'Tis the Season for Spontaneity

A few hours ago, I showed up at a barbecue place in Brooklyn to meet with a group for brunch. It was a chilly 50 degrees spring weather, and I just came from my date, so I was still in last night’s clothes. I wrapped myself in a large black coat hoping I didn’t look like a huge embarrassment, and like this, I pushed the door and entered the restaurant.

The brunch was an invitation from a girlfriend, and I was expecting a typical girly encounter - like the one you see in West Village, with three, four girls sitting at a small table, making small talk. Instead, I walked into a day-drinking party, with 10 people I didn’t know all chilling under the sun at a long outdoor table, holding their glasses of beer. Which was great, because it was cold outside, so I didn’t have to take off my black coat and reveal what was going on last night.

Meanwhile, these people had already been there for 2 hours.

I introduced myself to a French couple who had just moved to New York from Madrid, and a guy who had just flew in from Geneva to visit his girlfriend working in the UN. I caught up with my girlfriend, and saw another friend that I last met 3 weeks ago at a bar. We chatted under the sun for 2 hours about everything and nothing - the Shanghai lockdown, Sunday scares, the best Italian restaurant in the city, and then we ended up at a courtyard of a cafe. We said goodbye afterwards.

And just like that, spring is back with its full spontaneity.

The other day, me and my friend were walking along the East River on Queens' side after work, when we decided to try out a new Malaysian restaurant nearby for dinner. Google map led us to this block behind all those warehouses right next to a homeless shelter, and it became questionable whether we should go back or not.

The sky was already dark at around 7:30pm, and the only lights we could see were the car bumper lights on the road. Tempted by the food, we decided to still give it a go and head to the restaurant on full speed, by foot. Suddenly, a random dude across the street started yelling at us. It sounded scary, and I didn’t even dare to look his way. I was about to grab my friend’s arm and tell her to walk faster, or even start running, except that she realized the guy was actually her boyfriend, trying to say hi.

So, all three of us made it to the restaurant, located deep inside a warehouse, and discovered that the place was just an industrial kitchen - with only one guy sitting at the front to greet all those delivery people. We watched him heat up all our food, took it away, and had dinner at the rooftop of my apartment building, overlooking the amazing Manhattan skyline. The food was great - we were definitely ordering it again - but probably just online only next time.

After a winter of hibernation, I, or we, start having escapades like this again. We get spontaneous, and give it to the world to guide us to where we are gonna go. Both you and I know that we are aching for things like this just as much as our afternoon naps, and we’re excited to have more of it this summer. After all, there are only so many days of Netflix and chill we can stand, before we get bored out of our mind.

So, there’s that, and cheers to the beginning of everything fun in the year of 2022.

All The Apartments I've Lived in New York City

Just like the City itself, New York City apartments have all its quirks. There are the pre-war buildings that arrange the shower in the same room as the kitchen, the shoebox apartments in the most central locations, and then the ones that seem to have it all - reasonable price, plenty of space, great location - but only has one window that faces the dead of an alleyway, making them resemble jail cells.

Like any other average resident in the city, my journey of finding the perfect place took some time to happen. For the first two years, I was living in a flexible bedroom - a rather common setup pre-pandemic for first year NYC dwellers, so that two roommates can live in a one bedroom apartment and share rent. My room was basically a living-room-turned-bedroom, with half a wall just around 6 feet tall as a divider and a curtain as a door. There was no privacy - I not only shared the space, but also the noise, the smell, and for 1.5 years, the mice, of the entire communal space of the apartment. Still, I didn’t care so much, because I was never in my apartment. If you were doing New York right, people said, your apartment was just where you slept anyways. So, I went on living life like a “true” New Yorker. Based in Hell’s Kitchen, everything was 20 minutes away. Tourists went to Times Square for sight-seeing; I went to Times Square to buy eggs.

When the pandemic hit, I upgraded my living situation and moved into the master bedroom of another apartment in Murray Hill. It felt so nice to finally have a door. Sunshine filled the entire room, and I even had a view of the Empire State Building. The caveat, though, was that it was located right on the busy Third Avenue, and I could hear traffic 24/7. During the WFH days, I even had to mute myself sometimes during client calls, in order to mask the loud ambulance and honking cars.

