from the peace to the war

16 June 2007:

Acres and acres of beautiful sprawling greenery amidst tall towers of concrete. OINY. Only in New York.

Central Park is my favorite place to go to in the day. Okay, I'll probably freeze there in winter so to correct myself, it's my favorite place to go in the summer of New York. It is so amazingly serene. Even with groups of people all around you, and tall buildings still in view, it is utterly awesome. We bought lunch (more about that later) and had a little picnic in Central Park, near the Columbus Circle subway stop. It wasn't too hot, and it was so much fun to just sit, eat fab food and chat. A picnic here is so not to be missed.

Actually, I'm sure there's a lot more to the park that I've yet to see. Wanna know how big it is? The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located inside. There's a zoo, about three large bodies of water, and it stretches all the way from 59th St. to way past 100th St. Going to try for the Met tomorrow.

Lunch was a whole new experience today. We got out at Columbus Circle and saw a mall across the street with a Wholefoods supermarket, so we walked in, intending to get some biscuits to munch at Central Park while we walked around. Instead, we found a totally yummy paradise.

Apart from the typical grocery section (which are all organic, hence the name Wholefood), there are two salad bars and two hot food bars for you to pick and choose food from. Food goes at about 7.99USD per pound, but if you're not a heavy eater, it's unlikely you'll hit that range.

The variety of food is SO yummy. There's rice and curry and five types of chicken and lots of salads and couscous (which I am now into, thanks to Sandy. heh.) and a whole lot of yummy food. It smells so divine. We spent a good two hours trying to figure out what to get. Oh and the soups! I love the soups. There's like ten types of soup to choose from. So yummy. I had gazpacho which is a kind of cold soup, which is totally perfect for a summer picnic in Central Park :)

We went back to Times Square after because I decided that I just had to watch Les Miserables on Broadway. Lea Salonga's singing Fantine! How could I possibly miss it? The queue was surprisingly (and blessedly) short, so our poor legs, tired from the queues of the day before, weren't overexerted. After that, we wandered about Times Square. Pretty much went back to the stores we were in love with, like Colony (for me) and M&Ms (for Jing Yng).

Colony is the coolest music store. It has every single score to a ton of famous artistes and musicals and movies, and then some. Marina and "Aidan" (heh), you guys will totally love it. I found Maroon 5 and guess what. There's more than 5 chords to Sunday Morning. Hahahahhaha. Too bad the scores were a tad bit ex, otherwise I'd probably have bought something. But it's totally a musical paradise.

M&Ms is so SO funky that even going two days in a row, we're still enjoying ourselves there. Took a photo with green and red M&Ms (which I'll upload soon. one day. i think.) and played M&M checkers. The chocolates are separated into columns according to color, so it looks so pretty. They've got themed M&Ms too, like Halloween (black, purple and orange), Christmas (green, white and red obviously), and -get this- Shrek-inspired M&Ms! The chocolates are "ogre-sized" and the come in green, brown and orange. SO cute. Everything in there totally screams "Photograph me!" They've even got jewellery in the shape of M&Ms. Haha.

We got our "I Heart New York" T-shirts from the opposite corner, which I will proudly wear when I'm back in Singapore - but only at Parkway because it is a tad bit big and I look quite sloppy in it.

I went to watch Les Miserables after that, while JY and Alvi wandered about themselves (which you can read about it here when JY gets around to blogging about it). It really differs from the West End production. Firstly, American accent. Kinda weird to hear them sing with American accents after being so used to hearing it in the Brit one. Lea Salonga was so amazing. She had the loudest cheers from the audience (which probably means I'm not the only one who went to watch just for her). The rest of the cast were alright, although I didn't really like Eponine. Had a lot of replacements in the cast although they were mostly the small roles, except for Enjolras. But the replacement was quite excellent.

Sadly, it doesn't compare at all to the West End cast. Okay, maybe I'm biased. Broadway Marius certainly wasn't as cute as West End Marius. Heh. Also, the Broadway musical arrangement differs from the West End one. Instead of the full orchestra of the West End, Broadway uses more strings, so the whole musical lacked a sense of climax at several points. Like when Enjolras was garnering support for the revolution, the song seriously lacked the oom-pah-pah that I've been so used to.

On the bright side, it has a couple of scenes that they kept from the original musical but was taken out of the West End production. They fleshed out the stories a little bit more, which added to the overall feel. They had a couple of prop problems though, because when Cosette was pining away from Marius, the gates started opening slowly and a crew member had to come out to latch everything together. Rather ruined the mood. Then again, I never liked Cosette's pine-y song, so whatever.

I think it's safe to say that epic musicals work better on the West End. They've got more dignity for it. Broadway probably does spectacularly for musicals like The Producers and Chicago. Oh wells. I'm glad I watched Les Mis here though, 'cause now I can proudly proclaim I've seen it in three different countries, and with four different casts live, plus one on TV. Ahh, the 10th anniversary concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1995. The dream cast has totally spoiled me for any other version of it. No one, absolutely no one, comes close to doing Jean Valjean as fabulously as Colm Wilkinson does.

Okay. While I'm running on a happy buzz from watching a musical, I shall go sleep and dream happy dreams. Night all :)