Nothing’s better than a long weekend with a holiday name after my car. Edward’s garden, dinner@ Lok Siu Yiu See Fong Choi, and experimental flower bed to see if Steph and I can actually keep some flowers/plants alive.
Civic Holiday
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Trip Eats 2010
One of the best things you get out of a trip to Japan is, of course, the food. Since we traveled to some of the smaller cities this time, less sightseeing means more time to eat. Sorry no time to label the food in the pics but if you want to know where it is or the experience please just send me or Steph a email. Best time to view these pics is after a meal or when you are full!
Japan 2010
Just came back from a 3+ week long vacation to Hong Kong and Japan. The trip is pretty much split in half with about 12 days in HK and 12 in Japan. We went to mainly the northeast part of Japan this time with some 3 or 4 days in each of Tokyo and Kyoto. Like any vacation it was not enough! I am still using Lightroom for photo editing and this time I am trying this other JAlbum skin as the one I used to use (SimpleViewer) started to limit number of photos you can put in an album (for those without license)! Also, this time I’ve added caption as some complained my photos were too boring… hope you will enjoy it more this time!
Photos from Rita & Kenneth’s Wedding – 26 Sept 2009
Congrats to Rita and Kenneth! They should now be on their honeymoon not knowing their wedding pics are now on Facebook… This concluded all 3 weddings that I attended in this special Sept 2009. With this wedding I found that a zoom lense is still the best choice for shooting events, only if they can make it smaller!
Welcome to Facebook
Yesterday I heard about this really cool App called Facebook…. hahahahaha okok… Anyways, here I am finally on Facebook, let’s test out this WordPress Plugin first.
Photoes from Sara and Eddie’s Wedding
This is a month with 3 weddings for me. Kicked off with this BEAUTIFUL wedding downtown near CNE at a place called Palais Royale. Congrats Sara and Eddie! A friend in the group was kind enough to offer me his 24-70L lense from Canon to try. So the pics from the ceremony was shot with that lense! Looks great! Thanks Bennett!
Yosemite/San Francisco pics
I guess this blog has turned into a photo album blog. Enough said. Hope you will enjoy these pics..
Switzerland photos
Please click on the photo below to be directed to the newly posted Switzerland photos. Again, edited with Adobe LightRoom 2 and that’s it. I actually have spent only 1.5 hours on picking and editing these Switzerland photos! Maybe I can do this for Steph’s 2000+ pics … or maybe not… 
Paris photos
Back from my Paris and Switzerland trip. I probably have lots to blog about my trip but let’s focus on these Paris photos I have just finished processing. Recommended by Jason, I used Adobe Lightroom 2 this time to edit my photos and boy, it definitely is one of the best tool I have used for photo editing! Although it keeps crashing once in a while but the important thing is :- it’s fast, it keeps all the edited info when it crashes (phew…), it does all the basic editing functions very well, and hence, it’s a one-stop editing tool. My 11-16mm easily becomes my lens of choice for this trip as it provides such crisp and amazingly sharp images — one of the most important element when it comes to wide-angle shooting. I think there is a need for me to get a substitute for my 17-85 as I find it not sharp enough these days… probably the 24-70 from Canon. Will see. Please feel free to leave me any comments for these pics! (Please click on the pic below, it will link you to the album)
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
I find Toronto has quite a lot of these ‘self-promoting’ events which, they try to promote the city but eventually the quality of these events aren’t really up to the level. This one is a night out with free contemporary art displayed all over downtown Toronto. Without much expectation, I wasn’t surprised to find there really isn’t that many good exhibits. Having said that there is the Gardiner Museum with free admission that night (actually not sure if it’s free usually) and surprisingly there are some interesting stuff there. Of course, another reason I went is to check out the performance of my new 11-16 lens which I quite like. Please drop by my Flickr page to take a look.
New lense, new phone
Not that I want to show off, but yeah… my 1st generation iPhone is broken (there is actually a sad story behind it but I prefer not to tell here… I will keep myself as a happy blogger) and yesterday the iPhone 3G has arrived and I am using it today!
