sick

Sick. Not to be confused with "hot" or "awesome" as in the way my Boston teenagers use the word. "Yo, that was a SICK concert dawg!" hehe. I caught some kind of bug and am feeling thoroughly crappy. Mrs. KC just left, sigh...it was so fun to have a friend to play with and take me to really yummy Korean food. The hubby is on an ER night shift (tonight and the next few nights) so it's just me, our stuffed puppies and some old DVDs.

finding friends and finance 101

We had a very social week last week, which is great! I reconnected with old China friends over brunch and amazingly fragrant tea at Alice's Tea Cup. We checked out a small group that meets practically across the street from our place, full of doctors, of course. I hung out with some of the small group ladies, and we got invited to our first dinner party here! It was so nice: pleasant company, fine cheeses, gourmet German cuisine and mochi and cream puffs that we found in Korea "town".

Saturday, we also attended a budgeting seminar which was REALLY helpful as we learn to navigate around the financial perils of living in this mucho expensivo city! Basically, the seminar thesis was: be firmly intentional about living simply, enjoy all the non-consumery things that New York has to offer, develop a budget that prioritizes giving and saving and don't give up!

Today after church, we went out to Flushing to stock up on Chinese groceries and ate at Joe Shanghai's! The xiao long baos were pretty good I must say.

Through all of this bustling activity, I got to meet some people working in schools, organizations and fields I'm interested in exploring...and as much as I may loathe networking at times (I'm so turned off by the posturing and manipulation), it really was a great week for networking.

This week, our first guest comes to visit! I will continue the hunt for jobs and network network away.

what do i wanna be when i grow up?

I still don't really know. Suggestions?

The job hunt is in full effect now since our nest is at least 70% furnished to my liking. Now I'm actually itching to work!

I'm considering everything from part-time sales at Crate and Barrel (since I go there like everyday) to teaching in Harlem or a fancy private school to free-lance writing. It might be fun to be a personal shopper if I could stomach all that materialism. I've always been so jealous of the clear career direction of my husband. He's known pretty much since he was 10 years old. Me? I'm still dreaming of a million different things, lack of commitment? Lack of skills? Lack of vision?

is this yuppyhood?

Our Weekend

-decent Chinese takeout (piping hot from them to us in 15 minutes)
-big, fat, 5-inch thick, week-old Sunday Times ('cause they end up taking me a whole week to read)
-sealing Craigslist deals, our latest finds: a painted screen and hallway table
-lunch with Dr. T in Brooklyn Chinatown, picked up all the stuff we left with him (it can mean nothing good when one is excited to see one's old cleaning supplies)
-driving out to Long Island Macy's to swap wedding presents (unruffle those feathers dear reader, they weren't YOURS)
-getting sucked into Macy's special promos (20% here! 25% there!)...belts, shoes, bags, wallets...eeek!
-hitting up Ikea for odds and ends and plants and mass produced art work
-staying up late to set up and organize and rearrange

And then, the last questionable activity (I struggle with buying more stuff, getting stuff too easily, what's a NEED anyway?)...Ordering groceries online. A few clicks of the mouse and ding-dong! at your door at the conveniently clicked time. Kinda scary. Do I like this? Is this good? To borrow from Dylan Thomas--rage, rage against unquestioned yuppiness!

In my readings this week, God keeps hammering over and over again that there are special days, festivals where people are to remember, celebrate, and DO NO REGULAR WORK. Do no regular work, repeated like 800 times in one chapter. And that got me thinking about Sundays and sabbath.

Our *favourite* pastor has a great talk on the sabbath--that God establishes it because of our inexhaustable drive to do, prove, achieve. Guilty as charged. That the sabbath is not necessarily for NO activity, but *avocational activity*, things you don't normally do each normal day, but to enjoy things that will restore you and refresh you! Isn't this so incredibly gracious of God? To forsee the toxic hazards of our fallen restlessness and FREE us up TO rest! To celebrate life and life with Him!

Be it resolved that there will be no more shopping or housework or other normal work on Sundays as much as can be helped.

blog on

When I first started posting in July, I wasn't sure how long I would keep this up. I was at home, we were separated, it was a tough time.

I sometimes don't admit it, but I really like to write. In fact, rarely a day goes by where I do not write (and I don't mean e-mail or barebones business writing). Of course, people who like to write, like to have an audience. And maybe blogging is a teensy bit to writing, what many actors say live theater is to acting--more satisfying than film or TV because there lies the promise (and risk) of instantaneous feedback from a tangible audience.

Yes, I too, love instanteous (preferably kind) feedback, lively dialogue, great conversations, face to face, over email, on the phone, and of course, through blogging. And now that I'm where I'm supposed to be, I think that I will blog on, because I just really like writing.

Simple pleasures of late: those imitation roller-blading machines in gyms now, random creme brule at Bloomingdale's, picking out fab ties for the hubby, making new friends and reviving old acquaintances!! Oh the joy of a coffee date with someone other than my spouse! He just read that and is pouting. I just prefer to interact with more than one person in a day, don't get huffy!

contentment

I should say it out loud, right now, that we are so blessed. And I am really thankful.

Little things and big things, I should always acknowledge! Instead of jumping from worry to worry, one uncertainty to the next uncertainty! Why do I do this? (There's no meat! No water! We wish we were back in Egypt!)

Last night a long-coveted bookshelf came for me, and it was like Christmas morning, I was so happy! (I totally discriminated against all the monstrous medical textbooks and claimed the entire thing for all MY books, hehe). We had such a fun time rearranging furniture and laughing at our own silliness!

This past Sunday was gorgeously pre-autumn, and I spent much of the day in Central Park reading the paper, smiling knowingly at couples taking wedding photos, lunching by the Boathouse and catching up with friends before heading to Redeemer for church.

