New York City...round two.

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Six days in New York
Let's do the touristy things
Times Square anyone?

I can’t believe that I’m in New York City again! Whoo Hoo! I love New York City and can’t wait to do some pretty touristy things while here. Once again, I’ll do the one big entry for the next six days route…

Saturday, September 24, 2005

In the Big Apple

The flight north was not that eventful. Basically just did a bit of napping and reading of my book.

At LaGuardia Rosa picked us up and took us back to her house to see her husband Geordi and her two kids Truman (5) and Justin (3). Since they don’t know us they were super shy at first. But I slowly broke the ice with them and by the time we piled into the car to visit Anita’s aunt they were a little less shy.

At Anita’s Aunt’s house we also met up with some of Anita’s other cousin’s (Rosa’s siblings) who live in the same house as her aunt. Let’s see, there was Alberto and Denise with their two kids Tiffany (6) and Andy (3) and Alex and Ping with their daughter Megan (1.5).

Tiffany is pretty outgoing and not shy at all considering I have seen her only two times in my life. The first time when she was about 8 months old and then a couple of years ago when she was in Vancouver for her uncle’s wedding. And even then it was not like we interacted a lot! You should see Tiffany’s bed which is just chock full of stuffies. Thank goodness she is only 6 because I don’t think she really has all that much room to sleep! Lol

All of the kids were super interested in playing games on the computer so they were all congregated around the one computer screen taking turns playing.

After a while of visiting it dawned on us that we hadn’t had a bite to eat for lunch yet! So Anita, Rosa and I walked over to a local Vietnamese restaurant for a bowl of pho. I indulged in a hugeass glass of ice coffee too. Yum! This was around 4:30/5…hmm, I guess this would be considered an early dinner!

Anita was starting to feel really tired and Geordi and the kids had plans to have dinner with his parents who live next door to them so we pretty much packed up and headed back to Rosa’s.

When we got there Geordi’s sister, brother-in-law and nephew Jordan (4) had just arrived from their home in New Jersey. They spent a bit of time over at Rosa and Geordi’s house before going over to the parents for dinner. Truman, Justin and Jordan seem to get along pretty well just trying to decide what it was they wanted to play. They ended up playing a few games of hide and seek. It was so funny watching them since they weren’t very creative in their hiding spots! Soon enough they were bored of that and moved onto playing some racing games and also played with the hula hoop. I must say Truman is quite the hula hooper...not one hula hoop but two at the same time! Now that is talent. Lol

The evening was a pretty quiet one. Everyone was asleep by 9:30! That’s a little too early for me so I ended up watching some TV (The Truman Show) and reading a bit of my book, Wicked before hitting the sack around midnight.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Play, Laugh, Eat

Truman and Justin
Two Silly Billy Gumdrops
Reminds me of Nick.

I got up and showered before heading downstairs. I see Justin in the computer room playing a Blues Clue game. He is too funny. I say good morning to him and he says to me after saying good morning…”I thought you were lost!” “Lost?” “Yeah, you weren’t sitting there in the big chair.” I guess the last he saw of me last night before he went to bed was of me sitting on the sofa watching TV. LOL

The kids have Chinese school on Sunday’s so we dropped them off before heading over to Rosa’s mom’s house. Her brother Camilo (Anita’s cousin) was in town from Vancouver for some business in Connecticut. So we chatted and caught up with one another since it’s been since Christmas that we last saw one another. Camilo also showed us the cell phone that he helped to create. I think they should call it the Leo. Haha It’s pretty cool. It’s a cell phone with a hard drive. So basically it has an mp3 player and emailing capabilities on this phone. I can’t believe that it took a team of about 50 people and two years to develop the phone. Pretty cool!

We still had about an hour to kill so Anita and I walked over to the local Target store. Nothing too exciting there but it was good to just walk about and browse.

We got back before having to leave to pick up the kids and then drive over to Rancho Jubilee for lunch. It’s Alberto’s birthday so we all went out to celebrate at a Dominican Republic restaurant. The food was awesome. I still can’t believe that a full buffet lunch for 10 adults and 5 kids came out to only $118 and I think I heard someone say that included the tip!

