Argentina v. USA – Friendly at Giants Stadium

Yesterday was hot and hazy and it poured for a few minutes before my dad and I left for Giants Stadium to watch a friendly between the US and Argentina. I’ve only been to Giants Stadium once before yesterday for a soccer game, when River Plate and the Metrostars were playing. (Actually, there were two games in a row, but I can’t remember who played in the first one we watched). The stadium was packed, with 78,000 people, and ten minutes before the end the announcer said it was the 9th largest turn-out for a game in this league. We had “nosebleed” seats way up on the top tier, but we had a view of the entire field, which was awesome. During halftime, some guy ran out onto the field wearing Argentina colors, and the security guards chased him until one of them tackled him. There was much shouting and cheering.

The game itself was intense. My dad says today’s commentators said it was boring, but I guess the intensity of the crowd made the game awesome. Everyone was shouting and chanting, but there were two REALLY annoying guys sitting next to us. One spent most of the time yelling at the referee, the other one just kept shouting “USA, motherf***ers!” And plenty of people left repeatedly to get more beer and food. As my dad reminded me, there might have only been one goal, and you should have made sure you saw it. But the game ended 0-0.

At the end, though, the best part was when the thunderstorm came. Around the 80th minute, it started pouring. A few people left immediately, but we stuck around. Only 10 minutes left, right? Except 5 minutes of overtime were added. We left completely soaked (no umbrellas allowed in the stadium, and we didn’t have ponchos). Today my throat hurts, but it was really fun.

I took a bunch of pictures, mostly of the crowd and the balloons that were floating around. One long yellow balloon floated onto Argentina’s goal during the second half and everyone started cheering (btw, I ended up sitting on the mostly USA half of the stadium). The wave went around the top tier about 3 times, which was really cool to watch. And the USA fans at one point started shouting, “Estados Unidos” at the Argentine goalie. During Argentina’s corner kicks, too, they unfurled a US flag at the corner. After the game, a bunch of guys were yelling “Overrated” but I thought maybe they might have thought differently if the game hadn’t been a friendly. Still, Argentina made six substitutions, I guess so they wouldn’t wear out their players. There were a LOT of injuries and a lot of fouls during the game, and two red cards, one per side.

Well, a great game. Can’t wait to see a non-friendly, hahaha.

 

New York

Today I met up with a bunch of college friends in NYC, and I thought a blog was in order since it’s the first time in a while that I’ve done so many different things in a single day and had so many adventures…

I got up relatively early, with only 5 hours of sleep, and took the bus into the city, getting there around 11 am. I met up with my friend, who was staying on the upper east side at a nice place with a doorman even. The plan was to go to Brooklyn and get on the Barge Music to listen to classical music at 1 pm. It was something our other friends had heard about, though none of us had much info on it. To get to Brooklyn, we had to take the green line downtown to Broadway-Lafayette and switch to the F line. But for some reason that I have yet to understand, the train skipped our stop and the PA system announced that we were headed for Brooklyn Bridge instead of Lafayette. My friend realized that we’d have to change trains NOW, and she darted off with me a half-step behind her – only for the doors to close between us. While some guys chuckled good-naturedly behind us, we mouthed Lafayette to each other, and I stayed aboard the train. At Brooklyn Bridge, I took the local train back to Spring St., since I was afraid of against missing the Lafayette stop, and decided to walk the way above ground. Unfortunately, I walked one block in the wrong direction, only to remember that Broadway runs DOWN, not UP, so I had to turn around and run three blocks (run not walk…) to the Lafayette-Broadway station, while my friend called me to tell me she’d wait for me at the front of the F train. I got there, swiped my card just as the train came in. I had to run down the train, searching desperately for my friend, until I finally saw her and we got into the train, running into another friend we had to meet in that car, as the doors closed a minute later. If this wasn’t some weird destiny…wow… I mean, the chances of our taking the wrong train, then somehow meeting up at the SAME car on the F train…

We got to Brooklyn around 12:50 pm maybe and found the barge around 1:20 pm. We’d been worried that it would leave and return to dock later, but it didn’t. It looked shady from the outside but the inside was very nice. There were no seats left, so we hung around near the coat rack for a bit, until we really started to feel the barge swaying in the water, and then we left. It was interesting; most of the audience members were senior citizens, I’d say, though the performers were young and very skilled. The 1 pm performance was free, apparently, but the 4 pm wasn’t.

Later we went to the Museum of Natural History, which brought back a lot of memories, and I grabbed some desperately needed food at its cafeteria (including a delicious oatmeal raisin cookie and a fresh Granny Smith apple).

