New Yorkaration

So aside from a ton of random unwanted things happening in the recent past, this week wasn't so bad.

First off, I've been blessed with a few new friends who are quite cool and fun to be with.

(Christy and I)

And I've seen a number of really cool things...

This is from the time warner mall on columbus circle (opposite the southwest corner of central park).
This is framed by some building in the 50s near Park Avenue, that I thought captured something beautiful about the city...
Finals have been upon us, causing much stress... much much much stress...
And I thought this was a beautiful shot... I call it "Aspirations" it's an unedited photo I took today on the hunter 3rd floor east west skywalk.

so this was a quick post just to keep you all updated... hope things are well, where you are.

Beauty, oddity, and real life rabble-rousing in NYC and DC

So NYC is definately fun, most sundays I get to see several cast members from SNL, Conan, and other TV comedy shows for free doing improv at the Upright citizens brigade (second awning in the picture).Every sunday we arrive circa 7-715 with hopes of getting actual "tickets" but generally resigning ourselves to stand by... both are free, but getting tickets when the line is long is risky, it means that you might get a really bad position in the stand by if you don't get tickets... though almost everyone in the stand by gets in (I don't know of anyone being turned away). The only draw back of standby is that you have to sit inline for 2-3 hours and can't leave (we actually do send out some scouting and foraging parties to grab grub for us all).

This is the stage of the UCB theatre... (it's flush with ground level) I usually end up sitting on the ground right on it... instead of a chair (better view as the chairs left over when standby gets in are not primo.)
This is Rosh and Chantal at central park... for a while when the weather was good we'd go to central park and claim to study between classes... if you were in such beauty would you really study?
I found this funny... it's the ice cream machine in the dorms... "hmm... which ice cream do I want???" "Ice cream sandwich, chocolate eclair, White castle burgers, candy center crunch, creamsicle, reese's bar, klondike?? Definately White castle"
This is Chantal... She asked for it... really really she did... no lie, ask her!
There was a festival in little italy a bit back that we went to... it was cute and had a really impressive opera singer, but was basically food stands... nice lights though!
This is the girls on the bus as we headed down to DC... we missed the first bus at 6pm and ended up taking teh 7pm... but that gave us time to find some chinese food in china town, nyc... as the bus was a china town to china town express. the ride was fun and filled with nutella, gatorade and other fun things like the toilet door behind chantal openning constantly and belching it's hideous stench into our polite conversations.

When we finally arrived in DC, Chantal and Rosh were attacked by a rather large puppy demanding that we adopt a pet.
This was outside Union Station in DC... I really like the bird in midflight.
This was inside. I really liked the light falling in.
This is the Capitol... we couldn't figure out how to go in, and the Brits really didn't want to... they apparently aren't at all interested in American Government... I don't blame them. The majority of Europeans I know really really really dislike Bush. And that also seems to go for New Yorkers.
This is Rosh, Reflecting at the reflecting pool outside the Capitol.
This is chantal getting wacked in the face by the map during a sustained gust of wind.
That's hetti hiding from the Capitol police... chickens are good at camoflage.
We decided while walking through one of the sculpture gardens to walk into a sculpture... and rosh came up with the idea for this fun shot...
We met a squirel during our lunch outside of an art museum that loved chocolate chip cookies from subway... but he couldn't hold his cookie... after eating a little bit he ended up running around and did a 360 spin in the air... too much sugar...
this is me in the Hirshorn... I love this shot... and Hetti had to get in it as well, but she was cooler than I and only is showing a leg.
This was in the Hirshorn and was a bit trippy... I don't know if I like it enough to want it in my house or if it makes me sick at all... but I what was I saying? I was confused by the colours...
Chantal decided to squash the washington monument...
Hetti decided to eat it...
And rosh won the coolnes competition by making it come out of her mouth.
Hetti also learned how to fly on the trip.


And then I went somewhere I hadn't been in over 20 years... the vietnam memorial.

