Daffnee

My roommate wants to go to Atlantic City for the weekend. Help.

Also, Cleopatra committed suicide on this day in 30 B.C.

I got my first New York Times delivered to my door this morning, and I'm glad to say that reading about worldwide misery over breakfast has not only made me feel like a more complete person already, but improves my relationship with this city I'm in.

I went to see The Manchurian Candidate last night with the neighbours and got up at 7 AM, so I'm feeling pretty run down for 9 PM. Should it surprise me that we have better theatres in the suburbs? No SilverCities here -- it's actually kind of silly that New York has some of the most ordinary theatres I've ever been to.

I spent most of the day wandering down Broadway, through Greenwich to Chinatown and finally the Financial District. I even picked up my first suit ever, so I've fulfilled that particular legal requirement for the year. For the people thinking about coming to New York, a bit o' advice: window shop across all of Manhattan, but if you need to buy labels (or just eccentric clothing), go to Century 21 and have a fun afternoon wandering their ten floors of stuff. I picked up a suit, ironing board, and cushion there today. I would have gotten shoes too, if they didn't all look a little to trendy (i.e. pointy) for me.

So I've had five hours of solitude while walking through New York, and I think that's becoming my preferred method of learning about the city. I got to see the New York and Jersey police prep for the convention, escorting delegates into hotels and on every street corner; haggle with a few Chinese merchants over fake tote bags I only considered buying halfheartedly; and ate both a coconut bun and enormous pastrami sandwich for lunch, which I wouldn't really recommend because it sticks to the teeth and New York pastrami is inexplicably dry. I love that the only vegetables that came with my lunch were a bag of chips and a lonely pickle. Where do people in this town get their fibre?

Fatigue and reading don't go well together, so I went up to the terrace and took a few photos of the New York skyline (as viewed from D'Agostino Hall). The panoramas aren't too interesting, but I thought it's kind of neat that the Empire State changes colour depending on what event's coming up:

Still am not sure if I like this city yet. It makes for good exploration, because the island's pretty small -- I want to do Battery Park City next weekend -- but it's so built up I can't help but feeling that this is a place where people come to lose perspective. Maybe that's too preliminary. More musings later, perhaps with the assistance of what's rumoured to be the best pizza in the city:

That's the intersection in front of the residence. Another banal note: I bought a TV today. More accurately, roomie bought the TV with her American credit card while I twiddle my thumbs, apologise for having a Canadian billing address and promise her the lump sum tomorrow in cash. She's like the Mafia, she won't take cheques or credit.

Must stop buying things. Must start doing things.

I've been dithering over this to-library-or-not-to-library argument for a few days now. Library = considerable hassle detangling the mass of cords protruding out of the back of my laptop, not to mention finding the laptop battery and lugging numerous casebooks (admittedly only across the street). Home = roommate that talks incessantly (to me, not just herself!) and a bihourly request to give wardrobe advice -- ignored, of course.

I'm sorry to say the roomie has not given up her personal mission to "change" me. I feel for her, honest I do; I feel like I've met and become friends with a good number of people, but I don't know if she has. Hence her insistence, and my reluctance, to go out. (We've mutually discovered that we're both combative and are generally used to getting our own way.) We still like each other -- but we're already starting to get a bit frustrated. The clearest evidence of this is that I started to clean the bathroom, which only happens when I'm feeling some domestic unrest.

The people here really are great, though. Obviously I haven't met all of them, and one could make the argument I just gravitate towards those that are more like me, but so far, they're all reasonable, intelligent, nice people. Thank goodness. I can talk to these people without feeling like my energy is dissipating out of my eyeballs! That doesn't change the fact that the only excursion I made this Friday night was for a walk around the block and a quick grocery run for pears and ice cream (frozen yogurt, actually -- never again), but it's still pretty impressive for my track record.

Has anyone ever tried Skype? I didn't have much faith in internet phones until I tried this. It's impressive, but probably because the phone that I'm using for real was rescued from Vanier and has pretty horrendous reception.

Being home alone is kind of nice. I can go to the kitchen without being called to and enjoy the sound of nothing for a little while. Judging from the number of people I've seen drifting in and out of the computer lab downstairs, I'm guessing I'm actually in fairly good company.

Well, I think I'm enjoying law school so far! There's been a few debacles about not being able to buy things online thanks to my "international" credit card, but I've met a total of 8 Canadians here so far and I'm thinking there should be upwards of 50 for me to search out. The roomie's actually impressed with my social persistence, given my usual disposition. I figure that if I'm spending the rest of the year with these 115 people, I might as well get to know a few of them. She also makes fun of my Canadian accent. I make fun of her fear of insects, street vendors, and unintentionally burning the building down.

