Opening Doors

It's past 3 in the morning, and finally the sound of the door awakes his mind and his heart. His son was coming back, and like many previous occasions, with just a few hour's notice. He said he was coming back with a friend. The old man never asked who the friend was. He has introduced him to many of his friends. This was the first time in a long while when he brought a friend back home. The young man is muted always with his private life, and the older version never gets nosy.

He is awaken by the sound of the door. The boy is startled. He knows his Dad was coming back now. Has he done all his chores? Has he finished his homework? To earn this moment of watching a sitcom about an equally weird family in which a white man is the foster parent of two funny black boys, He is afraid he would get in trouble. He looks at his sister, who is still doing her homework. He's better at math than she is, so he's already done. But the feeling of doing nothing, that luxury of watching TV, bothers him. Maybe he has to make sure the food was all prepared and done. But that's too late. The door is opening. His heart is racing.

His heart is racing because he hasn't seen his son in a while. Or for him, anything beyond a week, max two, is a while. When the adventurous young man was living in England, which was the last time he brought a woman home, the old man, with more hair then, told him on the phone for the first time that he missed his son. And now he's back, from dancing somewhere. It doesn't matter to him that his son comes to New York every weekend and almost never comes to see them. Seeing him once is beautiful already.

The door is familiar. Same keys to get in. They have changed the inner door, it appears. The college boy returns for the first time since leaving for college. It's Christmas time. He didn't come back for Thanksgiving. He was starting a relationship with a foreigner for whom Thanksgiving didn't mean anything. And this time she came with him to the city where he grew up, but she isn't now with him. He can't have her meet the parents so soon, not because it's a rule, because, by soon, he means forever. He is too ashamed for any of his friends to see this place where he was forced to call home for nine years. Too ashamed for friends, even more for a girl he became intimate with for the first time in his life. The door opens like it always had with the same keys. He enters and the same dim light greets him. The same sound of Chinese soap opera. The same smell of years of Chinese food infused into the furniture, despite the powerful ventilator in the kitchen so typical of Chinese homes. And so typical of his family is that his Mother doesn't say "Hi" to him, but he knows she's expecting him to say more than that to her. And he struggles to overcome his pride and says "Hi" to her without looking at her. His Dad smiles and calls his name, but that is all there is to the undramatic return since his departure four months ago. Perhaps later on his Mother will complain again that he didn't come home for Thanksgiving even though the college was only five hours away by bus. Six, max.

The old man takes a quick glimpse at the blond woman that comes in furtively, not because there is anything to hide, but because it is three in the morning and they seem to want to respect the people sleeping in the old house. But no one is sleeping, and he knows the young man knows this, for the latter has told him repeatedly not to wait for them. He complies by pretending to be sleeping. And yet, he has left the light on. He is afraid the boy might trip on something in the dark. Even though boy is 35, the old man does not want anything remotely bad happen to him. Through his fake sleeping eyes he sees the woman walking up with the boy. They aren't holding hands. They don't seem too close. Maybe they are friends. He lets the next thought go by quickly with its gratuitous pain: maybe he's gay. His wife stirs. And when the couple have disappeared upstairs and the sound of the door closing made itself visible, the old man sits up.

The teenager is angry now. He prefers to be with his guys talking about math or just nonsense. But not this time. The little baby is crying for the most senseless reasons. The other sister, still younger than him, is trying in vain to calm down the baby. Authority must be asserted. He screams at the toddler, who prefers to swallow her own screams than the food the two older children have been mandated to shove in between the lips of this unruly baby sister of theirs. The screaming doesn't do anything more than unnerving the other child. The parents are not around. He doesn't think about them. Doesn't blame them now for leaving the task of parenting to them. He does feel anger. Whatever the root is, he feels it. And the anger spills out onto his right palm as he slaps the toddler's already red cheeks from the screaming. The screaming doesn't stop. It only rises further, finally cracking the other child, who stands up in her own anger, yells at her older brother, and walks off to the kitchen. The toddler now is throwing everything on the little tray onto the floor. The crashing sound of plastic bowls and utensils, the sight of a mess than he must clean, only enrage him further. He screams at the toddler, at the sister who has abandoned him, at the living room empty of parents. And he slaps the toddler on the cheek and walks off.

"What do you think they are doing upstairs?" Her eyes are closed. But he realizes she is just as preoccupied with the visit as he is.

"Why does it matter? He is home."

"You think your parents mind? Sure?"

"If I am not sure I wouldn't let you come. I just hope you feel comfortable here. The bed is small and uncomfortable. But it's better than the floor. I can sleep on the floor."

"My brother's wife asked me the other day if our son was coming back for Fourth of July with that girl from last Fourth of July. Idiot. I bet they were only friends. Why does he have all these women and not a girlfriend?"

"I only hope he's happy."

"Really, this place isn't so bad. Not like how you prepare me for it. They are just different."

"The toilet doesn't let you throw toilet paper in, like we are still living in China."

"This might be serious. I mean, a girl in the same room. He might not be Chinese anymore, but that's still scandalous, I am sure he knows."

"Maybe we have to be more open-minded about how young people behave nowadays."

"You don't understand. I mean, maybe that means she is a real girlfriend."

"I hope you don't mind the breakfast tomorrow. It will be soupy stuff. Very weird. We can go somewhere, though this neighborhood doesn't have much."

"Don't worry. And don't sleep on the floor. Lie next to me."

"Go back to sleep, they are fine. Don't get your hopes up. She is just a friend, I am sure."

But he gets up instead, to go to the kitchen and boil some water. He doesn't drink cold water, thinking that it would be contaminated like water was back in the old country.

And he lies next to her, trying to feel at ease with someone he liked very much in a house he never did. When was the last time someone held someone in this house? He has never seen it. And the last time he brought someone back, they were friends by then. To hold someone in this house makes him feel the weight of his heart.

