Funny how sometimes weeks can go by with nothing much to write about, but other times, like recently, so many little things fly by which are blog-worthy but I just don’t have the time to devote to whole entries to them. But since I do want to write about them before I forget about them completely, here’s a quick rundown of loose ends and leftovers from the past couple of weeks…

Mercer Consulting released a survey listing the most expensive cities in the world in terms of cost of living. There were a number of surprises- Moscow is number 1 and NYC is all the way down at number 10, tied with Oslo (?!). But for me the biggest shocker comes in at #43- White Plains. Doh! Scanning the list for just U.S. cities, they rank this way: NYC (10), LA (29), SF (34), Chicago (38), Miami (39), White Plains (43). Hrmmm… which one of these is not like the others?

I crashed a PwC alumni event at Cipriani with R. Seemed to be basically a networking event for all ex-employees of PwC. Open bar and all kinds of food stations in the opulent setting of Cipriani must have cost sick $$. I am flabbergasted that PwC does events like this with regularity considering the ROI seems intangible and incalculable. But they’re able to throw these parties, so they’re obviously doing something right. R actually is a PwC alumn, so he got in legitimately; he had to score me a nametag by grabbing a discarded one from one of the tables on the side. That made me Kawaldeep for the evening. “Just call me Deep. After I left PwC I entered the porn industry…”

Only a few weeks left until the main event of this year’s WSOP and it doesn’t look like I’ll be there. I’ve played 4 qualifiers and never seriously threatened in any of them. I’m quite a bit off my A game, having developed a lot of bad tendencies from playing the uber-loose home game at R&L’s. Seeing way too many flops, especially when I either get a big stack or I get tired during the 3rd and 4th hours of play. I just picked up Harrington’s 3rd book and it’s getting me back to thinking properly about the game again, but it may be too little too late. I just don’t have enough time to play many more qualifiers. Boo hoo…

My dear friend Liz was in a car accident. Some bitch ran a stop and plowed into the passenger side of her car, causing her to lose control and slam into two other vehicles. Thankfully she’s alive, but unfortunately she suffered some probably permanent nerve damage in her right arm. While she’s rehabbing, there’s a lot of things she just can’t do. Makes you realize all the little things you take for granted every day. You ever try wiping your butt with your left hand??

I’ve gone to that soft tofu place in Fort Lee for three or four weeks in a row now. I just can’t get enough of the oyster tofu and those incredible strips of kalbi and for $7 and $10 respectively, it’s a relatively cheap habit. Their kimchee is not the greatest and the service seems to vary only between rude and indifferent, but hey, that’s not gonna keep me away.

Went to a local 4th of July party at my friend Ray’s house in Mamaroneck. He’s got a huge backyard, a nice pool for all the kiddies to play around in (and there were tons of kids running around), and Marissa does most of the cooking which she’s awesome at. Definitely a good time, and this year I actually managed to make it through the whole day without passing out! Again, the wonders of Heineken Light…

One of the benefits of working for a big company again is the fact that there’s an activities budget. In the past few weeks there’s been 3 pretty cool events. First was a workday lunch where people brought in various ethnic dishes presumably to promote diversity in the workplace. Whatever the justification, the food was awesome. Some of these people really went all out. There were things like pigs feet and even a giant platter of short ribs. Delicious by any standards, extraordinary for a lunch at work. Then there was the company booze cruise. It was a hot and sticky night so being out on a boat with a mild breeze was not a bad place to be. Everyone took advantage of the open bar to a great extent and got silly by the end of the evening. At least one picture of me from that evening has thankfully been disposed of (supposedly). There was also a raffle for various prizes and I won an iPod nano which got a few groans from the crowd since I had won the Sony PSP in a raffle back at the company xmas party too. Even the bus ride back was fun and funny. I was so drunk I just wanted to fall asleep, but just as I had managed to doze off, my very funny new friend ST wakes me up as I was trying to ignore him. “Steve…Steve?….STEVE!” I open my eyes and ask him what’s up, and he goes “Steve, I just want you to know it’s cool if you want to sleep.” What a clown… And last but not least, the final event was last week’s golf outing. It was a scramble format and we had a blast. My team was especially fun with TF, BH, and ST. We really put up an awful score, but it didn’t matter because we had such a good time. Afterwards there was a buffet dinner and TF, ST and I followed that up by hitting Butch’s in Eastchester; a terrific bar with big flat screen tv’s everywhere and the cutest bartenders in Westchester.

As for golf, I must say, I’m striking the golf ball better than I ever have. My drives are still a bit loose, but since I started playing DT So-Lo’s, the bad shots just sort of drift instead of curving wildly. They don’t stop on the green worth a lick, but it’s a small price to pay for staying out of trouble off the tee. Strangely my short game has come around too. My chips are actually taking proper trajectories now and I’m not chunking or thinning shots like I used to. I hope I get to keep playing regularly over the weeks ahead before I fall out of this groove I’m in.

And finally, my friend Harriet just sent me an 11-episode Japanese drama called Crying Out Love, in the Center of the World. It was apparently a novel and then made into a movie as well as this jdorama, and all were tremendously well received. I just started watching it last night and couldn’t stop myself until I really really had to go to bed at 2am. Totally reminiscent of the time I was devouring the 150+ episodes of Sakura when I first got those discs. So I’ve seen 6 of the 45-minute episodes of COL so far and I can definitely say it’s one of the most well made dramas of any genre I’ve ever seen. I can be utterly emotionless when I want to, but then I’ll be a total sap other times, and I’m definitely in one of those sappy moods after last night. COL is a huge departure from the lighthearted nature of Churasan and Sakura. Depressing from the get go yet it surprisingly manages to pull you into the characters even though you know there can’t be a happy ending due to it being filmed as current day scenes overlayed with flahshbacks. Each episode starts with the super depressing hero in the present and bleeds into the relevant flashback for the bulk of the remainder of the episode. So many of the things that make this drama work from a romantic perspective would sound too contrived if I described them here, like the way the lovebirds carry on their relationship by recording messages on cassette and passing them back and forth in a walkman, but suffice it to say, it all works and works really well. I would be completely shocked if COL does not get remade by Hollywood in some way, shape or form. I’ll be going out to dinner tonight with Kerri & Andrew to celebrate Andrew’s birthday, old man that he is, but immediately after, I’m sure I’ll be rushing home to watch some more of COL.