After writing the previous blog, I called a friend (let's call her Sun since she's a cheerful person and her smile is bright like the sun...plus her name has 'sun' in it) to see if she was available to hang out. I haven't seen Sun since senior year of high school and haven't talked to her since I first met her in 8th grade, so in a sense, I never really knew her.
New York is weird like that--you meet up with people who you barely know and are able to talk to them as if they're old friends since you both share a common background, like being from Orange County or having mutual friends. Or perhaps it's because we crave friendship so much in a city where we know no one that we're able to reconnect instantly. Either way, it was lovely being able to spend a whole day with her, getting to know her all over again.
Throughout the day, I learned several lessons and was reminded of old ones as well:
Cherries - We went to Ching Chong Town for dumplings and bought fruit from the street vendors. I bought two pounds of cherries for some friends for $5 and thought it was a good deal. Then I walked down on the same block and saw two pounds for $4. Eh, it's only a dollar less so it's okay. So I bought another two pounds for myself. Then I walked down a bit further and saw two pounds for $2. By that time, I was annoyed with myself for buying the first thing I saw. Lesson learned: look further down before you make your purchase, especially when the vendor is Asian.
Impermanence - a group of Tibetan monks from a monastery in India have been touring the US for about a year and a half now and every time they break from their tour, they stay at my family's house in California. They happen to be in NY right now and was performing a mandala ceremony at a book store in the city so I stopped by after lunch to visit them. They spent 40 hours over five days to create the sand image and was going to destroy it within seconds. The destruction of the mandala was symbolic of the impermanence of life and served as a reminder for people to not be attached to material things (since all things are impermanent). Someone once told me, You never step foot in the same river twice since the river is always flowing...or maybe I'm making it up...whatever, it still sounds profound. It's very easy for me to get caught up with this material world and I needed this lesson to remind me to keep it real. Lesson learned: all things are impermanent so try not to be so attached to certain things, like your youth or your LV bag.
Karma - While Sun and I were drinking our drinks in a tea house (I love green milk tea!), a mosquito flew by my head and I tried to swat it with my hand. (Ever since I worked at Vector Control, the words "West Nile virus" goes off like an alarm in my head whenever I see a mosquito...along with images of dead birds.) Several hours later after eating at a Korean restaurant for dinner, I felt an itch on my face. I touched my face and felt a bump. Are you freakin' kidding me?! A mosquito bit my face! Grrrr. Lesson learned: there is such thing as karma...and mosquitoes can talk to each other and will get you back for attempting to kill their friend...or maybe the one from the tea house was stalking me the whole time and was waiting to get me.
Burning face - I bought a new tube of Neutrogena facial cream cleanser and tried it for the first time today. I squeezed some onto my palm and applied it to my face. I now know how Macaulay Culkin felt when he put on after shave: it freakin' burned my precious face and I let out a yelp. It's like I had chlamydia on my face except my face wasn't peeing (and no, I wouldn't know what chlamydia feels like) -- the burning sensation lingered for what felt like minutes so I ran cold water on my face. I was also curious to see if the cleanser really did remove dirt from my pores so I washed the heel of my foot with the cleanser (I walked in flip flops for 11 hours through the dirty city) and it didn't work well. Do I not have pores on my heel? Lesson learned: read the label first.
1 comment:
...please where can I buy a unicorn?
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