When I lived in Bloomsbury, I had a favorite Sunday morning ritual which I’d perform every couple of months.  It worked best when the weather was dank and gray – when you didn’t miss being outside.  I’d walk over to the British Museum, go look at the Egyptian Mummies and the Rosetta Stone, getting lost in the age of it all.  When you move cities, you make new rituals.  Today I headed to the UES for my New York City gray day favorite.

Picking up the Sunday Times and taking the 5 train from Wall Street to 86th Street, I walked over towards the Park.  On the corner of 5th Avenue and 86th is the Neue Galerie.  Inside the Neue Galerie is the bustling yet incredibly calm wood-paneled Cafe Sabarksky.  Along with the Week in Review, Main, and Books sections of the Times, a huge piece of Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (chocolate cherry cake) was demolished with a Milchkaffee too.  Actually, I also ate two Bratwurst Mit Sauerkraut and Röstkartoffeln and an Austrian lager in addition to my Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and Milchkaffee. If you’ve been on a diet for six days of the week, it’s a smart idea to give it a rest on the seventh…

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and Sunday Times

The Neue Galerie is a favorite as it has something in there I love just as much as the Egyptian Mummies in the British Museum.  Her name is Adele Bloch-Bauer and she was painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907.  Her face is so delicate, and the whole painting radiates a soft golden light.  It’s one of my favorite pieces of art in New York City.

The Galerie had a special exhibition of Otto Dix’s work.  Beginning with his unsettling and brutal depictions of the First World War, and then moving on to his colorful, sometimes comedic and sometimes unnerving portraits.  Amazing use of color, I very much recommend.

The sausages, potatoes, beer, and huge slab of cake required a walk.  A long walk.  I went to the Park, south of the Reservoir.  It’s beginning to feel slightly autumnal despite the residual mugginess.

Central Park Reservoir

Looking towards the UWS

The final part of the ritual is a walk to Zabars to pick up coffee.  The UWS on a Sunday is full of strollers and brunching.

85th Street and Central Park West

Zabars smells great.  Looks great.  Feels great.  Appealing in every way.  I want to dive into the barrels of coffee beans every time I visit and it’s a real feat of control not to leave with enough food for a month.  A favorite Manhattan place.  There is only one other store I found to rival their coffee, and that was Darwins in Cambridge.  Which became one of my favorite Sunday morning rituals when I lived up there for the summer too.

Zabars

Coffee barrels to dive into

I have done this exact same route: lunch at Sabarskys with the paper, walk through the Galerie, across the Park and over to Zabars, many times now.  It’s seriously relaxing.  Perfect for a gray Sunday at the end of the summer.

My super new roommate was supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but sadly wasn’t able to sublet her place.  So, I am looking for a new roommate to share my doorman-building apt right by the Hudson River.  The room is available immediately.  Rent is $1100 month incl. wireless internet, cable tv and a landline, plus monthly electricity.

The room is 16 x 11 ft, and unfurnished.  There is a large tv and cable box though in the room.  There are 2 large closets, one in the room and one just outside the bedroom.  The rest of the apartment is a bathroom, kitchen, living room with dining table and my room.  There is a laundry room on the same floor as the apt and there is free bike storage in the building.

Battery Park City is awesome, the Hudson River Esplanade makes for a great backyard.   There are lots of restaurants, a supermarket, dry cleaners, nail salon, drug store all near by.  The NRW, 1 and 4,5 trains are a 10 minute walk across the West Side Highway.

I am looking for a roommate who is sociable but doesn’t tend to bring the party home, I am out a lot and home is a place I like to chill and relax in.  I just graduated from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and drink a lot of coffee.  I also sail and avidly read the Economist and celebrity gossip magazines.

Please send me an email at catherine.white AT nyu DOT edu if you’d like to come and see the apartment.

Battery Park City

Bedroom

Bedroom and closet

Living room

Bathroom

As I check my calendar this evening in London as I prepare to return to New York, I remember that it would have been my father’s 71st birthday tomorrow…

My father was amazing.  He loved technology.  He taught me calculus and how an LED worked.  He also helped me nail the basics of macro and micro economics, and how to write a business email.  He explained Information Theory, showed me radio waves on an oscilloscope that we kept in the kitchen, and told me of the Feynman Lectures.  Because of him, I love Bizet and Bruce Springsteen.

