Lionhead Rabbits

Aaron and I saw a movie this week: Hard Candy? It was on cocaine, really. It was basically about some online stalker who was pursuing this 14 year old chick. Turns out, the teenager ends up torturing the stalker to the point where he contemplates suicide.
The movie gave me nightmares.

I also realized why they pay so much money for people to do psychology experiments: they're mind numbing. I had to stare at a screen for 3.5 hours. I had to look at pairs of words, and determine if I could relate them. It. Was. Hard.
The last one I just did showed me disturbing pictures on a screen, and I had to determine the background color?
Hey, $45 I wouldn't have had normally.

Chambers started back up. I'm really glad with how the group is turning out. We're all nut cases! We were being goofy together and it was wonderful! I just met these kids, and I already connect with them. And the new kids were so glad! Because they were afraid they'd be the weirdoes in the group, when in reality, they're quite normal.
That's a good feeling.
And we can all sing well!
Methinks we'll be fine. Viva la classical music!

I saw Alex last weekend. He's an interesting duck, to say the least.

And, I must say, this Paris planning is freaking me out.

A Memo

Dear Men,
Please don't think that by ordering females around you will either attract them OR get your way. We are not obedient pups waiting for our next command. Yes, we admire a guy with some good, healthy confidence and initiative. However, when it comes to telling us what to do and then scolding us for not concurring...that is unacceptable. You might as well pour a cup of slightly-hotter-than-scolding staining coffee on yourself. Thanks, but no thanks. We can handle our lives just as well as you think you can.
Two more comments:
1) Know our individual names
2) Don't EVER start the conversation with the words "whore", "hoe", or "bitch".
Love,
Kim, a Female

On that note, Aimee and I just had a great day. Not only did we go to the Bodies Exhibit, but we also ate lunch in Little Italy at the San Gennero Festival. And we ate chocolate at Max Brenner's chocolate shop, and watched the hilarious show Hairspray. An A+ day.

Sushi of Champions

I'm having issues with my thought process...it's in Franglish. Now, I'll want to say something, but it's French that tapers into English. I'm pretty sure no one would be able to understand me.

Yesterday I took a good, relaxing Pilates class. It was delightful.

My girlfriend Elana, that I haven't seen in a grand total of 1 year, invited me to see her at this Latin Ballroom Social. I had to sweet-talk the girls at reception into letting me get in for free. I went for maybe 20 minutes; I said hi to Elana, talked to some Russian named Igor (I kid you not), and jetted as soon as they had an all inclusive salsa.

I met up with old roommate Lauren and her flatmate/my girl Denysha. We went out with their other flatmates, and assorted other friends, to go get sushi at Sushi Park. One of their flatmates is an Italian exchange student, Nina. She brought 2 of her co-Bocconi guy friends, and we battled language barriers all night. They had never eaten Sushi, let alone Sashimi, before. I shared a plate of Sashimi with Nina, and the boys shared a plate. We (being Denysha, her roommate, and me) had to teach them how to use chopsticks, and how to eat sushi. They weren't nearly as successful as they thought they were, but at least the food managed to mostly enter their mouths. And they loved the sashimi. The whole dinner made me ecstatic: Foreigners and Sushi?! Pure bliss.
It was a large group, too. 12 people?! Sushi Park didn't like us very much, but we flipped a big bill, so they got some reward in the end.
We had a great time, though. Lots of laughs. I made an agreement with one of Nina's friends, Fillipo, that I would help his English if he taught me Italian. He's very, very nice, so I'm going to hold him up on that.
We left the restaurant and started walking to some bar. I'm not exactly sure where they were intending on going, but the Italians had a mission, and I wasn't going to be the one to stop them. We ran into the OTHER Italian exchange students on the street. They were very drunk. And they are Italian. Wonderful combination. Very interesting, loud conversations happened for about half an hour on 11th between 2nd & 1st. We melted into an even larger group, and started crawling (the Italians were walking REALLY slowly!)back to campus to go to some Belgium place. The NYU kids were walking in front of the group, the Italians far behind...and ranting in Italian!
One of the Italian exchange students, Rafaele, is particularly good-looking. He started talking to Lauren and me (Lauren said that he was "totally into" me, and wasn't paying any attention to her...at which I retorted with a good & hearty chuckle at the thought), in which it became quite apparent that not only was he sober, but that he understands that he is attractive. He was trying to give me a few Italian pointers, of which one he told me to tell him, "Tu stei bello." You are handsome. I laughed at that phrase, and told him he was silly. I much rather the lessons from Fillipo.
The bar wasn't open anymore, so they hit up another place nearby to grab a few drinks. Lauren (who was more involved in her Odwalla bar) and I left early, at 2am.

