In a few days, I will have an entirely different life

I miss my blog too, when I don't post. It's my very own internet diary.

Thursday or Friday: Drunken end-of-semester farewells in the dorm include an impromptu turn naming as many African countries as you can in three minutes (on pen and paper, each to his own). Oddly enough, all three of us came up with 24. I thought I had 25, but I named the same country twice, once under the colonial name.

Saturday: Brunch at a South African place in Fort Greene. I read James Michener's The Covenant in grade 9 in Belgium. I finally know how to pronounce bobotie.

Sunday: The nearly yearly ritual of sorting through everything I own - that is, my life - determining what is significant, what is worth remembering, what I will look at again, what heuristic ornaments I do and do not need. Programs from the Rockettes: out. Ticket stub from the ESB: in.

Suck it

Four girly heads of hair, showering at least once a day. This happens. The city throws its angriest muck back at you, up seventeen stories (probably more than twenty, once the pipes make room for the 2/3 train). This is not nearly as bad as the other time, when we had to buy a new shower curtain.

P.S. This always happens on a Friday after 5pm.

On wingless pigeons

Before I moved to New York, I asked anyone I ran into who had lived here - because this was my main concern about housing - whether they thought I would have to deal with rats where I lived. Rats or cockroaches. I figured there weren't any in those pre-war apartments on the Upper East Side, but in a student dorm downtown, you know, I thought it might be an issue. So I would ask this, and they would always laugh and condescend and say, "You're so cute." And I would say, "No really, I'm honestly asking, because I don't know." And they would laugh again and smile and pat me on the head. And I would say "So will I?" And they would say "I dunno."

Well, the other day I watched a gaggle of my male neighbours in the dorm try to catch a rat (probably just a mouse, actually), with, let's see, there was a broom, a tupperware container, some books, a bottle of whiskey... They eventually got a sheet of that mousetrap sticky paper, and the next morning found the ratmouse on it. The sticky paper doesn't kill it, of course, just traps it. None of them wanted to kill it, so eventually one of them just threw it out the window.

Trashiest Jubilee run ever

12:30 AM:
1 box of frozen chicken nuggets
1 package of Ichiban
1 pack of cigs

Century 21

Friday the city was innundated with 6 to 8 inches of snow cone material, which cancelled all flights and made the streets a mess. I hung out with my neighbours whose spring break plans were rapidly falling apart. The next day, I went with one of them to Century 21, which is a big department store down the street that sells discount designer stuff, and as we were standing outside finishing our lattés (cuz the security guards wouldn't let us into the store with them), a giant chunk of hardened snow cone material fell off a high ledge and smashed to the ground inches from my friend's head.

The store calls itself New York's best kept secret, but the bargain hunting hordes reminded us why, as residents, not to mention as students with copious free time, we should NEVER GO SHOPPING ON A SATURDAY. Among the horde though was Patricia Field, the clothing designer behind Sex & the City. Very skinny, fire engine red hair, very wrinkly, dressed 20 years too young. My friend recognized her and told her she was a big fan. Patricia Field told her to fuck off. Well, not in so many words.

So Long, annoying party-goers

Went to a friend's birthday drink in Chinatown tonight. It was at some dive on Orchard St with a blank awning and no heat and a lone 20-something bartender playing tunes from his iPod. But okay, decidedly cosy when fat snowflakes are falling outside and So Long, Marianne comes on and I am eating the spare ribs and dumplings I just had delivered and talking with Friend (capital F) about that girl thing of needing to be good and needing to be kind and what ensues from that.

And then something happened that doesn't often anymore: we all came back to mine. Well, not my own dorm room but another in the building, with the very same floor plan but whose occupants were masochistic and charitable enough to mash the two beds into a corner and make one wing of the ell into a very congenial living room. Partying at home can of course turn a sober boredom into a willingness to socialize into the wee hours, except that friend and friend got into a REALLY ANNOYING whiny is your half bigger than mine? logistical dispute about drug and I and went to bed.

Katherine and chips and Grace and Marianne and cookies and wine

Feng Shui

My daily routine for an interminably long time has been:

Wake up to roommates making oatmeal, sleep, wake up to roommates doing dishes, sleep, wake up again, drag laptop onto bed, read email and celebrity gossip, shower, scrounge for food, watch a few minutes of y&r, train it to school, drink coffee, chat with friends, cig, read philosophy (repeat), train it home, scrounge for dinner, read email, go out, get back, watch movie, sleep.