So, the three years in New York City taught me a lot of valuable life skills. I learned to sleep with the sound of the cars. I became a rodent expert who knew all about mice’s favorite foods (it was not cheese). And I learned the best way to air out an apartment when I just had a major cook out. Living in Manhattan was no longer fun - it was noisy, stressful, difficult. Immersed in a huge concrete jungle, there was no place for me to escape. Everywhere I went, there were people, cars, skyscrapers. Dirty water, trash, air pollution.

Exhausted, I decided to live normally for the first time in three years. My salary also increased to a level where I could live more comfortably. And that was when I found my favorite apartment so far in NYC. It is a studio apartment in Long Island City, not far from the East River. The neighborhood is quiet, clean and cozy, quite opposite from the busy, stressful concrete jungle that is Manhattan.

With this apartment, I became an indoor person. There is nothing better than a day staying in, working on a weekend cooking project, or curling up to read with the sweet fragrance of my candles. I was finally able to find the peace I was craving for a long time. It was great.

Overall, the three apartments I’ve lived in NYC witnessed a fast changing period of my life. Through my ongoing apartment hunting journey, I evolved from a fresh university graduate tangled up in the messiness that is Manhattan, to someone in her late twenties who retrieved to a more “adulthood” lifestyle. Time went by real fast, and I can’t wait to see what’s next!

*Title image from istockphoto.com

How to Spend an Afternoon in New York City

It’s 60 degrees and a Saturday. I put on my contact lenses, sunscreen, lipstick, perfume; I picked an outfit that’s slightly more dramatic than usual, and off I went to hang out in the City.

I took the 7 train, then the 4 train, and got off at 86th Street on the Upper East Side. I walked past the century-old apartment buildings along with their 50-year-old doormen. I studied the gothic relief on the wall, the red bricks and the brownstones. I walked behind a diverse group of preppy college guys chatting about school. I walked in front of two middle-aged Latina women discussing their friend’s kids — a 22 year-old, an 18 year-old, and a 14 year-old. All of us were heading towards the same destination — the Metropolitan Museum of Art, right on the eastern edge of Central Park.

A few exhibitions down, I ended up at the hot dog stand right outside the museum entrance. I bought a bottle of gatorade and sat down on the infamous museum staircase, where the Gossip Girls used to sit. Except this time, I was with a few hundred other museum goers from all around the world. That black saxophone street artist was still there, playing decade-old Chinese pop songs he learned while he was living in China. The familiar sound of ice cream trucks was also in the air, along with the fluttering wings of pigeons fighting over fries left on the ground, and people chatting about everything and nothing.

A few stairs away, a young couple just sat down, arms embracing one another. Further up the stairs, a hippie girl was waiting for her friend group to gather — she had a large angel wings tattoo on her waist, nestled right below a tight crop top. Standing behind the girl, a French woman in a pair of grass-green pants was chatting with an elegant European man dressed in black, both in their 40s. Elsewhere, an Indian family of 6 were lounging in a row, sharing ice cream and organizing their backpacks.

It was a typical New York crowd.

I took out my subway reading - Nine Short Stories by J.D. Salinger - and started on a new short: “Just Before the War with the Eskimos”. It is about the encounter of a teenage girl back around the WWII period, in the hallway of an Upper East Side apartment, waiting for her friend to return the money she borrowed. A story that could be occurring right now, above me on the 20th floor of one of those apartment buildings in a nearby block.

The saxophone player began to play some really outdated songs that I hate, and it started to get chilly. I stood up and left the staircase.

Heading east, I hopped on a bicycle and began to cruise downtown along the Second Avenue. I passed by a bunch of bars and their patrons celebrating — I mean really celebrating — St. Patrick’s Day. I passed by a grocery store named Grace’s Market. I passed by my old neighborhood, Murray Hill, as well as its gigantic cinema. I passed by a dead rat lying on the curb. Finally, around the golden hour, I went on the Brooklyn Bridge and saw the river from above. It was gorgeous, and I was going full speed. Cars were passing by in the opposite direction on another lane, separated by metal fence. “Wo-hoo!” A man suddenly cheered from a car that quickly drove away.

“Wo-hoo!” I responded back.