Happy New Year One and All!

May 2006 be the Best One yet!

It takes quite a man to accumulate this many candles!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

You will soon have a smile on your face!

We were in Chinatown and decided to buy a bag of fortune cookies from a street vendor. Only $2 for a whole bag of luck! And they all come with numbers at the back.. for the New York Lottery.

This is only half the bag.. the rest of the cookies were not so fortunate, and have been eaten.


er.. instead of just smiling, could Mr Fortune also do some 'showering'? Please?


I have a feeling this was planted by Ms Gumption!


The last one is Ginnie's, and yes! it really made her day! For those of you who have been following our adventures... she got this just before she got her spiffy Puma jacket!! hmmmm.... I guess some of us make our own luck!!

Farewell All Round Good Guy Columbian Choon Keat who Lived Across from Tom's Diner

We first met Choon Keat at the National Day Party at the Singapore Commission (who can resist the siren song of satay?) and have since met up about ten times.. with coincidentally food being involved in .. er.. ten of those times.. oh ya there was also good, considered, conversation.. Anyway, sadly, his term at Columbia is about over and he will be going back to Singapore.
So see you around buddy, try to get that overseas posting, don't worry about Ferrari, they'll be World Champions again next year! and have a Kek Seng Kio laksa on us!

Ginnie Gumption and Outstanding Alfie rendezvous with The Columbian at the 125th St Subway elevated station

Dinosaur Bar-B-Q!

Had dinner with Choon Keat at Dinosaur Bar-B-Q on 131st St. All agreed the food was delish! Thanks Tessa for the recommendation!
Conversation at the table ranged from Choon Keat's skiing trip and impending return to Singapore to what makes a nation to which is your favourite laksa store to how dirty is New York City, really? to can I try that delicious looking thing on your plate? to what the hell is happening to Manchester Utd??????

Doughnut Give Up!

After our devastating discovery a couple of days back that the 23rd Street Krispy Kreme had gone out of business, we eventually gathered our wits and spirits about us, stared down the empty coffee cup of Defeat and grabbed it by the scruff of its scrawny neck! We were determined not to have to resort to Dunkin' Donuts! Yucks! And went in search of an alternative..
And found a Krispy Kreme on 84th and 3rd!
Sure it's a farther 50 streets uptown, sure it means taking the much dreaded, armpit-in-your-face, 1.3 million commuters-a-day Lexington subway line (the numbers 4,5,6)
But Lo and Behold! it makes its glazed doughnuts on site!! Possibly the only one left on Manhattan that makes its doughnuts fresh on site. (The other 2 we knew of were at the World Trade Centre (really, there are no winners in war..) and the 23rd Street outlet)!
So the moral of the story is.. "No matter how much Dunkin' Life gives you! Doughnut give up!", "The Kreme always Rises to the Top!", "One man's Krispy is better than Dunkin' in the Bush!" or something to that effect..


One very excited customer! One very obstrusive lamp -post! And one guy who walked into the photo!


After the dough has risen in the oven, the pale couch-potato coloured, life-saver shaped doughnuts are launched downstream for the ride of their lives in a conduit of hot oil!


After one side gets an artificial tan, it's flipped over, so that it's evenly golden-brown.


Then the oil gets shaken off.


Then the doughnuts go through a refreshing curtain of glazing!!


After which they emerge shiny and happy!


And rush into the arms of a very nice lady who er.. is very nice to them and nicely puts them in nice trays.


And voila! this is what you get after you put some coins in the hands of the nice people behind the counter, who are friends of the above mentioned nice lady.


One very satisfied customer! This is for you Zann!


One very satisfied customer! standing in front of the Holy Grail of Doughnuts... the red HOT NOW! KRISPY KREME sign..

Nobody Told Us There'll Be Days Like These!

Can anyone tell us what amazing adventures befell outstanding alfie and ginnie gumption this fine fall day of near freezing temperatures from the above montage? Apart from the fact that they forgot to bring out their camera and had to download very small files from the internet? Anyone?