And every day a fresh layer of philosophy readings, borrowed CDs, coffee napkins, dirty laundry, and metrocards settles on my living space.

But today was different, because Katherine is coming tomorrow. I tidied and dusted and swept and bought groceries, and now it's actually really nice and homey in here. Katherine is going to *love* eating pizza pops and sleeping on my exercize mat under a pile of jackets.

OMG, I am so excited.

Apparently I'm the only decent cook around here

Went to Little Italy with some girlfriends on Friday and had dinner in one of the many restaurants on Mulberry, then went up the street for cannoli and coffee. Conversation was great but gastronomically the evening sucked, sucked, sucked. Thanks a lot I only have so many meals in my life, jerks! The funny thing is, the neighbourhood and restaurant seem to be full of Italians. The server was old-country Italian, and halfway through our meal an Italian wandering brass band came in and serenaded us all. But the sauce on my ravioli was a can of tomatoes nuked with provolone, and the cannoli, and my friend put it, was "grocery store quality."

This afternoon I went to Trader Joe's, like a non-day-of-the-week-minding fool. The lineup wended (went?) its way around the entire store - you couldn't even get to the items on the shelves for the wall of iPod listening, cell phone texting, puffy jacket wearing hipsters waiting to check out. Haha I am one of them. Anyway, Trader Joe's is wonderfully indulgent, like most Manhattan grocery stores (there's sushi and frozen hors d'oeuvres and fresh pasta, but no like, flour or vegetable oil or sugar. Substitute: white truffle oil and a small shaker of organic cane sugar) - except it's cheap. (Incidentally, helped some neighbours polish off 5 bottles of Trader Joe's wine on Saturday night - aka $16 dollars worth.)

This evening I went to my first ever Superbowl party. I brought crab cakes. People made fun of me - THROUGH THEIR REALLY FULL MOUTHS. And I don't know whether the same commercials are shown in Canada, but did you see the one with the GM robot that gets laid off and then can only find menial non-unionized service jobs and feels so dejected that he decides to jump off a bridge? Man, was that funny! Bwhahahahaahahaha!

I have a new roommate, and no table manners

So Grace moved out and a new roommate moved in. She is a young, sweet-tempered woman from India. She Skypes with the family back home from 10 pm until 2 am most nights, which makes me feel like less of a skid for keeping similar hours.

Shortly after she moved in, she saw me eating heat-and-eat Indian food from Trader Joe's, so later that week she made me a real dinner. Tandoori chicken, which involves sautéed onions and peppers which she did in the convection oven of all things, since she (like the dorm authorities) didn't know about the electric frying pan, and raita and nan. Was it good. She had set plates on the table, but no cutlery or napkins, so in an effort to be helpful, I jumped up and got us some - and she graciously accepted hers. Then she proceeded to eat with her hands, using the nan, and saving the washing up for after dinner, and I tried to conversate normally while shooting sheepish glances at the idle fork taking up room on the side of her plate.

Anyway, I came home tonight after a long day, starving, and there was spinach and tofu, chickpea salad, and spicy chicken sitting on the table, which she insisted I partake of. Then we had chocolate cake and hazelnut tea, and talked about how people who simply eat to live have something profoundly psychologically wrong with them.

Complimentary

Little packages left on the all of the door handles in the dorm:

1 discount coupon for Stomp
1 individually-wrapped Cinnamon Stick tea
1 condom

This one's for the ladies

Thought you might like to know how the whole lip wax thing pans out here in New York.

I don't know about you, but I develop a brilliant red handle bar for about two hours afterwards, so it's important to me to be able to go someplace with good, nearby parking, such that I can dash home without seeing any public. Of course, here that means someplace within reeeaaal close walking distance. Luckily, there are "Nails" places everywhere in Manhattan; being in fact more frequent than gyms, corner groceries, or cell phone dealers. So I went to one of the ones in my building.

A tiny Korean woman asks me, from across the room, what I want done. And the half dozen Financial Districters (an equal number of men and women) getting their lunchtime mani/pedi breezily look over to hear my mumbled request for, uh, a lip wax. Tiny Korean woman takes me into the closest room, motions me to the paper-lined moustachectomy bed, and does her thing, (in the mean time, another Korean woman has wandered in just to, you know, watch).

