Classic New York City Taxi

Bradley Farless10 Comments

Old fashioned New York City Taxi.

I saw this old fashioned taxi cab parked on the side of the road.  I assume it’s still being used, but I could be wrong.  Maybe someone bought it and is using it as a personal vehicle and they enjoy the novelty of driving it.

I don’t ride in taxis much here.  They’re way too expensive.  With a little foresight and time management, you could save yourself 20 dollars or more and just take the bus or train.  I guess a lot of people do use them though, because sometimes I get the impression that there are more taxis on the roads here in the city than any other types of vehicles combined.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade Pictures

Bradley Farless6 Comments

Skulls on a shelf at a Walmart in Georgia.

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!  I spent my evening out on 6th avenue watching the annual Halloween Parade, which is said to be the largest Halloween event in the country.  I’ve gone to see it once before, in 2007 when I was here in the city on leave from Kuwait to visit family.

A picture of the crowd going up one side of 6th avenue.

It was pretty chilly out there, really crowded and it smelled funny.  Maybe it was just the area I was standing in, but I heard a few other people complaining about the smell as well.  There wasn’t much I could do about it.  I showed up an hour early and still was standing behind 3 rows of people.  I figured if I moved I might not get a spot as good as that anywhere else, so I just put up with it.  I didn’t hang around for the whole thing.  After the better groups of parade participants walked by, I figured I’d beat the rush of the crowd.  Getting jammed around by a crowd of mostly drunk people isn’t my idea of a good time.

I was hoping I’d get some better pictures this year, but most of them still turned out poorly.  I’ll share the better ones though:

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

Barbie thought she was special so she was walking by herself.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

This is the head of a skeleton horse, and it’s front hooves, if you’re wondering, plus some dead fish swimming around in the background.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

Yes, they are naked and covered in body paint while dancing to the beat of a tribal drum.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

This little girl was walking on stilts all the way down the parade route from Spring Street to 16th Street.

2010 New York City Halloween Parade.

These two guys were dressed as the stop and go signals for pedestrian crossings.

And that’s about it.  By this point I was starting to really feel the cold and my legs were starting to get tired, so I decided to head back home.  I hope you enjoyed the photos, and hopefully I can get some better ones next year!

MTA’s SBS Bus Service Is A Big Step In The Wrong Direction

Bradley Farless6 Comments

MTA Ticket Machines for Limited Buses in New York City.

The M15 limited bus is one of the new SBS buses in New York City.  It uses a new system where you buy a ticket from one of the machines pictured above before you board the bus and then you can enter the bus from any of the doors, rather than just the front door where the driver is.  It’s also supposed to have a dedicated bus lane and, though I have no clue how this works, priority at traffic lights.

The problem I see with this is that it doesn’t really save time at all and it wasn’t advertised enough.  I’ve only been back in the city for a little while, so it’s really no surprise that I hadn’t heard of this before having to figure it out firsthand, but other commuters seemed just as confused by the thing as I did, including my mother, who was born here and, after some time away, moved back 17 years ago.  She watches the news regularly but had never heard of this change and it wound up causing an incident on the bus we took this afternoon, the M15 at 1st Avenue and 14th Street.

You see, we showed up at the bus stop and boarded the bus just like any other bus.  The driver sat there and watched us come in through the front door.  He watched my mom dip her MetroCard into the machine and saw that it deducted the transit fare.  Then as she started to walk away, he called her back and told her she needed a ticket from one of the machines outside.  After she had already paid.  To get a ticket from the machine she would have to pay again.  We wound up having to get off the bus.

My question is this: why did the driver watch my mother dip her card and deduct a fare when he knew that wasn’t the appropriate method for boarding the bus?  Why is the card reader even on the bus in the first place if it’s not used for these limited buses?  And what recourse does my mother have now to recover the money taken from her?  None.

The driver gave my mom one of those paper transfer cards and told her to try that in the ticket machine, but it didn’t work, and of course he drove off right away rather than having to continue dealing with the problem.  Not that he could wait around forever of course, with a bus full of passengers, but it still feels like he was trying to evade the problem.

