Puerto Rico

My parents went to Puerto Rico from May 12-19. I'm posting this on the blog since neither of them have a site. It's split up into 3 parts with the slideshow representing part 1. Enjoy!


- Part 2 - ESJ Towers & Fort San Felipe del Morro
- Part 3 - Paseo del Morro

Memorial Sunday Dinner

After Auntie Ethel's party, we got back to my parents' house and immediately started getting things ready for our own party. Originally, we were going to go out for dinner, but decided last night that it would be better in the house. There would be no rush, everyone would get a chance to interact and we could get a larger variety of food. Last night's dinner was at such a huge table that it was difficult to talk to people at the other side.


After dinner, my Dad took Jeremy & Frida's family for a self-drive tour of NYC as he drove Emily back home. I went along for the ride as well and was able to work on these photos (above) for a little bit along the way.

Auntie Ethel's Birthday

Event #3 of Memorial Weekend was a surprise Birthday party for Auntie Ethel by Warren and Susan. I wasn't able to make it for the surprise, so I made sure I arrived after Auntie Ethel did.


I got pretty full on all of the great food here, but knew I couldn't stuff myself to the max, knowing that we had a family event for dinner.

Tung Yi Fung (Again)

A week later, we found ourselves in the same place as last week! Earlier in the week, we got word from Kathy that Jeremy would be getting married in October. Shortly after, an email from Jeremy announced that he would be in NY for the long weekend to meet Frida's parents. We picked them up from the airport early Saturday morning as they came in on a red eye flight from LA. Jeremy & Frida were going to host a dinner for the 2 families and my parents suggested Tung Yi Fung for the prices, food and space.


Afterwards, Jeremy, Cindy, Wil & Wesley came over my parents' house to hang out for the night. Frida and her family retired back to the hotel to catch up on lost sleep.

Memorial Saturday BBQ

For the first of my four Memorial Weekend events, Ben & Clovy hosted a BBQ on Saturday in place of our usual monthly dinner. Most of our group was away for the long weekend though. Only James and I were able to make it. The weather was perfect too. It's as if we got the bad weather out of the way during the week so the weekend events would be uninterrupted.


We stayed there until about 4:30, just eating, talking and playing with the kids & dogs. Then I had to take off and get ready for the next event!

Homework Help Cookout

We had our end of the school year party for Homework Help tonight. After an entire rainy week, the weather was perfect for us to do a cookout. We started with the traditional handing out of certificates for all of the students that completed the program. Then we headed to the courtyard in the back for dinner.


For more details on the events, visit the Picasa album.

9th Avenue Food Festival

Since the 9th Avenue Food Festival is just outside of my apartment, it's become an annual ritual for me. I even had a plan in mind this time around. My goals were to get the alligator sausage from the Cajun place, Kyotofu's green tea cupcake and finally get one of those Alien sculptures from Metal Park.


The weather forecast for today was rain and thunderstorms, but luckily it held out. It turned out to be great weather... cloudy, but comfortable temperatures.

Related: Delta Grill, Kyotofu, Metal Park, Frommer's Events

Web Design w/ Pencils

I reached a point in one of my projects today where I had to start sketching out web designs. That's right... sketching with pencil and paper! I'm probably the only person in the office with a pencil and electric sharpener. Edward Kinney, one of my computer art professors at SCAD always said that an artist should never be at the computer without a plan in mind. Working things out on paper seems to be more effective. In front of a computer, there's too much exposure to automatic tools and filters. This leads to a tendency to jump ahead and work on details rather than the basic idea. Back then, we were learning electronic painting and animation, but this applies to web design as well.

We already had a bunch of pages figured out, but I ran across a page that was somewhere between a main menu and content page. If I had jumped straight to Photoshop to do the design, I'd be wasting time with what each page section looked like. On paper, I needed to figure out which layout would make the best use of the space. The details could be filled in with my imagination. I made two sketches and then easily picked the one that worked out the solution best. Tomorrow, I'll be all set to jump into the XHTML & CSS... not even going to the Photoshop step!

New Tung Yi Fung

Location: 135-29 37th Ave., Flushing, NY, 11354
Cuisine: Chinese, seafood
Phone: (718) 886-8233
Prices: $15/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 8
Service: 7
Value: 8
Environment: 7

Frequency: All the Time

I'm at Tung Yi Fung so often for family dinners that I could've sworn I reviewed it before. I searched this blog month by month and found that I didn't though... so here's the long overdue post. We went here for Mother's Day. Generally, my family likes this restaurant because every dish is good. You won't find anything special or exotic here. It just has the usual Chinese-American dishes, but everything is done so well. More details in the pics below:


Tung Yi Fung is an excellent value choice for family style dining. The portions are large for most dishes and don't really cost that much. It might be overkill for dinner for two though. It's also a comfortable place to eat because the space is huge for a Flushing restaurant. They also have 2 floors and the 2nd floor is nearly twice the size of the 1st.

Enchantment Prologue

We enjoyed the Memorial Weekend cruise on Queen Mary 2 so much last year that we're going to do it again this coming June. At first, I was looking at cruises to Alaska for Memorial Weekend, but it turns out that the Philippines cast won't be here until June. So It's going to be an early June cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Key West and Cozumel on the Royal Caribbean Enchantment of the Seas. It'll be interesting to ride on another ship after being on one of the World's largest. QM2 dwarfs Enchantment by about 200ft and outweighs it by almost 70,000 tons! Oddly enough though, Enchantment holds only 150 less passengers. I wonder if there will be enough elbow room for everyone!

Enchantment of the Seas Stats
Length: 990 ft
Weight: 80,700 gross tons
Passengers: 2,446
Top Speed: 22 knots

Related: Royal Caribbean, Frommers.com, Cruise Critic, Wikipedia