He is my first Geek Hero, having managed the research department at British Telecom and before that he made really fast switches at Bell Labs in New Jersey after completing his PhD in electronic engineering.  He was also awarded an honorary professorship from the University of Wales, granted the Freedom of the City of London and was the Chairman of the BT Technology Journal, as well as being a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers in London.  I am hugely proud whenever I speak of him.

I find it incredible to think what he’d make of technology in 2010, specifically the advances in telecommunications technology and the Internet since 2004 when he died.  In 2004 there were no iPads or iPhones, and Internet speeds were tortoise-like compared to today.  There was no Broadband Plan in the US and we did not all carry BlackBerries (I wonder if he’d have been glued to his like I am mine).  There was no Twitter or Facebook outside US universities or Foursquare.

His last major article was for the Millennium Edition of the BT Technology Journal.  The edition considered telecommunications in the future, today and in the past.  He wrote of the importance of understanding where we’ve come from technologically to really understand where we’re going in our future developments.  Wise words.  He also spoke of the coming “data wave” and how “voice communications will be relegated to a similarly marginal position that we now give to Morse code telegraphy!”  What a conversation we’d have about this now…

Dads often give really good advice.  Mine not only was good at the regular Dad Stuff (avoid wearing open-toed shoes to the office if you’re a chick, and Worcestershire Sauce makes cheese on toast taste much better), but also he was really an amazingly clever telecommunications expert.  His love of technology had such a huge influence on me.  As I sit here eager to return to NYC for Internet Week beginning on Monday, I know he’d have been Skyping me and emailing me to discuss every new Twitter trending topic next week.

(Text above, quotes and picture: BT Technology Journal, Volume 18, Number 1, January 2000, SpringerLink – http://www.springerlink.com)

A recent conversation on a plane had me re-thinking @cshirky’s Rant About Women and reminded me of the importance of @kio_pio’s When Strangers Meet discussions…

I took a plane ride the day before yesterday to Miami.  Before take off I noticed an empty middle exit row seat a few rows ahead of me.  As any traveler knows, this is prize real estate in economy.  With the stealth-like moves of a hunting puma, I slid across the aisle, and geared up to pounce.  Mustering my sweetest polite Brit-ness, I inquired to the man on the aisle if anyone was sitting there.  And – well, he replied rather gruffly to me, pretty much informing me it was free but…. he didn’t want me to sit there.  I was mortified, normally people usually love for me to sit next to them. I just stood there, guppy-like for a little while.  The air stewardess hustled me out of the aisle, and I had no real choice, nor him, other than for me to plop in right in the contested middle seat next to him.  My bottom lip was out, I was dejected, and a bit offended.

His wife was in the other seat next to me. I looked at her, and in the manner of someone who hates to have disappointed, or offended, I spoke to her.  Something germane along the lines of “oh I wish I wasn’t going home” in the hope of warming the Siberian winds blowing at me from the other seat.  She replied, and we began to exchange a little chat.  I apologized for the kerfuffle over the seat.  “Don’t worry” she said as we took off, “that’s the worst you’ll be told off about this.”  I smiled, feeling about 7 years old and wondering how the middle exit row seat had started to feel strangely like the naughty corner.  Then, something started to happen that amazed me.  Its the reason I’m writing this post. The lady next to me and I began to talk. We talked quite a lot actually.  And I came away from the conversation thinking of Kio Stark’s When Strangers Meet class, and Clay’s recent rant about women.

Turns out  that despite a 30 year age difference, we had some things in common: lived in the same place for a while, both in creative places work-wise, and had similarities in our non profit work.  We began to talk about my recent work for Human Rights Watch and the topic of maternal mortality and her work on parenting classes in underprivileged areas.  She had a very soft voice, and warm lines around her eyes.  I listened to her as we moved from mere information exchange to thoughtful and thought-provoking conversation.  She told me of the feelings of a mother towards her child, the fears and the weight of being completely responsible for another, and wanting to do the very, very best for this little person.  We discussed how to connect people through this shared role of motherhood.  Since beginning this HRW internship, working on this issue, of course I’ve felt hopelessly out of depth, having never been a mother, I mean – yes, am great on the social media stuff, but the content of the campaign, I feel woefully incompetent to comment sometimes.