Path of Men and a bit of Kungfu

Long day. So tired. No napping in the bathroom. Left later than I should have. Slight drama at work where two coworkers argued over something that somehow dragged me into it. It's normal.

I notice more and more when my peace is broken. Like my little sister, I am more of an angry person. A lot of people don't know that. Anger not necessarily in the explosive way, though sometimes I do. Anger as in easily be bothered by something to an exaggerated level.

I notice this more since I started kungfu last Saturday. I went again last night.

I am sure it's a path for me to find peace, shed the anger. I hope I will go through it. I no longer wake up angry. But these few days, something opened up and I find myself angry more often than before. Maybe it has nothing to do with kungfu opening anything up, maybe it's just my ups-and-downs. Nothing happened. No drama. But perhaps just feeling lonely, and when I do I think about the people who have left me, who have disappointed me with their rejections.

But being there, on the rough wooden floor of the kungfu studio (I haven't figured out what the proper name is, as they call it "dojo" for aikido studios), I feel different. I feel I have a purpose. And so much about kungfu sync's with me. The idea of respect, the idea of rules, the idea of honor, being part of something, discipline. Ah, discipline. For as long as I have been a programmer, in terms of work schedule and work ethics, there was little external discipline. Programming itself is full of discipline and rules, but the work itself, especially the last year or two at Yale.

And when I am challenged to stay in the painful position with my muscles burning, I feel a purpose. A purpose that is about myself only. When I think I can't do another pushup I feel a purpose: purpose to overcome my own weakness and do one more.

One of the instructors told me to relax, that it was my first day (really second if you don't count the trial day last Saturday). He's right, but he doesn't understand that I am an overachiever, that I am lazy in ways I should not, that I have grown up believing that strength can only come from hard work and suffering and yet now I have a comfortable life in which I seek drama and other kinds of suffering in a very useless way.

And this connection with myself, with the other person (supposedly my attacker), so precious. I think it was good that I have studied tango; it started my path of connecting to myself and to another person, to understand my own space and that person's space. My body isn't just a bunch of limbs attached to a rigid torso. I learned a long time ago from a tango teacher and a friend that I have so many possible movements in my body I didn't know was possible. A key to tango, and a key to martial art, or any thing artistic with the body, is to unlocking those movements. That's why we stretch so much in kungfu. To allow these possibilities to surface.

I got my first kungfu uniform. Made me giggle. I thought about when I was really young in China, watching this same movie over and over again about an orphan who got adopted by the famous Shaolin temple where the oldest recorded form of Kungfu still lives on today. I remember trying to imitate the movements. I remember being inspired that it's possible to be that good. I remember the dimple formed on the floor from the boy's relentless practice with his right foot. Of course, now that I look at it, it was a very silly theme in another Chinese movie good at being cheesy and obvious. But still, I remember being inspired by the idea that if you're patient and persistent, you will succeed. Somehow I lost that. I am impatient and my persistence only lasts for a little while.

After kungfu I felt good, and I went to meet my guy friends at the tranny bar. They weren't there, but I did see two transvestites, tall, skinny, fake boobs, and talking like women. I have never been so close to transvestites. But I wasn't too bothered. I realized the men weren't there so I went over to the bar where they said they would be before going. I found them and they said the bar was closed tonight. Too bad, no tranny lap dancing for our bachelor. How funny would that have been.

I found myself behaving very normal, or my normal self among these men. They ranged from very manly and bad-boy like, to very effeminate but far from gay (including the bachelor himself). There was something almost magical about being with them. I felt more free to say what I wanted, and even more bizarre, to gesticulate the way I wanted. Maybe because I didn't know them. But with my female friends, I always felt I had to behave in a certain way, even with my best friends. I had to make sure I wasn't too effeminate, wasn't too rude, was gentle and considerate. Perhaps I am too used to being the man that women want just in case one of them actually wants to date me.

Then the night became wild and strange. But all in a good way. I won't go on further here because a bachelor's party needs to be sealed in secrecy. I do want to say that I felt somewhat bonded to these guys. Like when one got slightly drunk and declared his eternal love for this girl that they have been on and off with for since the first time I saw them together many years ago. Or when we all congratulated the bachelor and just being simple men. Meaning, nothing complicated, very primitive, slap and smile and roaring like animals.

I am glad to know that talking to men isn't boring and that I could connect to them in some way or another. And that I didn't feel I was in some competition, which is usually the case when there were pretty women present. And I felt I was liked. It wasn't the point, of course. But I noticed that they liked talking to me. There was no effort by anyone, but that it just happened. My art friend, who stayed over the weekend, told me that men liked me too. I could see she was probably right.

My house is still giving me troubles. Roof is still leaking, supposedly. Insurance will go up once I confess that I am no longer living there but making it just a business. I want to let that go. Make my life simpler. I wonder if that will change, this hunger for simplicity, as I progressed on my path, accompanied by kungfu, by more men, and who knows what else I will be doing. I wonder if I will soon let go, without effort, the desire to be holding a woman in my arms, and let that happen to me instead of me dreaming about it. I didn't go to my Sunday milonga for the first time since I moved to New York. I spent the evening watching a mellow movie with my art friend, instead. I was tired, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't chained to tango like it was a mere routine. I want it to remain special by not making it a routine. Tonight I will go out to practice at the practica. I want to get better. I want that goal, be the best amateur dancer in the city.

Now a little nap in this local train back to the city.

Another Chapter Closed

This morning I saw my car perhaps for the last time. I say "perhaps" because it will be staying in my neighborhood, on the other side of the subway line. Maybe sometimes I will see it. And if you're in the neighborhood, maybe you will recognize it, the Indigo Blue Corolla that pretends to be the rough sports car but really has a normal heart like most other normal looking cars.

