Sachin Agarwal: January 2006

The food here in New York is incredible. Whether it cheap food at the corner, or a fancy restaurant, you can almost always know the quality is going to be very high (unless you're in China Town :) ). This week is restaurant week in New York which means you can go to all the fancy restaurants and have a set $35 dinner. We went to "One If By Land, Two if By Sea" which was a really nice, fancy restaurant. The food was very, very good. It was worth around $35. I couldn't have imagined paying the normal $70.

The one thing I haven't found yet is mexican food. I know I won't be able to find Taqueria Cancun burritos here, but so far I haven't found anything good. Grant raves about Chipotle but I refused to go, mostly because I don't eat fast food anymore, but also because I don't want to support McDonalds. But I went to their website and there was a picture of an avocado, and I was hooked. Plus they seemed fresh and healthy.

We went to Chipotle and I was surprised that the burrito was $7.50! Then i was *shocked* when guacamole was an extra $1.50!! I miss Taqueria Cancun.

I pulled out my laptop to look up something, and decided to check the nutritional info on Chipotle. After fighting their stupid flash website, I found a neato calorie calculator. My chicken burrito, with *no cheese, no sour cream, no guacamole* had 1100 calories!?!? What?!

The website also gave me this great bit of HTML to put in my "AIM profile or blog" so here it is.

My burrito has 36g of fat, and 1067 calories. How about yours?

I love the scene in Shrek when a bunch of people are in a Starbucks that gets crushed, and they run outside to the Starbucks across the street.

Today I was working at the Starbucks by Times Square (which one? you ask, yes there are many in Times Square. I went to the first one where I could find a table)

After a few hours I saw a homeless man go into the bathroom and lock the door, and there he stayed for about an hour. Eventually I told the Starbucks staff what was going on. I needed to use the restroom so I left there and went to Astor Place Starbucks, my soon to be neighborhood, and where I was meeting Roy for dinner later.

I walked in and saw there was a line of 10 people to use the *single* restroom there. So I walked about 100 feet (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little) to the other Astor Place Starbucks, where I immediately used the restroom and bought my second coffee for the day.

How can it be legal to build 100 person seat Starbucks's and only have one restroom?

Nikhil posted a link to Steve Wozniak speaking at the Computer History Museum. I haven't watched it all yet, but I'm sure it will be interesting.

Steve Wozniak

iTunes Stanford updated their site with more content, including 8 hours from the Dalai Lama, video the Stanford News Service (this is new?) and the video from Steve Jobs commencement speech.

I can't believe it's only been two weeks. So much has happened, so much has changed. Here are some highlights:

On Saturday we went to the MOMA which was awesome, one of the best museums I have ever been too. They had great modern art, interior design, architecture, photography, and right now a great Pixar exibit. There was a video playing that spanned 4 screens side by side, super wide screen! It looked like a bunch of animated stills on a wall, but as the camera moved around and zoomed in, the stills actually had motion and depth to them. It was really amazing. In one room they had a Mac SE, iMac, iPod, and the taillights from a Miata all in a row!!!

Last weekend I went to Boston to see Becca, Sam, Monika and Jen. I did a little sightseeing, and too much drinking :). It's a very cool city, and I'll be back soon. I was also in New Haven for about 20 minutes, and it seemed like a fun place.

There's something strange about how much things cost in New York. I haven't been able to figure it out yet. Obviously housing is expensive, and forget about shopping in SoHo. But you walk another half mile to China town and everything is cheap. Downstairs from my apartment there's a haircutter that charges $75. And 4 doors down another that charges $12. And in Chinatown it's $6. How can anyone afford to rent a space in New York and cut hair for $6? I got a good haircut for $12. My first haircut from someone new in 7 years! It seems places on rent control are cheap, and places who aren't are forced to be upscale and expensive. And labor seems to be cheap, maybe because there are so many people here.

I'm sort of torn on the abundance of delivery services in New York. Places like Seamless Web and Fresh Direct and make it really convenient to never go outside or talk to anyone. But I guess they will be nice on rainy days.

Sometimes I forget about how New York wasn't really a safe place 10 years ago. As long as I've known this city it's been fairly clean and mostly safe. It's hard to imagine it otherwise. I guess that means I'm not a true New Yorker.

Space is very limited, of course. This is obvious in the small places for rent. One of the most interesting things I've seen is a portable Post Office, which is really just a truck that's parked at the same place all the time. They open the sides of the truck and service people as they walk up.

