Memorial Day Weekend

Saturday…

Whew, it's pretty warm out.  After Leena and I took a cool shower then researched paneer pasanda on the web, got dressed and headed out.

I found two restaurants in Manhattan that listed paneer pasanda on their online menus, and one in Queens, but looking at photos of the one in Queens, I couldn't tell if it was a sit-down place, or take-out only.  I'm sure there's more, but not tied in with the GrubHub menu system...

 I decided to try the nearest one, on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.  I took the R train from near my apartment.  I got lucky on the train, too, the R line was backed up and running behind schedule, the so the particular train I was on was going to "go express" and skip a bunch of stops, going over the Manhattan Bridge instead of the tunnels under the East River and jump up ahead of some other R trains to fill in the gap in front of them.  When it left DeKalb Avenue it was on the right track for me to see the artwork I've been trying to figure out which train to ride to see...  Cool...  It's two sets of underground cartoon animation, but only clearly visible from one track.

I got off the train at Prince Street, turned around a few times at the top of the stairs to orient myself and then headed up to Bleecker Street and over into The Village...

I almost didn't see Indian Taj because it was on the opposite side of the street, with a big truck blocking it while offloading...  But I did and went in.  It wasn't very crowded, only two couples at tables near the front, close to the buffet.  Since I was already sweating from the short walk, I asked for a table wherever it's coolest, so they seated me at private booth in the back.  I told the waiter I'd like to order from the menu rather than the buffet, so he came back with that...  I quickly found what I wanted, the paneer pasanda, and ordered that with two plain, sada naan.

There was a bit of a wait, and the booth was very close, with curtains running all the way to ceiling.  But across the restaurant, to the side was some nice Indian artwork to keep my eyes  occupied while I waited.

When he brought the dishes I was surprised.  I'd never seen paneer pasanda in a red gravy before, always white, and relatively dry...  But he set it down saying "paneer pasanda" then set down the bread bowl, saying "two orders of naan" so it's not like they got the order wrong...  And it was chunks of paneer, not thin layers with stuffing...  But now that I'm looking online again at their menu, the description is "cubes of cheese seasoned with authentic spices butter & cream, served with basmati rice" which is exactly what I got...

My eyes were definitely bigger than my stomach and I should've only ordered one naan, not two.  Especially since they were butter naan, despite ordering plain.  Same as last time, but maybe "plain" means "butter" here because that's the normal order or something.  The bill has always been for the price of plain, so maybe butter naan just has a lot more butter or something...  I couldn't finish it all, and in fact, I think I tried too hard because I was a bit uncomfortable from eating too much, rather than stopping at "fully satisfied."

I also think my capacity has gone down since coming to New York because I eat smaller meals all the time, so when faced with a big meal, I simply can't eat as much.  Not that that's a bad thing, just don't take me to any expensive all-you-can-eat places...

Overall, it's probably worth returning to that restaurant.  The dish was good, it simply wasn't what I expected, but I'm sure other stuff is probably good, too...

After I finished and paid I headed out to the streets again.  I walked up to Madison Square Park, near the Flatiron Building, where I found a park bench in the shade.  I spent an hour or so reading there on the iPad, occasionally sipping some of the water I carried with me, watching people go past, watching the squirrels and birds, etc...

While sitting there I cooled off and started to think maybe summer weather isn't so bad.  But once I got up again, I was uncomfortable in the heat before I was even out of the park...  Also, the allergies weren't so bad when I was sitting still, but once I got up to walk again, I was stuffed up, my eyes were running and I was sneezing...

I walked along 23rd Street, from the Flatiron Building almost to the river, and it's quite a busy street.  Lots of good looking restaurants to try there...  It also rained lightly, very lightly, unbelievably lightly, just a few drops from a single cloud overhead, for a few minutes till that one cloud blew over.  That single cloud didn't even block the sunshine...

Then down to the High Line again.  I walked the length of it, twice, but couldn't find a free seat in any shady spot because it was so crowded.  But at least I got to use the bathroom and the water fountain...

From there I walked over towards the river, because I saw an interesting ship at the dock, but couldn't get close, and the sun was awfully hot out there, despite the breeze blowing off the water. So, I headed back in on 15th Street, till 9th Avenue and then walked up 14th Street to Union Square.  I picked up a $1.50 cup of fresh apple cider from a vendor at the farmer's market there (the market is in Union Square Wednesday, Friday and Saturday almost every week of the year).

Then I took the subway home.  Back in Brooklyn I dropped my backpack off at the apartment, then went out once more to buy some allergy medicine Gary recommended, then out again to buy some groceries...

Now I'm in...  I took a long, cool shower that helped some.  I see I got some sun on my face, a light sunburn, not too bad...

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Sunday...

I slept in a bit later this morning, took a long, cool shower, a light breakfast, another cool shower and got dressed to head on out, with no particular plan in mind.

I took the R train and even into Manhattan couldn't decide where to get off and what to do, other than be outside...  It was blazing hot just walking from my apartment to the subway station two blocks away.  But not as hot as yesterday...  I was half considering getting off at 23rd Street and reading in Madison Square Park, or Times Square and doing who-knows-what, or Central Park and finding a spot to read, or taking it to Queens and check out Jackson Heights, or switching to an R or Q along the way and taking either of those to Astoria in Queens just to sight see...

In the end some other dude made the decision for me...  A one-man-band guy got on at the station before 57th Street and was playing a trumpet.  A trumpet!  A fucking trumpet!  In a subway car!  It was way too loud and hurt my ears like hell, so I got off at 57th Street, which is very close to Central Park.

So, I walked up to Central Park and figured I could use the bathroom there, except that it was packed and while shorter than the line for the ladies' room, there was still a line waiting to get into the men's room and I didn't feel like waiting.  So, I walked around the lower portions of Central Park a bit, stopped on a park bench in some slight shade, with the sun peeking through some of the trees and cooled off a little.  Even the fifteen minutes of walking before that were enough for me to get uncomfortably hot and sweaty.  It stank of horse manure there, but was kind of fun watching people walk by and take photos of some rather uninteresting rock formations.

Once I realized I wasn't going to get any cooler at that spot I got up and started walking.  I walked out of the park near the Plaza Hotel and the Apple Store, at 5th Avenue, then at 57th Street I cut across to 7th Avenue and caught the Q train down to 14th Street Union Square.

I got off there, in the mood for sushi at Shima in the East Village.  It wasn't a long walk from Union Square there, but it was pretty hot out.  I made my way mostly in the shade of buildings, and only out in the sun to cross streets.

