My New York experience begins now

On the morning of my scheduled flight to New York:

• more snow comes pouring down into Ohio, and there's 2 inches of snow on the ground
• when I arrive at Cleveland Hopkins, there are SEAS of people, all queuing up [oops]
• Fortunately, I spot the self check-in counter [Yay!]
• I flash my still-wet boarding pass and wait at my plane's designated gate. They change the gate at the last minute. The jostling and hobbling road-race for the closest seats to the gate begins 50 feet away.
• The usual de-icing begins. I have spent 1 hour being stuck in a cramped seat with a low ceiling, and we still managed to do a decent imitation of a rock on the runway.
• Smooth flight [Surprise!]
• Smooth landing [Yay!]
• Surprise! There are no free gates at LaGuardia, and we have to do our rock imitation again.
• And again. An hour passes. What was supposed to be a 1 hour flight has turned into a 3 hour leg and back cramp.
• We get a gate!!! Aand, there's an airport vehicle stuck in the snow. And we wait.
• The vehicle stumbles off, and we wait. [humph!]
• The airport runway gate leeches to the flying sardine can, and we all huff our way off the plane, right into a bunch of sour-looking passengers hoping to get on the petulant aircraft. I hear kids behind me piping up with "Thank you for flying Continental Express and by the way, you've missed your connecting flights."
• As I pound my lonely way to the Ground Transportation area, I call to summon my reserved SuperShuttle ride to the hotel. And I wait.
• Hispanic gentlemen show up and cart away passengers.
• Eventually, my hispanic guy shows up, and ushers me into the van. I am immediately accosted by some guy's knee and have to scrunch all the way to the end of the Van-sofa in yet another cramped position.
• We careen our way [no kidding!] to my hotel, and I find that I absolutely have to step into a deep icy pothole in front of the hotel.
  

But! All is not lost! I have a room, and it's clean! and bathrooms are available!
This here's the view from the doorway - the turqoise thing is me bed.
And the view of the phone and 'desk' And the in-the-wall LCD TV. Note the "Which Toilets Are Free" indicators above the door.
And, lastly, the sink, and the closet.
This will be my nightly existence, where I lay my weary head and stinking feet, hiding from mythical New York hoodlums who prowl the streets in search of juicy, fresh, naive prey.

Upgrader of Seats ..

.. I am not. I am extremely unsuccessful in my paltry (exPectorate) and pitiful attempts to upgrade my puny Sardine class NorthWurst airline seat to a Busyness class seat. Apparently:

• I need 6000 more airmiles
• There are no more business class seats available (really meh?)
• I have the same chances of landing an upgrade as I had of winning the USD 316 Million Dollar Ohio lottery

So, I had to settle for:

• A pic of two early bird Canada Geese staking out their Springtime nesting area
• A pic of an extremely fat Squirrel (yes I know I promised, but he was so close by) taking shelter from the sudden snow storm, behind a tree. Wind was blowing the snow from right to left . Unfortunately, the snow was too fine for the camera to pick up.
  If I were a Native American, I might have said that this was a PHAT squirrel (Pretty Hairy And Tasty)... [ahem]
• Attempting to track an desperate but errant parcel that DHL fouled up. I made the mistake of going to the singapore site for customer service. I called the 1-800 number there, foolishly thinking it was a US number. [Ring] [Click] "Hello Baby! I'm sorry, all our girls are .." [HANG UP HANG UP]
  
• Doodling on 'my' whiteboard, leaving this blog's web URL for my co-workers in Cleveland, suddenly bereft of my dazzling personality and Pepper's scintillating chatter. The peanut/poop/Dutch clog-like thingy is my best whiteboard interpretation of Singapore.
  The silly Chinese Name translation is a joke, based on the fun Pepper and I had, translating our Cleveland Colleagues' names phonetically, into Mandarin.
  For instance, our supervisor is "Jiao Na Sen, aka Summoner of coastal trees".
  Another colleague is "Jie Ni Fu, aka Outstanding Intimate Woman", who could also be known as "Evergreen Rainbow of Increasing Clamor". You get the idea...

So, goodbye Ohio! I shall miss you and your crazy weather! (where else can you experience a 50 degree fahrenheit change in temperature in 24 hours?)

Scenes of the Day

Two types of morning views...

This one on here was taken when it was warm and dry.This one one was when it was cooling down, and starting to rain snow, or snow rain.



On an extremely clear day Almost like the default Windows XP background.. and all three from my apartment's balcony..

And here's more from this morning - two days of really warm weather (60F/17C), with melting snow, then last night, we had a big thunderstorm and then SNOW again this morning! Poor earthworms were so confused.
A carnage of earthworm corpses, all drowned, frozen, squashed, dismembered.

Parts of Caution Lake were defrosted, and re-starting to freeze over. The mallard couple are still hoping for spring:
Not to mention them two geese near the far end..