The resources here are such a far cry from UBC -- all the perks of a private institution, I suppose. One of the two law school buildings is brand spanking new, and I'm not kidding when I say every entrance has a security guard checking ID. It's an unfortunate tradeoff. The classes themselves have been just peachy, since I'm actually interested in this stuff (unlike Medieval Literature, with apologies to Professor Boccasini).

No pangs of homesickness yet, but I'm sure that it'll come. Maybe when things get truly insane, as everyone keeps insisting it will.

The family flew home tonight, and that wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be. I think they know I'm going to be ok -- more importantly, I think I'm going to be all right. That's not to say I won't miss this, though:

We had a pretty fully day of sitting around, through some very nice speeches and long bits of advice and pretty awful (but boxed and packaged) sandwiches. I had my first class -- Lawyering -- today; we sat around and argued about a hypo(thetical situation) and whether an ice cream truck in a public park constituted a parking violation. The most noteworthy part was that we all got nifty and individual spiral notebooks afterwards.

As for meeting people, it's been an interesting day for that! I seem to have no shame around pure strangers, and since Smooth-Over Man isn't here to keep me from making many a faux pas, I've been introducing myself to everyone in sight and banking on being a Canadian novelty. I don't know if it's working, but I've managed to find an SFU grad at the law school and a UBC pharmacology grad doing her PhD in biomedicine here so far, so I'll consider those minor successes.

Justin's right, though -- the roomie really is good for me. We attempted to go to a comedy club tonight, but they wouldn't let us in twelve minutes before. The cut-off time was apparently 15 minutes before. We went to Terra Blues instead, where I drank coke and listened to a trio of fairly amazing blues guys -- just like on that eternal Pepsi commerical. I may lack cultural exposure, but I remember the Pepsi guy.

Lastly, in a testament to the draw of this place, I'm thinking about going to a performance given by Anna Deavere Smith (a.k.a. Secretary of Defense on "West Wing") here at the university in September. We studied her work on the race tensions in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after a Hasidic driver's car jumped the curb and killed a black boy (Fires in the Mirror) in my honours seminar last year; she interviews witnesses, records them, and learns to mimic their gestures and voices exactly. She chooses select monologues and produces a collage of people, all played by her. It's quite astonishing, really, and for $5, the only other thing I could do is go to a Yankees game -- which I just might, too.

And so orientation begins! Kind of. The roomie has about four feet of unbraided, undreadlocked, unstraightened African-American hair, so that's going to take about an hour to get washed -- but until then, updates on the Suit Search. Anyone who's worried about the CDN/USD exchange rate needs to check out Century 21 by the WTC. I was sorely tempted to start trying on $300 Armani and D&G suits yesterday, but couldn't go through the hassle of getting someone to unlock them for me. Did try on a few nice Taharis, though.

I bit the bullet last night and went to a "jazz" club across the street with the roomie, which turned out to be a groove/funk/r&b joint (she's obviously not to clear about music genres) with excruciatingly bad drinks and a curious band that played an opening half hour of very boring electronic funk before getting into Michael Jackson, Prince, and John Denver (?!) groove remixes. (No joke on the drinks -- I don't drink often, but I don't think a Long Island Iced Tea should taste like gin with ice cubes and cost $10 USD.) It was a good reminder as to why I a) never go out; and b) need to buy earplugs (or at least ear filters).

And because there's really nowhere else that's safe to vent to about the roomie, here goes: she thinks my entire family is complacent! She doesn't understand why we would make each other tea if someone wants it, or how we could spend 4 hours indoors in New York (while it was raining out), or why we keep gravitating back to Chinese restaurants (all different, mind you). Argh! I wasn't planning on have to defend my way of life this early, or this constantly. I honestly don't see the problem -- we enjoy each other's company, have a good time, and really needed to get out of the heat. Maybe having a diet consisting 60% of Froot Loops and 40% of overpriced gourmet meals does something to one's cultural sensitivity.

Here's the silver lining about last night, though; the club might have been torture on the ears (and the drink on the stomach lining), but the walk through the Village afterwards was fascinating. People from the entire city descend on Greenwich Village near the end of the week, and almost every store here is a club/restaurant designed to take advantage of the late-night crowd. Not my scene, mostly, but amazing nonetheless -- it was interesting watching middle-aged tourists and backpackers mingle with students and locals, all while tring hard not to choke on their drinks.