So, in the end, my mom got shorted one fare today.  One fare may not sound like much to some people, but every dollar counts and it’s not just the amount, it’s the principle.  The NYC MTA stole money from my mother today.  That’s bullshit.

Getting back to what I was saying about the process not being any faster, like SBS claims, I believe that it’s all a trick to make things seem faster.  The only faster part about it is getting on the bus.  It still takes just as long for people to get off the bus.  It also takes quite a while to get a ticket.  I haven’t been there during the morning rush hour but we spoke to one lady who said that in the morning there are long lines of people waiting to use the machine to get a ticket, and while you’re standing there in line waiting, you’re missing buses that go by.  So, how is it really making it faster for passengers to start at point A and reach point B?  I also don’t recall the bus using any special lane on 1st avenue, or having some sort of special privilege at the traffic lights.

This whole system just makes things more confusing than they have to be, and it feels like a step backward rather than a step forward.  Seriously MTA, paper tickets?  You know that’s what they do in third world countries, right?  Everyone else in the world is moving towards a permanent prepaid card that you use indefinitely.  You don’t even scan, slide or dip it.  You simply tap it on a panel that reads the chip in the card to do the fare deduction.  You don’t even have to take it out of your wallet.  That’s easy and faster.  Imagine getting on the bus and dragging your purse over a pad to make your payment, or bumping your wallet against a pad before tucking it back into your pocket.  No more fumbling with getting a card in and out of your purse/wallet/pocket.  And you know how the secret inspectors verify that you’ve paid?  They have a handheld device that reads passengers’ cards to show when they last used them and for what bus.  They don’t walk around asking for paper tickets.

One last thing I’d like to mention is the extra costs involved in this venture.  The SBS signs on the buses point out how they use less energy because the buses are at the stops for a shorter amount of time.  That’s all well and good, but what about the cost of all of the ticket machines?  And how is it greener to print paper tickets for every single person for every single ride!!!!!!????  One of the simplest concepts in ‘going green’ is to reduce the use of paper to save forests, not increase it unnecessarily.

The money that’s been wasted on this project should have been used to replace buses with newer, more fuel efficient models, or to upgrade the system to permanent, prepaid tap cards.  As far as this goes, though, it’s a step towards the third world in a city that’s supposed to be the best.

A Pepsi Throwback That Should Stay Back

Bradley Farless10 Comments

Pepsi Throwback, Made with real sugar.

When I was in Singapore, maybe two years ago, I remember hearing about a movie called “Food, Inc.”, which is about the food industry in the US.  It covers a lot of ground, but one of the areas it really hits on is the prevalence of corn products and byproducts in almost everything we consume in the US.  It’s our staple food and is heavily subsidized by the government.  One of those byproducts is called ‘high fructose corn syrup’.  I’m sure you’ve heard of it.  It’s been in the news a lot recently.

So, what’s the problem with high fructose corn syrup?  Well, first of all, it’s a sweetener that’s meant to replace sugar.  Supposedly it was a better alternative to sugar, because it was cheaper for the companies, lowering the cost of the product, and tastes about the same.  That’s all good right?  Well, there’s a problem.  I’m sure everyone has realized by now that Americans as a whole are getting pretty fat.  I think we’re the fattest country in the world.  It’s disgusting, and high fructose corn syrup is one of the reasons for it.

A study done by Princeton University last March showed that rats who consume high fructose corn syrup “gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.”  That’s a problem.  The things we find high fructose corn syrup in are usually not that healthy anyway, and now we find out that the cheap stuff they’re using instead of sugar is even worse for us than the real thing.  Of course, they probably knew that was the case when they started using it.  That sort of thing has to go through testing before it’s approved for human consumption.  It wouldn’t be the first time a corporation has put profit before the well being of their consumers though.

In response to this, and I’m going to be vague here because I don’t remember the details, the corn growers association is lobbying to have the official name of high fructose corn syrup rebranded as ‘corn sugar’.  Their reasoning is that this will more accurately convey to consumers what they’re eating and where it comes from.  I guess they think we’re all stupid though.  Just changing the name of something doesn’t change what it does to you.  If we started calling gasoline ‘light oil derivative’, it would still power our cars and empty our wallets.  The real reason they want to call it corn sugar is because the word ‘corn’ sounds healthy.  It’s a vegetable right?  That has to be healthy!  So, new consumers who hadn’t heard of high fructose corn syrup before will be duped into believing that what they’re eating is actually a healthier alternative to natural sugar, that comes out of the ground and not out of a laboratory.

