Happy Buddha

We're starting to get close to the holidays. Like last year, I ended up with a lot of vacation days to burn in December. So I scheduled every Monday off + the last week of the year. I usually spend this time meeting up with friends for meals. I kicked off this Holiday Food Fest today with Lewis for lunch at Happy Buddha. For pictures and restaurant details, please check out my previous posts:

- December 17, 2010 (Lunch)
- June 26, 2009 (Dinner)

Emily's Birthday

Photos & Comments

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Video

Windy City adiZero Rose 2.0

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Grand Restaurant (Dim Sum)

Location: 40-21 Main St., Flushing, NY
Cuisine: Chinese
Hours: SUN-THU (11:30am-9:30pm); FRI-SAT (11:30am-10:30pm)
Phone: (718) 321-8258
Website: grandrestaurantny.com
Prices: $11/person
Credit Cards: All major

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

Frequency: Unique

The last time I went out for dim sum with my parents on a day off, we attempted to go to Grand Restaurant when it first opened. We decided to eat there because the line was too long. I think we ended up in Tung Yi Fung. My mom heard from a friend that the crowds have died down a bit since it was the new thing in Flushing, so we gave it another shot today. It was still pretty crowded for 11:30am on Monday, but much more comfortable and no line/wait.

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The food was pretty good. They had all of the standard dim sum items and a few original ones I haven't had anywhere else. Having Grand Restaurant around makes up for the closing of Gala Manor.

More Clam Case Pics

The Clam Case I just wrote about deserved more photos, so it was the subject of my first photo shoot with my new class 10 memory card:

Lost Videos

I got a new memory card for my camera, so I reviewed my old one before wiping it and found some short video clips that I never posted. This tends to happen when I shoot video with my still camera. I posted them based on original date so they would be close to related entries. Here are the links:

Sizzling Beef
Chinese New Year Dinner
February 14, 2010

Bryce's Dog
Bryce's Birthday
March 20, 2010

Cancun Dolphins
Reinhard & Marites' Wedding
July 5, 2010

Something interesting about the memory card upgrade... the first shot I took on it was from August, 21 2009 when we ate at Tito Rad's. The last shot was at Ben's Birthday party, catered by Tito Rad's!

Ben's Birthday

The monthly dinners went on hold in 2011 because there were a lot of changes within the group. I started a new job last year. Charlotte & Jeff moved to Long Island. Emily had a work schedule change and recently started classes. Irene moved to Kansas City. Reinhard moved to Forest Hills. So it's been a bit harder to meet up, which made tonight's get together more fun. Not everyone was there, but I got to catchup with Ben, Charlotte & Jeff.

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The food was fittingly catered by Tito Rad's, which was our group dinner location for August 2009.

White Clam Case

I ended up getting the Clam Case after all as the white one just came out last week. The generic case I bought back in June didn't turn out to be so good. Sometimes it would work perfectly and other times the keyboard would act up, either not responding to keypresses or typing multiple letters on a single press. This started to make me less efficient when typing on the train. I was backspacing so much to make corrections that documents often took me 2-3x longer than they should have. So even though the Clam Case was $150, I still felt it was worth it because I'd be able to type normally. Since the generic one was just $35, I didn't feel too bad. Some parts of the imitation leather were starting to wear down and it did a great job of protecting my iPad for 6 months. While the keyboard was mediocre, it was an excellent folio case.

The Clam Case is worth every penny. It's a solid construction that will protect your iPad on all sides. It's versatile because you can use you iPad as a tablet or laptop without removing it from the case. The keyboard is solid and as responsive as a computer's keyboard. The generic one I had was to soft, which is probably why it had contact issues. If there's one downside to the Clam Case it's the weight. In order for it to stand up like a laptop, the base/keyboard needs to be heavier than the iPad otherwise it would tip over. When attached to the case, the iPad weight doubles and feels like a netbook.

Thanksgiving

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Ihawan 2

Location: 10-07 50th Avenue, Long Island City
Cuisine: Filipino
Hours: SUN-THU (11:30am-9:30pm); FRI-SAT (11:30am-10:30pm)
Phone: (718) 937-7373
Website: www.ihawan2.com
Prices: $17/person
Credit Cards: All major

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

Frequency: Unique

We finally tried out Ihawan 2, the 2nd establishment from the family owned Ihawan in Woodside. The Long Island City branch retains all of the items as the original, but seems to have a large grill menu. Since it was our first time here, we went with all of the usual dishes so we could compare. For more details on the food, click into the Picasa album.

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Ihawan 2 opened up a few years ago and since it was the 2nd in the chain, it was build ground up with nice looking materials. It has a restaurant feel as opposed to kitchen or backyard BBQ like the original. The space is well decorated, has nice lighting and high ceilings. Seating accommodates mostly groups of 2 and 4, but the layout is very movable for larger groups.

Located just outside of the Vernon-Jackson 7 Train stop, Ihawan 2 is in a business/industrial neighborhood, so things are a bit slow around dinner time. We went tonight at 6:30pm and it was empty for a long time. They had only 2 other dine-in customers while we were there. So it's not as festive as Woodside, but could be just what you're looking for if you want a nice quiet restaurant with great food.