January

Moved to New York, lived on West 152nd Street in Harlem, used Spanish flash cards, started a new job, took many train rides to Brooklyn, got lost on subway perhaps a dozen times, asked for directions dozens of times, got homesick often, met many new people, made many new friends.

FebruaryLearned more about my job, got homesick less, went ( Read more... )

Voting in Brooklyn was a complete mess -- the room was too small, there weren't enough machines, it was super hot and crowded and took an hour and forty five minutes, but I did it.

Here's to hoping this all goes through without a hitch and my guy wins.

After watching the Democratic National Convention thus far, I'm comfortable saying that the Republican Convention is going to look like amateur night. There are no arguments to be made against the progress that the democrats are proposing at their convention. It's comical to watch commentators try to be devil's advocate, when all they can do -- ( Read more... )

But for many, the thrill of arrival is often tempered by the sinking realization of what an alienating place the city can be, especially for those who are not wealthy or who don’t have a pre-existing network of friends. Nothing comes easily, even if one can get past the dauntingly high cost of living. The subway maze seems indecipherable. People ( Read more... )

One show that I have been following regularly on television is Mad Men. I'll have to admit that watching the show makes me feel strange about the general frumpiness of attire I, and pretty much everyone I work with wears at work. I work at a marketing company in Manhattan -- the difference between my place of work and the Sterling Cooper ( Read more... )

Fun train happenings from last night:
1. There was a guy sitting next to me chattering like a schizophrenic to himself on the A train, and midway through his conversation, he opened his bag and got out the syllabus for a psychology class for which it would appear he was the professor ( Read more... )

It is embarrassing when I think about how long it's been since I've written anything here ( Read more... )

In this generation, there is a different feeling for the art of words -- kids are still reading the same stuff, old books by old people, fantastic books by people I won't even begin to name. (well, okay, one. William Faulkner. I'm done, really.) But there's this lack of artistic motion in the written word. Michael Crichton's last book sucked, ( Read more... )

So I moved out of the northwest stretches of Harlem, away from Hamilton Heights, away from the Dominican Republic in New York City (though not true, it is fun to imagine that there could be more Dominicans in New York than there are in the DR -- I apologize for my previous misinformation on that fact). Though i am in great debt to Erik for hosting ( Read more... )

Even if it is easy to mock the uniformity of tastes in dress, music and haircuts of these newcomers, Mr. Florida, who is a business professor at Toronto University, is sympathetic. “I don’t want to blame the hipsters,” he said. “They are searching for places that are real and authentic. Many are isolated, many are alone. They were looking to avoid ( Read more... )