ny state of mind

it's been about 6 months (already?) since i moved to new york. i've been meaning to jot down some thoughts for awhile now but had been putting it off. this article, which was tweeted to me by my old roommate michael, finally got me going.

inevitably when i see or talk to family or friends again for the first time since i moved to new york, i get a barrage of questions of what it's like to be living in new york now. one thing that almost always comes up is the pace of the city. new york city comes with a perception that it's bustling fast-moving city, and to survive, you better keep up. but you know, i don't really see it. well ... i do see it, but i don't really feel it. i actually feel quite the opposite. since i live so close to work, i walk to and from work everyday, and there's something about walking, which just slows everything down (and i don't mean that literally). walking around with my pandora on blast usually gets me into my own world, filtering out the hustle and bustle of the streets, and allowing me to enjoy the walk. as far as i can tell, i'm not walking faster and rushing everywhere, but i do notice myself weaving in and out of people sometimes ... but then again, that's how i used to drive.

speaking of driving, i don't have a car here and thought i would miss my car a whole lot more than i actually do. that has nothing to do with high gas prices either. i enjoy walking around and taking the subway everywhere. the only time i really did miss my car and driving was on a long drive for our camping trip on long stretches of highway (though part of that may have been because of the driver of the car i was in). i'm getting familiar with the subway system; however, i occasionally make mistakes here and there, like thinking the D stops at 14th St. my iphone and the city transit app help for those moments. i still think it's cool seeing people of all races, walks of life, and social status crammed together in one train.

my apartment is in a great part of town. i don't think i could be anymore in the middle of manhattan. my apartment is easily accessible to four different subway lines. there are a bunch of good restaurants nearby, including an awesome chicken and rice cart right downstairs (i swear i grab food there at least twice a week). things are open late. best of all, i'm REALLY close to columbus circle and central park. i had an epiphany a few months ago: it would be a sad sad thing if when i eventually leave new york, i realized that i lived so close to central park and didn't make the most of it. now, i sometimes grab lunch and sit under a tree in the park. if i have nothing to do on the weekends, i often grab a book or my laptop with a blanket and sit in the park for a few hours. just being to chill in the park like that also contributes to the fact that i think my life has slowed down since i moved here. columbus circle has also become a hang out of mine. it's like my new sproul. sometimes on my way home from my work on a nice sunny day, i'll just sit in the circle and just watch people go by.

in terms of social life, mine hasn't been the greatest but not that bad either. i also expect it to improve. a couple friends were gone for the summer but are now back. ol' dirty is moving to brooklyn soon, which should make for good times as well. i've seen a couple hip hop shows, and the fact that they were new yorkers (immortal technique and talib kweli) made them even better.

i do have a few gripes. first, it's not even winter yet, and i'm still adjusting to the weather. in my 6 months here, i've probably seen more rain than i did in my 3 plus years in sd (maybe that's why we had fires so often). i'm sure by the time january rolls around, i'll be crying ... but i'll get used to it. second, watching sports since i've been here is tough (and not even because of the way boston took out the lakers in the finals). i usually have to be awake till about 1am watching lakers games. now with the start of football season, i'll probably complain some more. in cali, i was used to waking up around 10am on a sunday morning, rolling out of bed to the couch, and sitting there watching football all day. here, i'll have to wait till 1 before any games start. oh well.

but if the weather, which i expected, and having to adjust my routine for watching sports are my two biggest complaints, i guess you can say i'm enjoying it here. i used to think that the window of opportunity for me to live outside of california sometime in my life had long closed. of course, things changed, and i'm glad they did. i know i will eventually move back to california, but for now, i'm very happy that i'm living in ny.

the rotten apple

whoops. the guys over at bloomberg accidentally published steve jobs' obituary. i think someone forgot to mention to them that he's not quite dead yet. good job guys. reminds me of that scene in monty python and the holy grail.

The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.

baby got back

i recently came across this article on wired.com about a couple of visual artists, who break down musical genres and the parts of the body they mention most.