Final note: my parents have now found a favourite Chinese restaurant down the block, and have gone so far as to ask the waiter and owner to "take care of me" after they leave. We got free dessert for the last two nights running. I don't know how they do it, but I love them.

The humidity here has just gone from 80% to 100%, meaning I'm experiencing my first NY thunderstorm. For the rain-savvy kids back home, this would be a "downpour" combined with tinny-sounding thunder, not like the nice grumblings I'm used to, but pretty attention-grabbing on their own. The family came over to help me get through the leftovers from 3 days of eating out, and we actually did a pretty good job of recreating Anmore by booting the roomie out and borrowing her dishes.

Speaking of the roomie, she went to a university with 3600 people (no typo there) and has (what I consider) a scary and chipper personality; chipper, because she's quite upbeat, and scary in that she seems quite enamored with the 'good life' (as in $94 for a pedicure!) Quite the opposite of this Queen of the Homebodies.

The next quest is the Search for a Suit. I started at Saks yesterday to get an idea of what I won't be able to afford, and will probably head to the Banana soon to get some gay-approved fashion advice. (I mean this in the best way possible!)

Till then, this is your damp Vancouver correspondant in NYC.

It's freezing in my residence room right now, which is absolutely fantastic because we've been groping our way through New York for four days now in the disgusting humidity. I'm feeling awful for hijacking my family's "vacation" -- I was hoping they'd be able to take time out and see the sights, but it seems like culture has a lethal effect on this family. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was a particularly toxic one, killing most of Wednesday.

Do I sound cranky? I think I'm disappointed in myself for not warming up to the Big Apple; it seems like so many people have gone through a lot of trouble to make this place awfully spiffy, and the most I can say about it is that it's crowded and feels (right now, at least) to be where the struggle of Western humanity focuses itself. The most fun I had was in a little Shanghai restaurant with my family when we could relax in our natural grungy-Chinese-restaurant habitat. I also managed to arrive just as Early Interview Week was happening in my residence hall, so I was greeted on my first day here by a hoard of chain-smoking black suits and a very solemn doorman who told me I was going to have a tough time moving in.

Those law firms give away squishy penguins, though. I saw a girl who took two after her interview, and they seemed to make her very happy.

I'm all moved in, though. I've got the computer, the gear, the room, and most of the books. The roommate's not too bad either -- very, very cheery, and she doesn't cook at all which means more kitchen time for me! Does seem to be a bit of the socialite, but that seems to be more of a inherent disposition than a chemical addiction or obscenely large disposable income. I look forward to being the recipient of embarassing stories about future classmates. On that note, this will be a wonderful place to hermit, especially with the view I've got:

And if you kids are good, maybe I'll show you the night view tomorrow.

For all those people who have an ongoing grudge against the makers of Crashdows, I am pleased to announce that as of now, this blog now formats correctly in Mozilla, Netscape, and all those other Microsoft-protest browsers.

Here's the surest sign yet that this sinking feeling isn't just a sinking feeling but a real indication I should have gone to Toronto:

FLOOD STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE UPTON NY
1152 PM EDT SAT AUG 14 2004

...THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN UPTON NY HAS ISSUED AN URBAN AND
SMALL STREAM FLOOD ADVISORY FOR THE FOLLOWING COUNTIES...

IN NEW JERSEY...
ESSEX...HUDSON...UNION

IN NEW YORK STATE...
..BRONX...NEW YORK (MANHATTAN)...KINGS (BROOKLYN)...RICHMOND
(STATEN ISLAND)...NASSAU...QUEENS AND SUFFOLK

UNTIL 545 AM EDT...

MODERATE TO HEAVY RAIN ASSOCIATED WITH TROPICAL STORM CHARLEY
IN NOW MOVING OVER THE REGION. RAINFALL RATES OF UP TO A HALF AN
INCH PER HOUR WILL OCCUR OVER THE REGION FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL HOURS
RESULTING IN RAINFALL TOTALS OF 1 TO 2 INCHES BY MORNING. THIS WILL
RESULT IN PONDING AND MINOR FLOODING OF ROADWAYS...POOR DRAINAGE
AREAS AND SOME LOW LYING AREAS.

DO NOT DRIVE YOUR VEHICLE INTO AREAS WHERE THE WATER COVERS THE
ROADWAY. BE ESPECIALLY CAUTIOUS AT NIGHT WHEN IT IS HARDER TO
RECOGNIZE THE DANGERS OF FLOODS.

BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION IF THE FLOODING THREAT INCREASES OR A
WARNING IS ISSUED.

My sister gave me a handmade stuffed pineapple today with an MP3 player inside. That pineapple is the coolest thing ever!

Heard today (by me) in Port Coquitlam Provincial Court: "Your Honour, I apologise that my client cannot be here in person this morning because she's undergoing some changes in her life. You see, she's getting a sex change operation right as we speak."

There's new stack of styrofoam take-out boxes in our fridge. My grandfather's 94th birthday isn't for another week, but he made this colossal exception because my family won't be around on August 23 -- this kind of puts me in an embarassing situation, so I tried to dress nicely to make up for it. (It's interesting that I didn't dress nicely because it was a $100-a-head dinner, as would be appropriate for almost any other kind of cuisine.)

We always end up dithering over why we attend these events in the car. Anyone who knows me understands the significance of the phrase "family dinner"; it's this unbreakable routine, where extended aunts, uncles, and cousins gather around a lazy susan in a Chinese banquet restaurant and try to talk about safe subjects (e.g. school and American politics). The food is usually ridiculously expensive, slow to appear, and shiny. My sister rejects the entire exercise as inferior to home cooking. I try to take the more moderate tack that these events cost a lot more as a symbol of (grand)parental affection, rather than because the food's good.

My brother just said he felt like a bomb, with which I replied I was sorely tempted to hit him three times to see if he'd blow up. He didn't get that at first.

The wastage tonight was disgusting, though. I've only ever read about meals that have roast pig, pigeon, shark's fin, abalone, lobster, crab, shrimp, and fish as main courses, and those appeared in medieval epics right after the chief/king/thane has committed some terribly impressive slaughter of his neighbours. And the 4-course dessert afterwards, even though half the dinner was already packed to go? Brilliant. That meal cost the equivalent of my first-year meal plan.

To take the moderate tack, though, imagine what a 21-year-old Shanghaiese boy with no education and likely few prospects was eating in 1931. Our collective cholesterol might be shooting through the roof, but I for one can't fault him.

Happy birthday, Grandpa.

It's looking like all my worldly belongings can fit into three large suitcases, and I'm counting my kettle, toaster, Japanese bowl collection and traditional Chinese rice pot. The conventional interpretation would be that I'm not doing fantastically on the materialist front, but that doesn't grate much.

Who was it that said he loved music because it was the soundtrack to the crappy movie that's his life? The one thing that can't manage to fit into a suitcase and get to NYC in one piece would probably be my pretty blue flat stereo -- the one with the deceiving SureWake button -- and I'm wondering if I need some kind of musical replacement. There are days when I need the Barenaked Ladies in the morning, but I suppose I can try to train myself out of that. Then again, Rio did come out with a new iPod challenger that's darned cute and promoted on streaming video by a Korean CNET staffer, no less. So everybody say hello to the final three:

Don't worry, I haven't actually become a gear girl yet -- I think it's just a coping mechanism to avoid thinking about the move.

Music must look like fireworks.

I'm feeling horrible guilt again for taking money from tutoring. Maybe I should stop asking for the money monthly; it's too big of a shock when I finally get it. I even tried offing some of it (well, most of it) to my mother to offset "high gas prices", but she didn't buy it. Ugh. I hate dealing with money.

On to something I enjoy far more: school! NYU just released my fall schedule, so here's the lineup for this JD2B:

Contracts: "The body of law concerned with private agreements, including capacity to contract, contract formation, interpretation, conditions, excuse of performance, and remedies for breach." Taught by one Professor Liam Murphy, who I'm hoping will sport an Australian accent.

Lawyering: A full-year course that, as far as I can tell, teaches you how to be a lawyer. We get to role-play! Granted it's probably role-playing lawyers instead of black mages, but I get the same buzz from wearing a black suit.

Torts: A funny name for all the bad things that can happen to people -- falling objects, uneven sidewalks, obnoxious farm animals, etc. The calendar describes them as "inflicted physical and psychic injuries." Mm, psychic injuries. The best kind. Less good is the time, that dreaded 2 - 4 PM Tuesday/Thursday time slot that guarantees a comatose Daphne. I tend to buy a lot of coffee on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Procedure: Full name, Civil Procedure, a.k.a. How To Sue the Pants Off Someone. Is probably going to be very helpful, seeing as Financial Aid just told me yesterday that I don't qualify for loan repayment assistance after I graduate, essentially ensuring that I'll have to become a corporate whore in three years to pay back the banks. That made my parents happy, at least.

