A serious and sometimes not so serious personal blog
We saw this guy at the A train platform on 14th Street. He wasn’t doing much at first, but when he got going he sounded good. He had the speakers producing a beat track that he was able to tweak using pedals on the ground in front of him. The way he played his trombone reminded me of a saxophone.
I was just looking through some old posts and I realized that I moved this blog from Google’s Blogger to self-hosted WordPress more than a year ago. During that process, a lot of the images didn’t transfer properly. There are just broken image placeholders in a lot of the posts, which is really a shame since most of my older posts were about visiting places in Asia and the photos are fantastic. Well, they’re fantastic and the posts don’t make sense without them.
I’ve been trying to get around to fixing these broken images, but it seems like things just keep coming up that I have to get done. I suppose I’ll get them fixed eventually. Maybe this summer? Maybe if I just start doing one or two each day they’ll all be fixed before I realize it. I certainly can’t just put off classwork to fix broken links.
I really need to get this done. Self-hosted WordPress is fun but expensive. If I ever decide not to stick with it, I need my blog data to be all put together so I can export it to some other platform. I’d rather not do that, but I want to be prepared.
I spend so much time trying to put this blog together or get it organized the way I want that I haven’t put much effort into actually writing posts over the past year or so. That is partly because I’ve been busy with school, but also because every time I open the post editor I think of how the blog isn’t the way I want it to be, the posts aren’t fixed, images are broken, my blog keeps going down because some script is eating up too much RAM on the server, categories need to be rearranged, etc.
I’m too much of a perfectionist. Maybe if I just find a really nice, minimalist theme that has nice color accents and incorporates the newest features of WordPress, I’ll be happy with it and just stick with it for a change. I suppose I’m not particularly happy with how 2014 looks and besides having those broken images, I’m dreading the amount of time it’s going to take me to find a theme that I like that suits a personal blog with a bit of personality but isn’t completely dumbed down.
I really don’t get why people do this. Do they think it’s cute? Or do they just not care that other people will want to sit on the seats without getting filth from the streets on their clothing? I’m guessing both.
This was one of four times I saw someone do this in a single day. Another time, a guy was standing in front of the seats with his friends, holding the overhead rail when he put his right boot up on the seat. What if he stepped in dog crap? What if that got on the seat and someone else sat on it? How can people be so self-centered?
People scream their conversations at each other in the buses and trains, disrupting everyone around them. They drop their trash on the floor. They purposely put wads of garbage in the train doors to jam them and prevent the trains from moving. People play their music loudly on speakers instead of using earphones or headphones. They spit on the floor in elevators and stand at the top or bottom of stairs blocking the flow of pedestrian traffic.
Apparently no one else matters. Other people are just background noise to the story of their life, props to be ignored except when useful.
Maybe our society preaches individualism too often and needs to shift to promoting social responsibility and being good to one’s neighbors.
About two weeks ago we went to a place called Stage Restaurant, a Ukrainian and Polish restaurant at 128 2nd Ave in Manhattan. I can’t believe it’s been that long already. With classes going, time is flying by.
We wound up in Stage because we were looking for a place to take my mother for a late birthday lunch. She happened to see an article in the paper about Stage potentially closing due to leasing problems and she wanted to spend some money there and support local neighborhood establishments. A lot of other restaurants that had been in the neighborhood for decades have been driven out by rising rent costs, including places that we used to go to often as kids, like the 2nd Avenue Deli. Now the 2nd Avenue Deli is way up town on 75th Street. I haven’t been there since they moved, because it’s so far out of the way. I remember the food being really good. I suppose we could go there before or after visiting the Met one day.
Anyway, we found out later from one of the employees that Stage has a long lease already set up that can’t be broken by the new building owners, so hopefully things work out for them. It seems like a lot of property in the area is getting bought up by NYU for classrooms and dorms. The whole character of the neighborhood has changed since NYU put those dorms up at Union Square. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. The place looks a lot nicer. On the other hand, it runs up prices on everything and the neighborhood was predominantly lower income before. Basically, people were run out of their homes because they could no longer afford to live there. That’s gentrification, I guess.
Stage Restaurant is a hole-in-the-wall sort of place with one long bar for seating directly in front of the cooking area. The latkes (fried potato pancakes) pierogies were recommended in the news article, but I went with the French toast. My wife and I shared a plate of apple blintzes. I can’t remember what she ordered now, but she didn’t have any complaints at the time. My mom went with a plate of pierogies, stuffed cabbage, sausage and sauerkraut. The portions were huge and she had plenty of food to take home for another meal.
