Chinatown

I went to look around Chinatown this evening, in the hope of finding an authentic restaurent to have dinner. I was a bit disappointed, firstly by the limited selection of decent places to eat and secondly by the general smell and look of the area. It was smelly (not good smelly) and people were selling cabbages on the sidewalk for a buck. This would have been ok, had the vegetables not looked like they had all fallen directly onto the street at some point... So I decided to hop on a bus and make my way back uptown to Madison Sq. Garden, to eat at what has now become my favorite Japanese eatery. Good sashimi, good udon, good vegetables. All for under 15 bucks. While walking home with a McFlurry (with M&Ms) in hand, a guy called out to me "Sir, you sir, with the ice-cream, can I borrow one-hundred thousand dollars?"

Comics

My boss took off for the weekend to go to a Comic-book convention in San Diego. I wondered why he would travel all this way just to look at comics. Then I learned his wife (Tracy, who calls our office regularly each day) writes her own comics and has her own web-site called Traced.

A comic-book writer and an economist. Hmm...

Mousehunt

This evening: I was watching an episode of Family Guy on my computer when a mouse scurried into my room. I immediately ran out (I would have stuck around to look for my new friend but you know, things to do, people to see...) and after some contemplation heard voices outside of the apartment and decided to seek help.

The people outside were the guy living opposite and his friend. The guy living there offered to let us borrow his cat ("Tomorrow") for a few hours to hunt down the rodent.

After much room re-arrangement and cat-stroking we were unable to find the mouse, deciding it must have found it's way out through one of the many of the holes and crevices in the apartment.

Phone

I realize now how much energy goes into speaking to people on the phone. Even though it's great fun using my snazzy new wireless headset, it also requires a lot of emotional energy to speak to clients, listening to what they are saying and explaining to them about our work. I have already spoken with a couple of potential clients over the phone and it's been hard work explaining to them about what we do and trying to convince them to use our service. This will take time and it can't hurt to work on my people skills. I hardly spoke to anyone while I was at Bloomberg...!

The neighbourhood

Let me take you for a quick tour of the neighbourhood:
First there's the high school right outside our apartment building. Every morning I see about 100 'eager young minds' lolling in the street until the guy at the door gives a shout for everyone to go inside (which is exactly the time I leave to go to work - around 8.10am).

At the corner of our street with 8th Avenue there was a restaurent that just closed down, since the entire building was bought by somebody with bigger and better plans. This might have something to do with the fact that only last week a swanky 24-hour restaurent opened on the other side of the avenue a few streets down. In between these two establishments are a number of gay bars, the four elderly guys always sitting on their front porch drinking booze when i walk by, the countless dry cleaners, more bars and of course a Starbucks.

Look uptown a block away and you'll see the 'local' cinema showing independent movies i've never heard of. About 1km further up and you'll see the lights of Madison Sq. Garden. From there the rents and the buildings go sky high...

Life

Ate burritos in soho tonite with a guy from Germany. He's the same age as me, had a similar experience with his girlfriend. He's still trying to figure out what to do with his life, where he's going, why he's doing it. So we talked about this for a while, in the hope we might find some answers...

Earlier I went on my regular jog to central park. I run past concorde, by the Hudson River, I can see the Empire State building. The whole city opens up while I run from around 25th street to 42nd. It's great.

The night before I ate lasagne at Yvette and Marc's apartment. They invited two of their friends around as well. I learned it's Yvette's hobby to match single people together.. I wonder who she has in mind for me...!

Dinner with sage

Just had dinner with my 97-year old (98 in a 3 weeks) great great aunt and her granddaughter.. Received all the answers to questions about my life plus more questions to go away and think about! We covered relationships, work, culture, religion, geography, even economics. Perhaps something out of a Dickens novel? I feel like I need to set off on a long journey now to find fame and fortune...

Happy people

I attacked Central Park today. Only managed to cover half of the area.. it's so vast, so tranquile, so secluded. The most dramatic thing that could happen there would be if someone couldn't catch a frisbee that was thrown at them. In the central part of the park there was an area where people danced to music while skating on roller blades or skates. Everyone looked so happy. This was a very peaceful scene. Within a couple of minutes you're back into the hustle of fifth avenue and another 5 mintes to Times Square where i ate as much fruit for 5 dollars as my stomach could manage.. if i had one more piece of pineapple....

4th July & Gay Pride all rolled into one.

East River Fireworks: good, not great.. the guy announced that we were about to see the best fireworks display in the country. He lied. They have a better one every night in Disneyland, FL. We queued over an hour for a pizza while my roommmate catherine queued an hour to use the restroom. i rode the bathroom queue for just 20 minutes to get in. much of the banter between the people waiting was fun for me to hear.. and seeing women enter the mens room to use private cubicle was the icing on the cake.

then we set off to see my first penthouse in new york. 19th floor, actually quite near to where we are living. the view from the roof allows you to see empire state and the financial distict all at the same time. it was perfect. a friend of a friend is renting there... we all know someone who knows someone who's doing this... and this one was being rented by, yes, a gay male. for the first time in my life, i got an awkward look from a guy for not kissing him on the cheek when i greeted him and when i said goodbye... i need to figure these guys out more since they seem to populate most of the area around where i'm living... they're guys but they're not guys. they like girls but they prefer guys who think they're girls.. i pretty much knew all this before living among so many of them.. where do they go in London? why aren't there that many in tokyo?? standing in their apartment with 15 foot ceilings the friendly tenant shows us the latest edition of something magazine showing all the famous people living in the building next door.. calvin klein, someone else, martha stewert...! he was so proud of his apartment that it was all he talked about. shame, he must have a lot more he could have discussed with such emotion.. couldn't he?

Hair

after getting my hair cut by my new (gay) hairdresser today (who by the way says i can get a free trim to extend the cut - not bad value for $40!) i stopped by ground zero.. it's just so much open space there now, they could make a huge park if they wanted.. would be a huge blow to the local economy no doubt... they must have already shifted all the jobs of the people who worked there to somewhere else by now.... there's a Century 21 opposite, so i went in.. they sell $400 gucci silk sweaters for $50... but no prada shoes to go with it! oh, and i stopped by times square.. ramin: the reuters news headline ticker is running too fast for people to read.. can you get someone to take a look at it?
happy 4th of July everyone!!

Central Perk

while jogging thru central park today there was yet another guy shouting on his cell phone to (no doubt) his girlfriend... "you got a problem writing the word 'shit'? your work IS SHIT!"

that made me smile :o)

Jaywalking cops on Times Square

Walking thru Times Square I noticed two police officers on horses stopping at a curb to speak to two women, who I think were Japanese. One wrote down a number on a piece of paper and then offered it to one of the women, saying in broken English "tomorrow, you call this number at 12, and we can go out."

Outrageous abuse of horse power!

Cameo

just came back from watching spiderman 2 (on a school night!!!!!)

scene 24: Daily Bugle. Editors office.

Peter Parker enters office. Next to editor is a tv screen showing Bloobmerg TV, Matt Nesto doing his stock report from a deskcam. This would have been in the New York office, perhaps a cross to the London bureau....

I nudge the person next to me, pointing to the screen, "hey, I used to write for that show!"

you should have seen me.. after the movie, everyone asking me for my autograph.. oh no wait, they beat me and took my spare change.. then spiderman came to my rescue.. he's my hero!

serioulsy though.. good film. bloomberg tv 'n everything...!