Showing posts with label Asian/Pacific. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asian/Pacific. Show all posts

07 May 2013

Rumphool in Woodside

📷 #Rumphool in #Woodside, 2011. #ThaiCuisine #RooseveltAvenue #winter #color #ThaiHomeKitchen

📆 Lunch from Rumphool, 57-17 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside, 2 February 2011. (Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.)

More of my pictures shot that day can be viewed on Facebook.

(Also available on Tumblr.)

http://www.instagram.com/p/VLcmJQtW6S/

24 December 2012

Cheese Cake Plan

📷 The “Cheese Cake Plan” is the plan on which I want to be! 🍴 #signage #misspelling #Engrish #cheesecake #dessert #cheesecakeplan #cake (at Ichi Umi)

📆 My birthday dinner at Ichi Umi 一海, 6 East 32 Street, Murray Hill, Manhattan, 21 December 2009. (Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.)

More of my pictures of that event can be viewed on Facebook.

(Also available on Tumblr.)

http://www.instagram.com/p/TmcKaJtW0h/

18 December 2012

“She Did It, Officer!”: Glamorous Mannequin Lineup

📷 “She did it, officer!”: glamorous mannequin lineup. #JacksonHeights #NYC #sari #mannequin #vishal #SouthAsianEthnicGroups

📆 Vishal Sari Palace, 73-12A 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, 17 December 2012. (Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.)

Also available on Tumblr.

http://www.instagram.com/p/TWd1KhNWwF/

07 December 2012

Shrine of Sorts

📷 Shrine of sorts at Thakali Kitchen, Jackson Heights. ☸ #Buddha #shrine #NYC #JacksonHeights #ThakaliKitchen #Thakali #NonResidentNepali #QueensLove #Buddhism #NepaliPeople (at Mustang Thakali Kitchen)

📆 Thakali Kitchen, 74-14 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, 7 December 2008. (Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.)

More of my pictures shot that day can be viewed on Facebook.

http://www.instagram.com/p/S43HTjNW96/

Last modified 13 December 2012.

03 April 2012

Thanks again to my friend and former coworker Mayouko for another great dinner party, a tradition in which I have participated nine years.

Neglected ☹

The friend who had been entrusted four days earlier to invite me had neglected to do so and telephoned me at 21:15 when the dinner party was already in progress. My inability to leave my home in any reasonable time frame, the significant subway delays I faced, the uncharacteristically cold night and the walk from the subway station meant I arrived at her place after midnight after a number of guests had already left. I removed my sneakers while I waited for the door to be answered to discover nearly every other guest was wearing shoes.

Carbohydrate concerns

The hostess was very pleased to see me and made another batch of beef possibly primarily for me. I couldn’t have the traditional sugary sauce, so she put salt and pepper on the meat and it was very good. I had some of her pork and cabbage dish (presumably made without sugar, unlike coleslaw which it resembled) and seafood and cucumber salad (sunomono 酢の物) which a guest assured me was only seasoned with mayonnaise. (Most of the recipes for it I now see online include sugar.) Even though I was drinking a dark beverage (diet root beer) in a big cup, I mistakenly picked up a light‐colored beverage in a small cup and downed the rest of someone’s likely alcoholic beverage. (This and the later Diet Crush discovery may have sabotaged my diet.)

Chat

I met Mila Jam who was wearing her sensational shoes she had bought fewer than twenty‐four hours earlier. J.J.’s dog calmly sat on his lap dressed as a huge strawberry. A friend and I were talking about unusual food, particularly insects, when he abruptly asked me what celebrity I find sexy, apparently changing the subject. Distracted, I came up with Çağatay Ulusoy and Adam Levine (אדם נח) on short notice, so he asked if I would have sexual relations with one of them in a big vat of live cockroaches if it aroused him and were the only circumstance under which he’d have sex with me. In another discussion, Laverne used some well‐paid entertainment professional as an example of someone who makes “down loot.”

