Vintage Train Ride

        Every year, MTA runs vintage trains and buses in New York City during the holiday season. This year, the vintage train ran on the F and E line from 2nd ave F train stop into Queens. There is at least one bus route in each borough that has vintage buses running during the off-peak day-time hours. For more info check the MTA website during the next holiday season.

        The train cars are really vintage. The cars are manufactured in and around the late 30s. They were in service until the 70s. The cars have all the old components preserved. They have ceiling fans, a lever to open vents, and the seats are the old ones as well. The other amazing old element of the train were the ads. It gave a window into the past and how the society thought about certain things. There were ads encouraging to hit door blockers with purses, or ads showing a kid who was run over by a car and bleeding on the street. The ads also had prices for certain products and it showed how much cheaper things were back in those times. I think that the ads were the most fascinating thing about the whole ride.

Here are some pictures that I hope you will enjoy.

Lunar Eclipse in the North East

So if you didn't hear that there was a lunar eclipse recently that was visible in parts of the United States, you need to crawl out from under that computer screen and get out a bit more. lol I keed I keed.

So the eclipse started around 1:30am EST and lasted for a few hours, reaching its peak at around 3-3:30 am. I was awake for the initial phase and was able to take some clean pictures of it before heading to bed. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

A Visit to the Wired Store

        If you haven’t already heard, Wired has opened a pop-up store over in the NoHo area (Corner of Broadway and 4th st). The concept of the store is to showcase various products that Wired magazine has reviewed in their various issues. So I decided to visit the store a few weeks ago. I got there around 6:30pm on a Tuesday only to find the store closed. On closer inspection, the store is only open from Wednesday to Sunday and closes quite early on weekdays. So if you are thinking of visiting the store, double check the times on their site before going out there.

        It doesn’t take very long to go through the store and see all the gadgets that they have. Some worth mentioning include the uni-motorcyle displayed in their window, touch screen HDTV, and Cisco Telepresence. The sales person was helpful enough to do a demo of the Cisco Telepresence where she made a phone call to someone in LA and we were talking live with them on the TV. The concept is pretty cool and it works with Google TV as well. The other two things to check out are in the back of the first floor. One is this reflection of you on the wall with birds flying above and they swoop down and peck at your shadow until it’s all gone. The other is a piano but if you look above the piano, you will see how hitting a key will generate the sound from an enlarged piano strings. You can see it up-close from the second floor of the store.

NOTE: In the refrigerator in the back of the store and on the second floor, there are free drinks like ginseng tea, so make sure to pick one or more up when you are there.

Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what to expect there:

Long Hiatus

It has been quite a while since I last posted here. That doesn't mean I haven't done anything in terms of traveling. On the contrary, I think I did quite a bit of traveling in these few months. Mainly within NYC, sight seeing and all, but my major international trip was to Panama and Costa Rica towards the end of November, the details of which I will be posting in the next few days so stay tuned.

Summer of Movies

This summer I was able to go out and watch quite a few movies in theaters. Three notable ones were Despicable Me, Toy Story 3, and Inception.

Despicable Me, in my opinion, was a great movie. I was funny, entertaining, and above all it catered to not just the younger audience but the older ones, like myself, as well. The story line is pretty straight forward, one villain trying to outdo another. There is a dark side to the plot but with the introduction of the kids, the movie takes a very light hearted turn, which is always welcome. Without giving away too much about it, I think this is definitely one of the must see movies of the summer.

Toy Story 3 turned out to be your average Toy Story movie. I went in with high expectations having seen 1 and 2. The movie was good and continued the story from where the previous one had left off. There were moments that were funny but overall, for me, the movie did not live up to its expectations. I personally would have waited until it was out on DVD to see it knowing what I know now.

Inception, now that was a whole other story. I had heard great reviews about this movie as you probably already have. The movie lived up to all the hype that I had heard. The plot was great, the casting was also very good, and the special effects were amazing as well. I think the plot was the best part of the movie. The twist in the ending really made us think what really happened and what we could have thought wrong in our assumption of various situations. To this day, we still have discussions about the ending and its effects on the rest of the movie and how it definitely threw a wrench into the perfect explanation that everyone had of the events in the movie, until the final scene. So this movie is also a must-see from this summer.

NY Philharmonic At Prospect Park

Every year, the NY Philharmonic hosts a program called New York Philharmonic: Concerts in the Parks. This involves the New York Philharmonic performing in various parks around NYC. The various venues include Central Park, which holds the most number of shows for them, Prospect Park, Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens.

I had plans to go to the performance in Central Park. The special part this year was that one of the performances had the Shanghai Philharmonic join in with the NY Phil to perform, the first event of its type in Central Park. However, due to the weather forecasts where rain was imminent if it wasn’t already raining during the day, I could not make it to any of the Central Park performances. Eventually, I convinced a few of my friends to join me on a Friday for the performance in Prospect Park.

Arab Heritage Week - Comedy Show

Last week was a rare celebration of the Arab culture in NYC. The Arab Heritage Week was celebrated through various means all around NYC. There were music shows as well as comedy shows and festivals throughout the 5 boroughs of NYC.

A friend of mine convinced me to go to the Arab comedy show and it turned out to be a blast. Although the cover charge with the 2 drink minimum was a bit excessive, the show itself turned out to be a great display of Arab comedians. The show was held at the Broadway Comedy Club on 53rd st between 8th and 9th ave. In a span of 2 hours, the standup comedians made us laugh hysterically, the poet made us think about the current state of Arab culture, and the musician on the guitar picked on all different stereotypes of the Arab world.