Dumplings and Diversity

Erin and I haven't eaten any Chinese food since arriving here, so I made an effort to go down to Chinatown tonight.  I smelled the rotting fish as soon as the subway car pulled into the station.  Ah, Chinatown.  We went to Prosperity, a dumpling house.  There is not much to it.  It's a tiny shop with a four foot wide counter to order at.

I ordered 20 dumplings and a sesame pancake for a total of $5.50.  Wow.  I can't argue with the price.

The food was good too.  It's nearly impossible to find good dumplings in the US, but Prosperity does a good job.  They aren't as good as the ones in Hong Kong, but I would go back, especially for the price.

Leftover dumplings.  Ignore the Sriracha spill in the bottom.

Perhaps the more interesting part was eating them in the park.  We sat on a bench and ate dinner next to a group of teenage boys.  It was quite the interesting group.  One was black, one Hispanic, and one Indian.  They were screaming at each other in nearly unintelligible speech.  Sure, we were eating in a park attached to public housing, but it was pretty strange.  I just don't remember screaming in broken English to my friends for half an hour.

New sights and sounds every day!

Crazy People

Dallas didn't seem to have as many crazy people.  Perhaps they were locked away or moved off to sanctuary cities like Austin.  For whatever reason, they were pretty rare.  Not so in NYC!

Crazy people:

1. Woman is holding a conversation with herself.  She is walking on the sidewalk next to me and holding both sides of the conversation.

Woman: We need to go grocery shopping.
Woman: I hate grocery shopping.
Woman: I know, but you ate all the food.
Woman: No I didn't.  You ate the apples, remember?
Woman: It was a banana.
Woman: No it wasn't, you hate bananas.

I quickly passed and went into the subway.

2. Erin and I are riding the subway.  A man gets on and just starts screaming profanity for no reason.  He gets real close to people and shouts at them and then moves on to the next person.  At one point he sits on someone's lap and everyone pushes him away.  Then he sits two seats away from us and screams about how he's not afraid to die.  Pretty much no one looks up.

3. I am sitting on a bench in the subway and a woman with a shopping cart starts shrieking and cackling for no reason.  She sounds like an evil mad scientist as she strolls along the platform with her shopping cart full of crap.  No one looks up.

4. Erin and I are riding the subway and a very big man comes in the car asking for money.  After no one gives him any, he pulls out a huge stack of $100 bills and starts counting them in plain view of everyone.  No one else seems to notice.

5. A man enters the train covered in dust and starts running down the aisle screaming nonsense.  At the next stop, a passenger drags him out of the car.  No one evens looks up.

Apparently you become used to crazy people and stop noticing them.  So far, I still notice when someone with only one shoe wearing a winter parka gets on the train and starts talking to his invisible friend.

You may notice that the crazies seem to live in the subway.  I guess the parks and roads are patrolled by the NYPD while the subway corridors aren't.

Week One at Columbia Business School

Most of my posts will be about NYC and not CBS.  However, I wanted to make at least one reflecting on my week of Orientation.

CBS Orientation was unlike any other experience I have ever had.  You take 747 students from countries all over the world and put them into groups of 65 or so.  Then you make them chant, cheer, dance, study, talk, work, and play with each other.

Our schedule was packed full from 8am to 10pm or later every day with a mix of academic and social activities.  The main objective was for us to meet everyone in our cluster, the group of 65 or so that we will be taking all of our cores classes with.  I managed to meet 40 or so over the course of five days of activities.

Here is a good example of what Orientation was like.

The people in the video were late to class.  Don't be late.

Next week will be much less fun.  I will miss free lunch and dinner every day with free outings afterwards.  This week had an event every night with other students.  It's much easier to meet new people when everyone else is new to the city (or country) as well.

One thing I won't miss is the lack of sleep.  I haven't been so sleep deprived due to my schedule since early 2011 when I pulled all-nighters at work.

IKEA

New York City has an IKEA.  There are actually two in the area.  One is in Red Hook, Brooklyn and the other is in Elizabeth, NJ.

We needed to go to IKEA because there was simply no way to arrange our tiny bedroom without using more vertical space.  That means the bed has to go in the air since it's sort of difficult to loft a dresser or a couch.  IKEA happens to sell a loft bed that fits a double mattress for $299, which is much more reasonable than I had expected.

