In what apparently has become an annual ritual… the post:

• WuChess - Protect ya rook. Fast chess has never been my thing, and I have been holding an illusion that I am decent at chess ever since I came in second in a 4th grade chess tournament, but I might go for this if not for the $48/annual fee.
• Baogette cafe - Hard to find a _good_ sandwich these days for $5. This place undercuts the vanguard of Vietnamese sandwich joints and brings banh mi for $5 and a spy-say bbq chicken sandwich for a buck or two more. Better than BAMN automat for sure.
• Hakata ton ton - Never had mottsu nabe before here. Also never had a collagen nabe either. Both are tasty and worth a repeat visit during the winter months.
• I now get all the lawyer jokes. I didn’t get them before, but now I _really_ get it.
• Someday, we will grow one of these

After spending the past 6 months getting my bearings at a new gig, and _really_ getting into it, I find myself at a place neither here nor there. I think the lack of posts is symptomatic of this general malaise. In any case, here are a few morsels for the mouth of the willing:

• I’m not a coder anymore (was I really ever one?), but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a coder voyeur:
• http://www.hanselman.com/blog/
• http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/
• Spore, spore, spore… 
• It is almost that time of year again: Research season
• Ippudo NY costs $13 per bowl. That just ain’t right.
• Curry-ya is open. I had a plate of chicken curry almost exactly in the same location where I got my hair cut for about 4 years. (Curry-ya now occupies the former location of the excellent Hair Kuwayama)
• Chikalicious is still bumpin’, but the Dessert Club gets most of my attention these days. Tonight was:
• Red velvet cupcake
• S’mores cupcake
• Strawberry cheesecake (in the light style I prefer)

Sorry Mac users, Hammerfall is a Windows only gem. I’ve been bugging out on the demo release’s keen physics and oddly engaging gladiator-esque plot. In a blurb, you are the pilot of a helicopter with a giant sword, or mace, or hammer hanging from it. You can swing your appendage around and destroy any foes in your way. I know it is a cliche but the game mechanics are smooth and I keep waiting for it to end, but over 2 hours later (which is a marathon by my gaming standards these days), the plot still carries on.

By the way, the English translation is spotty at best. It feels like watching a poorly subtitled movie. I think this actually adds to some of the charm. Give it a shot. It feels like Rygar… except with helicopters.

Recently while visiting the new Kinokuniya book store on 6th Avenue, I found myself lingering mainly in the stationery and pen/pencil section. Perhaps this is where I always hang out since I don’t read Japanese so well (ok, at all), but I found a very cool selection of mechanical pencils that got me thinking of where else I would find such instruments. It turns out there are a handful of very informative and current resources for information on what is in my opinion a very under appreciated class of writing instrument.

Dave’s Mechanical Pencils is a great place to start to get your graphite lead fix in for the day. If you are a Dpreview or Tom’s Hardware reader you will quickly get the point: This is not for the faint of heart. In fact, these sites are not even for the dedicated; they land squarely in the territory of obsessive.

All that being said, I can safely say that I am a loyal reader of all of these sites and yet I can only aspire to such heights of evaluation of the gadgety world. Mechnical pencils don’t necessarily include a lot of cutting edge technology, but I do believe they are a part of the soul of technology as we see it today. As I learned in 1st and 2nd grades: I enjoy a nice sharp pencil lead, always. I shouldn’t need to get up to go to the wall mounted pencil sharpener to get a fresh point (and change the shape and balance of my pencil) whenever the tip gets dull.
Physically writing words, particularly in pencil, has an appeal that goes beyond the end result of the writing. The friction of the pencil on the paper, the thickness of the lead, the effects that can be seen by variations in pressure and angle all make up the experience of giving a thought life. Mechanical pencils bring a consistency of approach to this execution. The lead is never dull, the edge can be quickly made to suit your angle, and when the lead runs out, a small cache of graphite is usually never far away in my desk. To the point, these tools solve a very fundamental problem which is really the entire point of technology in the first place.

I place these tools up there with pocket protectors and short-sleeved shirts: they achieve simple usefulness, adding definition to a particular course of study/work.

