The leftovers

I talked to my grandfather yesterday morning. Once we got back from New York, I developed a thick wad of photographs for my grandfather and had them sent over to him. He adores photography and has several photo albums close by his bed. I think he went out to buy a new photo album just for these photos because I developed a good 100+ photos. I included some of the ones I took from Thailand. He really liked them. I think the photos are really good to help him take his mind off the cancer. I don't like asking him too much about it, so on the phone we just talked about how nice Thailand was. He said the photos looked really good and that Thailand had amazing scenery.

After that conversation, I've realised that I haven't really talked about the rest of my New York/Flushing trip. I'm just going to post up all the remaining photos I've neglected. They're mostly of food and snow and me looking dorky.

I hope you enjoy these.

My uncle took my father and I to West New York to get a good view of the city. My photos do not do the view any justice. It was amazing and vast!

My uncle then took us to this Japanese Shopping Mall/Food court for lunch. It was a very quiet shopping centre but the place was really clean and there was a very interesting Japanese supermarket. For lunch, I ordered some kind of udon soup noodle. I was still in my "no appetite" phase so I wasn't in the mood for an intense meal. I got the noodles and a piece of prawn tempura.

My dad ordered some kind of Japanese-esque cordon bleu type set meal. See that giant deep fried prawn? No, it's not a massive prawn. It's actually made out of "crab meat"!

My uncle ordered the deep fried pork cutlet meal set. It was all very good value. Huge meals!

After a few days, my other uncle had me and my dad over for a few days. My dad's cousin and his wife also came to stay. My uncle owns a motel in Virginia so my dad and I stayed in one of the rooms. It was awesome to have cable. I think it was around this time where started to get my appetite back. My uncle made that yummy platter of sushi. He was a trained sushi chef when he was younger. He says his skills are little rusty because he hasn't made sushi in a while. He wasn't happy with how it turned out. I think it was because the knife he was using wasn't sharp enough. Regardless, it was yummy as!

That morning, my aunt went to Popeye's to buy me some deep fried chicken because I told her the previous night that I was super into deep fried chicken. It was so good! She also showed me her collection of knitted and crocheted scarves and beanies. She's really talented!

It also snowed that afternoon! It was a big deal for me and my dad. We were pretty excited. My relatives thought we were silly. I was overjoyed! I look like a 12-year old boy in that photo! I'm such a dork. 

I'm at Times Square with my dad on my right talking to someone on the phone and my uncle. I hear it's prettier at night. We went on a bus field trip around New York. Probably not the best way to explore the city (we spent 5 minutes outside Central Park). We kept driving past all the awesome food places like Shake Shack etc. I was bummed I didn't get to do all those things.

We ended up going to the Empire State Building. It was all right. The view was fun but the novelty wears off, especially when the process of getting to the roof top was like going through customs at the airport.

This guy somehow managed to sneak his cat into the Empire State Building! Even a security guard was stunned. He asked him how he smuggled the cat in. However, we were in the same queue as him when we were leaving the Empire State Building AND WE COULDN'T SEE THE CAT ANYWHERE! I hope the cat is all right.

We also went on a boat/ferry trip to see the statue of liberty. It's not a great photo but you get my drift. I have so many more photos but I don't think anyone wants to see photos of me and my family posing in front of various monuments.

I think by the end of my trip, it was mainly positive albeit incredibly emotion. I was shocked at how vulnerable my father was and it reminded me that we are all the same on the inside.

You're worth the whole damn bunch put together!

It was probably a bad idea to visit Chinatown. It’s just a busier version on Flushing. There’s nothing to do there. And people are goddamn rude. It’s like every man for himself. Don’t mind the woman pushing a pram, walk right in front of her. And there are very few public toilets. I found some dingy Chinese shopping centre in Chinatown and while their toilets were very clean, they had no toilet paper. I had to ask around for paper. One lady was kind enough to give me some. Sigh.

