Moving!

We've been looking for a place to live in the New York area for almost three months now. The search is finally over.

After a 14 and 1/2 hour flight from Hong Kong, Karen and I arrived in Newark, NJ to find that our connecting flight to Boston had been canceled. The airline found a flight for us the next day and put us up in a hotel for the night. This gave us an extra day in the New York area.

I was able to sleep a bit at the hotel, but woke up at 2am due to jet lag and started surfing craigslist. One listing stood out: a 1 bedroom with a small "den" on the corner of 1st and Hudson in Hoboken. I called the agent at 8am, got a call-back at 10am, and we arrived at the unit at 11:45am. The apartment seemed a great fit for us, so we went ahead and signed the lease. We hopped back onto the PATH and got back to Newark with ample time to catch our 3:20pm connecting flight to Boston.

I find that housing in New York arouses strong emotions from many people. Many have discouraged us from choosing New Jersey, for various reasons. We're choosing this place mainly because of its location: about 680 ft from the Hoboken PATH station. The commute to NYU consists of 1) the 700-ft walk to the PATH, 2) a wait for a train, 3) a 10-minute train ride and 4) a 1/2-mile walk from the corner of 9th St. and 6th Ave. to the philosophy department. I think that, door-to-door, the commute will typically be 20-25 minutes. I hope this proves correct.

The rents are also lower in Hoboken, which allows us to afford to keep a car, so I can drive to Rutgers and Princeton for classes. Hopefully, this means I'll be able to take full advantage of amazing philosophy resources in the New York Consortium.

Anyways, my stress level has decreased significantly now that the housing seems to be taken care of. We will move to Hoboken on August 1. Karen and I will be in Texas for the month of July. We look forward to seeing old friends again there.

So sometimes, canceled flights can be a good thing! A very good thing, indeed!

Nintendo DS and the R4 in Hong Kong

Since I so thoroughly enjoyed the Nintendo DS game Elite Beat Agents, I thought I'd try to find the Japanese sequel that was just released last month, 燃えろ！熱血リズム魂　押忍！闘え！応援団２. My search took me to the computer bazaar in Sham Shui Po in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

The game, unfortunately, is in fairly high demand in Hong Kong and was sold out everywhere I looked. What's notable, though, are the suggestions of the shop-owners I spoke with: they recommended getting an R4 cartridge and downloading the game.

The R4 is a flash cart that plugs into slot-1 on the Nintendo DS (slot-1 is the smaller, DS-specific game slot). The R4 itself has a slot for a micro-SD card, and it allows you to play downloaded Nintendo DS ROMS. A quick online search revealed over 1100 ROMS available---and the Japanese game I was looking for was one of the available ROMS. The R4 plays the downloaded ROM flawlessly. It sells for under HK$180, which is less than US$25.

It is not all that surprising that such piracy devices exist. What is striking is the fact that Hong Kong shop-owners are themselves recommending that their customers use the devices. Of course, this is in response to requests for obscure import games that are in such demand that they are sold out---but I get the feeling that one reason such games are sold out is because shops are choosing not to carry them, expecting that their customers will download the games and thus will not be looking to buy them....