Other stuff I have recently come across and liked:

Crepes du Nord This place is the best lunch place ever if you work in the financial district. Shockingly, they serve crepes.

Del Posto Don took us here to celebrate a deal closing and it was amazing. It’s Mario Batali (he does great pasta), we had a five-course meal plus a lot of wine and cocktails. I went with my sister to Babo a while back, which is also Batali, but I thought this place was better. They had this cucumber-flavored gin drink slash concoction that I cannot even describe, but I miss it dearly. You know it’s a nice place when they give you complementary boxes of truffles when you leave. Well, that and the 4-figure bill. Anyway, I was impressed.

Dropbox I’ve been using this for a while now, but I finally upgraded to the paid version because it’s so useful. Simply stated, it’s cloud computing, which basically means that your files are saved on a server somewhere, so it’s accessible anywhere. I tried a number of these types of solutions, but Dropbox was by far the best. It basically syncs all the documents in one folder on each of the computers you link to your account, and it stores the files online in their server as well, so all your stuff is accessible through any web browser as well. It’s great because it’s simple, and it does performs a few functions incredibly seamlessly and correctly. If you have multiple computers you work from, or you just like having access to the contents of your hard drive from anywhere (they have an Android app, so I can get to basically all of my files using my cell phone, too), it’s an incredibly useful application.

Crazy Heart I didn’t think I would like this movie, but I did. It’s nothing fancy, but I liked it.

Justin Bieber I love him. Nah, I’m just kidding, he sucks. Sorry to those with Bieber Fever.

Christmas was spent doing hot pot at Bo’s apartment. I brought back the FIG-mas tree at work. It’s a small Christmas tree adorned with hand-drawn and colored logos of some of our main financial institutions clients. It’s also got some gold ornaments and in lieu of an angel, there’s a little lawyer finger puppet at the top. (It’s actually Franz Kafka, but it’s the closest I could get.) I would post a picture, but given our non-disclosure, I could theoretically get in trouble for disclosing who are clients are (even if it’s well known).

Overall, it’s been a fun holiday season. Going to Panama helps, haha. I’m really glad I got law school apps out of the way before it started or else it would have been significantly less fun. 2010! w00t!

I came up on the 29th (of May) to start apartment hunting and managed to find an amazing apartment — that was within budget! — within the first 3 hours. Cool. However, because I was traveling with my mom, we ended up staying at the West Side YMCA for the next week until she left. Mostly we did a bunch of sightseeing, bought me a bed, scouted out some furniture, etc. The best part was that we did the cancellation line for Wicked and ended up with amazing seats! The show itself was wonderful, though I felt the first act was significantly better than the second, the latter seeming quite rushed actually. We tried our hand at the lotto for it, too, but didn’t win. A guy that we’d been talking to, Randy, DID win and that was good cause otherwise his friends wouldn’t have come with him. Long story, but he was a nice guy and we were happy for him.

Anyway, overall, it was a good start to my NYC trip, but by the time my mom left I still had three weeks left until my start-date for work…eeek. Okay, so my agenda was pretty simple: 1) Decide on first-day-of-work outfit and 2) Furnish apartment. Technically, I budgeted $1,000 to buy all furniture. Technically, I’ve stayed well within that budget. In actuality, however, I’ve had a lot of expenses that are not strictly furniture, but are for the room nonetheless. For example, buying a floor length mirror, over-the-door hooks, totes and cubbies, hangers, etc. Either way, the room looks great (if I may say so myself), but yes, I have overspent. I’m not all that upset, really. I’m waiting for my two most expensive furniture pieces to come in, and I’ll post pictures when they do.

So, moving on. After deciding on my furniture (and in-between checking the order status and tracking on everything constantly), I decided to focus on decorating, such as buying a Mint Potted Topiary from Crate and Barrel and buying my piece de resistance…a painting!

