-1 temperatura despite the snow not falling heavy. the wind were getting right to it though and it was even colder.
we spent the whole day indoors, meeting and planning world domination, the longest thinking i’ve ever done about a brand in while and i realized the last time i did this, i was still in advertising. wine and cheese and chocolate were flowing liberally for good measure.
the good thing is that we have to do a send-off to a friend that has the common sense to relocate to california and the balls to let everything do in this economy including his job to pursue the digital gold rush so that he could finance our evil empire. now, that’s augmenting reality.
despite the cold, there is only one option: chinatown.
so we punished ourselves subwaying it and walking around 1o blocks to joe’s ginger at pell street. the food was superb. soup, dimsum, rice, beef, chicken, shells, duck (what else but peking?), shrimp, sweets, tea and tsingtao. the beer was heaven as it was my first since i came back from manila. all for chinatown cheap, but the mastercard moment is that there are no irritating intrusion from the mandarin and contonese-only speaking staff. if you ask for water, you get a glass of water, unlike the norm in the rest of new york where a glass of water is always a sign to deliver the check and the unspoken reminder: “tip generously please aside from the 25% already imputed gratuity as you are a party beyond 5 persons and good riddance fuckers, see you in our overpriced joint soon say, tomorrow, so that this crime could continue?” we stayed a long time in the restaurant until only the hardcore chinese, a few other pinoys, and the in-the-know gweilo (drinking tsingtao in the comfort of a real table with no burden of tipping a dollar per order) being as loud as we can as only the chinese can allow.
going home, there is no choice but to do the penguin walk because the temperatura fell even more. but the hot ‘n sour in my belly and the tsingtao in my veins made everything worth it.
back home, more alcohol and card games until the night spilled into sunday and we realized that it’s already superbowl sunday – a white married man’s excuse to drink copious amounts of alcohol in front of the kids. these kinds of fun, we would gladly join in.