I'm pretty sure I found my grandfather's name... but oddly when I went there I realised I didn't know his whole name... only that I'm Edward the second, Manuel the third, and Alonzo the nth... odd how something so common for most families to know is lost in families that struggled. I'm pretty sure it was Alonzo, Manuel Bustos from San Antonio, TX... If I would have had his death letter with me still I would have been able to corroborate his Unit affiliation also... but I think I have the copy in Iowa still... not sure.



We managed to hit almost all of the major monuments... and got to see the needle at dusk... it was beautiful.
AndI'm a freak.
This was a pretty shot from when we walked around the tidal basin...
(Jefferson memorial)
we also got aquainted with the DC metro system... it's a bit complicated compared to NYC where you pay only one fare for how ever long your ride is. In DC you have to figure out how far you are going, station to station, then where you want to return to, then add it up and put that much money on your card... sounds easy... except when you enter a station, it's really hard to figure out where you are going exactly (being new to the city), and then trying to find the station location on a rather impressively large board of names, do math and then figure out how to pay is a bit taxing... luckily the metro workers were nice and helped out.
the first night (friday night) we went to the Georgetown area after hearing from a DC cop (who was from Russia via a stint in NYC) that there was food to be had in Georgetown... so we caught the subway and hoofed it over... noticing all the college students dressed up to go clubbing. We ended up walking trying to decide what to eat, when we finally decided on this american-mexican restaurant (I don't even want to call the food it served tex mex...) I went online on my Cellphone and found out about a cool rooftop after getting a review about it... so when we entered, we were about to be placed downstairs, when I asked for the roof top (not knowing exactly what that was) and promptly being rewarded with this cute little roof top area in nice cool weather. The food was on the better side of okay, the service was okay, but it was a nice place to chill. Towards the end of our meal, the downstairs was flooded with a sorrority party... and girlish screams could be heard everywhere... sometimes I'm really happy I've never dated a sorrority girl... I think I'd want to kill myself if she behaved like that around me.

my cellphone came in handy again the next day in discovering another cool place... this beautiful park...



we stumbled across it as we were trying to find a place to eat the ice cream we bought (I'm quite notorious for eating at least one or three servings of icecream a day!)... Earlier in the day we had eaten at a rather tastey new orleans cafe and found an incredibly cool area of dc (the name of which escapes me right now). After sitting in the park, eating ice cream and studying abit, we headed out, but decided to head back as my cellphone/pda once again saved the day and directed us to a series of jazz clubs in the area (louie armstrong used to play near this park) where we were directed to a really cool bring your own beer, food, etc. club that had an incredible atmosphere, good music, and a great reason to exist (to propagate jazz and education on Jazz... it was a nonprofit initiative of several groups).... the place had four distinct but continous "zones" the first was when you entered, a few chess tables, the second along the right wall was dinning tables, on the oposing wall was couches facing the stage, then as you went in further, you stepped down a few stairs into the last area which was the club... several small round tables with chairs, dimly lit, as music from sax, piano, bass and drum vibrated the air that surrounded people seemingly suspended in a trance but also seeming so alive that their realness seemed to verify your existence.

Few times in my life felt more like a movie or a dream.

The next day we all slept in again, checked out and headed downtown where we meandered abit, was unimpressed by the minuteness of the white house and then headed back to NYC.

capital break

9/24/06
655p
This weekend was fantastic, I spent it withtwo beautifu brits in our nation's capital. We realised early last week that we had a three day weekend, and decided to do a random road trip. It was great fun, from cheking out the public mnuments to viewing a smithsonian modern art gallery to walking along the potomac under the stars and planes flying low overhead. We also had chances to walk though more industrial ghetto areas (our hotel was in one) figure out the public transport system, visit georgetown in search of good eats (the alamo grill? Is okay, and mostly worth it, but make sure you ask to sit on the roof) and accidentally run amok in adams morgan.