To prepare for my trip in October, I have also bought a new 11-16mm lense from Tokina. I originally wanted to get a ultra-wide prime from Canon but it’s just too expensive (ie. C$2000+) then I started to read multiple reviews saying how this Tokina is quite well-build and also the quality of the photos it takes are quite good too! Together with the cheaper price that’s enough reason to give this 3rd party lense a try.
OK. Finally what I really want to show you is this. Anto the hardwood floor guy came to my house today and replaced some hardwood floors. I have posted some pics to flickr.
Family in TO
I really don’t remember the last time my whole family all stayed under the same roof. Although our house got a bid messy, loud at times and a bid too cold, it’s all good and I would welcome my sisters (and their friends/family) back to stay at our place any time. Didn’t bring my camera along with me to the 31 people Blue Mountain trip and when taking my sisters around. But I do have my iphone and have put together a quick little “Victor’s (my nephew) trip to TO” iphone album to share with my family and friends. Victor is super cute especially near the end of the trip when he has adjusted the time difference (from HK) and got to know more people around him. Vivian and Jason has certainly passed along the msg of “having a baby is not easy” to Steph and I. But when I see their way of looking at Victor’s laughter and how they react when Victor has just learn to do something, all their weariness will magically disappear and turned into probably the most enjoyable moments in their lives.
2008 WSTC trip to Las Vegas, weekend to Napa, CA
I don’t have much time to blog on my trip yet but do have my pics done. This time I managed to bring my tripod so I was able to achieve some of the night shots that I really wanted to take in LV. Didn’t spend too much time in editing them just used autostitch to stitch together a couple of them, also used GIMP to adjust LEVEL/BRIGHTNESS on some of them… that’s all. A couple of us from work (also from the wine tasting group) went to Napa for the weekend and did some wine tasting. It was a great trip! Please enjoy the pics here
Lesson learned on TMV
When I first moved in to my new house the hot water wasn’t hot enough. After chatting with my contractor, it came to my attention that besides the thermostat that controls the temperature inside the water tank, there is a ‘thermostatic mixing valve’ which builder needs to install by law these days to mix cold water with hot water for safety purposes. Now to get more hot water, I need to somehow turn this ‘valve’, mixing less cold water into the hot water. Now after a big mess which I am not going to mention here, I learned which ‘valve’ I should turn the hard way. BTW, this is specific to my CASE ACME brand TMV, other brands might have a whole different design… So here is what to do if you want to adjust the ‘valve’:
1) Take off the Blue Cap which is just there to protect the ‘valve’ and to look nice
2) Don’t turn the knob where it says ‘hot’ and an directional arrow, unturning this will lead to a small flood in the basement (guess how I found out)
3) Turn only the triangular shaped knob in the middle as shown in the picture
Bala’s door handle from Rona
Before I start ‘Bala’ is the model name of my new house… Steph and I are just used to calling it that. Anyways, back to the handles, I guess this is by far the best value improvement to my new house for now. Can’t beat this deal for C$8.7 a piece (same price with and without lock), with tax it’s still under 10 bucks a handle. I’ve changed all 26 of these in Bala!
A visit to Ottawa
Just went to Ottawa for 3 days last week for work. Had some time to visit Bell’s Corner which is where I stayed 12 years ago when I was in Ottawa for the first work term. I still remember the surroundings, how to get to work BUT I’ve totally forgotten in which exact townhouse I stayed during that four months. A lot have changed since then… including the Hwy 416 that takes you right from Nepean down to Hwy 401 which was building at the time. I stayed at Indigo Hotel which has modern style rooms. My first time at a room that has LCD TVs 
(two of them!) I guess they (the LCD TVs) ARE getting really cheap these days! On this visit I’ve been to numerous coffee shops, yes, Ottawa downtown has countless number of these coffee shops, big or small, to keep people warm on the streets. Bridgehead is one of these chains and they only have stores in Ottawa. Suggested by a friend of mine, I’ve managed to try a cup of coffee made by the expensive coffee maker ‘Clover’. Surprisingly the price for one cup is just 50 cents more than a grande-sized Starbucks Sumatra. Ottawa to me is still a relatively small city, besides an occasional visit during the time of the Tulip Festival and spoiling myself with 1 cup of good coffee a day, it’s getting hard for me to think of something to remember it… Better take some quick shots before I will need a GPS to bring me back to Bell’s Corners.
