a great speech

nyu's first snow day / biggest snowball ever

check out this giant snowball I made during the first snowball fight of the semester.

 washington square park - february 10th

one of my professors said it was the first nyu snow day in more than 30 years! nbd

new york rangers game at madison square garden

rangers vs. predators at madison square garden

Me, Bobby, Toby, & Aalok

neon indian + atlas sound concert at NYU

poster advertising the show

neon indian

atlas sound (bradford cox of deerhunter) 

me + van gogh's masterpiece

probably my favorite painting in existence, 

Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night at the MoMA.  NBD

Photo courtesy of Nancy Benner, September 2009.

steve forbes speech at stern

steve forbes, ceo and editor in chief of forbes magazine, in the middle

he gave a pretty great speech mostly about the superiority of the free market system above all others, typical spiel.  pretty cool i guess.  

my trip to the United Nations headquarters

Today I headed up to the UN headquarters on 42nd street & 1st avenue to take a tour of the buildings and learn more about the organization.

the outside of the general assembly and the flags of all 192 member nations

offices for each nation next door

outdoor statue representative of the UN's peacekeeping goals

the inside of the general assembly chamber, the place where delegates from each nation come together

awesome buildings

the chrysler building

radio city music hall + rockefeller center 

the plaza hotel

The Colbert Report

Tonight I attended a taping of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central.  The tickets were free and it was really cool to see how they taped a TV show and what went on behind the scenes.  Stephen Colbert was hilarious and seemed like a really cool guy in person when he talked to the audience "out of character" during a question and answer session.  They were very strict about not taking pictures but I was able to get just this one with my iPhone.  You can see Colbert in the middle, the set of his show behind him, and the audience in the foreground.  

A pretty cool adventure for a tuesday night in new york.  nbd

free vampire weekend show

Tonight in Union Square, Barnes & Nobel hosted a special event called "Upstairs at the Square: Writers & Artists Mixed".  Author and poet Kwame Dawes and Vampire Weekend were the guests of tonight's edition of this free program for the few hundred in attendance.  Vampire Weekend played an acoustic set of 4 songs including "Horchata", "White Sky", and "Oxford Comma".  Between VW's songs Kwame Dawes, winner of an Emmy Award for his documentation of life in Jamaica, performed selections of spoken word and poetry for the audience.  This "social mixer" of creative professionals was kind of a half-baked idea as it was clear the crowd was there to see Vampire Weekend play from their new album rather than listen to poetry being recited.  In the end through, it didn't matter the band sounded great and the crowd was glad to attend a free show in a unique convert venue.

photos courtesy of Tyler York

the blakely (lol)

the hotel named after me in midtown.  nbd.

real life, part II

this story takes place on my flight home from new york back to california for christmas

since i was flying home on the 22nd, my flight was completely full.  i was lucky enough to get an aisle seat even though it was in the second to last row of the plane.  i took my seat and was listening to my ipod when a middle aged man traveling with his 5 year old son approached me, beginning to explain his situation.  for some reason he was only able to get two middle seats on the flight, in the same row as mine but across the aisle from each other.  of course, he didn't want his young son to sit alone for the 6 hour flight so he asked me if i would mind switching into one of his middle seats.  i hesitated at first at giving up my aisle seat but quickly realized that a child that young shouldn't fly separate from his parent.  i took the middle seat on the other side of the aisle and the father took my seat and his child took the other middle seat.  the father thanked me and the flight went by like any other.  at the baggage claim, as i was waiting for my bag to appear, the father approached me again and casually tossed a crumpled up bill onto the book i was reading.  he told me to buy something nice and to have a merry christmas.  by the time i realized the denomination of the bill, which was $100, and tried to give it back saying it was too much, the father was quickly walking away, refusing to accept the gift back.  all i could do was watch as he jumped in his mercedes and drove away with his child. nbd.

washington square park christmas tree + snow

SantaCon 2009!

so apparently every year in washington square park there is a convention with thousands of people dressed up as santa.  basically, they get together to sing christmas carols, drink, and be merry for a while.  afterwards they split up into groups and each goes to a nearby bar to drink for the rest of the day so that by the end of the night there are thousands of drunk santas in new york.  i wonder if the real santa was there...

in the fountain

by the arch

santa jump-rope

view from kimmel

evening with Robert C. Merton, Nobel laureate

Tonight NYU hosted Robert C. Merton, recipient of the 1997 Nobel prize in economics, for a discussion of the recent financial crisis.  Merton is currently a professor at the Harvard Business School and spoke on behalf of the Institute for Public Knowledge.

The majority of Merton's presentation was his analysis of the origin of the financial crisis of the past two years.  He argued that three forces, which alone are harmless if not beneficial to the economy, came together in such a way that created the systemic risk to bring down the financial system.  These three forces  were the steady rise in U.S. home prices, falling U.S. interest rates, and the increased efficiency of mortgage refinancing.  This is a contradiction to the common belief that the crisis was a product of unethical or incompetent behavior on Wall Street.  Merton believes that since these three trends occurred at the same time they created an "unintended synchronization of homeowner leverage" in which every refinanced mortgage was taken out at the highest possible value of the home.  When home prices began to decline, everyone suffered rather than just those with new mortgages and not those individuals with mortgages valued at below current prices had there been no refinanced mortgages.

Robert Merton at NYU

friendly fires and the xx concert at webster hall

yesterday, Chris, Priya, Shreya, Anna, Toby, and I went to check out these two bands.  friendly fires was better than the xx, more upbeat and energetic.  check out the pictures below.

the xx opening

friendly fires

some random room filled with 40-something TV screens.  pretty unusual but also pretty cool

three of the coolest buildings in new york in the same picture

the MetLife building, Grand Central station, and the Chrysler building (from left to right) at the intersection of 42 st street & park avenue

each of these three buildings is awe-inspiring in its own way.

the metlife building takes up two entire city blocks and is one of the few buildings in new york that has a sign on the top of it.

grand central station is the largest train station in the world in terms of number of boarding platforms it contains.  (more pictures to follow).

the chrysler building was at one point the tallest building in the world until it was surpassed by the empire state building a year after it was built.  the art deco skyscraper is arguably one of the coolest  buildings in new york.