6 Million Dollar Man

I couldn't afford the 6 Mil so this is what you get for $37,000. I got my stitches out today and now I've got a scar that starts at my heel and goes a 1/3 of the way up my calf. Looks pretty gnarly so I'll spare you from the real nasty photo of what my leg looks like now.
Most of it will be taken out later but it still looks pretty crazy!

Life on Crutches

Life on crutches sucks. The next two months is gonna be a big pain in the ass, I predict. The other day I went to Kmart to get some supplies. I was greeted by a mentally disabled employee who suggested I get one of those electric carts to cruise around the store with. Good idea. While I was waiting for the cart, the guy started to tell me how he became the way he was. Turns out when he was 16 he got jumped by 20 guys. He said the only thing he remembers is a baseball bat coming down on his head, arms and legs. The beating put him in a coma for four and a half years. I guess being on crutches ain’t so bad. In the pocket of his red Kmart vesthe had a picture of his African Gray parrot who can apparently sing almost any Bob Marley song. I told him he should shoot it and put it up on youtube. I’m thinking of going back there to help him do that. I would love to see his parrot sing “No Woman No Cry”.
Didn't think I'd ever be driving one of these. Moma Wu kept trying to jack it from me.
Today I went to The Museum Of Natural History with my lady. She had to push me around in a wheel chair with a bad front wheel. The museum is not as cool as I remembered as a kid. I don’t remember the stuffed animals looking so dusty and fake. The gems where cool and so were the dinosaur fosils but the rooms and rooms full of fake animals were really lame. Seems with the high ticket prices they could at least get someone to dust off those dioramas. I think I’ll be hitting the Met or the Moma sometime this week.
If this was my fibula, it wouldn't have broke.

Break a Leg!

If you read this blog and remember my Slam blog a few weeks ago. I should have taken that as a cue to retire from the sport forever. Two tuesdays ago I was skating to class as I've been doing everyday for the past month and a half. My trucks were loose and I kept telling myself to get a skate key and fix the problem, but I didn't and I ate shit and I broke my fucking ankle. Never having broken a bone before, it hurt pretty bad. I laid in the road for a minute trying to get my mind to get my body to do something but I was frozen there. After the initial shock, I dragged myself out of the road and in between two parked cars. My left ankle bukled outwards, so much so that my inside of ankle bone scrapped the ground and dug a good piece of skin out. I was hoping I didn't break it but when I tried to rotate my ankle I saw it flop and buldge under the skin, I knew I was fucked. After catching my breath, I called my girlfriend, Lisa who was still sleeping and she ran over to my rescue. She got me a cab and got me to the hospital.
I finally got to experience the problems with the American medical system first hand. I appreciate Hong Kong medical services so much more now. There was almost no one in the emergency room but it still took six to seven hours to get me out of there.I ended up seeing a couple more doctors and in the end I had to have an operation this past tuesday. Now I've got a bunch of pins and plates and screws in my foot now. Half of which will be removed a few months down the line. Aside from all the pain I was more bummed out I was not able to finish my last week of class. Oh well. Here are some pics. Don't worry nothing nasty, although I could post those too.
That's the x-ray of the front view of the left foot. That's the break circled in red the fibula is trashed. The blue is the direction my ankle went, not natural. Notice how the x-ray techinician can't spell. Or maybe it's German?

That's me in the emregency room right before they reset the leg. Can you see the look of anticipation?
That's them setting the leg. Not fun. Somehow taking the picture reduced the pain.
Post op pic. My roomate was a 78 year old guy who fell and broke his hip in three places. He woke up in the room in the middle of the night freaking out. He thought he was in his home and told the nurses he was going to call the cops. He pulled open my curtain divider and said "why is there a woman in my room?" I guess my long hairless Asian legs confused him. Turns out he was just too high on the morphine and was actually a nice guy.
Showering sucks now.

Food Hangover

My girlfriend's parents came to town this past weekend and her father is really into good food. We ate so much, I had two days of food hangover. Everyplace we went to was incredibly good but it was a bit much for me, eventhough I love a good meal. We started Friday at the famous Peter Luger's Steakhouse in Brooklyn. I had a Rib-eye steak that must have been the size of my 12" Mac notebook. I should have started slow. Saturday night we went to Degustation which is a tasting tapas style joint.You sit at a bar and they prepare these small but incredibly tasty dishes right in front of you. Here are a few...
New interpretation of Cheesesteak. Basically a fine carpaccio with a cheese sauce. Tasty.
Lamb Belly with hasbrowns and a quail egg to top it off. The red is a beet sauce, not blood.

Suckling pig. Crispy skin and super tender meat. This was by far my favorite of the weekend.
We also went to La Esquina or The Coner in SOHO which was more of an experience then than a culinary experience. It looks like a small taco joint with standing room only but on the side there's a door with a guy and a clipboard. Once it's decided you're allowed in, you go through a door down some stairs, through the kitchen and through another door into this really cool looking underground space. The ceilings are vaulted in brick and it's really dark so it's hard to tell if it's really nice or not. Interesting experience.
Overall the food tour was a rare opportunity to a lot of nice food in a really short amount of time. I should probably only drink water and eat fruit for the rest of the week so my body can get back to normal.

Shriners

For the past week I've been coming home to see people standing around this cardboard box at the base of this tree about ten feet past the front door. Since I come from behind it, all I could see was that there was this Brillo box and people sitting around it, putting their hands in it, then stepping away. I imagined a cat or some weird animal was living in there and these people were feeding it. Since ther were always people around I never went around front to see what it was. Then one day last week no one was around so I snuck up to take a look.
Taped to the tree was this picture. Turns out it was a little rememberance shrine. I guess he died recently and this was probably his spot.
The Brillo box was filled with candles and a can of Old Milwakee beer. I guess he liked Old Milwakee. It's interesting how similar this shrine is to the ones I see in peoples homes in China and HK. It's cool to see rituals like this still exist and survive in this country.

Today's Lunch.

I had my lunch in Union Square today. Great place for people watching. There are a lot of freaks walking around. Today's highlight was this huge muscle bound guy with long hair walking through Union Square with his shirt off and his body all greasy. Looked like he came off the set on Xena: Warrior Woman.
This is what the doctor sees when I've got bad tonsilitus.

In Hong Kong there are these old Chinese people, usually women, who walk around all day collecting cans. You see them everywhere. So I was surprised to also see them all over New York. It makes me a bit homesick, but what's with these people? Is this an international profession that only Chinese know how to do well? Or did Giuliani see them in HK and imported them to NY? For the women there seems to be a standard uniform with flower patterned Chinese button down shirts and black pants that are 3 inches too short. Most of them are seriously hunch backed. Is this because it's easier to pick up the cans? Did they genetically evolve this way? I see them carrying these huge bags and feel like helping, then I realize tin cans take up a lot of space but don't actually weigh that much. This guy was rocking it old school with the rice picker hat and the bamboo pole.

Flavored Rice?

Came across this place in SOHO the other day and was trying to figure out what the hell this place sells. All I got are questions. Flavored rice? Is this like when some white people put butter on or douse their rice in soy sauce but only much more advanced? Whatever it is, it's strange.

But if these are the flavors of the day and the sign is fixed, then that means the flavors never change...right? Why would you want to eat Cookies and Cream flavored rice? What's wrong with plain old white rice?

What's with this sign? Is there a lot of illegal and indecent activity happening at this place? This sign and the confusing nature of this food place kept me from going in. Anybody been here? What the fuck is it?