Across all of the categories, the eyes are most frequently mentioned body part (Hall & Oates, "Private Eyes"), with the exceptions of hip hop, which places a firm emphasis on the posterior (Sir Mix a Lot, "Baby Got Back") and blues (Louisiana Red, "Keep Your Hands Off My Woman") and gospel music (The Gospel, "Put Your Hands Together"), which are respectively focused on the keeping off of one's hands and the clapping or raising of one's hands.

i thought it was kinda interesting. check it out.

never can say goodbye

i recently picked the new game album LAX. the album has some good names in terms of collabos (common, raekwon, nas, ice cube) and producers (kanye, hi-tek, scott storch). i haven't given the album a whole lot of listen yet and won't comment on it overall, but one particular song did stand out on first listen.

the song is called "never can say goodbye" and begins with la radio personalities yo yo and julio g from kday reportings on the deaths of tupac, biggie, and eazy e. the game then goes on to flow as each of those MCs in the first person, recounting their last moments alive. interesting concept, and i think he pulls it off well. he even gets into each of their styles during the three verses.

check it out.

watch out

if you live in san francisco, watch out

mash out posse

for some reason last night, archana started singing that silly barney song. it reminded me of a barney video that i actually like. i quickly grabbed my iphone, pulled up the video on youtube, and showed it to her (the iphone has surprisingly good speakers btw).

here's the video:

and while this barney video is the first i can remember in the hip hop/kids' show mash up vein, my cousin shawn recently put me on to this video, which i think is much better and done incredibly well. i love both these songs.

enjoy!

call of da wild

before there was facebook or myspace or even friendster ... or any other social network, for that matter, there was the OG social network: the goan network. throughout my life, my mom would tell me that some person or family was coming over for dinner or something. if i ever asked who they were, i would usually get some convoluted answer about a friend's brother's daughter's cousin. luckily for terence, my cousins, and me, the network was rarely used to get us hooked up, though some of my aunts have thought about it.

but hey, goans are extremely nice, helpful, and hospitable. when i moved to ny a few months ago, i was put in touch with the young goan group of new jersey. i was actually "connected" to the group through two different people. i was put on their email list, and a month or so ago, i found out about a planned camping trip. since it'd be good to know some more people in the area and camping is usually a lotta fun, i thought i'd sign up and go. yeah, i wouldn't know anyone else going, but they're goan ... it's all good.

despite some delays getting to the campground in PA, i got to the site and had a lot of fun. there were 20 of us total, and we all had a really good time. even though i just met everyone, people were super friendly and fun. we went white water rafting saturday morning. since the rapids were not so rapid, we went the majority of the time angling our raft in the best possible position to toss buckets of water onto people on other rafts while staying wet ourselves. of course, everyone was drenched in the end, but it was a really good time. the rest of the day consisted of a bbq, volleyball, dodgeball, and of course, ghost stories (provided by google on an iphone) and smores around a campfire. unfortunately, mother nature decided to pour on us sunday morning, which confined us inside our tiny cabins playing taboo. all the guys and one girl went paintballing that afternoon, which was a blast, despite continually foggy goggles and rain and hail. all in all, it was a great weekend, and now i know a few more people in the tri-state area, and the fact that they're goan is even better.

UPDATE: apparently not everyone was goan ... those phonies!

too short

i've recently been obsessed with a couple j.dilla tracks off his unreleased pay jay album. yeah, yeah ... i know, i know ... i shouldn't be bootlegging his shit since his family is hurting for money after all his medical bills, but damn it, i wanted some more dilla. i'd gladly pay for it ... if they would finally release it. anyway, not the point.

starting over ...

i've recently been obsessed with a couple j.dilla tracks off of pay jay, particularly "no one knows." i'm not sure what exactly it is about track that i love; if it's the hook, the sample, his flow, the production. unfortunately, once i really start getting into, it's done. 2:19. that's it. no more. it just kinda leaves you hanging, yearning for more, unfulfilled. sucks.

i felt the same way about "unwritten" featuring mercedes martinez off the roots' rising down. this roots track even has the same sound/feel of the "no one knows" ... and when it ends, i'm like, "that's it?! no more?!" common's whole album be gave me this feeling too. and while i appreciate the songs/albums, don't tease me like that!

changes

quick thanks to everyone who responded to this post and voted for my cousin. her video won, and she and her partner now have an all-expense paid vacation to ottawa.

they monopolizing news

over the last few days, i've experienced what i think is an interesting phenomenom in the way information travels. microblogging/tweeting/updating facebook status is changing how quickly information gets out there and also who can access that information. if you don't know, twitter is basically just facebook status updates, but you can update a whole buncha different ways, like web, texts, im, etc. you can also receive other people's updates through those means too.

