Stuck in the Subway

I get little panic attacks when I'm stuck in a semi-crowded enclosed space with inadequate air conditioning for an unknown amount of time. My old roommate used to wonder how I was able to fly on airplanes which always have you trapped in a crowded, enclosed space for hours. But, the AC always works too well, and I know how long the flight is so planes never bother me.

So I was riding the express subway back home from work when all of a sudden, it stopped. At first, I thought nothing of it because subway cars aren't allowed to follow eachother too closely and also, sometimes the tracks merge, so the conductor has to stop or slow down. But then the conductor annouced over the intercom that train service on the 4 & 5 would end at the next stop due to a police investigation going on further up. Meanwhile, everyone was stuck in the subway car for an undisclosed amount of time. I was kind of annoyed at first, but grateful that the car wasn't too full. But then the A/C shut off, and I started to sweat a bit, got really fidgety and started having adrenaline rushes as the car got stuffier. It took about half an hour for the train to go one stop because it would move very slowly for a bit and then be still for 5 minutes at a time. I almost wanted to kill the conductor when he annouced that he wasn't sure if he would let us out at the next stop, or try to go another stop further before releasing everyone. Luckily, he let us out at the next stop.

I was still pretty far away from home and feeling a bit lazy, so despite my claustrophobia, I hopped onto the local 6 train to get back. But after going one stop, it also stalled in a tunnel. When the train finally got to the next stop, I gave up and walked the final 30 blocks home.

Love the City

Things that exist in New York that I love:

The city literally at your doorstep

An abundance of non-chain or mom & pop restaurants

Botrytised dessert wine

Things that do not exist in New York:

An abundance of patient, friendly people

Thrifty's ice cream

Those grade placards at restaurants that tell you how clean the establishment is

Weird looking bugs (a real plus)

(Coworker rant: "You've got a lot of weird, scary looking bugs flying around in Cali. There are bugs literally half the size of my hand (my thought bubble: images of cockroaches running around outside Sharkey's in Manhattan Beach). What you need is a real, cold winter to kill those things. That mild weather of yours allows too much breeding which leads to mutations, giving you those scary looking things running around.")


Things that I've concluded do not exist in New York:

Food handling gloves

Rigid gas permeable enzymatic lens cleaners (Rite Aid worker: "...the [expletive]. If we have it, it would be in this section." (Actually found these in CVS after searching every major drug store in the city. So, I guess this doesn't really belong here.))

Red vines

Things that exist in New York that I wish didn't:

Supermarkets that charge Bristol Farms prices in return for Food For Less Quality (that pretty much covers all of them)

Crappy AC units that drip on your head as you unknowingly walk under them on the street

Exploring My Neighborhood

This morning, the Boy and I woke up early and went jogging in Central Park. The weather was actually nice with a slight breeze. When you jog deeper into Central Park where you can't see the city around you, it's nice because you feel like you're not in NYC anymore. It's like going on a scenic hike in the mountains, when you're actually just a few blocks away from your home (well, depending on where you live).

Later that day, I decided to explore the shopping in my neighborhood and did a little damage to the credit card at Steve Madden's, Ann Taylor and the Gap.

I'm beginning to really like my quiet little area.

Zagat No Good

Last Friday, I met a couple of the Boy's friends at the Pearl Oyster Bar for dinner. Before this meeting, I only knew of them as the Greek and the Indian, as I had never met them before. It doesn't sound very PC, but ethnicity is a more memorable identifier than names sometimes, especially for people that you've never met. The Greek actually started a conversation about how he refers to his friends and associates by their ethnicities also when talking to his mother in Greece since she would never remember who he was referring to if he used names. Hence, the Boy's pseudonym was "the Taiwanese," and I'm supposing that I was "the Taiwanese's Girl" up until Friday.

Recently, I developed a strong liking for raw oysters after restaurant hopping with a couple of coworkers in LA. Before, I would have cringed and gagged at the thought of eating an uncooked, soft, slippery mollusk. But after trying one out of politeness, I was hooked. I was a little disappointed with the Pearl Oyster Bar, though. The oysters weren't as fresh as the ones I'd had in LA and a bit sandy. Zagat must have been high when they decided to give the restaurant a 27. Either that, or totally smashed drunk as the Boy and I were after drinking about 3/4 bottles of wine each. Between the four of us, we had three bottles of wine, and two of us woke up with a hangover the next day.

