Monday, January 29, 2007

on banh mi, crappy mice, and the homeless

we have previously covered the eating of bánh mì, but today i went to a different bánh mì place, this time in chinatown. A Chau Deli is at 82A Mulberry St, between Canal and Bayard. The sandwiches are delicious, large (about twice the size of nicky's) and super cheap; the #1 is $3! It has a variety of vietnamese cold-cuts, some pâté, cucumber, pickled carrots and cilantro. The coldcuts seemed a little less processed and generic than what you get at nicky's. And so cheap was this that I decided to try a sardine sandwich too ($2.75). It was good, but not nearly as good as sandwich #1.

I only ate half of each one, figuring I could give the rest to a homeless person. but let me tell you, today must be a homeless person holiday because there was not a bum to be found between chinatown and the village. seriously, it must have been the first time in 20 years that there were no homeless people in washington square park. what the hell. for you conspiracy theorists, note that today is the day the city starts their annual official homeless census.

finally, coming up to nyu entails, as it so often does, the usage of a mac. i really don't dislike macs on principle (well, the DRM thing doesn't exactly enthrall me) so much as on practice. The keyboards, as previously noted are quite painful to my wrists. and now, the computers here in the library all have mighty mice which want to right click everything until you look it up and find out that it's supposed to sense whether you are clicking on the right or left. but there is nothing about the mouse itself which suggests it does this, so instead I just sit here getting frustrated about how this computer seems to keep getting stuck right-clicking everything making it impossible to use. Then once i figure out the problem, i find i have to lift my right finger up when I click in order to reliably click the way i want to. this is, i hasten to add, exceedingly uncomfortable and I might not even be able to do it if my piano teachers hadn't made me do finger-independence exercises when i was a kid. i appreciate that this might work well with a little getting used to, but for chrissake, stop telling me that everything apple makes is so fucking well designed. attention getting and cool are NOT good design principles, i'm sorry. though i can certainly understand why they are good for sales.

1 comment:

  1. Chinatown always makes me feel guilty for eating anywhere else. I just spent 15 bucks on beverage and dinner tonight (not so great hot dog and bratwurst at a sitdown place on 18th and broadway) when I could've eaten like a king for that amount of money in chinatown. And yes, now I want bahn mi.

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