Leaving

Little by little, guests started leaving. The last three guests and I cleaned up and left together, and it was just too late and cold to do anything else so I got into Second Avenue station and fled home. I usually ride the second car from the last when traveling home but I kept rejecting car after car because each was full of homeless people. I got near the middle of the train and finally settled on a car with only two homeless people in it who were both on the other side. Another passenger and I smiled to one another as he saw me looking ahead through the cars and seeing endless homeless people.

Because I am literally months—and in some cases, years—behind in publishing my pictures online, I offer this picture from a 2009 dinner party when she served the same thing.

Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam. Mayouko’s dinner party, 27 May 2009.

Previously

• Last modified 12 April 2012.
• Versions of this article are reproduced at elyaqim.tumblr.com/post/20449678288 and webcitation.org/66fYgJXhb
• Additional comments may be available on Google+, Tumblr, Twitter or FriendFeed (1, 2, 3, 4).

09 January 2010

From Facebook Wall to Surface Web, 20–26 December 2009.

▴ Pictures of my Flushing adventure to 중국집 Chinese House Restaurant, 한양마트 HanYang Mart, 旺角 Corner 28 and Golden Mall. —26 December { }

▴ My pictures of the 2009 North American blizzard in western Queens. —25 December {}

▴ …feels this guy is sexy but not much of a singer. Merry Christmas only to those from Catholic or Protestant families. —24 December (The Kai Chronicles on YouTube) { , }

Qazax (Kazak) tənbur/qopuz/lute soloist with a pretty video. —24 December (larealitegothique on YouTube) { }

Nate “Blunty” Burr discusses his Australian pronunciation and inadvertently mentions Mountain Jews. —24 December (Nate “Blunty” Burr on YouTube) { }

▴ …no longer allows any Facebook friend to see photos in which he is tagged if the privilege isn’t reciprocated. Those affected feel relieved. —23 December { }

▴ …wishes all his friends a happy HumanLight. —23 December (Wikipedia) { , }

▴ …had a meal yesterday that could not have been as delicious as the friends who joined him. (Not to imply he ate the friends, as he did not.) —22 December { }

▴ …received so many birthday notes on his Facebook wall that he must click “Older Posts” thrice to see them all. He thanks all the authors. ♡ —20 December { }

• A version of this article is reproduced at webcitation.org/5mfQa3SrJ.
• Additional comments on this article may be available on FriendFeed.

19 December 2009

From Facebook Wall to Surface Web, November 2009.

▴ My pictures of the vigil, Hudson River Park Pier 45, and “optional mass,” the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, in memory of Jorge Steven López Mercado, Greenwich Village, 22 November 2009. —28 November (Facebook)

▴ …thanks Glenn for a sensational meal last night with such traditional Thanksgiving foods as gumbo and kašk u bâdenjân (کشک و بادنجان‎). —27 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …is too old to know or care about the distinctions between the “Pokémon,” “Digimon” and “Kakimon” (קאַק אים אָן‎). —26 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …came to the conclusion, after insufficient research, that the Czech word kavka (jackdaw) is not related to a name for the Caucasus, Kavkaz. —21 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ Pictures of the Jackson Heights Food Group at 친구네분식 ★ 포차 Friend’s Restaurant and the Cuckoo’s Nest, Woodside. —21 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …wonders which animal you are. —19 November (The Onion, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

☠ And another violent attack on a gay youth…. —19 November (khou.com, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

☠ Another outspoken and non-conforming gay youth has been brutally murdered. We’re fighting for our lives here, people. —18 November (The Baltimore Sun, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ Pictures of “The Fur Ball” at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, Greenwich Village. —17 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …finds this song cute but annoyingly repetitive. But who cares? Look at the wigs in the video instead. (Thanks to Bunny’s ’blog.) —17 November (greymanfilms on YouTube, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …thinks the logo for this snow cone (“gola” گولا) company looks a bit familiar. —16 November (Go·gola India, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ Pictures of Jeff’s (and Laura’s and Chet’s) birthday at Best Fuzhou Restaurant 松柏園福州小吃, Chinatown. —14 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …is glad a télévision series like Nova can teach him about Homo erectus. —14 November (Nova on PBS Video, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …appreciates photography and videography all the more because some art is inherently ephemeral. —13 November (xogml69 on YouTube, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ This is my kind of bar: lots of food and puns available. —12 November (English Whirled Wide on Facebook, Facebook)