I am sentimental. I couldn't wait to get rid of it. But when I finally got rid of it, signed the title over, and left the insurance company with all those hundred-dollar bills, I felt nostalgia. There is no remorse. Don't get me wrong. I am happy that I won't have to look for a parking space anymore. That my Mother won't ask me to do any driving favors for her. That I don't have to pay for insurance anymore. That I never have to worry that someone is going to hit my car while it's parked somewhere far, or that they have some special event on that street and have to tow my car but that I wouldn't know because it is usually parked so far from where I usually walk.

I am happy I have gotten rid of a major possession in my quest to own as little in this world as I can without sacrificing true comfort. I wish I could get rid of my house now.

But strangely, I am more attached to the car than to the house, and I am more attached to the car than I had thought. I have written a sentimental blog entry about it, so I won't repeat the same sappy sentimentality here. But when I had to clean out all my junk in the car, I found a few trinkets of memories. Frankly, though, I can't remember which woman this or that belonged to. The names, or even faces, don't matter so much as that the car accompanied me through my dramas in the past five years that I have owned this car. When I walked past it again, after depositing my cash immediately, I saw that it would a good car. No matter what the buyers were trying to tell me about its defects in an effort to lower the bargaining price, it was a good car. Good in the sense that it had been connected to me and only me for its life so far, and for most of my car-owning life in New Haven.

On the same day that girl from Missouri wrote to me to tell me about her next stages in life, which included going to a festival for free and living in different basements, including her car! I got worried. I told her I was worried.

Why was I worried? I didn't want to talk to this girl again. (In case you have lost track of which girl/woman is which, this is the singer that I took to the airport at 5 in the morning a few weeks ago.) But I was worried. And I thought it was ridiculous that having such a protective family and with very wealthy relatives, she has to live in her car.

It bothers me a little that I cared. I bothered me a little more than a little that I should want to be cold.

I went to my first kungfu thingie today. My body is all broken, good thing no tango tonight. Besides pushing my body to the breaking point after having only gone to the gym a handful of times since last Thanksgiving, I was reminded that martial arts is not about beating someone up, but finding peace in your heart and in your mind. The Shifu made an interesting point: once you have found that connection to your heart and mind, you need not fight, or at least not find yourself in a situation to fight.

I am bothered by how much I care about the people I refuse to talk to again, and I am bothered by this reality that I am bothered. All this has to do with the fact that I am so disconnected from myself, from my body, my mind, my heart. I get disappointed quickly. I get jealous easily. I don't know who I am and whenever a woman chooses someone else and rejects me, the self-hate multiplies. I wish it was that easy what I want to do: be friends with people for the goal of reconnecting with myself, be friends, not anything else. There is a part of me that knows if I could do that, if I could reconnect with those I have refused to talk to anymore, I will reconnect with myself. But paradoxically, if all this hypothesizing is true, the lack of connection now is the reason I can't connect with those people.

This is why I should be careful with the new people I meet. I will be meeting this teacher in a couple of hours. For the first time since we became close. I know I will have to struggle a little not to get stuck in those big brown eyes and beautiful smile of hers. I hope she and I will be great friends and whatever drama that will happen between us will be those between friends.

Now, a bit of a nap before meeting up with her. Good bye to my car. This is one breakup that is proceeding without any drama.

People at Work, Bittersweet

I laugh a lot at my work. One would not expect that from a banking environment, particularly not an investment bank environment. But the cause for my daily laughter has little to do with the nature of this finance firm. Before I explain, I do want to say that this bank isn't like the stereotype, and isn't like Goldman Sachs when I was there for the two long interviews. People are more relaxed, perhaps because it used to be a hedge fund before being bought by the megalithic British bank. And my manager smiles more than one should expect from an investment bank manager. However, his boss rarely smiles.

The reason I laugh a lot is the comical interaction between my supervisor and the other guy that works for him and with me. (My manager isn't my supervisor, who also has him as a manager. My manager is the guy that reviews my progress, but he is otherwise very off-hand, trusting me and my supervisor in getting me to do the best for the firm.) The "other guy" is really not that bright, but that's all right. That doesn't make things necessarily comical. He is quite a character, however. Combined with his ignorance and a mix of exaggerated ignorance and denial of ignorance. For example, today, he was not ashamed to say that he was being "sneaky" because he couldn't figure something out. The supervisor replied, "I am not if that makes me feel better." The "other guy" (that's the Korean guy, if you recall) said tester, "One day I will be as good as him in C#" ("him" meaning me and "C#" is the language he is struggling with, among other things). I simply said, "I am flattered" and the supervisor chuckled. In that "other guy's" absence the supervisor would sometimes shake his head and say, "I worry about that guy sometimes" or "He drives me mad." (Recall that he's English and they say "Mad" to mean crazy, not angry.) The other guy is always in need of the supervisor's help, and the supervisor has a great sense of humor, for otherwise, he would just feel he's wasting more time than saving it from having this extra "help". And when they are sitting together so the supervisor can help the poor guy with something that boggled his mind ("boggle" is a word the other guy used today when he tried to be clever but failed to solve a problem for me), I can hear a lot of sighing and not a small amount of sarcasm coming from the supervisor. It's hard to describe their interactions, but the combination of the supervisor's British sense of humor and the other guy's unabashed ignorance, I get a good laugh.

In some ways I feel bad for this man. He isn't really knowledgeable about what he is expected to do. From what I have seen in the code he has written, it's obvious that he has had no significant training in fundamentals of computer science. He is just copying what he has learned and reapply it and modify it until it works. That's a great way to learn hands-on but without some basic understanding of computer science, it becomes frustrating and the product becomes very poor in quality. He also isn't very driven. He complains a lot about our manager, about the job. He doesn't have any ambition. He is unashamed to say he's afraid of his wife, that he gives in to her all the time. And on the phone with his non-coworkers he sounds very childish. Sometimes you would mistaken his conversations to be that between six-year olds. I wonder what future holds with such a person. He has enough money to live comfortably, and big screen TVs and nice cars don't give him any reasons to be ambitious. He isn't trying to learn anything new.