second trip to NYC in 2007
Happy New Year everyone. It might be a bit too late for that actually but I just managed to find some time to make a blog entry. Steph and I went to NYC for the second time in 2007 near the end of Dec and I still haven’t visited all of the places I want to visit in NYC. This time though there are some interesting experiences… We stayed in Secaucus NJ which is a region usually a 20 minutes bus ride away from Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. First night there we went in the city by bus, took us a good 1.5 hour as Lincoln tunnel is totally jammed on the Friday night. The second day we decided to pay a tunnel toll and find free parking (weekend) in upper east side but it turned out to be harder than I hoped. Ended up paying $20 for 10 hours (which is actually pretty good) then take subway all day. Anyhow this 4-day trip turned out to be 100% shopping… Toronto->Woodbury Outlet->ShortHill->Costco->Gucci Outlet->Wine Outlet ->SoHo->ShortHill->DFS with Kenneth totally tired out. I am not sure if Rita and him are going to tag along with any trips we plan again… not to mention trips organized by Kwong!
Another note worthy hi-light of the trip was a dinner at Cafe Boulud which is a French Restaurant owned by celebrity chef Daniel Boulud. We managed to try their 8 course dinner which I think has pretty good value despite its price. Here are some pictures of the dishes together with some pics of this trip with Kenneth and Rita. Hopefully they enjoyed the trip as much as I do!
My third Raptors game
Got a pair of free tickets for Dec 3rd’s Raptors vs Charlotte Bobcats basketball game and of course, Steph and I went since we just cannot resist the fact that they were, well, free. Steph was actually very busy that day since it’s ‘month end’ (although in accounting terms, I never fully understand when a ‘month end’ starts and how long it lasts… but let’s not get into that) so we had to rush down, quickly grabbed something from McDonald’s and finished eating it before going into Air Canada Center.
It was TJ Ford Bobblehead (see pic) night and we later found out that they only hand out 6000 of them…. which means we never stood a chance of getting one since we barely made it to see the opening tip. Anyhow, the game itself was quite interesting with Raptors playing without 3 of their top players. They did manage to win by quite a big margin (we didn’t stay to the very end of the game so we can skip a bit of the rush getting out…. what do you expect… the tickets were free!!) so, WELL DONE RAPTORS!
About the pictures I took at the game, I now figure out why I need an expensive zoom lens since I can barely capture the players (or the cheerleaders…) in my shots despite having two pretty good seats in section 121. I probably need one of these to capture anything worth a wow to look at… But just in case you still want to see how mine turned out, Check this out but please don’t be disappointed.
another improvement on the onion soup
This is the third time that I am making the onion soup. This time I didn’t follow any one recipe. The difference is I’ve used beef stock instead of chicken, red wine instead of white, and this time, I’ve added some carrots and celery to cook the soup (idea was actually from Vincent, thanks!). The result turned out quite well. Before I thought the carrots/celery will make it too sweet and taste more like vegetable soup, but I used more onions and it turns out better than I thought. By putting carrots/celery this time, the soup can actually bring the onion flavour out better instead of too ‘onion’ and plain before. Now I think this soup is more ready to serve my guests.
Pics from Grace and Alex’s Wedding
First of all, congrats to Grace & Alex! I have to say this is one of my favourite sets that I’ve shoot this year! Having said that I am even more confused as to which Photo Editor I should use to edit the photoes!
