Year of the Dog

My crazy friend Pablo was in town, so we went to dance with the lions in Chinatown. It was a drizzly but another unseasonably warm afternoon, and the colors of the streamers shot out in the grey sky were being washed out in the rain, creating colorful paddles everywhere. It was fun afternoon, but we still missed the sound of fire crackers they used to scare us all over the place in the New Year.

Yesterday a couple with stars painted on their face wondered in to have dinner. They told me about this Idiotarod shopping cart race by hundreds of costumed people, which may explain why there were so many police in the neighborhood. This city is so much fun! When people ask me if I plan to live here forever, I always says yes with a conviction, even though I didn't race in a costume pulling a stolen shopping cart yesterday.

Yuri finished her work Friday, since her busy last semester at the college is starting. It was sad, but that's the way it is. They come and go, unfortunately. Restaurants have very fast turnover. I'm lucky if they stay for a year. Customers come and go also, although most of them come back sooner or later. A longtime loyal customer Ali came to pick up her favorite ginger tofu the other night, before she left the neighborhood. "It's sad to leave, but we need to get a bigger place," she said, rubbing her round 5-month belly. Thanks to my friend Noah, I made some new friends from fancy Rivington Hotel this week, who are already sending people over my way. I think out of towners would definately enjoy our locally friendly little restaurant on Suffolk.
on january 29, 2006 @ 09:04 pm [link]

no more milk

It suddenly occured to me that my cat may be lactose intolerant. Why didn't I ever think of that?! I didn't always give her milk, because when I was growing up we always had a bowl of milk out for her. Last month I was giving her milk at night before I go to bed, since she lovesit, and she almost always woke me up with her whiny belly aching kind of meow every morning. So early like at 7 or 6 o'clock, sometimes even earlier. I noticed she hasn't been doing that lately. Then I realized that I haven't been giving her milk. I said, she must be lactose intolerant! And I thought it was really funny- then Kathy confirmed with me that cats can be lactose intolerant, especially when older. I did some research and found out most cats are lactose intolerant! Quite fascinating. Milk also has very little to no nutritinal value for cats, they say. It's supposed to be kitty junk food. So my kitty had some junk food and had bellyache in the morning. Poor thing. But no more junk for my kitty.
on january 27, 2006 @ 12:44 am [link]

No pants 2k6

Kathy sent me email hoping I wasn't one of the eight people who were arrested wearing no pants on subway yesterday. She just heard on David Letterman. I was considering participating in this silly event, but worried that I was going to have my period any minute, I chickened out. Therefore I wasn't arrested pantless. But they did it again! Read it here. It's really hilarious. You'll love New York all over again.
on january 24, 2006 @ 01:13 am [link]

New Year's coming - again!

Yesterday on my weekend long run, I was blessed with the sight of Chinese Lions dancing under Manhattan Bridge. Luner New Year is approaching. Two red and a white lions were rehearsing their New Year dance. Colors in Chinatown are intensifying in preparation for the New Year. They gave me a bunch of little red money pouches at a Chinese supermarket. Rikako is back from her vacation, just in time as our business begin to pick up after holiday slowdown. We've been having unseasonably warm weather. I sometimes miss piercing cold air and powder snow that covers all the grey asphalt which surrounds us.
on january 24, 2006 @ 12:39 am [link]

It's a boy!

Our new help arrived. After running the restaurant by all girls crew for over 6 months, we got a boy! He's tall and can reach places the rest of us can't. He'll be probably banging his head into the microwave shelf more than the rest of us. We are two weeks into 2006 and I feel good changes are coming to SOY. Still patiently waiting for the liquor license.

Sometimes I look into the statistics log and see where people wonder into our website. Obviously some people arrive here by chance, because of all the crazy things that go into this 'restaurant blog.' A search for 'HO Cakes' definitely brings you here. Sometimes even for my spelling mistake- if you search for 'manupilative' you may get to SOY diary. Unfortunately also a search for 'diarrhea.com' points to SOY, although the entry had nothing to do with our food. I swear.
on january 18, 2006 @ 07:46 pm [link]

SOY Power

Finally I had the last of the horrible painfull series of gum surgery this morning. Dr. Berger grinned at me, "You are going to miss me!" Jewish doctors are always the funniest. So, I have to endure another week of living on soft tofu and miso soup. How horrible can it be? I won't mind if there was no pain. But it's a lot of pain, lots of Advil and penicillin pills and super sensitivity to hot, cold and sweet. So I won't be able to eat ice cream to cool my pain. No chocolates to soothe my craving. I was thinking the other day that if I ever lose my ability to eat, I don't want to live. But this one will be over. I will be able to eat anything (almost) I want in a few weeks. Until then, lots of softee stuff.

New York City Marathon's official result magazine arrived. And there's a picture of me with SOY headband right at the finish line to prove I've done it! Of course I was looking for my picture flipping the pages, but when I actually found it, I was cracking up. I look content, too. I think people really like to take pictures of me with SOY headband. A year ago TIME magazine took picture of me. This time was Runner's World. Neither of the photos seem to have made the publication, but I still got my picture taken. And how many people do you think got picture taken out of 37,000 runners? I don't have the answer but I assume it wasn't that many.
on january 18, 2006 @ 02:10 am [link]

another passing

The first week of the year had been relatively quiet, but many people enjoyed ozou-ni, Japanese new year soup with mochi rice cake. I came up with an idea of doing a traditional New Year's Day brunch with special celebration food next year. All the things we eat during the new year holidays have meanings, of course for prosperity, health, happiness and such. A Japanese customer said the other day that she was bummed that there was nothing to do on the new year's day, not like back home.

Another sad news just came from home. My uncle passed on. I thought about a sharp pinch I felt in my stomach last night, but he died two days ago, my mother said. Boy, he was a character. I have some video footage of my uncle from the new year 2000. I have to look for it.
on january 9, 2006 @ 01:26 am [link]

in the year 2006

New Year has come. I'm still trying to recover from the very stressful past few weeks, between the transit strike, gum surgery, slow business around the holidays, the party, cooking for the new year, my poor belly-aching cat, crazy neighbor who plays bad 80s pop songs and sings along with them any time of the day, impossibly trying to communicate with the Zipcar people for my unpaid traffic ticket because their car was unregistered (my god, it's such a long story I'm not going to write right now), still trying to get a liquor license with a help of this yet another lawyer who won't listen to you, attempting to deal with the department of buildings to get some document from them but quickly realizing that I couldn't fight this monster and had to hire new professional in the matter, during which the process I travelled uptown to 133rd street to acquire a copy of this ancient handwritten document about this building from over 100 years ago, and a few other more personal matters. I was a bit spaced out on the first day of the year, and decided to go shopping to shake it off. I found a pretty skirt and a sweater and things were looking good again. I still think I need a vacation and wrote to my friend Nuria in Barcelona that I'm thinking of visiting her soon. I still have drinks left from the party and my life is not really all that bad. Not bad at all.
on january 5, 2006 @ 12:39 am [link]