We went for dinner at Franchia since two of the people traveling with us were vegans, and – believe it or not – Franchia is a vegetarian Korean restaurant and tea house. When we got there, they told us we’d have to wait until 7:30 pm for a seat (it’s kind of a small place and you generally need a reservation), and we couldn’t wait that long for food. Then the waiter told us we COULD eat there if we didn’t mind sitting on the floor. We wondered if he was joking (how strange!) but it turned out that what he meant was they had a tea room, and if we wanted, we could eat dinner there. Hell yeah!! The food at Franchia was yummy. My friends shared so I don’t know how what they ordered tasted, but they seemed pretty happy. I had the Dumpling Noodle Soup and it was delicious. I also got a Green Tea Latte ($6) and that was also delicious. This place is yum but super expensive, which is why my friends shared (I had my heart set on the soup so I opted out family style). Also, we’re almost positive that André 3000 was eating there, too.

For dessert, we hopped down to Rice to Riches on Spring St. One serving there seems HUGE, no matter how you think about it, but it’s delicious, and they let you try various rice pudding flavors. It’s kind of expensive (think pinkberry) but great, and the place has humorous signs posted all over. They also give you special tupperware for your rice pudding that you can take home. I definitely want to go back and eat there again.

The last destiny thing that happened was that after I grabbed the shuttle from Grand Central to Port Authority, I hadn’t been walking for a minute before some friends – who’d also been in the city at the time, just not with me – found me. Life is full of such crazy happenings.

 

New York City – Friday

And back to NYC on Friday, the hottest day I’ve spent outside. I went with two friends, one of whom is a regular NY-goer, so she was our acting tour guide, hehe.

The plan was to chill in the city then grab the shuttle to Mitsuwa in Edgewater, but I had to go to jiu jitsu, so we only had time to hang together in the city.

We arrived at Port Authority then grabbed the subway down to Union Sq. I bought a very cute shirt with butterflies and glitter, and a punk rock shirt, at Forever 21, then snapped up the special edition of 300 at Virgin Records (on sale at $22.99 I think). Then we went to Forbidden Planet, where I bought Water by Takehiko Inoue, and got a little egg toy out of one of the quarter machines. It’s i love egg!

Then, we walked to St. Mark’s and slipped into a church to get some cooler air since the second floor of Forbidden Planet had been a furnace! In fact, when the cashier was a bit short with me, I got annoyed, then realized that anybody would be cranky when it’s that hot.

In St. Mark’s, we checked out some gothic clothes stores and my friend got her ear pierced.

We took the subway to Canal St., check out some Chinese stores, and had bubble tea! I love bubble tea – I got black tea, since lychee wasn’t on the menu. It tasted great, but as soon as we left, I cursed myself for eating all the tapioca in my drink (using the philosophy – I paid for it, I’m eating it!) since then I felt sick.

Then we rushed up to Korea Town since it was almost time for me to leave. We had dinner/lunch at a Korean restaurant, and I finally had proper bulgogi. At my college, I often eat bulgogi – but it tastes…like crap compared to the real thing. I also tried kimchi, and it was spicy and a little hard to get used to, but it was all good. I also nabbed food off my friends’ plates since neither one of them wanted to finish what they’d ordered (and it wasn’t much to begin with).

I had to rush to Penn Station after that to grab the train home, and I made it to jiu jitsu with two minutes to spare.

That day, we didn’t have many adventures, but I think it’s because we were in a rush to see so many things, and also because it was so HOT. I sweated through two shirts (changed in the bathroom). I don’t know how I didn’t faint under the hot sun in ninety-degree weather in NYC.

One amazing thing happened, though. When we were in the subway, I noticed some guy came down to the platform with water splattered on his back. At first I thought “sweat” but no one sweats in random drops, to my knowledge. When we got to 34th St. and we came out of the subway, we found that it had rained. And almost as soon as we stepped into the restaurant in K-Town, it started pouring. And it stopped by the time we had to leave the restaurant. How lucky was that?

 

New York City – Tuesday

Whew, I finally got to hang out in NYC. I met up with my college friend on Tuesday and we did soooo much, and then I hung out with two friends today and we did soooo much. So, I thought I’d have a personal moment, rather than continue flooding this blog with opinions/reviews of movies and books.

