed by one of the best tiramisu i’ve ever had. yum! towards the end of our dining, there was a water situation so since Jannine’s apartment was right around the corner we bade Jennifer a goodbye and the three cousins headed to Jannine’s place where the water can be blow-dryed. we hung out for a bit, watched Scrub’s “My Half-Acre” episode from the DVR, and left shortly after Jannine’s boyfriend Nathan came over so that we won’t miss the train back to Long Island. all-in-all, it was a very walk-filled day.

total walked miles: 9.31

it was a brisk and rainy day today. rain and rain and more rain. i went to the Church of the Advent Hope for worship where i ran into Noelle who was someone i knew from PUC. unexpected meetings are always a pleasant surprise. after church, my uncle’s family took me to Sentosa Malaysian restaurant in Flushing. we ate our fill of yummy Malaysian food and then headed back to the house to basically chill the rest of the afternoon away. before i knew it, it was already evening time and a meal of noodles and fruits was to be had. later on i spent some time reorganizing the file structure of this website. you can’t really tell as you browse through it but it makes so much more sense for me and web developers alike when its viewed from the backend. uhhh… okay that doesn’t sound right but i think you know what i’m talking about.