Fleet Week

Little can prepare you for the annual Memorial Day Atlantic fleet crossing of international ships that dock at the myriad piers on the west side making the women of New York swoon for crisp, ivory uniformed sea-faring mavens whose worldly charm can transform even a dive like Hogs and Hefers—a profane pit that reeks of day-old barbeque and stale domestic beer—into the set of a black and white movie when gentlemanly sailors held tightly to their hats to keep their hands from shaking as they asked the prettiest girl for a dance.

Rain

Accept that New York has a wet season and always carry a sturdy umbrella in April or you will meet the fate of all who’ve treaded before you on Vesey St. between Church and West Sts. The rejected carcasses in black, blue, red, and every other plastic hue create an umbrella cemetery that is surrounded by Asian immigrants undercutting each other to sell you the cheapest umbrella as the grey skies drip down your back and make you question your love for New York.

Ode to Street Fairs

Bid farewell to the summer at the last of the street fairs in early October. Leisurely amble past block after block of modern gypsies offering to reveal your fortune for a meager $5, retired hippies selling cheap jewelry for prices that justify their creativity and hefty booth commissions, NYU students selling art and photographs in the hopes of getting discovered or at least making enough to pay for another week of over-priced beer, Chinese masseurs trying to make ends meet, sausage salesmen at Italian carnival stands hawking funnel cakes and ices, Thai chicken on a stick and spring rolls, $2 lemonade and fresh-fruit smoothie stalls.

Shake Shack in Madison Square Park

Willingly queue up for an hour on a Sunday afternoon in September with your dog looking up at you expectantly; hoping his best behavior will earn him a caramel-covered peanut-butter-laced Poochini in conjunction with any scraps of your grease-dripping-off-your-lip double Shackburger and stick-to-your-teeth Cheese Fries.

Courting

Soaking up the sun in a paddle boat in Central Park in August—the sweet refrain of melodies from your past reverberate in your ears thanks to amateur musicians performing for dollar bills in Strawberry Fields—as your lover rows you in arcs competing for the title of Most Romantic New York Couple.

Bryant Park

Mondays at dusk when picnic baskets on blankets litter the green amidst Midtown skyscrapers anticipating the start of that night’s HBO movie--projected on a big screen beside an old fountain. The burgeoning sense of community is palpable as strangers become neighbors: bartering wine for cheese and corkscrews for fruit. The realization dawns that free films in warm weather provide cheap but memorable dates for students living two-to-a-walkup studio apartment in Alphabet City and executives in floor-through penthouses on Park Avenue alike.

55 Water Street

The tiered escalators to heaven continually assist those adventurous enough to make the climb to the Plaza perched above the FDR Drive at 55 Water Street—overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge and the Downtown Heliport—lush greenery in a concrete sandbox. Go at lunch on a weekday in June to gawk at the masses in suits, loosening their ties with hands in Au Bon Pain and Pret Manager emblazoned paper bags, shedding their disdain for New Jersey across the bay as they masticate and smile.

Where I'm From

I am from too many bodies crammed into too little space.
I’m from the Land of Jaldi Jaldi in a Universe of Masala Chai.
From Fish curry and Mint chutney, served piping hot in the sweltering heat.

I am from my mother’s gold bangles--ornately beaded Pink saris drying on parapets.
I am from elephant rides on Juhu Beach at Christmas; sand clinging to my wet toes.
I’m fighting to stay awake at 7am mass, rehearsed responses in an unknown tongue!

I am my granddaddy’s tennis star who crushed my grandmother’s OB-to-be.
I am a pediatrician’s daughter who doesn’t want children.
I am the Sun in Her galaxy; one of many moons in his Milky Way.
I am from weekly calls on rotary phones except during power cuts to a Mother who loved me too much--a nightly prayer for my future spouse ever since I can remember--In a world where a daughter is your guest till she is married into her forever home.

I am from singing in the monsoon and dancing in the shower.
I'm putting garam masala on my American Chop Suey
Watching--on mute--the censored version of Dirty Dancing
With my American cousin on a Colour TV sans closed captioning.
The same cousin who got knocked up at 16 and was ostracized from My Family.

I am from Keep Your Legs Crossed and Your Eyes Down.
From a world of Don’t Ask Questions and Because I Said So's
Mixed in a thermos of collectivism; blended in a pot of pacifism
Garnished with equal parts filial piety and family honor
In a stainless steel cup with my initials etched on the side.

I couldn't MAKE this UP!