Lunch was good.  None of the usual waitresses were working today, so the service was a little more chaotic.  There was one guy who I've seen before, I think behind the sushi bar, and he didn't seem too familiar with waiting tables, and another waitress who I've also seen before, but she didn't seem to be in the mood to wait tables or something.  Both were polite, but not efficient or cheerful as usual.  Still, the food was what I expected and afterwards I got two scoops of green tea ice cream.  The waitress also brought me a cup of green tea that I thoroughly enjoyed as well at the end.

From there I walked up to 23rd Street and across to Madison Square Garden.  It was jam packed with people and the first shady bench I found turned out to be too close to Jemmy's Dog Run, a place in the park for people to let their dogs run loose in a fenced in area (lots of New York City parks have these) so I got up and found another.  But it turned out to only be shady when the occasional cloud blew over, and when the sky was clear it was hot...  On the other hand, it was easier reading the iPad screen when the sun shone on it than when it shone on me.

I got up again and found another place, where I actually sat Saturday, and that was better.  I read there for a while, as well as watched people, squirrels and birds...  It was relaxing there...  Another middle aged couple eventually came and sat on the bench next to me and read for a long time (the guy had a book I've been thinking about getting...)

Eventually I was getting hotter and hotter as the breeze faded, plus I had to use the bathroom and there isn't one that I know of in Madison Square Park, but I checked on the internet anyway, and didn't see one listed.  So, I figured it was only 15 blocks up to 42nd Street and Grand Central Terminal, where there's also a shop, the New York City Transit Museum, with some artwork I keep planning on getting, but none of my wanderings have me ending up there at the end of the day.

So, I walked up.  By the time I got up there the sweat was rolling off me and my clothes were uncomfortably abrasive from sweating...  I used the bathroom but just missed the shop, which closed at 6pm, since I got there around 6:03pm or so...  And they're not open tomorrow because the holiday...  Ah well...

From there I wandered over to Bryant Park and sat in the shade to read for a little while, then got up and took the F train home from there.  In Brooklyn, instead of getting off at the 9th Street & 4th Avenue station, then walking uphill, I took it one more station to 9th Street & 7th Avenue, so the walk was downhill, and about the same distance.

--------------------------

Monday, Memorial Day...

Well, today was relaxed and interesting...

For a change I decided to wear the Birkenstocks Leena's mother got me in New York in 2007, but without socks.  I can't wear my usual black ones without socks because the foot liner isn't suede so my feet make a horrible sounding and uncomfortable sucking sound with every step.

I got out the door around 11:30am or so, and dropped my rent check off at the mailbox on the way to the subway station, feeling like I left only partially dressed because of the missing socks...

I just missed an R train when I got down to the platform, but then an N train came, which doesn't usually stop at the 9th Street station.  But there was no room to sit in the first two cars, and I didn't feel like standing all the way to Manhattan, so I skipped it and waited for the next R train, a few minutes more.

What luck, too...  I couldn't make out the conductor's announcement clearly, but due to some incident, this particular R train was going to take a different route.  At the next station, DeKalb Avenue, it was on the opposite side of the platform from where the R usually goes.  And as luck would have it, on the track that goes past the artwork underground I keep wanting to see...

I got my camera ready and as we passed the lit up art I took a bunch of photos.  Unfortunately, I don't think they came out well, though.  It was more brightly lit inside the train, so it's mostly reflections off the window, and the window was fairly smudged, too...  Oh well...

After DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn, this R train followed an F route through lower Manhattan, which is very strange.  I would've expected it to at least follow an N route, not an F.  One guy who'd been wearing headphones got confused when we exited the tunnel onto the Manhattan Bridge and asked "I was wearing headphones, what was that announcement?" so I explained it.

Then at one of the stations, where the R normally does not go, a woman looked at the signs outside and the map near my seat and asked, "I thought this was the train to Whitehall?" and I explained to her that there was some incident and this particular R train was taking a weird route, but that the conductor was still calling it an "R train to Queens".  I suggested she stay on it till it rejoined its regular route, then get on a Brooklyn bound R to get to Whitehall...  When we got to 34th Street at Herald Square, I told her that was the best place for her to make the switch...

I got off the train there, too...  I felt too stinky, sticky and sweaty to possibly go into Macy's and try on summer clothes, so I didn't.  I did check out the Manhattan Mall shopping mall, but it was a pretty lousy place, not much in the way of interesting stores (e.g. no music store!)

I made my way down the streets to Madison Square Park where I walked around looking for a cool, shady bench, preferably closer to the middle, but no luck and I got one near the north end of the park.

I took out my book and read a bit...  It was a book about travelers' tales from India.  After a little bit some scruffy looking, heavily tattooed elderly guy in a wheelchair, being escorted by a young woman, asked "are you planning a trip to India?"  I told him not right away, as I'd recently returned after about ten years there and was still thoroughly enjoying life back in the U.S. again...  We chatted a bit.  He'd never been farther from New York than New Orleans.  When I mentioned still being kind of new to New York City he asked me how I liked the park, and reminisced about how it's been cleaned up over the years.  He said when he used to be homeless he slept in that park for a couple of years.  Eventually he said, "well, you return to your book, I'm just going to close my eyes here in the sunshine for a few minutes..." and dozed off...

After they left some college students came.  One was a big, muscular black guy who took off his shirt a couple of times to flex his muscles and show off quite a few tattoos, the other was a long haired, fat white guy with a heavy metal t-shirt, spiked leather wristband, studded boots...  Once they settled down they started drilling each other on their anatomy homework, about various joints in the body, which are unilateral, bilateral, trilateral, some stuff about the thumb joints and things...  It sounded like they were preparing for a test or something in medical school...

I started getting hungry and got up to buy a pretzel from a vendor at the corner of the park (the line for the Shake Shack again had around 75-100 waiting, so I wasn't going to do that, though I really want to try it sometime).  When I returned I'd lost my bench...

So I took another bench nearby.  After a couple of bites of my relatively unsatisfying pretzel, a woman on the next bench asked "is that pretzel any good?"  I told her it was only mediocre, not the worst I've had, but not really very good.  She mentioned that she'd bought a cup of beer from the food fair across the street and she knew she shouldn't have it in park, but wasn't causing any trouble...

We ended up chatting for another hour or more, mostly about New York City, parks, computers, local food, dog walking and India.  She mentioned going to college in the mid-70's so I guess she fifteen years older than us, or so.  She took a year off then to live in India, staying mostly in villages to get "the authentic Indian experience" as she put it.  She was curious for my descriptions of how India has changed since she was there.

