Daffnee

So it turns out that not all large American cities are built the same -- some are much, much nicer than others.

I spent the weekend in Boston with my aunt and grandmother (who were there for a wedding), and I'm moving there at the first available opportunity. They make good use of red bricks. Seafood is plentiful and rather well done. Boston appreciates the humble bean. Streets are wide, clean, and tree-lined. The city is painfully Caucasian and the Chinese food is wanting, but other than that, what's not to like?

This probably comes as no surprise to many of you, but I finally made the roomie cry. Don't worry, it wasn't me being personally abusive or anything -- I wouldn't, considering she brought back an enormous centerpiece from a dinner with Clarence Thomas (whatever one might think of him) -- but perhaps we got a bit involved in our death penalty debate.

I think we both decided at the end of it that people do terrible things, and talking about it just sometimes makes it worse.

Good news, kids: it looks like the roomie and I have one thing in common.

We both like Viggo Mortensen.

I knew there were higher powers at work here when she said she didn't like Anne Shirley.

The mind-bogglingly unlikely pairing of me and the roomie has led me to believe that we are part of a secret sociological experiment, where the two most unlike people in the 1L class at the law school are put together in close quarters and left to tear each other to bits, as it were. They even gave us a living room in which to duke it out. Granted, it hasn't been all that bad -- compared to some past Fairview roomies, it's been heaven, actually -- but I simply did not believe that I had a polar opposite on this Earth until now.

I love Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe. She finds Anne annoying, prefers the father-suitor Royal Gardener, and idolizes Diana. I assume that relationships materialize out of thin and air and will present themselves at a suitable opportunity. She's got a thing for the Albanian doorman and makes finding a rich husband her life project. I'm here because I want to learn the law; she's here in case she doesn't manage to find a rich husband in New York in the next 3 years. She likes pepperoni. I like mushrooms and olives. She thinks I could be trendier. I think she could wear more practical footwear. We both think the other needs a haircut.

I suspect she trash-talks me when I'm out of earshot, but I suppose I make disparaging insinuations too -- if the above can be considered mere insinuations -- so we have a good understanding of each other: we're irreconciliably different but like a clean house, so I think we're ok with each other for the time being.

You guys think I'm going to last the year?

Life suddenly started getting a whole lot better two nights ago when I gave up my res-approved mattress for the floor. My computer's been happy, the weekend came around, I found people who actually didn't mind discussing economic policy at 12 AM in a bar and discovered the best part of being in New York probably has a lot to do with being able to get French toast at a diner at 2 AM without needing to worry about the 98 B-line cancelling their last run.

These might just be the Chinese peasant genes kicking in, but the vast improvement makes me wonder whose brilliant idea it was to start using padded springs in the effort of "sleeping better". Is the idea of sleeping on the ground just unattractive or something? I find it strangely comforting, kind of like Jim Carrey getting bathed in the kitchen sink in Eternal Sunshine but without the monster gloved hands or the presence of Kate Winslet. Something to do with getting back to basics and eliminating the superstructural junk of life, but that's probably just my Marxist analytical gear going into overdrive.

Cerebro is happy and healthy again, which basically means that I'm happy and healthy too -- or at least I will be, after I go on my ergonomic shopping spree this afternoon and pick up a chair to replace this wooden kitchenesque thing I've been using for the past month.

Since it was Rosh Hashanah yesterday and I got the day off (which tells you something about the power of demographics -- did anybody even know when Rosh Hashanah WAS in Vancouver?), I went for a walk around Battery Park City at the southern end of Manhattan. It looks surprisingly like Yaletown. Green grass, glass condos, broad concrete and deceptively polluted water. What I'm not mentioning is that it's an awesome change from the skyscrapers, to be able to see water on three sides and picturesque New Jersey (ha!).

So I've been picking up the finer points of Jewish culture over the past little while, in much the same way I tried to pick up a few insights into Christianity while at UBC; this is a remarkably kosher town. I don't think you can even buy a non-kosher hotdog in this city, which I suppose isn't all bad considering what I hear about what they put into them. It kind of makes me wonder why we didn't celebrate Muslim or Hindu holidays in BC, but I suppose taking a month off for Ramadan just doesn't work well with the current school system.