Sweet (03:53:31 pm): hmm...maybe just bubble tea before class will do the trick
sexytom346 (03:54:06 pm): agh that stuff'll sap all ur creativity
sexytom346 (03:54:10 pm): those bubbles are posion
Sweet (03:54:41 pm): no I love bubbles
Sweet (03:54:45 pm): yummy in my tummy bubbles
sexytom346 (03:54:52 pm): gross!
Sweet (03:54:55 pm): YUM
sexytom346 (03:55:01 pm): poop
Sweet (03:55:05 pm): ew
sexytom346 (03:55:15 pm): id rather eat poop than bubbles
Sweet (03:55:29 pm): that's disgusting
sexytom346 (03:55:36 pm): but true
Sweet (03:55:36 pm): I'm literally gagging at my desk
Sweet (03:55:43 pm): choking back the ickiness of it all
sexytom346 (03:55:43 pm): i gag at bubbles

Finally Focused

After a year of dilly-dallying and five years of finding myself, professionally, I have finally decided to invest wholely and solely on graudate school in the form of seeking my Masters in Business Administration (MBA).

I intend to pursue a full-time endeavor dually concentrating in Communications and Media Mangement as well as Marketing while splitting my focus on electronic and international business at Fordham Business School. It sounds loftier than it is...or maybe that's just the naivete of a cartographer creating a map from a journey an explorer detailed to her--a journey she has yet to take.

While Fordham is not a top school and my school snobbery knows few bounds, I have come to see that indebting myself to the point of collections and defaulting on loans is not a way to establish myself fiscally. I'm starting their pre-MBA curriculum this fall at which point I hope to build relationships with the faculty that will secure me a 300-hour graduate assitantship my first term which will reduce my tuition by 70%. Hopefully the remaining will be covered by a scholarship I can "easily" attain given that my current GMAT score is above their acceptance range (540-670 out of 800). I intend to take the exam again to beat the 700 mark to assure myself a place in their hallowed halls of free post graduate education.

Credit repair aside, I no longer have a burning desire to be average in a lot of over-achievers given my social loafing. I'm accepting the fate of working marginally hard to shine in a lot of average folk--a real cross-section of the populance. Not to mention their New York City location will avail me significant recruiters in the publishing and e-media industries.

Road Trip Caffeine

Thanks to Dunkin Donuts' soon-to-launch website: www.MyIcedCoffee.com you can avail yourself of tasty treats or just caffeine boosts in 33 states should you take a roadtrip across these fine United States. Whether you are going across or traveling along the coasts, DD is here for your mapped out coffee needs at every stop along the way.

Hazzah!

Ms. Verbose meet Mr. Pithy

In my zeal to showcase my newly acquired Outlook calendar feature (via work) and assure D'souza that I am the organatrix I always was I have been sending him outlook invitations in 1-2 hour blocks of activities I have planned for us to participate in this weekend.

Saturday
9-10am Kayaking on the Hudson (Downtown Boathouse)
10-11:30am Tennis at the Canal Street Courts along the Hudson
12:30-1:00pm Lunch at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park
2-3:30pm Beginner Salsa at Empire Dance
4-5pm Boat ride in a paddle boat in Central Park
5:30-6:30pm Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral
7-8pm Drinks at Ava Lounge at the top of the Dream Hotel
8:30-10pm Dinner at Buenos Aires

Sunday
11am-12pm Tennis on the Fayson Lakes clubhouse courts
12-1pm D'souza to help Mr. Winters (my mom's hubby) with his computer
1-2pm Take the motor boat on the lake for a relaxing ride
2-3pm BBQ with the family on the deck overlooking the lake

D'souza's response:
"stop the outlook appointments...just send me an email with all our plans...i can print it, laminate it and hang it around my neck...that way I can't forget!"

"I am afraid, I am not any fun. I don't have any stories that end with me peeing in someone else's bed"--Lauren

Lauren's older sister, Ashley, is getting married at year's end to her high school sweetheart. Ashely's a sorority girl who now works in PR while Lauren is a practical girl who works in Market Research--at Maxim, mind you. Lauren and Ashley are roughly two years apart which made for great sibling rivalry and general disdain in high school but has lead to a healthy sisterly bond in the post-collegiate years.

Recently, Lauren--who lives with her former co-worker/boyfriend--has spent copious amounts of time with Ashley given that her wedding is looming and their father had been recently diagnosed with cancer. He's doing well but the family has grown much closer off late.