When I leave ($6 plus $1 tip), I briskly walk the half block to home, fumbling with my stupid scarf which is too chenille to stand up over my mouth and which is such an implausible disguise anyway since it is 20 degrees out. I end up sort of holding it over my face, as though I am being evacuated from a smoke-filled building. And when I arrive back at the dorm, since rule number three in New York is that everyone is allowed to comment on everyone else's shit, one of the security guards starts laughing and asks me WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE, GIRL?

The end.

You heard me

So I am a very few hours away from a big trip home (10 whole days)! Literally: it is 1 am because I stayed up all night with my roommate watching S&tC (how apropos) and drinking vinho verde and talking about this city. This city. It's unreal. To quote a fragment of a conversation about me the other night between Grace and our friend:

Grace: She's not bitter!
Friend: No, I said the city bit her.

I've travelled, you know, and it's nothing like here. Roommate and I talked about the fact that when we go home and try to tell people like this, it can only come off as outstandingly pretentious. Ah, well.

Looking forward to seeing the Calgary and Edmonton humans, of course. But I am addicted to this place and it will not be hard to return.

Because, for example, a woman can walk down the street and have a 100 decibel conversation on her cell phone saying "Let's get something straight here, this conversation is between you and me. You hear me? I don't want anybody else hearin about this. No one." And there is nothing inconsistent about it.

That, and the hobos. Best hobos here in the whole wide world.

Soaking and crusty

Mmmmm... a glass of pinot and some leftover KD (okay, so I threw in some vine tomatoes and cheese and oregano and fresh ground pepper and a touch of cream). This is all very cosy after having been caught in the rain - of all the days I had to experiment with getting off at Wall Street, only to come out the west exit and get stuck on the wrong side of Broadway. I passed a schnauzer in a yellow raincoat, but myself had only a t-shirt on and no umbrella. I arrived with sopping tendrils and saturated cuffs; now I am warm and dry.

It's Wednesday, which means it's almost my weekend - no classes on Fridays - and I could pretty well imagine myself staying in for four days, preparing for my presentation on the Schematism, reading the Repetition, and getting ready for the Kristeva class, which starts in a few weeks. Not only because it would be good to get caught up, but because I've become sort of disenamoured with the social scene here. There are a few interesting people, but there is a whole lot of drinking and BRAGGING about how much Tillich or Buber you've read (who, for you non-philosophers, are fine authors but the corpus's equivalent of last year's American Idol winner). It makes me laugh and think of my friend Wesley's one-word summation of philosophy students: poncy. Brings out the crustiness in me.

I need to get myself in touch with some anarchists...

This is wicked awesome, if I do say so myself

Happy Thanksgiving

Well, then. Andrew leaves early early tomorrow a.m. Today we went for Dim Sum again, then wandered deep into Chinatown, into the parts that smell like fish poo, where there are really no round-eyes, to find a candy store that sells sour cherry blasters as well as candied tilapia and preserved Thai lemons, and a grocery store under the Manhattan Bridge – literally built right into its supports so that you can hear the subway go by overhead.

Tonight we had a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner – chicken thighs and Stove Top stuffing and mashed potatoes and packaged gravy and yellow beans. You can do a lot with an electric skillet and a small convection oven. We also had great meals the rest of the weekend. I had so start cooking again after all those restaurant visits when we were camped in the hotel (including a visit to the guacamole truck). Also, it was incredibly nice to come home again. I’m glad we stayed in the hotel for that very reason – to come home again and feel so cosy in this place. My stuff, my bathroom, my kitchen.

I am totally over the fashion thing. I think New York has a way of making you become what you already are. The flipside of the fact that this city is so crowded, and that you never, ever find yourself alone and in private, is that you can do whatever the frickety-frack you want, wherever and whenever you want. It’s fantastic.

Where we live

Our building:


Our kitchen:


My space:


The view:


The street:

Post 3: I like the hyphen

Yes, it’s a scandal. I haven’t posted in ages. Most of that has to do with Mom being here, and spending a lot of time haggling for my cargo shipment, which I have finally got a hold of. Apparently it was at Laguardia all along. Hmm.

So last weekend I went to the “Bodies” exhibition at the South Street Seaport (http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/intro.html). Even more interesting than the genuine human bits was peoples’ reactions to them. Teenaged boys were fascinated by how small a two-month-old fetus is. Women crowded in silent reverence around the cross-section of the female pelvis. Kids started out wide-eyed and grossed out and ended up as bored after half an hour as they are with anything else.

Sunday the gals on our floor of the dorm all went for Dim Sum. We had invited the boys too, but they had assumed that “meet in the lobby at 9:50” meant 9:50 pm – since who in their right mind gets up before noon on a Sunday?

