It's not everyday I get to try a new cuisine. Yesterday I took the opportunity of my kids nap to sneak out and grab some Tibetan food in Jackson Heights. There is a place there called Tibetan Yak there that the Village Voice seems to like. I went there, and there were only Tibetan / Nepalese looking people there, however it was not very crowded. Service was slow. It took a few minutes for someone to even come in the dining room and seat me.
When I was seated, I was brought some Tibetan tea, which has both butter and salt in it. It sounds gross. Indeed, when I first sipped it, I recoiled in horror. A few sips later, though, and it began to grow on me. By the time I finished my cup, I wanted another one, but to get more I had to pay $3.50 or so for a pot of it. Being the cheap bastard I am, I convinced myself I was content with my single cup.
I ordered a stew of beef, radish, and a thick kind of rolled noodle. On the side I got some Tibetan flatbread. The stew was great, very hearty, and the noodles were perfect for the hearty stew. It would be great on a cold winter day. The flatbread was small, round, thick, and must have been steamed. In fact, is was a lot like Chinese steamed bread. It tasted good, but not my favorite flatbread.
When it gets cold, I'm going back. The menu is small, but there are at least a few other things I'd like to try. And it's only one express subway stop away.
I just finished reading Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon. I had heard so many good things about this book and Neal Stephenson in general, that I had to read it. I finished in a few days ago. It was a long book, around 800 to 900 pages of story, plus an appendix. The book was good, but it didn't quite live up to my expectations. While there are an uncountable number of very clever passages in the book, I felt the plot was a bit weak overall. There is was way too much going on, and at the end, many things never really got answered, and in fact the ending itself doesn't seem to follow from the rest of the plot. It's strange, it either needed to be edited down quite a bit, or given a hundred or so more pages.
Other books I've read recently:
I recently found out there was an interesting collection of food shops somewhat nearby called the Chelsea Food Market. I went there the other day, and it sort of reminds me of the San Francisco Ferry Building. They have a great Italian shop with an amazing assortment of Italian products, a nice fish market, a small Thai grocery that sells cooked Thai food as well, a good kitchen supply store, a butcher, and a bunch of other things. I wonder if the San Francisco Ferry Building was modeled after the Chelsea Food Market, or if they both are just part of a trend of high-end food courts.
There's a few simple, reliable rules on how to select restaurants. One of these rules is not to eat at any chain restaurant with its own style of architecture (for example, Lyons). Then there are a few things that could indicate a good find. When there is a window where you can see people make things out of dough, this is a good sign. I discovered this phenomenon in San Diego, after eating in the Old Mexican Cafe in the old, historic section. It was a restaurant that initially looked cheesy and touristy, but looking in the front window, I could see two old ladies making both flour and corn tortillas by hand, and cooking them. It looked wonderful, and when Greta and I ate there, we found their tortillas to be so wonderful it singlehandedly changed how I thought of them.
Today I went to one of these places that feature windows in Manhattan Koreatown, called Mandoo Bar. There were two ladies making different colored dumplings in the front window. They them out, stuffed them, and then handed them to someone to cook. The dumplings were excellent, and they tasted just as fresh as they were. The dough was a medium thickness, pleasantly chewy, and the stuffing was well flavored. It was a bit expensive - $10 for just 12 smallish dumplings. But, it was worth it.
Walking back, I noticed another of these places, with a man making noodles by hand in a window. He did this the Chinese way - which was to take a huge mass of dough, and by a combination of stretching it and spinning it, he winds up with a huge amount of long noodles. Watching it, I knew that, without a doubt, it will be my next Koreatown destination.
Today I get to experience another wonderful New York phenomenon - horribly bad weather that brings the city to a standstill. The remnants of Hurricane Frances has brought the transit system to a standstill all over town. This morning I found out that there was flooding in some station in Queens, and there was no subway service at all.
I went over to the Long Island Railroad, two blocks away, and found a huge line of people waiting for the train. A train soon arrived, but it was way too packed for me to get on. I waited for the next train. After about ten minutes, there was an announcement that trains were running 30 minutes late. I never know what this means when trains arrive ever 15 minutes or so. Does that mean the trip will take the same amount of time, but the train I'm boarding was supposed to be here half an hour ago? If so, who cares?
Anyway, after around 15 to 20 minutes I got onto a train, where all of us passengers were packed like sardines. It went slowly... very slowly. Eventually we stopped in the tunnel to Manhattan. We waited there for about 20 minutes before anyone bothered to make an announcement. Evidently one of the tunnels had closed, and this caused a lot of train congestion. After about 10 more minutes, we finally got moving. Slowly, of course.
As I got out of Penn Station, I thought I would quickly take the subway down to 23rd St, but I saw a huge crowd waiting for the subway, so huge that it went up the stairs and out to the walkway. No way. I walked to work.
Well, it's not as bad as the Subway Ride from Hell, but it was fairly unpleasant. The one good thing is that the train was so packed, no conductor could have possibly asked for tickets, even if they wanted to. So I got this ride for free.
Best quote, from a New York Times article about this:
Christina Chung was trying to get from her Upper West Side home to her job as an architect in the Wall Street area. She had left home at 9 a.m. for what was normally a 35-minute commute, but was standing on a platform reading a magazine at 10:30 a.m. "I prefer this over the Republican National Convention," she said.
I always seem to here the argument these days that both Republicans and Democrats have the same problems, both are mean-spirited, or dishonest or whatever. This may be true in a trivial sense, but I think Republicans are much worse. For example, here's a funny look at liberal philanthropist George Soros vs conservative philanthropist Sun Myung Moon.
I've been noticing some strange things in my referrer log lately. It seems I am getting many referrals from other blogs, all of them Movable Type blogs, and all the referrals coming from "/archives" or "mt-comments.cgi". When I go to the blogs, there are no links to my site. The referrals come to seemingly random places in both my blog, and the Hyatt blog. The referring blogs look legit, though. I've been wondering for a few weeks now about this.
Today, I noticed that all of these referrals are done by one entity - ns1.adros.net, which is evidently a Polish nameserver. I don't quite understand what a nameserver is doing browsing my pages, but perhaps it is just a victim of IP masquerading.
I looked at my logs, and found out after the each referral, ns1.adros.net is doing a POST to my mt-comments.cgi (in my case renamed to mtc.cgi). Here's an example from the logs:
What is going on here? Searching the web for problems like mine, I can only find a Japanese webpage, which I cannot translate through babelfish.ns1.adros.net - - [02/Sep/2004:02:35:48 -0500] "GET /archives/000127.html HTTP/1.1" 200 8166 "http://www.ffej.org/archives/" "Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.x" ns1.adros.net - - [02/Sep/2004:02:35:49 -0500] "POST /cgi-bin/mt/mtc.cgi HTTP/1.1" 200 3881 "http://thehyatts.net/cgi-bin/mt/mtc.cgi" "Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.x"
I better put this info out there in case other people are wondering the same thing, so perhaps some information can be spread about this phenomenon. I still don't know why this is happening, it doesn't seem like referral spam. It is something new. Perhaps innocent, but certainly deceptive.
I went by Madison Square Garden yesterday at lunch, and I saw a few items of interest, but no protests. It turns out I missed all the action yesterday. I did see a ton of cops, however, and many street closures. Did I mention a ton of cops? Because at one corner there was at least 50, all holding their riot-gear helmets. When I left they were all filing into a big truck. I also saw Republican protests shouting at people to not believe Michael Moore's lies, and that Bush is all about the truth. I guess some people will believe anything.