SPACE ROCKS @ Harvard's GSD

Whilce Portacio's wallpaper on his tablet pc.

Friday morning I came across a post pitching SPACE ROCKS, a design conference hosted by AsiaGSD, a student group at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. I proceeded to spam Sooran throughout the day until she agreed to host me, got on the 10:30pm bus and was in Cambridge by 3am.

The main draw for me was Dana Cho of IDEO, a company which "helps organizations innovate through design", without getting too inquisitive about their statement, how awesome does their job sound? Pretty damn awesome. Her lecture covered IDEO's practices / methods followed by a sampling of some of their projects.

Other speakers of note included Raine Noe who has his hands in almost everything deemed cool in my book (of note is his gig as a writer at Core77, one of my favorite design blogs). Elmo reminded me that he spoke previously at Carnegie Mellon (apparently Chewy's flyer was awful). His lecture consisted mostly of photos and coverage gleaned from the magazine he edits, Theme, caught my attention enough that I'm considering a subscription. Need to scrutinize the current issue before I add another magazine to my overfilled mailbox.

When you have a process that works, a service that speaks for itself, you don't have to manufacture anything in a talk like this. Just walk the audience through what is done in the offices and it makes for a great presentation. That's where Cho and Noe shined. Irene Hwang of Actar wasn't bad, for a second I thought the 'boogazine', Verb, she was pitching was UOVO a similar magazine I saw at a shop nearby work. Unfortunately the others didn't really catch my attention though a good portion of the audience really appreciated work from Groovisions, MK12 and Brooklyn Foundry (which used to be located in my neighborhood before moving to Crown Heights).

As for Nurri Kim, she came after Cho and Noe and immediately killed the conference. Her blue tarp lecture was pretty awful, something akin to a first year student's work. Not much of a concept behind it and the interesting blue tarp images already came before in Noe's lecture. Remember people, if you guys are giving a presentation, please don't describe what is on the screen. For god sakes you are presenting at Harvard not to Bush and his cronies. Whilce Portacio and David Imber both tried too hard and didn't have much to contribute.

I did speak with Whilce on the side and really wanted to ask him what were the family issues that kept him out of work when Image Comics launched in the early 90s. An interesting note, during the 90s, comics regularly sold more than 100,000 copies per issue. In fact, any title hovering at around 125,000 would be at risk of getting the axe. Compare that to today when titles are only selling around 30,000 copies an issue, for a title to be considered for the chopping block, they would have to drop down to 12,000 issues today.

Outside of the lecture, Gund Hall where the architecture studios are is sweet. Sooran naturally sits in the back of one of the floor plates surrounded by fellow Asians. During the lunch break, I quickly strolled through the campus seeing what I could. After the lecture we walked over to Porter Square where I got reacquainted with the burritos from Anna's Taqueria. Definitely prefer them over the Chipotle burritos. Cheaper, tastes slightly better and packaged in a much more friendly form factor (way easier to eat than a Chipotle burrito).

On the bus back to NYC I checked the scores and was shocked to see that the Buckeyes lost. That really jolted me out of Boston and back into reality. Saw the highlights when I got home and Illinois played a great game... blown coverages, the OSU defense just didn't get it done. Giants lost to the Cowboys... what a crappy second half. Out of principle I sat Romo and Crayton, kept Folk active, I was hoping for defensive stops in the red zone. Guess I'll be paying for it with my second fantasy loss.

A few more hours and it's back to the grind.

TeaQuest: Search for the Elusive Pudding

Mmm coconut slush and egg pudding with an order of fried dumplings.

Seven years ago, I spent a summer studying in Taipei and was introduced to boba tea. Since Taiwan's tap water is undrinkable (without a trip to the emergency room, just ask my father), and bubble tea was so cheap, it became my main source of liquids during my stay. The tapioca balls were interesting but the novelty soon wore off and by the time I got back to the states I was no longer fond of them.

Two years later a handful of us made the 24 hour journey by car to Austin, Texas for our fraternity's annual convention. I forget which school we mixed with and whether or not they were a sorority or little sisters. Not important, what is important was that after dinner we stopped by a local bubble tea house and it was there that I was introduced to boba substitutes. That's right, I could have the coconut or taro milk tea I enjoyed and chew on something other than tapioca balls at the same time! I instantly gravitated to the pudding (egg or milk) and consumed cup after cup while everyone else in Austin tried one upping each other by consuming enormous quantities of Everclear or beer.

Drinking and chewing as much as I could, I left Austin bloated and in despair. The Chinatown in NYC is one of the largest Asian communities in the U.S. and I've never seen anything but tapioca offered in the tea houses there. While visiting Binghamton one weekend, a friend and I stopped in at the local Old Tea House across the street from campus. There I rediscovered pudding tea and since then I've always made it a point to visit that location or its sister location at Cornell whenever I'm in the vicinity.

Two weeks ago I was wandering Flushing and recalled someone telling me that the Quickly near the Flushing Library offered pudding tea. While they do offer pudding, the taro slush left a lot to be desired. But I was so desperate for the drink that I ended up going back to it later that day to try another flavor. The trip out to Flushing isn't too arduous, but I wasn't sure if the slush they prepared was worth the trip.

Yesterday after dim sum (where Patty and Elmo showed up INSANELY late, that's right calling you guys out) we went to get boba which has become somewhat of a ritual. I made another attempt to find a pudding tea supplier in Chinatown and was forwarded to the Quickly on Grand Street. I've eaten there so many times I never bothered to look at the menu which in fact includes pudding tea! The slush there was much better than the Flushing location too.

After five years I'm finally able to have pudding-tea on demand. Try it, it's great. I couldn't find a photo online and I actually bought a cup earlier today but finished it without taking a photo. The Husky photo up there is just a place holder. I'll get a photo of pudding tea later this week.