Farewell lunch for Pepper and me! We finally get to try the place that was snowed under before!
Here's the inside view

where I ate
YUM!

Boo Whoo Hoo!!!

Boo Hoo!

Winter's over.
Spring's almost here.
It's almost time to leave Ohio. Goodbye Helpful Tech Commies! Thanks for the West Side Market excursion!
Thank you for lunch at the Great Lakes Brewing Co.!



Whoo Hoo!
No more smelling of charred hydrocarbons.
No more stinky feet.
No more tuneless yodelling.
No more smelling of rancid cuts of pork.
No more damp kitchen floors.
No more worrying about my wok.
Hello New York!

Scenes from Today

Here's some interesting stuff I saw today, on my now-daily lunchtime circumnavigation of the office premises.

What looks like a snowed-in bunch of Flintstones-era cars is actually some performance art by the office's snow-plough guy.

Big, loud honkers - the resident flock of Canada Geese. I also managed to get a video, in addition to Goose Poo on the soles of my shoes.


It's cold today. A few days ago, it was quite sunny: The first three days of this week, the cold front is back, and along with sub-zero celcius temps, some snow.

During lunch today, my smelly roomie (see the previous blog entry) unveiled his crappy smelling lunch and elicited some spirited responses from us all. Thankfully, everyone voted to evict him from the table, because of the stink. Preserved Bamboo shoot normally doesn't smell that bad. I think maybe he used the brine from the can. Otherwise, it could be a chemical reaction with bamboo shoot and tomato.

Bad news is, there are some more leftovers. :-(

The odour of an Abomination

There I was, sitting innocently on my armchair, waiting for my roasted chicken, red potato and sweet yellow corn to finish baking to perfection. I can smell the pepper and garlic slowly succumbing to the gentle heat, infusing the tender, fresh meat with tendrils of fragrance and delicate flavour.

In comes roomie, who starts chopping up preserved bamboo shoot, and raw meat and Idaho potatoes. I figure that it's one of his Myanmese recipes, so, fine.

At last, my scrumptious meal is ready! I transfer the succulent items from the roasting pan to my plate, and draw a knife from the block. Then I notice that the knife is wet. Then I notice that the serrated edges have something white all along the edge. Close inspection reveals - raw pork and pork fat!! ARRRRRGGGHHH. Roomie drawls "Ayah, I used dar nife".

And proceeds to pick off the meat off with his fingertips.
And almost puts the knife back into the block. A withering glare prompts him to wash the knife in his usual noisy plate-banging throat-clearing fashion.

A couple of deep breaths later, I'm happily eating my carefully prepared dinner, and then I smell it.
Tomato-based pork dish braising itself with garlic, onions, pepper and possibly dark soya sauce, with one special mystery ingredient. I think it's preserved bamboo shoot.

Knowledgable Asians (or those who know how to cook Asian dishes) may know what over-boiled preserved bamboo shoot smells like. With the combination above, it smells like UNWASHED PIG INTESTINE, heavily marinated in White Peppercorn.

Somebody please kill me now.

Disconnected in Ohio

Thank you Bridgestreet, "Corporate Housing Made Easy". Maybe they should change their motto to "Making Multiple Screw-Ups"...

• Yesterday, 14 entire hours without Cable TV or Internet access. Was forced to take out a book and READ! The Torture, the Pain! The Inconvenience of Sequential Information Access! I was forced to sleep early. So Medieval!
  
• Pepper's unmentionable underthings keep getting fondled (or maybe even modelled) every time Housekeeping invade the apartments
• Fire alarms go off when water pipes burst, or when people open their doors too hard. 4 so far, and counting..(as of March 6th)
  
• Housekeeping keeps replacing Pepper's clean, bleached bedsheets with stinky, yellowed ones.
• When Pepper and I first got the apartment complex, we had no way of getting into the building. Our roomies were unlisted in the directory, and of course, our keys and access cards were in the apartments already...
• Housekeeping took away the dishcloths they provided (after we asked for some), so I'm currently using a handtowel.
  
• They arrange for a Cleveland Tour 4 weeks after we get there. Thanks!
• Pepper is constantly barraged by a sucksaphonist in the apartment above hers, who daily-gaily mangles her once-favorite songs (it's Bridgestreet's fault for choosing such lousy apartment complexes).
• Sharing an apartment with an odour-generating roomie, whose feet smell so bad, I have to spray his footprints with an Extra-Strength anti-bacterial cleaning spray.
  

Thankfully, the wonderful folks at the office more than made up for our travails. They've brought us to concerts, and out to wonderful meals with warm company. In fact, we recently had our first breakfast meeting at Original Pancake House.

So there's one more concert coming up and a group lunch at Abuelo's (or West Side market). Yay!

For my readers outside of Ohio, the weather's warming up.
This is Caution Lake, a few days ago when temps were around freezing:
And two days ago, with temps slightly above freezing:
Later on, I'll show you how many geese have returned (only to find themselves freezing again this weekend)..