2008 Macy's Parade

I am feeling really down lately. Won't discuss the personal issues here of course. But career wise, I have possibly reached all the milestones. Perhaps it is time for a job-change or at least a change in scenery. Life is essentially becoming a case of shadow and echo, and I am hard pressed to think of the next milestone that I should strive towards. I guess that is what makes life meaningful; always striving for the next milestone.

Since I am in NY for Thanksgiving, I attended the 2008 Macy's Parade. You might have already seen Macy's Parade on the TV. If you recall seeing some Parade with GIANT balloons of popular TV characters, that is the Macy's Parade.

Macy's parade started in 1924 when Macy's employees marched to Macy's flagship store on 34th Street in Manhattan dressed in vibrant costumes. At the end of the parade, Santa Claus was welcomed into Herald Square to symbolise the coming of Christmas. In 1927, the Parade began to feature big balloons which were breathtaking. And every year since, each Parade will feature a new character.

So, kicking off the parade is a couple of big Macy's balloons.

First to come is Smurf. Are they back in vogue, like Transformers and Polly Pockets?

Oh, forgot to mention. I think more than half a million people thronged the streets to see the parade. If you want to be right at the front row, you must start waiting in the cold, wintery morning at 6 am. The good thing about being infront is that you get to see not just the balloons close-up but also all the bands, performers and entertainers. Apparently, Hannah Montana was there. I went there at 9 am and I was stuck several rows back. I didn't mind, because if you are infront, your ears will freeze off since there is no one shielding you from the winter breeze.

Then a couple of pumpkins floated back.

Snoopy! WWI Fighter Pilot Snoopy. You can't see it but Snoopy's friend Woodstock was infront of Snoopy.

Look at the size of Snoopy. Think he is about to step on someone.

I have no idea what is the fish doing here. Sponsored by Sakae Sushi perhaps?

For the life of me, I forgot the name of this school girl TV character.

Energizer bunny. And then . . .

He turned around in circles and circles before moving off. Brilliant!

Sesame Street characters also appeared to say hi.

Big Hello Kitty. A lot of girls squealed in delight. Kitty looked good for her age.

Here comes Pikachu. This is one big Pokemon.

It looks like it is going to eat everyone.

Or summon his other Pokemon friends. Like the duck who just walks around looking stupid.

AARGH. I am going to eat everyone as revenge for making me so cute.

Old movie character - Captain Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story makes an appearance.

I hate this character. I seriously do.

I hope the wind catches him and tangles him up in electric wires to become spongebob fried pants.

Kermit. I miss the days of Muppets. The Count is my favourite character.

Big ugly ogre at 12 o'clock. I was disappointed that Donkey was not around.

And here comes my favourite balloon in the entire Macy's parade. The organisers actually saved this one for last.

Horton and the Whos!

Check out the flower that Horton is holding in his trunk. Horton looks happy. I wish I could be like Horton. Macy's Parade had been brilliant and these were just the balloons. Our Chingay could not even come close.

Yo, Adrian . . . we did it!

That was the last line from Rocky II and Rocky VI (the last movie of the franchise). Rocky was calling for Adrian (his wife) when he won the World Championship in Rocky II; and when he placed the flowers on her grave at the last scene in Rocky VI.

It was almost night when I reached Philadelphia Museum of Art. I located East Entrance Steps after some difficulties and strapped on my Apple Ipod searching for the Rocky theme music. Around me, people were running up the steps in unison and doing the Rocky victory dance at the top. There was even a wedding photo shoot on the steps.


This is the view from the top of the steps. By the way, if I do get married, I am so never, ever, taking any wedding photos in Singapore. There is surely a limit of the number of times I can endure seeing Sentosa or the Esplanade on wedding cards.


Only one of my friends was brave enough to act stupid with me and accompany me in running up the steps. The rest just couldn't "get it". They turned down the opportunity bcause they couldn't get the significance (some never watched Rocky movies in their lives) and some were also worried about appearing like idiots. Honestly, sometimes I think Singaporeans are too serious for our own good.


Sometimes, I really despair for my generation. I really do. Because they don't get it, they just don't. Everything is just money and work. Some didn't even watch any movies. I always thought I was boring but compare to some of my colleagues, I am positively the Hellraiser himself.

The running pic below is blur but no choice there.



View from the top of the steps. Wonderful view of Philadelphia.

Ok, the running aside. Philadelphia is a dump. Aw, man. The city seriously suck. Some of the streets were flooded after a heavy downpour. It was like Vientiane. Seriously, the Rocky movies are really accurate in portraying Philadelphia as a seedy and rough city. This city is really squalid. No wonder Rocky has to fight his way out of this city. I drove to this so-called famous restaurant "Pat's King of Steaks" to have the celebrated, legendary and illustrious Philly Cheesesteaks.


The "legendary" food turned out to be utter rubbish. I was so appalled by the Philly Cheesesteaks that I decided not to even put up pictures of it. Imagine a baguette with slices of beef and cheese and that's it. The beef was tasteless anyway so it was horrible.


