I’ve been out and about these past few months, exploring various parts of the city, meeting new people, etc. etc.  And while these things have been fun and exciting, I’ve come to realize that why I’ve been feeling out of sorts lately is because somewhere along the way, during my exodus from California, I’ve forgotten some of Life’s essentials…

Every single day, as I walk through this city, I come across all sorts of people.  Young. Old. Beautiful. Not so easy on the eyes. Fat. Thin. Hungry. Well-to-do…and that’s when it hits me that here, in this exciting and frantic city, it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day. I think daily living, regardless of where you are physically located, it’s easy to get caught up with life in general and lose sight of the things that really make life…well…Life.

I’ve never been much of a phone person. I prefer face-to-face contact over talking over the phone but alas, I no longer have that luxury with my friends and family so slowly, ever so slowly, I find myself becoming a phone person.  In a recent conversation with my sister (she always knows just the right things to say) she reminded me of one of my favorite songs and I’ve been listening to it quite frequently and it is the lyrics that have have served as good reminders of the important things…

Everybody\’s Free to Wear Sunscreen

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.

The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….

You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year
olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t
congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on.

Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you’re 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth. But trust me on the sunscreen…

My Blackberry Curve is dead. It died Saturday evening. After an hour of tech support, the prognosis was grim. I had been in contact with T-Mobile all day and they wouldn’t ship out my new phone without my dad’s authorization (I’m under their business account) so I emailed my dad to ask him if he could call T-Mobile to authorize whatever it was they needed. He emails me back…

“Alice,

T-Mobil asked me if your phone is blue berry or black berry, you have to answer them clearly. Beware that they won’t ship you the new one until they get further information from you.

One of the customer service named Sharon said she needs the IMEI number which located on the back of the phone, and she asked me about the error message or broken condition which I an not able to answer her.

You have to call in again to provide the IMEI#, then they will ship a new one to NY directly.
I have informed them to ship the new one by Express and is willing to pay the difference.

When you get the new one, read the liablity condition carefully, and return the broken one by USP within 7 days, or they will charge you $375.

Give me a ring if you have any question or need any further assistance.

Regards,
Ray Hsu”

So silly and formal all at the same time. *sigh, I miss my dad. So while I feel completely out of touch with the rest of the world, hooray!!! I’m getting a new phone.

The students are doing well.

We went on a field trip to Riverside Park to view some heroic statues and monuments. At this particular monument, the kids were more fascinated with the homeless man who was sleeping next to it than they were with the actual monument.

Speaker: What type of message did the artist want to convey?

(kids talking): What do you think he eats? I had an old blanket that looked like that… Why is he still sleeping? Can he hear us?

I’m looking forward to going home for Thanksgiving. Though it’ll be a fast and very short trip, there’s just something so comforting with the familiarity of home. I love this city but it’s not a place I would refer to as “home”….yet.

Football for the Fall season is now over. I’m contemplating whether or not I should still play for the Winter season. The idea of playing in snow is really not that appealing but I do play with a great group of folks (though we’ve lost every game this past season), I think it can only get better from here on out.

So I was walking back to my apartment from Mt.Sinai Hospital. I see a panhandler sitting outside of Dunkin’ Donuts. A man walks out of the shop and drops some coins into the panhandler’s cup.

Panhandler:  “That’s it?”

Man: “What do you mean, “That’s it?” A few cents here and there can really add up.”

Panhandler (with attitude): “You could give a bit more you know.”

Man: “That’s it! Give it back!”

Only in NYC I tell ya.

Confused about my post…well it is titled “Sporadic” thoughts.

Goodnight!

- I miss my family and friends.

- I miss Tobie.

What can I say? I love this place more and more with each passing day.

I started off this morning with a meeting, in volunteer services, at Mt. Sinai. I’m excited to report that I’m going to be involved in their Child Life Program. Apparently, Troy Aikman and Garth Brooks funded the start of this amazing organization to help kids better understand their illnesses and achieve a sense of normalcy when they are hospitalized. They have state-of-the-art equipment for the kids in the hospital including a mini-TV station where the kids can produce mini-TV programs.  Every single kid has their own flat screen TV in their room so they can call in to the shows and interact with whatever is going on. It’s totally interactive and amazing.   I’ll definitely be keeping you guys posted.

Later on, I met my teaching partner, Jessica, at Alice’s Tea Cup to plan for next week. Instead, we ended up drinking lots of yummy teas and chatting for two hours. So…basically…we are not ready for next week.

Then last-minute, Randall and I went to get our hair cut. I’ve been wanting to get a haircut for a while now as my bangs were starting to impair my vision. We walked in around 6-ish and found out that they only had room for one person at 7:30. However, they had an apprentice who could give a free haircut at 8:00. They said the apprentice would be under supervision. The end result was…me at 7:30 and Randall the Brave at 8:00. We went to grab a quick bite to eat. He was a bit anxious but the clincher was when we went back to the salon and they handed Randall some magazines, with trendy Japanese hairstyles, to choose from…such as…

…OH BOY!! The haircut started around 8. The apprentice kept snipping away more and more hair.  As far as supervision goes…it was pretty much non-existent.  My haircut ended by approximately 8:40-ish. I was happy to be able to see again.  Let’s just say, Randall’s haircut ended at 9:30. It was shorter than expected but overall, everything was even and it looked good.

What can I say, another day of adventures and accomplishments in this great city.