I was really unhappy with the idea that I’d have to give in to consuming high fructose corn syrup back here in the US.  It’s just not healthy, but there aren’t many alternatives when you like to eat sweets or drink soda.  The bottle above is a limited run product from Pepsi that uses real sugar.  I wish they’d make it a permanent run item, but that might not happen.  I was told that people had petitioned for Coke to use real sugar and that petition had been flat out denied.  Again, not surprising, but definitely disappointing.

The New York City Fire Department Don’t Play

Bradley Farless10 Comments

This morning I accompanied my mom to Times Square Church.  We left late, but hey, that’s what happens when you stay up til 2 AM.  Anyhow, we went out the door at about 10 AM and when we got to 14th street, where we usually catch the bus to Union Square for the train, the road was shut down between Avenues A and B.

FDNY shut down 14th St. between Ave A and B.

Firefighters walking back to their truck.

This may seem like a stupid question until you see the following photos, but I asked one of the firefighters why they were there.  He said there was a fire in the building that one of the trucks’ ladders was up against.  You see, I thought something serious was happening, like a gas leak, a bomb threat, or something that could potentially destroy us all.  The whole street was filled with response vehicles:

The building with the ladder up to it is the culprit.

The whole street between Ave A and B was filled with response vehicles.

To the right of the SUV marked “4” is the bus stop we usually use, and the guy standing there is the one who I asked what was going on.

More response vehicles further down the block.

Fire trucks parked on the street.

More emergency response vehicles.

Smoke rising from the building.

When we first walked by, we couldn’t even tell that the building was burning.  By the time we got to the Avenue A intersection, there was some light smoke rising from the building.

I didn’t see anything about this on the news this evening, but there was a guy recording with a professional camera.  I can’t help but wonder what was going on in that building that required so large a response from emergency services.  Was it overkill, or were they just making sure they brought enough firepower to put down anything they encountered?  I have no idea how things work here in NYC in regards to emergency response since the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, but even my mom seemed surprised and she’s been living here for a long time.

Regardless, it made for an interesting start to the morning, got my blood pumping and helped me from falling asleep in the warm, cozy Times Square Church annex during the sermon, which was actually pretty good.

Oh, and after the service… I enjoyed an unexpectedly 8 dollar kebab wrapped in pita bread.  I think I’d have been better off waiting til I got back downtown to the famous stand on 6th avenue.  I can’t remember the name of it, but I’ll blog about it later.  Lesson learned.  Food prices at the Times Square street fair are steep!

A fancy shishkebab from the Times Square street fair.

How to Add Prepaid Credit to your Philippines Phone While in the US

Bradley Farless5 Comments

One of the biggest problems to overcome when you’re in the US and have family and friends in the Philippines is finding a cheap way to stay in touch.  There are a lot of options out there for cheap communication to the Philippines, which I’m still sorting through, but to keep things cheap for the person in the Philippines, there’s an easy option.

When I came back to the US, I brought my prepaid Globe phone with me and set it to International Roaming through their website.  This allows people in the Philippines to send messages and calls to my phone at local rates.  It also allows me to receive those messages at the same local rates, which in Globe’s case is free.  They have no incoming fees.  So, that’s 1 way communication at a cheap rate.

The problem comes in when you reply back and use up your credit, or when the credit expires.  Credit added to Globe prepaid phones is only valid for a certain number of days before it expires.  Either way, you eventually need to add credit to your prepaid number.  As far as I know, there’s no way to do this through Globe’s website.  I’ve read a few board threads here and there where people suggest buying Globe reload cards through eBay.  It’s also possible to send money to your relative back home and have them get credit added to your phone there.  The first way is a hassle for you, and the other way is a hassle for your relative.  There is one other way, though.

Reload your Globe phone from the US with an ezetop card.

