For the record:
I'm living in a two-bedroom in Alphabet City**, near 4th Street and Avenue C. The apartment is entirely mine, basically, since the lease holder keeps one bedroom empty so he has a place to crash. He lives in Brooklyn with his girlfriend, and has stayed a grand total of one night in the apartment over the last three months.
So: I essentially have the place to myself, and if you need a place to crash, feel free to look for me.
** It came down to this, and a room in an otherwise occupied three-bedroom duplex nearby. I figured that I could always have someone over, but I wouldn't be able to kick existing roommates out.
I guess I'm really not a fan of random hookups.
...is why you would hit someone up in a chatroom, and then proceed to say absolutely nothing at all.
I... I just don't understand it.
Usually returning to the United States is a matter of lugging luggage. Every summer before I leave I stash my luggage with someone; and every fall when I return I move the luggage to the (new?) dorm. But this fall was different: I no longer had a dorm. I did not have an apartment; I did not have a room. For the first time returning to the United States I had no place - no space, even - that I could call my own.
The plan had been very simple. I was going to move out of campus, and set up an apartment with a friend. He was staying in Manhattan, and he would bear the brunt of the search. I had to return home to work, but I would help as much as I could from Singapore. Before I boarded the plane that was the understanding that we shared.
But weeks dragged on and the rejected pile grew ever and ever larger. If it was not rent it was the location, or it was the broker's fee. I have heard it said that singles are difficult, but whole apartments are really not much easier. Finally after June had passed there were a few weeks of mysterious silence. Some terse messages had preceded them, so I thought it best not to nag.
But when the end of July loomed near, I started to panic. I shot off a tentative email, hoping things were looking up. Instead I got an apologetic reply: he had already found a place.
For himself, of course.
A month later I returned to New York City, and made a temporary home on my brother's living room couch. I sleep there still, although I am glad to say that I have secured a place. And it is a fantastic place, and I will be beyond happy to call it my home.
But in the week before I found the place, I learned a lot of things about myself. Most of them were not that great. It turns out that therapy isn't really necessary; apartment-hunting is more than enough to reveal the horrors of your psyche.
I realized that I could not make do with a small living space; and materialism is only a smaller of the prejudices I have been nurturing. I also realized that I did not want to live with Asians, regardless of how Americanized they are, and that desire for Americana in itself is probably also a fault. A third realization was that I still hoped to find a boyfriend through my rooming situation, that I was still unwilling to venture further afield in that. A fourth was that I still need to fight to look under skin color, whether for roommates or for more significant relationships.
I could go on and list the continuing disheartening realizations, but I suppose there would be little point. I don't quite understand people who list their faults publicly as if that alone is a step towards correcting them, so I'll stop at those four.
I really do hope that by the end of the year, I can look on this post and say honestly to myself that I have at least made some improvement.
Hi. My name is Zack, and I am addicted to As The World Turns.
Or at least the Luke and Noah storyline. The rest I could not care less about.
Check it out on Youtube. Just type 'luke noah' in the search bar.
...in ad copy at least.
I just made USD 25 in an hour, writing ad copy for a gym website. And it has the potential to turn into a long term thing. Who says writing doesn't pay?
I really have a good feeling about this semester.
It's not only because I will be interning at Tor, a fairly reputable science fiction and fantasy publisher.
And it's not only because I'll finally have my own place, a two-bedroomer for the price of one. The extra bedroom is used as a crash pad, so the whole place is really effectively mine.
And it's not only because I look tonnes better now, and have finally started to fit my clothes better. Although I have to say that both have helped - a lot.
It's mostly that because of all these reasons, and a hundred other little ones, I finally feel like something is happening.
The only snag in the thing, of course, is that I can't seem to write the app. I need to get 2,500 words to send with the East Anglia application, and I can't seem to get into my character's head. I need a change of scene, I think, and maybe write a different chapter.
I think I just walked by Christian Campbell, a.k.a. Neve Campbell's brother.
I've only really seen him in the remake of Reefer Madness (which also stars Kristen Bell - who is going to Heroes!), but I've always liked, not him exactly, but the idea of him.
Also, if that was him, he's even hotter in real life. And if it wasn't? That guy I walked by needs to find himself a modeling gig, stat.
So there I was, walking down the 11th street, minding my own business. A moving truck roars towards me, and in the instant that we're level, pavement and road, the driver leans out of his window and screams hysterically at me: "JET LI!"
I'm only surprised, really, that it hasn't happened before now.