Then it was back to Anita’s aunt’s house for some birthday cake and to sing Happy Birthday. Yup, we are all tone deaf. Haha After a bit of digesting and lazing about Anita and I took off for Manhattan. Union Square to be exact to meet up with Tony. It was still a bit early to be eating dinner especially since we had such a large buffet lunch. So the three of us wandered the streets and checked out some of Soho, Little Italy and Chinatown before stopping at Tea & Tea for a drink. Mmm, peach ice tea with lychee bits is really good! We chatted for quite a while before deciding to head somewhere to go for dinner. But not before Anita stopped and got her name painted on a big poster. There are tons of these guys painting name signs on the street. Anita said that she couldn’t believe that she was getting one. Then I jokingly said, “Hey, let’s try and find one of those guys that writes your name on a grain of rice!” lol

Soon enough we were headed on our way again for a bite to eat for dinner. We ended up walking back towards Union Square and ended up at a restaurant called Lemongrass. They serve up a variety of Asian dishes ranging from Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai. Really good food. I still wasn’t all that hungry so Anita and I shared a plate of pad thai. Hmm, eight dollars…a far cry from the $1 meals you can get in Thailand. Haha

We walked a bit more and then parted ways since Tony would be taking a different train from us. Tony lives on the Upper East Side while our hostel is located on the Upper West Side. So basically we were on either side of Central Park.

It was relatively easy to find our hostel and check in was a breeze. The HI was awesome even though it was huge. We got ourselves into a six bed all female dorm. Our other 3 roomies were there already. One woman was reading, another was doing something up on her bunk and the last one was trying to sleep so we didn’t really talk that much as it was nearing 11. I’d say the only down side with this hostel is that the bathrooms seem to be super duper busy! I got out of the shower and there was a line up. Plus all four sinks were being used. Oh well, I guess it is all timing…

I probably would have slept a lot better if the woman across from us wasn’t snoring so loudly! It just kept going on and on! There was a bit of noise from the street traffic as well. Plus there are plastic covers over the mattresses so every time you turn it would make this really loud noise! Of all times to leave my earplugs behind in Atlanta it had to be now. lol So I had no choice but to employ some of my concentration I normally reserve for yoga and just tried to “drown” out the noise all the while concentrating on my breathing. That did the trick until I heard…”Bonnie” “Bonnie” It was Anita. She couldn’t sleep either. Doh! I don’t think that Anita is cut out for hostel life. Lol

Monday, September 26, 2005

Star Struck!

On the Today Show
Spitting distance of Al’s Head
Tracey Chapman Live!

We got up early this morning so as to make it down to Rockefellar Center to check out the taping of the Today Show. We get down there and see all of these houses being built. Habitat for Humanity is set up in the Square to build houses for some of those that have lost their homes because of the recent hurricanes. We then looked across 49th Street and see that there are two concert stages set up and head over that way.

Tracey Chapman and Josh Grobin are set to sing in the Today Show concert series. Cool! At first it didn’t look like we were going to get ourselves onto the Today Show because it was sort of crowded all along the fenced off areas. There were lots of people holding up signs. We sort of stood near the side so that we could at least watch the show on some of the TV screens that were set up on the side.

We saw Tracey Chapman perform. Wow! I’m watching Tracey Chapman! We got a bit of a video clip but there’s something wrong with my SD card and we lost it! Doh! But it was cool nonetheless. After her performance it was over to the other stage to watch Josh Grobin sing. We stood around the Tracey Chapman stage just waiting for her to come out and perform again when I see Al Roker and a familiar looking actress (It turned out to be Lake Bell but I was thinking it was Amanda Peet. Whoops!) walking down the side towards the Tracey Chapman stage! So of course Anita and I go towards the corner where not too many others are standing and as luck would have it, Al Roker stops pretty much in front of us! What luck! Oh my gawd! They will be taping the next weather segment in front of us. I couldn’t help myself and yell out “We LOVE you Al!” It was so funny. Al’s head was in between me and the camera most of the time but I could see the monitor in front of us and Anita was pretty much in view the entire segment. Too funny! At one point in the segment when I reviewed it later you could see me saying to the lady in front of me…Al’s head is in the way. LOL