I'm thinking about finding a law firm sponsor to get free coffee and tea at the law school, because it seems silly that we don't even get 12-cent coffees when we're paying enough tuition to buy a house if we just picked up and ran away with our student loans. There's been widespread support in my section, but maybe they're just being polite. Heck, if I was Wachtell and already had the firm's name on our law school cafe, why not shell out the extra $5000 and get your name on the coffee cups littering the campus too?

I've got an appeal for all the techies out there:

Why does my Interet sometimes work perfectly well (usally in the morning), and other times not be able to connect to any sites at all? Last night, I had to click on a link about 10 times before it would load -- and sometimes not even. This morning, everything's peachy.

What's up?

Is this how dependent I've become on technology?

I've spent the past two and a half days cursing my computer and the various cables and projections emanating from it, all because the silly thing won't let me connect to the Internet. There was a time -- very long ago -- when I didn't even understand what the hype about this Internet thing was all about, and even now it seems silly; ooh, so I can send text messages to people. Ahh, online TV listings. Hey, Canadian news is kind of nice. What, am I nuts?

I feel nuts right now, and am about to take it out on the collection of geeks on the second floor who insist they only deal with staff and faculty members, so I'll have to send some guy an e-mail ("How?", I asked) so he can e-mail me back with his technological wisdom. Screw that, just fix your server and reload my profile -- having gotten a second opinion from Irish computer science guy, I pretty much know what's wrong. Not that this "Gary" I'm supposed to contact cares, I'm sure.

At least I'll be getting wireless in ten minutes -- if these guys don't hurt my poor Cerebro more. It's like the second brain I've always wanted, I swear.

I was feeling pretty ambitious today and tried to configure my computer for wireless roaming, but now I don't have Internet at all and it's driving me nuts -- I even went so far as to ask the Irish guy across the hall with the computer science degree to see if he could fix it, but he spent some time fiddling with all the things I did and gave it up too. I can't believe how dependent I am on connectivity. I barely watch the TV I got, and the only part of the paper besides the front section that I read with any interest is the real estate one; without Internet, I am nothing. You can't be a silent blogger, a non-messenger. An e-mail address is not supposed to be a P.O. Box; it's supposed to have a home.

And all this after things were going so well; I bought CD-Rs, a mop at Kmart, and our apartment is lemony fresh. I even got a free (i.e. unordered) big jar of applesauce with the groceries I had delivered today.

Looks like I'm not the only one that stays in on Saturdays -- I'm downstairs in the res lobby/computer lounge, and the other Vancouver guy is here too. I think that's why I like this place. It's not just that there's all types here, but a big proportion of them are just like me!

I was feeling a bit bummed over not being able to get more than half the answers in any given class these past few days, so I went swimming and did laundry. I even bought Bounce sheets for the first time in my life, so I might still not understand all the facets of consideration in contracts but have darned good-smelling laundry. I'm not sure how I'm going to prevent myself from turning into a incohesive, sedentary blob over the winter, but I'll tackle that one when it becomes an apparent problem. Law school seems to be a really effective way of helping one lose all sensation in the rear, though. These chairs are killing us!

And did I mention I always manage to get stuck with the crazy ones? The roomie came in today feeling "sad" again, this time because law school is turning out to be more work than she expected. As I tried and failed to prevent the "duh" look from creeping onto my face, she explained to me -- quite sincerely -- that she wanted a law degree to make heaps of money and had planned to spend no more than half her time here studying. She also sees no relevance to anything we're doing now because none of it will help us pass the bar exam in three years' time.

Because civil procedure, contracts, torts, and lawyering skills just don't matter in the long run, see.

The good part is that she's the exception. The bad part is that, well, she's the roomie.

Stupid housing cut off the central air conditioning and now all I get when I turn on the fan is a strong jetstream of foul-smelling basement air. Opening the window gives me smog-laced muggyness, so that doesn't help either -- so why is my window wide open and the fan on at full blast? Must be part of my new strategy to make myself productive in the morning.