One thing he is good at is being friendly to everyone. He hates confrontation (and since I don't always avoid it, I have come to the brink with him and seen how he backs off in a very friendly way). Although he did get into an incident with a driver on the road that resulted in the man coming out of his car and punching the hood of his car, resulting in a dent. And my coworker decided to sue the man and now after many court proceedings he won the suit but only got first half of the compensation. He is still waiting for the other half, and he does complain about it. So maybe not confrontational with people he has to see almost everyday.

At lunch he complains too, and when he isn't complaining, he talks about eating at Chipotle's, his favorite place. Maybe I am being arrogant, but somehow his whole attitude in life depresses me. Maybe that contributes to me laughing when he acts deliberately or unintentionally dumb with our supervisor. My supervisor is a different story. He's rather cynical. He feels trapped. He wants to leave and golf everyday, but he can't. He has a son, perhaps a daughter, too. His wife is up the stairs literally and also on the corporate ladder. He loves her a lot, and I think that gives him a lot of joy and hope. But his job gives him very little reward. Perhaps that's one reason he likes to poke fun at the poor boy. He is never mean, but his sarcasm is a source of his relief.

His buddy that I briefly mentioned in the first blogs is another source of depression. He's in a worse state than my supervisor. Nearing the end of his middle-age. Prefers also to be golfing instead of sitting among all those Bloomberg terminals (these are computers finance people use to get all the data they need). The worse problem for him is that he is lazy. I could see it in his face in the beginning, and this month that I started to work on his projects, I realize I was right. He doesn't work long hours, and he is often not at his desk. His sarcasm can sometimes be biting, turning more into complaints.

Contrast to him is another guy that I have been working with. He's much younger, younger than me. He's motivated, and gets me what I need to help him in a very timely manner. His team is motivated and I can see the contrast in the energies between his team and that middle-age man's team. This younger man is teaching himself more advanced finance whenever he has time. He always eats lunch at his desk, and he usually comes in before me and leaves after me. I use myself as an example because I work a little more than most people on my floor, judging by how empty the place is when I come to work and when I leave.

Youth has its energies, I suppose. But youth isn't defined by age, either. This "other guy" is the youngest of all the people I have mentioned now, and he seems so old with his sighs, complaints, and monotonous and repetitive praises for Chipotle's food.

Me, where do I fit in? I enjoy my work. Still very often I look forward to going to work, even after less than four hours of sleep. I don't feel I am learning as much as I was at the beginning, but I still am. This weekend I have one guest, my art buddy. But I hope to find some time to study some finance. Saturday night I am invited to a party, for the first time since moving to New York. Not bad after just a month and a half. Then Monday I am going to another party, a bachelor's party. I have never been to a bachelor's party. I have said I wanted to spend time with men, and Monday I will have plenty of that. They are talking about going to a gay bar and inviting a "tranny" stripper (that I found out soon meant transvestite). If that happens I will be a new man. All my homophobia will be put out in the wind of open-mindedness. My work is good. New York is good to me. One step at a time. Taking care of my own garden.

Reconnecting on a Thursday

I just finished reading an article about this undocumented Filipino, who boarded a plane when he was six with a coyote, a man who traffics illegal migrants, hired by the boy's grandfather. It's an article about his successful life as a journalist but whose growth was always under the cloud of his illegal status.

Different people have different challenges in their lives. Some get to put it in an interesting story. I mentioned a little of my own immigrant life to my new New York friend, about my family, about my grandmother. Just a little, both the past struggles and the present quest for peace and reconciliation. I wonder when I will write about all this. There's so much to say, so much to share.

It's Thursday. It's my night off from tango. I decided to not meet anyone, not really even planning on talking to anyone on the phone, and go home. Then on the subway back I thought about getting to know someone: my neighborhood. It's late, but still, I want to get to know it a bit more. So I decided to go check out this cafe that the guy who also lives around here told me to check. It's called "Marlene". I went. It's quaint, but not very warm. I later found another coffee shop just down the block (from the owner of Marlene!). That looked and felt more like a coffee shop, called Aubergine (which is the name I gave myself at some point in my New Haven life, and if you're not French, you wouldn't know that it means an eggplant; don't ask me why I called myself Aubergine.).

There's a blackboard, and on it was written a quote from Robert Heinlein, "Love is the condition in which the happiness of another is essential to your own."

This morning I found a trickle of peace when for some reason I started going through the text messages I have stored in my phone. Some are sweet messages from friends, like for my recent birthday, or just wanted to leave a note for me about how much they loved me. There were also some from those that I wanted to be with, but are no longer is in my life for one reason or another. Instead of feeling sad or nostalgic, I felt some serenity. I didn't keep confrontational messages, and there were plenty before they were deleted. I kept the nice ones, the ones that either directly showed love or told me how much they appreciated our connection. What those messages made me feel was that after all the turmoil and drama, after the final cut in this or that relationship, these people did make me happy in some ways. Of course that must have been true; otherwise why would I keep going back to the relationship, creating more drama in the end? Still, I don't always remember that: the simple reality that not everything was dark and stormy. The reality that I really did love these people, and that they, at least sometimes, at least in their own limited ways, loved me. I didn't feel sad that they are gone, either left me, or were expelled, or both. That didn't matter. The text messages weren't about the end. They were about human connections that forms the basis of all our happiness and love.

I remember that they told me at one point or another that my happiness was important to them. My Dad told me this once, too. I am grateful even for these broken relationships that at one point made me feel loved.

Tonight I do need to write a letter to my Grandmother. I told her when I saw her last weekend that I was sorry I hadn't had time to write to her. I will have to do that tonight. When I mentioned her to my new friend, I mentioned my driving to the old lady's house just to get stories from her. I wonder how I can get other stories. She's having trouble hearing, talking, and walking now. She suffers from huge headaches. I am afraid that a piece of me would be forever lost once she leaves us, and I don't know how soon that will be.