I love that whenever I go out with Denysha or Lauren, something ridiculous happens to me. And they're always the type of situations where I know I could write a book about them, if only I was better at storytelling.

I woke up early today to go to an IBEX meeting. Some woman from Sciences Po was here to talk to us going to Paris. I'm not as worried as I was before, but I'm still annerved about it all.
And I'm exhausted.

Off to the gym....

I LOVE Macbooks

I received my new laptop yesterday. It's wonderful. I feel like the good karma came all around full circle, at last.

Last night, I went with Aaron to a debate with surprisingly skinny Thomas Friedman (NY Times journalist) and "ho ho ho" Joe Stiglitz (former WorldBank big guy) called, "Making Globalization Work". Overall, I was moderately disappointed. You would think that Stiglitz would be more of a public speaker, seeing as he is a professor at both Columbia and Amherst. But he paused a lot, stuttered a bit, and he talked far too much. He ranted for about 45 minutes to summarize his new book. Friedman was obviously more used to giving public speeches, and he related with the audience a lot more. Though, he was almost flamboyant...theatrical? Their points were well made for the most part, and good points at that, but sometimes they would get off topic to (it seemed) attempt to validate themselves. But, I stayed the 2 hours, and I am glad I did, in the end.

Dance class moderately whooped my ass on Sunday. It made running on Monday a bit rough. But, while dancing, I was horrified to see how much I unintentionally buffed up my shoulders. Girls' shoulders should not look like this, unless they're into the more masculine sports. I guess I'll have to cut back on the weight training, eh?

Danie, Cassie & I were all wearing the same tremendously bright color of pink today. The girls decided to create our own 3-girl sorority. I passively went along with the idea. Delta Kappa Chi? Because of our first-name initials? It exists somewhere...but not at NYU. Therefore, we're being original. And, to make it more silly, we're the Omega chapter. For those of you who aren't Greek buffs, Omega is the last letter of the greek alphabet. So, we're the last chapter. Get it? Eh, eh, eh?

I've signed up to do some (paying) experiments at the school's Psychology department. Let's see where this takes me!

Late Night Laundry

I'm currently doing my laundry, so I have some time before I go to bed to quickly make some key remarks about life as of late.

I just finished Lonely Planet's short-story book called "The Kindness of Strangers". I highly recommend it to all people who love to travel, and would like a rekindled faith in humankind.

Aaron and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday. It was pouring outside. I had a movie moment before we entered the museum; a truck drove by me and covered me in water from a street puddle. I walked into the museum, in other words, completely soaked (as if I had just escaped from a lake). It was a nice day there. We hung out with the Egyptians for a while, flirted with Chinese Buddha, admired a pianist playing an antique Concert-B Steinway, and glanced at some post-plague (aka dismal) artwork.

I went to a Graduate school fair on Thursday, and became rejuvinated about my potential career paths. I am thinking about getting a Masters in International Affairs/Policy/Relations, and perhaps concentrate on Public Policy or something of that general persuasion. The one Graduate school at the fair that really struck my fancy was University of Melbourne. And it's number 19 in the world! Of what, I'm not sure, but it's still impressive. The only question is: what are my parents' points of view on that?
Nevertheless, I accumulated 13 pounds (I'm serious, I weighed it!) of paper from grad schools that I am going to look over sometime soon. Some of it's Aaron's, so it won't be that bad, but still....

Chamber Choir auditions have been going on this week. In other words, I get to listen to a bunch of college kids sing, and then I get to judge them. We're not a large group....and I think there's a reason for that. Most of the kids are not that great. I mean, don't get me wrong, most of them have an ear...they're not bad (actually fairly good). But a lot of them play on as if classical singing is their forte, when in reality they are more meant for Rogers & Hammerstein. Nothing wrong with that, just not for a chamber choir.

I have concluded that I hate chick flicks. They make me depressed and resentful.

For the last two nights I have hung out with Danielle in her apartment. We do homework, or chit chat about assorted musings. I event turned down hanging out with people tonight because I was going over to her place to do some Law homework! Then again, they wanted to play beer pong. I, being the non-drunken type, excused myself with the lamest reason of all: my acid reflux disease. I scapegoated out of it, but I'm almost sure I offended a few people with my silly reasoning.

I have concluded that I need to start investing more of my life into some more social clubs or meaningful groups/organizations. I feel like my life is ticking away right now, and me just sitting here blogging about it is counterproductive. We're only young once, right? So why am I not acting more youthfully? This is a predicament that I will chew on for a few days until I come to a conclusion.

Quick Update

I'm fine.
I've been very, very busy lately.

