Lion King and such...

I went to see the Broadway version of Lion King with a friend last night. It was in town for the past two months, but I don't really keep track of this stuff. So when I realize that they are actually in town, it's already the very last week of their stay. I bought two tickets and it costs $169. Actually for the past few days I have been online and try to find the best seats, but all there's left are seats that are either behind a column or those that are far, far away. I called them up and they say if you get tickets two hours before the play at the theaters, they are going to be $25 each. But when I got there the line was so long that i rushed to a ticket center and got the better seat. So me and my friend were like 6 seats apart, but we found seats they are pretty close and not behind anything.

The play was quite nice, I've seen some footage of their creative costumes before, so I was expecting to see really elaborate things and they delivered. I have to say I was touched about how they integrated the aspects of Africa into the show. Of course, everybody knows the storyline of Lion King and we have all heard the songs before but seeing the story being told in a different way is very delightful and they did add a lot of "ethnic" chanting in the play. Since I don't understand the language they use, there's so way for me to know whether it is "African" or not, but I've heard that Disney is pretty good with authenticity. Maybe not quite, Mulan was quite horrid. But the entire feel of the show was quite nice.

When the whole show was over, me and my friend when to eat in a neighborhood restaurant. It was like 10:30 pm and I nearly fell asleep on the table. It wasn't a bad restaurant, but I'm so used to the fast service of Asian restaurants that waiting 5 minutes for the waiter after being seated is quite unreasonable for me and it's not like they were busy. I cannot stand slow service, I'm hungry, I'm here to eat. They didn't even give us bread, not that I can eat it but bread is like a common courtesy thing. The food was ok, a bit on the expensive side, the service lousy but I still gave them more than 15% for tips. They are pretty much the only restuarant who still serves at that hour. And I'm pretty sure I took in quite a few carbs either in the tamarind-glazed ribs or the white mussels with chorizo and corn. It's hard to be on a low carb diet when you dine out.

I really need some sleep. I think I'll go to bed early tonight.