For now, some music (at least to drown out Mr. Softee outside with its annoying ice cream chime!), some simple food, and some time for myself.

People in Trains and Beyond

I am on the local train now. I've decided that the imbecilic "express" train is just too much trouble. In theory, as I have mentioned, it arrives only about 6 minutes after the earlier local train arrives, even though it leaves about 20 minutes later. But more times than not it arrives in Stamford at least 10 minutes late, and yesterday, some police activity caused it to leave another 15 minutes later. I got home past 8, leaving me less than 2 hours to relax, cook, and talk briefly to my sister before running off to dance.

I realized going out to dance isn't just for dancing. It's for me to relax. I know that people usually think of their home as a place for relaxing. Well, when it's hot and stuffy, it's not so easy. The subway is air conditioned, but moreover, when I am in the subway it's almost like meditating. I am calm. (Granted, being a true New Yorker, I am always hurrying once I am outside the subway.) I read the advertisements as if in a trance. They are always stupid and always the same. In fact, that sexual impotence ad has been around for as long as I have been coming to New York to dance. At least!

And watching people (without staring) also relaxes me. Wondering, and wondering where those lives go, how they are shaped, what await them the rest of eternity after I disconnect from them.

There are some people I see repeatedly, especially in the commuter train. There's this man around my age, with very short haircut, and he always boards at 125th Street with his folded up bike. I think he needs it to get to work from the train station in Stamford. There are shuttle buses that take finance people into areas in Stamford not within walking distance. I guess he chooses to bike. His bike is funny to me, a fold-up black little bike. I have been meaning to bike to Manhattan one of these days, when it's not too hot and, well, when I actually have a bike.

There is this woman that works in my company. In fact she gets on the same subway train stop I do. We've never spoken. But I see her often. So these are some of the connections I have. Unlike when I started commuting from New Haven, it's much harder to connect to strangers here because there are just so many of them. Maybe it just takes time. I imagine that New Yorkers, being like any human beings creatures of habit, would be boarding the same area of the same train every day at the same time (assuming the trains run regularly). Still, I haven't recognized anyone. I haven't seen that Asian boy again. I remember connecting, without words, to those four five people waiting for the commuter train at 7:30AM at the little station near my New Haven house. I remember the cold, the frost, the twilight that heralded the sun, and of course, the faces. I remember the strange man in leather jacket that insisted on sitting at the same seat at a corner in the train designated to him by God, apparently. I remember the black man that always smokes on the platform before boarding. Then there's the woman with the funny pink hat, large non-sexy legs covered often with thick tall socks of equal pinkness. The man that tries to talk to him all the time about their respective romantic partners. The South Asian man that never smiles. In a small town like New Haven it's much easier to remember faces. I don't always remember faces even in the New York tango community. "Remember" means recalling a connection. There are people I recognize, but I don't feel anything for them the same way I feel for those four or five commuters. The same thing is true for the surroundings that the train cuts through. I remember writing a lot about what I saw, how I felt, each morning and evening that I travel between home and work. Here, I can't really tell you about the landscape and its transformation between New York and its financial satellite where I work. I wonder how deep a connection I will make, how each will feel.

My new New York friend, that teacher, made me happy with something very minor. Last week I was telling her and someone that I needed stamps. The only time I can get stamps is Saturday mornings, and so far every Saturday morning I have been busy. I wasn't in dire need, and my complaint that I needed stamps wasn't even serious. But she said she would get me some and I thought it was nice, but I totally forgot about it. Today she got me stamps. Little details that make friendships so sweet.

There are quite a few people I want to be friends with. Including men. At the same time, I don't really have time. I want to do so many things, it's crazy. I am starting Kungfu this Saturday. But I will need to find time for singing lessons, for guitar lessons (I imagine myself singing tango songs accompanied by a guitar, like the old times when Carlos Gardel sang with the guitar before the iconic bandoneon appeared). I want to allot time to practice tango alone. And to add more to tango-centricity, I want to learn the names of the popular songs, and be able to pick them out by name. I want to study finance, at least going through that text book. Of course, I want to hang out with friends. Not to mention spending some time alone. And not evening mentioning dating.

For now, I am all right. I went dancing last night but spent most of the time practicing. I have a goal for my dancing this year. And for the future, I just want to be the best amateur tango dancer in the city. Ambitious, why not. After all, I am doing Kungfu mainly for tango. It's very tango-centric, my life.

And yet, I never stop imagining one day in the mountains, with my walking stick, with the humility that I had grown up with, and with my legs not to dance but to walk a piece of life in those mountains high up in Tibet. And in doing so, I hope, as I imagine, to make some deep connections, with the people, with the mountains, with the rivers that carve and caress them, with the clouds and the blue sky watch over me. I look at the watch, and being a good New Yorker, I wonder if I am running out of time.

Where the Home and Soul Are

The train was super-crowded yesterday on the way back. It was late, fifteen minutes late, because of some signal failure somewhere coming from New Haven. Still, being late doesn't explain why I found myself jammed packed in the car with people occupying every bit of standing space. It was the most crowded I have seen. I think it's more because there weren't that many cars.

Today the 7 train was giving problems, though small compared to some other times. When the train station was within sight as I was walking toward it I could already a lot of people on the platform. That was a bad sign. Something was wrong. I was right. I ran anyway, and when I was on the platform, the train that I usually missed was chucking by and firing its horn indicating that it wasn't going to stop. There were vocal and visual grunting that I heard and saw from the fellow passengers. The train after that was the train I usually took, and it came a little late.

A little late can mean a big delay because it might mean I miss the Metro North train to work and would have had to settle for a local train that would take me in the office more than 20 minutes later. It's not really a problem for work, but it's sort of a waste of time given that I get up so early just to get in more than 20 minutes late. Luckily, with some running, I was able to catch the commuter train two minutes before it departed.