The topic of pocket protectors, short-sleeved shirts and the yet-to-be-mentioned slide rules is probably best saved for another time. However, while we are still rambling on the topic of mechanical pencils, I would also point out the somewhat related past-time/martial art of pen tricks.

Look no further than Pentrix for all your pencil spinning needs. Through reviewing the collected writings of these masters, I have learned my prowess is really just two fundamental pieces of the pen trick hierarchy. I can reliably execute the ThumbAround Normal and the Charge Normal, but the pen gymnastics routine on the Pentrix home page appears to be straight out of the Matrix trilogy.

As I am wont to do, I have been drawn into a number of brief tinkerings dabblings. Here are some of the more memorable items from the crossover from the past few months:

• Desktop Tower Defense - A day to learn, a lifetime to master. Hyperbole? Decidedly so. A game that is deceptively deep and wickedly engaging? Aye. I saw my brother-in-law discretely getting in a few rounds over the holidays and now I understand (the in-law thing and the DTD thing).
• YoYo Games - This is more than just another casual gamers hangout. YoYo Games has the particular distinction of having a complete game creation kit as part of the site. Not convinced? The games you can play on the site (and most of which you can download for free) are made using the kit. You shouldn’t expect Halo 3 but seeing as most of the games are created by independent contributors, as likely to be in the workforce as playing WoW past their bedtime, the results can be surprising. For my own first game, here are the two main characters:
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• New job - I’ve started work at a new company in a New Year. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to do at the time (and it still does). No laptop. No blackberry. Yet.
• Read my first Reader’s Digest article while waiting in line at the Duane Reade. The article on the MUFA diet was just too much to resist. Other than learning that avocados and macadamia nuts are OK, I would still think the disclaimer of good exercise and moderation in everything applies.
• Stumbled on this rambling discussion of wont versus won’t versus want. A dictionary couldn’t resolve this one soon enough.
• Puddin’ - It’s across the street. It’s open. And it’s good. Of course this is very old news, but when you haven’t posted for 7 months you’ve got a lot of ground to cover.
• Dinner @ Prune - It may not be for everyone, but the bone marrow appetizer was better than I expected. I fully feel pretentious admitting this but it was tasty on the warm toasty bread with a parsley salad. The parsley salad was much more flavorful than you might expect from, well, a parsley salad.
• _still_ waiting for Hakata Ippudo (ramen) to open their outpost on 4th avenue. I used to wait patiently. Now I just look at my watch and shake a closed fist at the still-under-construction storefront on my way to work.
• Rameniac - Haven’t read it much, but it is in the feed aggregator for further review. Mostly LA focused but found it based on a NYC blurb.

After what seemed like 4 months of waiting, but really was something like 1 month, Ramen Setagaya is open for business. I couldn’t believe it. Aya and I were planning to get a bite to eat at a local curry house tonight, but when we heard the news, we were at the door…

…along with everyone else. However, clearly in this case, good things come to those who wait.

Shio-ramen was, well, salty. At first it was a bit too salty, but then as I made my way toward the middle to the bottom of the bowl, my palate seemed to adjust and what was left was a nice, somewhat smoky flavor. BTW- kaedama (extra noodles after you’re done w/ the first bowl) is only $1.50. I’m glad we got it today as I can’t see how they’ll continue to sell it at that price. I give it 2 weeks before the price goes up or it comes off the menu entirely.

Tsukemen was much less salty and more mild. I think if I hadn’t had the shio ramen first, I would’ve enjoyed this more.

In both cases, the noodles were a bit firm, but were definitely a pleasant texture. I look forward to having too much ramen at a place too close to home for many nights, days and months to come. Did I mention they were sold out of product at 8:30PM?  I think all of the people who were absolutely sick of terrible ramen at Momofuku came out of the woodwork to give the NKOTB a try.  There’s probably enough ramen business to go around between good ramen and bad ramen.
On a related note, Cecel cafe crepe has undergone some changes: they now offer small portions for about 50% off the original $6-$7 price. This is a welcome addition as the small size is appropriate from a dessert and wallet perspective. They got rid of the refrigerator w/ crepe cakes, but I hope they still have some kick in them.
It’s good to live on my block. The two block radius, within which I live most of my non-work life, has gotten much more interesting over the past year. For instance, right across the street, a new wine/food bar is opening (Graffiti) with a grand total of ~10-12 seats. Previous occupants of the storefront space haven’t fared well over the past 4-5 years, but there’s always hope: the radius seems to generally be supportive of the foodstuffs (sorry share, we knew ye too briefly). I only hope others feel the same way.

