Happy Holidays!

Hey Everyone! I know I owe a bunch of people a bunch of phone calls so sorry about all that! I just wanted to send out a quick message of Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope that everyone is doing well! I am so exhausted from this weekend, which included a Russian restaurant - Kabaret, a trip out to PA to visit family, and a trip back to NYC for more family fun.

I also went back to the favorite Argentinian Caracas Arepa Bar with Carl and Ivan followed by The Fab Faux show at Webster Hall, where they played the White Album from cover to cover.

Awesome.

NYC Chocolate Show

gustaux
Originally uploaded by shaman8933.

So at the 200 NYC Chocolate Show the award for the best chocolate goes to Gustaux French Chocolate Truffles. They have a web site (www.gustaux.com) but it seems to be temporarily unavailable.

The best ports and dessert wines goes to these in this order:
1. Quay's Starboard - Batch 88
2. Elysium
3. Essensia
4. Electra

But that may point out my problem because the order of alcoholic content are 20%, 15%, ??%, and 4% respectively. Other members of the present party seemed to enjoy my #4 better so go figure.

www.quadywinery.com
www.vya.com

Wind Energy

We should invest $10k to put this into out Engineers Gone Wild home:

Wind Energy

I say we invest in land in PA. so that we can go Skiing, play paintball, build snowmen, etc.

Noel's Costume

I think I found a Halloween costume for Noel:

http://www.beanos.com/~tsoutij/domokun.php

New 7 Wonders

They're re-electing the New 7 Wonders of the World:

New 7 Wonders

BEST PAELLA EVAR!

I can't seem to stop raving about this. This is hands down, the BEST PAELLA EVAR!

If you're in Ft. Lauderdale, go to Brio Mediterranean Bistro on Las Ola...
I also posted a review on City Search.

Best Bed Evar!!

Last weekend went to Ft. Lauderdale and stayed at the Hilton in Deerfield...OMG...BEST BED EVAR!!

www.hilton-hotelsathome.com

One day these pillows will be mine....yes, they will be mine....

Taco Town

updates below! =)

Recovery

coming soon...

Benelux

Paris in 4 Hours for Dummies

TBD

Barcelona

coming to a theater near you

US > London > Spain (seville & madrid)

Oh where do I begin... Before we left on our journey Ivan's parents paid us a visit to wish us off well. Actually, we almost didn't go on the trip because there was a health scare in the family, but we won't talk about that. Anyway, Ivan, Sof, and I trekked out to my parents house where my mom fed us with cheesy gooey spaghetti and chicken. mmm...

Then they drove us to the airport (thanks mom and dad!). When we got on the plane we all sat in seats apart from one another and we pretty much dozed in and out of consciousness to a plane that wasn't taking off.

The woman I sat next to lived in NJ but was originally from Argentina. I told her that I knew she was from Argentina from her Spanish that she was speaking on the phone. She said that she eventually wanted to moved back there with her husband because here it's harder to raise a family because there's no help. I totally knew what she was talking about; back where my parents come from there are always "help" who did all the cleaning, the cooking, the laundry, and entertaining of the children...all of which is more than reasonably affordable (think about paying 10 USD/month to have all that done...). Pretty much when you have a job and are living on your own you have to do all that stuff by yourself. No wonder everyone doesn't move to America.

Anyway, by the time we got to London, we missed our connection flight! The airline booked us for the next flight and while we were entertained by London Medics trying to diagnose some Russian man who was pretty much passed out on a chair.

London Medic (animated with thick British accent): do you feel a strong crushing pressure on your chest?

When we got to Madrid we took a bus to the city and a train to the station nearest to our hotel and from there we walked...

And here is where we encounter our first lessons learned from out trip:

Lesson #1: If you go backpacking, invest in a backpack that has a waist strap.

We did not have this and I'm sure we would have appreciated the torque it would have created in bearing that load. But, no worries, we used the wheels when we could.