I love my painting! It’s a wonderful 62” x 26” print on canvas (it’s a canvas transfer with some textured gloss overcoat) of Last View of Tuscany by Philip Craig. It matches perfectly with my comforters and bedding. In a somewhat amusing (ahem) story, I actually got it off Craigslist, except the first time I went to go get it — note that I had to take an hour-and-fifteen-minute subway ride — it started raining like crazy the second I got out of the subway. I ended up having to buy a Times from a Starbucks nearby and run over to the guy’s apartment being completely soaked and ridiculous with my drenched newspaper flopping over my head — only to reschedule for later. At any rate, the guy I bought it from was really cute and when I went the next day to transport the painting back home, the cab driver was, like, the nicest cabbie in the whole of New York. I feel the painting and I were kismet. I think I’m going to name it Bartholomew after my ex-car.

Also, my birthday has managed to pass rather uneventfully in comparison to last year. However, no one’s in town so that’s not really unexpected. I ended up hanging out with Marek, and we just caught up on the past semester, went to Pinkberry, etc. I’m also going out with my roommates tomorrow (it was supposed to be today, but both roommates had bad days at work so we just got dinner and drinks at Yukka and left it at that) to party it up, haha. Anyway, I’ll hold off on talking about the roommates (who are pretty great, by the way) because I need to get to bed soon…

So, now I’m roughly three days away from starting work (OMFG!!), and I’m both freaked out and completely excited as well. I’m restless to become a productive member of society, haha. At any rate, I love New York. I have yet to meet any unpleasant people, which I realize is an anomaly. I’d write more, but I’m quite sleepy. More tomorrow!

Anyway, mentally, I’m done. I have checked out. However, in actuality, I have an investments test in two days which I do not feel ready for in any capacity whatsoever. That is a problem. Anyhow, I’ll just say it – this semester was shitty. I felt whiny and crappy all semester cause I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Next semester, I am sure, will be better.

Most of all, I’m looking forward to the Paris and London trip we’re planning! Rita and I had dinner with Ben and Chaussie at Pura Vida this past week to iron out some details, but I think we’re set for the most part. We’ll be leaving Thursday night before Spring Break and flying back Sunday morning (to get back Sunday night). I’m literally going to be back around 11:30 pm the Sunday before school starts. But whatever. I’m psyched.

The downside of working a lot is that it’s hard to do things during the week. I basically have no time whatsoever from Monday through Friday. I actually didn’t do laundry for the first time until this past weekend – I just kept buying more clothes and underwear, no joke. Right afterwards, I went online and bought more stuff from Victoria’s Secret so I could toss the crap I’d purchased from Duane Reade. Yuck.

Instead, I keep most of my social engagements on the weekends so that I don’t end up canceling on people all over the place and feeling like a jerk. Luckily, people have been in and out of New York every weekend so it’s been pretty fun with sooo much good, delicious, savory, flavorful food. For example, Heartland Brewery has really good mini-burgers.

My first weekend after starting work, I spent most of the time with Rita shopping in Soho and checking out little boutiques. At some point, we went out to a little restaurant called the Barking Dog, where we ate outside in this stone fountain area thing. Quite lovely with pretty good food, depending on what you order. Later we went to Cafe Zaiya because they have really great cream puffs. I also got together with Bo and Chen, who are both also working in the city, but we basically walked around, ate at Monster Sushi and ended up going to the Mac store for some reason. Whatever.

Second weekend, Kasey and Jules strolled into town – yay! So, all us IB kids got together again and went to some very, very random Chinese restaurant in (where else) Chi-town and got gelato afterwards in Little Italy. Also, there was this French restaurant later where Bo tried to hit on the waitress. The great thing about hanging out with other Asian people is that we can do family-style food which is always fun. Chen brought some friends and gave me a sew-it-yourself Monster doll — I’m waiting for a time to do it when I can give it the full attention it deserves.

