Subway Creepers

new york subways is a cultural subset of New York that can, at times, be treacherous to navigate. the rules i think people should abide by:

1. take up only 1 seat per person. especially on the 4/5 trains, which uses bench-style seating, i really don't understand people who use their bags or spread their legs so wide that they take up 2 seats. 

2. allow others to exit the train before you attempt to enter it. 

3. give up your seat for the elderly, pregnant, physically challenged or little kids.

these are the basics. there's more nuanced items e.g. moving further into the train when the train's crowded so others can get on, but the above 3 are the basic tenets.

but there's a whole list of bad behavior that is just wrong and disgusting. whether it's engaging in sexual conduct (uh, you are in public. with other people. and that is inappropriate and disrespectful behavior. save it for your bedroom because i'd rather not see it) or groping other passengers (you are a disgusting criminal and should be locked up), there are a litany of activities that you should not do on the subway, let alone in public (and in the case of molestation, never).

this morning i witnessed something really uncomfortable on the way into work. i entered the train in my usual spot, which is near the end of a specific car, close to the conductor's window. near me were the retractable priority seats, each one occupied by one person. in 1 seat sat a larger man. in the other, a smartly dressed blond woman with a large shoulder bag.

as the train took off from my station, i saw the man sharing the center pole with me eyeball the blonde woman. he then proceeded to tap her on the should and ask her to move her bag so he could share the priority seating with her. which is really weird. those seats, appear to be made for 1 person to sit in. while you may occasionally run into the situation where 2 people are sitting, those people are: (a) squished together, with the outer person's butt usually hanging off the seat; and (b)  friends. the situation i saw this morning was neither.

and then, out of the corner of my eye, i saw something even creepier: the guy just kept staring at her. eyeing her up and down, looking at what she was doing on her phone. just blatant staring. and it was so creepy. 

if i'd been her, i would've gotten up right away (well actually, i would never have let him share the seat in the first place). she got off at the next stop, and when she did, the guy actually reached out and tried to touch/grab her as she exited the train. i don't think she felt it, but i was completely repulsed and infuriated. i wanted to step between them when i saw his arm reach out. i wanted to give him the hairy eyeball as he continued to stare after her with his lewd smile. 

but i didn't do either (well no hairy eyeball at least. just side-wise glances of revulsion). if he had actually done something maybe i would've, who knows. but even the almost-somethings he did were so creepy and degrading.

on a more inspiring note:

covert moves

this morning i found myself on a packed 5 train on my way into work. never a fun experience, especially in all this heat, but thank god the 4/5 trains tend to have very good A/C (better than my current apartment, where i haven't installed my window unit yet. and am melting because of my laziness/ineptitude).

the only spot available was the standing bar directly in front of the doors, which works fine for me since work's only 2 stops away. and today, i had the pleasure of having eye candy in the form of a good-looking man standing across from. hooray!

i'd also see this guy before on at least 1 occasion on the same train, and must've thought he was attractive then as well, since i clearly remembered him. as i surreptitiously stole glances at him, i realized how inopportune my position was in relation to him.  if i wasn't standing directly in front of him, at such a close distance, i could probably just stare away to my heart's content and enjoy his sharp, attractive features. but in my current location, it would be super creepy and awkward to just stare straight at him.

seeing this in front of you COULD make you uncomfortable. just a bit.

which was such a shame since he was very pleasant to look at.

Subway Surfing

when i used to drive everyday for my commute to work in NJ, i'd always be super annoyed at the traffic, horrible drivers, and the brights that all cars seem to have installed by default.  now that i'm officially a New York-er, i find myself getting annoyed at bad subway riders and sidewalk walkers. you know what they say: the grass is always greener...


i am constantly amazed at the amount of people who don't have basic commuting etiquette tho. i mean, it's pretty common sense, no? everyone knows that in (at least in the United States) you drive on the right side of the road. and that the left lane is for passing. yet, somehow, these same principles never apply to walking. why not?

recently, i had the pleasure of getting onto a packed subway during morning rush hour. no i'm not gonna complain about how crowded it was. i'm not that much a whiny priss. i understand, it's rush hour. and, in a fortuitous miracle, the car i was in wasn't that packed. it wasn't spacious to the point i could lounge on the multitude of empty seats, but, for once, we weren't packed in like sardines in a can.

which made the man standing in front me as a fortressed barricade to my access to the subway pole very frustrating. if i was a giant, this wouldn't be a problem because i could easily grab one of the overhead bars. unfortunately for me, i am a typical 5' 2" asian girl which means i always have to grab one of the vertical side bars or else risk having my arm pulled out of its socket in my attempt to use the overhead bar. and there was, literally, no way to maneuver around this man. his square-ish, rectangular body shape made him the perfect impediment. seriously, if this man isn't a door bouncer somewhere, he missed his calling in life. 


