Mexican Food, Palm Reader, No TP

Finally, Tum Tum has been satisfied by good Mexican food! Last night, my friends and I had dinner at Zarela Restaurant, sampling each other's dishes of tamales, chilaquiles, enchiladas and fried plantains. I seriously thought my stomach was going to explode...

After we headed over to Opal, a restaurant/bar with a dj and dance floor, but before we got there, a man passing out fliers for palm reading struck up a conversation with my friend, convincing her to go see his clairvoyant employer. (He also works at a phone store and was able to convince my other friend to check out the new phones.) My friend said that if he could persuade the psychic to read her palm for $5, then she would go. So we walked to the palm reader's street-front office and waited outside, but in the end, my friend didn't want to do it. Darn, I really wanted to see the lady's crystal ball!

This morning I left my friend's place (in the city) to go home and noticed that the traffic police would stop pedestrians from crossing to let cars pass through. Those cars belonged to UN Diplomats (their license plate says so). They get VIP lanes, which were blocked off with cones, while all the other cars sit in traffic. I want my own lane!

In roomie news, we haven't had toilet paper since yesterday morning. Each person takes turn to buy toilet paper but someone didn't do his part. I get home and the same sad empty roll is still hanging there. Good thing I already used the bathroom at my friend's place this morning.

Mystery Solved

My friend spoke to her neighbor and it turns out that he was the asshole who gave me a heart attack. Apparently he mistook her window for his.

***

I went to a Mets game after work today with my coworkers. It was a company-sponsored event so we all received Mets money to spend...kind of like Monopoly money. I didn't pay much attention to the game because I was savoring my foot-long hot dog and Dippin' Dots.

On the way home from the game, I called my cousin to say hi to the kids. I used to visit the 4 year old boy and 2 year old girl every week, and repeatedly watch Shark Tale or Madagascar with them, play catch or push them on the swing. How I miss them so...Anyways, my cousin was telling me about their "camping trip" in their friend's backyard, complete with tents and s'mores. Made me wish I could be in a kid's state of mind, to not have a care in the world, to see the magical in the mundane. It also made me crave s'mores. Mmmmmm, s'mores...

There's a Man Standing Outside the Window

A night of revelry can't be complete until a man is caught with his pants down. Yesterday night we went to Le Souk, an Egyptian restaurant/hookah bar/club in the East Village. Upon entering the door, we pass by a line of tables with people smoking hookah, filling the air with a sweet aroma. There's a tiny dance floor on the first floor and a larger dance floor on the bottom level, which played house music.

Since it was a Saturday night, the place was packed, limiting my dance moves and making it hard to avoid the drunk girls who bump into everyone. The dj played some good remixed old-school songs and transitioned to Middle Eastern music, which signaled the end of my dancing. Nothing annoys me more than seeing and hearing a man do the clap-dance, especially when the claps are off beat.

We sat down so my friend could smoke hookah. All of a sudden, I see a staffer rush to the entrance and then three HUGE bouncers rushed in. You know what that means...Fight! Fight! Fight! Within a few seconds, four bouncers dragged a man out from the dance floor to the front door, circling him as though they were trapping him in. In the dim light, all I could see were his legs, which made him look like he was either wearing nude-colored tights or wearing no pants. Yep, he was wearing no pants...well, sort of. His pants were DOWN to his ankles! hahahahaha! Did he get in a fight while he was in the bathroom? Did he expose himself on the dance floor? I have no clue what happened, but the whole ordeal entertained me.

I ended up going back to my friend's place around 5am and slept in my other friend's bedroom (she's out of town). Before I went to bed, I closed the window to minimize the noise from the cars. (My friend's window has an interior barred door that locks from the inside and is designed to prevent anyone from the outside to unlock it.) As I lay with my eyes closed, I could hear sounds of footsteps on the roof and then the sound of someone pressing the button from downstairs to get into the building. Then I heard noise that sounded as if something was directly outside the window. Keep in mind, my friend's apartment is on the 4th floor, which is the last floor of the building. I opened my eyes, turned my head to look at the window, and I see a man standing on the fire escape, looking in, lifting up the window. OH MY F*CKIN' SH*T!!! My heart was racing so fast and the fight or flight instinct kicked in, prompting me to jump out of bed, walk to the window and scream, "WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU DOING?! GET OUT OF HERE!!!" I squeezed my fingers through the bars to push down the window and the man immediately went down the fire escape.

