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.

electric relaxation

a few months back, i saw a lamborghini gallardo (not this one) on the street. it was driven by a huge prick and equally rude girlfriend, but that's another story. of course, i asked archana if she'd be buy me one, and in our fanciful world, her objection is that it's not very eco-friendly. point taken ... "how about a tesla?"

if you don't know, the tesla is an electric car being manufactured by a startup in the bay area. tesla motors is one of the first new american car manufacturers in decades. the car is based on the design of the lotus elise and is estimated to go from 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds. they car will set you back $109,000 though.

anyway, they recently opened the first showroom in los angeles and another in the bay area. the first few cars have rolled off the production lines and to customers. they say around 8 to 10 of the vehicles have been delivered already.

and already someone has crashed theirs! good job buddy. way to crash one of ten of THE hottest cars out there right now. you can read the article from wired.com here, but people are speculating that the crash was probably caused by aggressive driving and the fact that it's low profile and almost silent engine makes it hard to notice.

once/if they fix the car, they should not let that guy have it back (and give it to me, of course).

when you speak of the dopest MC ...

i thought about writing this post the other day when i was listening to pandora on my iphone and wu-tang's triumph came on. inspectah deck's first verse of that song is one of the best ever. i thought about writing this post again when later main source's live at the bbq came on. nas kicks off that songs (and his career) with a TIGHT verse. it could quite possibly be my favorite single verse of all time.

and then today, i'm listening to bumpy knuckles' new album, crazy like a foxxx (pretty good so far ... but i haven't listened to much yet), and i finally gave in and wrote the post (obviously). listening to bumpy knuckles (aka freddie foxxx) reminds me of his verse on gang starr's militia. his verse on that track is just ... hard ... fierce ... ferocious. it's one of those tracks that just kinda hits you.

all three of those songs (triumph, live at the bbq, and militia) are made by those single verses. without those verses, each of those songs would be nowhere as good as they are.

anyway, what other single verses should be added to this list?

overnight celebrity

came across this the other day when i browsing through wired.com. apparently i'm not that famous.




i scored a 30, compared to ?uestlove's 79 and obama's 9078.

what about you guys?

murs is better than your favorite rapper

some more free music for you guys by murs and 9th wonder. in my opinion, murs is one of the best mc's out there these days, and 9th wonder is one of the best producers. head over to okayplayer to get the free album ... or just click here.




also, as i'm writing, i'm watching nas on the colbert report. COMEDY! check it out if you can. nas is talking about his beef with fox news and o'reilly.

what's ya phone number

after spending waaay too much time in line, i finally got my new iphone. so far i LOVE the thing. it's awesome. i think more than any of the hardware changes, like the added gps and 3g connection, the new app store makes this thing great. i haven't had much chance to play with many of the apps much. here are my thoughts on some of them:

remote: remotely control itunes with your iphone. i've been wanting this for my ipod touch. works great.

loopt: location aware social network. i haven't been able to use it much since i don't know anyone else on it yet, other than terence.

pandora: i'm really excited about this one. listening to the pandora music network will be great on my walk to work. so far though, it's a bit slow to load, and sometimes while on the 3g network, it skips while buffering. i'm looking forward to be able to discover new music. unfortunately, since apple does not allow apps to run in the background, you cannot do anything else on the iphone while pandora is running.

yelp: it's great to be able to search reviews while on the go of restaurants, bar, etc around you.

google maps: the gps functionality is sweet. having maps on the go is even better.

urban spoon: randomly choose restaurants around you. fun gimmick but i wish it would let you filter by ratings too.

city transit nyc: map of the new york city subway system. it will even tell you which station is closest to you and if there are any service advisories.

midomi/shazam: similar apps. they record a snippet of sound and then will tell you what song that snippet is from. i've had better luck with shazam than with midomi but midomi is supposed to be better when there is more background noise. i showed arch, but she was skeptical at first when it picked up a stevie wonder song i had been playing since i just controlling the itunes with the iphone anyway. she put the thing to the test. it successful figured out some of the most obscure songs she could think of ... then she tried it with hindi and tamil songs, which shazam was also successful with! pretty cool. it even gives you youtube links to the songs if there are any.

bomberman: i love the bomberman series. this one is fun too; though, i'm still getting used to the controls.

phone saber: fun but pointless app that makes lightsaber sounds while you swing around your iphone.

cube runner: fun game, in which you navigate through a field of cubes, trying not to catch.

those are the ones i've been using the most so far. obviously push email is cool, as is having the internet constantly at your fingertips. i haven't used the phone part much yet but nothing to complain about at all in that department. some of the apps will crash every once in awhile. most crashes are minor and just take you back to the home screen; though, some force the iphone to restart. so far, the only apps which i've paid for are city transit nyc ($3) and bomberman ($8); there rest were free.

they did have trouble with porting my old 619 number, which means i have a new york 917 number for the next few days ... and have to carry around my old phone too ... sucks.

the show

Archana's mom was around for about a week around the 4th of July. While she was here we decided to go see a show on Broadway. We ended up seeing Spamalot, which is a Broadway adaptation of Month Python and the Holy Grail ... they call it "lovingly ripped off". If you're a fan of the movie, I'd definitely recommend. The show followed the movie pretty closely, at least for the first three quarters. The playbill even had fake info on a fake cast reminiscent of the fake intro credits on the movie (except with no llamas). Arch and her mom were confused with that,but I loved it. Some of the songs were too long and detracted from the overall comedy but oh well. The end of the show was a lot different from the movie. Overall, it was really good, and if you're a fan of the movie, you should go check it out. My biggest gripe: since the end was different, they left out the scene from the end of the movie where the knights have to answer three questions in order to pass. It's the scene were King Arthur asks, "African or European?" Without that scene, the entire first scene in which they're discussing swallows is pretty much pointless.

we gotta make a change

i'm pretty sure this post is unnecessary since all my subscribers probably already saw this post, but who cares ...

my cousin in canada has entered a video contest. all submissions are aimed at social change. she's already won $1000 and moved passed the regional rounds. she's now onto the national level.

she made the video with a friend of hers. the video is based on a poem she wrote herself. i think it's pretty good and far better than anything i could do.

part of the competition is based on an online vote. she is currently in second place, losing only by a few points. i may be a bit biased, but her video is much better than the silly song about landfills, which is currently winning.

anyway, go here and vote for her video "Change," eh.

organize an army that will make the devils nervous

i haven't really played video games, especially PC-based video games, much lately. i played halo 2 often and even played some halo 3, but for the most part, i don't really play that much anymore. i even sold my xbox 360 a few weeks ago since it was just sitting there as a glorified DVD player.

... but ... when i did play PC video games, the ones by blizzard (warcraft, starcraft, diablo) were always my favorites. i loved the diablo series and beat the first two versions. blizzard was also one of the first to do online gameplay well.

that being said, the new diablo game looks pretty damn cool. i probably won't buy it or probably even play, but it's still a bit tempting.

here's the cinematic trailer ...



... and a link to a video showing the gameplay.

along those same lines, i'm excited about the new wii game Star War: The Force Unleashed. i just think it'd be cool to swing a lightsaber around for a video game, though i'd probably break something in my apartment or hurt someone (or myself). i probably would have picked up a wii once i sold my xbox 360 if it could play DVDs. oh well, maybe in the future.

bomb wall street and make the stock market dip down

the stock is market is getting (been?) pretty ugly lately. the dow (DJI) looks like it might dip below 11000. this is starting to get painful. i'm hoping it'll turn around soon. luckily for me, not all my stocks follow the general direction of the market. some (PQ) kinda just keep going up; while, some (SDTH) just bounce all over the place.