so i spent the rest of my time subway surfing, which i did surprisingly well at, with only 1 minor wipe-out.

answer me why?

morning commutes into the City can be annoying, tiring, aggravating, angering, etc. For instance, yesterday i got onto the smelliest E train at 42nd Street. i mean, i've been in smelly cars before: sometimes it's pungent food or (usually) the noxious smell of pee. This time though, the smell was reedonkulous. it was a very smack-you-in-the-face body odor and it was unbearable. when riding on NYC subway cars, you can usually tell the NYers from the non because they have stoic faces in the face of the unusual. in the face of panhandlers, kids peddling candy, fights breaking out, NYers keep completely straight faces as if nothing happened. however, on this particular day, about 80% of the car had their noses buried into their jacket collars or scarves; and about 25% of the people were having physical reactions to the odor. it was so offensive that even when i stepped off the train and got to work i still had the feeling of being dirty, as if the smell had somehow attached itself to me like a thin layer on top of my skin. ::shiver:: even now, the memory haunts me...

Sometimes, on those rare occasions, the commute can also be entertaining. for instance, a few days ago i had missed my initial bus to work and was waiting for the next one. my bus stop is right outside of a 7-Eleven and is a high traffic area for kids on their way to the middle and high school. i also happened to be wearing jeans to work that day. as i waited, a yellow school bus stopped in front of me and opened it's doors. i was confused for a moment until i realized: the driver thought i was a student waiting for the school bus. not bad for a 27 year old i guess. or is it?

i've recently been reading the book Eating a Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman. i had NO IDEA what the book was about when i picked it up at the library. i just thought the cover was interesting and then i read the inside jacket and my interest was piqued enough to at least check the book out from the library. i figured if it sucked i'd just stop reading it.

the 1st chapter entitled "Something Instead of Nothing", asking the question "why do people feel the need to answer questions?" was mildly interesting. there was one part that i found particularly interesting:

"I'm not sure that we aren't seeing the emergence of

a society in which almost everyone who isn't famous

considers themselves cruelly and unfairly unheard.

As though being famous, and the subject of wide attention,

is considered to be a fulfilled human being's natural

state-and so, as a corollary, the cruelly unheard millions

are perpetually primed and fired up to answer any and

all questions in order to redress this awful imbalance"

-quote from Chris Heath in Eating the Dinosaur

this concept feels true. look at this blog for instance, and all the millions of other blogs out there. everyone's just spilling over to share their opinions, their ideas, their voice. hence the appeal of appearing on reality television.

i had no idea when i started to read it, that the book is a collection of essays. which was a pleasant surprise because i don't know if i could a read an entire book about interviewing and why people answer questions. i haven't finished the book yet (i'm currently on the chapter about ABBA) but i heartily recommend it. the topics are entertaining and completely relatable. they're relatable because they feel true. his topics have a very Murphy's-Law-feel to them and often they're concepts you've discussed yourself with friends or had fleetingly thought about at one time or another.

my favorite essay is "Tomorrow Rarely Knows" which discusses time travel. it touches upon every concept you've ever discussed or thought about time travel and then explores it a little more. but that's not why i like it. for me personally, was extremely relatable. at one point, Klosterman talks about having the fantasy of reliving his entire life while still possessing his present-day mind. and i have that fantasy ALL THE TIME. okay, all the time is exaggerating it a little. but i do think about it on more than one occassion. it's just such an appealing idea to me but i never delved into exactly why, aside from the obvious. but Klosterman provided a motivation that, while not a great revelation about me, still seems pretty spot on:

"I used to have a fantasy about reliving my entire

life with my present-day mind...I imagine the bizarre

things I would have said to teachers in junior high.

I think about women I would have pursued and stories I

could have written better and about how interesting it

would have been to be a genius four-year-old. At its

nucleus, this fantasy is about never having to

learn anything. The defining line from Frank Herbert's

Dune argues that the mystery of life 'is not a question

to be answered but a reality to be experienced.' My

fantasy offers the opposite. Nothing would be

experienced. Nothing would feel new or unknown or

jarring. It's a fantasy for people who want to solve

life's mysteries without having to do the work...

The desire to travel through time is electrifying and

rational, but it's a desire of weakness... People who

want to travel through time are both (a)unhappy

and (b) unwilling to compromise anything about who

they are. They would rather change every element of

society except themselves...

