New Projects and Experiences

I finally finished knitting a hat and a scarf. Pretty happy about that. It's like going to the gym, once you finished you get a sense of satisfaction. The grueling process is over, now you can think of what you are gonna do next. My eyes are on a blanket, this is really what I want to make. A nice, big, soft blanket that looks cool and comfortable. I'll be spending lots of time and money and effort on it, I hope it'll be worth it. Yarns are expensive, I'm afraid with all the time I spend on it, it might be cheaper to just buy something at the stores. The color scheme of the blanket is set to be the various shades of coffee; From dark brown to khakis to light cream. I'll be knitting very long strips of them and then linking all of them together. It should be nice.

The people at the knitting classes are nice enough. They told me about a new Argentinean restaurant open nearby. I was pretty excited because El Principe came from Argentina and New York is the closest place if we want to eat Argentinean. So I went to that place after class and find out that while one of the owner is from Argentina, the food is focused around Spain. They feature a lot of small dishes when they say small they mean small. I ordered a butternut squash soup and some Ham croquettes, an oil-flashed shrimp and an open-faced rib-eye toast. Everything except the rib-eye toast is under-seasoned. The soup was ok but I needed salt. The croquette was blend and need some kind of sauce accompany it. The shrimp dish features "1" small size shrimp soaked in oil with a piece of roast pepper on top of it. I was gonna laugh when I see that one small pathetic shrimp laying on that small plastic sauce bowl. The best dish was the rib-eye toast, it was small but the flavor of the gruyere came through and the crunch of the toast was nice. The whole thing cost $20. I tried to eat as slow as I can appreciating the delicate size and the texture of the food. But everything was finished within a bite of two, and I only felt satisfied was an hour or two. I don't know if I'll ever gonna go back.

ES sent me two clips on YouTube that is quite eye-opening. One is about a giant marionette in London called "Sultan's Elephant" This giant doll was carried by some lifters and controlled by these puppetiers, to see that kind of movement and character from a puppet is absolutely amazing. The second clip is a dance performance on Chinese TV called "Thousand-Hands Kuan-Yin" the choreography is really amazing and I really like the whole traditional Chinese vibe I get from it, well that is, until I see three guys in the back around the 4:00 mark. But like they say, Kuan-Yin was originally a man, so I don't know what to think anymore. There is a kindness attached to Kuan-Yin that I find very soothing, she is so non-judgemental. She's like the mother of all things.

Some friends and I will be going to a great restaurant named Susanna Foo this evening. I'm pretty excited about that because the food over there is pretty awesome. It is a Chinese-fusion restaurant that caters to clients with a bigger wallet. I tasted their tea-smoked duck beofre and it was seasoned so perfectly that I almost cried. Earlier last month Susanna was on the news for beating up a parking maid for repeatedly harassing truck drivers that deliver supplies to her restaurant and causes that parking to have a miscarriage. The news says that Susanna repeatedly punched the women on her head and her stomach. It's very unfortunate that the woman had a miscarriage, but in some way I'm quite proud of Susanna, she's 63 years old and that parking maid is 38 and she can still kick ass. It sends out a message to the city: "Don't mess with the Chinese!" We were afraid that her food will suffer after she got arrested, but I hope it won't. My friend is gonna bring a camera to the restaurant. So maybe I'll get to share the pictures on this blog afterwards.