Oh, when I met up with Rita and her friend Chelsea, we went to this really cute restaurant painted in blue that I need to remember to get the name of. We had a really overzealous waitress who listed off specials for at least a couple minutes. It was a little weird. That, and the crepe place (called Crepe Creations) we went to afterwards that had no food. Seriously. We tired to order stuff and each time they said they didn’t have chocolate, or didnt’ have “fluff” whatever that is but it’s in half their menu or whatever else. When they finally had the stuff, they ran out of apples in Rita’s apple crepe and they ran out of whipped creme and substituted powdered sugar on mine. I know the guy was no Mario Batali, but come on – whipped cream and powdered sugar are so not the same thing.

The weekend after that was busy, to say the least. My sister was in town, so we got together with two of her friends, Monica and Theresa, both people from Plano. Also, Rita came in again, but with James and Ben, so of course we have to get together. It’s funny how people always seem to be colliding here — at the same time, both Brown and Beam – Emory people – were in town, too, and they managed to run into Suhas in the subways on the one day she came into town. My sister and I ended up hanging out with her friends during the day and my friends at night, basically. It’s not worth detailing out everything that went down, but it essentially was a really fun weekend. I also went to, like, five really good restaurants that weekend and ate a lot.

RESTAURANTS INCLUDED:
Havana with the Asian crew, New Yeah Shanghi Deluxe as well as Sala with Monica and Geg, Smorgas Chef and Choux Factory thanks to Theresa (and Geg), and finally I think the Emory kids went to Tigerland but I’m not sure. It was good.

My sister managed to miss her flight out three times in a row (okay, twice it was because she was standby, but still.) The last night she was here, we went to a Japanese restaurant near my place, and for dessert, we ordered some banana sushi concoction out of curiosity. After some slight confusion regarding complementary green tea ice cream (I wanted to know where the bananas were) – it was actually really good.

Finally, this past weekend, my fourth weekend in New York, marking my first full month to be in the big city, was Rita’s birthday! Her not-quite-surprise party was held at Gyu-Kaku, and I met a ton of her friends from high school. Justin showed up because he was in town visiting Stephanie, as well as James and Jimmy-James. Justin ditched us to go to a ballet. Uncool, man. Uncool. Chaussie was also in town for Rita’s 21st, so we all hung out afterwards (Halal on 53rd and 6th, Dylan’s Candy Bar and the ever-reliable Jamba Juice), as Rita went out and got crunk with her high school people.

Anyway, that’s my story up until this point. I have half and hour before work starts, so off to breakfast. Ciao!

Anyway, I made up for it the mediocre night today. Rita, Chausey and I had an impromptu girls’ night, which was good clean fun. We went to Taste of Taiwan that the Georgia Tech and Emory TASA groups had planned, which was okay as far as free food and free bubble tea goes. There were too many high school students though (or so it seemed), so we cleared out of there pretty quickly. Nice event, just not quite what we were looking for.

We hit Starbucks instead to sit and chat and then roamed around and ended up in Brickstore (which is becoming pretty par for course for me at this point). That was fun until a cockroach appeared behind us, which was, well, nauseating. Now I have to find a new hangout. Boo.

Rita wants to plan a trip to Europe for Spring Break next year and I really (really, really) want to find a way to go. We’re thinking Barcelona for most of the trip and then visiting England for a little while? We’ll see, I suppose.

Oh! And I found out two of my friends will definitely be in New York this summer so that’s going to rock no matter what. Yay! :D

Anyway, a lot has happened in the past few weeks, but I’ll get to all of it soon enough. For today, I said I’d post about Kendra’s birthday party, so here it is. I was in charge of decorations, so I popped by Party City, which (as my luck would have it) was in the process of closing. Are you kidding me? No. No, I am not.

But in the spirit of looking at things in a positive light, at least this meant that while the pickings were slim, they were also 50% off — w00t. I ended up spending less than 5 dollars and (an hour later) wound up with a canopy design for our dining area.