This whole trip has been a bit of a let down considering it feels like we travelled so far just to go to Box Hill. But whatever – this trip is to visit my sick grandfather, not really about going shopping and eating burgers.

The highlight so far has been visiting Katz’ Delicatessen.

It’s famous for not only making the best pastrami sandwiches EVER, but you know that scene in When Harry Met Sally where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm? Yeah, that was shot at Katz’s. We sat right next to where Sally sat.



Here I am, being all touristy. Y'all say hello to mah leopard coat! My dad and I hailed a 'cab' to get to Katz's. We were that keen. When we got out of the cab, there was a small queue running outside the deli. It was super packed inside. You have to grab a ticket to order food, and if you lose that ticket, you have to pay a $30 fee. Basically, you go up to the different sections to order your food. There's a grill, sandwich, sides and desserts sections where you order what you want. Once that's all made, you hand your ticket over and the chefs scribble on it. Once you finish eating, you queue up for the counter and hand over your ticket, even if you haven't used your ticket. The guys there will calculate how much your food costs and you pay.



So much meat. That is some good pastrami. When you order, the chefs carve up some meat for you to nibble on while they make your tasty, tasty meat sandwich. This is the pastrami sandwich: soft, delicious pastrami slapped between two pieces of fresh rye bread. Add some mustard and pickles and you've got yourself a fucking sweet meal. It was so big that dad and I shared one sandwich.


My dad also wanted something sweet so we got two slices of New York Cheesecake. What was interesting with the cheesecake that although it wasn't very wet like some cheesecakes, it wasn't too dry and crumbly. It also didn't tasty overwhelmingly cheesy like some of the drier cheesecakes. It was sweet, and had just the right amount of cheese flavour. The fruit glaze was sweet, and again, what was interesting was that there was no biscuit base like some of the cheesecakes I'm familiar with. I really liked it, although dad thought it was too dry.

I was dropping Katz trivia, telling my dad about when this place was established and their whole salami delivery service when lo and behold, the owner/manger of Katz emerged from somewhere. He's a big guy, super tall and he's in all the pictures on the Katz's wall of fame. He was really friendly too. He didn't talk to me but he totes smiled at dad (I was jealous as) while he walked past us. It was awesome.

The next day we had breakfast at the same Fu Zhou eatery. We ordered these awesome savoury donut things that I ate when I was a kid visiting family in China.

I also ordered some soy milk, and a plate of these noodles in a soy and peanut butter sauce. My mum makes this at home and I always just thought she invented this dish when she came to Australia. It's actually super popular, although the one I had wasn't as tasty as the ones I or my mum make. It's so super easy too!


We went back into Chinatown to meet up with my dad's cousin. It was a really emotional day, actually. I don't really want to talk too much about it, but it was one of those trips where you learn more about the people you are related to. I had this moment when I got home where I just had to cry a lot. I felt like I was Nick Caraway and my dad was Jay Gatsby and everyone else were the Toms, Daisies and Jordans. Things felt kinda fucked up and unfair.

Anyway, here are some photographs of what we ate. We had so much food, but my fingers got too sticky to fiddle with the camera. I'm gonna say this again, though: food in NY is so cheap. This banquet we had cost $198 altogether.

Pseudo - Fukkien

So day two of Flushing. I have to admit, I’m already bored. I feel like there’s really not much to do in Flushing and it’s just made worse when you know you are actually in New York, and an hour’s train ride to New York City. Unless you’re out eating heaps, there’s not much to do here. My uncle showed my dad and me where some of the shopping centres are. I thought Flushing Mall would be awesome, but it’s super empty there. We ended up going to Macy’s to buy my grandfather a North Face jacket because his one is ripped. Macy's is kinda like a Myer. It's essentially a department store.

I’ve been making a few observations about Flushing. The first one is that the majority of the Chinese population here speak the same dialect my parents speak. My mum says it’s called Fukkien, but I think it’s a bit different. Anyway, it’s really rare to find anyone who speaks this pseudo-Fukkien dialect, so it really felt like I was in China when every Chinese person I encountered was speaking this dialect.

