What has come over me? I don't write anymore. I have been too occupied by matters that deny me time to get to know myself better. I've been trying to do so many things that in the end amount to nothing. I have taken to sleeping on long rides--the four hour trip to New York last week, the two hour train ride (and one hour wait) to Neptune that botched Thanksgiving night, the six hours I spent on my butt in a Greyhound bus back to Washington freaking DC... my old self would have been more tolerant and attentive to the flashing landscapes, especially when acquainting with deciduous flora on their way to the grave, for the first time. My old self would've been able to write a novel with that much time.
Okay, maybe not. But still, needless to say, I didn't enjoy my Thanksgiving break as much as I had expected to. But of course, the first day/night of a trip is always remarkable--holding the promise of a great week ahead, if only a little promise. I arrived in New York at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday afternoon. It was my first time to take a Bolt bus, which is this new great bus servicing DC and NYC. On the way there I sat beside a grad student from George Washington University (who got her ticket for a dollar! I paid $17.50) and we talked about a lot of fun things. She told me about a great dumpling place in Koreatown and I promised that me and my friend, Dane, who was meeting me that night, will go scour the streets for it. I'm not a fan of Asian food in America. Nothing beats my mother's dirty kitchen version of everything. Food here is so expensive that if you're from a country like the Phils. you'd feel like nothing would be worth your money. My current favorite food are the burrito bowls of this Mexican fastfood, Chipotle. I'd say that at least in my part of town, or probably in the Mid-atlantic states, Chipotle is more popular than the shabby branches of Mickey-Ds. (Yes, the few McDonalds I've been on look like variations of a Taft Avenue branch in the early '90s.)
There's nothing like arriving in New York with a nice handbag holding your laptop in tow and a stroller bag with wheels that make gurgling sounds. The scene is straight out of a hollywood movie--either I'm a black sheep returning home post-reform (a la Serena in Gossip Girl), or I'm a newbie who looks up to Holly Golightly. The beauty of New York, for one, is in the way it is lighted. If someone took a picture of me right then and there, the lights would've been perfect: there was little but enough sunlight getting in through the buildings, reflected in the facades to let my scarf highlight the rest of my black ensemble, and all the other signage on the awnings of restaurants, or even just the OPEN sign on a barber shop nearby, would bring out the spark in my eyes and that toothy smile. Right before my friend presses the shutter, a yellow cab passes by and the frame is complete. Perfect. So yeah, if this was a film, that big iMax camera would be circling around a dreamy version of me, awed by the spectacle all around, and Natasha Bedingfield will be playing in the background.
But the fantasy ended too soon, or rather, I let it go on for too long. Twenty minutes later my friend and I were still walking, looking for the dumpling place in that rather expensive section of Koreatown. A bowl of rice and dumplings for $16? How about I cook some in the microwave? I was already very anxious to eat because I forgot to eat lunch earlier that day and Dane had already bought two cakes from this new cheesecake place that all of New York is going crazy about, Magnolia Bakery. Red velvet and lemon lime cheesecake. I was literally drooling.
Disappointed about the lack of variety in Koreatown and the outrageous prices for food that I can prepare on my own (hehehe, yabang), Dane and I walked all the way back to where we started, only to land on a bar & grill that later on became populated by middle-aged white people wearing board shorts and lays on their necks. We never found out what was going on at Madison Square that day, some luau thing.
(to be continued, rehearsals =.=)