This is where I got to thinking of Clay’s comments about women needing to be more vocal in their talents, in promoting themselves, these thoughts swam in my head mingling with recollections of discussions with Kio about fleeting relationships formed with strangers, and their sometimes incredible significance.  In the the space of 45 minutes (and one slight altercation with her now sleeping husband) we had become sharers of intimate, close and thoughtful conversation.  We spoke quietly, yet with excitement – there was a connection.  She spoke to me of relationships and marriage. She was wise, and smart.  We moved to religion, and even politics briefly.  And I wondered, do men do this?  Or is this kind of connection unique in its quietness, gentleness and subtlety to women? Is this a kind of alternative to the self aggrandizing promotion type-behavior that Clay discussed a few months ago?  Is it just as powerful and effective?  I don’t necessarily know, but in that conversation I was reminded of the grace of women and how we connect through a myriad of commonalities.  She asked me if I had read “Eat Pray Love” as she pulled it out (a book that makes me want to simultaneously love and hate Elizabeth Gilbert for her discussion of the female psyche).  I smiled, and pulled out her sequel “Commitment” from my vast purse.  They sat on our laps as we continued to discuss, just as Gilbert does, love and relationships, family, children and careers.

As the flight drew to an end, her husband began to thaw a little.  Maybe because he heard snippets of our conversation and had hopefully realized, that although I was lacking a little in etiquette sometimes, I was really pretty alright.  He needed a pen to fill out his customs form, I proffered mine.  With few words, we slowly began to interact.  As we fastened our seat belts for landing, he turned to me,  and began to speak.  “I’m sorry if I was a little gruff earlier.  You know, my daughter would have done exactly what you did with that seat.  You doing that reminded me of her and when she does stuff like that it sometimes embarrasses me.  I think I aimed that embarrassment at you.  Our generation aren’t like yours in that way, you are all such go-getters now.”

His honesty threw me for six, and prompted me to reciprocate with an apology to him for not asking the stewardess before switching seats, and in not doing so, had deprived him of his option to object without me being thrown out of the aisle next to him.  I found myself saying that sometimes my generation perhaps missed out on the common courtesies in our rush to be go-getters.

As we left the flight, we exchanged names, there were lots of smiles.  His wife and I said how glad we were to have met each other.  It was one of the most significant conversations I’ve had in a while, the whole thing really touched me on many levels.  My old girls school had the motto ‘Valens sed Clemens‘  meaning ’strong yet gentle.’  We used to laugh at it at the time.  As a student body, we deemed it slightly reminiscent of a deodorant slogan.  Yet, perhaps it was more right on that we realized at the time.

From my minor self aggrandizing jerk behavior (otherwise known as go-getter behavior), in seizing that seat, I learned again of the strength of the connection between women, and the differences between generations.  All over the contested middle exit row seat 9E.

Are the mnemonics to remember bits of New York Practice, specifically, MY LEGS: contracts that are important so you have to write them down to be valid, eg the M, is for marriage, and secondly, the grounds for a CPLR 3211 pre-answer motion to dismiss an action (DOWNFALL) and the corresponding affirmative defenses (SPARERIBS – apparently bar exam favorites are the two s’s: Statute of Frauds and Statute of Limitations).

This has been my life pretty much since December 21, when I sat down to day 1 of bar review lectures. Since then, I’ve been to class for about 3 and a half hours of lectures every day, memorized, and memorized until I was at one point contemplating just eating the note cards, written essays, done hundreds and hundreds of multiple choice questions and outlined, summarized and highlighted. And now its over.

This is also the first time I have sat at my desk, in the morning with a coffee, watching the snow fall – when I have not felt like I should be memorizing something.

Its lovely.

That’s not why I’m writing this post though – to bore you with the details of bar review. In England, we don’t have a bar exam. You go to law school, take exams there and then practice for 2 years, in a law firm, under close supervision, completing a sort of baby-lawyer skills syllabus, attending training, and being paid half the salary of an associate – after those 2 years have passed, if you haven’t screwed up, you are admitted to the Roll of Solicitors and get a big pay rise.