Embarrassing Work Blunder

I've been at my new job for a week and a half, and there have been a lot of problems configuring my computer so that it has all of the necessary programs. Today, my computer was finally complete, but the keyboard was all messed up so that I had to hit the control button instead of 'enter.' That kept throwing me off all day. But, I finally had access to the mainframe on my computer. Navigating through the mainframe is kinda weird. To move from screen to screen, you have to type a string of letters or numbers which will correspond to a specific screen. The letters don't make any sense. To get the the main screen when you first log in, you type 'SPF' onto a blank screen. I thought to myself, "Just remember, it's three letters, begins with an 'S' and is associated with sunscreen." So, later in the day the boss came into my cubicle to show me something on the mainframe and asked me to log in. I was working on a couple of other things, so I was a bit out of it when he came over. I logged onto the mainframe, and without thinking, my fingers just typed in 'STD.' I hit enter, and nothing happened. The boss looked a little confused as he peeked over my shoulder.

Me: "Oops! My keyboard is all messed up. I have to hit control for enter."

(I hit control, and still, nothing happens. I couldn't tell if the boss was embarrassed or sincerely confused, but now he finally decided to clue me in.)

Boss: "STD?"

I was so mortified.

Can't Buy Stamps at the Supermarket in NY

Last week, I remembered that I needed a book of stamps while I was at the supermarket. So, when I was at the cash register, I asked the lady to add a book of stamps to my bill. She was pretty sure that she heard me wrong, so she asked me to repeat what I'd said. I asked for the book of stamps again, and her response: "Right...this is a grocery store. Try a post office." She was looking at me like I was a complete idiot. I was going to explain the whole California thing, but really nobody cares.

Damn Sunless Tanner

Last night the boy and I went to the Lincoln Center for "A MidSummer Night's Swing" event. In preparation for this, I decided to apply a sunless tanning lotion onto my legs. I've always been kind of self conscious about showing my legs because they are so disgustingly white and refuse to tan regardless of how much sun I give them. New York is also too hot and humid to be wearing pants all summer long. So, I followed the directions as given on the bottle and decided to take a little nap while the tanner did its job.

About a half hour later, I woke up and my legs were orange.

Damnit!

Finally Got it Down

I've finally got it down (sort of). Getting to work with my new, shorter route went smoothly. The boss was pretty happy with my supposedly surprising progress working the mainframe during my first week, and the boy and I did a relatively painless grocery run at the local supermarket across the street.

Wrong Direction

I tried the new route today. If it weren't for my little side trip to Brooklyn (unintentional, of course), it would have been much shorter than the old route.

Long Commute

I live on the Upper East Side, but have to commute to the lower West Side for work. It takes me a little under an hour to get to work. I told a coworker about it, and she thought that it was ridiculous that anyone in Manhattan would have a commute almost comparable to anyone living in Long Island or New Jersey. With the route I've chosen to take, I have two subway transfers - and the trains aren't exactly right next to eachother. My coworker suggested a different route that seems a bit roundabout, but cuts out a transfer. I'll see how this turns out tomorrow.

Pros and Cons of Living in Manhattan

Upside:

Your arms and legs will get really buff from walking everywhere and lugging ______, thus saving you money from monthly gym fees.

You can go for a nice, scenic run in Central Park.

The subway is a common, convenient form of transporation, so DUIs or choosing a designated driver are no longer a concern.

I don't have as much reaction to weekly gas price changes.

Pedestrians rule the streets. New Yorkers have no idea that jaywalking tickets exist.

There's always something fun and exciting going on in the city.

Downside:

Elevators in apartment complexes are generally synonymous with sky high rents.

A 30 minute commute on the 405 is equivalent to a 40-45 min commute on the subway system with all of the train switching and waiting. Fast, cheap public transportation really is an illusion.

The weather is unpredictable. It rains a lot in the summer.

The city smells.

