I shall shower you all with some of the stuff that's been keeping me preoccupied (apart from work). The past couple of weeks have been fun and interesting. Been going "out" with friends both old and new. I have been in NYC in over a year and I've never been out dancing in a bar/club until this week so this was definitely out of the ordinary for me. Was out with Benny and his friends a few days ago and we all danced at this gay bar somewhere in midtown near Times Square. Then two days after that, Michael (our new temporary honorary roommate) managed to drag me along with him to Greenhouse on a Tuesday night where we went dancing like we (really) just didn't care. Mica brought a couple of friends over and we all headed down to Chinatown for a late night (rather, early morning snack). They drove us home and we continued the party until the sun came up and we all passed out. The last time I did something like that, I must've been 21...or maybe not. Remind me...

Apiary has been temporarily replaced as my go-t0 place for good eats by Momofuku Noodle Bar. I have been there every week the past three weeks. The food is so remarkably awesome, I can't get enough of it. Pictured above is their ever so famous roast pork buns (dubbed as the best siopao on the planet). Below is the ramen I had on my first visit. The ramen was fabulous but it can't compare to the ginger scallion noodle Mica had, which I also ordered on my following visit.
Below and after photos of my recent haircut. Fake straight hair below. I have yet to take a photo of it with it's natural curl.
Based on a recommendation from one of the tour guides from Foods of New York, I headed down to Butter Lane, a quaint little shop that sold nothing but cupcakes. I had the chocolate cake with espresso icing and the vanilla cake with pistachio frosting. Was it good? Yes,, but not quite as awesome as Billy's Cupcakes. Magnolia bakery can suck it.
This was the group of boys I hung out with at Therapy Bar in midtown. This is us waiting for the subway home at 3am.This was the night I asked Mica to get a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon for us to share when I get home from work. Instead, she and Michael bought several bottles (one for EACH of us, plus extras). I don't need to describe how that night went but I will say that a crazy wrestling match occurred on our living room floor while watching Raising Arizona.
Have I mentioned that Michael is about 6'7"? I've never felt so short in my life.This is a photo I took of Mike while we were hanging out at the storage facility across Greenhouse while we waited for the club to open. He's sitting inside his storage space surrounded by everything he owns (which was not much). We sat there sipping vending machine coffee, sobering up after the drinks we had from Bar Seven Five earlier that evening. More alcohol was consumed that night of course.
I have videos of last night's fun events. Mike and I headed to Queens to pick up his tux then he accompanied me while I grocery shopped at an asian store where I picked up items I needed to make sinigang na hipon that night. I also gave him his first taste of green mangoes which he loved. Benny was hilarious playing host to his own talk show. Most of it was captured on my flip and I shall share as soon as I catch up to the 8 million things I haven't done because of all the fun I've been having.

I shall update soon.

Ventured out to the upper east side today over at Ifang's. She and her husband are selling their studio apartment and asked me to take photos of the place so they can show potential buyers. Since I was there already, I also offered to take photos of 3.5 month old Koyuki, who was absolutely delish! She had such soft, fat, sausage arms, a full double chinned face and a cute button nose. I loved her! I have yet to sort through the photos but I do have one to show you.

My favorite are her elbow dimples

I bought two bulbs for my clamp lights from Home Depot after that then headed down to Union Square to chill but the park. I laid on the grass and read a book and I got alarmed for a second when I saw this when I was looking up beyond my book.

I actually thought there was someone standing at the edge of the building, I almost panicked.

I met up with Mica for dinner and we ate at one of four (or is it five?) of David Chang's Momofuku restaurants, the Noodle Bar. We had the famous roast pork buns (which are famous for a reason - they ROCK!) and I had the house ramen while Mica had a pickled shitake and scallion noodle bowl. On paper, her dish seemed boring but in actuality, her choice blew mine off the park. I had one of taste of hers and even after a few bites of mine, the flavor of her dish still lingered on my tongue. I had to shyly ask if I could get another bite. Their servings are portioned well enough to make you want to roll yourself out of there but still manage to walk several blocks after. Which we did since Mica wanted to buy herself a pair or of Crocs too after I told her I got a pair for myself earlier that day. We walked back to Shoemania, where they were having their never ending "Buy 1, get the 2nd at half off" sale. I ended up buying two more pairs of shoes after she showed me a couple of good choices. What's even funnier is we got a pair of the EXACT same shoe each.

We are now both proud owners of purple snakeskin print leather flats. We promised to inform the other if we are to wear those shoes out, specially if we have plans of meeting up later in the day.

