Catching up with old friends

My friend, "H" from high school is in the city for grad school and this weekend was busy with me showing off the city that we know as New York City. Since she'd already done touristy things before, it was a little more difficult coming up with places to check out, but just walking around made up for it.

But first and foremost, dim sum at Jing Fong was in order. H and I thought it looked a lot like a Korean wedding hall...either that or those large banquet halls that they hold poker tournaments in in Hong Kong movies. I jokingly berated the half-Taiwanese H for not being much help in conversing with the cart ladies, but of course a) she understands Mandarin, not Cantonese, and b) she's more fluent in Korean and better at hearing Mandarin than speaking. I'll probably take her to Ping's next time too. Afterwards we had to get bubble tea from Ten Ren. We also commented on how weird it was that bubble tea didn't really catch on too well in Korea.

We played with some dogs and cats just wandering around. Highlights were an extremely friendly Estrella Mountain Dog "puppy" (she weighed 60 pounds and had 30 more pounds to go with HUGE mountain dog back paws) and 16-year-old, VERY gracefully aged black kitty who was a small bundle of almost cavity-inducing sweetness.

We also stood by the dog park in Washington Square Park on Friday and just watched dogs frolick.

Me: Do you think we'd get in trouble if we went in there to play with the dogs?
H: I don't know, I think you kind of need a dog to go in there.
Me: Yea...they might look at us funny. We'd be like that weirdo without kids who likes to hang around the playground a little too much.

We stopped by Jacques Torres and each sampled a passion fruit ganache filled dark chocolate and port wine ganache chocolate and were kind of disappointed there wasn't more bustling going on in the work area, but the chocolates were too tasty for us to care. I think I might try a tin of Jacques' hot chocolate this winter instead of the Marie Belle one I had last winter.

I told H one day we should walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, then we can go to the ice cream place in DUMBO. We're also planning a Flushing trip to have cheap, large-portioned, shaved ice. Sure we could've had the Korean stuff from Koryodang, but it's kind of expensive compared to how much you could get at the Flushing Mall Food Court.

I also managed to drag her to Astoria on Friday to finally watch "Snakes on a Plane" with some more friends of mine. And I must say, I was not disappointed whatsoever and Samuel L. Jackson was divine. We giggled though when the bad guy was introduced as Eddie Kim ("Heh, why's the bad guy gotta be a Kim?") and now we decided all Asian gangsters are "Eddie Kim." I wish the kickboxer guy got a bit more play. I might try to go watch it again.

On Saturday night, we sat in Union Square Park talking about people we knew and what they were doing (a lot of whom I've unfortunately lost contact with). A little kid who looked to be about five was skateboarding with someone who looked like his older brother. It was very cute. They went down the stairs together and we clapped, and the little kid gave us this shrug and a look like "Gee, it wasn't *that* great," which was not rude at all and even more adorable...and did I mention it was around 11 p.m.?

One interesting bit of news I heard about one of my old friends: He always liked to sing and rap and dance, but I guess he managed to get a job related to that in Korea and write raps for some Korean singers and was also in a Lee Hyo-ri m/v...interesting. I'll try to find that on Youtube and post it. It was great to hear that though, since he was always into spitting rhymes and bustin' moves. Hopefully, he'll be able to improve the quality of English used by some popstars in their raps.