Tuesday:
I got off work at 5 pm and had to meet my friend at 7 pm at Grand Central. So I walked up Park Ave. a few blocks and came upon a church, can’t remember of which saint, and I dropped in. It smelled a bit musty, but it was very interesting. The ceiling was red, and the picture of the saint (or Jesus? I swear I am so bad at this) reminded me of Arabic artwork…okay, I am so bad at this kind of thing, but I hope that makes sense. Anyway, it wasn’t a Gothic church; I think I learned what style this was, but I can’t quite remember. I was always more interested in the high ceilings of Gothic architecture… (Wow, I had to study this sooo much in high school, and now it’s all gone…)

Anyway, I got to Grand Central and bought a vanilla yogurt gelato, trying gelato for the first time in my life. It was quite good and lighter than ice cream. Then, deciding that there was no way I’d be killing time in GC for two hours, I wandered off, bought a copy of EGM featured FFXIII and went out.

I discovered Midtown Comics, which I’d seen previously but never entered. I bought a copy of Anime Insider to try out the magazine – I found it was informative, even though it had a number of misspellings – and an old issue of Animerica Next – the conclusion to Revolutionary Girl Utena and featuring that dragonfly story from Yumi Tamura’s Wild Com.

Then I decided to walk to Times Square to check out the larger Midtown Comics, and ended up finding an Asahiya bookstore on the way, where I bought a copy of the magazine Fruits. It’s interesting to look at, but do those girls fish their clothes out of the trash? Some seriously, SERIOUSLY messed up outfits.

I tried on clothes at a neat little store with TEN DOLLAR AND FOURTEEN DOLLAR shirts and pants; sweeeeet prices.

I visited the Swatch store and Virgin Records in Times Sq. then had to go back to GC to meet up with my friend, who had missed her train and arrived at 8 pm. I got lost a block from GC because suddenly all the buildings looked the same – GC only looks like GC from one direction, it seems. I ended up heading into an underground tunnel that claimed to be the GC terminal. It was incredibly hot in there – maybe ninety degrees – and then my friend called saying she was around. But I didn’t know where I was! Somewhere under GC… I came out of the tunnel four blocks from where I’d started…

Anyway, we finally met up, walked to Times Sq. instead of K-Town (my mistake) and took the subway to K-Town. A very attractive guy (with an accent) who drives one of those bicycle-carts (what are they called?) asked us if we needed directions and told me how to get to 32nd (since the only sign in sight said 34th St. and I didn’t want to start walking in any direction yet).

We ate at Pho Noodle in K-Town. Sooooo good! We both ordered Shabu Shabu, she getting seafood while I got chicken. Neither one of us knew what we were doing, but it was all good. The waiters didn’t really help us figure any of it out, though. The best part about Shabu Shabu was discovering what it was, since I only knew what another friend of mine had said about the place. The waiter removed two discs from our table, where there were round holes; he placed a pot of water in each. There was a remote embedded in the table, and this controlled the temperature of the water (boiling it or letting it just stay hot). I think it was a lot like fondu, since we were making soup with all the vegetables we got and then cooking our own food. But the egg – the egg! We tried to boil it in the water, when we were supposed to crack it over the surface and let the raw yoke cook in the water. Ah, well…

Then we went to pinkberry, which is across the street from Pho Noodle, where we bought an 8 oz. to share and ate it in the lobby of the Red Roof Inn because it was too hot outside and there was nowhere to sit. Pinkberry is so great – I’m not crazy about the Green Tea flavor, but Original is just fine, and I love being able to mix fruit (especially blackberries!) into the yogurt. It seems so healthy, but it tastes so good! If you’re in the area, I definitely recommend going there and putting up with the line that tends to form, esp. during rush hour. I think pinkberry’s drawbacks are – the line that tends to form and the lack of sitting space. The food is yummy but more expensive than ice cream, and you can’t take pictures inside the store. Other than that, it’s a great experience and worth a try. One day, I also want to check out Crazy Bananas, which is a block away toward Park Ave., I believe.

Lastly we went to Penn Station and used the bathroom, being unable to go to Borders since it was past 11 pm, and then to GC so my friend could catch her train home. It’d only been 4 hours, but it was soooo much fun. Honestly, we spent about 2 hours eating – 1 1/2 digging our way through the Shabu Shabu and half an hour getting and eating the pinkberry.

Oh, and a really, really cute guy gave us directions to the GC shuttle, although we ended up taking the subway, and surprise surprise – sitting right across from him! There were also some Latinos in the subway car – 2 black (one of whom was very cute and seemed friendly) – who seemed very disappointed we hadn’t sat next to them. And who obviously didn’t realize that I could understand what they were saying, lolz. Oh, and I tipped a guy who was playing Suspicious Minds in the subway (my third time riding it); that was a great moment.

Next time: Friday’s adventures.