By the time we got to our hotel, it was time to totally wash up. This is where we come to...

Lesson #2: Unless you go to maybe a 5 star hotel, Eurpoean hair dryers area joke. When I was a kid I had a toy vacuum cleaner where, if I was lucky, it would possible pick up crumbs. Put it in reverse and EUREKA! you have a European hair dryer!

Good news was that it was so hot and humid, I didn't even bother to dry my hair most of the time. Oh well... So then we made our way to the train station to make reservations for the Saturday train to Seville (as per Sobray's recommendations...and a few others later as well). But good luck doing that since they were on strike for the rest of the evening.

Anyway, the trainstation on the outside had a lot of construction going on (probably from evil-doer's crimes) but the inside had beautiful palm trees and flowers.

So since these Spaniard ticket agents didn't want to do any work, it was time to eat! We walked over to a place called Do Salmon that our Madrid book recommended.

The noise level there was pretty low and the food was pretty good. I had the salmon and it was alright.

Here we sampled our first pitcher of well-deserved Sangria. Upon finishing, we cabbed it back.

On Saturday we woke up and went to the train station to, again, make reservations for the train to Seville...and guess what? It was sold out! The closest train we got was at 14:00, which brought us there by 16:30. *sigh*

So, trying to keep positive, we walked around Madrid for a bit to take some pictures and kill some time. We passed by the colegio (shown below).

We got to Seville around the time it started waking up again. So it worked out perfectly. I loved it!

If I had to do it again, I think I would have stayed there instead of Madrid. Many of the streets we made of cobblestone and it reminded me of Salvador, Brazil. So apparently Seville is known for their fancy tile work...and we bought a very small set of tiles (remeber, this has to fit in our backpacks...) that spelled out Unit #2. =)

A friend from work told me we had to try to Paella off the streets... I didn't find any paella off the streets, but we did go to a restaurant off the street and had some of their paella, which is probably more hygenic. =P

I don't remember the name of the restaurant we went to, but we had some calamari which was HUGE, garlic chicken and the paella, of course. My favorite was the garlic chicken and the paella. Mmmmm... The paella's prawns weren't deshelled so I helped Ivan open some of his and showed him how to do it before he played with too much of them (best viewed in IE):

The people who sat in the table next to us were from Australia and California so Ivan helped them trakslate to the waiter what they wanted and what the menu said. =) by the way, you can see them laughing at us in the background of the video.

Afterwards we walked around some more to take pictures of the beautiful city and when Ivan sat down...well...let's just say that it's time for the Ivan-got-pooped-on-action-sequence!!

Either way, Sevilla gets two thumbs up from us. The train ride back to Madrid was cool and relaxing and we brainstormed what we would do when we got back to Madrid at 00:35 on Sunday morning.

When we got back to Atocha, Madrid's train station, we ended up walking over to the seemingly lively area and caught a jazz band.

I have to get back to you on the name of this place, but here we discovered the best coffee drink EVAR! It was called a bombon and it was coffee (or expresso) on top of a layer of condensed milk.

So that was day one and day two of our trip. It was a struggle to get back into the blog of things.

cookie cupidity

So a few weeks ago, more like the last week of May, there was this UPS notice floating around the lobby of my house. The first attempt notice, it was hard to read who the package was from. Ivan had many suggestions and after staring at it for a while I thought it said Cookie Outlet(!!!).

I was laughed at for that by 2/3 of the building. I guess that sounded rediculous to some.

So then I got a second notice and it didn't say who that was from. Eventually Adam saw the UPS guy lurking outside of our place and acquired the goods. I was the from the Cookie Outlet!

Inside was a batch of brownies that turned out to be the best brownies EVAR But there was no note in it for who it was from. There was a like note in it that said ...we are proud to offer this premium selection to our Loyal Customers and Hope you and your Family enjoy then as much as we do...but I have never ordered from them before or even heard of them so how would I be a loyal customer?