This time I’ve used a combo of ACDSee 8.1 and GIMP 2.4. You probably have heard of GIMP but if you are just looking for some basic enhancements, ACDSee is actually VERY FAST and can do the job very well too! So how fast can ACDSee 8.1 get on my machine? For one pic, it can do auto-exposure/sharpen/remove noise in about 10 seconds. Not bad.
I’ve also used Adobe Photoshop Elements before but for my machine (Petium 4 2.4GHz w/ only 512 MB RAM) it just takes much longer time to load and to work with. But of course, both GIMP and APE can do much more… one of the GIMP feature that I really liked this time is the ‘auto color enhance’, it makes the blue sky bluer, creating a more lively and warm feeling. However, it’s not as ‘real’ (ie. skin color) so you just can’t use it everywhere. Here is the link to the set.
Afterthoughts on Heroes Season 1
The ending of Heroes season 1 happened lightning fast. With almost the whole season leading up to ‘what will happen on the day of the explosion’ at the end, it becomes all of a sudden super quick and before you know, it ended and it’s the beginning of another volume.
The final decision of whether Peter Petrelli can “save the cheerleader, save the world” has shifted from Peter’s control to under Nathan’s. Although Nathan is never a ‘bad’ character in this series, he hasn’t really been ‘good’ either. Especially in the last episode when he was discovered by Peter (Peter can read Nathan’s mind after absorbing Partman’s ability) that he wasn’t planning on doing anything to stop Peter from exploding. So WHAT makes him all of a sudden becomes aware that he can save the world and actually did? Overall Heroes’ season 1 ended in a way much better than, say, Lost’s….. which made me even more lost season after season!
Being Uncle Andrew
Just this passed Sunday I just became Uncle Andrew as my sister gave birth to Victor Kie. There is a special warm feeling as I hear this great news over the phone from my Dad. First time being an Uncle, I already want to spoil Victor with loads of toys and things that I see as I go into malls and shops! I still don’t know what MY responsibilities are as an Uncle… I certainly don’t mind golfing and drinking wine with Victor… but I guess that just have to wait!
Good match in taste of home Decor
Stephanie and I have been home searching for more than a month now (probably looked at more than 30 houses). Today we’ve saw a open house which I can say matches what we need and our taste almost perfectly. However, the drawbacks are … fairly major… the side of the house is next to a road which in turn is next to a high voltage power line. This ‘high’ voltage power line isn’t as ‘high’ as those ones along Hwy 407 (if you live in TO you will know what I am talking about) but still enough to affect the house’s resale value. Anyways, the only reason why I want to blog this is because altough it seems to be hard to have what the seller is selling matches so well with what the buyer want to buy… but it’s not IMPOSSIBLE as this house comes really close! So, don’t give up, give it time and KEEP LOOKING.
Canon 40D
It’s probably what a lot of people are waiting for. The new Canon 40D has just been released last month and it sure looks impressive. A better image processor, the 3 inch LCD display, Live LCD view, 10 MPixel, Vibrating auto clean, the list goes on and on… DSLR photography has yet made another step towards a more user friendly and everyone can shoot photoes like a PRO! Of course, with still a very expensive price tag. Despite all these improvements on the 40D, I am still very impressed with my 30D and for what it can do, it still very much serves what I need from it… except that I do need some better lenses and accessories… but that’s already out of the talks of the main camera body. Another thing I noticed when I was trying my co-worker’s Canon 28-105 lense on my 30D, is that Stabilizer (IS) on the lense is definitely a must have especially if you are in dark places.
Shirly Kwan at Casino Rama
My second ever Chinese singer concert attended in Toronto since I migrated here some 20 years ago. The atmostphere just seems funny when watching a HK pop star in Canada. Got free tickets from Dad’s friend so cannot complain.
my first ‘crazy’ autostich from trip to N. Michigan
Finally getting some time blogging. Earlier this month I went to a golf resort located in N. Michigan with the Lee’s (Mum’s side family) for couple days. It definitely isn’t easy to organize such a trip with 15 people! We spent one day at Mackinac Island which is where the movie “Somewhere in Time” was filmed. It is one of my favourite movie (yeah it’s quite old but I just love the setting and the story!) and too bad we just didn’t have enough time to tour around the Grand Hotel … Oh well I am sure Steph and I will find some time to visit the island again.
