The Le Gamin Truck!

Every so often, I stop by Le Gamin on Vanderbilt Avenue at Dean Street, and have a crepe with ratatouille, goat cheese, and depending on my mood, either a fried egg or the grilled zucchini. I like to eat there by myself, eating mouthfuls of my savory crepe, while flipping through the pages of one of the New Yorker magazines that they have in the magazine rack on the wall. In fact, I just ate lunch there on Sunday. So imagine my delight as I walked to work this morning and saw a Le Gamin crepe truck on the corner of 25th Street and 10th Avenue. And for a mere $9, I had the very same crepe for breakfast, that I had for lunch on Sunday, minus the mesclun salad the accompanies the crepe if you eat at their place in Brooklyn.

Spotted plywood

My colleague found these terrific samples of routered plywood, on the sidewalk. There were a few different patterns, and I was imagining what the wall of a bar would look like if it was completely covered in a sheet of undulated dots carved into plywood. How cool would that be?

Bumptious from Marcos

An email from from friend Marcos, reminding of my more bumptious days from when I worked at Liska + Associates. I had some brilliantly stupid idea to label different hairstyles as esoteric vocabulary words for a project for American Crew, and one word was Bumptious. The client hated the idea, and I let him know in not so many words that it was actually a great idea and maybe it was him that was just a bad idea, and then he pretty much thought I was bumptious, in my own right, as a 22 year old who thought she knew everything. It took me about nine years for people to forget about that one stupid presentation. And I guess it still has not been forgotten. The ridiculous things we do in our 20s somehow always come back to haunt us. 

Tic Tac in German is...Tic Tac

Onwards by James Jarvis

And lastly, one more from the office blog, this video was made for Nike by illustrator James Jarvis, and it makes me want to run around the world and back. And I don't even like to run. This video is just amazing, in every way; plus the music is perfect. Wow, so blown away. 


Onwards from AKQA on Vimeo.

Scrabble

Here's another video from the office blog, advertising Scrabble, my favorite game. However, these new Scrabble commercials are so weird. I have been reading my back issues of The New Yorker, trying to catch up before I renew my subscription, and there was an article from the January 19th magazine about Scrabble. It mentioned some of the same people from the book, "Word Freak," which is one of my most favorite reads. Anyway, the article made me wish I was a total word maven, and much better in Scrabble, so I could join those online Scrabble games and not lose immediately. Regardless, the new Scrabble commercials don't capture the Scrabble-ness for me, that is so intrinsic to the game. I am sure that they are trying to reach a new and more diverse audience, but even so, I am not sure I get that these commercials are actually for Scrabble until the last bit. They are cool, but not really very Scrabble-y, at least in my opinion. Thoughts?

Honda Insight, Let It Shine

I have been seeing these Honda Insight ads lately on television, and I have been incredibly inspired to trade in my Audi and get a hybrid Honda instead. I am not fully there 100%, of course, but I still love the ergonomics of my car, but this commercial is pretty inspirational. I saw it posted this morning on my office's blog, along with the making of the video, featured below. More and more, I am becoming quite enthralled by the power of video, and how it can move people in so many ways.


Honda Insight - The Making of "Let it Shine” from Honda on Vimeo.

Ten second rule

This tuna sandwich fell on the floor of the parking garage; but the garage was in New Jersey. And parking garages are cleaner in New Jersey when compared to New York City garages, and I was starving and rather desperate for lunch, so I picked it up off the floor (I mean, who leaves a tuna sandwich on the ground?!) and proceeded to eat it, mayonnaise and all.

It was good.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

South Africa

Yesterday, as I drove to work I was listening to coverage of the South African elections on NPR news, and it really affected me. Maybe because when I lived there in 1997, it was right at the height of the Truth and Reconciliation committee's hearings and the newspapers were full of daily notices, like "Steve Biko's killer found." "Winnie Mandela on trial." Living there was like being caught in a giant political downpour. The NPR News feature was interesting because it started with them talking about Joseph Zuma's campaign song "Mshini Wami" (Bring Me My Machine Gun). For me, this song being sung by South Africa's leading presidential elect sums up South Africa very neatly for me with regards to how I felt when I lived there. Pretty much, to me, South Africa is both the most beautiful, and the most scary country that I have ever visited; full of dichotomies, paradoxes and oxymorons. 

I miss many things about living there, most specifically, all of my friends whom I have now lost touch with after 12 years. And I really miss the small things like eating Jungle Oats with jam stirred into it for breakfast; my afternoon Zulu lessons at the breakfast table; the smell of the Johannesburg air when I woke up every morning; bunny chow; riding in the back seat of a 1980 Volkswagen Beetle while drinking Diet Coke and seeing elephants. 

And it makes me wonder if I will ever go back to visit.

Tweenbots

This link was sent to me from my friend, Melissa (Mel), thinking that I would love it. Which I indeed to. "Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal." What I particularly love is that "often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.” I am not sure if this just appeals to my heart because I love all things that fall into the category of "Kawai-ness" or if its because I tend to personify all things in my life from my bike to the plants on my window sill. But regardless, I think that many people have this same tendency, given people's responses to the Tweenbot project. Which gives me hope that New York City is not as cut throat and intimidating as people would like to think it is. 

Gorp

This is not actually my gorp, because its rather boring looking. Peanuts are so blasé. I prefer to mix together: dry roasted almonds, dried cranberries, dark chocolate and banana chips from Trader Joes. 

Did anyone else join Girl Scouts when they were in elementary school, only to be severely disappointed by the fact that you have to actually clean the latrines at Girl Scout Camp? I quit shortly after realizing this. But not before I was totally hooked on gorp. Thanks Girl Scouts! Gorp, for those of you who have never had it, is pretty much what you eat when you go camping; or in my case, something I eat whenever I am not stationary. It is a mixture of dried fruits, nuts, granola, sometimes there is even carob pieces in there. Or even M+Ms! Gorp in fact, (according to Wikipedia) stands for, depending on the source, "Good old raisins and peanuts," in addition, the Oxford Dictionary from 1913 has gorp listed as a verb, for "to eat greedily." In my case, both apply. There is something deliciously addictive about sweet, crunchy and salty all mixed up together.

Spending the afternoon with Joni

I have not seen Joni in almost three years...and in that time, she has gone and had a baby girl, Kamah, who is now a year old. She is in town for a week, so today we met for lunch. It was my first time meeting Kamah, and I was totally smitten. Maybe it was because she was wearing a little green sweat shirt, but I am pretty certain it was because she was such a sweet heart. In addition to falling in love with Kamah, it was so great to finally see Joni again after such a long time. And that is the best part about dear friends; years can pass by and it is like you just saw each other last week.

I love this car

I heart Jasmine plants

Somehow, I brought my jasmine plant back from aphid hell via Super Thrive, and despite all of the branches initially turning into dead little sticks, I managed to coax a few new shoots, like blood from a stone, and now my little plant is blooming all over again.

The light shining through my blinds