Stage Restaurant isn’t fine dining, but it’s fast, comfortable, and the food was good. It was also busy. Every time a seat opened up, someone sat in it. I don’t think the restaurant is going anywhere anytime soon, so I’m glad we found it. We can add it to our list of potential lunch venues when we’re in the neighborhood.
Saturday we attended a synagogue service and ran into an acquaintance of ours who had two tickets for an orchestral performance he wasn’t going to be able to attend. He didn’t want to waste them by throwing them out, so he gave the tickets to me and my wife. I imagine he wasn’t planning on attending because of the cold. We weren’t sure we were going to go either, but we’d never seen a live orchestral performance so we figured this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Bundling up and heading back downtown after warming back up at home was a great decision!
It was a great experience that we’re both looking forward to repeating in the future. There’s something about hearing classical music performed live that is electrifying in a way that mp3s just can’t convey. I suppose it has something to do with the huge crowd of people all being there for the same reason, seeing the exertion and passion the artists are pouring into their playing on the stage, and experiencing the energy in the room as the crowd claps and cheers after sets.
The chamber orchestra we saw is called the East Coast Chamber Orchestra. They were performing as part of the Arens series of the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts 2013-2014 season. ECCO is a string orchestra that plays without a conductor. The member that introduced the group said they take turns leading. I’m not sure how they do that, but they managed to pull it off extremely well.
The venue itself was odd, I thought, because it was in a high school, but Washington Irving High School’s lobby and performance hall is very attractive. It has an old style of architecture that is very classy. The seats were hard though. By about halfway through I wished I’d brought a cushion. I probably should have just folded my coat and sat on that.
The best part of the concert was when ECCO performed Virtuosity: Five Microconcertos for String Orchestra. The composer, David Ludwig, happened to be in attendance so he gave an introduction to the piece. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the music was very engaging and the artists’ performance was amazing.
The concert was eye opening for me and gave me a new appreciation for classical music. I suppose I had gotten used to the idea that complex and powerful music was something that could only be achieved with computers. We’ve been in New York City for about two years now, and we kept talking about going out to do something like this, something new, but because of our routines and schedules we never quite got around to it. So, we were introduced to an amazing new form of entertaining just by chance, because someone had extra tickets and couldn’t use them. Sometime soon, we’re going to have to go see the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
After the concert, we walked over to Veniero’s Pasticceria on 11th Street and 1st Ave. We figured, why not finish off a great night with a great dessert and some a wine? It was getting late, though, so we got our order to go and got on the train. When we got home, we put the pastries in the fridge and went out with the dog to walk him. That’s when the evening took an unexpected turn.
We were walking past the narrow little alley next to our building where the next building over stores garbage between pick-up days. There was this orange cat sitting there in the snow, crying and pacing back and forth. The opening of the alley is blocked with a steel gate. I can only imagine the cat jumped down into the alley from behind the buildings and couldn’t get out. We couldn’t just leave him stuck there. If we did, he might have frozen to death. He was so pitiful and every time we talked to him he cried even more loudly.
I got on the phone with 911, because I expected them to send animal control. I figured, even if he goes to the shelter and runs the risk of being euthanized, that’s better than the cat dying of a combination of starvation, dehydration and hypothermia.
That call didn’t go quite as planned. I grew up with this idea in my head of firemen with ladders getting cats out of trees. I thought that was probably a little naive but at the last I thought they would send an animal control person with a ladder to get over the gate and get the cat out of the alley. The 911 operator instead transferred me to a “more appropriate agency for this situation” and I was disconnected before the call went through.
So, I called 311. After explaining the situation to the operator, she tried to transfer me back to 911 via a conference call, which ended with the 911 operator asking the 311 operator if she had any sense, since animal control issues are handled by 311. For some reason, the 311 operator was trying to pass off responsibility for doing her job onto 911. I literally had to threaten to report her to a local news station and the ASPCA as letting cats die of exposure because she was too lazy to do her job before she took the call seriously and agreed to submit the report and have police sent over to address the situation.
Keep in mind this was after midnight and I was on the phone for about 30 minutes, standing in the street, with it only being about 23 degrees outside.
Right about the time she finished taking my info and was about to submit the report, the cat made a loud yowling noise and launched himself vertically at the gate and managed to catch hold of the grating and haul himself to the top. He almost fell back in, but he eventually jumped down onto the sidewalk.
Of course, it didn’t end there. I couldn’t leave the cat in the cold. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. So, I called to the cat and he followed me upstairs where I put him in the bathroom of our apartment. I dug a big animal carrier we have from our international move with our cats back to the US out of the closet and put the cat in it for the night.