Then Katie Couric came over after Al left so that she could introduce Tracey Chapman again. So of course we took some photos of Katie. Boy is she tiny! I took another video clip and this time it seems to be okay. I had a pretty good view of Tracey which was awesome. Then at the end of the performance and Katie finishes her thing she turns around and starts shaking hands with some people in front of us. So Anita puts her hand out and Katie shakes her hand…”I’m never going to wash my hand!” LOL We stuck around for about another 5 minutes or so before realizing we were now famished!

On a star struck high we headed towards Lexington to catch the train down to Chinatown. Well, we didn’t quite make it there. We decided to stop off at a place we happened to be passing by that looked pretty good. I got myself a panini and a mochachino while Anita when the healthy route and got an oatmeal…not my first choice. Lol

We did a bit of shopping and eventually made it down to Chinatown where we walked around some more. Before leaving Chinatown we had a bite of lunch to eat. I can never get over how cheap Chinese food is and it is delish!

Somewhere along the line we stopped off at a street vendor that was selling purses for $5. He kept yelling out. Purses for $5. Then I don’t know how it started but I some how ended up feeding the guy some lines like “How much?” = “I said only $5!” “You’re outta your mind!” = “I must be outta my mind!” It was too funny. Anyway…

Back up to Times Square to see if we could get some tickets to a show on Broadway. Hey, is that Tiger Woods across the street? Yes, it was! It looked like he was doing some sort of promotional thing for EA and was surrounded by lots of body guards and stuff so there was no way of getting up close to him to ask for an autograph! So we continued on our mission to see what tickets we could get to a Broadway show. It was unfortunate that tickets for Wicked were sold out for the next two weeks. So we decided to head over to the TKTS booth to see what was on offer at a discounted price. Hmm, not much on sale today. So we ended up getting some tickets to The Producers. Tony had mentioned that he has seen this and that it was pretty funny. Will have to wait until Wednesday afternoon to find out!

Hmm, now what is there to do? Oh yes, shopping. We’ve gotta find some work clothes for Anita. We ended up checking out Macy’s on 34th and then checked out some of the big stores around there like Old Navy, Gap and H&M. We didn’t really find too much. I think part of the reason is because NYC observes four seasons, whereas Atlanta it is pretty warm almost all year round. It now being fall, a lot of the clothes on offer are on the warmer side. Hmm, didn’t think of that before we left Atlanta. Lol

I can’t believe we were on our feet for over 14 hours just walking around! So as you can probably imagine I just flopped onto my bed when we got back to the hostel before taking a shower.

After a bit of lying in bed and sending a few text messages and stuff…basically not being able to sleep! Anita puts her head over the railing and asks me if I wanted to go for a walk. I guess it didn’t help that we had a bit of a conversation with Snoozie Q in our room. She’s the type of person that has to top everything; I mean EVERYTHING that you say to her. It was really rather annoying. Then she was missing her red lock that was supposedly on her locker. She claimed that she put it on her locker this morning but when she got back to the room her locker was unlocked and the lock missing. It was almost like she was accusing me and Anita!!! Then it got worse, when one of the South African girls came back she did the same thing and was sort of accusing this girl of tampering with her lock. Then about two hours later the second girl from South Africa returned. Went to her luggage to get something and turns to me holding the red lock…“Is this yours?” I almost burst out laughing but managed to say, “Ohmigawd, that’s...” and started to point towards Snoozie Q. Considering she was so accusatory that we had all tampered with her lock she wasn’t all that grateful for the find. Lol I guess she didn’t really trust anyone and I noticed she went to bed with her purse slung over her body…

Anyhoo, Anita and I stepped out for a bit of a walk around the neighbourhood. Hmm, it’s kind of strange to be selling fruits and veggies past midnight! Let’s just keep walking…we stopped off to get a bite of pizza to eat since we didn’t really have anything for dinner. We stayed outside our hostel to talk for a bit before I headed upstairs and Anita stayed out to make a call to sort some things out otherwise she wouldn’t be able to sleep. I fell asleep pretty quickly once I got back to the room but woke up around 3AM realizing that Anita had left the light by her bed on. Hmm, it’s sort of lighting up the whole room. Hmm, should I get up and shut it off…that’d mean having to get up out of bed…I’m feeling lazy. Before I could muster up the energy to shut the light Anita came back. Phew! Now I can go back to sleep. Lol

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Let’s take it easy today since I’m feeling a bit lethargic.