Last weekend at Ashley's bridal shower which comes in the wake of a wicked bachelorette party--that Lauren spent much of the week that followed recovering from--a rather telling tale was revealed.

It seems that Ashely was defined in her friend circle by this rather unusual story:
About a year ago--at the ripe age of 27.5--Ashley attended a drunken frat fest at a fellow couple's abode. Her fiancee was out of town at the time and she proceeded to pass out on the couple friend's couch in the midst of the raging kegger around her due to her heavily inebriated post happy hour condition. However, around 3am as the party was winding down she awakened groggy and bleary eyed--grabbed her purse and stumbled out of the apartment without so much as a backward glance. The couple assumed she would fall into a cab and make her way home.

However, she resurfaced the next morning as the unsuspecting couple was eating breakfast with a rather conspicious wet patch in the groin and her bag slung over one shoulder. It appears she had woken up in a bed she assumed was the couple's based on the overhead view of trees and buildings only to feel a wetness around her. Upon sitting up to inspect her surroundings she discovered that she had not only wet herself but was in an unfamiliar room--no matter how familiar the view--belonging to a cross-dresser or girly girl. She then quickly found her bag and peeked sheepishly outside the bedroom door into the empty living room before fleeing the scene. It was revealed upon examining the front door of the apartment she had spent the night in that she was one floor down from her friends' place and had wet some stranger's bed.

The rip roaring laughter that ensued around Lauren led her to question her fun factor. She related this tale of hilarity to us at tea last night in a somber tone with the concluding question: "Am I just not that much fun?" Of course, we hastened to assure her that she was funner than fun and no amount of peeing in strangers' beds would make Ashely more fun than Lauren.

But it begs the question...Where do our insecurities come from? After all, Lauren is a successful, petite woman who lives with a committed partner in a very cute apartment in Park Slope with two cats. How could she genuinely question her self-image when a story relating to her older sister's proclivity to pee in beds, closets, kitchens is told?

Indignation

Much of my life, I have spent in a state of indignation. My threshold for indignance is low. This is not to say I can't handle a great deal of non-sense, it is however a fact that my reaction to much of what transpires around me is indignation.

Prime example: I go to tea every monday with the girls--Lauren, Kelli, Jo, Beth, and Stella. D'Souza feels the need to repeatedly refer to TEA as my TEA PARTY! We are not in Boston, I am not dumping tea in the ocean...it is NOT A TEA PARTY. The indignation I feel is past palpable to heart murmur inducing.

Similar example: I work at the ACLU--work as a temp--but it provides a paycheck so we will call it work. D'Souza will only refer to it as UCLA. YEEGADS! I am not in sunny, smoggy LA. I am not at the University of California. Thankfully, they are adequately liberal and left-leaning just as the ACLU is however the comparison ends there.

Brooklyn's Best

Yesterday, D'Souza and I went to Brooklyn. It must be noted that yesterday's rain rivaled a monsoon drizzle but in my open-toed heels and flimsy umbrella it could have been a tornado.

Having skipped breakfast and lunch (yes, I did begin my day with a trusty frappuccino--no I have not quit!), my hypoglycemic index was admittedly through the roof as we trudged through a maze of subway connections to arrive in Prospect Heights--really Crown Heights. He balked at the vast number of unemployed hoodlums lining the subway tiles. I pretended not to notice.

He shook his head as we walked along a desolate road to an apartment building that resembled the projects. Now, I must admit that elitism reigned, as we both stared dumb-founded at the Communistic concrete barrack that greeted us in a forlorn neighborhood void of white people. Yes, he said white people. I would have gone with suited people, but we'll take it for what it is. I avoided a long discussion on race with him--which I am fond of getting myself into with any and all who will indulge me--perhaps the only thing I hold onto idealistically is the notion that all people should be equal and thus treated as such. Yes, I am well aware that the world does not operate in this way.

I digress. As we milled around miserable in the rain I addressed the Jersey City issue. He was a sweetheart and didn't push a state change in my future address, but as I sit here and type I'm not sure what it is that I am fighting for...Manhattan is egregiously expensive for a tiny space where windows are luxury commodities and every expense carries a hefty preminum for being provided on this island. Yet the convenience of doing my groceries at 3am, should I so desire and a subway that always takes my drunk ass home just can't measure against a drastic change in lifestyle required if I move to Jersey City or even Brooklyn. I'm fighting for my way of life here. My method of being...of breathing...of pursuing happiness.

God Damn It, I work at the ACLU...Living here is an exercise in my liberty as a civilian of the American Nation...albeit a non-unionized exercise. For the simple reason that I WANT TO...I continue to live and dream and hope and wait to exhale in the one and only Big Apple.

