One of the great pleasures in life is having friends in places you like to go on holiday. I get to catch up with Alex and Shuyang, and also enjoyably get to introduce them to Alasdair and vice versa. We end up at Spicy Moon, not far from their apartment in the East Village, a veggie/vegan Chinese joint. Still pretty full from the earlier bagel, we go for the lunch deal, with some fried vegetable dumplings, in a luminous green wrapper, and the vegetable ramen which is absolutely unnecessarily stuffed with noodles. Like, too many noodles. It’s delicious, laden with tofu, bean sprouts, and other veg. I devour the broth, even if I simply cannot approach finishing the rest. We make a move and go see the changes Alex and Shuyand have made to their apartment, making the most of our brief overlap.