So I guess it was fitting when my dad suggest we eat at a fu zhou eatery. I had a bowl of soy milk and a wedge of taro that’s been deep fried. I think what they did was cook some taro, grate it, lightly season with either salt or light soy, a bit of sugar and some allspice. So good. 






Dad also ordered some dumplings. I didn't eat any because I don't eat pork, but he said it was awesome, way better than anything in Melbourne. Afterwards, and I mean straight after breakfast, we went to yum cha. It was all right – decently tasty.







I’ve also noticed that my appetite has diminished drastically. I don’t know if it’s because of the nature of my trip or the plane ride where we were fed every three hours, but I’m not hungry. My dad says it’s because I haven’t done a lot of exercise so my body’s not burning up as much energy. I don’t know if that’s altogether true. I hope not, because there’s so much I could be eating. They have a Popeye’s around here, plus this place called Barone’s Pizza where everyone flocked towards at about 1pm, forming huge lines up the road.

Actually, what’s interesting is that all the eateries declare their health inspection grade and put up huge posters about choking. I wonder if they’ve made it mandatory for eateries and restaurants to do that. Maybe shop owners are liable for chocking customers so therefore they have these posters up as a precaution. It’s like that McDonald’s ‘urban legend’ where someone sued McDonald’s because they burnt their tongue with their coffee.

Anyway, here are some photos of flowers. they're not very good. My little cousin kept throwing tantrums because I was hogging the camera and he wanted to take photos. It was really frustrating:



 PURPLE BEANS!

SQUIRREL

Goddamn that last post was a terrible blog post. I reread it and it was just awful. So hopefully, I can make up for it right now.

So today was day one in Flushing. It wasn't the most exciting of days considering all we did was hang around my uncle's place with the grandparents, and while that's all nice and lovely, you can only do so much without internet or a TV (yes, their TV doesn't work *sobs*). My grandma, dad and I went to the main street (also called Main Street) in Flushing to buy some groceries. It was pretty cool, but it did remind me of Box Hill a lot. But get this: FOOD IS SO CHEAP. It's unbelievable, and that's even with tax! We had breakfast this morning in a restaurant. We had some soy milk, you tiaos (fried dough) and onion pancakes – very Beijing, apparently. It cost us fucking $5.50. NO SHIT.

Oh and we bought 6 lobsters today for $57. YES FOOD IS THAT CHEAP. And I got some goober peanut butter and grape jelly because it was FUCKING $2.98.

But in all seriousness though, I got to hang out with my grandparents. I think my grandfather really wants to go back to China. I think he hates it here. I was showing him pictures of our house in Australia and he started talking about the house he lived in in China. He had some pictures of the house and it was a beautiful place, HEAPS nicer than my aunt and uncle's.  I know my aunt and uncle are doing their best to have everyone feel comfortable, but the house is TINY and they even have a housemate who, I reckon, probably feels really weird living with this family. He probably doesn't feel like it's even his home. I don't think it's the best place for my grandparents, and they also have to take care of my little cousins while my aunt and uncle are at work. It's not ideal at their age and situation.

My grandma showed me all the letters from my grandpa's doctor. Let's just say I've learned more about cancer today. It only just dawned on me that this cancer treatment is probably costing my aunt and uncle a lot of money, considering America's healthcare system is actually shocking. I'll be giving my grandparents $1000 soon, so hopefully, if they wish to use it that way, that money can go towards any medical bills.

I have to say, I really don't like one of my cousins. I'm psychoanalysing him and I really shouldn't because he's only 7 years old, but I just get the feeling he's going to grow up to be a bit nasty shit when he gets older. General selfishness and dissatisfaction with losing is very evident, and I know these are traits that are common with children, because they don't get "the bigger picture", but I really don't know any children who are like him. I should give him the benefit of the doubt though.

Anyway, here are some pics of Flushing.