Category Archives: Katrina

Katrina

My First Chai in Months – Support Indonique

Ah, Chai. It means ‘Tea’, and so using the word chai (Wikipedia def) to refer to a particular type of tea feels a bit confused. It’s derived from the Chinese word ? (cha). I just noticed that’s in the Wikipedia entry, but believe it or not, I knew that from my year of Mandarin Chinese classes. Whatever. Generally it’s used in the US to refer to an East Indian style of spiced tea latte, which has gained popularity in about the last five to ten years.  As you may recall, I made a post or two a while back about a favorite Indian tea shop of mine, Indonique, located on Magazine Street in New Orleans.

Unfortunately, due to Hurricane Katrina, the café is not currently open, and I haven’t been able to go in for my fix. However, the shop is still operating via the web, and I ordered some masala chai and some lung ching green tea from the site. Due to a UPS snafu (something that’s becoming more and more familiar to me lately), they don’t have any lung ching in stock right now, so they sent me some white monkey (after checking with me) instead.  I haven’t had a chance to try it yet.

I’m drinking the Masali Chai, and my have I missed it. It’s as wonderful as I remembered, though not quite as sweet as they made it in the café. I went easy on the sugar.  If you like tea, especially if you like chai, I strongly encourage you to place an order with Indonique. The café was a great part of Uptown New Orleans, they do good clean business, and I hope to see them back in a storefront in the near future. Additionally, Indonique is now donating 10-20% of the purchase price for most teas to various charities, so not only do you get great tea, but you support various charitable groups by purchasing from them.

Finally, if you’d like to subscribe, Indonique has a blog. There’s something wrong with the theme on the blog at the moment, but he has a bunch of pictures of damage from Chalmette.  I’ve been trying to get the owner to blog about the various types of tea and such, but so far to no avail.

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Back in Mandeville

I’ve left New Orleans, and just finished catching up on blog posts and email here in my parents’ house in Mandeville.

New Orleans was fun, and it felt good to be back there for a while. I’m looking forward to returning soon.  I was going to leave first thing in the morning for St.Louis tomorrow, but I’m pretty tired and I’d like to do some laundry and stuff before going back, so I’m going to leave Sunday morning instead.  That brings me back in time to start work Monday.  I’m also going to do some work here tomorrow.

Some of you may recall the little fiasco I had with my FedEx package a few weeks ago. After calling the manager of the regional distribution center, I finally got an answer. It had been delievered to the Quadrangle Housing office.  Noone from Quadrangle had called me, and I had no way of knowing that “COME PICK UP” as written on the door tag referred to that office.  There were a few failures of communication there, but at least the package was safe, and I finally received it.

There’s a whole new situation brewing with Amazon.com and some things I ordered, but I’m going to wait until the shit hits the fan before I try to sort that mess out. I’ve already called Amazon.com only to be told conflicting things by people with various heavy accents over their english, and I anticipate it will be a bit easier once they get some red flags internally saying that they’ve screwed up.

I don’t have stats for you today. I’m going to estimate that stuff tomorrow. Lack of internet and structure in New Orleans have derailed my logging a bit.

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My time back in New Orleans

I’m currently at Z’otz uptown in New Orleans, drinking my daily quota of green tea and blogging, doing some work, sorting and sending email, etc.

To everyone who’s worried that New Orleans is a ghost town, that it won’t recover, that people aren’t coming back, I say don’t worry too much for now.  The place is hopping. It’s far different from the way I last saw it two months ago.

There are people everywhere, and by 11 AM traffic is awful in places, and at least dense in others.  Many traffic lights are still broken uptown, but I’d estimate that an equal number are fine. The city appears to be moving to new traffic lights bolted to metal poles rather than lights on wires.  This will probably be helpful should we encounter another hurricane.

Everywhere stores and restaurants are opening daily. Hours are limited, and the Trolley Stop is still closed, but Lebanon’s is open, so I’m all set.

The city will probably be smaller. There will be less industry. Lakeview is apparently going to be a ghost town for some time. However, don’t worry. The French Quarter is still here. Uptown is still here. The atmosphere is the same if not better (as we’re low on tourists at the moment).

I’m leaving tomorrow to return to St.Louis, but I’m looking forward to coming back at the end of the month, and I hope to see you here.

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New Orleans Recovery News for the End of November 2005

Some good news, some bad:

$32 billion. wow. I’m suspecting that’s not going to happen. What then?

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Old Katrina Helicopter Images

I just went back and checked the MSN Virtual Earth thing where I found images of my apartment and Amanda’s. The interface is so screwed up on Firefox for mac that I didn’t notice before, but I could have zoomed in. It’s probably better that I didn’t, given how depressed I would have been at the time had I seen mine.

My Place Amanda’s Place