You can buy a 10.99 ezetop reload card, which is powered by Fastcard.  They’re the same people that do most of the online game reload cards and the local US prepaid cards.  I picked up this one in a Rite Aid in New York City.  You scratch off the silver stuff to reveal the PIN, call the 1-800 number, enter your PIN, the phone number you want to load, confirm the mobile operator and that’s it.  Your load hits your phone as an AutoLoadMAX reload.

There’s a catch though.  I went back and read the fine print after receiving confirmation of my credit being added to my phone because I was a little surprised at the actual amount I was credited with.  Let’s do some math.  As of today, 10.99 USD is 473.34 PHP.  How much of that was actually credited to my phone?  300 PHP.  That means I lost 173.34 PHP, or about 4 USD, in the transaction for miscellaneous fees.  That doesn’t sound like much, but when you think about it, that’s almost 1/3 of the cost of the card.

So, what I’ve learned here is that if I’m really hurting for a reload on my Globe phone, I do have an option here in the US.  However, if I’m not in a rush, the hassle I might put my relative in the Philippines through putting credit on my phone is worth it considering the fees involved with this method.

If you’re wondering, these cards work for the Globe, SMART, and Touch Philippines mobile operators.

Two Quiet Weeks in Georgia

Bradley Farless10 Comments

My blog has been pretty quiet lately, and that’s because I’ve been down in Georgia visiting family.  It’s nice and quiet there, so quiet in fact that the advertisements in the newspaper are sometimes thicker than the newspaper itself.  So… that doesn’t leave much to talk about.  The paper even covered the disappearance of a Ronald McDonald statue, though that is kinda funny.  Somewhere in Columbus, Ronald McDonald is always sitting on a couch, ready to hang out with the person that stole him from a McDonald’s bench.

That’s not to say nothing interesting happened though.  Well, interesting to me at least!

Super WalMart is huge!

We did a lot of shopping!  We did so much shopping, in fact, that I had to pack a box to mail back to NYC.  Thankfully, the shipping cost was less than the checked baggage fee on Delta and it showed up the day after I got back to NY, spending only two days in transit.

Dunkin Donuts ground coffee.

We also did a lot of grocery shopping for big family dinners.  While browsing the shelves I kept finding new stuff that I hadn’t seen before, like Dunkin Donuts having their own line of ground coffee.  I also got excited about stuff I hadn’t eaten since before I left the US, like Toaster Strudels and Fudge Shoppe cookies.

Kadie the cow in Columbus, Georgia.

I finally got a picture with Kadie the cow.  This giant cow used to sit in front of the Kinnett Dairy plant, which has since gone out of business and been replaced by a Best Buy.  The original plan was to remove the cow, but it had been there for so long that the plan caused an uproar in the town and it was allowed to remain standing.  There used to be a baby cow next to it, which is why there are those extra blocks stuck in the ground.  The baby cow was stolen, returned, and is now supposedly in storage somewhere.

Old toys from when I was a kid.

I saw this red box and the wooden toys that were inside it for the first time in years.  That red box is at least 21 years old.  I thought it had been thrown out a long time ago.  The wooden blocks have marbles inside and you have to twist and turn them to get them to come out.

This yard needed some serious work!

I did a lot of yard work.  Raking up these leaves took about 6 hours over the course of two days.  It was hard work, but in a way it was also relaxing.

A real cat named Garfield.

I met a cat named Garfield that thought the perfect place to sleep at night was right on top of my chest, and would purr until I fell asleep.

I had a good time doing a whole lot of nothing on this trip, aside from the shopping I mentioned.  It was all about hanging out with family and relaxing before coming back to NYC to get back to work.  Now that I am back in NY, I have a bunch of errands to take care of and then it’s time to start a new job.

It’s also time to start really blogging about NY!  So, look for that in upcoming posts.

Fake Chinese Food

Bradley Farless19 Comments

Once upon a time, before I actually visited a mostly Chinese ethnic country, I thought I knew what Chinese food was, and it looks like this:

American Chinese food.

Imagine my surprise to not find egg rolls over there.  No one knew what an egg roll was, unless they’d been here.  There’s something similar called lumpia, but it’s not quite the same.