We tried one of the pinkberry’s in manhattan this weekend. After a nice meal at gam mee ook, we decided to wait in line (for about 15 minutes) for the local pinkberry on 32nd street in k-town.

If you haven’t had one of these creations before you need to check it. It’s frozen yogurt with fresh toppings, but they use what i call the “asian yogurt” flavor. It’s that intense yogurt flavor that you find in hi-chews and other assorted asian candies.  The yogurt itself is tart and tangy and not too creamy so it’s easy on the stomach and the cholesterol. I have to be concerned about this type of thing these days

Anywho - The regular is better than the green tea, and the sweet rice cake/mochi topping is the best. I should know because I accidentally ate most of it from Aya’s pinkberry. It took a few subway stops for the anger to subside.

Memorial Day weekend marks the start of summer and it’s evident here in NYC by the 90 degree weather. No doubt, summer in the city has begun. Farewell Spring, your allergies and fair weather, we knew ye too briefly. Greetings to Summer, the time of sweat, stink, and storefronts that pump AC onto the streets. There really is no mixture of smells like those you encounter walking down a New York City street at 3PM on a sweltering day: Body odor, drying puke from the night before, piss, poo, fish, general garbage, coffee, tobacco, perfume, antiseptic. All of this on one block.
Last week, a new storefront opened for business on 1st Ave: Cecel cafe crepe. We stumbled across it tonight and decided to go with the recommended Apple Titan. I’m not sure if it was named after a mythical titan or perhaps was just a mispelling of “tartine” but the quality was excellent. The crepe was delicate and fluffy. The apples were crisp and the entire affair was suitably sweet, but not too sweet. A lovely dessert cream was included in the cone shaped crepe and added a nice richness to an otherwise fruity flavor. All told, this was a lovely find on a 80 degree summer evening.

I was less than excited about the $7.50 price tag, but for the quality, the price seems reasonable, if not affordable. I’ll be back to try these varieties:

• Sweet
• Red bean & strawberry
• Red bean & cinammon
• Double mango
• Savory
• Hijiki salad
• Potato salad prosciutto

The place is run by Kaz Yokoi, formerly of Sushi of Gari and Patisserie Payard. I’ve never been to Payard, but I could’ve sworn that I’d seen the crepe chef at Gari before. It seems like it has legs - we’ll see if we can get a few more rounds in before the locusts arrive.

I hadn’t come across the term “italo-japanese” until I searched for information on a small restaurant that opened down the street: dieci

I found this TimeOut NY article that mentioned a growing “mutual curiousity” between Italian and Japanese kitchens. This struck me as curious in itself as Basta Pasta has been around since 1990.

Anyway, I’m not here to degrade the efforts of the journalist. Rather, I would like to point out the “italo-japanese” influence in the kitchens of Basta Pasta and Dieci is decidedly copacetic. I won’t go into the details of Basta Pasta’s lovely parmesan/prosciutto pasta (it’s lovely), but I will touch on some highlights of the newly opened Dieci.

• Foie gras + black truffles + crostini was excellent
• Mozarella croquette with tomato sauce was better than advertised: you’d think the combination of ingredients would be more Applebee’s fare, but it was crunchy, tasty, and better still, interesting.
• Black squid risotto: made my teeth and tongue dark and menacing, but was pleasantly salty.
• Chocolate cake with homemade banana gelato: the combination is great, and the gelato was like a smooth frozen banana

Oh, and Dieci is on my block. I hope it’s 25 seats don’t get overwhelmed too quickly.

Last night we wanted to try something new for dinner. On our way out the door, we encountered a new menu from Birdie’s, Grandma’s Chicken for the People. This is a new joint on 1st ave in what used to be Flor’s Kitchen. There is chicken all up and down the menu, but for my money, at a new place, I usually pick the first thing. In this case, it was fried chicken - and why not? Who doesn’t love fried chicken?