Nothing yet on reading assignments, but that'll probably show up later next week. The case I have right now, "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers", deals with 5 guys stuck in a cave that eventually decide to eat one of their party. They're charged with murder 30 days -- and 10 dead workmen -- later.

Well, gee.

The only thing I can find out about Dr. Belle Mulholland is that she was a sessional lecturer in the UBC Department of Religious Studies some time ago, presumably while department was still called that and Professor Mulholland was still alive. She's not mentioned in the rather extensive History of Classics at UBC; I can't even figure out what, exactly, she taught. I guess time is just as corrosive in the digital age, and even more so for those that lived before it was normal to Google one's own name for fun.

Belle Mulholland must have really loved her work, though -- her friends and family established memorial prize in her name at UBC after she passed away. I'm thinking it was originally intended to be given to a religious studies student, but maybe after a decade of low enrollment in that program they've decided to open the doors a bit wider.

Thanks, Professor.

According to Phillip Till on CKNW, summer is not the time for heavy, policy-laden talk show issues. Summer should be filled with "powder puff" topics, like saving starving dogs in Athens or how much money it actually takes to live like the stereotypical millionaire in Canada these days. I'm taking my lead from a recent TIME blurb on "weird" fruit, not because I find any of them particularly weird, but because I happen to have a particular grudge against one of them.

It's a crying shame that durians are better anime-ated or made into plush toys than dragon fruit or rambutans, because they really do stink to high heaven. I remember how a few years ago, a little while after we finally got the ice maker in our fridge working, my parents brought another one of the accursed fruit home and left the stuff they didn't finish in the fridge. We still can't figure out how the durian got from one side of the fridge to the other, but we had durian-flavoured ice for a week. That's gross.

They must have been inspired, though; my parents' latest thing is home-made durian ice cream. We've had spotty success with the ice cream maker so far -- fantastic strawberry ice cream, mango sorbet you have to eat with a pickaxe -- but you wouldn't know it from the way they churn out the goopy yellow stuff and get friends over to ooh and aah over it. I mean, I've tried the stuff, and it tastes like pureed garlic and onions with little bits of fibre tossed in for fun.

I can't believe I have to hold my breath every time I open the fridge for more milk for my tea. But then again, who am I say I make life easy for my roommates considering my interesting interpretations of Chinese cuisine?

On a completely different track, I think mum's starting to feel the time tick down -- I've been getting more hugs than usual recently. This house is going to be so horribly empty in September, I'm almost glad I don't have to be here to feel it.

I've been an Internet convert almost since I first heard about it -- call it the knee-jerk reaction of a kid raised on Trek -- but I have to say that the case for human contact's been pretty strong over the last three days.

I was deathly afraid of the phone as a kid. Used to cry when my parents made me call someone, hated getting calls even from friends, that kind of thing; I think I felt that I was bad enough at reading people when they were right in front of me, and having only a voice to go by could only lead to bad things.

There's also another small issue too: I think I sound like a chain-smoking Honger with an unfortunate case of bronchitis, but that's more of a sidebar.

The key thing is that I've managed to wire an enormous sum of money, book plane tickets, get early housing arrangements and set up some complicated term deposit thingy for American funds that I don't really understand all by talking to real people. Nary a Google or FAQ needed, only 3 cents for long distance and an adequately pleasant manner (which proved to be easier to pull off than I thought).

Maybe I'm turning into a people-person! Or, perhaps just a people-presence-person. Who knows, these humans keep surprising me.

Oh, and I haven't received a bill from the NYU Bursar or law housing yet, meaning I get to call early tomorrow morning and demand to pay them a disgusting amount of money as soon as possible. I bet they set this up just so they feel like they have the moral high ground.

There's this moment that happens to me every year at Night Market, usually when someone I'm with stops to look at cheap socks. I'm looking down to the end of the alley, and the crush of humanity trapped between the flourescent stalls takes my breath away. It's so simple; pavement, tents, and people. So many small, similar, indistinguishable people. It boggles my mind that each little bit of that teeming mass has a life, experience, and an individual consciousness.

I usually end up doing something silly instead, like watching planes head towards YVR and timing the intervals between landings. A Boeing 747 has a maximum takeoff weight of about 400,000 kg (900,000 lb), and that entire mass is supported by the uneven flow of air above and below two 25 meter wings. Amazing, and so much easier to understand than people.

There are days when I kind of miss physics.