I thought perhaps it was from Lilibeth, who once sent me a huge cookie for my birthday a few years ago from Mrs. Fields. Yesterday I was talking to Dr. Cini online, one of my best friends, and she asked me Hey, did you ever get my cookie?

Oh! You mean the brownies?!?! That was YOU?!?!

Mystery solved! Thanks Cini!!

So when I was researhing this company (I had to make sure this package wasn't a trap!) it seems that there is a lack of Italian bakeries in the mid-West. Hence a lack of Italian cookies. Apparently Italian-cookie lovers have this company as the only resoure for getting their hands on Italian cookies in their respective remote locations and they all love this place. I do too. I'd eat it all up like the fat kid that's in me.

bob, bubble, & beatles

I was waiting to get some pictures from a friend before I posted this week.

Friday I had off and I visited a friend in Hoboken who was working. We went to a local coffee shop and relaxed and caught up. It was nice to be able to have some time to catch up with friends who you'd otherwise not see on a normal week. She also gave me a book that she was the publishing editor for. It must be so satisfying to have your name on a piece of work that you had a hand in producing. That's so cool!

On my way back home I ran into Ivan, Sof, and Adam who were maliciously loitering around in the street. They were hungry and we all ended up going (back) down to Charritos in Hoboken. The food there is so dangerously good.

After my class I visited my family to join them for lunch. Visiting home reminds me of how much I missed my family's cooking and it left me craving for real food for the rest of the week. :-)

On Sunday we had a performance at the Jersey City Museum. Ivan was playing Bob Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man and his guitar teacher and myself were accompanying him.

We were the last act in the last show, so you can say that we were headlining the headlining show. =) Ivan's friend came over to take these pictures and help us move all the equipment and just to see the performance. Ivan's sister and her friend also came to see the show.

Ideally we wanted to hang out with everyone afterwards to celebrate, but we had a salsa class in Hoboken that we had to get ready for afterwards (after fixing the neighbor's air conditioner). The class was a private 1x1 lesson and before us there was a couple learning to do a ballroom dance for their wedding that was the following weekend. That was their last lesson of 4 lessons and they had their dance down. The salsa class was a lot of fun too and the girl who helped out the instructor was a girl I knew back from our college days as well as the days when we use to drive down to the group lessons, which stopped after the accident. Private lessons are a little more than group lessons but they progress much faster and you get more out of it because of new people who'd join the class every week.

Afterwards we went back home to change and then went back down to Sinatra Park to see a show that was rescheduled due to rain last Thursday. The band was called Bubble and they were doing the whole Abbey Road and A Hard Days Night album. They were excellent! We bought their album of original music too. Apparently last year they did the whole White Album. That must have been great too...it was probably the best Beatles performance I've seen.

I realized that the next best thing to seeing a concert in New York, is see a concert with New York as its backdrop. It's even better when the band's musicians are pro and the music is awesome...it leaves me with such a satisfied feeling...

Afterwards we went to The Brass Rail to do a little celebrating for our show earlier in the day. We both had one of the specials, tilapia, and a really good bottle of wine. Ivan said if was the best weekend of his life and I agreed. It was a lot of fun, especially since the show went really well!

Here is a clip of Bubble doing Carry That Weight (it may only work in IE), if you listen real carefully you can get an idea of how beautiful the strings sound (!!!) :

I will try to post a video from the show when I get a chance!

Real Age

According to RealAge my:

• Calendar Age: 26.1
• My real age so far is 24.2

<-- Speaking of real age, I forgot to post this picture in my Memorial Day blog.

I didn't really plan anything this year except eat with my parents! On my actualy birthday, which landed on a Tuesday, Ivan and Adam took me to Cold Stone to buy me an Ice Cream Cone but ended up buying a cake instead! =)

Thanks hunny!