It takes a flexible mind to imagine how time travel

might work, but only an inflexible spirit would

actually want to do it. It's the desire of the depressed

and lazy."-excerpt from Eating the Dinosaur

...and cue the choir of angels and the light bulb suddenly lighting up above my head. while i've had the fantasy plenty of times, it's Klosterman that revealed why. hmm, i don't feel depressed, but lazy? spot on. i admit it, i have an i-wish-everything-would-just-fall-into-place attitude about life most of the time. kudos to you for revealing my inner psyche Chuck Klosterman!

Quarantined in Sick Bay

for the past 2 weeks, i feel like i've been on a perpetual and never-ending airplane ride. one that just keeps taking off and landing, only those 2 actions. in actuality, i haven't travelled or gone anywhere, but my ears have been constantly plugged up. i keep trying to pop my ears by clicking my jaw, which ends up making me look like fish.

this winter is turning out to be more hazardous than any winter before it that i've experienced in the past. everyone in my household seems to be on rotating shifts of getting sick and being in my house feels like visiting the sick ward of a hospital. i just barely avoided a severe cough and cold (after self-medicating with Robitussin and Zicam for 10 days) and now i feel another itch in my throat that is quickly developing into a cough.

oddly enough, i've never been squeamish about being around sick people (at least when it's people that i know). i possess a completely unfounded confidence that i won't get sick, even when i interact with sick people. however, as soon as i feel even a twinge of illness in my own body, i get into hyper-defense mode and bombard myself with Airborne and Zicam hoping to head off the impending illness.

it seems i've become a hypochondriac in my old age (but only when i start to feel ill.).

i have to add a caveat to the above statement about not getting squeamish around sick people. i get COMPLETELY squeamish around sick strangers or people i don't care about. hence, flu and cold season on a NYC subway is not exactly a fun situation for me. however, MOST new yorkers maintain a level of etiquette while out in public. then there was the Cougher i met last week.

i was on the platform waiting for the E train to arrive on my usual morning commute to work. the train arrived and it was packed like a sardine. of course we all tried to squeeze our way onto the train but it was definitely impossible just as i got to the front of the crowd. i let the doors close and waited for the next one. i realized i was dangerously close to the edge of the platform and tried to back up and realized a woman behind me who was staunchly standing in her spot, refusing to move and refusing to let me back away from the edge of the platform. it took more effort and a blatant shove to get myself even 2 centimeters back from the edge. clearly, the woman was not happy with what i'd done. so she proceeded to cough violently all over me. although she had nothing in her hands, she did not cover her mouth. so while being all pressed up on me, she proceeded to cough all over me for a good minute. GROSS. that is just not acceptable behavior, particularly in NY (or anywhere else really).

my subway

i was on the 2 train yesterday and noticed that someone had carved the name "TINA" on the ledge above the seat. how coincidental that i was riding in that car at that very moment.

so school's been...interesting. my roommate is hilarious. Wifey and i went to an AALSA social meeting last week sponsored by Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP at Palmira's. The food was pretty good, particularly these breaded balls w/macaroni in them. so good. the event was fun, made some new friends, 1 of which is a fellow Smithie. there's something about going to Smith that creates this instant bond.

Wifey got so drunk. the event had free food and wine and beer so we were all drinking chardonnay. Wifey doesn't have a high tolerance anyways so by the time we left, she was rocked. we walked home w/some fellow BLSers and when we got to Joralemon Street, we turned around and Wifey had disappeared. we walked backwards and found her cautiously crossing the street. the man next to her kindly advised us that she had just fallen! Wifey was hilarious. she kept thanking us for coming back for her. it turns out that she had slowly been walking towards the right until she fell and then had to hold onto a parking meter for dear life. we each flanked a side of her to keep her upright and got her back to the apartment in 1 piece where she promptly passed out.

i'm not gonna cry, i'm not gonna cry

omg my right foot is killing me right now. it was just trampled on by a giant Amazonian bitch. i was just on the 4 train from Union Square heading to GCT. the Amazon & i just barely made it onto the train before the doors closed. as soon as they did i (like most people who take the subway) leaned back against the door. this is a very practical way of steadying yourself while the train rocks to and fro. obviously Amazon did not know this. she proceeded to look around for a bar to secure herself on. the train jerked forward & she flew backwards. to steady herself she stuck her foot back. her spike-heeled foot. full force. onto my canvas Converse sneakered foot. yelp. she turned & shrugged & laughed & i had to fight everything in me to not start tearing from the pain. even now, 30 mins later my foot is still throbbing. i checked it out for serious damage but only see the start of a very ugly bruise exactly where the heel stabbed me.

