Tonight for dinner, I went to try out the newly-opened Se Ja Meh (meaning 3 sisters in Korean, and alternately spelled “Seh Ja Meh” and “Se Ja Meh” in their site and menu – oops, oh well whatever!).  It’s located at 114 Greenwich St, just up the street from my apartment building.  Now that I no longer work by Koreatown, I have started to really miss my 3-4 day-a-week Korean food lunches.  Se Ja Meh definitely compares in price and quality to my Koreatown fav, Seoul Garden. Now that I have a Korean place on the block, I can probably spare myself the trip up to K-Town.

I ordered the yellow tail scallion roll (above) for a starter.  Ok, sushi is not Korean, but I wanted to check it out anyway.  The sushi was decent; fresh fish and slighty too mushy rice – a problem all too common at sushi places in New York, so I’m not going to be too much of a sushi snob and pick on them for this point.  If I have another sushi craving, I’ll just stick to my usual local fav, Takahachi Tribeca.

And here’s the panchan (side dishes) below that typically come included with your meal at Korean restaurants.  Everything is on par in the panchan department.

For my main, I ordered the kimchi soondooboo (kimchi tofu stew).  The stew was rich with plenty of soft creamy tofu.  The kimchi and chili infused broth was flavorful without being too salty and in the right proportion to the tofu and other ingredients, in other words, not too much broth, two problems that plague lesser Korean establishments.  WaWa Canteen, I’m talking to you!

The place is clean, tastefully minimalist in decor and the service super nice, so I’ll definitely be back.  Plus, the location can’t get more convenient.

In the wake of a massive cyclone, at least 22,000 Burmese are dead. More than 40,000 are missing. A million are homeless.

But what’s happening in Burma is not just a natural disaster–it’s also a catastrophe of bad leadership.

Burma’s brutal and corrupt military junta failed to warn the people, failed to evacuate any areas, and suppressed freedom of communication so that Burmese people didn’t know the storm was coming when the rest of the world did. Now the government is failing to respond to the disaster and obstructing international aid organizations.

Humanitarian relief is urgently needed, but Burma’s government could easily delay, divert or misuse any aid. Today the International Burmese Monks Organization, including many leaders of the democracy protests last fall, launched a new effort to provide relief through Burma’s powerful grass roots network of monasteries–the most trusted institutions in the country and currently the only source of housing and support in many devastated communities. Click below to help the Burmese people with a donation and see a video appeal to Avaaz from a leader of the monks:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/5.php?cl=86184609

Giving to the monks is a smart, fast way to get aid directly to Burma’s people. Governments and international aid organizations are important, but face cahllenges–they may not be allowed into Burma, or they may be forced to provide aid according to the junta’s rules. And most will have to spend large amounts of money just setting up operations in the country. The monks are already on the front lines of the aid effort–housing, feeding, and supporting the victims of the cyclone since the day it struck. The International Burmese Monks Organization will send money directly to each monastery through their own networks, bypassing regime controls.

Last year, more than 800,000 of us around the world stood with the Burmese people as they rose up against the military dictatorship. The government lost no time then in dispatching its armies to ruthlessly crush the nonviolent democracy movement–but now, as tens of thousands die, the junta’s response is slow and threatens to divert precious aid into the corrupt regime’s pockets.

The monks are unlikely to receive aid from governments or large humanitarian organizations, but they have a stronger presence and trust among the Burmese people than both. If we all chip in a little bit, we can help them to make a big difference.

Click here to donate:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/burma_cyclone/5.php?cl=86184609

With hope,

Ricken, Ben, Graziela, Paul, Iain, Veronique, Pascal, Galit and the whole Avaaz team

PS: Here are some links to more information:

For more information about Avaaz’s work to support the Burmese people, click here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/burma_report_back/

For more information about the cyclone, the humanitarian crisis, and the political dimension, see these articles:

New York Times: “A Challenge Getting Relief to Myanmar’s Remote Areas.” 7 May 2008.

BBC: “Will Burma’s leaders let aid in?” 6 May 2008.

India’s Economic Times: Indian meteorological department advised junta 48 hours in advance, 6 May 2008.

BBC: “Disaster tests Burma’s junta.” 5 May 2008

Times Online: “Aid workers fear Burma cyclone deaths will top 50,000.” 6 May 2008.