Karaoke is huge here! It seems like there are karaoke bars all over the place, and no matter what we do each night, we end up at one at some point. Looks like I'll have to start singing and practice at home before going out ;)

I love New York. I love the speed that the city moves, and how there is lots of stuff going on all the time. I love the trains. But I definitely feel like the small guy in a big city. It's a very different feeling from being in San Francisco. And I miss all my SF friends! And I miss my Miata!!!

The New York Times has a section of the best pictures of 2005 and they are really, really incredible. I got the Time issue with the year's best pictures, and wasn't too impressed. But the NYTimes has many pictures that blew me away.

Click here

I'm really getting used to being in New York and I LOVE it here. I got my first monthly Metro pass and I've been taking the subways all over the city, iPod going all the way. Well, actually I've only gone above 14th street two times, but I've travelled around all of lower Manhattan! I'm starting to learn my way around, much quicker than I did in San Francisco where I drove way everywhere.

Today I went to the Apple sales and marketing offices that are located in the Citigroup building on 53rd and Lexington. The offices were beautiful (nicer than Cupertino!). It's a great place to be able to work once in a while, when i need to be behind the firewall.

I've already had lots of really incredible food including some of the best sandwiches. I'm going to start a list of my favorite restaurants, bars, etc.

I recommend:
Cafe Gitane
Original Sandwich Shoppe
Greenwich Cafe
Klong
Angel's Share
Hop Devil

It feels really great to be here. Yesterday I was going to meet Jason for dinner, but we randomly found each other in the same Metro stop before that! And today I ran into Kabir at Starbucks. Tonight I actually had to say no to Gary about going out to a show because I had too much work to do! Gary is a party animal.

Possibly the best keynote ever.

1. Very cool iPod remote and FM tuner. Already ordered mine!
2. 14 million iPods this quarter!
3. iLife 06. Awesome update to iPhoto that include speed improvements, full screen editing, really sweet calendar building, and photocasting! iMovie includes easy video podcasting. GarageBand include "ducking" and auto podcasting. But the best part is iWeb, an all purpose web publishing tool. Some of the nicest layouts I've ever seen, and overall very easy to publish a blog, random pages, a homepage, and more. Just make the pages you want, hit publish, and you get a homepage with a link to your blog, your photos, and all the other pages you make. I always hated having to manually link pages together. I will be switching my blog to this very soon!
4. iMac Intel! Same exact form and features as before, but now 2-3X faster!
5. PowerBook Intel (now called the MacBook Pro). 4-5X faster than previous powerbook, thinner, bigger screen, Front Row, built in iSight. I've used one. They are FAST.

And as always, lots of great commercials that will be coming to a TV near you soon!

I'm in New York! This is just too strange. I landed on Friday evening, dropped my stuff off at Grant's place, and went straight to the East Village with Gary and Joe. At 11pm, just 4 hours after I landed in the US, I was getting tired and falling asleep, but these guys kept me out until 3am.

I spent most of Saturday around Union Square, and I looked at some apartments. That night we went out for sushi, then a bunch of bars, a Korean club, and Korean food and soju at 6am. Throughout the night Joe, Gary and I were wrestling in the streets. The bouncer at the club actually walked Joe and me out the door cause we were too rowdy :)

This city is too awesome. So much fast moving action here. In the Bay Area, I had to keep Avi out and awake in the bars. Over here, Joe and Gary have more energy than me and don't let me go home. They have me really excited. New York changes everything.

A few weeks ago I was incredibly excited about moving to New York. I sold all my stuff, packed my bags, had my going away party, and left my apartment in San Francisco. All that stood in the way was a three week trip to India. "Why can't I just skip the trip and go to NY?" I joked.

Those three weeks turned out to be the best three weeks of my life, and I was crying in the airplane on the way home. It's strange how attached I am to India and my family there, even though I never lived in India and I've only been a few times in my life. Even the last time I was in India, I was very sad to leave. It took me a week or two to get over the shock of being in the US again.

But this time it's much worse, because I'm not going home to San Francisco, to my friends, my apartment, my bed, my shower. I'm going back to New York, to Grant's studio, far from my parents, far from my friends, far from my cars, far from Apple, far from everything I know. My time in India was full of good-byes, to my family, my Apple friends who were there, and then my dad.

Spending time with my dad was the most amazing part. He's such an incredible person, exactly who I want to become. He's great with people, keeps in touch with friends from 30 years ago, and he knows how to get stuff done. He's retired and enjoying life. He has so much energy, even I couldn't keep up with him night after night. On the trip he really took care of me and my friends to make it an unforgettable experience.