There is no point getting up even earlier because you're at the whims of the transportation gods. Commuting using public transportation means that you have to deal with "signal problems" of all kinds, and problems of many more kinds. This is in addition to having to spend so much time on the train. Nevertheless, if I have to commute, this is still better than driving, which is truly, for me, a time-sink. I can't do anything but sit and drive, even if there's no traffic. I can't imagine most people, including those who like driving, enjoy driving as a means to commuting. I think that if people had a choice, if public transportation were more available and affordable, people wouldn't care much for the "freedom" of driving. True, driving means you can leave when you want, not have to time yourself and rush to the train lest you must wait half an hour or an hour more, as is the case in most places in this car-oriented country.

So here I am, sitting instead of driving, so I can write this entry now and not during the precious hours I have in New York during the workweek. I am tired because I had about six hours of sleep. What was I doing? Monday I get to go through my bills, cook, and just hang out with myself. I didn't even want to call my friends because I knew I wouldn't be able to give them the proper time. When I saw my two closest friends from New Haven on Sunday, a surprise, I realized I missed them a lot and at the same time I haven't thought about them as much as before. Last night one of them texted me to see if I wanted to chat, so in the end, I called and we chatted briefly. Mostly we talked about my latest adventure, which wasn't really an adventure. It was short and simple and over. I realized talking to her that what really annoyed me about this woman that ended up only staying at my place one night was that what she did was very restimulating. She was my sister's age and she was hooking up with a guy twice that age. The last major drama was also about a woman choosing someone much older over me. I didn't even feel I liked this girl from last week, but just that she so quickly jumped onto this old guy without letting anything possibly start with me just annoyed me to no ends. So I told her off, in the end, and that I didn't want to have anything to do with her again. It isn't meant to be a punishment; just that such person isn't good for my life.

I realize I am becoming more selective with the people I want in my life. And that's a very positive development. For most of my adult life (God knows also my child life, too), I never had filters. I welcomed everyone in my life, and that, in retrospect, isn't because I am open minded, but rather, it's because I always want people to be around, to like me. I welcome them to my home, that is, my soul, with the hope that whoever they are, they would stay. Even if they are mean to me, even if they are negative, stressful, a downer.

Now, I feel I have the dignity to say, if you don't treat me right, you can't come in, or you get out.

Last night a little before I made the phone call way after my bedtime, a friend said "hi" on g-chat. She's that Polish woman, wanting to know how I was in New York. I was brief with my answers. She was the first disappointment in my life that I consciously ejected from my life, although not as explicit and dramatic as the later ejections. I was annoyed she starting chatting with me. I could still remember every bit of her behavior, how she tried to make me be part of her life but not give me what I wanted, how she was flirtatious but also mean when I got too close. But she also reminded me that I have come a long way in terms of preserving my own dignity. I have stopped talking to her and while I try to be friendly to her, I don't miss her. My life is better without her, without people who don't participate in the happiness I seek. And so I have little doubts about what I did with this young woman that ended up choosing someone twice her age instead of me. As my friends have told me over and over again, when a woman chooses someone else over me, I should count myself lucky that I didn't end up with such a woman who obviously didn't know better. They are being my friends, of course, but there's some truth to this.

In addition to cooking and baking and talking to my friend, I also wasted some time on Facebook. After I uploaded some nice pictures, I usually get inundated with comments, and I can't help but reading them. I have to confess, they boost my ego. I like my photos, and it seems that some of my Facebook friends like them even more. This time my ego was doubly boosted because a professional photographer, who lent me the lens that I used to make the pictures, told me it wasn't her lens that made those beautiful pictures, but me. A pro told me that!

She and I are slowly becoming friends. I have to be careful, though. She's a drop-dead gorgeous tango dancer and very sexy, and I would end up in a whole swampful of trouble if I have feelings for her. Still, it's nice to connect with her, not to mention learning photography from her. If I can be friends with this woman, there's some hopes for me. I mean, sometimes I think all I think about is getting into a relationship and forgetting the simple human connection. To become friends with a beautiful woman is almost as hard as becoming friends with a man, for me. Different barriers but the root of the barriers is the same: desperate desire for a relationship. If I can be friends with someone I would not blink to go on a date with, I might have some hopes of being just a normal human being, after all.

The train is pulling into the stop before mine, ten minutes away. After all this running I will get into work the time I want, after all. Most people here are dozing off, including the two flanking me, the three in front of me, and if I have eyes on the back of my head, probably the two behind me. Another day starts. I have a lot to do. But I am sure I will take a nap in the bathroom again.

Green Field of Memories

Today is the first Sunday I am actually by myself. Yesterday the little rascals came with their screaming and running-around, along with adults who often watch them helplessly, with or without threats that didn't have long-term effects. They tired me out pretty quickly and I needed to nap before going out. Despite my complaints, I miss them and wish they were around. They were here along with the rest of us for my Dad, for Father's Day. I didn't really spend a lot of time with my Dad, who sat quietly in the kitchen waiting for his turn at the cooking.

Today I woke up late. Someone who expressed interest in the car didn't show up. I woke up a few times before finally sleeping until 1PM, a record in recent memories. Perhaps it's getting too hot, and I am just dazed and dozing.

I wanted to try this lemon ice place. So I went to Coronoa, walked down the streets of typical "suburban" Queens townhouses. The place as like South America; everywhere I turned there was Spanish spoken and Latin music and Latino families. The people standing in line for the world famous lemon ice at Lemon Ice King were mostly white people from I don't know where.

With this medium size coconut lemon ice I walked to the Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Then memories started flooding in, but in a very jumbled way. I was here, once. When? Was it recently, when I went to my one and only baseball game (for the pathetic Mets, of course). Or was it in high school. The sentimental taste of the memory makes me think it was high school, with my then best friend. When I went to the Mets game, there was nothing sentimental. I was also with that same then-best friend, along with my sister. Just another day with the pseudo-parents of my sister, the little one, and I was no longer interested in my best friend then. So was it in high school? I feel like it was. I was with her and also a friend of hers. I have no recollection of anything I saw there. I was nervous. I was full of feelings, I am sure.