I was so disappointed that I drove back to NYC and went straight to Carnegie Deli. Carnegie Deli is famous for their cheese cakes. However, the service was utterly rubbish. I had been forewarned so I wasn't surprised. How bad was the service? Let's just say that they served me cold beer in a WARM mug. That was only one word to describe the service. GHASTLY.


But the cheesecake was awesome though.

Seriously, seriously good.

Rocky Steps

I am a big Rocky fan. And if you watch any of the Rocky movies, you will know that the most famous scene in all the Rocky movies is Rocky's training run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After Rocky runs up the steps, he will lift his arms in victory and spin around in joy. Since the first movie came out in 1976, thousands of people have run up the steps to emulate Rocky; a movie character which I always think symbolises much that is good about the human spirit.

Below is a video I found on Youtube. It is actually the final montage shown during the ending credits of Rocky 6. You will see young, old, fat, thin, Americans, Asians and basically people from all walks of life running up the steps in Rocky fashion. I always find the video inspiring and think when it will be my turn to run up the steps.




Well, I decided it is about time I drive out of NYC to Philadelphia to run the Rocky steps and eat Philly cheese steak tomorrow. Guess who is listening to the Rocky theme on his Ipod now? One more thing I can cross out of the list of things to do and see in my life.

2nd Avenue Deli

New York is famous for its delicatessens or delis for short. Basically delis are restaurants which usually offer a wide-ranging sandwich menu but also standard American home-cooked food such as meatballs and beef brisket. Delis can come from a variety of cultural traditions - e.g. Jewish delis which offer kosher food. I always wanted to visit a deli for a meal but was usually frightened off by the massive amount of food the restaurant throws on your plate. Mile-high sandwich, anyone? The image of delicatessens is also deeply imbedded into my psyche through American pop culture and TV such as Seinfeld (much of the characters could be found in Tom's Delicatessen in the West 100 St).

One of the most interesting delis that I always wanted to try is 2nd Avenue Deli which is a kosher delicatessen. Although it is called 2nd Avenue Deli, it is not at 2nd Avenue (think it had to move due to rent dispute). It was recognised by Zagat as the best kosher deli in New York. Yay! The deli's specialties include kosher food such as matzoh ball soup, knishes, gefilte fish and cholent.

By the way, kosher food is food in accordance with Jewish laws. The Jewish laws on kosher food are numerous and complicated but do you know that they can only eat meat from mammals that both chew their cud and have cloven hooves e.g. cows? The mammals must also be slaughtered in a certain fashion. Sounds like halal food? Actually, there is an ongoing debate now whether Muslims can take kosher food. Both halah and kosher laws do not accept pork. Cows are accepted under both laws. The problem is alcohol. Kosher laws generally allow any sort of alcohol but Muslims are not supposed to drink.

But enough of intellectual hee-haw over halal and kosher food. As long as the food is excellent, it doesn't matter which religion and culture it belongs to. I rounded up the whole office and basically browbeat all of them like a bunch of sheeps and herded them to the 2nd Avenue Deli.

My table ordered the sandwich medley. What it means is basically they serve you a platter of all sorts of meat e.g. roast beef, corned beef, pastrami, salami, beef tongue and turkey breast. They give you a mountain of bread to eat the meat with. My personal favourite is the beef tongue. The tongue is seriously, seriously good. Most cooks will tell you that the essence of a cow is in the tongue. They are right.

Looks good, isn't it?

We also ordered chicken in a pot and roast beef. The chicken in a pot is basically chicken soup. Which is good but of course, cannot compare to our classic Chinese herbal black chicken soup. God, I miss them in New York.

Potato pancakes. So-so.

Chocolate Babka. Looks ok but disappointing really.

And after the food, the waitress served us shot glasses filled with chocolate soda. Taste bloody awful really. But it was really fun for all of us as we did the yum-seng in the Deli. Everyone was looking at us funny. The waitress asked me what we were cheering for and I quipped that we were Singaporean Jews and it was a Singapore Jewish after-dinner tradition. She smiled and go ahh. I hoped she didn't really believe me!

Anyway, the overall experience is excellent. The service is good, the price is reasonable and the entree (sandwich medley) is to die for.

Another Day, Another Parade

A nice day today but the air is crisp and frosty. You can feel the coldness starting to bite in like needles as the wind kisses your skin. I have given into wearing my coat and even bought a pair of cheap gloves which in all seriousness, don't help much at all. By the way, I am spending money like no tomorrow. It is time to keep a tighter reins on my wallet before I end up washing dishes at some restaurants in Chinatown.

Today is Veterans Day which is an annual American holiday honoring military veterans. The US of A has been in almost every major war in the modern era, notably WWII of course. So there is a lot pride in their soldiers. New York City is swamped with lots of soldiers wearing their medals proudly.

Parade starts at 11.30 am at 5th Avenue. I have to excuse myself from some meetings to run down to 5th Avenue to take a look at the parade.

I can't believe they sliced up the cockpit part of the plane.

I paid US$68 to see Harry Potter naked

Yeah, that probably sums it up.