Personal shopper
Wandering around Bloomie’s
Picking out some suits.

We had a pretty easy day today. The computers were down at the hostel so we couldn’t check out right away. So we decided to get some breakfast to eat but first we have to put our stuff into a locker for temporary storage so that we wouldn’t have to lug it around with us all day.

We ended up at Times Square to do a bit of shopping and browsing. Our goal was to end up at Barney’s to check out the suits there for Anita. We weren’t too sure where Barney’s was and found out that we’d pass by Bloomingdale’s first so we went up to their “At Your Service” department. This is where you can get a personal shopper to help you pick out anything in the store. Typically it is to help with picking out clothes. We didn’t have an appointment but happened to meet a personal shopper, Susan, who was available. So she took us around pulling clothes here and there and then taking them upstairs to the dressing room. At one point we passed by Katie Couric who was also with a personal shopper! We didn’t want to make too much of a scene but later on when Anita was trying on clothes I was Katie in the dressing area again. She was about to go. She was talking with two ladies. She tried on these ugly animal print flats that she was thinking of buying. One of the ladies asked her if she had anything in an animal print and apparently she already has some zebra print shoes. Then Katie mentioned that she gets 50% off at Coach. There really wasn’t much else to eavesdrop. Lol

Back to Susan our personal shopper. In my opinion she wasn’t the most personable person. It was funny when at one point she stopped to talk to me about my Round the World Ticket and Anita was off on her own looking for clothes. Lol

It is quite an interesting concept having a personal shopper since they tend to pull things out sometimes that you wouldn’t even consider. Mind you sometimes what they pull is damn ugly. LOL

After a couple of hours of shopping we headed back up to our hostel to pick up our stuff and then head out to Queens to meet with Rosa, Geordi and the kids. We went to a restaurant that’s specialty is Peking Duck. Mmm, gotta love the fatty duck!

After dinner we made a short visit to Geordi’s Aunt. She just got back from Atlanta and loved it there. Apparently she is in the business of selling seafood and is thinking of opening up something down in Atlanta so she had some questions for Anita. I had a good chuckle listening to her pronounce all of the different neighbours etc. of Atlanta. Then I nearly bust a gut when Anita told me that the Aunt had made some comment about Anita’s Chinese pronunciation not being very good. LOL

We didn’t stay that long since Truman had to get home to do his homework. I somehow ended up being the homework helper. Thank goodness Truman is only in Kindergarten so it was pretty easy stuff to do and there was little resistance. 😊 Anita got bedtime story reading duty so I took the opportunity to take a shower and then watch some TV since it was way too early to go to bed again.

I started watching some movie that I had to see the end…I don’t think I ever found out the name of the film. Anita of course went onto the phone again…Yet another quiet night in…

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Let’s check out Broadway!

Going to Times Square
The Producers on Broadway
Lots of laughs ahead.

Anita was trying to get the kids to eat their breakfast this morning. Justin is so funny. At one point Anita is telling him that he needs to drink all of him milk so that he’ll be strong and be able to run faster. She’s telling him this and then he says really innocently…”Wooow!” It was so cute.

After the kids were dropped off at school, Rosa, Geordi, Anita and I headed into the Flushing Chinatown for some breakfast. Mmm, one of my favourites…fish jook!

