A Bite of the Big Apple

Back to NY. First trip this year. Weather was fine but temperature in the 30’s. I heard I missed the snow the week before.

Instead of walking about town, I ate my way through town this time. OK. I could only hit one per night so four different restaurants last week. Can’t complain at all. It beats eating salad and burrito with a beer in the hotel room.

My eating partner: Debbie, our controller who was visiting the NY office at the same time.

Monday: Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant. A classic, traditional restaurant tucked inside the Grand Central Station. We each had a platter of oysters – no sharing – and I had a squid salad for entree. It was not a California squid salad that's light with a tangy dressing. It was ALL SQUID. I was totally squid out!

Tuesday: Japonais New York. Complete different from the night before. The place was hip and modern. Great tasty food and the décor was FABU! The prefixed 3-course dinner was awesome. It was in the Union Square neighborhood. Nice little district with actions. I really felt like I was in New York!

Wednesday: Surya Restaurant. Modern Indian food. My first try of goat meat and had a theme-inspired cocktail: Indian Rose. It was lovely. The only thing about Indian food is that all dishes look alike. The restaurant was in West Valley. So, I really got to venture out of the midtown area.

Thursday: Riki Japanese Restaurant. Back to the Grand Central Station area. We had eyes for Japanese ramen to chase away the chills. We had originally wanted to go to a ramen place, but after hiking over – in the rain – we found it closed. Ugh! Not giving up, we searched the surrounding blocks and found this restaurant. We ended up not having ramen but sashimi and a pitcher of draft beer. Yes, walking makes you thirsty even in the rain.

Friday: home. I had plenty of good eat but I miss home cooking.

Vernal Equinox

Spring arrived today precisely at 7:44am EDT. Why 7:44am EDT? This was when the sun crossed the earth equator and evenly split today’s hours into equal part of day and night. From this day onward until the first day of summer, we will gain a little more daylight each day.

Of course spring time only applies to those of us living above the equator. The folks down south are just starting to experience the onset of the fall season. It’s still Equinox for them, but they will lose a little bit of daylight each day until the first day of their winter (our summer).

Life is fair, isn’t it? You gain, you lose.

Enjoy the season, everyone!

Saving Daylight

Our Office Manager puts out a memo reminding us that daylight saving time starts this Sunday (3/8). But, this is only in the US. France and the UK won’t change to DST until 3/29. Brazil has already changed to DST on 2/15, and Hong Kong doesn’t have DST. So, it will be fun trying to figure out who is at what time in the next couple of weeks.

What’s TIME any way? There seems to be no standard around when DST should start or end or should there even be one at all. We are all kind of playing with our own time. Why do some countries have DST and some don’t? Hmmm... I'll need to do some research.

Daylight saved but not time. I’m not complaining though. I wish we are on DST all the time. Right now, to gain extra daylight means I have to get up extra early. It will be good to have “the night is still young” feeling. Although we may lose an hour of time on Sunday, we will gain more with one additional hour of daylight. There’s so much we can do in that one extra hour of daylight:

• Gardening
• Walking
• Reading
• Washing car
• Eating outside
• Simply enjoying that there is light

Dexter’s Tale: A Day in the Park

Robert and I took Dexter to the San Mateo doggy park last week figured that we should let him get used to being with other doggies.

We've taken him to Point Isabel couple of times but he did not have a chance at full play. For one, he did not have all his shots. Two, it was right next to open water and we weren’t sure if he was going to jump in and swim away.

The doggy park at the San Mateo Shoreline Park looked to be a safe place for his first social outing. It was clean, spacious and enclosed by chain-link fence. It was even divided into big dog and small pooch areas and a rest area for their people too – very thoughtful.

SET ME FREE! We first didn’t want to let Dexter walk off-leash. Never have done that with him outside of the house and didn’t know how he was going to behave being with so many new dogs. So for the first 10 minutes or so, I kept him on the long leash while he got acquainted with his new friends. One dog person suggested that we set Dexter free and let him play at will. She said the doggies would know that he was a puppy and would treat him accordingly. Dexter would have a chance to use his puppy skills naturally. Besides, where could he go anyway? Good point. So Dexter was set free.

DOG GONE WILD. Actually, Dexter behaved beautifully. He was friendly, curious and playful. He had no problem with doggies licking him all over. He did not bully little dogs and he endured the big ones checking him out. Won’t be for long though… Dexter will be bigger than any of them in no time soon.

It was a blast seeing the doggies at play. They knew exactly what to do and their communication to each other was amazing. It was fun watching them wagging tails, taking turns chasing each other around and the most important sniff-sniff - and respectfully too! It was controlled chaos.

These were the lucky dogs who got love and attention and the luxury of play. I thought of the million more doggies in the shelters and wished they could all have such an opportunity…


Dexter was exhausted and as dirty as he could be at the end. He is now officially broken in.