Today, this afternoon, the weather was nice, I sat under a tree, wrote my jumbled thoughts in jumbled words on my little journal, and read the remainder of the chapter in that book of Irish people. The memories were like ghosts without a home (or rather, souls without a home, hence ghosts). I thought about my ex-best friend. I wonder if I should write to her. She probably knows by now that I live about 15 minutes door-to-door from her. She doesn't care, does she?

What do I care? I care too much things and people that don't deserve my love and attention. But that shouldn't be such a condemnable thing. To care too much about caring too much is itself an imbecility. Life goes on whether you worry or not.

Those memories will have to wait for another day for a home, another day for me to piece them together. For now, I enjoyed reading that book, I enjoyed being with these families, listening to their Spanish, and the weather. I enjoy those little rascals, and also seeing the rest of the family. I enjoy reading emails from my new friend in New York, sharing her thoughts, and letting me share mine. I saw her and talked to her last night at the milonga. I tried not to get off my path of having us be friends and nothing different. It wasn't easy. She has one of the most beautiful pairs of eyes in the world.

Rain on Window

When you look outside through a window pane painted with the tears of the rain, the blurred vision is like looking through a gray veil. Nothing is sharp, nothing is bright. Most of the colors have been washed away. In photography we say something is saturated when there's a lot of color. Looking through the veil of the trails of raindrops the world has lost its saturation. The green grass that lines the train tracks lost its meaning of color when there's nothing to contrast it. My art friend told me when commenting on how we dress with color that colors lend their power when there's little of them in the context of monochrome. When everything is more or less the same color, or too much color, none of the color strikes our eyes. The world out there is colorful, but the gray has leveled all their importance. The red looks green, and the blue looks yellow.

I wanted to go for sushi tonight. I invited the friend that moved at the same time I did from New Haven to Queens. She's busy. It's all right. She's a friend, so my disappointment is barely noticeable. I wasn't too anxious about spending tonight alone. But not at all alone because at 10PM I will meet up with another ex-Nutmegger, the man I had the grilled meat with. What I mean by "alone" I mean just a few hours alone. Which is really what I need. I had a good day at work, as most days have been during the past five and a half months. Last night I spent it alone. Thursday, along with Monday, is my day off from tango. I was tempted to go just to hang out with my ex-visitor. But then I already hung out with her in Chinatown, where I invited her to dinner at this place my parents and I frequent. She was dazzled by the food I got for us. Very simple, very good flavors, very fresh. My kind of food. And I was happy that she was so excited about it, gobbled it all down, ate more than me. I have taken other friends there before, but no one appreciated the place as much as she did. She and I don't really connect that well. But if I am wrong then it's because I haven't given us much time. We still don't have a lot to talk about. And I don't completely feel comfortable being with her. Am I not looking broad enough for a connection? Have I gotten too used to certain kinds of connections? Or I just don't know really how to be friends with a woman within the first week?

But I shouldn't really care. Give it a rest.

When the train accelerates you can hear the raindrops crashing onto the window pain, erasing old trails and marking new ones. Whenever I hear the rain hitting on the window pane, I remember the song that that girl sang that was so mesmerizing for me. It's the voice of that song that made me like her, be attracted to her. I've mentioned it in a blog entry, and I will mention it again; the song is about a man listening to the sound of rain striking the window panes, and remembering, with regret, leaving a woman who loved him and whom he, realizing too late, loved too. That story doesn't apply to me, but its raw and simple sentimentality creeps in as the forceful rain is subdued into gentle trails on the indifferent window pane.

Someone died. Someone I didn't really know. Someone I have seen the face of. Someone who came up to me a few months ago to say, "You look great. I want to dance with you." I said, "I guess I will have to ask you." "No, I will ask you!" she responded with that joking but serious smile of an Argentine. She's the organizer of my Friday milonga. She died Wednesday. I found out from that teacher, the girl I said I have decided to be friends with. This woman died of what, I don't know. But it's so strange that the owner of that voice is gone. That, no, I will actually never get to dance with her. That she will never ask me to dance. It will feel so strange tonight when all the regulars come and celebrate and commemorate. I don't know how to handle death. The death of my best friend's father was too strange to me. I didn't know how to behave properly, only cried for my best friend.

The rain came after a full display of lightning bolts accompanied by cracking thunder outside our office building. I saw multiple times bolts coming down behind the train station. The infamous I-95 that divides us from the station was a parking lot both directions. Beyond the lightning bolt was this strange formation of white clouds coming down from the gray sky, as if it were a tornado funnel but not spiraling. It was the first curtain of rain when I saw it. Summer is here. Summer is, however, cold. Today was also the funeral of that woman, taken place somewhere in Washington Heights. Today is a good day for a funeral. I have never been to a funeral. I feel old knowing that people around me have started to die. I have no doubt that soon I will go to a funeral. I wonder if I will cry. I guess it will depend on who it is.

My car is still waiting for me somewhere in Sunnyside Gardens. Some people have shown interest in buying it, but so far, no real bite. I may have to spend even more money on keeping it in a garage because the wonderful drivers of New York don't do what is right and legal after they hit a parked car, if you know what I mean. Of course, I have owned a car for many years in New York, in Brooklyn, actually, when I was still going to school here. And nothing bad happened to it, except when I reversed it onto a fire hydrant. No, it didn't break the stupid thing, but the bolt on the metallic junk bore a dent, nearly a hole, on my trunk door. That was my fault. I did get two robberies, had to pay for the window. I remember my Dad looking at the damage with dismay, and all he said was, "They only did this to us because we are Chinese."

