Sidewalk excitement

Breakfast at the Warwick
On Wednesday, I had a breakfast meeting with a prospective client at the Warwick Hotel in Midtown. The Warwick has a nice old-fashioned Bistro just off the lobby, and we met there. When the waitress came to take our order, he asked me to go first, and I made the mistake of accepting – and remembering what my mother told me (“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”), I proceeded to order a single-egg omelet with veggies and toast. The client, who was quite a big shot in his business, proceeded to ask for “a muffin” and got two tiny ‘mini-muffins’ since the Bistro was out of regular muffins. So to my utter embarrassment, he picked at two tiny muffins on his plate while I tried my level best to eat as much of my omelet as I could. Lesson learned! I guess American habits are more European than British (who have hearty breakfasts) and we Indians are like the latter.

Finding stuff on the sidewalk
On Wednesday afternoon, I was returning from a business meeting and had just crossed Broadway/Sixth Avenue to catch the M16 back to Waterside. As I crossed an entrance to the subway station, a couple of young girls (they appeared to be tourists) crossed me, headed for the subway. One of them had her wallet out and must have been taking out her MetroCard. While she was doing so, a few $20 bills inadvertently fell out of her wallet and onto the sidewalk. She walked on oblivious, and I and a couple of passersby hailed her. She and her friend stopped and turned, and we pointed to the dollar bills on the sidewalk. As she realized what had happened, and began walking towards the bills, a short oriental-looking older lady jumped on the dollar bills, picked them up, and claimed that they were hers. Thankfully, all of us bystanders told her in no uncertain terms that the dollar bills were the girl's and she then handed them over with a look of great sadness on her face. Having lived in a more sheltered, suburban environment the blatant way in which, in open view, she claimed the dollar bills to be hers left me really surprised.

I guess Wednesday is my day for finding things on the sidewalk -- I was traveling on the M16 yesterday, going to lunch with an old friend, and we had stopped at the Third Avenue bus stop. Someone got off the bus, and from where I was sitting -- near the rear exit -- I saw a small iPod Nano lying on the sidewalk. The door had closed by then, but since the bus hadn't begun moving, on an impulse, I jumped up and tried to open the door. But the light had already gone out, and the door would not open. I would have given up at that point, but someone saw me struggle with the door and shouted out to the driver "backdoor, please!" The driver opened the back door; I jumped out, picked up the Nano, and ran to the front of the bus to re-board. The driver looked at me puzzled: "didn't you just get off the back door?" "Yes," I replied, "I found this lying on the sidewalk and jumped out to pick it up." He just shook his head.

Later that evening, when I got home, I posted an ad on craigslist announcing that I had found a two GB black iPod Nano in the Murray Hill area. Since I had received no response by the evening, I plugged it into Sandhya's MacBook to see if there was any information about the owner. As soon as I plugged it in, it said: "Craig Saltzman's iPod." I immediately Googled ‘Craig Saltzman’ and several matching results came up. There was a doctor in Boston, someone in Chicago, and a real estate agent with a 516 telephone number. I looked up 516, and found that it was the area code of Nassau County, the county just East of Queens in Long Island. The photograph of the real estate agent showed him to be a middle-aged / older man, and the music on the iPod seemed to be of someone of my age -- it had Pink Floyd, The Doors, etc. I decided to call the number, and left a voicemail.

About half an hour later, we got a call back -- it turned out that it was in fact the right Craig Saltzman, that it was his son’s iPod, and that he had lost it earlier in the day. I heard a female voice in the background ask him "ask him how he found our number." I am sure my ability to find them so quickly must have freaked them out. When I told him that as soon as I plug the iPod into a computer, it said that it was "Craig Saltzman's iPod" and that I then Googled him, he relaxed. The lady, his wife, then came on the phone to thank me. "Tell us how we can meet you and pick it up, and pay you for your trouble" she said. I guess she was pleasantly surprised when I told her that no payment was necessary, that I was happy to be able to help. I took his e-mail address, and e-mailed him our address and asked him to come by and pick it up whenever he liked.

Bingo night
Wednesday night was bingo night in Dhruv's school, and so we decided to go for a while. Dhruv was not terribly keen but we decided to force him to go anyway. He had never played bingo before, and I was surprised to see his competitive juices flowing as he understood what the game was all about.

After playing a few rounds, we walked Patsy's Pizzeria, at the intersection of Third Avenue and 34th St., where we had a nice dinner of some lightly seasoned thin crust pizza. We're really getting spoilt with the high quality, thin crust pizzas which you get here in New York -- a little cheesy or perhaps than what you get in Italy, but pretty good all the same.

Saturday brunch
On Saturday, we headed down to the East Village for brunch with Sriram Padmanabhan, an old colleague from Infosys, and his family. We met at Angelica's Kitchen, a vegan restaurant that is at the intersection of second Avenue and 12th St. We took the M15 down Second Avenue, and were surprised to find the bus turn off at 14th St. Second Avenue was closed South of 14th St. because of a street fair. So we got off, and walked through the fair to the restaurant.

We have been to restaurants like Angelica's in the Bay Area (Gratitude Café, for example) and have always enjoyed the experience. Angelica's was no exception -- the menu was very interesting -- a mix of many different cuisines. I had a bowl of Southern Chilli, which was really nice. Sandhya had a burrito-like thing, and I helped her finish it.

After brunch, feeling quite healthy, we decided to go to Veniero’s for dessert. This cathedral to worshiping the desert gods is definitely for someone counting calories. I had a really wonderful cheesecake with fresh strawberry on top -- I've never been a big cheesecake fan, but I really enjoyed this one.

We walked back all the way from Veniero’s, enjoying a little stroll around the beautiful Gramercy Park, which is unfortunately a private park and only residents who live within a block of the park have access.

Classmate Gautam Gode was in town, visiting from India, and we had a little get-together of my business school classmates and their spouses. I hadn't seen Gode in almost 15 years and was pleasantly surprised to find that he had changed little.

To the Met with a purpose
I might have mentioned that Dhruv has been enrolled in afterschool art classes and spends an hour every Wednesday evening with an art teacher. She has been teaching them about the great artists, and having them actually paint in the style of these great artists. Thus far, he's studied Van Gogh, Monet, and Seurat.

We therefore decided that it was time for him to see the actual works of these masters. On Sunday morning, after breakfast, we climbed on the number six train with the specific objective of showing Dhruv the actual paintings of the artists that he had been studying.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that he quite enjoyed the visit -- he recognized some of Monet's paintings that the art teacher had showed them -- in particular, "Bridge Over a Pool Of Water Lilies". It was really sweet to watch him stand close to painting and look at the brushwork, and then walk backwards and look at the painting from afar. "But Appa," he would say "I can still see the dabs of paint!"