Woman at Cold Stone: What do you want the cake to say?
Ivan: Happy Birthday Sushi!
Woman at Cold Stone: Happy Birthday SUSHI, S-U-S-H-I?
Ivan: Yes!
Woman at Cold Stone: (out loud) WE NEED ONE HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSHI!
Man at Cold Stone standing next to Woman at Cold Stone: Sushi? S-U-S-H-I?
Woman at Cold Stone: Yes!

The flow of conversation was so smooth that I thought they were going to break out into song! Then...

Woman at Cold Stone: (accusingly) Is Sushi in the room right now?
Ivan: Yes, Sushi is here!
*Everyone in the store starts singing*

And so the story goes...it was SO funny.

Cold Stone cakes are the BEST, by the way! We got one at work yesterday for someone who sits next to me - it happened to be the same girl who took me out on my first day working here so we had to celebrate! =)

weekend update

Before much time goes by, I need to give the weekend update.

Thursday we got throught the list this time at the Verve! We went to their wine tasting with a few friends from work. It was a lot of fun and we stayed there later then we ever have stayed there before.

Saturday I slept in and it felt great. I can't remember the last time I just slept because I could. Saturday evening we went to the Alfonso's Medical School Graduation party, a friend that I've known from college. I can't believe 4 years went by so fast! On our way there we went accidentally went on the express lane on the NJTPK and we missed our exit. So then we tried to get off the same exit going in the opposite direction, but that side seemed to have skipped that exit. So frustrating...we pretty much went all the way back to get back on the other side to get of the right exit. That part of the NJTPK is very poorly labeled, by the way. I think I need to invest in a GPS or something. A ride that should have taken 20 minutes ended up taking twice as long...

Anyway, his mom managed to secure tents so that they could continue to have it ourdoors. It was a nice party and I don't think I knew anyone there besides him. We did however got into a really nice conversation with a family friend of his. We talked about everything from travel, sushi, colleges, music, etc. Another hightlight of the night was the jazz band. The guitarist said he remembered me from the Fonz' NYU Graduation party. I asked if they did requests and they did Tangerine for me! I love that song! Ivan also requested some songs and they played them too...I have to ask him again what they were.

Sunday was a nice day too. We woke up early and went to the driving range in New Brunswick. I am not very good at golf but Ivan is pretty good though. I'd like to get better but Sunday proved to me that that will be after much trial and tribulation. Afterwards we drove around looking for the Short Hills Mall, we eventually found it and we got the The Office Special (British version). I really liked the last episode. This is such a funny series and such quick-witted humor. It seemed that the show started out so funny and there were parts of it that became more and more serious and kinda poignant. You should watch it if you get a chance - it's probably right up there with Arrested Development. We also got some maps for our vacation.

Later we went walking to Hoboken. It was a pretty nice day so we wanted to enjoy some of it before the weekend was up. I finally got a picture of some art/graffitti that appeared on one of the street nearby. What do you think it's suppose to be? I'll tell you what I think it is after you tell me - that way I don't lead anyone on.

We ended up watching a girl's softball game. It was a lot of fun to watch but we both couldn't figure out who that guy was on the field. It's an all-girls team and there's a boy wearing big jeans and a huge t-shirt. What's that all about? The other team also had an extra player between 1st and 2nd base...2 short stops perhaps?

Then I got an unexpected call from Loren and she invited us to a Vietnamese restaurant in JC!! It was one that she took me to a long time ago when she lived next door to me in college. Loren & Don met us by the park (Thanks guys!) and the ride to the restaurant in Loren's car can only be described in a picture:

Ahahahaha.....The food there was great! We had some trouble getting all the condensced milk out of our cups (as you can see from the picture), but once we did, we devoured the iced coffees.

When we left he restaurant it was pouring! Luckily, they drove us home too! Thanks again!!!! You guys are loads of fun and we are looking forward to the Sushi place too! ;-)

P.S. We kinda weren't expecting to see anyone we knew, which is why we looked so fluffy.