I didn’t know you could do fried chicken so wrong. I don’t want to bash, but this was a really disappointing meal. I guess the first sign we should’ve noticed was that the restaurant didn’t smell a whole lot like chicken when we walked in. The chicken was crispy and browned, but there wasn’t any flavor other than plain, unseasoned chicken. Maybe I was disappointed because I wanted a cheaper, closer alternative to the salty, crispy chicken at Mama’s. If you really want to hear a rant, come ask me about the wet buffalo wings.
I suppose it’s too easy for me to forget the reason why there are always new places popping up in my neighborhood: many spots just aren’t ready.

I suppose we can try Kaleidoscope next. It might actually be nice with sufficiently lowered expectations.

Work has been busy, as work is wont to be, hence the term “business”, but over the past month or so, I’ve been able to collect a few notes here and there. Since I can’t seem to write, much less think, a single coherent sentence, I am reduced to communicating in bullet form:

• April in Paris is lovely - as long as you’re not working. After spending a week, I found myself defeated. Working in Paris to me seems infuriating at best and purgatory at worst. Meetings start 15 minutes late. Strict social hierarchies rule the workplace and dictate how you dress and speak. All the while you are surrounded by a city with high food quality and an unusually enormous blue sky. Coming from NYC, it’s easy to forget how big the sky actually is up there. Oh wait, but you’re inside all day… hmm. You know what? The food makes it all worthwhile.
• All work and no play makes Ken a dull boy.
• The Good Shepherd is slow and a bit boring. Seeing Matt Damon and Anjelina Jolie shlep around as 40something parents is like seeing your 7 year old playing Abe Lincoln in the Neil Armstrong Elementary School 2nd Grade Class Play.
• Casino Royale was better than I expected. I used to want to watch all the Bond films at the local Video City. I think I got through about 6-7 of them before Video City stopped renting Betamax tapes. I’ve always had a soft spot for Bond.
• Food on airplanes is not much better than school lunch fare. The only difference is when you’re eating school lunches, you don’t really have a point of reference to much of anything better.
• In many cases it costs more to get the airport in Europe than to board the plane round trip.
• The NFL Draft is just what the fantasy football fiend in me needs to keep me going until September.
• Ramen Setagaya hasn’t opened yet in my neighborhood. The suspense is killing me. Is this the year we get good ramen?

Sometimes I hesitate to post some things as I know that something or someone out there is eventually going to index all of this for posterity. With the understanding that we are all living history for the benefit of the future’s time-travelling tourists, I’ll share what is likely to be the peak of my literary prowess:

A SUMMER DAY

This is my nicest summer day. It was a humid day in July. I was leaning against a large oak tree while little sweat droplets raced down my cheeks like sprinters. The little sparrows sang and sang. Their songs soothed my ears. I could smell the crisp leaves as a cool breeze went by swiftly. The scent of the wind and the bypassing leaves soon had made me doze off. Even in my sleep I could feel the breeze massaging me. When I woke up everything was the same. I saw the little blades of grass swaying in the cool crisp breeze like waves in the Pacific Ocean. I could smell my mother baking scrumptious cookies and the scent led a trail right to the cookies.

Ken - Grade 5

My mom sent me this paragraph the other day. Aya opened it up and grinned ear to ear while I looked on and wondered what it could be she was reading. Apart from the entire scenario being a complete fabrication, it still encapsulates much of what I’m about: taking naps and eating cookies. I can’t recall ever falling asleep against a tree, let alone an oak, and I couldn’t even tell a sparrow from a mockingbird, so I suppose I had already learned a good amount of puffery at that tender age. More similes = better grades.

In any case… After a trip to Japan in January (some pictures are in the gallery), what I have to mention are two terrible movies shown on the flights:

1) The Guardian - starring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher - Top Gun in a pool, minus charismatic leads and probably about 2 hours too long. I only watched this b/c we were on an older 747 which didn’t have individual screens. Moreover, I had to watch it a total of 3 times before I was on a flight that actually showed the ending (the first 2 times the ending was cut off abruptly by the flight landing).

2) Gridiron Gang - starring The Rock - I can’t say this movie measures up to the ineptitude of The Guardian, but it’s about as cookie cutter as they come.

I am certain I am dumber as a result of watching both of these movies. Something must be wrong with me for actually submitting myself to these mind-numbing affairs.