1) On the way to the bank at Union Square, we sat just a couple of seats on the R train from Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. He can make his guitar sound like wind-chimes or a car-crash, or wind-chimes in a car-crash, or a car crashing into wind-chimes, but today he was reading to himself and wore a black Volcom jacket.

2) After the bank, which closes at 3 on Saturdays, and lunch at Taco Bell on Union Square, where we had six barbeque wings, 3 tacos and a Mountain Dew, we walked to 23rd Street to buy some Krispy Kreme and found that the store had CLOSED DOWN!!!!!! We almost collapsed but decided against it as the floor was yucky from the previous day's snow. We were dreaming double chocolate frosted and could not understand why life was so unfair.

3) Disheartened we walked back in the direction of Union Square to stock up on apple cider to drown our sorrows. On 23rd Street between 5th and 6th Ave, large chunks of snow that had built up overnight on the roof, 5 floors up, of the Home Depot suddenly came crashing to the ground!! Right in front of us!! The bunch of people caught in the barrage of ice and snow, including a hapless kid in a pram, escaped unscathed luckily. Though badly shaken by the scene of fractured icicles and people gesticulating vehemently at the sky and the obligatory bemused black bystander, we soldiered on.

4) 50 metres later, while waiting for the lights at the junction of 23rd, 5th Ave and Broadway, at the foot of the Flatiron Building, a man across the road collapses between 2 parked cars. Heart attack? We can't tell.. but it was quite easy to get an ECG chart off Wikipedia for the montage. Anyway, New York is full of good samaritans if anything and many cell-phones were dialled, many attempts were made to move the guy off the road, many diagnoses were offered, till finally a fire truck and 2 ambulances, sirens blaring, ruckus attending, arrived on the scene. The guy had wild salt and pepper hair and a bewildered pink face.

5) The day was turning out to be pretty strange and by this time we were shaken and we were shack. We decided to go to Shake Shack at Madison Square Park for a burger. It'll be closed from the 13th of this month till Spring. We'll miss it very much. We ate in a parkful of ice and dogs in knitted sweaters. The burger was steaming, the fingers were numb, the trip home was uneventful and the story is over.

Goo Goo G'Joob Mr Eggman! Goo Goo G'Joob Mr Walrus!

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together..

Jersey Gardens!

Half an hour bus ride from Manhattan, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, is yet another giant American mall (are there any non-gigantic American malls?) From 42nd Street Port Authority Bus Terminal, take number 111. One way ticket costs US$4.75. It's pretty big. Bigger than KL's Mid-Valley. Directory of stores include Gap, Nike, H&M, Nautica, Hilfiger, Borders, Kenneth Cole, half-a-dozen street style/sports wear outlets, Victoria's Secret, a giant food court, Marshall's, a theme park, a cineplex, Old Navy, DSW, Filene's Basement, Bebe, Banana Republic, BCBG, blah blah blah.. We bought 3 pairs of socks (very colourful of course!) from Sock Man at 3 pairs for $10, and some chocolates for the bus ride back.


er... where's Ginnie??


Standing behind me!! Gloating in her very spiffy NEW Puma jacket!!

It's That Time of Year Again!!??!

View from our window Sunday morning!


Somewhere in Jersey on the bus on our way to Ikea for meatballs!!??! (the exclamation marks indicate that not ALL the parties involved erm.. wanted to be involved in the activity!)


Half a river frozen. Some of the white blotches on the bottom of the photo are swans..


Ginnie in her galoshes outside Ikea, at the bus-stop. Notice also her NEW Puma girls jacket!!??!.. (the exclamation marks indicate that SOME of the parties involved erm.. wouldn't mind a spiffy new Puma jacket too!)

I'm Afraid You've Santa Christmas Wish List to the Wrong Address!

Sadly, there are still some people who think that Santa spends his days off at the North Pole.. seriously, why would a popular guy like Santa spend his time in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of sweat-shop elves and a pimple-nosed ruminant?
Our research team has found that he actually spends most of his time hanging out at the Penn Station K-mart.
Here, after a long day of loitering, he beats a couple of smiley asians armed with candy canes to an easy rocker to rest his feet..