She mentioned she used to be a writer, and had written a book about New York City's parks, but is now a professional dog walker to the wealthier people in Manhattan.  At various times other people walking dogs greeted her when passing by, and she'd point them out as another professional dog walker.  She said she has keys to apartments where many owners don't even know her last name, she's just "that weird lady with the green flour on her hat" that their building doormen recommend as a dog walker...

She was pleasant and friendly to chit chat with.  But a little weird, in a not-quite-right manner...  She was totally paranoid of the government and kept pointing out people in the park who were covert government agents.  At one point a couple of guys came a bit closer than normal to photograph some squirrels that were actually being a bit cuter than normal, right behind the bench she was sitting on, then the guys drifted off...  A little later she asked if I remembered the two black guys with the camera, and I said I did, but not that they were black or anything, just a couple of other tourists paying more attention to squirrels.  She told me they were government agents and on the way over they'd flashed her with a "laser refractor" to hurt her eyes, and the squirrel photography was just their cover, to look like tourists...

She asked if I ever read science fiction novels, which I do.  She said writers like Heinlein and Bradbury weren't just speculating on future things, like government control of citizens, but they were actually involved in it and had first hand knowledge.  I asked if she'd ever read any books by Philip K. Dick, but she didn't recognize the name and agreed to look for some of his.  Some good Philip K. Dick novels should blow her mind...

Around 4pm, I still hadn't eaten more than a few bites of my pretzel, that had gone totally stale and I didn't want any more of it, and I figured I should be heading back to Brooklyn, do laundry and all that...  As I was walking away, she called me to come back for a moment, then she gave me advice on buying a pair of Birkenstock sandals with a strap at the back because she said I was walking funny...

From Madison Square Park at 27th Street I walked down to Union Square, then across 14th Street to catch the F train back to Brooklyn.  I like returning on the F because I can take it one stop further and my walk home is all downhill.

First Weekend of May

The full set of photos is available on my Picasa page...

Saturday

Whew, long day out walking...  I actually got off to what felt like a late start after a shower and reading stuff online for a little bit (I'd drank a can of soda while Leena and I were on the phone so I wanted to make sure it went through me before going out...)

Just a random scene while
I was out walking...

I got on the R train and at Atlantic Avenue - Pacific Street there was an N express that pulled up right next to it, so I went across the platform to that one, as it's faster and goes over a bridge instead of in the dark tunnel under the river.  The guy sitting across from me was sleeping with a bottle of soda in his hand and actually looked a bit like Fred Flintstone on his t-shirt.  At one station he got up and walked to the door, but then seemed pretty drunk or something because he couldn't stand up, then ended up sitting back down and closing his eyes again...

I got off the train at 49th Street, sort of right behind Times Square, and walked up to 55th Street and Lexington Avenue to the shoe repair shop to get my Birkenstocks.  I waited in line while a woman in front of me kept the clerk busy answering questions about what they could do if she didn't like the new dye she was getting on her shoes and all that...  The woman who wasn't paying attention to customers, just polishing shoes, saw me and took my receipt, but had a lot of trouble finding my sandals.  Once the woman in front of me finished, the clerk helped the other woman find them.

She was going to put them in a bag for me, but I said "no, I'll put them on".  My feet were aching slightly from the walk up there in the other Birkenstocks, with the softer footbed, and at first the freshly resoled pair felt a little weird, since I hadn't worn them with these particular socks in a while.  But it was good to get them back.  After a few blocks they felt just as comfortable as an old pair of shoes (which they are...)

I like this sign!

I wasn't sure just what to do, so I walked down Lexington Avenue from there...  I kept my eyes open for lunch, too...  And about fifteen blocks down I found it...  I passed an Indian restaurant and saw dhansak on the menu outside and thought, 'hmm....'  Then I kept walking, saw some sushi and a good looking burger place, then thought "dhansak...  Dhansak!" and turned around to get that...

The place was called Nirvana.  I walked in and it was totally empty.  The maitre'd didn't tell me they were closed, so I indicated just one person and he led me upstairs to the restaurant, which was totally empty, too, not a single other customer.  I pointed to a table and I asked if I could sit by the window, but he said "no, the window tables are for parties of four or five only" and then pointed me to a table for two not far from the window.  He said they closed at 3pm, and by then it was 2:20pm...  To be fair, though, it did get a lot busier, the crowd actually doubled before I was done...

As soon as I was seated I ordered dhansak and naan.  He asked "do you want rice?" and I said no, just naan.  He asked if I wanted butter, garlic or spicy naan and I said "just sada naan" and he acknowledged plain naan...  So I sat and waited a few minutes.

The dhansak wasn't like Leena's family's cook's at all...  It had chunks of chicken in it (which I expected, ordering it from the chicken section of the menu) but other vegetables, like green beans, carrots and peas.  The waiter also brought a dish of rice, saying "compliments of the house" (I assume it was just part of what was left from their lunch service to get rid of).  It was good, not exactly what I expected, but good.  While I was eating another guy came in and sat behind me, he also turned down the rice, but then when his meal came got a complimentary bowl of it as well...

I finished right around 3pm, paid and headed back out...  I continued on down Lexington a few more blocks, then started heading towards the west, knowing one thing I was looking for was on west 34th Street, but not exactly where.  Around there, too, I figured I could use a bathroom, and knew there was a public one in Penn. Station, on 32nd Street and 8th Avenue. On 34th I found the Affordable Art Fair, in a fancy building across the street from the Empire State Building, and the sidewalk and entrance to it were packed with people.  After going a few blocks further to Penn. Station I didn't feel like walking back into that crowd, so I didn't make it there...

I exited Penn. Station on 7th Avenue, heading southward.  The Fashion Institute of Technology has an interesting looking building, so I drifted that way, and found FIT had a street circus going on outside of there.  I wandered through there a few minutes, enjoying watching people do karaoke, and play some of the games, then kept going...

A couple blocks from there I ran into another street closed off for a carnival, too...  It was more crowded and had lots of kiddie rides and things more geared towards small children, was noisier and less interesting...

I made my way over to the High Line.  The northern-most stair case was absolutely full of people, with a line waiting to climb up and a crowd up at the top waiting to go down.  I skipped it...  By the time I got to the next one down, it was pretty crowded, too.  So instead I went to the Chelsea Market thinking I'd get a ginger popsicle from the stand inside, People's Pops, that specializes in them.  There was a little line there, but the guy in front didn't know what he wanted.  First he asked if there was anything sugar-free, to which the guy working there said no, all flavors had a little bit of organic cane sugar in them, then the customer asked "oh, they all look so good, which should I get?" and the worker said "they're all good, it's a matter of what you'd like" and the customer asked "well, if you wanted one right now for yourself, which would you get?"