Geordi went off to run a couple of errands while us girls headed over to the salon to get ourselves a $6 manicure. Six dollars! It’s almost like we’re in Asia again. Lol

Our matinee was scheduled for 2PM so we headed off early and did a bit of shopping and stuff around Times Square. We checked out the Toys ‘R Us where there are several floors of toys to check out. In the lobby is a huge ferris wheel. If the price to ride wasn’t $4 I probably would have jumped on. Lol We also went to the Swatch store since Anita was eyeing a watch from there the other day and of course we checked out a few last clothing stores to see if we could find Anita some skirts…no luck! By this time it was around 1:30 so we grabbed a quick hot dog and then a McFlurry for lunch. Yum!

We then headed over to the St. James Theatre to settle into our seats to enjoy a performance of The Producers. I think I would have enjoyed this show a lot more if I wasn’t feeling so sleepy! There were some pretty funny bits throughout the show but I guess the past few nights of not so good sleep was catching up on me…Oh well, I still enjoyed myself.

After the show we headed over to the Subway to catch the 7 to Main Street Flushing in Queens. Tonight’s specialty at the restaurant was “juicy dumplings.” I haven’t had these in ages. I hope I don’t burn my tongue like I usually do. Lol

After dinner we headed over to Anita’s aunt’s house for one last visit. As per usual it was a bit hectic with so many people around and all talking at once. No wonder little Tiffany is having problems concentrating on her homework. So after a while I sat down with her so that she could finish up before her bed time. We were in the middle of the last reading assignment when I had to say goodbye since Truman had to get home to get his homework done!

So it was another amusing car ride home and then back to being homework helper for Truman. Justin wanted to do some homework too so Rosa pulled out a book and Justin started working on tracing letters. For a three year old he’s pretty good!

I decided getting to bed early was on the books for me but not before we gave the kids a couple of gifts. Anita gave the kids these really cute fish pillows. I got them a “Sam’s Slamwich” card game. Justin really wanted to play but he knew he had to wait until the morning. He is too funny. Upstairs in his room he yells out…”I love the Sandwich game!” Then I ask him if he’s played before and Truman says that they’ve never played with it before. Too funny.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Time to say Good-bye to the Big Apple

Last Day in New York
One last stop in Chinatown
Yum Cha is yummers!

Pretty much had a lazy morning. Slept in a bit. Washed up. Packed up. Watched some TV. Had a bit of a snack.

We met up with Maria in Chinatown around 11 for some yum cha. Yummers! I’ve had so much dim sum in the last few weeks...gotta love it! I’m glad I was able to meet up with Maria at least once while I was back in NYC a second time.

After eating and chatting we walked around a bit and checked out a couple of stores before saying goodbye to Maria and then hopping onto a bus headed to LaGuardia. It’s only a 20 minute ride to the airport from Chinatown!

We checked in and found out that our flight was delayed until 4:20! That’s almost an hour delay. Doh! So we had lots of waiting to do. Thank goodness for magazines to read to help pass the time. So by the looks of it we won’t be landing in Atlanta until about 7 which means we’ll be home around 8 after riding the MARTA…

Anita grabbed a glass of water and headed over to a friend's house to sort some stuff out while I stayed at home and unpacked (not that I had a lot of stuff. Lol) and checked my email and posted some blogs. Before I knew it, it was close to midnight! Where’d the time go?

Anita came back to ask if it would be okay if she went off to Florida to accompany her friend sort some stuff out. I said that I didn’t want to be the one to make the decision for her and to do whatever it is that she’d do if I wasn’t in town. Sure it’s disappointing to hear that I’ll be on my own BUT if it's something she has to do, than it is something that she has to do. Besides, it’s not the end of the World and how much fun would it be to hang out with someone that was thinking about someone else??? Anyhoo…

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Photos

Two Silly Billy Gumdrops
Justin and Truman

Say Cheese!
Geordi and Truman.

Blue Moon!
Andy and Truman.

Justin and Truman.
37 and 38 pounds...only one pound difference...21 months apart...wow...

Happy Birthday Alberto!
Truman, Auntie, Justin, Alberto, Andy, Tiffany, Denise and Megan

Tony and Anita in Washington Square
That's Anita's name on that poster...in Chinese of course. lol

Two studious kids.
Truman and Justin.