Mom’s visit was great – I got to eat in real restaurants and shop at Bed Bath & Beyond! (And, in a real Manhattan first, got my stuff delivered!) She may or may not be back, since she had to do the entire trip sans luggage (toiletries, change of clothes, pills) – the entire time she was here, her bag was in L.A., presumably having a GREAT time – and I think that may have soured her a bit on the experience.

I finally have a cell phone. I shopped all over town – way more providers here than up North, of course – and couldn’t seem to get around paying an enormous security deposit, seeing as I don’t have a US social security number. I eventually avoided all that by buying a phone and doing the pay-as-you-go thing, which everybody thinks is really weird, seeing as, like, I’m totally going to run out of minutes – NOBODY uses a land line anymore, that is so 90s. Sometimes, especially around quitting time, you find yourself walking through a forest of people talking loudly into the air while wandering down the avenue, each figuring out exactly where their interlocutor is, and what restaurant or watering hole they will be meeting at post-work.

I also now have all of my philosophy books – prices are pretty reasonable when you’re paying the publisher’s set price and not some exhorbitant Canadian markup. It feels good to read grown-up philosophy after a year of teaching 100-level material.

Tomorrow is the big day – the five-year anniversary of 9/11, which happened very nearby to where I now live. Bush was even rumoured to be there at noon today, so I went down to see. Besides the usual crowd of tourists/gawkers/rememberers, there was one lone protester – a guy with a huge banner, screaming about how Bush *planned* the WTC attacks. With a dozen news cameras trained on him, of course. (No sign of Bush - he was inside somewhere.)

The rest of the past week has been filled with bureaucratic misadventures, attending my first classes, visiting Brooklyn (on purpose) and Queens (not) for the first time and getting very, very drunk in the East Village once again – this time with a bunch of lawyers willing to compensate for mine and Grace’s inability to afford drinks. And the drinks – they’re a little pricey, but I tell you, you get your money’s worth. Every one is made with a very long free-pour of premium (and decidedly not watered down) spirits. I had to change my drink from gin & soda because I can’t stomach the taste of several ounces of gin with a thin slice of lime.

And on that note, I will talk to you all later.

Post 1: Shoes and rats

Okay, okay – I have been very negligent with the promised New York blog, and apparently it’s highly anticipated. So here it is…

Things have been going pretty smoothly. Our place is spacious, our neighbourhood has a 24-hour grocery, Trader Joe’s has $4 pinot grigio and vinho verde, and the subway is user-friendly. Our roommates have yet to check in, which is nice, except that we could use their broom and their cutlery and whatever else they may be bringing with them that we are trying to avoid having to buy. Also, half of my stuff is being held up in the Toronto airport waiting for stand-by cargo room on a flight to Laguardia.

New Yorkers are eminently, consummately, unabashedly open and helpful. Whenever I ask someone a question on the subway or the street I always get a big, enthusiastic answer back – and of course even better when it’s in a thick Brooklyn accent. People aren’t TGIFriday’s-nice, and they aren’t Southern hospitality-nice, they’re just friendly and direct: “You want the L-train, sweetheaht. That’s ovah theah.”

Of course living in Manhattan, Grace and I have both discovered, to our horror, that we are pathetically unfashionable and frumpy, that every article of clothing we own is old and tired, that our hair is boring, and that our shoes are worn out. So we’ve both given ourselves haircuts and taken advantage of the cheap fashions. In fact, the walk from school to home is probably only about 40 minutes, but we’ve never made it in less than 2½ hours, because we are unable to walk past a single shoe or clothing store.

Despite all the walking, I’m not sure whether I’ll be losing a few pounds here, or gaining a few since Grace and I have taken to eating several Oreos before and after every meal. And yes, that includes breakfast.

There have been some truly New York moments, like hailing a cab in the rain and listening to Frank Sinatra all the way down 5th avenue, or seeing a young woman step on a giant rat and scream in City Hall park. I made the mistake of asking for 100g of black forest ham at the deli the other day. The guy looked at me like I was being a smart ass. I guess if you trade in ounces and pounds, asking for 100 of anything sounds a bit absurd.

School has yet to start, but I managed to get into the class being taught by Julia Kristeva, which will be sort of like getting to watch Freud lecture. There’s no New School university bookstore per se, but the old men selling used books on the street have multiple copies of Kierkegaard and Sartre.

I will post again soon. Do email since it’s always nice to hear what’s going on back home.