The Thunder Bay Resort has a mediocre golf course but the chalet is new and very clean and nice. Highly recommended. I’ve used AutoStitch to stitch up 17 photos together conforming my first ‘crazy’ stitch pic. Just look at the first pic in the set of pics I’ve taken for this trip. Of course, you are more than welcome to view and comment on the rest of the pics in the set!
Autostich for panoramic photography
One of the most powerful and useful tools for photo editing is autostich. Not only it’s free, but it can create really stunning and beautiful panoramic effects. The most amazing thing is, it’s really easy to use if you follow these tips:
- always take lots of pictures for backup
- should allow lots of overlap
- fix shutter and aperture once you find the right setting to use
If you can follow these easy steps when shooting, autostich has a 0 learning curve.
House shopping has finally started
Despite the expensive market currently in TO, Steph and I have finally started to look at the housing market. Of course, with our current buying power, there really isn’t much to look at. It all comes down to what you can sacrafice… and I can already foresee that this will be the biggest hurdle in coming up with the decision. Anyways, this has been quite an enjoyable process so far (for me, not sure if it is for Steph), afterall it’s a house to call our own!
Heidi & Tom’s Wedding
2007′s HPY Wedding concluded with Heidi & Tom’s beautiful Wedding at their Scarborough church. Good luck with the Wedding planning with the HPYs that are getting married in 2008!!! You can check out the photos I took at Heidi and Tom’s Wedding.
1st Anniversary in Tobermory
Steph and I just recently spent our first anniversary (weekend of June 24, 2007) in Tobermory, Ontario. It’s a small town at the north tip of the Bruce Peninsula about 4 hours away from Toronto by car. As expected it was a very beautiful town with lots of good trails (the Bruce Trail) along the shoreline of Georgian Bay. Weather wise it was overcast on Saturday but on Sunday it was just gorgeous so we have nothing to complain about. One of the things we noticed was that there are no chain stores in Tobermory so don’t expect to find a McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s within 70km of the area. Here are some pics taken for the trip.
Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar
My first time to Jaime Kennedy wine bar (have yet to try the restaurant) tonight. It’s located right in downtown Toronto and not at all hard to find meter parking on a weeknight. Great decor and atmostphere for a after work chit-chat and of course, have some tapas and wine at the same time. Vincent, Kwong and myself shared a total of 7 tapas and 5 wine. Please visit GINI’s blog to look at the tasting note of some of these wines we tried. As for the tapas, they are around $10 each and to my surprise, quite generous in size (in general one should order 2 tapas per person). Jamie Kennedy hilights a open kitchen and we sat right at the ‘kitchen’ bar so we are able to see how some of our tapas are cooked. Another enjoyable night out.
Kathy & Michael’s Wedding pics are now up!
Once again another gorgeous sunny day for a HPY Wedding! Congrats Kathy and Michael! Check out the pictures I took from Kathy and Michael’s Wedding. Enjoy!
Improving on the Onion Soup
Yesterday at Joanne’s b-day lunch at Le Papillon, I had one of the best onion soup. Thinking that it is much tastier than the one I made about a month ago, I made another attempt tonight to see what I could maybe improve on. After reading a couple of onion soup recipes online I found out that they are very similar with simple ingredients like onions/wine/brooth. Tonight what I did different from last time:
- I added minced garlic
- adding wine with the caramelizd onion still in the stockpot
- less salt as we all find it a bit salty last time
- no bread (later I found out there NEEDS to be bread to float and support the cheese when baking
The result was better than last time but still not as good as the one I had yesterday at Le Papillon. The taste is still different and I am quite sure that restaurant has added some other secret ingredients to make it so delicious… It was $7.50 for a small one.