Chinese food in the US has been thoroughly Americanized, to make it more appealing to the local palate.  The Chinese food I ate in Singapore was a lot blander in most cases, with most of the flavor coming from dumping lots of chili sauce on everything.  That or eating green chilies along with each bite of food.  There’s also a lot of MSG used.  (Just a note, I’m basing this on the common Chinese food found in food stalls that a person would eat at on a daily basis, not expensive restaurants.)

Chinese food in Singapore.

Chinese food in Singapore.

[Update: It was very rudely brought to my attention by some piece of shit Singaporeans that I accidentally uploaded the wrong photo from my folder.  I’m quite aware that this is ramen, a Japanese dish, most likely from that Japanese food court in Tampines 1.  I can’t remember its name.]

That’s not to say that the food there, the ‘real’ Chinese food, was bad.  On the contrary, a lot of it was awesome, and thankfully I did read about a place in NYC where I can get chicken rice and pork rice.  The pictures looked similar to the dishes I grew to love in Singapore.  I’ll blog about it when I find it and try it out myself.

One other thing, the orange duck sauce that you can find at most Chinese restaurants in the US?  Ya, that’s nowhere to be found in Singapore that I saw.

My First FarmVille Card

Bradley Farless6 Comments

A $10 FarmVille card.

Oh yes, I’m serious.  I didn’t buy this.  It was given to me as a gift.  I did certainly use it though.

You see, I’m in Georgia right now visiting relatives and I’m staying at my aunt’s house.  My mother, aunt and aunt’s mother are all FarmVille addicts.  After a few nights of laying around just surfing the net as usual, I got caught up in their constant chatter about the game.  I used to play FarmVille, over a year ago, but gave up on it as too boring.

There have apparently been some big changes since then, including bakeries, wineries and spas, as well as cooperative crop growing with benefits, all of which have done nothing but make the game far more social, and in a way, more obligatory.  It locks people in and makes them feel like they’re required to keep playing for their friends’ sakes.  It makes good sense, from a business perspective.  It snagged my attention because I used to really enjoy crafting (weird, but I did) in MMOs like UO, DAoC, FFXI and WoW.  Before I knew it I was loading up the game to see what they were talking about.

While I was overseas I heard a lot about how FarmVille was taking off, and how people were dropping real cash on FarmVille items via these cards.  I laughed it off, but now here I am with FarmVille running in full swing and 110 Farm Cash (about 20 real dollars) worth the virtual currency loaded into the thing.  Granted, I haven’t put any of my own money into it…yet.  My mom and aunt seem to think of it as an investment towards their further enjoyment of the game, but I’m probably going to be hard pressed not to grab one of these off a shelf myself sometime in the near future, after checking to make sure no one is looking first of course.

It’s oddly addictive, and yet pleasantly casual with no massive demands on my time.  Well, not too much anyway.  And what’s even more odd is that more real cash has gone into my game during the last week than I ever put out for any mainstream MMO monthly subscription.  Zynga really does have a cash cow on its hands here.

Now, whether I continue to keep up with FarmVille after I get back to NYC and start working again is up for debate, but for now… I have to go check on my grapes.

Maybe Laptop Prices in Singapore Weren’t That Good After All?

Bradley Farless6 Comments

A long view down an aisle at a Super Walmart.

My aunt’s mother says that if you can’t find it at Walmart, you don’t need it, and you really could live by that.  A Super Walmart has groceries, clothes, electronics, and even car parts and it’s all sold for low, low, sometimes ridiculously low prices.  I remember when I was younger I didn’t like the idea of shopping at Walmart, but that was back before I was spending my own money on the things I wanted to buy.  Now that everything is coming out of my own pocket, I look for good deals over fancy brand labels.

Something Walmart seems to be doing really well at is their laptop pricing.  Have a look:

Laptop prices at a Super Walmart.

DSC05702

I remember seeing that 278 USD (362 SGD) Acer for sale in Singapore for 600 SGD.  I remember seeing that 298 USD (388 SGD) HP laptop for 800 SGD in Singapore.

Walmart really does have some low prices, and I’m not complaining.