The Wine Trials is an upcoming book that describes of a series of blind tastings that I took part in last year. The tastings were great fun. We were encouraged to come up with creative, uncensored descriptions of wines. I thought one of the wines tasted like cat pee. The book recommends 100 wines under $15 that beat $50-$150 wines in the tastings.

I’m all about the cheap wine, like the 3-buck chuck from Trader Joe’s, or the 4-dollar Spanish table wine I got from JUSCO when I lived in Japan. These days, I get my cheap wine from Fresh Direct. They have a great 7-dollar vinho verde and an 11-dollar cava that are regular fixtures of my wine stash.

This week’s issue of Newsweek has an article about the book on page 12 of the magazine, the text of the article is also online.

You can pre-order copies of The Wine Trials from Amazon.com.

Check out Pandora, an Internet Radio Station that lets you create your own radio stations based on songs or artists that you like and introduces other songs and artists into the mix based on their musical similarities.  Words don’t do it justice, so give it a try and you will be hooked!

Thanks to Iain for the tip.

From Helvetica vs. Arial: 

Helvetica was developed by the Haas Foundry of Switzerland in the 1950s. Microsoft distributed a typeface called Arial, a very similar typeface, that comes bundled with every desktop computer

Thus Arial has now overtaken Helvetica as the standard font in practically everything done by those who don't know better.

[click here to read more]

From The Scourge of Arial:

Arial is everywhere. If you don't know what it is, you don't use a modern personal computer. Arial is a font that is familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft products, whether on a PC or a Mac. It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft's influence in the world.

Arial's ubiquity is not due to its beauty. It's actually rather homely. Not that homeliness is necessarily a bad thing for a typeface. With typefaces, character and history are just as important. Arial, however, has a rather dubious history and not much character. In fact, Arial is little more than a shameless impostor.

[click here to read more]

The comments have been edited for spelling and to protect the privacy of the individuals who wrote to Avaaz. 

Click below to download the PDF:

Comments taken down for the time being while Avaaz has an internal discussion about privacy and blogging issues. 

Shanee Pink of the up-and-coming neo-folk indie ban, Pink and Noseworthy, is staying in my loft with my roommate, Yam, while she makes the transition from LA to New York.  Shanee gave me a copy of her new CD to listen to, so I decided to blog about it.  Pink and Noseworthy's sound is evocative of bands like Belle and Sebastian, the Velvet Underground and Benjamin Biolay and Chiara Mastroianni.  Shanee's voice has the intensity and urgency of Marianne Faithfull and the occasional hint of a Nico-esque darkness which floats on top of Noseworthy's warm, enveloping instrumentation.  But comparisons with other musicians really don't do them justice, so check them out and listen for yourselves on their website and MySpace page:

http://www.pinkandnoseworthy.com/

http://www.myspace.com/pinkandnoseworthy 

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Thanks to Luke from The Real Japan and Angelo from Angelo no pais das maravilhas for the forward. 

Check out this amazing and inspiring video which advocates non-violent resistance to war and struggle for justice and peace. Click the banner for the link.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

-Martin Luther King, Jr

Thanks to Adam from This Boy Elroy for pointing me to this link. 

http://www.apple.com/jp/getamac/ads/

• はじめまして、パソコンです。
• はじめまして、マックです。 
•  う〜ん。あなたもパソコンですよね。
•  でもみんなマックって呼ぶんだよね。

In less than 24 hours, over 16,000 people have already signed the CeasefireCampaign petition urging for a change in direction in Iraq.  Let's keep up the good work and spread the word!

This week the American people voted overwhelmingly to reject President Bush’s war in Iraq, and yesterday the key architect of the war, US military chief Donald Rumsfeld, announced his resignation. The winds of political change are sweeping the US, and the US-led Coalition in Iraq may — finally — be realising that they cannot win the war, and that they lack the legitimacy to bring stability and peace to the country without more help from the international community.

With a newly elected US Congress and a President who is finally in a listening mood, we now have a unique opportunity for a global public outcry to change the course of this disastrous war. It’s the perfect time to act.


To seize this opportunity, we want to place ads in US and UK papers with a new global petition calling upon the Coalition to accept a larger role for the international community and a phased withdrawal of all its troops from Iraq. We’ll publish the number of signatures we get in the ads, so we need AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE to sign the petition.


