VIva Mexico!

I recently had the opportunity to visit Monterrey Mexico for my job and have another look at the cerra de la silla myself :) it was mainly for work purposes but of course it was a lot of fun too and i always love being in mexico, the people, the food, the mountains :)
For work I also took a lot of photos of bus shelters as my office will be doing some shelters for various cities in Mexico (hence the bus shelter photos). also for research purposes we visited this great stainless steel fabricators shop and i snapped a few images there as well
I just got a new camera as well so i was pretty trigger happy. Hopefully from now on I'll be able to do a bit more postings with some decent photos as well.
Now that i think of it though perhaps the best way to post these is in sections as the trip was kind of broken up into different areas and activities. here first are some of the random photos i took from the car as we documented the bus shelters.

Cerra de la Silla

I am working on a new project at work and it's in Monterrey MX. I ran into this great picture of the city at night on Wikipedia while doing some research. Hopefully I will get to visit there over the course of the project. The mountain in the back is called Cerra de la Silla or (Saddle Mountain).

urban settings as a social determinant of health

On a less positive note than my last post, here are some disturbing and interesting facts recently posted by the WHO-World Health Organization.

Fact 7
Breathing Mumbai’s air is the equivalent of smoking two-and-one-half packs of cigarettes per day.

BOBO= "Bohemian” and “Bourgeoisie"

As of late I have been doing a variety of things including working a lot, studying and traveling back to Texas so I have been a bit lax on my NY adventures and my camera has just about totally died on me... sooo whether here or in Texas I am not taking many pix either :(

At some point when I finally find just the perfect camera after loads of time doing silly research for just the perfect one I'll be back on blog photo track! :)

Anyway one thing that does remain steady though about my little life here is my enjoyment of trying new restaurants, particularly those popping up in my neighborhood (which happens almost monthly). So BOBO (hence the title) is the latest of these findings :) My roomie Crystal (Chef and restaurant manager) is always to thank for these unexpected evenings of merriment which usually involve getting something free. Last night was no exception as we had the fortune (or misfortune as some might think) to sit nearly in the kitchen of the restaurant, where one of the chef's chatted with us about the recent opening of BOBO and recommendations for other restaurants. Anyway, better click the link if you want to go to this one as it's not easily found with no sign and a basement entrance. Name is kind of pretentious (see website for more explanation of name) but wine and food are good. A bit pricey so we just went for a drink and appetizer. Hmm but I quite liked their graphics, though they are more on the floral side and since i had no camera i'll just have to post the menu graphics for now :)

Grimshaw Holiday Party

Well it's been ages since I was in the blogging mode, but thought I would upload this quick pic from my office Holiday Party. As you can see I was enjoying myself and the great restaurant.
see more about Blue Hill here......very good probably the nicest restaurant I have tried in NY :) ok that's all for now have to get back to work

falling off the blog planet....been up to a little of this and a little of that.

well it's been a while since i blogged anything, just been busy with work and trying to study for my architectural licensing exams :( ugg man is it hard to get back into the studying mode :) i am use to making lots of plans to do a millions things on Saturday and it's so hard to find a quiet place in this city to focus and read....generally i try to hit up the massive b&n near union square, but that's just an excuse to make my way thru the Green Market, my latest favorite place to shop..winter squash, pears,a million varieties of apples, concord grapes, heirloom tomatoes ... it just makes cooking so much more fun :P

then there was the weekend i did CANstruction :) an event to gather hundreds of cans for the hungry in new york. loads of architects, engineers, and various people from the design community design structures out of cans that are then exhibited to the public for a few weeks, dismounted and donated to organizations to distribute to the hungry. grimshaw's was a little ambitious, i think the idea was better than the execution :P but there were some pretty impressive ones as well.... you would b e surprised at what kind of art you can make from baby can corn and sardines

there was also the week i went to the university of Maryland arch. school to work on a grimshaw exhibit there. that was pretty fun. lots of work but great to learn about all that goes into an exhibition. sadly i only have one image from that of one of the cases that we used to display and transport the grimshaw models.

A walk in Central Park

This pas sunday I did a small 5K walk around Central park with some co-workers to raise money for cancer research. It was so nice because of the wonderfully unseasonably warm weather we are having.

We were famished after our LOOOONG ;) trek so we went for some of my favorite food - KOREAN :) in K-Town ....yum yum and ate way too much. then again i never get tired of good kimchi.

New website of the day...Artkrush

Artkrush...one of my new favorite online art/architecture weekly publications, an image above from this weeks issue

Richard Serra @ the MoMa Manhattan

amazing work.... exhibit, i just can't see enough of this guys work, art yet architecture

P.S.1 MoMA + Long Island City

Saturday i took a trek out of my little west village area to the P.S.1 MoMa museum in Long Island City Queens. For several years i have been reading about the young architects program/competition on archinect that happens there every year and have been wanting to check it out since moving to ny. Saturday was the final day so i decided i better go check it out and it was well worth it, great temporary space called "Liquid Sky" by LA based firm Ball-Nogues.

The area around the museum was also quite interesting ; lots of old warehouse type building with graffiti. Crazy thing is no one seems to stop anyone from painting on everything, as it's quite obvious that the graffiti is improving the area in it's own way. i thought this truck painted on one of the building was pretty cool :)

here are a few of my random pix, was great weather too, so it made it even better.

Company Picnic Fun

well work has been particularly trying lately schedule wise :) but what else is new.

however, this past Wednesday we were treated with a half day and a great company picnic in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. the weather was perfect and there was plenty of good food, drinks and lots of soccer and a bit of badminton as well.

I'll only post a few pix as most are of people few of you probably know and i have censored the ones of myself taken by others as they were very unflattering shots of me flying thru the air trying to hit that little thing known as a shuttle when playing badminton, a sport that i now know due to wind etc. should definitely only be played inside :)

Latest Side Bar

see at right...people i think are interesting for some reason or another.
first entry: oliver sacks
reading one of his books at the moment An Anthropologist on Mars
http://www.oliversacks.com/

2C Shakeup! More new room mates :-)

Recently for various reasons including a marriage :) (see earlier post) I had to find two new room mates to fill my little apartment. And I am happy to report they are both wonderful! We had a bit of party with our neighbors downstairs on a Wednesday night! it was great. Lots of good food as one of my new room mates is a chef and so is one of the guys that lives downstairs.

Province..late night...late food

One of the highlights (if you can call it that ) of late nights of work in Manhattan is what to eat for dinner :) there are so many choices and everything is good and not necessarily even that expensive (though not a concern since it's on the office). This is one thing I really missed when I was living in London as most places closed there relatively early and were not big on delivery much less variety...at least in the area our office is in.

One of our latest discoveries is this great little Chinese place called Province that serves the most tasty small sandwiches. They consist of a few choices of fillings (Shiitake mushroom is my favorite) inside a doughy steamed bread of northern China known as Mantou.

if your ever in nyc heading south of Chinatown towards the Tribeca area this is a must eat and it will only set you back $5.

http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/Province/

a few pix from my weekend down in houston

this past weekend while in houston i got to do a lot of hanging out with friends and family. i had the chance to meet up with my friend, fernando, shown with me here and to go to a great art/street festival with my family in the old historic heights district of houston. ahh and not to be left out was all the fun i had with my sister's kiddos, however at the moment I don't have my pix of them downloaded just a few that fernando sent me from his camera, so more later on the kids :)

(yes and a bit of down time as well to play with my blog template, not sure about this red text and dark background but it's a new look i am trying :P)