First Day at Work

My first day at work started off with a roughly half day orientation. I was a little concerned at first that there was no record that I should even be there. The whole recruiting process was sort of random, disorganized and unexpected. I started to doubt that it ever really happened. But I filled out all the forms, had my fingerprints taken and had a drug test done anyway. The orientation site was not the same as work, so I hopped onto a subway afterwards to work. This company had offices all over Manhattan with each department being in a different location. I was the only new hire from my location that day. Although my id badge was supposed to work, it wasn't granting me access into the building, so I had to follow someone in. My department has no reception area, so once I got in, I just sort of wandered around, poking my head into various cubicles until I found someone who looked familiar from the first interview. That was kind of weird. The first day went like a first day at any other new job. I was introduced to everyone in the department. Everyone was super friendly and helpful, and I didn't have much to do except to go through a couple of tutorials on how to navigate through their mainframe program. Since I wasn't fully adjusted to the time difference or waking up early (6:15AM), I got really sleepy at around 3PM. It got really bad. I could barely keep my eyes open, and the tutorials weren't helping. I've never really liked tutorials. Whether I'm sleepy or not, they've always managed managed to make me want to fall asleep, and I've never really retained anything from them. I learn much better by doing. If I wanted to stay awake, I had to stop going through the tutorials. So, I surfed the web and occasionally went back to the tutorials until around 5:30PM when the boss called me in to see how I was doing and discuss some of the upcoming projects that I might work on sometime in the near future. They seemed really interesting. I went home after that.

How To Run Errands in Manhattan

This weekend's been pretty hectic with unpacking and running errands. Somewhere along the way, the boy and I had to go grocery shopping. In LA, this would be a simple half hour errand. We'd just hop into the car and drive to the local Pavillions or Ralphs. In New York, this can turn into an all day affair. We decided to get groceries in Chinatown because we needed a huge sack of rice, and I heard that the produce was better in Chinatown. The boy brought out a suitcase with rollers and put a large backpack on me. I told him we looked like tourists. This was all very strange to me. We took the subway to Chinatown. Before supermarkets came into existence, I imagine that this was how people got their groceries. Although Chinatown does have a couple of very hard to find "supermarkets," for the most part you have your produce markets/stands, your meat markets, and your seafood markets. We walked around from market to market, each time stuffing my backpack fuller and fuller. My shoulder muscles started to hurt, but I guess I shouldn't complain. All of the heavy stuff went into the suitcase which the boy had to pull. We had dinner in Chinatown before heading back. After this trip, we decided that we wouldn't buy groceries in Chinatown again. Although things were cheaper and better than at a regular grocery store, everything was damp and rotted faster. It was also a waste of a day. But this type of errand running is unavoidable. The next day we had to go to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get pots, pans and other kitchen items. It was the same thing all over again. It's funny how you never need to go the the stores around your neighborhood.

Almost Missed My Flight

I made it to New York (barely)! Last night I caught a 10:40PM redeye to JFK. Normally, I get to the airport with so much leftover time that I'm bored to tears waiting for the plane to take off, but last night things were a bit different (my first time on Delta) :

8:45PM: I arrive at LAX with 3 huge luggages, each about 2/3 my weight.
9:00PM: Finally have all of my luggage in a cart and proceed clumsily over to the Delta baggage check in.
9:15PM: Have my boarding pass, and my bags are checked in.
9:16PM: Take all of my bags to drop off at the image scanner. This is where Delta's ridiculous inefficiency lies. Every single airline I've flown has always thrown my bags on the moving belt behind them after I check them in and get my boarding pass. Delta's idea of checking in bags means slapping a sticker on it and then sending you into a neverending line to do nothing else other than drop your bags off to a backlogged bag collector.
9:25PM: Waiting in line. A lady behind me who has been eyeing my 'bodybag' full of clothes
curiously and somewhat nervously asks what's in it. I can't tell if my answer appeases her or not.
9:40PM: Still in line.
10:00PM: Finally my bags are dropped off, and I'm off to get myself scanned through!
10:05PM: Waiting in line. It's a busy travel night, and I'm beginning to freak out because my flight boards in 5 minutes, and I'm still close to the back of the line.
10:20PM: Finally, I get through the scanners, but my purse sets off the sensors. A lady pulls me over to the side and tells me that she has to check my purse. Among other things, she pulls out a small packet of salted plums in my purse and proceeds to tell me how she loved to eat these as a child, but shouldn't be eating these anymore because of the empty calories. I feel myself getting kind of irritated with her, but hide it.
10:28PM: I'm pretty sure that I've missed my flight by now, but I bolt out of the security area to the gate lugging my purse, camera bag and a 10 pound laptop anyway. Of course my gate is at the very end of the terminal.
10:35PM: The gate is still open! I made it!