Adams morgan was perhaps the most fortuitous of our trip, in finding a nice new orleans style restaurant that actually was somewhat akin to cajun and creole food (though not so much that they served ever trendy café du monde coffee instead of the true louisiana staple of community coffee.) and though they asked if we wanted beignets to "complement" our meal (when have beignets ever been a complement to a meal? Aren't they more of a separate snack meal usually served with coffee and chickory?) I forgave them as the food was quite good and rather reasonably priced.

After our dinner we walked around a bit, grabbed some maggie moos ice cream (akin to marble slab and amy's ice cream) and headed to perhaps one of the most incredible parks ever stumbled upon. (pictures will follow when I get to a computer and am not sitting on a bus typing on a pda). It was gorgeous set in a part of town which has still remnants of former wealth, but now mostly an african and hispanic neighbourhood of the lower working class. The site apparently was an alternate location considered for the whitehouse.

It had whispering water steps, grand views, greenery, ponds and other beautiful things that turn studying into a relaxing occupation and one's body a tad satisfied and a great deal lazy.

Later on, I stole away into our enemies bathroom (starbucks) and then regrouped with the girls to review the attack plans for the night and assess the one most likely to lead to success.

We decided to search the historic u street district (which fortunately was a stonesthrow away) for signs of jazz. (Duke ellington and various others played here.) After being turned away from various bars due to minimum ages, and having a bouncer in th very HEART of the district swear there was no jazz around (there were a few next door to his place in fact) we were finally directed to two possibilities that might cater to all ages... The first sounded a bit like they were using sythesizers and also had a steep cover ($15)... So we decided to trek to the last choice which proved a fair distance away. But also proved to be an amazing gem; HR57. The place was all ages, served wine, beer, and dinner and had three distinct, but comingled atmospheres. From the music club, to the social lounge to the chess parlour, the place offered quite a bit in moods and pleasures.
The jazz was fantastic as well, with a pianist that as chantal said "is perhaps the most animated" any of us had ever seen.
And the food by the way was delish... Fried chicken, collard greens, and red beans and rice for $6. Oh how I miss the south sometimes. Chantal being our token veggie friend had to eat some veg lo mein from a nearby store, which she said was quite good.

We also managed to keep our tradition of oversized large cups (aka, the various plastic containers you find in grocery store salad lines) alive and well with the intoduction of a half gallon of oj and a liter of sparkling water from the neighbourhood wholefoods. (we were allowed to bring in our own food and drinks, and alcoholic ones had a $3 per person "corking fee" that tough reasonable coupled with our severely mild interest in drinking quashed any chance of us buying spirits at the store to the south.)

All in all this is a long post, its 737 and I'm on a bus from chinatown to chinatown (dc-nyc) for 35$ roundtrip... My finvgers are tired and my friends need some attention. So au revoir.
741p

lately.

(a display on ellis island)

lately life has been quite enchanted (aside from the housing situation, being that NYC has a whole new set of rules for apartment searches/leases).

I've gone to central park numerous times, for various picnics, various dinners with friends, and various beautiful and exciting experiences in the city that I was finding trite until I discovered it's culture, (and a few londoners and a spaniard.)

NYC is filled with wonders, from starbucks, mcdonalds, subway, barnes and nobels, and duane reades (super-drug stores like eckherts or cvs) on every corner.




Life here is very odd, aside from email and making calls and searching for suitable apartments, I have class and friends I keep up with as best I can.

Some time a week or so ago, I ate lunch on Broadway, just west of central park... and when I say on Broadway I mean I ate it ON Broadway. There are islands on various avenues that they occaisionally put benches up on, aside from very beautiful landscaping, so one day I saw it, said why not? and ate a chicken, mashed potatoes, sparkling water and steamed veggies.



I also have a new cell phone, so if you're interested, you can email me and I'll send you back the number.