My brain took awhile to process what the f*ck just happened. I went to my friend's room to wake her up. Do you want to call the cops? What if the guy wanted to rape me? Or maybe he wanted to steal something? Or maybe he's just the drunk neighbor who locked himself out of his apartment and mistook my window for his window? (The windows are within inches next to each other.) My friend didn't want to call the police because the guy was gone by then, so we decided to go downstairs to see how the man got onto our fire escape. There were two ways: he could have pulled himself up the ladder from the ground level and walked up, or he could have climbed out of one of the apartments and made his way up to our floor, which meant that he lives there or knows someone who lives there. In the end, there was nothing we could do but make sure the window and barred door were locked. I told my friend to confront her neighbors but I'm not sure if she will. If I were her, I'd throw a bitchfit and kick the guy in the balls for scaring the shit out of me.

In other news, my roommate's bicycle was stolen from our backyard the other day, furthering my worries. Someone easily jumped the fence, entered our backyard and walked out with a freakin' bike. The street that I live on rarely has traffic going through so it's unlikely someone saw anything and if they did, they probably don't give a crap. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the neighbor, who also has a bicycle but it wasn't stolen. I went around the apartment to test the windows' locks and most of them don't work. I wrote a letter to Ivan last night to fix the windows and today, he (with a shirt on!) cut up some wood to block the windows from opening. Eh, it will have to do for now.

I'm Going to Get West Nile Virus

I've never been bitten more by mosquitoes in my life than I have during my 1 1/2 months in NY. WTF?! I have scars on my arms, foot and leg from scratching the itchy bites. Last night I saw a mosquito fly in front of my face in my bedroom but I was too slow to kill it...but a couple seconds ago I just smashed it with my school planner! Yes!

I woke up last night with an itch on my forehead, hoping that it was all in my head, but this morning there's a pink bump right there. As you can tell from the picture, the mosquito was engorged with blood...probably my blood! (No wonder I feel so faint...I'm missing so much blood.)

Let it be a lesson to all of you--don't mess with me or I'll keeel you, foo!

I Want a Cannoli!

Ever since school started, the days have gone by so fast. While I'm still adjusting to the pace of school work, I've managed to get out a couple days for a well deserved break. Last night I went to the Festival of San Gennaro in Little Italy. According to the festival's website, the event pays tribute to the Patron Saint of Naples. Frankly, I don't care who the saint is; I just want my cannoli!

Mulberry Street is lined with food vendors, cheesy fair games, and restaurants. People are packed in the street, walking the pace of legless person who moves around with his arms...or maybe even slower. It didn't matter though because I had a yummy-in-my-tummy cannoli. (Sorry, I didn't have my camera on me.) It was oh so freakin' delicious!

Later on I went to a lounge called La Caverna on the Lower East Side. You walk downstairs into the bar/lounge that has stalactites hanging from the ceiling (thus the cave name) and smell the flavored tobacco from the hookah pipes. There must have been something else in the tobacco because there were at least three couples on the dance floor eating each others' faces.

On another note, my landlord, a 40 something-year-old Croatian named Ivan, is the loudest person ever. I'm in the bathroom this morning and could hear him speak on the phone--the guy lives below me and sounds like he's in the next room. When he speaks, it sounds like he's furiously yelling at someone. Also, he's always walking around shirtless. One time I had the blinds up in my bedroom, which faces the backyard, and Ivan walks by doing some yard work, pretending he doesn't see me looking directly at him. I always keep my blinds down now.

I Want to Quit

I'm taking three courses right now and I feel like dropping out of grad school already. How do you grad students do it? I have two research proposals that I have to write up, over 300 pages of dense material that I have to read, and two papers to write. I also have to write in a forum every freakin' day for my online class. And I have to do all that before next Monday. I don't have time to cook so I'm eating cereal all the time. This is so sad. I'm going to die. Good bye social life.

I probably won't be writing for awhile...

Mets v. Astros

Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets.



This is the view that a $3 ticket gets you.


In the distant background, you can see the new stadium that is being built for the Mets.

I'm not a fan of baseball but if I have someone watching the game with me, then I'll watch it. My school was selling $3 nosebleed tickets for the Mets v. Astros game, so I thought, Eh, why not? I had more fun talking to my friends and singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame than I did watching the game...in fact, I missed most of the runs that the Mets made. The Mets fans are very passionate about their players, chanting every batter or pitchers name. At one point I thought they were booing their own player, but the were chanting Alou's name. Aaaaaa-looooooou! By the way, Mets beat the Astros.

Back to School & No, We Don't Talk Like That!

I didn't want to stay out late on Friday night because I knew I had to wake up early the next day for my first day of class. My friends and I went to a two-leveled bar called Tonic, which is a sports bar with televisions panels in every direction you look. We quickly got over the crowded floor, but luckily, my friend's date had a car and took us to another bar called Katwalk, a restaurant/bar/lounge. We ended our night with Mamoun's Falafel, which is unfortunately not as tasty as the Halal Cart.

