mishmash

my brain has been in a perpetual state of fried lately. i'm constantly trying to keep my head above the piles of reading to complete and papers to write for class. there is always another deadline right around the corner. and yes, i did sign up for all this when i decided to enroll in grad school so really, i'm not complaining.

but since sleep has been compromised and so has my social calendar, blogging sadly has also taken a backseat. here, in no particular order, are snippets of thoughts i've meant to blog but haven't had the time...

• when you attend school for a program in arts administration with a bunch of girls who are all artists and art-lovers, this means no one wears sweatpants to class. NO ONE. even the three guys (2 gay, 1 straight) in my class always look good. and it's not just looking put together - every one of my classmates has their own sense of style, their signature. there's the girl with the braids who always wears large lattice-like earrings. and the girl with the short hair who works for phillips de pury and always carries a kate spade bag. or the black girl from brooklyn whose amazing collection of colorful hosiery astounds me. or the guy who's interning at christie's and always wears a tie and sometimes vest to class. gone are the days of bumming in class.

• my brain feels like it's about to explode. besides the copious amounts of reading we have to do for class, there is so much external reading to do just to keep up with current events, exhibitions, art news.... and with my particular interest in art and social justice/community development, this means i have to stay abreast of public policy as well. keep those rss feeds coming.....

• my supervisor at work, the senior accountant, is hilarious. he's a middle-aged filipino-american man who always says what he thinks.  he has a slight accent where he stretches out certain vowels into nasaly flat tones, like "stupiiiiiid", which he uses a lot. today, when i was eating hummus and pita for lunch and raving about how much i love hummus, he said, "that's fine now but one of these days, you'll have trouble poo-pooing." and then later this afternoon, when the CFO was joking around with him about how he didn't hear what she had said earlier, he responded, "it's not my fault. it's all this hair that's growing in my ears." i love my job.

• want a surefire way to lose weight? first, move to a city where everything is expensive. then, choose to be a student so you're not earning money full-time. better yet, be a full-time student and work 20 hours a week to try and alleviate the expenses of living in said-expensive city. make sure your schedule is really packed - every hour measured out. and make sure your schedule involves a lot of running around from one end of the city to the other, which means you're usually late so you're literally running around. eat simply and not often, due to time and budget constraints. trust me, you'll lose weight unintentionally.

• this city is crazy, chaotic, maddening, inspiring, daunting, liberating, cacophonous and lyrical. in other words - i love it here.

and in the spirit of halloween, here's a recent gem of a find:

http://halloweenorwilliamsburg.tumblr.com/

is it halloween? or is it just williamsburg in brooklyn? you be the judge.


cups of coffee:  1 + 3 cups of green tea

mood:  time for bed

living in the gray

it's been two months now since i left shanghai. almost a month and a half since i moved to new york city. china seems a distant dream sometimes - was it really 9 years? other times, recollections are sharp and palpable, hitting me at random moments and prompted by certain sights and sounds: the chatter of young chinese women, most likely graduate students, on the subway; the vendors lined along the street in chinatown, their carts spilling with vegetables; the food truck parked constantly near my school, dishing out containers of potstickers.

a lot of friends have asked me how my transition has been. to be honest, it's been much easier than i'd anticipated. reverse culture shock did jolt me upon arrival and occasionally still rears its head, but on the whole, life in america has not been difficult to slip into. and life in new york has definitely been exciting thus far - trying out restaurants and bars, attending exhibitions, parties and wine tastings...the glamorous sheen of an urbanite life is similar in any major city, i suppose. this isn't to say life here is without a dark side; in the past couple of weeks, my neighborhood has experienced cases of sexual assault and a stabbing at a subway station. and this is probably the safest area in brooklyn.

the things that have proven difficult to wrap my mind and heart around are not easily unpacked. the onslaught of power, money, beauty and sex in this city - pervasive and inescapable. destitution and depravity found on almost every street corner in the form of a homeless man passed out and reeking of alcohol or a young mother with a child at her breast and tears in her eyes, slumped in the corner of the subway station stairwell. the blind eye turned by many a passerby.

i'm re-learning how to filter new issues through the lens of my faith as a christian. in china, i had to navigate issues such as corruption in businesses, the cultural concept of "saving face", loving my neighbors cross-culturally, to name a few. here, i'm contemplating and conversing on issues of sexuality, gay marriage, stewardship of career and finances, religious pluralism....and so forth. still learning to love my neighbors.

whatever the issues are, i think we are people called to live in the gray. i believe i am called to seek God, know God, seek Truth, speak Truth, but it's all covered in Love. without love, all is naught. and i think to love is to plunge into the gray, the areas of uncertainty and ambiguity, to get messy in the lives of broken people who long for so much more, all the while acknowledging my own brokenness.

i miss shanghai but i'm so glad to be here in nyc. but most of all, i'm glad to be here living in the gray.

cups of coffee:  1

mood: happy

stoop life

There’s nothing better on a warm summer evening in Brooklyn than sitting on the stoop of my brownstone, sipping a beer and reading a book. As the day settles into muted dusk, I drink my Negra Modelo contently while plowing through “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”, which I embarrassingly started months ago.

