Wow, only five days since I last posted but there’s a shitload of things to recap. First, the biggest news, I’m buying a condo! Well, I put a downpayment down and am currently in the process of reviewing the contract with my lawyer. It’s a one bedroom five blocks from my office, a little smallish at 773 sq. ft, but it is pretty sweet. So many bars and restaurants and the best mall in NY are all gonna be within walking distance. So it’s really exciting thinking about moving there, but on the other hand it is absolutely terrifying going back into debt taking a mortgage. Seems like I’m finally doing the adult thing in getting a place of my own instead of pissing my money away in rent, but now I guess I get to piss my money away on furnishings which is a much more grown up thing to do!
My mortgage broker, Da Greek, is a friend of mine who also runs the local 8-ball league. He’s super meticulous and that’s exactly the kind of guy you want handling paperwork as important as this. I play for his 8-ball team, and we had a match that same night after we went to see the condo and we won it convincingly even though the other team was pretty good. I haven’t been playing up to my standards lately, but I’ve been slowly coming back into form and that night I finally went 4-0 in strong fashion. The highlight came when I was in the midst of a run out, but got bad position on my last object ball. It was a makeable cut shot from the middle of the table to the far right corner pocket, but very touchy to leave myself a decent shot at the 8 ball which was positioned to the right and a little closer to me than my object ball. The angle of the cut shot would send the cueball downtable and to the left rail but because all my opponent’s balls were still on the table, the only place the 8 could go would have be to the right side pocket. To execute the shot, I would have to give it enough draw to keep the cueball from heading downtable, but not too much or else it would come off the rail and hide behind one of my opponent’s balls, or worse, potentially scratch in the left side pocket. I asked Da Greek what he wanted me to do, either play conservatively making the object ball first and playing a safety on the 8 ball, or playing to complete the runout by trying to pull off that delicate leave. He told me to go for the runout and “try to control the suck” where “suck” is apparently the local term for what most pool players call “draw”, meaning to pull the cue ball back with backspin. So I turned to my opponent and declared my shot (you have to call your shots in this league) by saying “7 ball to the corner… with controlled suckage”. That drew some laughter from the crowd and then I went ahead and pulled off the shot and completed my runout. “Controlled Suckage” is now apparently our team motto. 😀
The following night I went to Mi Cabanita, the Spanish bar across the street that my friend Hector runs. I hadn’t been there in months since I found out that my blood pressure was a bit high and that I should try to eat a little healthier and work out more. But knowing I probably won’t be in this hood much longer, I figured I should go in there a bit more while it’s still so convenient. I also bought a little gift for Hector, something I had seen in the NY Times food section a couple weeks ago- a plantain peeler. Apparently it won 2nd place in some invention contest. It looks like a pocket knife (so you can cut into the peel of a plantain) but with an attachment on one end that is designed to be a wedge for separating the peel from the flesh. Seemed kinda cool and I wanted to get Hector a little something to apologize for having been a stranger the last couple months. Sitting back in Mi Cabanita really made me reflect on how bizarre and varied my different worlds are. On the one hand I’m a technologist in a corporate environment by day, but outside of work you might find me as a regular in any of these situations: in dive bars with Westchester locals (some of whom would scare the shit out of passersby), dining in the world’s best restaurants, gambling in casinos (both high end and shitty ones), hanging with my fellow chinky friends (who yes, also like to eat at the world’s best restaurants and gamble in casinos), at country music concerts with good ol’ boys, and in this case, in a Spanish bar where the bartender may not even know enough English to understand what a Coke is. The oddity of it all really struck home when the new bartender at Mi Cabanita walked over to the jukebox, picked some songs and went back behind the bar. I expected to hear Aventura or Don Omar, or maybe even something more mainstream like Shakira. But do you know what she picked? Pink Floyd. How cool is that?
Sunday I had lunch at Sripraphai in Woodside, Queens. It’s the best Thai restaurant in NY as far as I’m concerned. It was the first time J&A and C&Dawg had ever eaten there so we ordered a lot. For apps we had shrimp cakes, shrimp rolls, papaya salad, soft shelled crab with green mango sauce, and two orders of the bbq pork. The shrimp cakes were remarkably light and almost fluffy but still tasted of fresh shrimp with a light wispy breadcrumb coating. The shrimp rolls were medium sized shrimp wrapped in wonton skins and fried. Both shrimp dishes were served with typically sweet and hot Thai dipping sauces. The papaya salad was exactly what you’d expect, so nothing much to write about there; we ordered that just so we’d feel like we were eating something healthy! Then the bbq pork was the real star of the apps. So tender and succulently sweet. Just so damn good. Then for one of the entrees we ordered my favorite spicy fish curry cooked in banana leaf. It looks like uni, but tastes like a coconut based curry, but with all kinds of unidentifiable seasonings, finishing on the palate with a heat that starts as a tingle and builds to a crescendo begging you to have rice with it, but politely subsiding right after you swallow it. Really tough to describe it, but it is a superb dish reminiscent of the catfish dish called Amok at the Cambodian/French restaurant The Elephant Walk that I used to frequent up in Boston. Anyway, we also ordered a whole red snapper which had nice chili and basil flavoring but a little too salty in my opinion. Next we had a dish of ground pork seasoned with lime and chili. That too was a little on the salty side but perfect with the rice that it was meant to be served with. The best of the entrees was their Chicken Green Curry. Probably the best green curry I’ve ever tasted. Hot without being too spicy to taste the chicken, and a real depth to the creaminess of the curry. Fantastic stuff. As an afterthought we also ordered the pad thai which was good but unspectacular compared to everything else.
I realize this post is dragging on, but I’m too lazy to carve it up into separate posts, so too bad :P. Anyway, Dawg did not propose to C yet, even though we all thought he would this weekend. Dunno what he’s waiting for; we have bachelor party trips to plan, dammit! After lunch we all headed back to Dawg’s place to play mah jong. K came out to play too, even though he usually doesn’t fare too well. He broke out to a helluva start, and could have really put the hurt on us except he missed a couple of hands where he won and didn’t realize it. One of those hands would have been a $96 gi mor lot pai too! Awwwww, too bad K! I started out paying out left and right, including a $64 lot pai to J. I had brought over a bottle of Horin super premium sake and I think I was just drunk for the first few hours because of it. When I switched over to beer I sobered up a bit and started to play better. I got really lucky and won a $192 gi mor som lot and then I never looked back. We played for around 14 hours and by the time we quit at 5:30am, I was up $412! For our stakes of mj, that is a colossal win. Too bad I was too sleepy to bask in it; all I wanted to do was go home and climb in bed!
Well, that’s more than enough for now I guess. More later this week as further details about my condo get cleared up. There’s a ton of ridiculous stuff in the condo contract that my lawyer is going to try to get amended. We’ll see how that goes. For now, I’m still sleepy from our marathon mj session so I think I need a nap!