Dell’s Order Status
I have recently ordered a Nintendo DS bundle from Dell and really can’t stop myself from noting it down here. I will not mention how I still haven’t received the product after 3 weeks but here is what I am trying to show you. QUESTION: Try to find the true ship date from these screen captures for my order. The answer is at the bottom of THIS POST:
ANSWER: It’s not shipped.
My-Chau & Ed’s Wedding pics are now up!
Congrats! My-Chau and Edward’s Wedding pics are now up. It was just a beautiful day! Well basically it’s following the HPY Wedding trend of beautiful sunshine on day of the Wedding! So Kathy/Michael, Heidi/Tom, you have nothing to worry about. Enjoy!
May 5, 2007 – GINI 11
It was the 11th meeting for GINI already! This time we had quite a good turn out 11 people gini people compared to only 7 at GINI 10. Here are some pictures of the meeting and it also includes some pics of Vincent’s private cellar — GINI 11
homemade Scone with homemade Devonshire cream
It’s such a nice day outside today but Steph has decided to stay indoor to fix me some scone for a afternoon tea. She made both the scone and Devonshire cream herself. We wouldn’t call it a great success as we found the cream too light and also too watery (something we can improve on next time). As for the scone, I think it tasted exactly like the ingredients that Steph used-> flour/heavy cream/butter/egg mixed together (recipe from www.joyofbaking.com). The texture comes close but overall seems like it’s just missing something from a tasty fresh scone from 4 Seasons. All in all a very good attempt and I had 3 of these this afternoon
Angel hair, Shrimp and Italian Sausage with Mustard Sauce
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Another Sunday night with me being the Chef. This cooking thing isn’t so bad when you do it about once a week! I stole this recipe from allrecipes.com which I know Steph and I will definitely love if it turns out well. Well, we loved it! |
Onion Soup
| This is supposed to be fennel/onion soup but I couldn’t get fennel from Loblaws! So this has become 100% onion soup tonight. Another recipe from Barefoot Contessa. I find I’ve put too much thyme leaves and somehow it is a tiny bit sour (probably from the wine) and I’ve put too little cheese… but nevertheless quite a successful turn out! |  |
GINI Wine Tasting Weblog created!
Today marks the birth of our GINI Wine Tasting Weblog!! Please visit often to look at our latest GINI wine tasting notes and events!
Niagara region winery visit
Went to the following wineries in the Niagara Region yesterday: Daniel Lenko, FlatRock Cellars, Malivoire
All of these wineries produce Pino Noir which is probably due to the micro-climate and also the terroir of that sub-region we visited in Niagara (you can see that at Tawse in the pic below).
Out of all these wineries Daniel L. is probably the smallest and they don’t sell to LCBO so they take a bigger profit margin. Despite the size of the vineyard Daniel is quite friendly and he poured pretty much all of his >10 wines for us at no cost. I ended up buying a 2004 Cabernet Franc for $24.95 at Daniel Lenko’s winery.
We also went to Tony De Luca for dinner. Click here for some pics that Steph has taken.
2003 Chateau Monbousquet Saint-Emillion Grand Cru
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Another night drinking and dining with Vincent and Naomi. Here is the wine we had tonight. Let’s see how Vincent’s tasting note work out in google in couple of days:
Medium purple. Already showing good amount of black berry, toasty oak and tobacco. Initial entry is quite tannic but it did soften a bit over time. Open knit and controlled alcohol, it doesn’t show any overripe character from this hot vintage. Tannic medimum finish which can use couple of years. Overall pretty nice except the mid palate is a little hollow. More concentration would make this excellent. 92 |
Chicken Chili
| I am a lazy person so I am not so interested in cooking. But tonight I’ve decided to follow the Barefoot Contessa Parties! cookbook and here, take a look at this chicken Chili I’ve made. It actually tasted pretty good. |  |
NYC photos done!
