New York City: January 2011

From Friday, January 14, 2011, through Saturday, January 22, 2011, I went to New York for reasons that shall remain undocumented. I visited Di Yin and her parents, staying at their apartment in Forest Hills, Queens.

During the visit, I always ate at their house, eating Di Yin's mom's home cooking, which was definitely good stuff but she always cooked too much. Eating with Di Yin's dad is funny--no matter how long we sit at the table, he often forgets to eat.

Before my flight to New York City, I had time to wander around the part of SFO's Museum in Terminal 3. The main exhibit in this terminal was Second Chances: Folk Art Made from Recycled Remnants. It was neat: wire sculptures, dresses made from Tootsie Roll or Mary Jane candy wrappers, a chair made by weaving together aluminum from cans, and duck decoys made from painted milk cartons and cardboard.

My flight to New York was one of the easiest flights I ever took. I barely felt the landing. I grabbed a taxi to the apartment. The taxi had a GPS in it so I could watch where the driver went and make sure he took a reasonable route. I wonder if these are standard in taxis nowadays. (I generally don't ride taxis.)

Di Yin and I flew home to California in first class, perhaps the second time in my life that I've ever been in first class (and the first time that I paid for it). I was looking forward to the 180-degree recline seats, but the airline swapped the plane out at the last minute and I ended up with normal business class seats: spacious but not much of a recline. Ah, well. :(

At least we got good food. In fact, the airline even gave us a printed menu. My meal included: mixed nuts, shrimp accompanied by soba noodles, a salad (choice of dressing), bread (choice of type of roll), an entree (four choices; I selected the cheese ravioli in tomato cream sauce; the entree turned out to be lighter than I expected), and an ice cream sunday (choice of topping). The last was enormous and too much to finish.