This is our chance to make sure the pressure of global public opinion is being felt by Coalition governments as they rethink their war in Iraq, pressing them to accept a larger role for the international community and to withdraw their troops.


We know why it’s so important to act. A shocking study released by Johns Hopkins University last month suggested that hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in Iraq — more than anyone thought — and experts warn that the civil war is about to pass a point of no return. October was the worst month yet for civilian casualties, with death squads moving house to house. The killing could place Iraq alongside Darfur as one of the greatest human catastrophes of our new century.


We must not let that happen. And if we each act quickly this week, we can each play a role in stopping it.


This may be our best chance for peace yet. Let’s take it.


About CeasefireCampaign.org


The Ceasefire Campaign began when 300,000 individuals from over 150 countries came together to demand a ceasefire in Lebanon. The campaign is a project of Res Publica, a global civic advocacy group and registered charitable organization based in New York City. Please write to us at Team@CeasefireCampaign.org, and visit the Res Publica website for more information – www.TheResPublica.org

Links: 

http://bicyclemark.org/blog/2006/11/bm164-ishiharas-tokyo/

http://debito.org/ 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200611/s1782512.htm

Here are some samples:

See them all at my Flickr account.

Watch it here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-261521694056675564
The story begins at around 7 minutes into the 11 minute video.

The Quicktime Report is a production of Gregory Kable. 

Here is the original text that I released on the IndyMedia Newswire:

New Campaign Urges the US to Dialogue with Iran

By Lee-Sean Huang

Global IMC 18/10/06

The Res Publica launches a new campaign asking Netizens around the world to urge the US government to begin open, direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program. 

The Ceasefire Campaign began when 300,000 individuals from over 150 countries came together to demand a ceasefire in Lebanon. The campaign is a project of Res Publica, a global civic advocacy group and registered charitable organization based in New York City.

The latest campaign, "Talk to Iran," was launched today (October 18, 2006), with the sending out of an email alert to the Ceasefire Campaign email list and the unveiling of a revamped website.

The new campaign is asking online citizens from around the world to urge the US government to enter open and direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program, a week after the alleged detonation of nuclear device by North Korea demonstrated that policies of isolation and threats of regime change will not prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
Over 8000 people have already participated in the first day of the campaign by sending a customizable message the White House asking for dialogue.

To find out more and to participate in the campaign, please visit the link:

http://ceasefirecampaign.org/

The Ceasefire Campaign is now available in French, German, Spanish and Portuguese as well as English.  The number of messages sent to the White House calling for direct talk with Iran on its nuclear program continues to grow, but we still need your help.  Spread the word by added the Ceasefire Campaign group to your MySpace, Friendster, or Facebook account, blog about us, email your friends, or come up with something creative to campaign for peace.

I want more flexibility to customize my blog. I think WordPress is awesome, and my will continue to use it for my new site, but I want to take advantage of features and plugins that are only available on a self-hosted version of the software. Plus, this will be a great chance for me to learn more about web design as I tinker and tweak the features on the new site. Also, by hosting my own WordPress blog, I can also add a podcast or a videocast to the blog. Stay tuned…

The new site also features randomized header graphics, so come back often to collect them all. Or if you are really bored, keep on clicking the "refresh" button on your browser to reload the site for a random graphic each time. Fun!

Also, the final reason is vanity, pure and simple. I like the sound of leesean.net. I want to be a first-name-only web celebrity/brand name.

The new site is still a work in progress, so bear with me while I tweak and tinker the tech and write some new content as well.

A moment of vanity at work today. Brought to you by the built-in camera and Photo Booth software on my new MacBook.

I saw Elijah Wood of Lord of the Rings fame on Sunday night while I was grocery shopping at the Gourmet Garage in SoHo.   He was shopping for meat and salad dressings with his girlfriend, Pamela Racine.

The party was full of hipsters, Ivy Leaguers, and beautiful people. There was an exclusive RSVP guest list, a long line to get in and a VIP area. I felt like I was on the set of Sex and the City. I even ran into a girl I went to high school with in Arizona – how random is that?! Al Gore was there too. He’s shorter and huskier in real life than on TV. I guess that is the case of most famous people.