You can check them out here now!
NYC Trip (March 24-27, 2007)
Just came back from Steph and I’s first short trip after we got married. It’s been quite an exiciting 4 days and I must say very ‘productive‘. We have accomplished (or should I say ‘I have accomplished‘) almost everything we wanted to do. Things that were on the to-do:
SHOPPING
- we were able to find ourselves in SoHO 3 out of 4 days we were in the city. This is definitely the area you want to be in when it comes to shopping. Shops from famous designers to more economical buys can all be found here
- Out of all the shops we visited, I find we spent the most time in Uniqlo Flagship store which is what I describe as Japanese Giordano. They sell good quality, simple casual wear. And the best thing about it, is it sells for a reasonably low price
- and of course, I must mention that I’ve finally bought a winter jacket for myself to replace what Steph refers to as the ‘Grey-Red-Black’ Bubble jacket. Finally, Steph is going to stop asking me to throw that away
SIGHTSEEING
- Top of the Rock (efellar) should be the highlight of this trip. Just to let all you photographers (whether you are semi-pro/pro/amateur) out there know, when you are up at the top, you cannot use a tripod. Apparently Rock has made a deal with the group of ‘Kodak photographers’ not to let anyone use a tripod atop their building. As a result, when I was caught using one (I didn’t know until a security walks by), I ended up talking to several of their managers. What amazes me is that they don’t have any intention to put up on their website or any signs at the site to inform people on this at all! At the end, I got a full refund…
- Brooklyn Bridge is another place we went. I specifically wanted to walk across the bridge from the Brooklyn side back to the Manhattan side so we can enjoy the Manhattan view the whole time we were walking. I also requested to do this in the morning so the sun will still be on the east side so for the pictures we take (Manhattan) the sun will be behind us. Things did work out as planned except for Steph was a bit disturbed by the wind blowing at us… (it wasn’t really that bad)
- B&H is definitely more sightseeing than shopping. I have never had this experience before when it comes to buying stuff. When you first walk in, you are immediately lost. Without knowing where to go even when you know what you want to buy, you have to be directed by one of their many shop consultants who are your only hope and luckily, they are everywhere. I wanted to get a Canon prime lens and also a flash light. Simple, right? I ended up lining up for 3 separate lines before I can walk out the store. One line to consult their behind the counters consultants (they are the experts) who brings out what you want. By the way, after you’ve decided on buying the product you cannot bring it over to the checkout area yourself, they have to put it in a blue box and some delivery workers in the store will deliver these blue boxes from the consulting area to the checkout area. The second line is for payment (which in turn split into credit card line and cash line) and last line is the pickup area where you can finally get the product you’ve paid for
- Broadway Show. The only show we were interested in that has the day discount was Chicago but it was only discounted at 25% off comparing with most of the others at 50%. We didn’t watch it
St. Patrick’s CathedralGrand Central StationNew York Public Library
FOOD
- We went to Fiamma in SoHO our first night and it was just beautiful. It’s Italian but Stephanie had her best Foie Gras — Fegato. We openned a bottle of Rosso di Montalcino – La Fortuna 2003 which was also quite delicious to go with the meaty Ravioli that I had
- After trying 3 different Japanese Ramen places (2 from the last time we were in the City), it was quite easy for Steph and I to come up with the winner -> Sapparo on 49th between 7th Ave and Broadway. It’s so good that we have to go there TWICE this trip, both lunches to have exactly (almost) the same thing. I personally recommend the Miso ramen because I do find the other two (Shio/Shoyu) brooth a bit too salty. We also had their typical but very authentic Chahan and Gyoza
- L’ecole (The French Culinary Institute) do have good value but it’s not on my recommendation list. The wine pairing was also disappointing… The waitress that served us also wasn’t doing her best…
- Onigashima makes their own soba which is either by hand or by machine. Really tasty and authentic
You can find more links for this NYC trip –here–