If I haven't announced already...Fred, my laptop, has died. He was a good laptop. Struck with a terrible cancer that kept him bedridden for weeks. I'll miss you, little buddy.
I am eagerly awaiting a new MacBook (thanks to James' advise). Oh, frabscious day!

I have been trying to fight a $300 additional fee to my speeding ticket in NY State. Those Oneonta court employees are a terrible people, and are making my life hard.

Aaron and I went to the Museum of Natural History on Friday. Though he claims to be mostly vegan (or low-impact, whatever), he ate a full plate of pulled pork at the museum, before our tour of all 4 floors. He should have known that he would feel sick the rest of the time. Nonetheless, we had a joyous day. Lots of sights to be seen in that museum. I dragged him to an astronomy show called "Cosmic Collisions", narrated by Robert Redford. It was well done, and once again I am questioning why I didn't major in astrophysics.
We walked through Central Park to get to the Guggenheim, where we saw a bunch of architecture from Zaha Hadid. I'm not much of a buliding buff, and we strolled through the museum quickly. And he moaned and groaned the entire way down. I had a good chuckle at that.
That night, I went out with some girlfriends for my friend Azadeh's birthday. We ate at a very chic restaurant (Mercer Kitchen). We were all decked out in makeup and heels. It was a good night. We walked over after dinner to watch the Woody Allen movie "Scoop", which I actually enjoyed more than I thought I would. Scarlet Johannson is a gem. And Hugh Jackman is............marvelous. The movie ended around 2:30, so I got home late.

On Saturday I exposed Denysha to sushi, which she hestitantly explored. It took a lot of cajoling that the eel really wasn't that frightening. It was wonderful sushi. The last person I took to that restaurant was Ido, and that was a while ago, so it was nice to revisit it.
Afterwards, we went back to my place so she could see it. We finished off pints of ice cream/frozen yogurt, and we watched a chick flick. We also ran into a post-college frat-like party on my roof! I wanted to show her my view, and we get on the elevator with a bunch of men in their late 20s/early 30s, sipping beers or cradling hard liquor. They made a few passing smartass comments, and to our horror the number of them multiplied by 10 or so. And the music was, well, a conversation starter.

Sunday I went to school and studied and started watching "Clockword Orange" in the Avery Fischer Center.

Oh, I have become a jogger/runner (which I fully blame James' influence on). The ellipticals are not sufficing my need for sweaty shirts, so I have started to utilize the treadmills at Coles. It makes me sad and I miss going backwards.

Otherwise, uneventful.

What I Don't Like

I have a new reason of contempt for McDonald's. It's the food.
For those of us who have been disenchanted by the fast food franchises (particularly McDonald's), it is simply cruel to see bags of fast food being toted in public.
Especially when those of us are absolutely starving and riding in a public transport to get home, completely absorved with what could be consumed as quickly as posible when finally back from a long day.
We see you people who have chosen to sit next to us, with a bag of McFries in your grasp.
We see you dip your fingers into the granulated grease, and licking your tips of the residual lipids.
We smell the heavily fried chunks you stuff into your esophagus.
We, for these purely trenchant moments, want these fries. Badly.
We begin contemplating the notion of either stealing the fries from your own hands, or sacrificing 99 cents from our own wallets for the quick and easy satisfaction these McFries could bring.
We flit with the betrayal of our own gullets and lifelong health.
And the sudden realization of what our thoughts have been led astray to lead us to immense guilt and self loathing from our weak guts.
Is this fair? I assure you, no.

Current Events

Penny gave me a surprise visit this weekend. She acted like a tourist, as I showed her around the city. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif We had a lot of fun, and walked a lot. A lot. Exhaustion. And we saw one of the best movies created in the 1950s: "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?". Utter genius. I laughed so hard I snorted during the film, and Penny cackled.
And we did everything a tourist in NYC should do, ever.
We made a small cameo at Brazillian Day, too.
I even made 2 men walking dogs that I was a foreigner with very broken english as we walked towards the UN. The conversation was something along the lines of "Uh, scusay, U-N?" "Ohh....YOU. GO. UP. TO. THAT. BIG. BUILDING. OVER. THERE." (Mind you, they're flailing their arms around, trying to further excentuate their words.) "Oh! Sank yooh!" Priceless, and imagery galore.

But, alas, it's been pouring a lot lately.

Aaron and I concluded to take a walk around Central Park last night. That was a pleasant gallavant.

Otherwise, classes started today, and I will definitely have my work cut out for me. To write a lovely list of my enjoyable business classes: Business Law, Managerial Accounting, Consumer Behavior, Int. French, and Economics of Global Business. Start squealing with delight, boys and girls. This semester will be full of rainbows and chocolate-covered cherries. And lots of sarcasm. At least most of the professors seem to have personality, so I should enjoy myself somewhat.

I miss certain people.