LBC to NYC girl

I’M ALIVE!!!!

Yes it’s been a year since I was last on tumblr. There isn’t any particular reason I stopped; I think I just got busy and forgot about it. Along those lines, I’d just like to say that although I don’t speak to many people on a regular basis these days, it’s only because school literally takes up 95% of my time. I still miss everyone back home =D

This Friday I finished my Ob/Gyn rotation. Before that I did an endocrinology elective, neurology, and psychiatry. To be honest I’ve really enjoyed all of the rotations and I’m not much closer to figuring out what specialty I want to pursue!

Last month my friends and I reserved tickets for the Discovering Columbus exhibit and I finally got to go on Friday. The exhibit was created by Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi, who was asked to do a project in the United States, for which he chose the Christopher Columbus statue on 59th street. Essentially it’s a modern living room constructed 75 feet in the air around the statue of Christopher Columbus that’s located at the southwest corner of Central Park. I apologize now for my terrible photo taking skills.

 The outside of the exhibit. We had to climb 6 flights of stairs to get to the top.

 Here he is! To be honest, because the statue is so high up, I never even realized this statue was at Columbus Circle (yes despite the name). The room was set up with modern furniture and customized wall paper.

 The wallpaper seemed to consist of American “icons” like hot dogs, McDonalds, cowboys, and Michael Jackson.

 Super nice flat screen tv.

 Nice view of the shops at the Time Warner Center.

 Close up of the statue!

After the exhibit, we ate dinner at cute Thai restaurant in Midtown. We decided we wanted dessert and found a place called Kyotofu on yelp. It turned out to be a great decision!

Kyotofu is a Japanese dessert bar that incorporates (you guessed it) tofu into their desserts. Their desserts are vegetarian and many of their baked goods are gluten-free as well. They also have savory dishes that looked pretty good but since we already ate, we just ordered desserts. The place is tiny but really fun and hip (as in white furniture, dark lighting, and hip hop music playing).

 This first dessert was on the house because we had to wait so long for a seat. I thought that was really nice since I swear we only waited like 30 minutes! The bowl has soymilk soft serve ice cream. It was half pumpkin spice and half chocolate. The cake is some kind of gluten free cake with orange shiro an (sweet white bean paste) on top. The fruit smear is cranberry.

 Two of us ordered the green tea creme brulee with “orange shiro an, vanilla bean ice cream, chocolate tuile”. I have no idea what those red fruits are but I think they were tiny japanese plums. It wasn’t too sweet and was very light because it was tofu based rather than cream based.

 Two of us ordered the “kuro goma sweet tofu” which consists of “black sesame sweet tofu panna cotta, hoji-cha syrup, white sesame tuile”. It was also very light compared to most panna cottas because it was tofu based. It reminded me of those tofu with hot ginger syrup desserts! I wouldn’t say the desserts are out of this world, but everything was tasty and it’s definitely a great place to meet up with friends at. After that we attempted and failed to find a bar that was playing the Lakers game.

That’s it for today. I don’t know who reads these posts but I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll try to update more frequently in the future!

Black Eyed Peas

Like most people, I love free things.

So last year, when the free Black Eyed Peas Concert 4 NYC happen to be the day before my last final, I was definitely bummed I couldn’t go. Luckily, the concert had to be rescheduled due to be bad weather.

Fast forward to September of this year…

We decided to get there as early as we could in order to get a good spot on the Great Lawn.

When we entered, we were able to a secure a spot right at the front of the free section. Score!

Me, Central Park, comfortable summer shoes, and Doughnut Plant. I was a happy girl.

In total we waited at least 4 hours, but it was totally worth it to get there early. The only people ahead of us were those who paid to be in the closer section.

It was a week day, so I assume people had school or work. As the concert drew near, the place got packed.

In fact it got crazy. Those who came later tried to sneak into open spaces ahead of those who came earlier. Fights broke out near us, with people yelling, fighting, and the security (cops) had to be called in. I got pushed by a man who said I stepped on his daughter, and yelled at by a woman who accused me of cutting (I was coming back from the bathroom).

Before the concert started, there were a few messages from other celebs.

Finally it was show time! Unfortunately there were no suprise guests (Taylor Swift was scheduled to perform at the original show) and towards the end of the concert it started to rain. Still, it was a great show and I believe they raised over a million dollars for the homeless population of NYC.

Like I said, I love free things!

9/11 Memorial

Sunday Morning Studying Part 2

Can you believe its been almost a year since I posted this?

Its hard to put into words how differently I feel this year as compared to then. I’m in a different place now, both figuratively and physically. I guess pictures can tell the story.

I apologize for being somewhat MIA and a bit behind on my posts. Thank you to anyone who still takes the time to read my blog! Especially the ones that comment <3

Ellis Island

        Ellis Island. Above is a nice photo of the main room that newly arrived immigrants would have been taken to upon arrival in the United States. Back during its usage, the room was filled with chairs, and people sat and waited to be processed.

    Here is the theater where we watched a movie about Ellis Island

      One of the exhibit rooms

   Pretty view through the third floor ceiling

I actually learned a lot of interesting things about Ellis Island. I learned that the United States wanted to build a strong, healthy nation, so there was an intensive screening process to identify any sick or trouble individuals to send back to their home country. I learned the ride to the US was no picnic…people were stuffed into boats and were at sea for months. I also didn’t realize until the end of our visit that Ellis Island was only recently opened as a museum. There was an exhibit showing what a ghost town it was in the time after the US closed immigration from Europe and the 1980’s when the renovation took place.

