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PIA Guide to Asian Eats in NYC |
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 Asia means many things to many people: grand temples, ancient history,
indecipherable languages, adventurous travel, and more. While all those
things are true, for me it means one thing above all else- food. Asia
is an eater's paradise complete with the tastiest delicacies (e.g.
duck's tongue soup) to go along with the most basic of sustenance (e.g.
a bowl of noodle soup). While it's hard to compare America's renditions
of these treats to those made in their native countries, New York City
has some of the finest Asian cuisine this coast has to offer and PiA
has searched long and hard for the best of the best in a place famous
for finicky eaters. It is thus with great pride that we present the PiA
Guide to Asian Eating in New York City. We hope that food lover's
around the country will read our guide and test out our findings. We
also hope that those who feel passionate about their meals will
continue visiting this site in order to share their thoughts and
digestions on Asian eateries around town. Feel free to chime in
anytime--there's always someone willing to consider your musings while
munching on some dumplings.
-Ari Wolfe, PiA Program Director
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Welcome To Princeton in Asia |
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 Mission Statement: “ To promote good will and understanding and to facilitate in every way the free interchange of the best ideals in the civilizations of both East and West.”
Princeton-in-Asia (PiA) provides transformative, service-oriented experiences for talented graduates and serves the needs of Asia as determined by our Asian partners. Over the last century, the organization has achieved this goal by providing talented young people with various opportunities to live and work in Asia. The first PiA "fellowships" consisted of a handful of Princeton University graduates who went to China in the late 1890s to do relief work and teach English; the program has since expanded considerably in size and scope throughout Asia. In 2007, PiA placed 125 fellows in seventeen countries, including Cambodia, China, Timor-Leste, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Laos, Mongolia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Currently the program offers 85 teaching fellowships with 40 additional fellowships in the fields of journalism, international development, and business.
PiA's Home Office is located on the Princeton University campus. Princeton-in-Asia is a private, independent, non-profit organization 501(c)(3) affiliated with Princeton University.
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Sam Grant: PiA Fellow of the Fortnight |
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 Those who doubted whether the Navaho Flute would be a huge hit in Mongolia need only glance at the record turnout for Sam's first live collaboration with Batjargal, the horse riding harmonica man from Hustai.
When not traversing the grassy steppe in his semi camouflage green suit searching for new musical talent, Sam can be found at his "day job" in Ulaanbaatar providing banking services, of the micro variety, from the prestigious institution, XacBank. Sam arrived at XacBank ten months ago, amid soaring commodity prices and rising alarm over what would become the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Friends at Wall Street jokingly expressed disapproval when Sam departed the states saying, "Good luck securitizing a herd of camels and all those silly circular tents." Little did they know a few months later they would be faxing their resumes to Sam's desks pleading for employment, while they gathered up the tattered remains of the investment accounts they entrusted to a friend named Bernie.
Sam has been working closely with XacBank to create the first green lending program in Mongolia. The bank will use its extensive network of credit officers to promote energy saving products and increase the public's environmental awareness.
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Stacia Birdsall: PiA Alum of the Fortnight |
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 I spent a fabulous year in 2002 as a PiA Fellow at Save the Children's Himalayan Field Office in Kathmandu writing grants, collecting and analysing maternal health data, and learning jokes from a group of staff women who called themselves "the Haha's" because they laughed so much. A highlight of the year was a month in Bhutan, where I researched adolescent reproductive health, put together an extracurricular program for schools in Zhemgang District, and danced to Hindi and Chinese pop at All Star nightclub in Thimphu. In 2003 I came back to the US to do a master's in nursing at Yale and become a midwife. During my final year of school I went to Pakistan to do relief work after the Kashmir quake (little blurb from the PAW) and quickly picked up essential Urdu for shopping, eating, and delivering babies.
Following graduation I traveled through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia (where I snacked on fried insects for the first time), and Vietnam, topped off with a jaunt back up to Kathmandu. Currently I'm working in an Ob/Gyn clinic in New Haven, and occasionally get the chance to bust out my rusty Nepali with a handful of Nepali patients here. I'm also still quite infected with the South Asia bug--I take my vacations in India, and after spending two weeks in Afghanistan last December, have decided to move to Kabul this January to work as a midwife trainer in a hospital there.
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