People to meet, everywhere!

An interesting thing happens when it starts to rain. Suddenly people go from needing 2 sq ft of space (their body width) to needing about 4 sq ft of space (their umbrella width). It makes for interesting games of dodge the umbrella. At one point, I was looking back waiting for some friends to catch up from the previous street. I turned around and caught an umbrella nearly in the eye. I think this is about the most danger I've been in since moving here!


What can I say, I'm easily amused. Spotted in Harlem.


A synagogue which suffered a roof collapse two months ago. This is directly across the street from the Tea cafe that I visited last Sunday. Speaking of, Sunday was an amazing example of what life can be like in NYC.

In the morning, I went to a Quaker meeting. The Quaker meeting room was set up with pews coming from all four walls, all facing the center which was empty. The idea is for everyone to sit in silence for an hour, waiting in "expectant silence" for divine leadings. If anyone is inspired to speak, they are free to do so. Only one person spoke during this particular meeting, although I hear that the 11:30am meeting is usually full of shared thoughts. I used the silent time to explore the origins of the universe, and ran into a few interesting questions which I'll want to research later on. I once heard that Stephen Hawking has so many amazing revalations about the origin of the universe simply because he spends so much time sitting still, thinking about it. Now, I can completely understand that.

After the meeting, I left for the Multi-ethnic eating tour. I arrived 30 minutes early, and coming out of the subway I ran into a guy who needed directions. His name was Tom, and he was interested in my phone (doubles as my PDA/wallet/camera/videocamera) which I was using to pull up a detailed map of the streets. We got to talking. It turns out he was on his way to a little tea cafe to meet an acquantance, and he invited me along. With 30 minutes to kill, I said "sure!". We arrived at Teany, which turns out to be a cafe started by Moby. Moby's ex-girlfriend, Kelly, started the cafe with him and now owns and runs it. She was there to chat with the three of us. Unfortunately, I had to bail out pretty quick and head to the walking/eating tour.

There, I got to know Brian and Sonya, who were the guide and guide-in-training, respectively. We sampled all sorts of ethnic food from the largely immigrant-populated Lower East Side. The samples included: Plantanos from a real Dominican chef. In fact, at one point, Big Onion had to skip this part of the tour because the chef had literally gone home to the Dominican Republic and was the only one who knew how to make the plantanos! Rugelach, a Jewish pastry. The choices were chocolate, raspberry, orange and cinnamon. I had the raspberry and cinnamon, which were both delicious. Pickles from the Pickle Guys. They were quite a bit different--and better--than the typical pickles you buy.

We also had Dim Sum in Chinatown, where we walked past a statue of Confuscious. Finally, we finished the tour with some fresh Mozzarella balls and Parmesan chunks in Little Italy. Overall, the tour was excellent. Afterwards, I was chatting with a group of 7 people from the tour who were thinking about stopping somewhere for some coffee.

I told them about this great little Tea shop which was right near the start of the tour, and consequently, their parking spots too. Yep, you guessed it, I showed back up at the same Tea shop where Kelly (Moby's ex-gf) had seen me earlier in the day with two people I had just met. This time, I was bringing 7 people I had just met! They all tried the TeanyChino, the incredibly delicious tea I'd had earlier that morning, and all of them loved it. I had to leave this party early too.

I was off to meet a group of people from 43things.com, who all share the goal of "organize a 43Things meetup in NYC (or nearby)". There ended up being three of us there after a nasty thunderstorm in the morning made the rest of the attendees a little hesitant to come out (thankfully, it had stopped raining during all of my outings that day!). After meeting and getting to know them for an hour, we all went our separate ways.

I ended up at the Penington, having dinner with half of the house on a rare night that the dining room was completely full. I made plans with some of the residents to go to the Annual Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day on Tuesday, then went to bed.

What a fun day. And to think...
I used to be the classic introvert.