▴ My pictures of the premier meeting of the LGBT Equality Coalition of Queens, Bayanihan Filipino Community Center/Philippine Forum, Woodside. —10 November (Facebook)

▴ …envisions a reworking of last year’s hit song into an acoustic Central European–style version called “Polka Face.” —9 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …commemorates the victims of Kristallnacht and thinks something similar could probably happen even nowadays. —9 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …wonders how many of his friends noticed the egregious grammatical errors he made in his last two posts. —7 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …thinks this article has some inaccuracies but nevertheless exemplifies some key reasons I [sic] moved to the neighborhood. —7 November (New York Globe, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …dreamed he had a cat painfully clinging to each of his feet that would scratch and claw all the more if their removal was [sic] attempted. —6 November (Facebook, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ …sometimes just needs some fun pop music. —6 November (seeme96 on YouTube, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ My pictures of New York Bear Den at the Diversity Center of Queens, Alliance Building, Jackson Heights. —4 November (Facebook)

▴ …finds it ironic that brown boobies have white chests. —4 November (Wikipedia, Facebook|FriendFeed, Jaiku|FriendFeed)

▴ My pictures of Halloween at View Bar, Chelsea, as well as some other costumed folk en route. —2 November (Facebook)

▴ My one hundred ninety-one pictures of signs of autumn in Jackson Heights. —2 November (Facebook)

• A version of this article is reproduced at webcitation.org/5m93okSuT.
• Additional comments on this article may be available on FriendFeed.

08 July 2008

U.S. Independence Day 2008

 I wrote on the GLYNY Again Reunion Board how I spent my Independence Day:

The fireworks were pretty blah this year. I viewed them from a rooftop party on the Lower East Side, but the windless, overcast weather meant the smoke from each burst stayed in its place and blocked the view of successive bursts. And it only lasted about twenty minutes with no spectacular finale. If the right-wing fanatics can blame gays for AIDS and the California earthquake because we supposedly incited God’s wrath, then I blame the U.S. government’s evil ways for inciting Mother Nature to remove the spectacle from the Independence Day festivities.
—Untitled post in thread “Happy 4th of July Weekend,” The Official GLYNY Again Reunion Board, 5 July 2008

 Nonetheless, I had a great time. Thanks to Dr. Charles and APANY for the great party. I saw many old friends and met many new friends, but I would be remiss if I did not mention the Web log authors I met there: I Need You, Babe a.k.a. Greg, Richard and comedian Sean Graham: Leader of the Chucklenauts.

Update (9 July): My friend Andrew was also at a rooftop party on the Lower East Side, albeit a different one, and described the fireworks similarly:

it was amazing. we were seriously right under all the fireworks. all the car alarms on the street were going off from the loud noise. it was kool but the smoke from the fireworks wasnt clearing fast enough so it was alittle blocked. it still was amzing.
—Andrew Jonas, “And the Rockets Red Glare…,” Andrew MySpace Blog, 5 July 2008.

A version of this article is reproduced at webcitation.org/5kYviTskE.

22 April 2008

Lobster Canto.

 Like many others, one Chinese restaurant I frequent in Jackson Heights (specifically New Jade Bamboo House 玉竹園, 70-24 35th Avenue) has pictures of various dishes on an overhead menu. The captions to these pictures are in a font size much too large for the space allotted to them, so numerous rather extreme abbreviations are employed. My favorite is Lobster Cantonese Style abbreviated as Lobster Canto, a song I would love to hear.

09 February 2008

Misheard: The huge Korea fair.