I love Central Park.

Now, I'm definitely not New York's biggest fan, but if I have to like it for that nice big spot of green it's got in the middle of Manhattan, then I guess I have to say I like it. It's the most civilized part of the city I've found so far.

Maybe that's what's been grating at me. I don't find New York very civilized. It's like that nightmare where you're stuck in Coquitlam Centre during Christmas-shopping season, everything looks the same and people keep telling you to buy things in order to keep you from escaping. Does Tiffany & Co. really need 5 stories to display its jewelry? Does Chloe need 3 separate boutiques along Fifth Avenue? What's the difference between Louis Vuitton and Fendi, anyway? Where are all the non-bank businesses in midtown? Who would actually pay $20 to travel 10 minutes from the Upper East Side to the Village, where I live? And so on.

So Central Park is uber-paved, rather bustling, and has lots of little fences to either protect the grass or the American Elms (which are apparently a lot less hardy than their European counterparts). I got to see toucan fly for the first time (flew away from its owner when splashed a bit with a hose), and what I call the "Angels in America" fountain. It was also the first decently-sized splash of green I've seen in almost a month, and the first hour when I didn't feel like somebody somewhere was demanding something of me.

'Twas a beautiful contrast with the morning; the roomie got very depressed over not being able to go to the U.S. Open because of undelivered tickets -- I was upset too, because she made me spend an hour helping her settle on an appropriate outfit the night before -- so I indulged her in the only way I appropriately could. We went to Bloomingdale's. And so the cog of consumerism spins and spins.

Interestingly enough, the little camp-out party we've been watching take place on the astro-turfed apartment roof adjacent to us was mentioned in the NYTimes today. The owner is apparently a paralegal and "professional agitator" who was boarding unprepared teenage protestors from Texas. They really were unprepared, too -- their tarp tent didn't even stay up when it started raining on Tuesday. Turns out the kids for 18 and 19, and most of the people on the roof didn't even know each other before travelling to NY for the express purpose of telling George W. Bush how much they don't like him. If that's not national spirit, I don't know what is.

I walked fifty blocks from 50th Street home along Broadway this afternoon, and that was enough to make me decide to take a break from the city for at least one Friday night. My lungs hurt! Beyond that, though, it's the number of people that are here; I tried to put in my hour of girlie shopping for the week at Macy's, seeing as there's no sales tax this week -- the one place on Earth where they celebrate back-to-school appropriately -- but fitting room lineups of 40 people and Daphne with a backpack made it a fairly unpleasant experience.

That's not to say the week hasn't had its positives, too; the roomie managed to coerce me into helping her throw a floor party last night, which got the requisite numbers of foreign students and 1Ls into our apartment, with 4 tubs of ice cream as our creamy offering. It made for a pretty stressful morning when I got up late and had to power through 4 contracts cases, but we have enough ice cream left in the fridge and goodwill spread around the floor to smooth most of that over in my mind.

Speaking of ice cream, I am once again eating ungodly amounts. I really should stop, because I'm fond of that suit I just bought and would like to actually one day wear it to an interview.

I don't think I'm cut out to be an urbanite, though. I've made some friends here -- or acquaintances, at least -- who are nice, decent people with good intentions and a grounded outlook, but no one yet I feel that I can be unguarded around. The roomie's on a perpetual project to get herself a boyfriend, and it's spilled over into a mini-project to get me one too. It gets a bit irksome when she calls me into her room several times a day to render judgment on any number of prospective law students or dubious celebrities, and not really helping my goal of finding a comfy social situation! I've been doing quite a bit of Manhattan foot-exploration, actually; it gets me out of the house and away from people.

The final, and perhaps most surprising, thing is that I haven't yet sunk into asking myself why the heck I'm here. The material and work are more interesting than anything I studied in undergrad. I don't think anyone who hasn't been confronted with the law through a casebook understands how uncertain it is; how nothing is ever, ever, ever the perfect answer, or the absolute right thing to do.

Electronic hugs all 'round, mostly because I'm a little lacking in the real kind right now.