mopotofu's blog

The Czech Airlines flight arrived at Prague's Ruzyne airport at around 530am, even earlier than the advertised 620am. Minutes before, I had eagerly taken my pen out in anticipation of the handing out of the landing cards and customs declaration forms. However, mystifyingly enough, none came. The flight attendants merrily went about handing out drinks, but no paperwork. The immigration dude just looked at my passport and stamped it forcefully without asking any questions. Weird. First country this has happened to me. Must be an experimental anti-terrorist screening system based on no screening at all.

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So yes, dear wide-eyed out-of-towner, you've finally made it to the Big Apple. Your jam-packed itinerary included taking in Phantom of the Opera, scaling the heights of the Empire State Building, strolling through Central Park, gazing at Lady Liberty's majestic figure, and if you're lucky enough, snaring a table at Nobu. However, after days of trudging through the concrete jungle of Manhattan with all those huge corporate buildings looking down upon yourself, a refreshing change would be a subway ride down to one of New York City's most interesting and historic neighborhoods, Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village possesses a reputation as a hangout of writers, artists, and other non-establishment types.

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Morocco ranks up there as one of the most unlikelist places to practice my limited salsa dancing skills, being a conservative society with no ingrained Latin rhythms culture. Not even sure they've heard of salsa, in contrast to my previous Central and South American journeys, where sadly didn't get much opportunity to wow everyone - probably all for the best, since I sucked big time. Anyway, just when I was on the verge of questioning my sanity for taking salsa "On 1" despite its limited practical use in the New York club scene, developments in Morocco give me renewed life. (For non-salsa dancers: "On 1" is classic salsa style, "On 2" is New york club style).

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For us legal immigrants, the road to becoming a US citizen is a long and treacherous, albeit a rewarding one. The last hurdle was the actual face-to-face interview with immigration, and an exam covering the basics of US history and English competence.

The full story is here.

This is a review of a 3-hour "Greenwich Village Food and Culture Tour" I took which visited several restaurants and food specialty stores in the neighborhood, with stops for delicious tastings along the way.

To read the full article at Associated Content, click here.

Well it took them quite a while but Associated Content finally published some of articles I had submitted to their site. Took a bit longer than expected, but I'm happy. You can leave comments and/or give a rating for each article.

I have tons more stuff waiting in the pipeline to be published, since Associated Content has paid me for 9 articles so far, but like I said, it takes them a while to actually publish them on the site.

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My two roommates have gone nuts. Totally nuts.

Like me, these two guys in their late 20s/early 30s love to go out and have fun in NYC. Now every Tuesday and Wednight night (and Thursday too?) they've become shut-ins - each sitting in their room spending their night watching hopefuls make fools of themselves on American Idol.

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If there is one thing the hordes of Spanish language students love to do in Antigua, it must be bar hopping. The logic is quite simple: bored foreigners faced with the prospect of sitting around in their host families' houses generally prefer to hang out and meet other foreigners in bars (and converse in their native tongues, unfortunately). As expected, one soon becomes familiar with the drink specials on offer at each bar, and the respective timings of that crowd-drawing phenomenon called Ladies Night.

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Recently, my friend R. and I were discussing the people we were dating (in my case, more like the friend I had feelings for which of course weren't revealed to her yet), as well as the relationships of our common friends and acquaintances.

One thing we both marveled at was the wide age gaps between the two parties in a few of the couples. This predictably led to an animated debate as to what is an "acceptable" age difference, if there is such a thing. Some would fall back on the age-old (pun intended) nugget of wisdom, "Age does not matter". But I would wager that most people do have a self-imposed limit as to the ideal age range of a potential mate, with anything beyond that limit considered "ewwww".

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"Man", I thought, as Aragorn's sword pierced the flesh of yet another evil grotesque Orc, "this movie is amazing! I need a DVD player so I can watch the complete trilogy over and over."

An admitted slacker when it comes to gift-giving, every year I eye the holiday season with more than my usual lack of enthusiasm. Somehow the prospect of circling mall parking slots looking for that elusive space and digging my elbow into another shopper's ribs to get a better view of the merchandise doesn't seem very appealing. End result is that even my good friends rarely end up receiving any gift at all. Well, I guess that's why they're my good friends - they stayed and somehow manage to put up with my bizarre anti-social behavior .

