Summer's Here!!

Midnight exercise
Like most other weeks, the excitement this week started on Friday. I had been trying to meet an ex-colleague for many weeks, and we finally managed to find time on our calendars on Friday evening. We had been trying to coordinate it so that we could meet with our families, but since things weren't working out, we decided to just get together for a drink and involve the families later.

He picked a bar called Ginger Man on 36th St. for us to meet. The timing was such that I took the Waterside Plaza shuttle and got off at 42nd Street and Third Avenue. As I began to walk towards my destination, in a few blocks it became apparent that an attractive Oriental woman was following exactly the same route that I was taking -- a few feet ahead of me. We would come upon a certain intersection and I would turn left or go straight depending on which walk signal I got and it so turned out that she would take the same exact turn. She was a few steps ahead of me, and since this happened many times, I half expected her to stop and ask me why I was following her. This continued all the way to 36th St. -- almost 6 blocks south and three blocks across town -- and as I was looking down at my Blackberry to see the exact address and location of Ginger Man -- I looked up to find that she disappeared, and I was standing right in front of the bar. "Uh-Oh!" I thought to myself, "I hope she hasn't gone in here". I entered the bar expecting to find her pointing me out to the bouncer as a stalker. Thankfully, there was no sign of her and no such thing happened.

Ginger Man turned out to be a great find. Although it was just 6 PM on a Friday evening, the place was crowded enough that we didn't get any place other than standing room in a corridor. After a while, a little space opened up on one of the bars, and we got to sit on a stool and enjoyed some really nice Belgian Hoegaarden. We spent about an hour and a half, after which I headed out to meet Neil Lamba, who was back in town. Neil and I had a couple of drinks, and then since he and his friends wanted to go to Café Wha? and I wasn't in a mood to go there -- we hopped in a cab and headed downtown. They dropped me off at 25th St., and I planned to walk back to Waterside. We had driven down Broadway, and I thought it would be about four or five blocks, but it turned out to be more like eight blocks.

A long walk later, I was about half a block away from waterside, when I saw a girl and a guy carrying a heavy table between them walking up the sidewalk. They were coming right at me, and I pretended to avoid them with mock drama. They put the table down and the girl called out to me in a really plaintive voice "can you please, please help us with this table?" She was sweet (if a little chubby) and I was in a cheerful sort of mood -- and figured that this would be something interesting to experience anyway. So I got one corner of the table and off we went in the opposite direction. I looked at the guy and he was your typical graduate student -- sloppy T-shirt, fuzzy beard, and a funny hat on his head.

"How far?" I asked.

"Oh just a few blocks" she replied.

Half a block later, we ran into a tall, strapping young college kid -- and she corralled him into helping us carry the table. So here we were, a motley crew of four people, carrying this really heavy table up 25th St. They were apparently taking it to a party, and I think the college kid expected to get a free drink out of it at the end. Three or four blocks later, we made a turn on Third Avenue and by this time my arms were really aching. Thankfully, we stopped a few doors down, and then she said "now we have to figure out how to carry this up to the roof." At that point I decided I'd had enough entertainment for the evening, shook hands with all of them and left. I wonder what would've happened if I'd stayed, or gone to the party -- I'm sure it would've been fun.

King-Sized Saturday
With Saturday, our big "Lion King" day arrived. This show was at 2 PM, so we left home at around 11:30 to have lunch at an Indian restaurant close to the theater. "Minar" turned out to be a little dive of a place on 46th St., with a fairly wide, but reasonably priced buffet. A quick lunch later, we walked over Times Square, and since we had some time to kill, spent a few minutes picking out a new pair of jeans at the Levi's store. Looking very tourist-like, with Levi's bag in hand, we took our seats for a few minutes before the show was supposed to start. Dhruv got a cushion to allow him to see better, and our seats were very nice. The Minsikoff Theater was not as large as some of the other Broadway theaters I've been to, and this meant that we had an excellent view of the goings-on.

The show was fantastic -- words cannot begin to describe it -- starting from the portrayal of animals -- the giraffes in particular took the cake -- to the music, props and the overall effect, we were just blown away. One way of measuring the impact of a performance is how many times you feel a chill wind down your spine -- and I must confess that I felt a chill at least five or six times. We had been cautioned that Dhruv may get scared and not enjoy the show -- but he had such a wonderful time that I saw him clap in a way that I've never seen him clap before -- with his hands extended out above his head and a beaming smile from ear to ear. I can't be more specific without ruining the fun for those of you who haven't been yet -- but this is honestly the best three hours I have spent in a long time. We've now seen a few productions on Broadway, and Broadway productions when they are on tour (in San Francisco). A show on Broadway is a show on Broadway -- nothing comes close (even a Broadway show on tour).

Hot Sunday
On Sunday, we had scheduled a picnic in Central Park with Enthu, Charu, and their kids. We packed some veggie burgers and they were going to make sandwiches. We caught the number 6 train up, and met them at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 72nd St. We picnicked close to the small conservatory pond where scores of young boys were trying to sail little remote controlled sailing boats on the relatively still waters. It was a really hot day -- the mercury was supposed to touch 90°, and we think it might have crossed that.

As we got to the park, Charu got a call from the pizza delivery guy (they had also ordered pizza) and as we were walking towards the rendezvous location, I ran into Amir, Anita and some of their friends. I guess New York is not such a large place after all, and neither is Central Park -- if I (a newcomer) can run into someone I know!

After lunch, we spent some time tossing a Frisbee around (and Dhruv almost beaned an old lady on the forehead -- and got what sounded like a stream of invective as a result) and the kids climbed trees. We left the park at about 3 PM, and as we were crossing Fifth Avenue, we cut across a parade of some sort that had a contingent from (when we were passing it) the Brooklyn Greek Orthodox Church. I did feel bad for their patriarch -- he was walking up Fifth Avenue in all his ceremonial black robes, in that heat.

Like they normally do on a hot and windy day when the pollen is flying around, my allergies began to act up by the evening. By the next morning, I had a full-blown attack and had to take some serious medication and sleep it off. I thought that the urban sprawl of New York would mean that there was less pollen to trigger an allergy attack and was perhaps less careful about taking my allergy medication on time. I should not take things for granted -- it's not only the Bay Area that can trigger really bad attack.