At that point I gave up, I didn't feel like standing in line for all that, and I left.

I walked up 14th Street towards Union Square, but then decided to check out Madison Square Park and see if there was more to that artwork I saw the crew setting up last weekend.  I also figured that would be a good place to stop and sit for a while and sip some of the water I'd carried in my backpack.

Madison Square Park was indeed crowded, though less than last weekend when there was a Sikh festival in it.  Lots of people were examining and photographing a huge, 44 foot sculpture in the main lawn, Echo by Juame Plensa.  Small leaves were falling off the trees, and every time there was a breeze they blew around like a snow storm.  I sat on a bench there for a while, not sure how long, just relaxing, playing with my camera and trying out some different techniques.  After a while, though, I started to get congested and sniffly, maybe from the stuff from the trees blowing around...

Once I got ready to move, I changed lenses on the camera and walked down Broadway to Union Square. In Union Square I walked a full circle around it, then used the public restroom there.  Three days a week there there's a big farmer's market, with fresh produce, meat, honey, wines and things.  One stall had fresh made apple cider at $1.50 for a cup, so I got one and it was really good cider.

A shop near where I went the
wrong direction...

By then it was close to 6pm and I was getting a little tired.  But I decided to walk back to Brooklyn over the Brooklyn Bridge...  It was some walk down Manhattan, but I took the subway from Union Square to Canal Street.  Only once I got out at Canal Street, I got turned around and walked a few blocks in the wrong direction before I figured it out.  I was waiting at a traffic light to cross along with another couple when one asked "what bridge is that?" pointing to one to our right a few blocks and he said "the Manhattan Bridge."  I thought about it and realized, that it being on the right would mean I was facing the wrong direction, it should've been on my left...

So, I turned around and headed the other way, through Chinatown and down along a street lined with government buildings and courthouses.  I saw the plaza I found late last year that was pretty interesting, but once I bought the 11-16mm ultra-wide angle lens, the plaza was closed for some construction.  The construction permits posted listed an expiration date of April, but today it was still blocked off with construction barricades...

Near there I passed a fountain with three young women horsing around and after I'd passed one of them came running and asked "can you take our picture?" and gave me a camera.  So I took a bunch of photos of them posing on the edge of the fountain, then gave it back and continued on my way...

Outside City Hall I got onto the path to the Brooklyn Bridge.  It was pretty crowded, lots and lots of people, but not the most crowded I've seen it.  I've seen it before with so many people that walking on it was like walking in a crowd leaving a movie theater.  Today was a little better.

I took a few photos on the bridge, but with some of the construction it's hard to get a good view over it, and with all the crowds, many are blocked by taller people...

On the Brooklyn side of the bridge I walked around a bit, walked down by the water, under the bridge.  I found the big park that I've seen in movies, that I couldn't quite find before, with a great view of lower Manhattan.  It was cool down there.  I got a few photos of the sunset reflecting off the Empire State Building in the distance, as well as some of lower Manhattan.  Definitely nice down there.

But it was getting chillier with a breeze, probably from being right by the river.  I didn't quite know how to get home from there, other than a general south-east direction, but not which streets go through and which don't.  I partially retraced my steps to get up near the Brooklyn Bridge close to where I left it for the ground.

Then there was a park I recognized from the last time I was in that area, so I went through there.  The other side of it has big businesses and government buildings, courthouses, Brooklyn Borough Hall, a university and things.

At the edge of the park, when it was getting dark and there was hardly anyone there I ran into a couple who were lost.  They asked me if I knew where the nearest subway station was.  I said I knew it was in the park, but when I used it before I entered the park from a different place.  But I whipped out my iPhone with its map, located where we were with the GPS and from there I showed them where the subway station was.

A few blocks and I figured out where I was and remembered how to get home from there.  I walked through the Fulton Mall district, full of retail shops closing up for the night, and then to Flatbush Avenue and down there till it crossed 4th Avenue, where I headed up a couple of blocks then up to 5th Avenue all the way to my apartment.

Whew, quite a walk.  But it was fun.  There's some places I definitely want to go back with a different camera lens...


--------------------------------
Sunday

Well, today was shorter...  After Leena and I got off the phone and I  showered, I got dressed and headed on out.  I didn't really have much of a plan...

So, I got on the R train near my apartment.  At Atlantic Avenue - Pacific Street there was a D express train across the platform, so I hopped over to that, knowing it would go over the bridge instead of the tunnels.

I kept imagining it would stop at Canal Street, despite knowing that the D doesn't, it's the N that does. When it got across the river and stopped at Grand Street, I got off there, since I'd never used that station before.

Grand Street was near Chinatown, not far from where I'd been yesterday and pretty close to Canal Street, and most of the shop signs had Chinese writing, the smell of Chinese food wafted all around, and a city street sign had an arrow pointing away from it all and said "Chinatown". I walked around some of the less crowded streets around there a little, took some photos.  The lens I carried wasn't good for some of the things I wanted to photograph, but then none of them does it all...

I walked north on some street I'd never been on before, and through Little Italy, which had some interesting looking restaurants and shops.  Mostly I tried to stay on the shadier sides of the streets because the sun was blazing hot out.  Eventually I crossed over into the East Village, where I've been quite a few times.

As I got closer to 12th Avenue I decided to stop in at Shima for some sushi and worked my way over there. There were hardly any customers and I got a nice table by the window.  This time the waitress actually recognized me and remembered that I wanted a window table last time.  The sushi was great, as usual.

Back out on the street I walked up to 14th Street and to Union Square.  In Union Square I caught the crowds from the Asian American and Pacific Islander Culture Festival going on.  There was some Thai sort of performance going on in one part of the square, and a big stage set up at the back of the square.  People handed out pamphlets related to it so I got one of those.  I watched some of the performance, but couldn't really get close enough through the crowds to see more than a glimpse.

The Andy Monument -
for Andy Warhol...

From there I walked up towards Madison Square Park, which is about eight blocks up Broadway.  Just before the park I took some photos of the Empire State Building and crowds and then my camera's memory card ran out of space and the camera shut down.  Actually, in the nearly four years I've been using that camera this is the first time I've filled the card...

When that happened I turned around, went back to Union Square, watched the performance a little more then got on the subway to head back to Brooklyn.