I woke up at 8am and walked from my friend's place to class. Since I'm in grad school, my building isn't situated by the main campus in The Village. Instead, it is located in Midtown in a building that has several floors that NYU rented out. The first class I had was Communications Ethics, Law, and Regulations, running from 9am to 3pm. The first day of class is usually comprised of an overview of the class, but the professor was able to include lecture time as well. My brain was still half asleep and wasn't ready to answer the philosophical questions pertaining to ethics and legality. Next time, I'm staying home on Fridays...Overall, the professor posed challenging questions and engaged the class in discussion, which kept me awake.

After class ended I went home to shower and then headed back into the city for a friend's birthday dinner at Sala, a delicious tapas restaurant. (I would go back there again but only if I had a huge group of people to sample all the plates.) Her sweet boyfriend surprised her with a birthday cake, consisting of lychee, mango and green tea ice cream, made by Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Following the fat fest, we went to Dream Hotel's Ava Lounge, where I stared at the photographs of the naked women on the walls, and then to D'or, the neighboring underground bar. After one drink, I was literally falling asleep on the couch and decided that I had to go home to catch some z's. While walking from the subway to my apartment, a car stopped by me and the African American passenger started speaking what he thought was Chinese to me. Seriously people, go to school and learn that not all Asians are the same and while you're there, learn how to speak correct Chinese. I don't know why, but it's only the black people that always try to speak Chinese to me. I wouldn't be surprised if they asked me to teach them kung fu. I started walking faster and the car kept following me. A bit scared and pretty pissed that he demeaning my Asian-ness, I screamed, "Go away!" and they drove off.

$152 for a Shot!

No, I'm not talking about a shot of alcohol! I'm referring to a vaccination shot. Before I left for NY, I received my first HPV shot from Kaiser Permanente, which covered the vaccination. The shots are administered in three doses, with the second shot given two months after the first one, and the third shot six months after the first one. Since I no longer have insurance through Kaiser (I purchased insurance through the school) and am living in NY, I needed my second dose, which I received through NYU's health center. You can imagine how wide my eyes became (considering they're small to begin with) when I received the credit card receipt to sign. $152?!!! Nobody ever told me it was going to cost me a month's worth of food! The lady at the counter replied, "You didn't know it costs that much? The school's insurance doesn't cover it." Apparently not!

Wow, our healthcare system is jacked up. Vaccinations are provided as preventative measures against illnesses that may cause irreparable harm, yet they cost an appalling amount that could cause financial strain on many people (namely, me). For those who aren't able to afford such costly vaccines, they risk contracting a disease that will ultimately cost more to treat than it would to prevent. Shouldn't the government do something to subsidize these costs? Like stop spending money on wars and start taking care of sh*t at home.

So I had no choice but to pay the $152. I'll have to come back in January and begrudgingly pay again. But in the big scheme of things, $304 is a small amount compared to what it would cost me if I contracted one of the common strains of HPV that causes cervical cancer or genital warts. But then again I could acquire an uncommon strain of HPV and the whole vaccination ordeal was for nothing.

I can't wait to start my internship tomorrow so I can start paying off my bills. Does anybody want to be my sugar daddy?

Taxi Strike

If I had a car in New York, today would be a good day to drive into the city. There will be a noticeable reduction in taxis because taxi drivers are holding a two-day strike. According to the New York Times, the taxi industry is opposing the city's requirement for taxis to install new technology such as credit card readers and GPS screens for passengers to track their route. Even though I don't take taxis on a regular basis, this strike does affect me because I'll probably have to be squished in between sweaty, angry people pushing their way to get into and out of the subway trains.

I would be screwed if MTA subway drivers ever go on strike...which they have before.

Bruce Lee is Alive

The back of Bruce Lee.


Tai Chi man.

One of the many reasons why New York is such a great people-watching city. While chatting with my friend in Washington Square, we look over and see a guy standing, facing the bushes and intensely practicing his kung fu moves. Then we looked over to the area of dirt and see another man doing Tai Chi. I would have posted the video on my blog but it was taking forever to be processed.


NYU's Bobst Library, located by Washington Square. A wall dedicated to the past presidents of NYU. Doesn't look like there will be a non-Caucasian or female up there anytime soon.


US Open at Rockefeller Center.

After watching Bruce Lee fight a bush, I was ready to watch some real one-on-one competition. The most anticipated female rivalry match was between Justine Henin and Serena Williams and I was there in the first row (well, not really since the American Express cardholders got "VIP" seating) at Rockefeller Center to view the game. If you're wondering, Henin won.

The Lake at Central Park

A view of Conservatory Water from afar.



