Lessons from the fishball game

1. Treat the ball gently. Once you get the hang of it, it'll be a lot easier

2. If you doggedly pursue a particular fish instead of bouncing around like a maniac and getting distracted by other fish, you will almost always catch it.

3. Head to the surface once in a while. You don't want to lose all those points if a pufferfish gets you.

4. Beware of the pufferfish. They look cute but they'll burst your bubble, literally.

5. If you see those special balls, grab them.

6. Take advantage of invincibility. Go attack a pufferfish if you have it. But remember it's only temporary.

7. With the proper soundtrack, everything is more fun.

8. The ocean is pretty.

Ichiban suki na moto

Shame on me for not exploring Fulton Street sooner. There's a strand in my neighborhood (my work neighborhood, that is) and I didn't even know it. This I discovered yesterdey en route to the seaport for dinner. It was a weird, gloomy, wet day for dinner at the seaport and with our luck, Sequioa was closed, so we ended up eating at the foodcourt. The view is still fabulous though, clear day or not.

Today I set out for a cheap books expedition and emerged with three finds. Hey, that's pretty good for thirty minutes. At the train station, I discovered my copy of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing had a Gore Vidal price tag on it, and thus inflated my total. Otherwise, all three books would have cost less than twenty bucks. Word of advice: You might as well walk to Fulton Street if you're in the Wall Street area. Uptown trains are always crowded and take forever, such that when you get to strand, you'd be in such a hurry and yet still be totally awed and fascinated at the disarray that when you finally get back to your office, you'd only have time to pick up a diet Snapple and a pack of cashew nuts for lunch, which you'd have to eat at your desk because you're already late.



Tomorrow I'll be on another expedition to get a refund and perhaps a nice little Japanese-English dictionary. If you adored Lost in Translation like I did and love singing along to songs, here's a neat little thing I found:

Mochi no hazure no, senobi shita roji wo
Sanpo shitetara, shini darake no
Moya goshi ni okinuke no romen densha ga
Umi wo wataru noga
Mietan desu sorede boku mo
Kaze wo atsumete, kaze wo atsumete, kaze wo atsumete
Aozora wo kaketain desu, aozora wo

Walking on the overstretched alley
In the outside of the city
Through the blemished haze
I saw a first tram across the sea
And so,
Gathering the wind, gathering the wind, gathering the wind
I wanna fly the blue sky, the blue sky.


[from misanthropic]

{Kaze Wo Atsumete, Happy End}