The IKEA is the same as any other IKEA I have been to.  I ate at this one, so that was different.  15 meatballs, mashed potatoes, cornbread, lingonberry jam, and green beans for only $4.99.  That's a great deal.

In Texas, you load the furniture into your truck (since everyone has one) and you drive it home.  In NYC, everyone uses home delivery.  IKEA will deliver as much as you want for a flat rate of $100 (to Manhattan).  That seemed expensive to me, so Erin and I took it home in a much more fun fashion.  We loaded our 400+ pounds of furniture into the back of a taxi!  Since we were there, we also bought a desk, shelving, and wall organizer.

The taxi back to Uptown Manhattan was much cheaper than paying IKEA.  Plus, we were able to ride with our items and have them delivered immediately.

I have a feeling there will be quite a few more differences to come between Dallas and NYC.

First Weekend Timeline

Thursday: sign lease, get keys, find first lunch (pizza), go shopping for basics at local markets, realize local markets are way too expensive in Morningside Heights, walk to Harlem, find much more reasonable grocery store, buy necessities, drop them off at home, buy Metrocards, take bus to Target, haul supplies back, find dinner, sleep on wooden floor.

Friday: unpack and set up most important furniture (bed!), go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, go to Best Buy

Saturday: go to IKEA, build loft bed

Sunday: Continue cleaning and setting up apartment, go to evening event for Columbia Business School Orientation

Moving In

We slept on the hard wood floor on the 16th without pillows or blankets.  As you can imagine, it was not the greatest night.

On the bright side, the movers called at 8am to let us know they were downstairs and ready to unload.  We spent the next few hours holding doors, checking the inventory, and paying $100 that was not in the original estimate.

It went smoothly enough and we managed to fit all of our belongings inside.

Kitchen

More kitchen

Bedroom

Now the fun part begins.

Turning On the Lights

On the 16th, we signed our lease and received the keys.  Our apartment is owned by Columbia University.  It is specifically reserved for married Columbia Business School students.  The process was much lengthier than any of my previous apartments.  Texas doesn't seem to care about lead paint, asbestos, termites, fire escapes, bed bugs, or window cages.  NYC certainly does.  I had to certify over and over that no children live with me.

Erin was pretty excited at this point to see the apartment.  She really likes organizing things.  So we entered for the first time...

Our really long, skinny, and overall useless hallway.

 So our 450 square feet includes 100+ square feet of a tiny hallway.  Not a good first look.

The "bedroom".  At least there are two closets.

20% of the space is used up by suitcases from the plane!

Oven, check.  Fridge, check.  Dishwasher...microwave...laundry connections?

Nope.  Just an oven and fridge.

The other side of the kitchen.

The first impression was pretty mixed overall.

Good things:

• Wooden floors
• Windows in every room
• Floor, walls, cabinets, and appliances are in good repair
• Location is the best possible for school
• The building has an elevator
• Price

Bad things:

• The entire apartment is covered in dirt and dust
• The floor plan is going to be difficult to work with
• The ceiling is leaking water (but workers are fixing it as we move in)
• The hallway is very narrow
• The walls have 10+ coats of paint
• The building was constructed in 1910 and it shows
• No cable TV jack

Erin is much less excited at this point.  We are very worried about how we will fit a full-size couch in the apartment.  Still, I'm thrilled to be in NYC and I can certainly live here.

Introduction

On August 16th, 2012, my wife and I took a one-way flight from the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to New York's LaGuardia Airport.  For the next 21 months, we will be Texans living in what is in some ways almost a foreign country.

Potential concerns:

• I sold our two cars and my motorcycle.  From here on out, we walk and take the subway.
• Our new apartment is 450 square feet.  Some houses in Texas have master bedrooms larger than that.
• Erin is deeply concerned about the lack of good Mexican food up north.
• I have no friends here.  I do have a few colleagues from work in the area.  Erin knows one person.
• I will be a student at Columbia Business School without any income.  Erin has to find a job.
• Erin is terrified of the cold.  I am terrified of having no A/C in the apartment.

I am pretty excited to return to being a student and to explore all that New York City has to offer.  Erin is less thrilled to be leaving her beloved Texas (and its warmth) behind.

Let the adventure begin!