Back in the apartment I offloaded the last few weeks' photos from the camera and started a load of laundry and that's that...

The Universe is Listening

I just had a weird coincidence yesterday...  But not the first of its kind...

On New Year's Eve I walked most of the way home from Times Square to Sunset Park after midnight.  Partway through Brooklyn I passed a big sign advertising BAM and listing what appeared to me to be names of performances.  The name, BAM, intrigued me, of course.

Then that following Monday I got a pamphlet in the mail with a calendar of performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  BAM.  There it was.  Same logo...  BAM!

Is that weird or what?

Then this past Saturday on my wanderings about Manhattan (I'm still editing the travelogue, not posted yet...) I was near Columbus Circle and happened to see some interesting stuff at the entrance to the Museum of Arts & Design.  While not in the mood for being inside at the time, I made a mental note to check out that museum as it looked like the sort of place I'd enjoy.

Yesterday I got home from work and in the mailbox was an invitation to an open house at the Museum of Arts & Design.  A weird coincidence for sure!

I suppose both of them got my name and address from the mailing list at the Museum of Modern Art, which I joined last year.  Still, the first mail from each came on the first working day after I saw them...

As one of my friends commented about this, "the universe is listening."

A Rainy Sunday - MoMA - Japanese food in the East Village

After talking to Leena on the phone, then preparing some papers for the apartment broker, I got dressed and decided to go to the Museum of Modern Art.  I'd purchased a membership in October or November, but the only previous time I went the lobby was crowded I left immediately.  Knowing I was going there, I didn't take my backpack, since those have to be checked, nor my camera, since I wasn't fully clear on the camera policy from their website.

I took the R train, and at 36th Street transferred to an N express train to get there faster.  The MoMA is near (or maybe part of the complex) Rockefeller Center, having been founded by Rockefeller's wife.

I got off the train at 49th Street, near the top of Times Square.  Walking to the MoMA, across from Radio City Music Hall an Indian fellow all by himself stopped me to ask me to take his photo, with his camera.  I asked him what he wanted for a background and he said "the tall buildings" so I did that, and had him move a little over so I could get the Radio City Music Hall sign behind him in a couple as well, as that's a major landmark in the city.

When I got to the MoMA it was jam packed.  I had to go around the revolving door twice because the woman before me stopped right inside and didn't give me room to enter the lobby while she fiddled with her dripping umbrella.  The second time she'd moved away enough I could squeeze past her, but still got splashed slightly by water from her umbrella.

I found my way through the lobby to the entrance to the museum proper, where I gave the attendant my membership card, which she scanned, and I went through.  The other side was pretty packed, too...

I explored all five floors of exhibits.  I liked some of the art and didn't like some of it.  The exhibit on photographs used to prepare for filming action scenes, for instance, just wasn't very interesting.  Some paintings here and there were interesting.  I was more fascinated by an exhibit of industrial designs, like chairs and tables and what-not, most of which were designed by architects.

A few galleries had exhibits that I never would've associated with the term modern art, like Picasso, Cezanne and Monet?  I thought modern art started as sort of a rebellion against those, but now that I'm looking it up online after going there I see my impression was wrong.  There were some works by a famous modern artist, Marcell Duchamp, whose works I'd seen before were mostly kind of silly, but they had some that were actually kind of nice.

Another gallery was full of just Jackson Pollack paintings, some of which I'd seen in art books before.  But none of which I actually liked.  I mean, sure I remember in junior high, it was fun to splatter paint like Pollack, but the end result isn't much to bother looking at…

The single largest crowd of people was standing in front of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night painting.  Although there were a tremendous number of people sitting on the benches across from the room-wide Monet triptych, Water Lilies, so many I was uncomfortable walking between them and the painting to get to the other side of room...

It was fun, but super crowded.  In places it felt like trying to walk through Times Square or something.  Lots and lots of people were taking photos, so almost everywhere I tried to walk I stepped in between a photographer and their subject, "oops, sorry, excuse me".  And people reading the little explanations next to paintings would step back without paying any attention to whether someone, like me, was behind them, "oops, sorry, excuse me..."

I don't think I saw it all.  The galleries have lots of entrances and exits between them, so I'm sure I missed something.  But there's also things I'd go back and see again.

Back out on the street I was thinking about sushi again for lunch, down on 12th Street in the East Village, since I quite like a Japanese restaurant I found there.  At the moment it wasn't raining so I sort of considered grabbing a knish near Bryant Park and then walking 30 blocks down and being hungry enough for a full lunch.

But while I was walking from 53rd Street down to 42nd it started raining pretty heavy...  Too heavy to eat a hot, fried snack outside without it getting wet, cold and soggy...  So, I went into Grand Central Terminal, used the bathroom and contemplated getting sushi in the food court there.  However theirs was all packaged and I figured it'd be better to go to a real restaurant and get it fresh.

I grabbed a subway train from Grand Central.  First I got to a platform with one train on either side, so I dashed into the one with an open door closest to the staircase, which turned out to be a 6 local.  The other train, a 5 left, while the 6 just sat there, with the conductor playing the "we're being held momentarily by the train's dispatcher, please be patient" message every couple of minutes, but without going anywhere.  Then a 4 pulled up across the platform, so I went over to that, and immediately the 6 train left, while the 4 I just got into played the same delay message...  Fortunately it didn't play it long, and we were soon underway, with that one being an express train, so the next stop was 14th Street Union Square, exactly where I wanted to go.

At Union Square I got out and got wet in the rain walking a few blocks over to 2nd Avenue and 12th Street, where Shima is located.

Shima was virtually empty, with the only other customers being a Japanese couple at the corner window.  The hostess told me to sit where I wanted so I took a seat looking out the window onto 2nd Avenue.  I ordered the sushi lunch and asked if they had sunomono salad, which is a Japanese salad made with thin sliced cucumber, a little thing sliced carrot, vinegar, sugar and salt that I like.  I didn't see it on the lunch menu anywhere, but she said they had "sunomono mix" on their dinner menu and that it wasn't included with the lunch, but they could "mix it" if I wanted.  I agreed, since I hadn't had it for a long time...

I got my miso soup first and burned my tongue on it as it was piping hot.  When I finished that she brought the sunomono mix, and it was not at all what I expected...  I expected a small bowl of salad, but this was a large square plate with sashimi, slices of fish, mushroom (I think?), crab, a prawn, some things I couldn't identify, and two slices of octopus tentacle.

