Missing NYC

While randomly channel surfing the other day (is this considered a sport yet? I'm a pro athlete if it is!), I came across a program on the Travel Channel about a group of students who were touring America and the stop of the day happened to be the Big Apple. Watching all the familiar New York scenes flash by brought back so many memories.

I miss NYC.

Top 5 things I miss about New York City

1. My friends

We moved to the big bad city together after graduation, ready to conquer the world. Wish we could spend more time together. Skype and emails are just not the same.

2. The food!
I love the variety of food in New York. There are cuisines from all around the world here, and best of all, lots of free delivery places! Some of my favourite places include:

Best pizza in town - John's Pizzeria
They have three locations in town, but I prefer the one in midtown, opposite the Phantom theater. Their pizzas are thin crust, crunchy and to die for.

Best Asian fusion food - Asia de Cuba
I went there for a Restaurant Week lunch one day. In fact, I went to quite a few restaurants for Restaurant Week, and this one was one of the most memorable. The calamari salad with a mix of chayote, hearts of palm, bananas, cashews, chicory, and radicchio with spicy sesame orange dressing was out of this world.

Best Malaysian food - Penang
There are a few locations in town, but my favourite is the one in Chinatown, off Canal street. It's a good place to go whenever I'm craving food from home, but nothing compares to the laksa in Paramount!

Best Yakitori - Oh! Taisho
"Insanely cool" little hole in the wall place in St. Mark's Place. Their specialty is Yakitori - Japanese barbeque. Just about everything on the menu is good. Try the smelt eggs. :)


3. The shopping
I mostly mean grocery shopping, because I'm not much of a clothes/books/shoes/whatever shopper. Except when I'm bored and I'm at home. But that's another story :P However, one of my favourite places to shop is Steve & Barry's at the Manhattan Mall in Herald Square. They're the only store in town that carries Sarah Jessica Parker's line. Just before I left the city, they were having an $8.99 sale. EVERYTHING in the store, including shoes and clothes was on sale for $8.99. I love the SJP jeans - one of the few in town, no make that the country that fits me without needing hemming. Sigh I find it ridiculously difficult to buy pants in this country.

My favourite grocery store is Trader Joe's. I especially like their organic collection - affordable veges, canned food, and even toiletries. Try their recycled toilet paper and environmentally-friendly laundry detergent.

I also miss buying cheap cheese, chips and salsa, and pear cider. Can't find these things at home! :(


4. The convenience
I love NYC for its convenience. Everything you could possibly want is a few steps away. From grocery stores to cool shopping to good food to hot bars. If it's not within walking distance, a short subway ride will get you there. I definitely want to live in a place where I can walk to the shops - it's impossible to do that here in Malaysia! I'd be a stinking puddle of sweat by the time I got to wherever I was going. Oops. Too graphic? :P


5. The scenes
Most of all, I miss New York City for the city itself. From the stunning skyline to the large parks to the non-stop vibrancy of the city. I have too many favourite spots in the city to list them all, but one of places at the top of my list has to be Union Square. I love all the restaurants around the area, and best of all, the farmer's market held here four times a week, where regional small family farmers come here to sell their wares. These pictures are from the Wikipedia entry because I never took pictures! It just didn't seem like the thing a local would do - and I was a local for a while. Now I regret it :(


One of these days, I'll go back. Looking forward to a gorgeous reunion!

Wii-mania

There was a pristine white box and two rubber-encased controllers sitting innocently underneath the TV at my cousin's house. It wasn't even switched on until three or four days into my stay there. But omg, when it was switched on, it was SO hard to tear myself away White and innocent-looking. Hah! Someone should put a warning label on those things - ADDICTIVE! Do not switch on unless you've got an hour or 24 free. Yes, I admit it, I'm a Wii addict!

Well, actually, I was. Sigh... unfortunately I don't have it at home, and there's no point getting it because there's no one around to play it with me. I'll just have to settle for being a couch potato while watching the Olympics instead.

