New York, Thanksgiving and Korean Soju

I am in New Orleans for the holiday and not back in SF until the 28th. I am somewhat exhausted, even for me, and welcome this respite.



I spent four long and wonderful days in NY, then back for a week, then to Las Vegas for the NAPABA (National Asian Pacific American Bar Assn) and then onto New Orleans.



New York. I arranged the trip because my friend, Judy Butterfield (see http://www.judybutterfield.com/), (who is 17) was performing at the Oak Room at the Algonquin, one of my favorite venues in New York. This was on a Sunday night. Then I found out my friend Joelle (she is French -- a "frog" she always says in her very Parisian accent...more about Joelle later) was also in town that week. She has an apartment in the West Village. So I made appointments with a bunch of clients and arranged some wonderful meals with them to justify the trip and off I went.



Sunday night, I had a table of five, Joelle, Maria Cristina (a shrink originally from Argentina I think, who speaks fluent french among other languages and is a close friend of Joelle's and has been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras), Alison Pearsall (more about her later), and Margaret Clark, my close friend of many years who is a painter and works in the fine jewlery department at Bergdorf's. Judy was a huge hit, the show was wonderful -- this was her second show at the Oak Room. I got to watch the rehersal and talk with "Eddie" who runs the Room and he was talking about her last show.

Afterwards, a bunch of us went to Birdland to see Arturo Farrell and his Afro Cuban Orchestra. We closed that place and Judy and her base player (remember she's 17 and he's 24) still wanted to go out so i was the sport and we stayed out wandering Manhattan until 3 a.m. I don't know how I did that.

The next night I went to an award ceremony for Alison Pearsall who is a third year lawyer at a NY firm...I meet her when she was a first year law student at UW during on campus interviews. I couldn't bring her to Thelen at that time but have been trying to woo her to DWT...through all this, we became friends. She won an award for her pro bono work on behalf of West African women trying to emmigate to escape genital mutilation, mostly for their daughters. Alison's father came in from Paris to see this and she introduced me to him as her "mentor." That felt pretty good.

After that cocktail party and reception, I went to dinner in the old meat packing district, which is now hoity and up scale, with joelle -- my friend and former client. We have a lovely dinner at STK -- not your daddy's steakhouse is how they advertise.

On Tuesday night, I went to see the Receptionist. It's an off broadyway play -- an allegory for Bush's torture program and was effective enough. I think it could have been tighter but it was pretty good.

Wednesday, Margaret and I escaped all and went to a lovely wine bar, small plate restaurant in Union Square.

It was so cold that I bought mittens and a hat so I could walk around...so great.

Then the next week I went to NAPABA -- the Asian Pacific Bar assn annual meeting, and learned to drink Soju with Koreans -- they drink and sing karoke all night. I had made a lot of friends the year before by using many of these folks as local counsel in a big case and so I showed up at the conference because I knew I could get my pay back. We also had a great client dinner so that was fun...and NO SLEEP AGAIN.

Now I am in New Orleans and Jess brought a friend who hadn't been here in a long time so we stayed out listening to live music last night...fun never stops. I'll get some rest in the next couple of days. Weather is perfect here, lovely. I took the dog for a three miles run this morning and it was just great.

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