Today we took him to New York City Animal Care and Control. We tried to get him into a few no-kill shelters, but all of the NK shelters in NYC are not accepting cats. So, we’ll keep up with his progress and try to make sure he doesn’t get euthanized, but at least he’s not freezing to death.
He is a very good cat. Very well behaved. I had my gloves on, but when I picked him up he didn’t even try to fight back. He seemed very happy just to be warm and to have something to eat and drink. According to my wife, he was very behaved at the shelter as well.
When the intake person asked for the cat’s name, my wife called him Cheesecake. So, now Cheesecake is in the shelter, going through a health assessment. I hope this turns out well.
We went to an interfaith recitation and music event at the Town & Village Synagogue on 14th Street in Manhattan last Thursday. Every year, the event is held at a different venue, and this time it was T&V Synagogue’s turn to host the event. I don’t mean to say the hosting is thought of in a negative way, but rather as an opportunity to contribute to the interfaith dialogue that they’re trying to promote with the event.
According to the announcers (Rabbi Larry Sebert and Anthony Donovan, the co-founder of Local Faith Communities), it was the fourth time they’ve held the event and the groups all seemed to be familiar with each other. In addition to Town & Village’s choir, there were representatives from:
The atmosphere was pretty relaxed and it was interesting seeing people of different faiths all in one house of worship. Another thing that I found interesting was the way Mr. Donovan kept saying that the Torah scrolls, housed in the ark behind the bimah (an alcove behind the raised portion at the front of the synagogue) must be really blessed since so many people from different religions were there praising God, or at least their interpretation of God. Perhaps he was thinking of how Jews call someone up to bless the Torah prior to oral recitation of the text.
There were a few groups that I found particularly interesting. The Russian Orthodox group sang at what felt like a professional level. The harmony and precision of the singers’ voices was amazing! The Tibetan priest was fantastic as well. The 10 foot long horn he played prior to reciting a mantra was very exciting. I took a video of it. The guy seems very humble and pleasant. He works construction during the day, despite his age. Perhaps that’s why he’s in such good health.
The Quran recitation was also interesting. A 16 year old boy who is already a hafiz, a person who has memorized all 600+ pages of the Quran, and the imam both did recitations on the bimah. I bet that’s something you wouldn’t find anywhere in the world but this country. Maybe not even outside New York?
That’s not to say the other groups weren’t good as well. The whole evening was fantastic. Those are just the three that stood out to me the most. The event was a little different from what I expected in that most groups sanitized their music choices. This event was supposed to be about celebrating difference as much as unity in that each group was supposed to present songs or recitations they would normally use in their services. The Russian Orthodox group leader specifically said they chose selections from Psalms because it was more inline with an interfaith type of dialog. The Middle Collegiate group sang a song in which I’m about 98% sure they replaced the word “Jesus” with “freedom” to make it more universal in nature.
There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s probably a testament to the success of what the Local Faith Communities group has been trying to do that even when given the chance to do what they normally do, people went out of their way to make sure they didn’t offend each other. That’s what interfaith dialog is all about, right? Learning to live peacefully with one’s neighbors?
The whole event lasted from 7:00 PM to about 9:30 PM. We had dinner beforehand at Murray’s around the corner on 1st Avenue, which is outstanding by the way, and then had some fruit after the event in the reception hall below the synagogue’s sanctuary. We had a really good time and we are looking forward to seeing next year’s Spiritual Sounds event.
Here are some photos of the different groups on stage which I have, hopefully, labeled appropriately. I wish the quality was better, but even after charging my camera battery and leaving myself reminders, I forgot to bring my camera with me and had to use my iPhone.
My wife and I went to Rite Aid earlier to pick up some supplies for the week and while we were pondering the cat food choices this guy walked up to us and said to my wife, “Excuse me miss, do you know where the pad locks are? The locks that spin, that turn, with the combinations. Do you know where those are?”
We looked over at the guy and we both took a step back from him. He looked rough. Homeless maybe. His clothes were really worn out and sort of dirty looking. His speech was slurred and hard to understand. What startled us, however, was the fact that the whites of his eyes weren’t white; they were hot red, like maraschino cherries. He was also gesturing wildly and was leaning towards us in a weird aggressive sort of way, but not like he wanted to rob us. It was more like he believed we knew where the padlocks were and if he wasn’t forceful enough in asking us, we would hide the answer from him.