I never really wanted to try octopus before, and I always wondered what I would do if it ended up on a plate in front of me.  Now I know.  It doesn't have much flavor, and its texture is very, very rubbery, like it was a rubber octopus toy or something...  It was easier to eat it while I was by myself, without someone else watching to see what I do.  I ate both pieces and I wouldn't say they were really bad, but there's so many better things available I definitely wouldn't go out of my way to get it again.

The things I couldn't identify also had a rubbery texture, and I actually don't know if they were animal or vegetable.

Underneath the other stuff there was a bed of sunomono salad that was what I actually thought I was ordering...  And once I found that under there, it went great in combination with the other items as a single mouthful.

I definitely enjoyed the fish, prawn and crab pieces, delicious!

As I was nearly finished with the sunomono mix my plate of sushi came.  This time for the roll I picked spicy salmon, and now that I've had it, I prefer the regular salmon or tuna rolls...  Not that it was bad, but the spicy flavor from it stayed in my mouth and overpowered some of the rest of the subtle sushi flavors, which is quite subtle indeed...  And the fish on the sushi pieces was fresh and tender, melt-in-your-mouth...  Mmmm...

All in all, a delectable meal...

When I finished and paid I grabbed my jacket off the chair back, and the earlier rain had had time to soak through it at the shoulders, so it was kind of cold putting it on.

Back out on the street it was raining harder again and I got wetter on my way to Union Square.  There's a Whole Foods store across the street from Union Square so I figured I'd pop in and see if they had chocolate bars with bacon in them, something I saw a few years ago at a Whole Foods in Los Angeles, which seemed gross at the time but I've been thinking of it since then and would like to satisfy my curiosity...  The store was jam packed with people, although not as crowded as the MoMA.  I passed a truly overwhelming tea selection before finding the chocolate bars.  They didn't have what I wanted, so I didn't buy anything.  And when I returned to the front of the store where the checkouts were, I was glad I didn't find it, or I would've been stuck in that insane line for the checkouts and I have no idea how much longer I would've been there...

So, I got the train home and here I am...

Art - Code on the Subway?

I've seen this poster on the subway lately and I like it (I took the image itself from the MTA's website).

I didn't notice it the first time I saw it, but what's with the letters and numbers on the bottom?

They're presented as the symbols for the various subway lines, including the colour the subway system uses on trains, signs and maps for each line, but there's no obvious order and the strings are different lengths.  Several are duplicated, but not all of them...  All of the subway lines are represented.

I suspect it's an encrypted message...

The symbols are:
LZN ABG3S FRJME76D R41CBS 5MQL2

Any ideas?  I've tried a few simple, basic decryption attempts, but no luck so far...

-------------
Follow up on March 4, 2011

I wrote to the artist, Takayo Noda to ask if I was on the right track...  This is her reply:

Thank you for your Question / Comment.
I wish I had an exciting code to give you but the line numbers and letters are placed for the visual purpose. However, I was careful with not spell out any words with the letters.

What makes a book?

Nearly every day on the subway I see ads for audible.com, selling audiobooks, of mostly pretty popular titles.  Some trains have ads all the way across, from one end to the other, like this:

But one thing it got me wondering is...  

What is a "book"?

I've always thought of books as paper with printed words or pictures or combinations, and more recently with ebooks, electronic versions of printed words and pictures and combinations.  But the key thing to me is that a book is words.

But these audio books, are they still books?  Where's the dividing line between a book and a performance?  How often would we go to a play and after it's finished say "wow, that was an amazing book!"?  We might say it's based on an amazing book, but we don't refer to the play as the book.

I've only ever listened one audiobook, a performance, definitely a performance, of The Hobbit, performed by one of my favorite actors, Nicol Williamson (more famous for playing Merlin in Excalibur). This is something done long before audiobooks were commonplace, so I don't know if modern ones are similar.  In it, he did all the narration and all the voices, giving each character a distinctly different voice.  I've listened to it a hundred times or more since my mother got the tapes in the late 70's.  Williamson has probably become my favorite actor simply because of how many times I listened to that through my child hood...

And I sometimes wonder what a modern audiobook might sound like.  But I expect to be disappointed if I ever listen to one, because I can't imagine many actors doing as good a job as Williamson did for my favorite story.

But back to the original question in my mind, I have no doubt that the one I have heard was a performance, not a book.  I never thought of it as a book, but only as a dramatic performance of a story.  And maybe that's part of why I don't want to listen to an audiobook, by calling it a book instead of a story or a performance, my expectations are set for disappointment.

A warm October Sunday in Central Park

Okay, a sort of busy and sleepy day today...  Yesterday I bought a large painting from an artist selling his work on a sidewalk in SoHo...  But no frame or anything like that...

After Leena and I got off the phone late in the morning, I went up and did my grocery shopping, no problems...  Then dumped them off at the apartment and headed out again.

My intention was to go to Staples near the Target and get some heavier clips, then head back and try to hang the painting with them before going out again.  Only I fell asleep on the train and missed the stop.  When I woke up I was in Manhattan.  So I figured I'd just continue on what I was going to in the afternoon...  I dozed off and on in the train till around 60th Street and Broadway where I got off.

I was a little disoriented and wandered around the block, half thinking of asking someone "hey, is there a park around here somewhere?" (the joke being that the nearest park is 50 blocks long and quite a few wide, not the sort of thing easily missed (and in the song Miss You, Mick Jagger even mentions it by name)).  But I found it and entered Central Park...

I wandered without much aim for a while, enjoying the shade.  It's not hot, but the chill we've had lately was gone, so it was comfortable short sleeve weather outside.  I got a pretzel at one place and continued walking a bit in the park.  I liked the big, green lawns and watching people playing ball games, as well as the scattered saxophone players all over.

The park is so big that looking north or south from many parts of it and the city outside is far, far in the distance...

That went on for a bit, until I wandered by the lake and kept comparing it to the lakes near my parents' house, and then into an "all natural" part called The Ramble, where it's supposed to be more natural than the rest of the park, but those two things just reminded me a lot of my parents' neighborhood, Sandpiper Village, but as only half-baked imitations (but then, Central Park is in the middle of a city, my parents' neighborhood is outside of the Waldport metropolitan area, surrounded by wilderness).

I headed out to Central Park West and walked down the blocks.  I passed the American Museum of Natural History that used to be my favorite museum as a kid, where I always just wanted to see the dinosaurs.  Somewhere around the 60's blocks I saw an interesting building off on a side street, so I walked that way.  It turned out to be Lincoln Center and I liked the fountain and sculpture there.  The steps all have LED displays in them so as you walk up you can see little notices about what shows are playing and things.

From there I headed on down Broadway, passing through Times Square where for at least ten blocks the street was blocked off and there were lots and lots and lots of booths on the street.  At each end of each block, on each side was one selling food, and in the middle a variety of things, hats, cell phone accessories, shawls and what-not...  The streets were jam packed with people and all the sellers repeated every other block, the same food items, the same tables of the same merchandise and so forth...  On a few blocks where guys with harnesses hold down gigantic balloons advertising Aeropostale clothing and outside that store someone was trying to give away 10% off coupons...

At 42nd Street I got off and headed into the subway to return to Brooklyn.  I slept a good bit of the way back on the train, again missing the station where Staples is located, and barely waking up at my own stop.

Back in the apartment I took a shower and settled in, but after a while felt like I should head out again for something...  So I looked up Staples online to see what their store hours were.  The one I planned to go to closed at 6pm, but there was a closer one near Fort Hamilton that closed at 7pm, and I hadn't been to the Fort Hamilton area at all, so that sounded like a good reason to head out.

I took the subway down there, getting off at 95th Street (only the trains and stations are so long I exited at 93rd Street).  Amazing...  The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is just gigantic down there, filling the whole view to the south.    I wish I'd brought my camera for that.  It doesn't actually go there, but one of its towers is very close (or very, very big).

I found the Staples store and looked all over the basement floor to find the clips I wanted.  I got four packs of two each, which in hindsight was a couple short, I should've gotten six packs of them.  Upstairs I looked at the laptops and they had one on clearance for $350, which I thought at that price could make a good experimental machine for tinkering with other operating systems that I've been running in virtual machines for a while, but would like to try non-virtual (e.g. not Windows, not Mac OS X, but ones like Linux or Haiku (which yes, made a recent appearance in xkcd)).  Unfortunately they didn't have any in stock.  The sales guy said maybe tomorrow.

After I paid and left I got back into the subway at 93rd Street just as a train was coming in.  It's the last stop of the R train, so I got in but had to wait while the cleaners swept it and all that before it left.

Back at the apartment I got out the clips and hammered nails into the wood above the wall and hung up the painting.  It's not hanging great, but it's up...  I wish I'd gotten more clips...  I took a couple of photos with my iPhone...

The artist is Prawech Pranaprom.  Last weekend I was just walking around in Manhattan and passed by his sidewalk display and liked what I saw.  Throughout the week I kept thinking, I've got to go back and see again, and wondering how much would an artist charge for artwork being sold on a display on a sidewalk anyway? (okay, that turned out to be around three times what I expected and budgeted for, but we bargained and got it down a decent notch, only 66% over my budget...)

A highlight of the one non-silver black lightbulb in the painting.  It's black, with white arrows and lines that the artists said was "energy" (I won't disagree with his interpretation, it's what he had in mind when he painted it, and I like how it looked).

Now I'm just winding up the day and will be turning out the lights and going to bed in a bit...

Sunday - Wandering Brooklyn and Manhattan (again...)

After Leena called in the morning and we talked, I looked at the chunks of beef in the fridge and thought, "well, if I don't cook them soon they'll go bad" and figured I'd fry them up for breakfast.  I hadn't gotten around to buying any cooking oil or butter or so I figured I'd just toss them in the hot pan and let them fry in their own fat...  However, this isn't a nonstick pan, so they all stuck pretty bad before they got cooking...

I let them cook, flipping them around with a spatula until some were a touch burnt at the edges.  Whenever they were on a part of the pot where I'd already scraped some off, they stopped sticking, but when they touch another, new part, they'd stick and I'd have to scrape them off and back into the center of the pan again...  Once I figured they were finished I scooped them all out onto a stack of three paper plates and used one of my kitchen knives to cut them up and eat them.  Tasty, nice, wholesome beef with no extra flavors, all the subtleties that would otherwise get covered up.

I soaked the pan with some soap and water and almost all the burnt stuff scrubbed off.  I don't have a scrubbing sponge, either, or I'd get even more off.  Anyway, it's things like that that'll "season" the pan.  Good quality pots and pans absorb the oil, fat and stuff of things cooked and eventually cook better and smoother.  Or maybe that's only cast iron, not stainless steel...

After that I wasn't really full, so I looked up the address of the 5 Guys in Park Slope and went out on the subway.  It was easy enough to find.  I ordered a plain burger, which comes with two beef patties by default, and a single patty burger is a special order, a regular order of french fries and a regular drink.  It came to $12, and used up almost all the cash I have on hand...  For my drink I got a Cherry Coke, which wasn't very cherry, but I'd have continued to be curious if I didn't get it.  It took about ten minutes for them to cook my order and I ate it there.  The fries were a lot, their regular order of them is a small cup filled, and then since they always serve in a bag, even for orders that aren't going out, they then fill the bag above the food with fries.

Now that was a filling meal!

After I finished it I figured I'd better walk a bit to work some of that off.  I walked all up 7th Avenue until it hit Flatbush Avenue and then I walked along Flatbush until I got to the Atlantic Avenue / Pacific Street subway station, where I usually transfer on workdays between trains.

From there I hopped on a 3 train into Manhattan.  I got off at 59th Street and Broadway, which is just at the corner of Central Park.  I walked around the park for a while.  It didn't take long to figure out why I kept smelling horses as I walked along the outside of the park, there were lots and lots of horse drawn carriages going around inside the park.

I stopped at park benches a few times to cool off.  I didn't even bring my backpack, and just walking slowly and leisurely I was sweating pretty heavily.  There were a few small drops of rain here and there, but not a whole lot, and not enough to ever think, "ah, it's raining."

After walking a bit in the park I went back out to the streets, zig zagging around a bunch of Manhattan streets.  I passed the Apple Store near the park and there was a waiting line to get in because it was so crowded.  The store is all underground, I guess.  There's a big, glass cube as an entrance in the middle of a square on the sidewalk and an elevator and stairs going down into the store.

It was sort of dazzling to walk amongst so many huge buildings.  They just never ended.  Anywhere I stood there'd be tall, tall buildings in all directions, and then walk a block or two and it's all different tall buildings in all directions.

I passed by the Museum of Modern Art where I could see some interesting artwork in the windows, and thought about going in, but figured I'd check prices and things online.  Since I didn't think (and now that I've looked it up, I was right) it was free, I figured it'd be better to plan a day there rathe than just stopping in to cool off from walking hard...  But looking at their web site, I was walking on the street outside the window in the photo from that link...

Photographic evidence that my camera
(if not me) was in Times Square...

I made my way to Times Square and thought about getting an ice cream cone or something, but resisted.  I sat at a couple of places there to cool off before getting on the N train back to Brooklyn.

I also stopped at Bryant Park, which is quite close to Times Square and watched the pigeons there try to eat a piece of what appeared to be a pretzel, but it was too big for any bird to swallow and too tough to break apart easily...

The ride from Times Square to the stop by my apartment was long and crowded and I was barely awake by the time I got out.  There was some elderly guy sitting across from me who kept twitching and yawning and drifting between asleep and awake.  Whenever he was awake he'd open up his duffel bag and take out a small, black plastic wrapped, flask shaped, glass bottle and swallow a little clear liquid, then put the cap back on and put it away, then he'd sort of drift off again, twitching his hands...

Total Recall of the Future

I recently watched the movie, Total Recall again for the first time in eight or nine years. I've enjoyed that movie since the first time I saw it at the theatre near the college campus. But this time I was struck most by some of the director, Paul Verhoeven's 1990 vision of the future.

What made me think to watch the movie with this in mind is the London Underground from my last few trips to the U.K. In Total Recall there's video advertisements all over the subway station, with monitors and video instead of the old paper advertisements. The same things were alongside the escalators in some of the London Underground stations. Many of the real ones were timed so that as you move up or down, each monitor you pass is just a little farther in the advertisement than the previous one.

Near the beginning Arnold Schwarzenegger as Doug, and Sharon Stone as Lori, have breakfast in front a wall that's a TV. Doug keeps turning it to a news channel to find out what's happening on Mars and Lori keeps changing it back to a pastoral scene of a lake in the mountains. While science-fiction back then is a reality now (though maybe not cheap).

Throughout the movie the characters all talk to each other via video phones. While most of our stand-alone telephone units don't have video yet, we're on our way there. At work we have video conference units that are kind of similar, and for my recent job search I used Skype with video sharing.

Then in the movie there's the scene with Lori practising her tennis swing, following along with the hologram. There isn't much detail there, but somehow that makes me think of the Nintendo Wii. I've seen photos and read descriptions of the Wii, but haven't actually seen one yet. But it looks like fun with its controller that you wave around to control the games.

At one point when Doug checks into the Hilton on Mars the clerk says there's something of his in the vault. Both of them put their thumbs on a small scanner and the drawer opens. I don't know if they had biometric stuff like that in the 80's, but now in 2010 I get into the office door using a thumb scanner.

Of course, some of the futuristic stuff is kind of corny. The cars in particular look silly and look like a cheap shell put on top of a real car. The guns the agency operatives use look silly, too.

Sun Down

When I got home from work, around dusk, I found this on the balcony... What to call it?

Day break? Night fall? Sundown?

It made me think of the saying, "day breaks without having fallen, but night falls without breaking."

Odissi Dance Performance, Sunday Night

Last night I was out late, at an Indian classical dance performance.  The first one I've actually been to in nearly nine years here in India.  When I first came over, a couple of my friends at the time said "don't worry, we'll see lots of Indian classical shows" for both dance and music.  But well, none of the plans ever worked out…  Sometimes there'd be one and Prasad would say "it's from 9pm to 1am, and I won't be going to Aundh afterwards so you'll have to get back on your own" which didn't seem like a good idea.  Or other reasons we just never went.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this one.  It was an Odissi style performance.  The dancer was a disciple of a famous Odissi dance guru, who later became the master's daughter-in-law.  It was an annual performance put on for the anniversary of his death.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to keep the notecard sized "program" with their names...

My sister-in-law, Sonal, was the master of ceremonies, explaining the performance at the beginning and then giving an overview of each individual piece before it began.

The evening began with Sonal's cousin, Nitu, who is also a former coworker of mine at Tieto, and her sister and brother-in-law picking me up down at the end of the lane.  We went to my in-laws' house to meet up with my brother-in-law, Vinesh and niece, Shraddha, who went in a separate car.  We got to Symbiosis in Deccan at just about 5:30pm, and it was scheduled to start at 5:45pm.  After the parking we all went in and found seats just behind the "reserved" sign blocking the front few rows.

But things didn't start right away…  The hostess was waiting to see if more people would show up, since most years the auditorium is packed for this show, but this year it was little more than half full.

Once it started Sonal came out and explained what we were going to expect and introduced the dancer.  And shortly the dance began.

There were six (or was it seven?) numbers.  The opening and closing ones were more the dancer's prayer to a god, and while they were graceful and elegant I didn't really understand them.

The ones in between were more stories from Indian mythology and while I didn't know some of the stories, such as the one Nitu explained involved casting dice and gambling, I could recognize a number of movements as representing activities, and sounds that were clearly rain.  It helped, too, that Sonal introduced each one.

The one about the rain was the clearest, with the music and the dancer's movements most obvious, beginning with light rain and great, crashing booming of the deluge that washed everything away.

Even when I didn't quite understand it, I still thoroughly enjoyed watching.

At one point, though, I found if I sat with my feet crossed at the ankles I yawned and yawned and yawned, but if I kept my feet flat then I wasn't tired at all.  Shraddha, next to me, however, was a different story.  She was obviously bored and fidgeting horribly, completely unable to sit still.  The wooden armrest between us was a little loose and sometimes in her thrashing about she'd bash it into my side, not on purpose, I know she wouldn't do that.

At the beginning Sonal announced it would be about 90 minutes.  About 90 minutes into it she introduced one as "in the next piece" and Shraddha's reaction was a mumbled exclamation "shit!".  Nitu said this wasn't the most exciting or interesting classical dance performance and she's seen better.

But I really liked it.  I didn't have any other expectation so it was fascinating to me.

After it was finished Nitu and her family wanted to stop for dinner, but it was getting on to my bedtime so I went with Vinesh, Sonal and Shraddah.  Sonal invited some of her dance classmates, a couple of teenage girls, to join us since they had to go to Kalyani Nagar as well, and we squeezed all of us into the car.

On the way back the three of them discussed how perfect the dancer was, how exact she did "flips" and "frames" and other technical dance terms I wasn't at all familiar with, and how well her facial expressions went along with each movement and story, which was something I understood...

Afterwards, looking at the Wikipedia article, the repertoire listed was a very close match to what we saw, including the story of Radha.

So, if there's more of these on Sunday afternoons, not too late, and not too early, I'd be happy to go.

Well, here's a couple of pictures from Wikipedia...  This performance last night was strictly "no photography" and without a clear invitation, even if I'd brought a camera I don't think I'd be comfortable taking photos of a live performer who might be trying to concentrate...