Being jobless, and somewhat, seemingly, directionless can easily cause me stress. I feel like I need to prove myself all the time, and be perpetually on the go, doing, achieving, changing. Contentment, in whatever circumstances, what a thought--to be a content person...that would really be something.

World Trade Center

A recent New York Times article talks about how newer arrivals to the city are often eager to visit ground zero, attempting to connect more deeply to their new home and neighbors. Veterans on the other hand, care less to visit the site; their own memories are enough.

As poster-children for the newer population, I don't deny that visiting Ground Zero and watching World Trade Center are things we are doing to help us understand better what it was like to be in New York in September, five years ago.

I appreciate Oliver Stone's omission of that familiar footage the world was bombarded with in the aftermath. Instead, our vantage point is mostly from the inside of the buildings, terror, utter cluelessness, fires, collapsing rubble and all. I appreciate that the story centers on two everyday policemen and their everyday families. For me, the film becomes most searing as they try and keep each other alive with mundane stories, (but now, oh so precious stories), of family life.

The last time I cried as much in a movie was probably, hmm, not even in Hotel Rwanda.

Which brings me to a point of struggle: as horrifying and truly heart-breaking the events of 9/11 were, I just could not help thinking that financing, markets and acclaim are readily available for movies about this tragedy, but not all tragedies get the same deal, and that does make me kind of sad.

Numbers-wise, bouncing-back on a national scale-wise, it's a small event compared to what happens in Sudan, Congo, Chechyna...on a regular basis. It IS understandable that the average North American is not as into movies about far-off lands and foreigners. Like I said, I cried more in this than Hotel Rwanda, it definitely FEELS much closer to home, but I'm struggling somewhat because I'm aware that the scale of the genocide in Rwanda, and of other wars involving innocents, far surpasses 9/11.

I guess this is a long-winded way to say that it makes me sad that we don't hear stories of other suffering people as often or as lavishly told. It makes me sad that there are limitations to our empathy and compassion as a movie-going public and as individuals. And maybe that's ok, we're human not God, we can't be perpetual bleeding hearts for an abstract world--right? I don't know.

I think everyone would admire the wife of one of the policemen, who, in her own grief, manages to use it to comfort a complete stranger. I guess I hope that the tragedy depicted in World Trade Center will stimulate the kind of attitude that allows us to empathize and comfort others, whether they're American or not--INSTEAD of the fortress-America, us against the world type of attitude and all its associated atrocities.

View of Oyster Bay

I went to the Met today. I didn't have much time, but that's ok because it's close by and I disciplined myself to only see the Tiffany collection. It was so lovely it was almost painful to look at.

Random thoughts on ultra-urban life:

Tipping- I wish there was some widely circulated guide or some reliable system out there to know who/when to tip and how much. (Is there one?) This has perplexed me for awhile. Who decides these things anyway? Why aren't people paid enough so that tipping is largely factored out? Maybe the Japanese are one up on us here.

Elevators - We all feel the awkwardness...people staring up, staring blankly ahead, staring at the ground to avoid eye-contact or conversation. And in a building filled with doctors, it's become magnified...REALLY intense people with weight-of-the-world attitude intensely avoiding eye contact or conversation. The one pleasant elevator co-rider so far was a man with a very deep Southern accent. And a Latino delivery guy.

Dog Mania - Everyone has a dog! They're everywhere! Is this because people are starved for companionship and cuddly-ness in the big lonely city and prefer non-talking dogs to talking/annoying humans?

More cleaning and furniture shopping and home decor on the menu.

housewifed!

My life here so far has been about:

Grocery shopping at $teeny tiny grocery stores$ stocked full of all things Jewish. Nearly knocking over many a tiny Jewish grandma in the process.

Picking up the doctor's dry cleaning at one of the million cleaners within spitting distance of our apartment, (every other storefront is a dry cleaners or a nail salon--mani/pedi $15!).

Admiring all the stylish women in their big Chanel sunglasses, complete with teacup poodles in designer purses while searching for the bank, the post office, the parking guy, the Crate and Barrel...

Cooking full dinners with soup and everything, all Chinese mamas out there should be proud, packing lunch for my hubby..

Scrubbing nasty floors, ridding all remains of the infamous foam peanuts, doing mountains of king-sized laundry, fighting a losing battle with dirt armed only with a small Dirt Devil Broom Vac...speaking of which, every time I use or open up a new gadget I think fondly of the people who gave it to us! Heeee...ahhh..the George Foreman grill, the beautiful Denby dishes...the lush bathmat under my feet, so fun...

See for yourself...

Our building
our hood













our backyard

at last

The worst part was probably the inch by inch crawling for over 3+ hours to cross over. One tough talking officer, then one uncommonly nice one later and we were on our way to Ithaca. Perhaps with the audacity only found among newly-weds, Doojin called exactly, literally, as we pulled out of the border to suggest we go get a room somewhere.

By the time we got to the land of the Cornell, it was LATE. The hubby was in seventh heaven pointing out every single apartment, restaurant, classroom, hangout, rock, tree and waterfall that had ANYTHING to do with him remotely at all.

After breakfast at Friendly's (it's like FAKE food there, blehh, nothing tastes real) with one of the hubby's Cornell admirers, we headed home! HOME for the next 3 years at least! I haven't lived anywhere for 3 years since undergrad!

Now, he's cleaning the bathroom while I slack off. Haha. He'll get his revenge though when he goes back to work on Monday and I get to unpack ALL the boxes, every suitcase, all the wedding gifts, stinking foam popcorn and all, and make this place FEEL like home.

We are blissfully relieved, deeply thankful for friends and family who went through this with us, and in grateful awe of God. Yay!!!