 Almost every multilingual person I encounter exhibits the same trait that is the reverse of my own personal experience: They learn to speak a language more or less fluently but have great difficulty imitating the sounds of the new language and instead choose from the repertoire of sounds of their native tongue. This is of course why people speak with accents, and I am fascinated by it. This week, my painter Pablo, who is Ecuadorean, was describing another client of his, and even with repeated utterances, I could not ascertain whether this client was huge or Jewish. (It turned out to be the latter.)

 I overheard Dan, a Romanian-born member of the faculty of the school where I work, talking about the Korea fair taking place downstairs, and images came to my mind of exotic music and costumes (not to mention cute guys), and I momentarily wondered how I would excuse myself from my desk to attend. I was disappointed to figure out it was actually a career fair.

30 June 2007

APANY’s MySpace account was closed but not quite deleted.

 I worked very hard on developing a MySpace presence for the Asian Pacific Alliance of New York (APANY), a struggling not-for-profit organization of gay Asians and Pacific Islanders here in New York City. I was not only the Web master of their profile page, but a force of nature driving all their MySpace–related promotion. I painstakingly typed all the articles from the hard copy of their newsletter into the MySpace Weblog, I created both an event page and calendar listing (which MySpace keeps curiously separate) as well as a bulletin for each upcoming event, I uploaded every possible APANY-related photograph I could find on the Web to picture albums, and I found videos of APANY events online and linked to them in the corresponding Weblog entries. I invited as many APANY members and pageant “royalty” with MySpace accounts as I could find to be our friends, and browsed for every Asian or Pacific gay male and transsexual in the New York City Metropolitan Area (hundreds) and slowly requested their friendships one at a time, a process that took days to finish. Most who checked their accounts before the requests expired seemed to accept, and we soon had over two hundred forty friends, including local gay Asian artists and performers (e.g., Kevin Nadal, Vidur Kapur, Danny Katz, Justin Woo) and major organizations and venues (e.g., the Web, Lucky Cheng’s, the Asian and Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS [APICHA]). Keeping up with friendship requests from genuine parties and spammers alike, as well as the steady stream of new images, videos, messages and events was arduous, but I managed to keep my head above water.

 Then this week I discovered it was all gone. In its place were the words “Invalid Friend ID. This user has either cancelled their membership, or their account has been deleted.” Why was our account closed when other not-for-profit organizations were allowed to keep theirs? I can only speculate: I created event pages and bulletins with large numbers of external links, mostly to other not-for-profit groups or government Websites, precisely during the brief window of time before they introduced their current safer external linking system (redirecting via msplinks.com), but after they had instituted a policy of insisting accounts had been “phished” if there were too many external links in their bulletins and event pages and then forcing the users to change their passwords. As a result, I wound up changing our password about ten times, not knowing this might possibly raise a red flag to the powers at MySpace and indicate a theoretically compromised account ripe for the closing.

 I posted a message in the MySpace forum asking how one might appeal the decision if that were even possible. As one can see by viewing the thread, I got conflicting advice by two persons who fancied themselves informed on the topic. (One wrote “nope no appeals”; the other “Youi [sic] can appeal….”) Both thought getting the account reinstated to be little short of impossible. I don’t know how likely getting our account reinstated would be, but I strongly suspect that MySpace could easily do so if I could only catch their attention and gain their sympathies. Here’s why:

Our social network is intact. Our friends’ respective numbers of friends did not decrease by one when our account was closed. (I personally still have 169 friends, although the number should have decreased when APANY’s account was closed.) Our Weblog also looks different depending on whether or not I am logged in, so I am being treated as if I were still APANY’s friend.
Our Weblog is intact. As I mentioned above, our friends can still view our Weblog. Those who were not our friends see the Weblog set to “private” (not “deleted”).
Our pictures are intact. For the time being, our main profile page can still be viewed at Google’s cached copy of the page, and the embedded slideshow still functions. As the slideshow accesses the original images, they all must still be in place.

 I wrote a letter to MySpace. If they respond, I’ll let you know. I also wouldn’t mind if others wrote to MySpace at this location and summarized this article and pleaded our case with them. If enough MySpace members write, perhaps they’ll flip the necessary switch and reopen our crucial promotional tool.