Directly across the street from me is a funeral home. I watch a couple of cars pull up to the curb tonight and the occupants clamber out to make their way to the door. Most of them are chatting, even laughing, bearing not at all the sort of mood I would expect of visitors to a funeral home. I wonder what kind of person died. The valet for the funeral home is a young African-American man, looking bored in his white shirt and black trousers. He spends most of the evening texting on his phone, sometimes propped against a parking meter, sometimes perched on the hood of a car.

The street is never quiet here. There is always the rumble of the R train as it burrows far beneath the pavement, roaring like some underground monster tearing through the tunnels. The traffic’s symphony is never ceasing, swallowed occasionally by the relentless wailing of an ambulance.

A straight shot from the subway station, the sidewalk in front of my apartment proves to be a runway of sorts. There is the Hispanic woman, curvy and brown, with her long ponytail sashaying behind her, chirping Spanish loudly into her mobile phone. There is the young couple walking hand-in-hand, he with his square-framed glasses and ironic t-shirt, she with her hair pulled into a messy-yet-stylish bun on her head with a canvas bag slung haphazardly on her shoulder. There is the bevy of dog-walkers, all carrying serious countenances while their canine companions prance happily before them, smiling broadly with their tongues lolling.

An elderly man paces up and down the street, looking for his cat. With a shock of white hair, he is shirtless and paler than the underside of a flounder. In his left hand, he carries some sort of breathing apparatus with a long transparent tube snaking its way up to his nostrils. In his right hand, he carries a walking cane, which he forcefully thumps twice on the pavement after every five steps.

“Muffy!” he cried out. “Muffy!” Passing by my stoop, he pauses and squints up at me.

“Have you seen a grey cat?” he asks me gruffly.

I shake my head and smile. He thumps his cane and continues his course. At one point, he leans forward against a tree, the breathing machine tapping against the trunk. I hope he’s okay. I hope he finds Muffy.

cups of coffee: 1 + 1 iced tea + 1 negra modelo

mood:  lovin' it

oh, brooklyn

i've been an official brooklynite for 48 hours. here's the short list of my likes and dislikes thus far:

likes:
- my roommates. all 3 are medical residents. yes, they are fun, attractive, smart and cool like the docs on "grey's anatomy." no, they are not all sleeping with one another. and yes, apparently there is a lot of drama that happens with the hospital staff. they keep sharing gossip with me about their colleagues whom i haven't met yet.
- my neighborhood. there's an amazing homemade yogurt place down the street - check, that's TWO yogurt places. there are fun cafes, bars and restaurants. a decent-sized supermarket is a 5-minute stroll away and a 24-hour dunkin' donuts is right on the corner. AND the subway station is literally across the street.
- my neighbors. actually, the one neighbor i've met so far. my bedframe collapsed suddenly last night and the neighbor downstairs was kind enough to bring his toolbox up this evening and fix my bed. i wanted to bake him cookies to thank him but he's on the zone diet. so i'm gonna give him a bottle of vino instead.
- the apartment. it's a good size with a decent kitchen and two bathrooms.

dislikes:
- the apartment. my bedroom is a closet. everything is old and falling apart. and my roommates are all busy so i've been the default cleaning lady thus far. i miss my ayi terribly.
- the subway system. nyc's subway system is extensive but oh-so-run-down. but then again, i have been spoiled by shanghai's state-of-the-art subway trains and fully air conditioned stations.
- cost of living. everything is so &$^#%@ expensive in general here.
- my landlord. he actually lives in north carolina so isn't present to deal with any apartment issues. and apparently he's not the most pleasant person unless you're able to get on his good side. i miss being my own landlord.

all in all, the transition has been smooth. i think it hit me for the first time yesterday that i am indeed back in america and living in new york of all places. i feel like i'm re-learning american culture every day.

met with my advisor today and registered for classes! wow. it's really happening....

cups of coffee:  2

mood:  mixed feelings