High but Thin Walls

Sitting in my cubicle at the ACLU--which D'Souza (silly foreigner) continues to call UCLA, much to my chagrin, and his unending glee--I am reminded of the scene in Office Space where the heavy, high-pitched woman with an unhealthy dose of face paint caking her could-be-beautiful if slimmer face squaking into her constantly ringing phone. There is a boy--I call him this in his skinny jeans and graphic tees--who delivers an ACLU membership spiel with the frequency and fluidity of a humanized robot.

Our cube walls--to call them walls is a misnomer at best being that they are made of some sort of cheap particle board that is covered by even cheaper gray, textured fabric--perhaps partitions would be a better term, are high. My guess 6 feet high. But given that they don't touch the 9-foot ceiling nor do they have doors, what little privacy you accrue visually you lose audibly. So much as a sigh is transmitted with a clarity that rivals THX commercials at your local movie theater.

Me...at the ACLU!

I currently temp at the ACLU--American Civil Liberties Union--which is a land filled with Helens. You recall my high school chum of British descent who lived in a village in South India for a year in an effort to flex her crunchy, granola Middlebury education in a non-Peace Corps Save-the-Third-World effort. A girl with as much heart and noblesse oblige as a Teva-wearing, globe-trotting, foreign policy type can be. She recently got admitted to both Dartmouth and MIT for B-school and will soldier on in her efforts to make enough of a profit to stay afloat while making a difference in the non-profit/government sector. I digress. All this isn't irrelevant, it goes to illustrate the differences between me and the Helens of this world. I find myself in employ within a Helen world presently. A sobering reality in the context of my money-grubbing, conscience-lacking self-concept...I sense that in reconciling these differences I will discover my true path to career success.

It must be said that in my two days here I have encountered nothing but positive feedback in the kindest of words, a complete acceptance of my tardiness in light of my prolific turn-a-round time and delivery methods, and a general happiness that I now understand to be a passion and happiness with work and the work-life balance. Not to say they aren't a hard-working bunch but they seem to work without effort in the way that someone that loves what they are doing occupies their time. They also appear to seamlessly leave work at work and amble home on the earlier side of late to what I imagine to be smiling families around dinner tables awaiting their presence. Suburban Utopia in an Urban Microcosm?

Dress to Impress

This morning, I woke up groggy--as I do every morning, I am NOT a morning person--rolled over D'Souza rubbing a sweat-soaked hand over my bleary eyes and pulled out a bright green, button-down, silky shirt and a pleated, knee-length, white skirt with a multitude of multi-colored flowers adorning it. I paired this ensemble with a small, red leather, elbow-dangler bag and bright red, soft-leather shoes--a recent gift from Tracey.

I seemingly floated to work, not noticing the favorable greetings I garnered. However on my daily Starbucks run I ran into a barista who frequently served me at the Wall Street location--he had been transplanted to Water Street, my current closest Starbucks. He beamed at me with recognition, clasping my hand in his own and requesting I return with the frequency and fervor with which I had graced him in our shared previous life. From Silverstein Katz-->German Bank-->Non-profit Do-Gooder Union entailed Water St.-->Wall St.-->Water St. confirming that the financial district of Manhattan is very, very small indeed--geographically, at least.

My growling stomach led me to ABP across the street where I was greeted with warm smiles--I could hear the theme song of Cheers playing in the back of my brain--the nice man who made my breakfast sandwich complimented my shirt, the lady at the counter insisted that they would still serve me breakfast even though they were removing the breakfast menu, and the cashier wished me a very nice weekend and a happy mother's day. I balked. Am I to assume that all these people saw me as someone's MOTHER?! Do I look that old? Was I having a fat day? YEEESH.

I stepped back outside, shaking the growing suspicion that despite the bounce in my step passers by perceived me as less than youthful and exuberant, and continued back to my current office location with the yuppy, capitalist accoutrements I had collected on my morning pilgrimage.

Headless Phone

Walking up the street towards Brooklyn Bridge I spied a public phone that had it's head chopped off. Makes me wonder what kind of instrument could cut through a plastic phone with all those fibrous wires within...then I start pondering who carries such a thing on the city streets in the financial district.

I wished desperately I had a camera to capture that and out it up with this post--alas I did not.

Fixed

It was just an off day--a natural lull in relationship land--no trouble in paradise.

Smooth sailing for now; I would say from here on out but that seems naive.