All the law exams you do though are within the academic institution you are part of, so there is no coming together like I was part of over the last 2 days, of everyone in the area, to take the same exam. Last week I saw my therapist, and he made the comment along the lines of “wow – how strange, all those people, in one place, all.wanting.to.be.lawyers.” I didn’t twig at the time what he meant. But yesterday, as I was surrounded by hundreds – probably thousands of other people, all having gone through years of law school, months of bar review, from all over NY and farther afield, nervously shuffling into the exam room, smiling, commenting on why we were doing this again, I got what he meant. Its a shared identity. Ok – a shared identity that everyone makes jokes about, but it is an identity.

I’m glad for that.

Am realizing I’m a bit of a solitary fish: am quite separated from my family, I live in a different country to the one I was born in and I’m doing a degree where I don’t do a lot of the stuff everyone else does, am certainly not the person to ask what to do with an Arduino. A novel outsider perhaps. But yesterday, I felt I was with my tribe. Disheveled and tired as we were. I felt I belonged. Not bound together by the fact we’d swallowed the same amount of facts over the last 2 months, or been to law school – something more than that, I get the same feeling when I’m at home with my friends from the law firm, or this summer working at a law school – our minds work a certain way, through a barrage of training yes, but also a natural inquisitiveness, and desire to solve problems, a pedantic rigor to delve to the very heart of something, and discernment to take a broader view. Being a lawyer is part of my identity, and I’m beyond glad for that, when so much else shifts and changes. Its very solid, tangible, I worked for it and I have been changed by it.

So MY LEGS, SPARERIBS AND DOWNFALL ASIDE, having a proctor actually IN THE BATHROOM, honor codes, being blasted over loudspeakers, wristbands, being herded like sheep, suppressing panic attacks for over a week now – was all worth it. Pass or fail. It was worth it.

The second reason for writing this post, in case you are still with me here after my ode to the legal profession, is that, I learned a lot about my adopted home doing all this studying. The obvious bits yes: the Constitution – due process, equal protection, the Bill of Rights, Miranda, search and seizure – its a long list. That’s not what I meant though. What I meant is that I learned, that, well, why I moved here – that Americans are really, really nice people. Clearly not all of them. But – my taxi driver the other day wishing me the best luck, the lady in the rest room with amazing shoes who also wished me best luck, my bar man at my local restaurant, Ross who gave me a glass of wine on him last night, the proctors in the exam, who smiled and told me “they” (I think the NY State Bar Examiners) “wanted us to pass, and not to worry” – all of them nice, kind, friendly, encouraging. Not to mention my professors who have high-fived me, taken me to tea, listened to me wail about the Non-Resident Motorist Statute, and my friends (who think I’m nuts for doing this at the same time as doing ITP – and who are completely right) – who still have been seen with me in public despite roots in my hair that quite frankly should be a misdemeanor.

People are friendly and warm and nice here, yes – even in NYC. In England too, but we’re less expressive en mass I think, especially to strangers.

That’s my review of bar review. Now I can get back to a life without latches, mandamus to compel, res judicata, conversion – incidentally, the conversion of a dog hypo (law professor leaping around yelping “NO – I DO NOT MEAN THE DOG IS NOT AN EPISCOPALIAN – THE DOG IS DEAD!) is something that will, make me laugh forever. Thanks BarBri.

Last night the NY micro-trustees got together – and here we are….

We’re completely excited to introduce our newest trustees:

Brandon Kessler

Dawn Barber

Steve Rosenbaum

The deadline for this month’s submissions is 11:59 PM Eastern on the 14th (tonight!)  Apply here

So completely jazzed to announce that Awesome Foundation NYC is kicking off!  Grant applications open today, all details here.

What is the Awesome Foundation?!

Its really simple – as the website states:

“We support people doing awesome things in the world. Every month we give out a grant.”

10 people, each giving $100 a month, to give a combined $1000 each month to a totally awesome project.  Super. Cool.  Started in Boston, later to Providence, and now to NYC.

Additional information here.

I’ve been eating chicken pretty much all week.  This is due to learning the hard way that you have to separate the chicken breasts before you throw them in the freezer…  Tonight was the final one.  Happily.

