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

Interactive Yak

1) Goat brain curry, anyone? [click here]

2) Mango vs. Mango [click here]

3) Bryce says... [click here]

Himalayan Yak

Location: 72-20 Roosevelt Ave., Jackson Heights, NY
Cuisine: Tibetan, Nepali
Hours: SUN (5pm-8pm); MON-THU (11:30am-2:30pm, 5pm-9pm); FRI-SAT (11:30am-2:30pm, 5pm-10pm)
Phone: (718) 779-1119
Website: www.himalayanyakrestaurant.com
Prices: $31/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 9
Service: 8
Value: 7
Environment: 9

Frequency: Unique

Last month, we got a preview of Himalayan Yak and planned on trying it this time around for Reinhard's Birthday.


I made a lot of jokes about yak meat and double yak burgers with cheese, but despite the name, they don't serve yak meat. They're an endangered species, so it would probably be illegal! A few of us got their early and we spent so much time flipping through the pages of the menu. It consisted of a lot of vegetarian dishes, Tibetan, Nepali, Indian and Chinese items. There were so many new dishes none of us have had before and we had a hard time deciding what to get. The waitress was helpful in explaining some of the dishes and even recommended certain ones for first timers. For more details on individual dishes, visit the Picasa album.

The decor is what stood out about Himalayan Yak. It's the most noticeable restaurant on this part of Roosevelt Ave. It's not just the facade either. The theme and craftsmanship carries over to the interior as well. Seating was comfortable and they had no problems seating a group of 8. We were probably OK without reservations, but I placed it just in case since it was our first time.

We have yet to circle back to a restaurant since we started these monthly gatherings, but this will be on the list. There are so many more things to try out. And we know that they can take a large party without rushing.

A Good Wrong Answer

Every Wednesday night, I participate in a volunteer tutoring program in the UWS. This year, my student is preparing for the biology & math regents tests. Most of his homework consists of regents-like multiple choice questions. He has a tendency to read quickly and rush through them, which results in choosing "a good wrong answer." Multiple choice tests are not designed to be as easy as they look. A wild guess gives you a 25% chance of getting the answer, but the difficulty increases when more than one answer looks appealing. As we're going over the homework, I have my student read the entire question. Then he attempts to choose the right answer. Whether or not he chooses correctly, I make him explain why he picked it just to make sure it wasn't at random. Then I make him explain why the other 3 were wrong. Often enough, some of the wrong answers were good ones... ones designed to lure students in.

I remember math class from the 7th grade. It was the first class of the day and I had Mr. Hoch as my teacher. He was the person that introduced me to the idea of "a good wrong answer." When we went over examples in class, after arriving at the answer to a problem, he would often ask, "what's a good wrong answer?" I thought that was a genius way of preparing students for multiple choice tests and it also truly shows which students grasps the concepts. In math and in life, it's just as good to know what the answer is as why the wrong ones are logically wrong.