Click on and Print the above ticket out and bring it to your local Fuddruckers.....

Go to www.fuddruckers.com to find one local to you!

Current Mood: hungry

I am having such a nice time with my daughters in NYC, and so it is so easy to see the horrors that people in Berma (Myanmar) must be suffering. I just read in this news report that the death toll is expected to exceed 100,000 people, and that aid is trickling in.

That's as any people as live in the city of Manchester, NH. (The city just to the north of my town) That's about 1/10th of the number of people who live in the entire state of NH!

If there are 100,000 dead....think of the number injured!

Believe me....I know this is a big world. Very large....and quite honestly, I'm not sure if anyone could have seen that this situation was really this big. I thought the initial reports of 10,000 were staggering.....but now, only several days later.....we are talking an order of magnitude higher.

Quite staggering....and very humbling at the same time. Nature is not something we want to cross....and so we should probably consider how how powerful planet can be...and how helpless we humans are against that power.....maybe we should be kind to our planet.
(not that this is any sort of payback...but if the global shifts occur we some feel, we might ALL being put against forces like these on a regular basis....not a pretty thought.)

Current Mood: sad

No, I didn't score the $1 Bolt Bus tickets I hoped (can you tell I like their logo with their transparent GIF background....putting on every page I mention them :-).....I was just too late for that. It seems those prizes are taken as far as a month or more out.....maybe I will get them for some future trip.

Heck, that's cheap enough to try and buy them on the "Chance" that I might go....$1.50 isn't so much to lose if I don't. (how wasteful huh?)

I did get the 10:00am Fung Wah...I had a choice of Fung Wah or Lucky Star, with both of them being side-by-side at South Station...and both waving me over as I strolled towards them.

But the Fung Wah people won me over by having the ticket and $5 change all set when I got about 30 feet from both. (they apparently had good enough vision to see I had a $20 in my hand....and that small attribute was the difference! )

The bus was packed, with about 2 empty seats when we took off.

Most everyone seemed to sleep.....though I only scored about 1.5 hours of it in the 4 hour trip. The weather was too nice out, and I just loved looking out at the sunny views as we came down. (I normally travel at night when I drive....and as a passenger, I can look at the sights......and believe it or not, I am just as taken back by the farm fields of a farm state, the majestic mountains of a mountain region, or the steel, smoke billowing factories of New Jersey.....it's all "different" to me...and I like to learn...soak it all in.)

My first course of business when I arrived in NYC.....why to eat of course!

Being in Chinatown was perfect....but being alone, I wasn't going to be sitting and relaxing. I went into a small store and grabbed three noodle / vegi spring rolls (or whatever they might be actually called), and they were just perfect for the walk to the subway station two blocks away.

On my way, I also stopped at a couple of street markets and picked up some fruit and nuts for snacks. (Oranges and these"Champagne Mangos" that are just perfectly ripe! (yummy))

Current Mood: excited

I'm not against hijacking a popular expression if it gets my own point across, so I will say that the place Kristen and I are staying at, the 388 Bergen House Bed and Breakfast gets "Two Thumbs Up" from both of us.

Very nice neighborhood.....very nice rooms.....very affordable for the location. (We paid $170 per night)

I took a few photos of the place, and have then uploaded to my Flickr site.

Current Mood: happy

Last night, Kimberly took Kristen and I to the 2008 Pratt Show at the Manhattan Center Studios.

This is the show put together of the works of Pratt Students. The work at the show spans from end to end of the art works world.....I mean from visual art, to physical art including 2D, 3D as well as digital art works.

I am a visual person for sure...so the show was a sort of visual candy show of sorts. I admit to being a total art "newbie"....so a lot of the work went right over my head.....but then I think that real works of art will do that for the average person. That is, they are a success of the average person sees them and loves them...without having to know or understand the difficulties or reasons behind them.

So there were a lot of successes there!

Yes....the graphic to the left has little to do with what I am going to write about....except for the fact that I like it, and until about 9 years ago, would have considered myself strictly a coffee drinker.

Even then, I used coffee mainly as a drug....coffee and tea were always FREE at work, and I would use coffee to stay awake at night as I drove home after a long day.

I only marginally liked he taste of coffee, and didn't pay all that much attention to tea.

My mother was a fairly big tea drinker, but she was also probably equally into Coffee. My dad....I never saw a cup of tea in his fingers, and don't think I've ever even heard of any passing across his lips. (except perhaps when my mother made her tea, whiskey and honey drinks to fight one sort of chest cold or another)

Cheryl was much more of a tea drinker though. In fact, I don't remember her drinking coffee all that much....though I know that is a lie if I think about it because we always had some sort of coffee at the house. (I guess for guests and parties)

But my mom and Cheryl's taste in tea was very generic....you know, pretty much any black tea. I suppose I don't even know if I can remember the tea they liked.....things like Irish Breakfast, maybe Earl Grey (all of which are apparently blends or flavored black teas)

So my life experience with tea was sort of boring. (IMHO)

Yes, Cheryl had all kinds of herbal teas.....but most of them just tasted too flowery to even bitter to me. I don't know what it was, I wasn't into very many of them at all.

But my taste for tea changed when I started my trips to Taiwan for work at Sun Microsystems back in about 1996-1997. I made about 15 trips in those first 3 years, and another 3 or so for Sun and Kentron between then and now....and my experience with tea grew 10 fold. (I'm no expert by any means.....but I have tried a lot of tea in the mean time)

My interest in tea came from the fact that I wanted to drink something there that was HOT, and something I could get everywhere. "Don't drink the water" was the main thing I was worried about....and not simply soaking up soda was another. (too many calories, I was losing weight at the time)

So the Chinese in Taiwan were very proud to try and tell me all about teas, and tea drinking....because, after all...they invented the stuff. (and according to this "history of tea" article, the Portuguese seemed to initially take a liking to it from their colony in Macao.....and the tea trade was born.)

So Taiwan has many, many kinds of tea....and I can't even begin to explain them all. There are even great variations of Green Tea, and Oolong Tea.....depending on where they are grown, and when they are harvested.....and believe it or not, they showed me differences....and I could discern them too! (trust me, I'm no expert...can't read Chinese, so I would NEVER be able to steer you to a good tea.....but they told me what to look for in the stores in Taiwan, I did...and I always loved the teas they suggested)

So I seemed to settle on some of their Green Tea's and Oolong.

The people in Taiwan always warned me that I would never find tea in a bad that were as good as loose tea, and as far as the tea in Taiwan....I found that they were right. But to tell you the truth, I've never found as nice a Green or Oolong Tea in in the USA as those in Taiwan....and there are a lot of Green Tea's in the stores here. (but I admit to not trying them all)

But tonight, I tried a tea that was in the 388 Bergen House kitchen....a Darjeeling. (I tried it mainly because the Green Tea they had here was yucky) Wow.....I had never tried a Darjeeling, and I don't know how this blend rates against what might be called good, but I loved this!

So much in fact, that I have had three cups of it so far today....and I'll go on my forth pretty soon.

I don't know how to explain what I like.....but it has an interesting taste, I guess smell, and lovely sort of after taste. Not at all bitter, but not weak at all.

I would say that it was some sort of a blend or flavored tea...but according to the Wiki, Darjeeling isn't. But then again, the wiki also says that 3/4 of the worlds Darjeeling is "fake" and not from the place it needs to be to be given that name.

So who knows....I might have a fake....but I don't care what it is...I like it.

Current Mood: curious