I really should be sleeping right now because I have to get up for work in three and a half hours, but that in itself is something that deserves a blog post of its own. Since I’ve been surviving on an average of five or six hours of sleep every night in New York and I really need to get as much sleep as I can on weekdays, I’m going to have to give you a really quick rundown of what I’ve been up to.
Author Archives: Anny Chih
Recap of random adventures in New York
I’ve started this post and deleted it, only to start again, and delete again. New York is a difficult place to write about because it’s always different. I’ve been here for six days now, and I’ve had incredible highs and crummy lows, captivating conversations with heaps of interesting people, and solitary afternoons spent walking along the boardwalk. I’ve felt like the luckiest person in the entire world looking down on the city from a rooftop bar surrounded by amazing people, and as if I’m too small to matter in the grand scheme of things while talking to a stranger over brunch. The city is made of an eclectic mix of people and you never know if you’re going to be sitting next to an opera singer at a juice bar, dancing next to a rocket engineer from Italy at a cute bar / nail salon, going to a haunted house with a Jersey boy, having lunch with a partner of an asset management firm who just flew back from Bermuda, getting to know a lawyer / UN intern over drinks, or even making random street conversation with a Russian speaking African-American bouncer who is in the midst of writing a book about the city. You can’t even begin to expect any of these things, but I’ve found myself in all of these surprising situations and more! So where do I begin?
Guess where I am?
I’ve had a roller coaster of a ride today meeting lots of new people and walking all around this big city. It’s such a huge place that I doubt it’s possible to see everything! According to the locals, it’s a pointless to try because the entire city is constantly changing. And for the record, all of the people I’ve met today have broken the stereotypes of this popular destination by being really friendly and helpful. Guess where I am?
This “beautiful” taste sure reminds me of broccoli
When kids play restaurant they think that by using pretty plates and tablecloths, describing their dishes in fancy ways, and charging higher than average prices, their establishment is automatically chic, upscale and worth every penny. They don’t usually think about what the plastic food tastes like because in pretend land, food is as good as the imagination. Sadly, reality isn’t quite the same.
Phil selected Refuel Restaurant for this month’s Dinner Club outing. Its website motto is “honest food relaxed atmosphere” and I don’t agree with either of those statements. The restaurant seemed to be suffering from an identity crisis; flipping between glorified dishes that all “taste beautiful” according to our server who was sporting a low-cut shirt displaying her breast tattoo, and over-priced bottled sodas paired with miniature dishes that were either over-salted, over-cooked, or tasted like broccoli (even though there was none in it). Based on taste alone, the dishes should’ve been served in take-out containers and with double the amount for half the price.
Sugar, Oh Honey Honey!
I like sweets. I blame Mum for this one. Every time she sees me looking bored, she suggests having a piece of pie or cake, or a sweet bun. One day (I think I was still in high school) she asked what I wanted for dinner, I said “cake” (as a joke). She kept asking and I kept replying “cake!” Eventually she gave up, left the apartment, and returned with an entire cake from the bakery downstairs. It wasn’t even a tiny cake; it was at least a 16″ traditional Chinese sponge cake with a layer of fruit and cream inside. I ate half of it for dinner.
Still my favourite song
I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times over the past year and it’s still my favourite: Fuel Up by Stornoway. I thought you might enjoy it too.
A small measure of time
How do you measure time?
Up until I finished my degree at SFU, I would recall events by what grade (K-12) or year (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) I was in. After there were no more school years, I remembered things by whether they happened before or after Russia, my stint in Australia, the US road-trip, or Peru. I’ve gotten so used to measuring things by grade levels or international borders that not boarding a plane between Montréal last summer and Vegas this summer made it difficult to remember what happened in between. This memory lapse phenomenon might be why people tend to make annual summary newsletters or blog posts; it’s why I’m doing it.
Guu-y textures
Ahh texture. I’ve never experienced so many levels of gooey, mushy, gloppy, sticky, jelly, and slimy in one meal. You could tell that everything was prepared the way it was meant to be made, but that didn’t make it taste better. There was a lot of “what’s this thing?” and “I can’t figure out which one this is supposed to be” going on — especially when the oden assortment arrived because it’s hard to tell a fish cake apart from a squid rolled fish cake when you don’t know what they look like. In just that one bowl there were at least four very different textures ranging from a tougher grey dotted block of something to a gooey sticky rice thing in a tofu sack that looked like it was taken off the set of some alien horror flick.
I think it’s …Asian?
HP had been whinging about not being included in Dinner Club, so for his birthday I took him to a restaurant that I would’ve chosen for Dinner Club if it was my turn this month. We went to Toko Restaurant and I wish we hadn’t because that was probably the worst birthday meal we’ve ever shared. I had thought Toko was a Japanese restaurant, but they include everything Asian from kimchi to Szechuan — that is, everything except sushi. It’s a “generically Asian” places that no Asian would actually go to and there was enough salt in each dish to make a dog sick. Bad choice. Sorry HP!