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Well, allow me to add to the deluge (or expected deluge) of posts about the upcoming high-pressure holiday known as Valentine's Day (if you're rather I didn't post about it, then leave a comment and make your voice heard).

Great to say that I am currently single and thus there is no pressure to go out and buy chocolates, flowers, and lingerie (??? help me out here, ladies) for a significant other. However, for the (un)lucky ones out there who are in a relationship or marriage, I just came across this interesting article in the WSJ and thought I'd share the gist of it (yes, I'm at work and not supposed to be surfing).

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My ears were hurting as I stood there waiting outside the arena, wondering why on earth her bus had been delayed. The last SMS had simply said they were moving slowly along the highway. The wind was gusting at full force, and I silently cursed myself for not remembering to bring my multi-colored Gap scarf. Good thing I remembered the Thinsulate-lined gloves, or it would've been a slow painful death.

The hometown Devils disappointed the sparse crowd by playing like a bunch of underachievers, ultimately going down to the lowly Phoenix team by the score of 3-1, with Phoenix scoring twice in a span of two minutes to break the game wide open in the last period. The game was pretty exciting, fast paced and enjoyable, especially for this pair of hockey newbies who had no clue whatsoever about the sport's rules. We didn't even know how many periods there were in a game (three, it turns out), and considered seeking clarification from our fanatic seatmates (wearing team jerseys and periodically cursing out the opponents' goalie, for good measure), but thought better of it, ultimately due to embarrassment. Funnily and happily enough, we both showed up wearing the exact same colored sweater (maroon/red), and by coincidence the Devils' team colors were red and black, and thus we managed to look like longtime supporters. Afterwards, I could only laugh at the forlorn expression on her face, apparently her losing streak while watching live sporting events was still unbroken!

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Last Thursday night's salsa class was alright. Being the 2nd session of the month, I didn't expect to see any new students attending. Wrong I was. There, standing right before my eyes, was this gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous striking sexy goddess. So while we were busy practicing the newfangled steps and complicated turns, I couldn't help it but my eyes were transfixed on her - I took in her long wavy jet black hair, the big expressive eyes, sharp aquiline nose, smooth olive skin, lithe slender figure...(yup, drooling hahaha).

Class finally ended, and I made my way across the street to my favorite cheesecake place in the city to buy some goodies for a midnight snack. Afterwards, was sorely tempted to walk down the few blocks to Chinatown for some Vietnamese chow, but eventually decided "Nah, some other time". I bounded down the steps to the subway platform, and voila! Guess who was standing right there? Yes, the Latina goddess!!! So I thought, "Oh wow, this is the perfect chance to knock her socks off with my Espanol" (yeah, how pathetic).

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With a couple of Super Bowl party invites in hand, I face the dilemna of being tagged an outcast by my friends who find my excuse of having salsa classes hard to swallow.

Disbelieving, incredulous reactions abounded, especially from the male species. "We didn't even know you were taking lessons", exclaimed AJ. "That's soooo hilarious", said N. "Can't you skip it this one time???". Their wives, who also weren't aware of this somewhat new hobby of mine, were more supportive of my decision and wished me luck (and tittered, "Oh, how cute").

In truth, football isn't really my thing, although in this case I appreciate the fact that the bigger issue is that of friendship, camaraderie, and male bonding while watching oversized men tackling each other over an oval shaped ball and at the same time expanding our collective waistlines by chowing down artery-clogging pizza, wings, and beer. Such a killjoy, huh? So I put myself down as "tentative" and asked for time to consider.

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Note: A longer version of this story appears in Associated Content. Click here for the story.

Just thought this would be of interest to people living in the NYC area, or those thinking of visiting New York. Let's say you wanted to dine out on a special occasion, like a anniversary, birthday, and the like. Or maybe you want to impress a client and wanted to take him to a high end restaurant. So you're thinking, "Wonder how much it would cost? And what entrees do they serve? Do they have vegetarian options?".

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