As it is widely known, Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) has been spending the last few months on Broadway. He is playing the lead role in Equus - a 3-hour play about a boy who blinded six horses in one night. The case is real although the characters and the circumstances were all fiction.

I mentioned that I found "Chicago" boring but on hindsight, it could be because I had already seen the movie. In any case, there is only one Richard Gere. But I wanted to give Broadway another try and I chose Equus. My reasoning was that even if the play suck, at least I can say that I have seen Harry Potter naked. You see, the play kicked up some controversy because Harry Potter was naked for the last ten minutes. There was supposed to be a sex scene between Potter and a girl (Jill) where they both got naked.

I must say, the play was brilliant. Coming from me, there is quite high praise. That said, be warned that the first part of the play was damn slow paced. I dozed off like twice when some of the characters went into monologue. Yawn. But if you can get past the boring monologue which can get sometimes pretentious and self-indulgent (think Anne Rice writing a theatre play about vampires i.e. Lestat - snore), the second part picked up considerably.

Essentially, the play is about a psychiatrist who tries to find out why a 17 yr old young man blinded 6 horses in one night. Needless to say, Harry Potter was a very disturbed young man who had this really pathological religious and sexual fascination with horses. Some parts of the play can be quite disturbing - if you are a stupid six year-old who never watches TV. But some parts are pretty sexual like when Potter started to "massage" the horses which are just actors with wire-trussed up horse heads. Oh yeah, there is also one part in which Potter became so obsessed with horses that he started to worship them, create entire bible references to horses and then started to whip himself with a clothes hanger. Like the albino monk from Opus Die in the Da Vinci Code. Creepy. The pace picks up after the intermission as we find out the real reason why Potter blinds six horses.

So the sex scene. Harry Potter's female fans will be glad to know that Harry Potter's "magic wand" is ok for a boy of his age. Not tiny, damaged or anything. Everything appears to be intact. I was looking out for the girl (but of course) who was very pretty and a pretty, naked girl is not a bad thing.

The play got a standing ovation. I think I was privileged to be with a loud and appreciative crowd. But what was really special was that in order to raise money for AIDS awareness, the entire cast appeared on stage and proceeded to auction the playscript. Bidding started at US$250. To make things more exciting, each actor/actress put on their brightest lipstick and kiss the script. When Harry Potter kissed the script, bidding for the script jumped from US$500 to US$1000. It was pretty wild. Bidding was fast and furious and surprise(not), the bidders were all women. I was frankly shocked that no woman from the balcony threw her bra at Potter. Harry Potter himself was very game about the whole thing. You got to admire his stamina. Imagine doing this same shit every night for months and months (think the whole show ends at Feb 09) and yet appeared smiling and enthusiastic about the whole thing. From where I was sitting, Potter looked like he still got what it takes to make the one last HP movie.

The final script was sold for US$2100. Well, I can cross one more item i.e. see Harry Potter naked from my "NY to see and do list" now.

And so it came to pass . . .

And so it came to pass. The US has its first black president. For many blacks in the US who has been through the racial riots in the 60's, it is a particularly touching moment. I am glad to be here in NYC when the votes were counted. To cut a long cucumber short, Obama won. So who do I support? I don't want to go into any debate about political allegiances so I will simply say that Sauron and the forces of darkness are finally defeated, the Holy Grail is found by Prof Robert Langdon, Frodo and Sam threw the stupid ring into the volcano, Luke Skywalker triumphed over the Sith, his father and the Dark side and the autobots led by Optimus Prime finally defeated Megatron's Decepticons. That should give you a pretty good idea as to which side I am on.

It started out as a faint hope in the morning. There were a lot of jokes that a town of 12 people kicking off the voting process and seven out of the twelve people voted for Obama. Well, a good start is bettter than none.

After I rushed my work till 10 pm, I ran down to Rockefeller Center for the election party. Whole plaza is packed with people and probably 99% are all Obama supporters. Look closely at the tall building. You see the 270 sign? It signifies the 270 electoral votes that Obama and McCain must get to become President. The blue column signifies Obama and the red column signifies McCain. When I took the picture, Obama led McCain 207 to 135. Everytime a result comes in, the blue or red column rises. When Obama's blue column rised, there was a massive cheer. Is that a brilliant idea or what? Trust the Americans to do everything creatively.

You remember the skating rink I took a picture of some days back? They now painted the map of the US on the rink. When a state's results are in, someone will go down to the rink and spray the state e.g. California blue or red. It was brilliant!

Some pictures of expectant faces in the crowd. All eyes are glued to the MSNBC or NBC screens.

When California's results came in, Obama won and the crowd went berserk.

Obama's victory speech was worth reading. It was actually quite moving. That was one part when he calls all Americans, whether white, blacks, Asians, able, disabled, gay, straight, they are all citizens of the United States of America. The people at Rockefeller Centre actually could predict what he was about to say and shouted "United States of America" with him. It was spine tingling.

In the end, Obama's blue column is way ahead of McCain's red column. 338 to 159 I think. A landslide.

Yep, that says everything.