We got home and were greeted by Benny and his friend Michael who's staying with us until he finds a place to sublet. He stayed with us for a couple of weeks last year before the holidays when he went home to Pittsburgh. Benny left soon after that and Michael convinced Mica and I to watch Breakdown with him, which was an old 90's Kurt Russel suspense film. It was not bad. It reminds me of a very muted down version of The Hills Have Eyes, without the mutants and the gruesome killing and extreme morbid violence. Kind of like The Crazies meets The Lottery.

My mac is currently messing with me so I can't edit photos or even convert the images to sRGB for web so the colors in the photos of this post is kind of bland. The mac will have to sleep all night and I shall try again tomorrow. Goodnight.

Woke up with a horrible bout of allergies again this morning. When will this spring pollen allergy end?!? Caitlin asked if I wanted to brave the line at Tom's for brunch today. Tom's restaurant is a place we pass by on the way to Cheryl's for brunch. There's always a very long line that snakes out of the restaurant and around the block. When we passed by one time, a busboy was handing out orange wedges to everyone on line. So today we decided to join that horde of people waiting for a table at Tom's. The wait was long, the amount of time we stood in line, we could've walked to Cheryl's and back. But the people of Tom's make you want to wait. Soon after stepping in line, we were handed free coffee, followed by free cookies, then free orange wedges. Anyone ol' freeloader would have called it a day and stepped out of line after that, but we soldiered on. By the time we sat down, I had already studied the menu by the door and knew what I wanted. Caitlin ordered lemon-ricotta pancakes while I had corned beef hash with soft scrambled eggs and home fries PLUS apple walnut pancakes AND a tall serving of egg cream.

That's Caitlin with my vanilla egg cream.

Two out of three of those plates were MINE.

On the way back we passed by a Craft Fair and I scored a few items, a cute little crafty apron with a munster flipping pancakes on them and a limited edition framed print of a trashcan with flowers on them. Hehe. There were several stoop sales on the way back and I got a few little items each of them $3 or less. When I got home I made myself a nice and refreshing watermelon cooler.

Sometimes I take home the used bottles from the restaurant bar and strip them of their labels and decorate them with twine. Don't they look pretty on the window sill? I got the poppy stems from a cute little store a few blocks from the apartment.

Took these this morning. He was asleep most of the time so sleeping shots for now. Should have better ones in the coming months. Already told Ana I wanted to make a monthly thing out of this.

The rest can be seen here.

I made a different version of my usual meal, which would be chicken and potatoes for lunch.

Baked crusted chicken cutlets with garlic herb roasted potatoes and my usual veggies.

Such a small meal for one yet I ended up with an overflowing sink of dirty dishes.

Today I finally decided to patronize the nail salon downstairs. I've been living here for over a year and I never went in, choosing instead to pay $28 for a pedicure over in Union Square. I walked in and had my toesies done there for $10 less! And I didn't have to travel across the river to do it too! I was afraid at the kind of place it would be, thinking it would be dank and dingy. It was surprisingly clean, even cleaner than the other place on 6th avenue (and better massage chairs too). I may just go there every week now.

I went to Target today to buy toiletries but I made the mistake of first making a detour to DSW where I walked out with this in a camel color since it was on sale.

I was hungry when I got home and wanted something quick so I used some of Mica's olive bread to make bruschettas.
I'm trying to use up the slowly rotting produce before it really goes bad. I hate how basil goes bad so fast. I bought a bunch of them the other day and most of them have gone gray now. I had to pick through them to find a few good ones for this. And apparently, Mica had been buying produce to replace the ones of mine she's been using and here I was buying more stuff since I didn't want to use hers. So now we have double the number of tomatoes, green beans and bell peppers. A house of 4 people who love to eat will always have a pretty full fridge.


Benny also made a comment about him no longer having shelf space in the kitchen cabinets since I've monopolized one whole shelf solely for my baking supplies. So I decided to use up a bunch of them today by baking TWO UN-red velvet cakes. I didn't want to buy food coloring just for the sake of making it red hence the un-redness of it. I used my squeeze bottle to add an extra flair to cakes too just for the heck of it. If I find extra time tomorrow, I might tackle another batch of white chocolate cranberry oatmeal cookies again.

I have to be up early tomorrow and head out to Ana's to take photos of Santi. I believe he's turning one month old this week and I've volunteered to take photos. I might just make a monthly thing of this. Next week, I will head out to Ifang's to take photos of the apartment she and her husband are trying to sell/rent and also to take photos of their baby, Koyuki, who's 3 months old now. I can't believe it's been that long since I took these.

Benny's self-produced show is tomorrow night so I'm also skipping over to the lower east side to watch it. I'm not sure if I've posted this before but the postcard flyers that were distributed to promote the event were designed by yours truly. I cannot take credit for the image though, that was taken by Benny himself. This is only the second material I've made that have been handed around NYC so I'm mighty proud.