One of my classes rocks (well all of them really but this one especially). In my Geology of NYC, I basically get to look at the urban development of NYC by walking around it. It's pretty amazing, because I basically have to get to know this city more intimately than most people do who live here for as short a time as I expect to. On one of my trips through harlem, I saw quite a bit of things I never thought I'd see, albeit things I never even thought of. It was quite interesting to see racial divides still in place, and shame about the name "Harlem" (various businesses have changed their names over the last century to take out the name Harlem from their titles).

I also found how alive racism is... how hurt and blaming some african americans are. While on our walk through, we had one man scream "Cracka, WHITE CRACKA" repeatedly at us, and we also had a waterballoon and some eggs thrown at us. I missed the waterballoon, but luckily was the one hit by part of the dozen eggs. I can't explain why I like things like that. They're very humbling and they surely make me face my pride and sense of justice, but most of all in some weird way when someone treats me in a way contrary to dignity, I feel like I'm getting exactly what I deserve, and that oddly excites me and brings me joy. I honestly don't understand it. I really don't, I just know that I feel like a better person a more honest and true person after being denigrated and despised.

Annie and some of her Kids in connecticut, She's amazing and they love her so very much!
Superman one time use cameras are really really really expensive... I'll just stick with my cheap 150$ digital camera, and have to deal with not throwing it away after 24 exposures... though buy one get one free really is a nice deal! I'll have to rethink my position on this whole camera thing... it IS superman.
This is in the church that Annie works at... isn't He gorgeous! I love Him so much!
This is Serendipity 3, the place that inspired the movie Serendipity, and has an awesome frozen hot chocolate!!! (though its 15$ and can serve 3 easily).
A common street scene in (West) Harlem
This is the beautiful church I get to go to mass to every day when I'm at school, it's only three buildings down from school!
This is the ceiling of the Grant memorial. NSE (National Student exchange students) and the few International exchange students, went on a double decker bus tour of NYC last saturday, and apparently Ulysseus S. Grant is buried in NYC. He chose not to be buried in DC, and his wife chose NYC out of his short list of acceptable burial sites. His tomb is the largest in the nation.
The end of the civil war (I think).
Hetti playing dead, and trying to get old Ulysseus and his wife to stop being so boringly dead.
Just a beautiful photo outside of the tomb.
On top of the double decker... that's Chantal. (She's from Houndslow, aka part of London)
This is the site of and construction on the WTC.
That's Roshni and Paloma (a Brit and a Spaniard) on our picnic in central park... after our tour we decided to scout out central park for some fabled water falls, and brought along some picnic food... a baguette, jam, oj, water and maybe some other small stuff.
Central park is pretty at night... isn't it!
This is looking at Downtown from the Jackie Onasis reservoir (AKA the Lake) in Central park... gorgeous!
These are my friends again!
Manhattan from the boat to liberty and ellis island (we went on sunday after our saturday bus tour).
Lady liberty. She's surprisingly small... I wasn't very impressed by her stature.
But I am impressed by her being so meaningful to our country, and the world.
Ever viligant, she stands looking on the city and land she loves.
The docks at Ellis island.
The hall where immigrants would line up for immigration into the USA.


This was a cool display about the impact of the Statue of Liberty on post 9/11 nyc. Read the photo... its quite powerful. And then wonder what she means to you.

The ceiling to the hall of immigrants... I love old ceilings.
Hetti and Roshni became quick friends! This was at the Salsa dance show on battery park... it was by far the single best dance show I've ever been to... and we just stumbled unto it! And it was free... one of the girls from "so you think you can dance" was part of the dance group (she obviously wasn't very important compared to the rest, as she wasn't introduced until the end of the show... the dance group was some broadway show's cast, Mambo nights?).

This was from today... this is a train yard in poor manhattan... Just north of harlem on the west side (Inwood?).

This is actually an atypical scene in NYC... most elevated trains were torn down in the 50's and 70's, and replaced with subways.