Jean-Georges’ Curried Sauteed Chicken Chunks with Coconut Milk

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2 – 1 inch dice

1 teaspoon curry powder

salt

1 teaspoon minced fresh chili or red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon minced lemongrass

3 tablespoons butter or neutral oil, such as canola or grapeseed

1 cup canned unsweetened or fresh coconut milk

2 tablespoons nam-pla (Thai fish sauce)

1 cup salted peanuts or cashews

1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro

1.  Toss the chicken with the curry powder, salt to taste (I forgot this), chili (I used the red flakes) and lemongrass (I forgot this too – mind is full of Crim Pro)

2. Place the butter (margarine worked too) in a medium skillet, preferably non-stick, and turn the heat to medium high.  When it melts, add the chicken.  (This was quite fun, the smell was lovely, and the chicken turned this great yellow color). Cook the chicken, stirring occasionally, until it loses its raw color,  Add the coconut milk and turn the heat to medium.

3. Cook for another 2 to 3 minutes until cooked through, then stir in the nam pla and the nuts (is there a way to chop cashews so they don’t fly all over the kitchen?) and cook for another 30 seconds.  I threw in a little more coconut milk here as it had gotten a less saucy than I thought by this stage.  Garnish with the cilantro (I didn’t have any – so used the only other green thing in the fridge – I think its thyme), and serve.

This was super quick to make.  Bonkers quick in fact.  Completely recommend it.  I remember making curry with a pre-made sauce at college for a boyfriend once, and having a slight issue with the rice, something bad happened and I had to carve it to serve it.  Happily, 10 years on, my  cooking skills have improved.  That – or, its impossible to screw up 3 minute-microwave-rice…

Tonight was an evening of firsts.

Number 1: I actually looked forward to spending time in the kitchen.  Or perhaps, more accurately, looked forward to not sitting at my desk.  Maybe more of a testament to bar exam prep than my new found love of cooking.

Not only that, but I free-styled Jean-Georges due to a slight oversight on the need for aluminum foil.  Needed: lots.  Have: none.

And another first:  two J-G recipes in one go.

So, there they are: looking forward to being in the kitchen, deviating from the recipe, and two recipes at a time.  Oh, and another: the oven made these slightly strange popping/explosion noises. And, all seems well.

Recipe 1:

Chicken breasts in foil (or not) with tomato, olives and Parmesan (serves 2)

2 tbl spoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 thick slices tomato

2 boneless chicken breast halves (about 12 oz)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

1 teaspoon thyme leaves plus 2 sprigs thyme

10 small black olives, pitted

Am not going to bother writing out what J-G said to do with all this, as it involved a lot of aluminum foil – and cooking in a pouch in water and steaming, and well – I didn’t do any of that.  So, here’s the quick sans-foil version:

Find a small oven proof dish.  Thickly slice a big tomato and cover the bottom of the dish. Put chicken breast on the tomatoes.  Splosh some olive oil over chicken, sprinkle with salt and pepper.   Add olives – un-pitted is fine, except I wonder if they explode in ovens and that is what caused the popping/banging in my oven.

Raw chicken ready to go into the oven

Put in oven at 400F ’til the chicken is not pink on the outside.  Then take it out, add a handful of grated Parmesan (I used a three cheese Italian mix) – liberally (by this stage was thinking fondly of my local restaurant and its mostly-cheese-chicken Parmesan) and a sprig of thyme on top.  Return to the oven until the cheese is turning brown, crispy and bubbly.

My slightly more Parmesan-drenched version and J-Gs’ on the right

Recipe 2:

Meanwhile, I made J-Gs’ mashed potatoes. V easy:

Simple Mashed Potatoes (serves 4)

1 lb Yukon Gold potatoes or other all purpose potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/2 cup milk

4 tbl spoons butter

1. Place the potatoes in salted water to cover and bring to the boil, adjust the heat so that the water bubbles, but not too rapidly, and cook until the potatoes are tender but not too mushy, about 20 minutes.  Meanwhile warm the milk gently (I zapped it in the microwave).

2. When the potatoes are done,  drain them, mash them or put them through a ricer, and return them to the pot over the lowest possible heat.  Add the milk and stir, then add the butter and stir until it melts.  Season to taste and serve immediately.

Mash!

I don’t have a potato peeler, and wasn’t feeling up to peeling with a knife, so I left the skin on.  Also, the potatoes I used were from Omaha, not Yukon Gold ones, but they seemed just fine.  Overall though, the mashed potato seemed to lack a little flavor, texture was lovely though.  Perhaps because I used skimmed milk – or maybe it needed more salt and pepper.  My roommate suggested some garlic – next time, after tonight’s successfully jumping off the recipe page, I might just try that…