Sky is always blue

Taking advantages of free hotel and the heck of fun around Times Square, I invited him down to the big city with me for our little so-called honeymoon we both need after a lengthy and lonely travel season I have had since September. That is one of the reasons why you haven't seen me around this area to update my journal. We bid good bye earlier this evening; he has to go back home and I have to stay for a few more days to complete my work in the big city. So here I am, back to the state of being lonely again and he is perhaps sitting/sleeping on Peter Pan bus somewhere along interstate 95.

Anyway, here are the photos of our days. Enjoy!

-/-

Thursday

I spent most of my day on the 6. Hey, remember one of J. Lo's first albums when she just rose into the big music scene back in the late 1990s? She titled it "On the 6" as to metaphorically inscribing her Bronx-girl life with a literally "big-ass" dream to become somebody someday in the Big Apple by riding the 6 into Manhattan. Anyway, whenever I am riding the 6, I thought of her. Strange :)

He arrived around 2 pm, and I took him to Ruby Foo, an upscale Asian-fusion restaurant on 49th and Broadway. With a visually imposing Chinese style decor, the restaurant looks very aesthetically pleasing. The food was not that bad either, although the price is way too overwhelmed for similar tastes I could get at any mom-n-pop Asian restaurants in Chinatown. Nevertheless, we both had a great lunch, and the service staff was professional and friendly.

This is me in the middle of Times Square, before heading down to the underground subway. Hmm, the 20% photogenic luck is apparent in this photo.

I had a work assignment over in Queens that night and he ended up accompanying me to Forest Hills neighborhood. It took us almost an hour on the train to get to the final destination. After finishing my work, we took the train back to Chinatown for our late night dinner. Unable to think of any other places and we were skeptical of experimenting a new restaurant, we went to Thái Sơn, a Vietnamese restaurant on Baxter Street that we often frequented.

For all the years of training with my mother, I have never been satisfied with Vietnamese dishes offer at any Vietnamese restaurants because of the lack of authenticity and more often than not, the tastes were a bit "Americanized" to accommodate non-Vietnamese clientele. But somehow, the Phở at Thái Sơn was amazingly delicious that night. I couldn't help but to slurp the noodles and the broth all together in five minutes. The service was not that bad but the waiter didn't give me enough bean sprouts and basil for my Phở. I gotta have lots of bean sprouts and basil to soften the fattiness of the broth, otherwise, the meat and noodles alone are too overwhelming for the taste. So that was me getting a little bit upset because of no bean sprouts and basils.

After dinner, we conveniently walked a few blocks over to Little Italy for our favorite orgasmic desert. It was around 10:30 pm, but the place was still packed with patrons. There were two wandering singers who kept serenading the patrons with various Italian love songs. We found ourselves sitting right in the middle of the hallway, orgasmically biting off the creamy and rum-filled tiramisu.

Remember my theory of 80% and 20% of photogenic luck the other day? This photo is an obvious evidence of my 80% un-photogenic look. I look ridiculously retarded. Perhaps that's my true orgasmic facial expression that I have never had the chance to see. (oops, that's too much of a rated-R information but hey, we are all adults *wink*). Nevertheless, the tiramisu at Ferrara has never failed me with its heavenly taste. We went back the next day and bought one whole cake instead of a few slices. Crazy people, aren't we?

That's a wrap.

More photos to come later on.

P.S. this entry is backdated to Thursday, but was actually written on Sunday :)

Oh please pardon me for this long post. It's all my fault that I have too much time on my hand to waste the entire night on prepping for this post. Nonetheless, I am by myself in the Big Apple, and I am so freaking lonely. :) So let me share with you the out-n-about of my day.

My day required a lot of physical exercise, mostly walking around in my boots with 3-inch heels (which is bad for the feet, knees and the ankles.) I had a successful first working day in spite of a few grudging encounters with fellow train riders. Nevertheless, I don't have any other imminent complaints.

The self-portrait captured my mood at at the end of a long day, I looked a bit tired and hungry at the same time. Thanks to Photoshop for the technical tools to lighten up my pale face. It's so inevitable that I don't look good 80% of the time; the other 20% were probably by luck or just of good light setting/angle. This is such a shameless narcissist plug. (Hey, it's my blog, I can do whatever I want!)

As you can see from the background, that's New York City skylight outside of my window. Sorry for all the cropping, which limited the expansive of the pre-cropped background. Nonetheless, at the time I am writing this post, the buildings right across are all lit up, capturing the characteristics and the vibrancy of the city. The TV/light towers at Times Square right below are constantly flashing with different commercials. I didn't even have to turn on the lights in my hotel room. Hmm, why don't they turn the lights off to conserve energy? The damage for their electricity bill must be up in the 6-digit figures. Yike, that's a lot of energy and money to waste.



Korean town (32nd street and Broadway).
Lots of Korean restaurants, shops, jewelry stores, perfumnia.

Girlfriends, if you are into affordable and yet fashionable and hip earrings or necklaces (or any other kinds of jewelries), come to this area for your shopping pleasure. There are a few stores where you can do a wholesale purchase with discount. Come for the glitters and the trends! (A few of my native NYC students recommended that I should go jewelry shopping at this corner of Manhattan.)



Another shot of a random street somewhere in Korean town.
There were a few "Spa" salons on this particular street. I wanted to come in for a massage but wasn't sure if it's a "special" massage place or not. Decided to skip it eventually; afraid people might look at me as if I am an idiot if the spa salons are particular serving men.