example 1: a few days ago, i heard that a trailer for the new marvel movie x-men origins: wolverine was debuted at comic con in sd. someone happened to tape the trailer and leaked it to the internet. being a big marvel fan (though not too happy with my marvel stock (MVL) today), i'm anxious to see the movie. i scoured the internet for a copy of the leaked trailer, but it looked like i was too late. after i gave up on my search, i asked the twitter/facebook community, and within half an hour i had a link (though the video there has since been removed too). the movie looks pretty sweet btw.

example 2: as you probably well know, there was a substantial earthquake in southern california a few days ago. i found out about earthquake through facebook and twitter before i read about it on the news. dozens of my friends had updates relating to the earthquake within thirty minutes, and one of my friends even had an update three minutes after the reported time of the earthquake.

example 3: unfortunately, i heard some tragic news from a friend of mine last night. however, before i talked to her, i saw hints of the news on facebook a few hours before and was curious as to what happened.

anyway, i just find it pretty interesting how news/information can flow these days given new channels, such as twitter and facebook. i think twitter will become much more useful/interesting once i have many more other i people know using it as well ... so join and add me!

my phone

since i've had my iphone for a few weeks now, i thought it was about time to give a better rundown of my thoughts on the thing.

overall, i LOVE it. no regrets whatsoever over dropping $300 on a phone. the high calling plans didn't really affect me much since i had an expensive calling plan before for all the minutes i was using while still in sd.

i gave a quick review of some of my favorite apps in this post, but in all honesty, i don't really use many regularly. here goes anyway for the ones i do use.

pandora: EASILY my favorite app. i love this thing. having an seemingly infinite amount of music at my fingertips is great. since 3g coverage is pretty good in nyc, i can walk around listening to pandora with few skips and lags. i really wish they would allow the app to persist in the background because while it runs, unfortunately, i cannot do anything else on the phone. oh well. i've already discovered a few new interesting artists through pandora, including the sound providers. dj profile, dj'ed at bar dynamite and part of the upstarts, used to be a part of the group. they got a sound similar to crown city rockers. good stuff. i find myself switching out my music less often than i did with my old ipod touch, and i think if i had known about pandora before i bought my 16Gb iphone, i would have thought long and hard about saving $100 and going with the 8Gb one.

facebook: the facebook app is pretty good. the first update now allows you to upload mobile photos directly, and i find myself snapping pictures of random things more often and immediately uploading them..

city transit: as i still get my bearings for this city, this app has come in handy. i can easily access the subway lines and figure out which station is closest to me.

twinkle: my twitter client of choice on the iphone for the simple reason is that it use the location tags. you can see who else is sending tweets with a set radius (5/10/25/50/100 miles).

remote: this application works exactly as i would like. i had been wanting this on my ipod touch for awhile now. it's easy to use and very intuitive. when combined with my airport express, the wireless audio setup i have going in my apartment is pretty cool (despite my crappy speakers). this would have been great for college parties. however, after seeing the remote app, i wish they would change to design of the native ipod interface to be more like how the remote app looks. maybe that's in the works.

those are basically the only apps i use regularly. everyonce in awhile i'll play a game on the subway, like bomberman, holdem, or jirbo break, but for the most part, i played them a few times to begin with while they were still novel.

the gps is a bit disappointing. it'll usually find my position within a block or two, but it has a tendency of moving around, even when i'm sitting still. to make thingss worse, the tall buildings of nyc often block the signal, and i can't even get a lock at all sometimes. the iphone definitely will not replace a good gps device ... yet at least. there are rumors that firmare update 2.1 will enhance the gps functionality, maybe even including turn by turn directions.

the best part of the iphone though is constantly having the internet and google maps at my fingertips. it helped me point some couple in the right direction on their quest for white castle (i'm not making that up either). while espn and facebook have good iphone sites, google wins in this department. google reader on the iphone is really good. for awhile, i was searching/hoping for a good app to use to track my investments. i wanted something a little more robust than just price or percentage changes, which the native stock app has. i finally figured out that google docs has a well designed iphone site. when you throw that in along with the googlefinance functions, i had what i needed.

i have no complaints about service or call quality yet (other than not being able to call canada). the battery is not that great, but since i keep it plugged in at work, i haven't had a problem yet. we'll see what happens when i'm running around for a day or two.