Work and Others

My sister told me I could start writing about my work again, instead of complaining about this or that woman or dashed hopes, etc.

So let me try to remember.

I am here. In the train. For about thirty seconds, a rain of hail pounded on the window I was leaning my head against, as I was trying to take a nap. I slept about 4 hours last night, after returning from tango. I said I wouldn't do tango this week. But a friend was leaving on her adventure with a man she is back with, out there to Central Europe. Crazy. But I wanted to say good bye. I am not sure why. We aren't close friends. But I guess for her I was a close friend since she told me things she couldn't tell most people in the world. That's how it happens sometimes.

That was after I had dinner with a man. Yup, I went out to have dinner in my new neighborhood with a man. A friend I had known from tango since I started tango five and a half years ago. He moved to New York a year ago. He knows a lot of places to eat in his neighborhood, Jackson Heights, where my former best friend is still living, I hear. That's where she was raised, where I had visited many times in high school.

I wanted to spend more time with men, and it was very rewarding, the experience. I felt more free to talk about women, complain about them. He was sympathetic, and he complained too. We talked over steak and wine, sitting by the window where I could see the sun set over the Manhattan skyline.

I work with a lot of men, as you know. And the two people I work with crack me up everyday. The Korean man is very naïve, and not the brightest programmer out there. The Englishman, now an American citizen, tries to be funny despite his disillusionment about his work, his life. He is still very much in love with his wife, who is a few steps higher than him at the same firm. Whenever she walks by, like today, even if not to stop by to say hi, I could see in his face, in his eyes, so much joy. They are in their late forties, likely even mid fifties. I am touched to see how the spark is still there. They are having a bit of parenting trouble with their teenage son, who was called into the principal's office for some fight with a boy that had been harassing him. I know all this because I sit next to him and get to hear all the phone conversations.

The Korean man, more a boy, still gets stressed easily, cursing the F-word every other sentence when trying to figure out a problem. For me, the programming part is interesting, and I learn new things, but it never is difficult. Never gets me stomped. I curse more now, not something to brag about but I don't really care as much. I don't get frustrated from not knowing how to do something, but often from not understanding how the messy the current system works.

I don't know how long I want to be in this job. I have a suspicion that it won't get too much more excited than this. I need to learn more about finance because right now I am doing a lot of work that isn't specifically about finance. I should pay more attention to what I am doing and the finance background for which the work is applied. End of this month I will have worked half a year. How time flies. But I am already imagining that I will have a different job, in the City, next year. I would like to continue with finance because there's so much more to learn.

A little more about the Korean man. He is gullible. Today, just before I left work, the Englishman told him, "I bet a dollar I will get you to start gambling by next week." The Korean guy thought he was nuts and refused to believe him. The Englishman repeated the proposal, and finally, the Korean man said, "OK, I take your bet." I was laughing so hard before the Korean man even realized he had just lost $1.

He likes to talk about other things at work. Like how my new laptop is (pretty dirty already, and only a month old). Where I went over the weekend (I never ask anyone what they did; I like to keep work and personal lives clean apart.) If I was competing tango, which is something apparently universally expected if you say you went somewhere for tango. He has stopped clicking his pen, which used to annoy me to the point I could not work. Now the only thing annoying about him is that he likes to repeat sentences, like, "I think there's a bug in the program, there's a bug in the program." He had just returned from his own Central European trip with his wife, and he complained that it was "All right", mainly because they had to walk a lot. He's probably 27, and he is a bit big and complains about walking. What else would you do in these medieval European cities? I suppose they could have taken one of those open-top tour buses and gotten to see everything.

I am sleeping in the bathroom more often now. Not sleeping. Dozing off. Even when I didn't come back from a milonga that allowed me only four hours of sleep max, I still feel tired. So I go to the handicap bathroom, lock it, and sit in the corner farthest from the toilet. It's cold. The floor is cold, the wall is cold. But I always manage to doze off.

The train is pulling into the station. I am going to meet up with a tango friend for gelato, if we're not super soaked from the thunderstorm that finally broke the heatwave. She is a very nice woman that I already had met up once at a Korean bakery. She's one of those women who still look early thirties even though she is in her early forties. She is born and raised in the New York, in the rough and tough section of Lower East Side that is now very expensive and super gentrified. Gone are most of her fellow Puerto Rican Americans. I like hanging out with her, because she's a real New Yorker, because she has a beautiful, maternal smile, because she has interesting stories, an interesting life. Her boyfriend lives in Cyprus with his daughter. That just shows you how interesting she is. Most of all, she likes me, and she isn't shy to show it. I have other great friends, but it usually takes them a while to tell me how much they like me.