What’s a girl to do in New York City?
Walk. Eat. See friends. Walk somemore. Huff up the subway steps. Huff down the subway steps. Stand 5 feet from Chloe Sevigny in Tompkins Square Park. Eat. Look for clean public loo in a city of 8 million. Eat. Gawk at Mandy Patinkin at Tom Colicchio’s Craft Restaurant. Eat really sublime food. Return to hotel and blog with one finger using the iPhone.
Rinse. Repeat.
Why, yes, yes, I am.
In the future that is 12 hours ahead.
Perhaps I’ll learn the intricacies of blogging on the iPhone. Perhaps not.
Most probably I’ll be wandering the streets of New York, eating $1 street hotdogs of indeterminate meat, shopping at H&M, wishing I had a billion dollars for all the photo books I want to buy at Strand, eating at Momofuku, checking out this joint called Burgers & Cupcakes (thanks to theblogblog for alerting me), and, of course, singing the theme song of Law & Order.
Hello Subtlety.
What’s that I hear?
Dot’s no expert?
Well, then Dot’s the perfect shill to give the lowest common denominator user review, no?
(1) Da iPhone is so freaking pretty. Duh.
Especially when it has the photo of your favorite person on the “cover.” One downside, the “slide to unlock” and “slide to answer” function is difficult to master in the first few days. I have missed calls because I didn’t slide fast enough.
(2) The home page is easy to navigate. All icons, all the time. I am obsessed with the Maps button. It shows me real-time traffic conditions, anywhere I may be. No need to sign on. It will miraculously find me a WiFi connection, even when I am on a highway over the lake. That makes me think I have magical gnomes with satellite reception living in my iPhone.
(3) The telephone keypad is mercifully built for fat fingered users like me.
(4) I can check ALL my email accounts.
(5) When I want to reply to an email, the keypad also miraculously appears from below. When you type in a letter, it becomes “big” so you know which one you hit. I admit, it takes a little getting used to. Again with the fat fingers.
(6) Best of all, for someone as info-starved as me, the ability to Google Anything, Anytime, is priceless. I can win (or lose) an argument that way. Here, I was trying to figure out the name of the female character in The Secret Garden.
In a perfect world, all you need is Google and Wikipedia on your iPhone. Oh, wait a minute!
(7) Scrolling and reading the Internet is extremely easy. That thing you do with the fingersâ€â€to expand or contract the pageâ€â€never gets old. The connection is way faster than any BlackJack, BlackBerry, or BlackAnything I’ve ever tried before.
One caveat for slippery fat fingers: The screen is sensitive, so I have more than once accidentally selected ads or clicked on something other than what I wanted.
(8) When you get home, all you need to do is plug it into the dock, and it automatically syncs the phone using iTunes.
CONCLUSION
IT IS PERFECT. EXCEPT IT DOESN’T SMELL LIKE BACON. YET.
Now normally, I have a policy of not getting to know my food before eating them.
Especially if they look as sad and forlorn as these lobsters.
But I unwittingly made friends with Mr Whiskers before his boiling fate befell him. Someone at Kevin’s Crab and Lobster Fiesta last night mentioned that the lobsters were on the balcony and I was ALL OVER them like a starved paparazzi.
Not that it stopped me from consuming Mr Whiskers with much vigor 15 minutes later.
So what do you get when a bunch of Singaporeans, Malaysians, and the occasional American gets together for a meal?
Prima-flavored Chilli Crab, Heaven-Buttered Lobsters, Roasted Duck, “Man To” bread to soak up the juices, and Xiao Bai Cai.
And lots of slurping. Lots.
The night’s entertainment was three-month-old Curtis, who was the butt of every photo, and er, who tried his first Miller Lite Beer last night.
Naughty, naughty Curtis.
We have a killer raccoon on the loose.
Okay. Not really killer, but he is killing me softly by pooping all over my lawn, often in places that require some acrobatic maneuvering. (See above picture! Inside the tree!)
As I have not had the pleasure of seeing a real raccoon in my life (Jay says he saw one climbing that exact tree late one night), I am visualizing a vicious striped animal walking all over my roof, rummaging through my trash, and gnawing on my BBQ hose.
Yesterday morning, I asked Jay, “I thought I heard someone walking by the bedroom window last night. Must be the raccoon. Do they walk on two feet?”
“Yes, Dot,” Jay answers. “And they wear a bowtie too.”
Jay’s dad once mentioned that there are two things I write about on my blogâ€â€food, and Jay.
I think I should get bonus points for when I combine the two in one post.
Alas, this is not one of them.
I present to you “Wun Tun Mein,” filled with passable broth, Dungeness crab wontons, a kind of flat thin yellow noodles (like nothing I’ve really had before), and a spicy soy dipping sauce.
My beef with broths here is that if it’s not overly salty, it’s tasteless. It’s like they expect you to enjoy the explosion of salt, orâ€â€which is something I’ve noticedâ€â€they expect you to pour a generous amount of soy/chilli/duck sauce/whatever into your broth.
But, I was starved. Guess how long it took for me to get from Point A to Point B.
Wonton Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Hungered.
If Mankind saw the banana before it saw the color yellow, would the banana still be called a banana?
And would I be wearing yellow Crocs or banana Crocs?
Think about that.
This is one of my favorite drinks ever.
I don’t know what the name stands for, but Jay likes to call it “Cow Piss” and scare everyone who’s never had it before.
I don’t think there’s any drink like it. The closest I get to describing it is a milk-yogurt-sweet-lassi-type drink that is heavenly.
I can now add this to my collection of Hello Kitty-themed food I am never going to eat or drink, thanks to my eagle-eyed friend Lindy who spotted this and bought it for me.
(I have never seen HK on Calpico before! And notice how meta it isâ€â€she is holding onto a Calpico bottle on the label.)
Maybe when I’m 50, I’ll finally decide I’m too old for Hello Kitty and break into my stash of unopened Hello Kitty foods.
And maybe, just maybe, Calpico will age well, like a fine vintage…
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