A lot of things ran through my head: ‘What’s wrong with him and is it communicable?’ being the foremost. I also started forming ideas about how to push him away while coming into the least amount of physical contact with him should he suddenly go nuts. Maybe that was just a reaction from having watched so many sci fi movies (zombies, rage virus, Helix, etc.) but you never know what might happen these days, especially if someone is so sick their eyes are literally red. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
The way people are doing experiments with viruses and DNA and genetic modification, it’s not impossible for something dangerous to get out in the wild (the general population of humans) anyway. I suppose you have to expect that sort of thing to happen these days, the same way we sort of expect the government to always be two steps from having a new lie and scandal uncovered.
The fact that he was disoriented was even more troubling. When my wife told him we didn’t know where the locks were, he walked away and we saw him stalking up and down the aisles asking other people about padlocks. I just hope that whatever he has isn’t contagious. I have better things to do with my time than lose my mind and wander around stores looking for padlocks.
Somehow I’m not surprised, both at the UPS person’s incompetence and the theft.
A few days ago I had to go to the Veteran’s Administration hospital in the Bronx for my annual physical. I was quite a few months late going this year. Last Semester was just too overwhelming for me to find time to get anything done. I still have lots of errands I need to take care of that I should have done during those four months as well as other things I want to get done before Spring starts.
I somehow don’t think I’m going to get through all of the reading I’d like to do before the semester starts, but I am enjoying having a lot more quality time with my wife. We’re catching up on a lot of television shows together. We sort of stopped loving Breaking Bad because it was dragging too much with the car wash nonsense and Skylar being so annoying (not to mention Walt was turning into sort of a wuss) and now we’re getting hooked on Fringe. Thanks Netflix! House of Cards was good too. I guess we’ll get back to Breaking Bad eventually.
I’m also trying to get my fitness level back up. I’m taking it slow though. I spent four months basically doing nothing physically strenuous. I have a Fitbit Force to help me stay motivated. It’s amazing how hard it is to cheat yourself when you can see the numbers in front of you plain as day, in terms of calories consumed versus calories burned.
So, coming back around to what I meant to write about in this post, which has to do with calories, I was surprised by just how disgustingly greasy the fried chicken at the VA hospital cafeteria was. When I went for my physical the doctor surprised me by telling me I should have blood work done. He surprised me more by having the nurse draw what seemed like almost a pint out of my arm. I didn’t have breakfast, so I went straight to the cafeteria afterwards to eat a decent meal to make sure I didn’t collapse on the way home.
There were plenty of choices but somehow the need to go a little overboard to replace all the blood I lost led me to the fried chicken buffet. It was a bad move. I put three fried wings on my plate but I could only stomach one before my stomach started to turn. At first I thought it was the change in diet I’d made away from greasy foods to more steamed and boiled dishes, but I’ve had fried chicken from other places, like Popeye’s, that didn’t leave such a bad taste in my mouth. We ate a plate of amazing soy garlic wings at Boka Bon Chon yesterday and it was fine, but hours after I left the hospital I could still taste heavy oil in my mouth. It must just be the way that chicken was prepared.
Thinking about it, I wonder if the same preparation method was used at the cafeterias I ate at when I was on active duty in the Army. Procedures are pretty standard in the military or military related facilities and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a field manual or technical manual related to the frying of chicken and operation of deep fryers. I used to really enjoy that chicken. Now I can’t stand it.
How much did the Army really teach me about physical fitness? I’m beginning to feel like I didn’t learn anything other than how to follow a physical exercise routine in the morning. I wasn’t taught how to evaluate food choices or supplement choices and I wasn’t given any understanding of how sleep, diet, and overall physical activity would affect my health. Perhaps I should have taken the initiative and looked that up myself, but as a young soldier who was trained to just listen and do as instructed, it never occurred to me to think that far outside the box, especially when sleep deprivation and ordering pizza are such big parts of military culture. So, I would exercise in the morning, eat fried chicken for lunch, maybe pizza for dinner, and then I would wonder why I never really saw any physical improvement.
If I recall correctly, the units I was in had people who were trained to be masters of physical fitness. They went to some sort of course to learn about physical fitness. What was the point of that? Were they not trained properly? Did the command structure ignore their recommendations? Or was it just a mark on a check-list to satisfy civilian committees who evaluated the military’s commitment to the health and well-being of service members that was never seriously implemented?
I learned a lot from my time in the military, but the more I learn outside of the military, the more I realize I was left in the dark in areas that were key to being a successful soldier. But, I suppose one can’t expect the military structure, composed mostly of high school graduates, to impart the understanding that comes with a college education and life experience to new recruits. Officers could do something about that, being college graduates, but there aren’t enough officers and that isn’t really their job.
I’ve been dieting since early November. Counting calories is a drag but becoming overweight would be worse. Tonight I’m splurging, though, with a chocolate volcano cake from Veniero’s.
Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog 