We hopped onto the Chinatown bus for NYC this past weekend to send my cousins off to residency and fellowship with what else but a big Chinese banquet with the family. But between wandering the city and meeting with old friends, our short trip took us on a culinary tour which reminded me once again why Boston is simply no match for New York City dining. Perhaps most satisfying was recapturing the soba experience from Hawaii at a cozy noodle shop in the village called Soba-Ya. Literally meaning “Soba Shop”, the place sports fresh, hand-made soba kneaded each morning from stone-milled buckwheat shipped directly from Azumino. The kaeshi (dipping sauce) is supposedly aged for days. Our other indulgences included some watercress dumplings and lotus leaf baked rice at our old favorite hole-in-the-wall in Chinatown, Sweet-n-Tart, as well as some greasy burgers and milkshakes at Burger Joint, another hole-in-the-wall interestingly hidden behind a velvet curtain in the classy lobby of Le Parker Meridien hotel. With two weddings down in New York over the upcoming months, I’m already preparing a new list of places to hit on my next trip down! =P

I got an early taste of summer this weekend when I realized that my heating system has gone completely out of whack. The temperature outside was around 65° and my thermostat is set to 60°, but the indoor thermometer read a scorching 90°! And I’m STILL getting heat! While all I can do is to keep the AC running full-blast until they fix the problem, it made for a rather uncomfortably hot and sticky weekend. We did, however, managed to drive down to Newport, RI yesterday to partake in the Great Chowder Cook-Off, the first of the tourist town’s many summer festivals. The ads report over 3000 gallons of chowder served up by over 30 restaurants to compete in three main categories, including clam, seafood, and creative chowder. Though each booth served only a smidgeon of their steaming concoction, we were so chowdered out by the end that we gave up on any hopes for seconds and just placed our ballots before leaving. Though I would’ve liked to explore the town a bit further if we hadn’t been so zonked-out, we were glad that two of three of our choices took first place in the contest, making it a worthwhile trip after all.

It’s approximately 3 a.m. in the morning, and I’m about to sit down to enjoy my… brunnerfast. For those of you who may not be familiar with this term, it refers to the meal eaten in the wee hours of the early morning similar to a normal breakfast, but quadrupled in size to cover breakfast, lunch, and dinner from the previous day. After working in lab for the past 16 hours without food, I once again realized that after graduating from an Ivy-league college with honors, I too can find a job killing myself for no money. Toward the end of the day, I was so exhausted (and somewhat high on a combination of phenol, choloroform, and paraformaldehyde fumes), that during a conversation, I was like, “… But… But… What the hell was I saying???” To which my labmate replied, “I dunno… you just started going “But” all of a sudden.” Tonight was at least better than earlier this week, when I would go back into lab after dinner around midnight to work until 5am, making it feel like a whole other work day! This week’s getting too long, and I’m desperately in need of a hug… =(