My goals, by Thursday, are too…

- Straighten out my salary situation. Apparently, they had hired me in on a certain salary scale but I just found out tonight that for some reason, they now have me on a different salary scale where I’m getting paid $12K less than what was originally promised me. (If they don’t fix this, either expect me back in CA by the end of the month or come watch me play my didgeridoo on the southwest corner of Union Square.

- Go swimming! I’m going to wake up early enough to get to the pool before the senior citizens get to it.

- Bake! I’ve been craving carrot cake for quite some time now but just haven’t had the time to really gather all the ingredients together. Grating carrots can be quite time-consuming.

- Catch up on correcting/grading papers. Seriously, everything we do in class is multiplied by 20. Let’s see…with six different subjects each day, that puts me close to 120-something assignments to look over…now multiply that by approximately a week and a half.

- Go read in Central Park…(in other words, scope out a heavy-traffic location where I may potentially be performing my gigs during my Union Square off-days)

Then it’s back for a full day of school on Thursday and a half-day on Friday. Whew! What a crazy week this will be!

I miss speaking Mandarin.

It’s weird to go from speaking Mandarin every day for the past four years to once in a while now.  I’ve been listening to Chinese songs practically every single day on youtube, my iPod, to the Asian man who plays the Yang-Qin in the subway if I’m lucky.  Whenever I hear people speaking Mandarin, my ears perk up.  Sometimes I get the urge to jump into their conversations but then they’d just think that I was 瘋狂 (crazy).

Maybe I should hire a Mandarin conversationalist to talk to.

I boarded the 5 Express train, found an empty seat (next to nobody) and proceeded to play Brickbreaker.

At 42nd Street, a bunch of people boarded the train. A guy ends up sitting next to me, along with his friend who sat across from him.  I went back to my game.

During my game, my peripheral vision was picking up a lot of hand movements from both gentlemen. It was rather distracting.  Next thing I knew, the guy sitting next to me tapped me on the shoulder. I paused my game, looked over at him and he was making various gestures with his hand.

I looked over at his friend with a WTF look on my face. His friends translates, “He’s saying that he thinks you’re pretty”. At this point, I was thinking…

1)  I know a few hand gestures myself. None of them friendly.

2)  I can go back to my game as if nothing happened.

3)  Say thanks?

4)  Just move!

I think God must have felt a bit bad that he was using my life for his entertainment purposes because at that moment, in mulling over my possibe choices, the train pulls into 86th Street.  I quickly gathered my things and bolted.

Gosh I love this city.

I have a student with CP (Cerebral Palsy) in my class.  He’s wheelchair bound and non-verbal but he’s quite bright. Every single day I see him watching the rest of the kids run around, watch other kids write on demand, speak their minds and basically, doing “everyday” stuff that the majority of us take for granted and I wonder…what is Tom thinking? How does he feel?   Though I don’t know many of his thoughts, he is constantly smiling and just has such a sweet spirit that it makes me tear up at times. I can only imagine what it’s like to have so many thoughts to communicate to others but physically being unable to.  When he opens his mouth, a jumble of incoherent sounds emerge yet he tries so hard to communicate. Through it all, he is still happy and exerts so much effort in class.

Just today I received an email from one of our Pi Phi alumnaes.  One of the women, after having twin girls in June, found out that one of the two girls has been diagnosed with Spinal Muscle Atrophy Type I and has approximately 4 months to live.

All of these situations just really remind me of how important it is to not take the little blessings and gifts that are often so easily overlooked, for granted.

If I have words to express, then say them.  If I have thoughts to share, then share them.  So many times I have things I want to say or express to my family and friends that instead of verbalizing it to them, I keep it in, thinking that somehow they’ll receive my messages or thoughts through my telepathic brain waves.

There are times when I’m so overwhelmed by how rich and blessed (I am/we are) that I’d say, at this very moment, it’s one of them.

I have been going into work wearing long-sleeve shirts and on occasion, turtlenecks. Some of my colleagues give me puzzling looks while others just ask, “Aren’t you hot?”

Man-oh-man…I tell ya. Some days, I think this city is just trying to freak-me-out-back-to-Cali by putting me through various trials. These days, it’s been the weather but I tell you what New York City, I love this place and I’m going to stay put…unless we get hit with a hurricane or some form of twister…then I’ll just end up wherever I get picked up and dropped off.

Don’t mind me. I have a cold and am rather sleep-deprived. Goodnight world.

As much as I love my profession, the beginning of the school year is always a pain in the a$$. I love being a teacher because I love teaching but nowadays, it feels as if I’m spending most of my time and energy on paperwork, legal IEP documents and the politics of work.

I’m getting to know many of my students and their families much better. I have…

…a  student who is a performer in a NYC elite dance troupe (can’t think of the name at the moment..her mom is also a professional model in NYC)

…a student named Notorious (…no, I’m really not kidding)

…a student (and his family) who are pretty high profile folks in this city

Aside from work, I’ve joined a co-ed touch football league through ZogSports (softball was completely filled so it was either touch football or dodgeball…I’m saving dodgeball for the Winter Season). Last Sunday was our very first game. To say the least, our game was a UCLA vs BYU Part II….final score between “Michigan Alums” and “Your Mom Was My Last Touchdown”: 23-0.

We played on hard astro-turf. Basically, any exposed skin that came in contact with the ground during a play would be rubbed off. By the end of the game, both teams had people with bloody knees, elbows, ribs and arms. To my amazement, I didn’t have a single scratch on me…I think it was because I’d let a ball sail by me rather than dive after it in fear of ending up with a bloody face or black eye. Next game is on Sunday against BrownChickenBrownCow. Will definitely keep you guys posted.

Happy Football Season Everyone!