Jay On The Go

When we go to New York City on a Sunday , if possible, we try to park on the street.  We have a few spots that we have been able to identify over the years and one of them is in the area next to Noodies Thai Kitchen.  Typically, when we are headed towards Boston , we try to leave just before dinner time and then grab a bite on the way.  Unfortunately, in the 195 mile trip, except for junk food, there are not many options.  Recognizing that we would have no choice but to eat deadly food from a fast food restaurant, we wondered if we should eat dinner before hopping into the car. As we were strolling in the area, we spotted Noodies and walked right in despite the fact that we had eaten Thai food for lunch as well (77 East 10th Street).  It is a small place but the staff is friendly and attentive.  I opted for noodles and Lorena ate a soup dish.  Reasonably priced and delicious flavor.  Strongly recommended.

I have been blogging about lack of decent cafes in America and within days of discovering LA Burdick in Boston , during a weekend trip to NYC, we discovered Nespresso by chance, because in the past we have been having our afternoon coffee at one of the many Le Pain Quotidien locations.  We had first had our coffee at the Nespresso location in Miami and were delighted to visit them in Soho. As always, excellent coffee and service.  The opera cake that my wife and I shared was delicious as well.  In fact there is something else that I liked about this location.  In Miami, everything is on one floor so that all those shoppers who want to check out their products create a mess.  On the other hand, in this location, the cafe is on one floor while the shop is on another, creating a true full service cafe environment.

One of the things that we enjoyed while we spent a month in Buenos Aires and during our numerous trips to Spain, England, France, and Japan is a cafe, where you can enjoy fine coffee with a few munchies.  It is even better if there is full service (yes I am happy to pay for it because in self service places like Starbucks, it is a mess -- students and self employed folks camping out on tables). We liked the Render in South End , but more often than not, we end up in the Newbury Street area.  What I like about Burdick is that it is open, clean, and there is plenty of place to sit.  There is also a good selection of desserts but someone who is addicted to dark roast coffee that should be nearly perfect, Burdick has pretty good coffee as well.  I really hope that they never offer free wifi so that it does not attract all those losers who have destroyed Starbucks.

For the time being I continue to be on the cheapest possible mobile phone plan in America , but I have been wondering how to use the Vonage mobile app for making international phone calls from my cell phone using wifi.  You see, I am a Vonage customer and on the plan that I have, I can pretty much make unlimited calls to almost any country in the world using my phone at home.  The company also lets me make phone calls with a cell phone by calling a domestic number, but if you have a smart phone, you can download their app and make/receive calls as if you were at home.  In addition, I have also wondered that on the rare occasion that I need, it will be nice to have access to the web (for directions or searching for a business) on my cell phone (which is currently an old, dumb phone).   So I started to research for a smart phone that will allow me to download apps, surf the web using wi-fi most of the time, but when I need to, I can also access the web without an expensive contract

Because I work from home , I have access to at least two phones all the time (I am also noticing that hardly anyone calls any more).  Obviously, I also have access to the Internet on a variety of devices, including my laptop, iPad , and iPod Touch at home.  So when I do go out of the house, the last thing I want to do is to surf the web or use the phone, but it is nice to have a mobile phone for emergencies.  The bottom line is that I rarely use a phone, maybe a few minutes a month.  So it makes no sense for me to have a smartphone and pay almost $100 a month when I have no use for it.   After doing extensive research I found that the Tmobile pay-as-you-go plan is one of the cheapest (there are others lesser known brands often run by large companies but they do not disclose that).  You can buy a fairly cheap phone (for less than $50 you have pretty good phones and I think I paid around $29) and then just add $10 to get 30 minutes that last three months (so that makes the phone co

As an atheist nothing fascinates me more than the people of faith and I try to watch them as much as possible.  Thankfully, Prof. T. M. Luhrmann at Stanford did exactly that for her book “ When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God ,” and I have been reading her columns in The Times.  These lines caught my attention:   "We often imagine prayer as a practice that affects the content of what we think about — our moral aspirations, or our contrition. It’s probably more accurate to understand prayer as a skill that changes how we use our minds........ The prayer warriors said that as they became immersed in prayer, their senses became more acute. Smells seemed richer, colors more vibrant. Their inner sensory worlds grew more vivid and more detailed, and their thoughts and images sometimes seemed as if they were external to the mind. Later, I was able to demonstrate experimentally that prayer practice did lead to more vivid inner images and

After the mess that Reese Witherspoon created in Atlanta, GA, when her husband Jim Toth was stopped by a cop for DUI, I wondered what would a passenger in a stopped vehicle need to do in such a situation.  Now if the vehicle is stopped for some other minor violation like speeding or illegally changing lanes or having a broken light, the process for passengers is straightforward: stay in your seat till the process is over, do not interact on your own with the cop , and chances are nothing more will happen.  If the cop suspects that the driver of the vehicle is drunk, then, obviously he or she will not be allowed to drive the vehicle any more (arrest is made instead), but you maybe able to drive the vehicle home with the permission of the cop (assuming you are not drunk as well).  It is also likely that the vehicle is towed and you will need to find some transportation on your own (ask a friend to pick you up, ride on the tow truck, get a ride in the police car, call a taxi, etc.).  In t

I have been closely watching the news related to disappearance of honey bees.  I can also add that in my own massive yard that blooms from April to September here in New England, while I do see a lot of bugs, bees are long gone.  While there are many theories, but the most comprehensive study by the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that there is no single reason for the decline.  Many reasons are contributing to their massive deaths and these include toxic chemicals used as pesticides, global warming, mites/viruses/bacteria, and poor nutrition.  As you might already know that bees are key to pollination but many farmers destroy almost all the weeds these days with chemicals and some of the weeds are essential to survival of bees.

It looks like on cue from Miley Cyrus wearing male underwear , here is Khloe Kardashian wearing a crisp white shirt and necktie that would look perfect on any businessman , and rocking it.

The State Department already has a strong warning against driving in India (though, if you take my advice, even going to India is harmful to your health), but recently when a 9-year old kid's family posted a video of him driving an automobile ( Ferrari ), instead of apologizing for the crimes (in any civilized countries there are multiple crimes committed including endangering a child, risking public safety, etc.), his mother actually boasted to the media, "It's not easy for a child to achieve such a feat at this young age."  She added that the son has already driven their Lamborghini and Bentley vehicles.  How do we make sure that such idiots never set foot on American soil and create a public nuisance here?

The way Americans have completely tuned out ObamaCare , they are hardly paying any attention to the so-called Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (BSEOIM) , a law that will allow 11 million illegal immigrants to become legal , right away give green cards to more than 4 million aliens whose applications have been pending due to limits on number of aliens who can be admitted each year, and bring even more cheap foreign labor through the H1B program .  A Pew poll found that just 19 percent of respondents were closely following the debate over the comprehensive immigration bill .  Most of those polled did not know about some of the immigration legislation 's key aspects. 

Apparently Fox News survey finds that "Americans are unaware ObamaCare was signed into law. Some think it's been repealed by Congress."  We Americans take pride in our ignorance but with two elections already contested on the Affordable Care Act and a Supreme Court ruling that made Justice John Roberts a pariah in conservative circles, two out of five Americans still don't know that it is the law of the land.  Oh, wait, maybe because the Republicans and Fox News do nothing else than talk about repealing it.  I wouldn't be surprised if a poll will find that abortion is illegal in America.