Happy Holidays!
It’s the end of another (long) year, and time to take a little vacation. To that end, our blog and social media will be on holiday break for the rest of the year, and we will begin posting again in January 2020. Our staff will also be taking some holiday too—our office will close early at 2:30pm on December 24, and the office will be closed on December 25, 26, and 27, reopening Monday, December 30. We will also be closed on January 1. Whether you’re able to sneak away for a few days to a warm and sunny beach or will cozy up in a nook inside to escape those cold temperatures outside, we wish everyone a wonderful holiday season and Happy New Year!
Radical When It Shouldn't Be
DLG Holiday Party 2019
We held our annual holiday party at the Institute of Culinary Education (aka ICE, but not to be confused with the other ICE) in downtown Manhattan again this year, and the results were as fun and delicious as always. As before, we chose a seasonal menu and divided up into groups to work at three different food stations to make the appetizer, main dish, and dessert. Although a few of us were skeptical to begin with (ahem, Alexis on the far right), enabled by the pink champagne, we quickly become experts in our chosen specialty, (see Alexis presenting the cooked fish and Tommy inspecting the group’s efforts,) resulting in a memorable meal. We are truly talented cooks. Okay, we also had some (very) valuable help from Chef Phil Hering and his skilled team. Happy holidays, everyone!
5 Things to Remember Before You Travel Internationally this Holiday Season
As the holidays approach doesn’t it seem as if things are moving at warp speed? If you are like me, you have several lists going: work projects to finish before the end of the year, gifts to purchase, cards to send, things to pack, and more! As we have in prior years, we thought it would be helpful to give foreign nationals who are traveling internationally one additional list (sorry) to ensure all goes as smoothly as possible and that you can enjoy the holiday season without being overly worried about immigration status and visa stamps. Now that we’ve made this list, make sure you check it twice (as the song says)!
Read moreUSCIS Announces Implementation of H-1B Electronic Registration Process for Fiscal Year 2021 Cap Season with Registration Beginning March 1, 2020
US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced last week that they have completed a successful pilot testing phase and are implementing the electronic registration process for the H-1B lottery for the upcoming fiscal year (FY) 2021 cap season. Petitioners seeking to file H-1B cap-subject petitions for the FY 2021 cap, including those filing advanced degree master’s cap cases, must first electronically register and pay the previously announced $10 H-1B registration fee. In a press release, USCIS states that they believe the electronic registration process will “dramatically streamline processing by reducing paperwork and data exchange, and will provide an overall cost savings to petitioning employers.”
Read moreWorth That Fight
Wynwood Walls
The Wynwood Walls in Miami were originally conceived by the late real estate developer Tony Goldman, who was looking to transform the warehouse district of Wynwood. He came up with a simple idea, he explained at the time: “Wynwood’s large stock of warehouse buildings, all with no windows, would be my giant canvases to bring to them the greatest street art ever seen in one place.” Since their inception in 2009, over fifty artists from sixteen countries have covered over 80,000 square feet of walls. We were able to visit the walls before our return to New York, and were blown away by the talent of the artists. We were lucky enough to see some artists in action as well. As part of the world famous Art Basel show going on this week in Miami Beach, Wynwood Walls invited artists to work on installations live for spectators. As Goldman once said about the walls: “The project has truly evolved into what my friend Jeffrey Deitch calls a ‘Museum of the Streets.’”
Work-In-Progress
Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels
We are in sunny and warm Miami (sorry, rest of country with crazy snowstorms and weather) for the Thanksgiving Holiday and came across this massive public artwork installation by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, who are known for their large-scale installations in city settings. Located in downtown Miami, Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels captures a moment when a bowl of orange slices and peels drops to the ground and shatters. The artwork includes bowl fragments in cast concrete, peels in steel plate, and orange sections in reinforced cast resin all with an overall weight of over 124,000 lbs. With the oranges and bright colors, Dropped Bowl certainly captures one aspect of Miami. And, depending on how your holiday is going, it might be an accurate representation of Thanksgiving for some people (not ours, thankfully). Whatever the case, we wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!