yesterday was Ahjima's birthday so we went to Kitchen 22 for dinner. The place is small but nice. warning: this is the first place i've gone to that did not have Jack Daniels. i was so shocked. so instead the bartender recommended a Canadian Club w/coke instead. he did not lie. the drink was smoother than the usual Jack & coke. the thing about Kitchen 22 is that it's a restaurant that serves a prix-fixe 3 course meal w/a choice of 5 appetizers, 5 entrees & 1 dessert. you don't have to get the prix-fixe meal and can get the items individually but it's much more economical if you do plus the food is pretty good. we had 7 people in our party so everyone got a little something. i heard the tomato gazpacho appetizer was amazing & Stacey ate 2 desserts.

afterwards we went to Third Floor Cafe in k-town for drinks. the place was packed playing lots of old-school r&b & hip-hop. Third Floor Cafe is definitely a korean bar & everyone who works there is korean. the uniform for employees is a white top (of any kind) & jeans so beware when you go. the female staff is gorgeous (all about 5'5 and skinny) while the male staff doesn't live up to the standards set by the girls. however, the manager that night was pretty cute. he brought Stacey an apple martini in sheer appreciation of the fro she was sporting.

this is what i learned about korean bars/clubbing. inevitably there will be a bunch of korean guys who will fight. this happened at the end of the night when i went korean clubbing in cali & once again last night. it was awesome. Gohm (Ahjima's nicknamed him "Carebear" & he really is!) & i stepped out for a stoge & were heading towards the elevator when Gohm suddenly pulled me back, just in time to avoid being trampled by the bouncer ejecting some guy through the stairs. Gohm & i headed into the elevator & some more guys came in. right as the doors were closing the bouncer suddenly appeared and started yelling at the other guys. turns out they were being ejected too! i love being this close to the action.

so while Gohm & i were outside we heard little tidbits about the incident. this is all i managed to learn. someone's shirt got ripped, someone had a knife, it was "that guy's" fault, "wtf i didn't do anything" and "i'm gonna kill that guy". korean guys are such thugs. we stayed for about another hour where Gohm & Stacey kept threatening to bust out their one dance move (i'm still waiting) and then left. when we got outside those guys were still there! and they'd started another fight! i told Gohm that next time we go out to a korean bar i'm bringing a tub of popcorn & a 40 & just camping out on the sidewalk in front of the bar so i can catch all the action.

the "Itis"

i've got major "itis" from lunch today. it's not uncommon for me to get "itis" after eating, regardless of the food or the quantity i ingest. anyways, b/c i have "itis" right now, i'm extra cranky. as such, here's the things i've seen today so far that annoy me:

1. people wearing clothes that are WAY too tight for them. the stomach hangs over the pants, the arms look like sausages coming out of tank tops and they usually have at least 3 donuts circling their upper body.

2. people who have to be touching you on the subway (any type of contact) even though there's plenty of room in the rest of the subway car. why?! why?!

3. getting stuck behind someone who is walking so slowly on the stairs or sidewalk and you can't pass them. occassionally this happens to me when the person in front can't help themselves (like an old person or a little kid). that doesn't mean i still don't get annoyed-hey i'm being honest here, not politically correct. however, when it's an able-bodied individual (particularly when it happens on the stairs and the person started fast and then just slowed down cause they got tired from walking the 15 steps-those out of shape bastards) i get very irate.

4. people who take picture of the WTC 9/11 site.

now i'm sure that some of this is just the "itis" but i'm pretty sure there are some valid points in here.

Ew yuck

I was stuck on the 5 train this morning between 2 people who both reeked of onions. o god it was unbearable. i mean so bad that i was involuntarily coughing and tearing. and of course since i was so physically uncomfortable the train seemed to take forever to get from Union Square to Grand Central.

aside from that, it's raining today. usually rain really bums me out, but ever since i got my Totes umbrella, i relish every opportunity to use it. i've never owned an umbrella in my life but when Ahjima & i were planning our Asia trip i decided to get one b/c weather reports were saying it would rain just about every day we would be there and i knew i wouldn't be able to get away w/ wearing a hooded sweatshirt in that muggy weather/torrential downpour.

if you're going to own any kind of umbrella, the Totes umbrella is the way to go. it's got a lifetime warranty and (this is the best feature) it retracts by itself. so you press the button on the handle to open the umbrella up and then you press the button again and the umbrella closes by itself. now tell me that's not one of the best things ever invented. right up there w/ the lightbulb & television.

this weekend was Mother's Day, so went home to hang w/the fam. Debs' dad was here visiting from Taiwan so there was a lot of eating out this weekend. Of course we went to Hunan Cottage on Route 46 in Fairfield (love coming here for brunch on the weekends). The highlight was going to Minado on Route 10 in Morris Plains. as i've gotten older i've opted away from buffet eating b/c all it does is make me feel sick about 3 hours later. Minado is my exception to that rule. the sushi buffet there is outstanding.

now it's back to cereal & salad until ASW's wedding in Vegas this weekend. can't wait for her reception at the Ritz Carlton.