Now my family has no connection to Ellis Island…or so I thought…..

Statue of Liberty

When A. came to visit NYC earlier this month, we took a visit to the Statue of Liberty.

      Take the 1 train to the last stop: South Ferry

There she is! From the shore, we debated whether or not the Statue of Liberty looked smaller or bigger than we expected.

     The ticket was 13 dollars and includes ferry rides to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

          I was surprised to learn that we had to go through a very thorough security check (think airport type) before we could board. This is when I remembered I get motion sickness easily =D

     Statue of Liberty is part of the state parks system, complete with park rangers and everything.

           We had to go through another security check before we could go inside. Here is the original flame which now sits inside the building at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

            After climbing a million stairs- we make it to the terrace!

       View from the terrace

          Did you know Lady Liberty is made of copper that is only a penny or so thick?

Manhattan

After lounging around on ground level for awhile, we headed to Ellis Island (post to come soon). Sorry for being so brief and unexciting…studying calls!

DIY

Second year of medical school is requiring a lot more time and attention than first year so I apologize for being so MIA. This year I moved out of the dorms and into my own apartment! I really love my apartment because its spacious and has nice white walls. The only downside is that I have so much space.

I decided to make a photo clothes line to fill up some of the wall space in my room. Here’s the finished product:

On side table: real peacock feather from earth day festival, pine cones from El Dolardo Park. On bed: teddy bear-hand made

Motivation

           I haven’t posted much lately, which made me wonder if I’ve lost my motivation for blogging. Then I remembered that I forget to bring my camera with me nearly every time I go out.  Too bad because my trips included some pretty awesome things like falafels and antique fares and honey badgers and walking across bridges.

And an Earth Day Festival. At this festival, one of the tables handed out ExxonMobil “trees” and told us to do our part by planting them. In fact the man asking us to plant our trees sounded annoyed, as if he knew that our tree SWAG would probably just sit in our apartments. It made me wonder what his motivation was; after all he was promoting one the largest oil companies in the world.

Speaking of motivation, I’m down to my last month of my first year of medical school. I think I have to muster everything I have to not enter vacation mode yet, which is hard considering all spring/summer/NYC/CA distractions that keep popping up.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I guess I have a tree to plant.

G.O.O.D. Friday

After spending a few hours in the library studying while listening to Kanye West, I came home and made this:

Warmed Trader Joe’s “Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough” Cookies, Haagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream, and chopped strawberries

Because I’m the kind of person that eats dessert before dinner.

This week I learned that I’m also the kind of person that doesn’t need to have ice cream in my freezer. I kept trying to think of new ways to eat it. Plus I ended up eating it every day. I like ice cream, but I have enough self control about it that I don’t feel the need to purchase pints of it.

On a related note, I’ve been craving a Chipotle burrito like crazy. I think it’s been almost a year since I’ve had one. That’s criminal. I’m seriously debating going out tomorrow for one. Even though it is a study weekend.

Where do you guys find yourself lacking self control?

Dean & Deluca: Delicious?

          I’ve never really been a fan of ‘out of the deli case’ food. Why? Well, no matter how tasty the items look inside the display case, they usually just end up tasting like leftovers you pulled out of the fridge and NOT the gourmet dishes they appear to be.  I was hoping that the food from Dean & Deluca would prove me wrong.

      The Dean and Deluca I visited is located on Broadway, centered right in the madness of SOHO. Although they have locations all over the world now, this location is the original D&D and opened its doors in 1977.

           From my short tour of the store, I wouldn’t say Dean and Deluca is an especially innovative gourmet market, although it certainly does seem to focus on gourmet food. They had separate counters for everything you could want: meat, bread, cheese, baked goods, deli, candy, and even a coffee shop in front!

       For dinner, I opted against the wild mushroom macaroni and cheese and picked up this stuffed bell pepper instead.

      For dessert, i grabbed a pistachio macaron and a creme brulee. The above items plus a medium almond latte cost me about 18 dollars.

What did I think?

Almond Latte: further evidence that I’m not a huge fan of “flavored” foods. Foods that lack the actual ingredients in them always taste odd and strange to me. Overall, it was a bit sweet and I chose not to finish it.

Pistachio Macaron: I ate this before anything else because I was so hungry that my poor stomach was eating itself. Overall, not bad but a bit too sweet for me. The Bouchon Bakery pistachio mac is still the best one I’ve had so far.

Stuffed Bell Pepper: The half red bell pepper was stuffed with basmati rice, italian sausage, onions, and cheese. Talk about an identity crisis. Who pairs basmati rice with whole chunks of italian sausage? I questioned the combination from the get-go but I decided to put my faith in D&D when I purchased it. It tasted okay and seemed somewhat healthy. I think a ground meat with some ethnic seasonings would have paired better with the rice (not to mention all that knife work necessary to split the meat into smaller pieces).

Creme Brulee: Yummy! But I never met a creme brulee I didn’t like….

All in all my opinion of Dean and Deluca is still positive, simply based on the selection and services they offer. I guess I’m still waiting to be wowed. Do you guys know of any good deli case foods?