The interior of Phở 32 & Shabu -- a Vietnamese/Korean fusion restaurant where they offer Phở on the menu and a plethora of shabu styles to choose from. The host greeted me "ahn-nyong-ha-se-yo" assuming that I am Korean. Do I look Korean? Because this is not the first time people have mistaken me as Korean.

I had doubts about the Phở and its authenticity at a Korean restaurant, so I went for my safety -- the seafood shabu. The total cost if @20 bucks, not bad for a dinner.



The restaurant has some intriguing decor. The bowl of noodles was made out of clay and plastered on the wall. I liked it a lot. Impressive idea.
(The right side of the photo before this one gives a whole view of the wall of noodle bowls.)



Here are the servings of my shabu dinner. I love the kimchi and finished within a minute after it was served while waiting for the broth to boil. Unfortunately, when I asked for another plate of kimchi, the server either pretended that he didn't hear it or he totally forgot about my request so I ended up not bringing it up again. I also love the peanut sauce as the salad dressing on romaine lettuce. The seafood items include a few squids, 6 shrimps, and 2 clams. The vegetable were not that bad.



After dinner, I stopped by a nearby deli store (own by Korean) and they have mochi. I ended up buying two of them, 3 tangerines, a bag of grapes, and a cup of cut papaya. That's my dessert for the night. As you can see from the photo, I almost finished the papaya, gulped down one tangerine, snapped a few grapes. The remaining items will be eaten tomorrow morning for my breakfast :)



It was raining, not too hard, but more than a drizzle. Good thing -- I was prepared with a hooded rain jacket and an umbrella. New Yorkers and tourists pay no mind to the rain, they still rushed out on the street bareheaded. It was still early, around 6 pm, but I wasn't thrilled to do anything else. Actually, I had intended to walk to a nearby Barnes & Noble, but with the rain that deterred me away from my original plan, I decided to hop on the R train and returned to the hotel. The photo above is captured right at my hotel door.

That's it for the night. I am just wasting too much of my time with the laptop. It took me almost 2 hours to complete this post. But at least I got a venue to vent. :)

Second entry of the day...

Sitting in my hotel room at 10 pm, drinking Poland Spring Water, smelling the stenchy pungent of the seaweed salad and two soggy pieces of tuna rolls I couldn't finish earlier...oh how I envy Mr. Noodlepie for the life he leads.

Mr. Noodlepie has a website collecting all of his epicuristic experiences of Vietnamese food that makes me drool and salivate every single time I paid my visit. As one avid reader of his blog for almost a year, I couldn't help but to admire his talents, not only for the kind of food he eats has but also for his witty writing style. One of his latest entries entailed his visit to the bún-heaven in Sài Gòn, with photos to intensify the pain I feel as I long for the same culinary experience while sitting in the middle of Manhattan craving for some real hardcore bún dishes and bowls. The strong fishy smell coming from the left-over sushi has become unappetizing right next to me; it makes me want to vomit. :( All of a sudden, I wish I didn't have sushi for dinner but some hot and sizzling slurpy noodles instead. I am desperate for some street food too.

Oi, Mr. Noodlepie, how I admire thee.

*sob* *sniff* *cough*



My pathetic dinner. I would rather have this instead!!!

I am not much of a "dessert person" and would rather choose tangy fruits over sweet delicacies to please my palate after meals. However, there is an exception. Of course, nothing is ever be absolute, and so is my preference. With that said, do you know what would savor my sweet tooth?

This would...

Undoubtfully...this piece of cake would...



If you don't have a faint idea of what it is and unable to recognize it, let me introduce you to my favorite "orgasmic tiramisu" that could only be found at Ferrara Bakery and Café in Little Italy, New York City. This is the only place that serves the best tiramisu I have ever experience and no where else could be comparable to the one made by this family.

The rich layers of spongy ladyfingers infused with coffee liqueur and bitter espresso coffee oozing in between the layers of rich mascarpone cream will rouse all of your five senses and stir your sweet taste buds. Yum! Just one bite of this heavenly cake, you will find yourself having an insatiable orgasm in the middle of the day, or night, or whenever. My heart pulsated, sending impulses to every single nerve endings in my body. This might be an odd confession in public, but I feel so strangely sexy, or rather, sensual when eating tiramisu. Perhaps it's the name of the cake, pick-me-up, which serves as an allusion to the romantic pursuit of love and the the courtship of dating (entirely my assumption).

Okay, so maybe you think I overrate my experience...but it was truly a sensual experience, especially when I had it with the special one.

Well, if you want to have the same gastronomical experience of Ferrara's tiramisu, find your way to Lower Manhattan by any train that stop in Chinatown. Once you're out of the station on the street level, walk to Mulberry Street and crossing Grand Street in Little Italy. Ferrara Café is on Grand Street, sandwiching between Mulberry and Mott. The place also offer a wide array of other sweet delicacies and numerous of authentic Italian drinks.

I am not a baker, and won't even attempt to try this. But just in case you are a baker and in the sensual mood for baking, here is the tiramisu recipe taken from Ferrara's family website.

I have finally settled into the new apartment although there are still boxes to unpack and furniture to rearrange. Nevertheless, it does encompass the feeling of "home" for me as of now. I enjoy cooking in the new spacious kitchen and treat myself to an authentic dish of homecook meal.

This is my dinner for the night: Stir fry squid with Chinese celery and sun-ripe tomatoes. I wish you guys are here to share with me. It sucks eating by myself :( Let me know if any of you want the recipe, it's rather quite simple to make.