We had dinner at a 50′s-styled restaurant called Agnes and Muriel’s, which has southern fifties/sixties coooking. It sounds random, but the restaurant is great. (I went back later and stole some of Dave’s Sweet Potato Fries, and now I’m determined to learn how to make some myself — but, I’ll let you know how that goes.)

Finally, we went back to the apartment for dessert, which Rita baked for us, and games. Justin brought Balderdash, which I won. Dan brough DDR, which is too addicting to even talk about.

The best part, however, was when Rita played a slideshow with a bunch of pictures of Kendra’s baby pictures that she’d compiled. Basically, Kendra thought that she’d lost all her baby pictures in a fire at her house a long time ago, but Rita contacted her parents and asked them to find what was left, and etc. It was sweet.

The whole Wheel situation has left me with a lot of mixed feelings about friendship and relationships in general. I’ve been mentally going down a list of things that happened with a new perspective, sometimes more cynical than I’d like. But in times like this, it’s nice to be reminded that there are some things that are untouched by ulterior motives and other other uglier forms of motivation. They’re just solid and good, and I think that’s important to remember.

That phrase is kind of what I feel like right now. After deciding to ditch j-school, as corny as it sounds, it feels like a world of possibility is open to me again. For starters, I finally had time to finish part one of the WordPress Plugin Tutorial that I started working on over winter break. I plan to have two more parts to it, but hopefully someone will find what’s there useful.

I’ve been having lunch – and we have, like, hour-long lunches – at least twice a week with my roommates. And I’ve checked out a bunch of restaurants as of late, which is great. I discovered that I rather like Indian food. We’ve ordered from Udipi (South Indian food) a couple times, but one of the sales reps told me I should check out Mirch Masala (North Indian food). Apparently, North Indian food has more meat and South Indian food is largely vegetarian, so if you like meat then North Indian is the cuisine for you. (The reason for this is because South India has more vegetation due to its proximity to water, whereas North India relies more on livestock.) Anyway, he was right and it was delicious, though the service was mediocre.

The do, however, give little keychains with to every customer, which I thought was kind of cute.

But anyway, we also had the Top Reps dinner on Wednesday, where we take the three reps who have made the highest amount of sales out with all the business managers to a fancy dinner. We went to a restaurant that we have trade with called Sala. I ordered crab enchiladas and duck tapas, both of which were pretty good, but not great. The restaurant definitely chose style over substance. However, I had a lot of fun and it was a great night. I also think it really “recharged” the reps to get back in the office and sell some more. Pictures of the my food and the restaurant below.

Meanwhile, I have rediscovered Tetrinet, which is, I suppose, a kickback to my high school days. We spent an excessive amount of time playing Tetrinet in class after exams were over during senior year. It’s not the healthiest of habits to restart, especially now that the Wheel Online Redesign team is fully underway, as is my role in heading the PR department for my marketing class. But everyone has their vices, right?

I, of course, am keeping my priorities straight and am updating this blog. This weekend was pretty hectic with Wheel stuff. I trained some new reps this morning and am really happy with how it went. Wrote a paper, blah blah blah.

Beyond that, I also got a chance to have some fun. Tracy’s 22nd was on Friday and I got breakfast the next day with a friend at the Flying Biscuit, which is a wonderful restaurant. It’s a pretty idiosyncratic place with lots of character, as you can see from the pictures. The food’s solid as well. I got a smoked salmon omelet and he got the Meggican Omelet (like Mexican, but with EGG inserted – get it? get it!?). EDIT Those two people in the picture aren’t us, by the way. I’m Chinese and uh…not forty.

Anyway, book reviews will be keeping me busy in the next two weeks. I’m reviewing Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky, an Emory alumni, for the Arts & Living section of the Wheel. Furthermore, I promised I’d finished my review of You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore for Emory’s Hub magazine in the next two weeks.