I only experienced the Wii Sports disc, but that little disc alone has more than enough to entertain anyone. You can play multi-player tennis games, golf, boxing, baseball, and my favourite - bowling! With a little flick of the wrist, even the most un-athletically inclined person could play a decent game of bowling. I once scored four strikes in a row and ended the game at about 280 points. No chance I could replicate that in the real world. I can now boast that I'm a bowling pro! Virtual, that is :P

Tennis was really fun too, although it took me a while to figure out what I was doing. Imagine little old me serving up aces and hitting cross-court winners. I'm a regular Sharapova, just with a better serve - 100% first serves in! Haha... Careful you don't swing too hard when you're playing, though. My shoulder was aching for a whole day because I was swinging too hard at nothing :(

I didn't really like the baseball - too slow for me, and I didn't try the boxing - no nunchuks (special controls for it), but the golf! Now normally, I'm the president of the anti-golf club, but Wii golf was really cool. No more traipsing around a huge golf course with the relentless sun beating down on you, trying to hit a tiny white ball into a hole you can't even see when you start. With the Wii, there's a gauge to tell you how hard to hit, and how hard you're actually hitting, there's a direction pointer, there's a wind indicator. It does everything except drive you around in a golf cart. Given a bit more time, I'd be a Wii golf pro too!

The graphics were nothing spectacular, but the wireless remote control was really cool.
It senses your motions IN 3D!! And usually when you're playing, you only need to press one or two buttons at a time. No more grappling with remotes not designed for technically-challenged people like me. I also tried out the PS3 version of tennis when I was in Sydney, but it was SO hard to control the characters and I couldn't hit 90% of the balls. Sigh... the Wii is perfect for people like me.

I want one!!

Christmas is coming :D Hint hint...

Two months on

It's been a while since I last posted, and yes, I'm still at home. Except now I'm also looking for a job. I spent a month working from home on the same project that I was in Korea and Taiwan for. Then in July, I went to Australia to settle my brother in at university in Melbourne before going to Sydney for a 2-week vacation. I always seem to go to Australia in the winter, but for some reason, this time it was really cold. Maybe my thick cold-resistant skin from New York has been dissolved by the hot Malaysian sun? Nevertheless, it was beautiful as always. I spent a lot of time just walking around Sydney, doing the Coogee to Bondi walk again, doing the supposedly 2-hour Mosman Bay to Taronga Zoo walk in just half an hour, Oxford street, and of course, The Rocks. No pictures this time around, I'm afraid. Not until I figure out how to get the pictures off the big clunker of a PDA phone that I inherited from my dad, anyway.

I also stuffed myself silly in Sydney. What did you expect? haha... Half a rack of lamb ribs from Hurricanes at Bondi, with a baked potato that was bigger than my fist, pancakes with roasted bananas and chocolate sauce at Pancakes On The Rocks, a dizzying plethora of Asian food from Jerson's favourite places, including Korean hot pot, Chongqing hotpot, Japanese ramen, Vietnamese pho, Malaysian laksa, and to cap it all off, a HUGE pot of mussels and a mug of peach beer at this Belgian bistro. Sigh, my belly was really contented :)

But now I'm back home and I'm busy revamping my resumes, rediscovering best practice cover letter-writing techniques and trolling through job sites. I'm thinking environmental/sustainability consulting or the old fallback, management/strategy consulting. Locations? Sydney, preferably. I do love that place. Melbourne and London are also on the list. And Singapore is a distant fourth choice.

I've got an interview coming up next Wednesday with the London branch of NERA, and economic consulting firm. See how that goes. They're one of OW's sister companies, and my HR knows their HR, which is how I got the interview. But there are no preferential practices, I can assure you. I even had to go for a finance assessment when I was in Sydney! Had to buy a copy of Corporate Finance Demystified to brush up on my formulas :P Apparently it works, because I did pass the assessment, after all. Did I really pay for a Princeton education when all I had to do was buy a USD19.90 dummy's guide to pass the test?

Haven't heard back yet from any of the companies I applied to in Sydney, but I only started on Wednesday last, so it'll be a while yet. Sigh... applying for jobs in the real world is challenging! Seems like applying for experienced positions boils down to HOW MUCH experience you have, which, in my case, is precious little. Still, hopefully having the good alma mater on my resume will open a few doors.