Conservatory Water, where people actually race their miniature radio-powered boats. Woody Allen's apartment is also somewhere in the background.



I saw at least 3 Asian couples getting their wedding portraits taken. Perhaps there was a special group discount...



Bethesda Fountain/Angel of the Waters, located in the "heart of the park."


The lake near Loeb Boathouse, where people can paddle their rented boat around and pretend like they're lovers from the movie The Notebook...except they would be surrounded by a bunch of other people.



Bethesda Terrace.

A trio of "performers" managed to gather a crowd around the terrace to watch them do flips across the floor. The closing act involved the afrobat (that's what the performers called themselves because they were black) doing somersaults over four people who were bent over. Expectedly, the afrobats solicited money before they did their closing act, with some people giving as much as $40! For a cheesy act that was less than 40 minutes and involved more talking than performing, they made good money. If I was ever desperate and completely broke, I'm sure that I could twirl around like a ballerina and people would give me some money.

230 Fifth--Rooftop View of the City

Photo obtained by 230 Fifth. The rooftop garden, offering breathtaking views of the city.


The Penthouse Lounge, where drunk people dance like nobody is watching them.

Last night my friends and I met up with some people whom we met from Thursday night and made our way to 230 Fifth, an upscale (drinks cost around $15 and most patrons wear cocktail attire) rooftop garden and lounge. Upon exiting the elevator of the 20th floor of the building, my senses were bombarded by the loud house music and the bold colors of the plush decor. We took the stairway leading up to the rooftop garden to view the city lights, but after awhile the cold wind led us back downstairs to the penthouse lounge. In between dancing and sitting on the comfortable couches, I watched an incensed boyfriend shouting for his stoic girlfriend's forgiveness, a cougar dancing with a younger man who had no rhythm, an intoxicated woman who was laying on the couch with her thunder thighs exposed, and a hyper girl (probably drunk) performing a cheerleading routine for her date. Although this place wasn't a club per se, I was still able to enjoy dancing in the ample space and sitting on the couches without needing to buy bottle service.

Brazilian Festival

Brazilian flag.


Brazilians...mostly.


Brazilian food. Clumps of shredded coconuts next to a tray of empanadas.


Arepa, a Brazilian dessert made of grilled corn cake with a cheese filling.


If you look on top of the heap of trash, you can see my plate.


I'm still waiting for a street to be named after me.

The Brazilian Festival was held in Midtown today. It was pretty much another street fair with the typical jewelry, clothes and food vendors and random Chinese people offering massages. The only difference was the loads of people dressed up in green and yellow. I've never seen so many Brazilians before in my life. I was expecting Gisele Bundchen to show up and start doing the catwalk along with the other gorgeous Brazilian women. I didn't stay for too long because the crowds were strangulating and there were no dancers in giant feathers to entertain me.

Jones Beach and East Village

Jones Beach


Where's the water?!


We had the beach to ourselves around 11:00am.


The crowds showed up around 1pm.


My thighs aren't really that big.

Yesterday my friends and I took the Long Island Rail Road from Penn Station to Freeport, which took about 40 minutes. It was the perfect day for a Labor Day weekend beach getaway, with the weather at about 80 degrees with a cool breeze. We brought chips to snack on and noticed some birds staring intently at us and slowly pacing in front of us, waiting for a crumb to drop. Even the NY birds are aggressive! After laying out and napping for four hours, we were ready to go home to nap some more (at least I did) and get ready for the night.

We headed down to East Village without a definite destination, deciding that the best way to learn the city is to explore it without predetermined plans. Logically, we walked toward the area where there were crowds of people and walked by a bar called Crime Scene, where the promoter in front persuaded us to go in and get a free shot. A free shot? Sure, why not? When we walked in, we could see why they would need to lure people in with a free shot. The place was kind of a dive, with beer pong tables scattered throughout the bar. It was basically a college party. When we got our free shots, they were jello shots! Yep, definitely college party. After my friend was hit on by some greasy-looking frat boy, we passed by a Cuban bar that offered $5 mojitos. $5 mojitos in Manhattan? It was too good of a deal to pass up so we all got one, with mine being mango flavored. Yum.

Sick of walking around, we were ready to get our dance on. For us to consider a place dance-able, naturally, the music has to be good. We found R Bar, a decent sized bar that plays a variety of music genres that girls could karaoke to, and danced for several hours until a drunk blonde flung her arm out, knocking over a guy's drink and spilling it on my friend's skirt. To make up for that party foul, we fed our tum tum a gyro from the beloved halal cart, which seriously had at least 50 revelers in line at 4am. Not wanting to wait in the long line, we went to the cart with the shorter line. The night was complete when my stomach was happy.