Was he right? I didn't question then. I assumed he was right; he was always right, in my eyes. Like the Jews, we Asian immigrants like to think we are the victim of everything.

That car was a gift from my Mom. I never thought of it as a gift. I hated driving in New York before I even had a license. I failed my first exam. I got nervous going anyway. I almost crashed onto a pole coming off the highway too fast when I was out looking for a job. Back then, there was no Internet search, no online resume posting. I found a summer possibility from a newspaper listing, and it wasn't the New York Times, either, but rather, the pathetic Daily News, or even Newsweek, whatever was the cheapest. I drove to a place where they were recruiting salespeople for vacuum players. I was so lost, as a teenager, about to go to college. So frustrated.

And so lonely. No one was there to help me find a job. I needed to make money, not for any reason other than keeping myself busy. How was it that a boy about to enter Harvard University ended up nearly crashing onto a pole on his way to a vacuum cleaner salesperson job?

The woman sitting next to me is reading a book about a man that started a school for girls in Pakistan, in the Himalayan areas, so the area you hear about in the war on terror. She told me that the man tried to climb K2 and failed. But in his failure his true mission was realized: helping girls who are otherwise not permitted to be educated in this orthodox Islamic area.

I want to be there. I want to make a difference. I want to connect to strangers and make them smile from their hearts.

For now, I am looking out to the suburb of the city I live in, the city I love, the city that has finally opened its mysteries, little by little, to me. It never opened up when I lived here as the boy that was trying to find a job the summer before he entered the Ivy League. It only showed its cold shoulders, its hateful racism. For now there is no K2, there is no conflict with religious extremists and collateral killing of the innocent here. Here I am starting a likely brief but interesting chapter with finance, and in the meantime, a curious exploration into tango, into the city. Tonight I will see the familiar faces. Tomorrow a friend from Chicago is coming, my first "real friend" I made in New York.

The rain stopped and it washed away a lot of my thoughts, my worries, my insignificant dramas. Soon the sun will come out, I can feel it. The train is moving toward greater light, leaving the gray veil behind. This weekend starts now.

Making New Friends

Yesterday evening was another car-moving evening. No, it's not so bad anymore. I know where to park after Mondays, and before Monday I try to park on weekends when there are more spaces because people drive to do shopping. I think I understand why Queens is full of cars; the subways don't go everywhere, and the bus system sucks. So a lot of people keep a car, or two. It's really crazy trying to find a parking space. Even last night there weren't many left, and the van behind me took the last space on that street very far from "civilization"; that's because I went a little late.

One nice thing about going a few blocks away to find a parking space is that I get to walk through my neighborhood. I really haven't found the time to scout out places in the area. I haven't found a coffee shop yet. But I am sure there is one. What I really like about walking in the northern part of my neighborhood, which is where I live, is the tunnel of tall trees. I don't know what kind of trees they are. They are majestic. They line the streets of the section called Sunnyside Gardens. The trees form a tunnel above you, and behind them stand the two-story townhouses that make you forget about the big co-op buildings and the busy commercial streets just a block away.

The townhouses all have little gardens in front of them. I almost feel like I am back in New Haven, peaceful, and the families that come out to play, the kids, the smiles, add even greater serenity. I forget about the dramas, I forget about the unnecessary expenditure of emotional energy. There are roses and other blooming flowers that wave at me as I pass by. By that time twilight was having trouble getting through the tunnel of trees to illuminate the beautiful houses.

After crossing Skillman there's a Korean church that comes with a school for the youngins. And across from it is a Catholic church, or maybe it's not Catholic, just that its color and style remind me of the big orange Catholic church in New Haven, close to where I first lived when I moved there. Now I was no longer in the tunnel of trees, but still, this northern side is quiet. Soon I would reach my building and soon I have to be doing something else, outside these serene thoughts.

More and more I realize I need to really reconnect with myself. Forget about connecting with others because I am less and less capable of doing so. Looking back at my frustration with the girl that was supposed to stay over, looking back at all the much more serious dramas before that, I realized I have been asking a lot just because I have left little for myself. And each episode of drama simply results in a net drain from me. This is in contrast to friends who give me an overwhelming net gain in love, in energy. I keep forgetting my goal to keep away from romance and make friends. I do it OK sometimes, but when I find myself being frustrated, I know I haven't been seeking a friendship. So I am reminding myself now. I went dancing last night. I saw the teacher that I had a mad crush on. When I saw her, of course, I was happy. But I also realized, as if I was looking directly into the bottom of my soul, that I had nothing to offer her. It was the same feeling when I danced with even the best dancer; I felt I had nothing to offer. I felt so empty. I felt I was just doing things alone, totally disconnected from the person I was with. So of course I was happy to see those big brown eyes, to hear that serene voice. But I realized she and I would be friends in the foreseeable future. That we won't have any drama, which is good. She wrote me an email just before I left the house, telling me about her distress over the loss of a friend who died yesterday. At that point I realized how nice it would be to have her as a friend. I told her earlier that she was my first "real friend" in New York.

Speaking of "real friend", my first real friend I made in New York is visiting this weekend, visiting the city, not me, in particular. She and I clicked, because of our background, because of a connection I can't describe. At some point, I accepted her friendship, I didn't think more about the possibility of something different. So now, same with this teacher. I have been telling her about my difficulty with tango, and she didn't criticize me for being wishy-washy. It's strange how she and I have been building a friendship on email. I only see her on Wednesdays, and you don't talk very much at milongas. When I saw her, like I said, I was happy. And my belief that we will be great friends deepened when we hugged. She had lost a good friend to illness and I gave her the best hug I have given to a New Yorker, as a new good friend of hers. From that embrace, I was even happier that she and I would be even better friends.

I have been consumed by the desire to have a woman in my life. It has burned away a lot of my love. I had none of that kind of love left for anyone beyond myself. And to try to look for another woman would simply burn off whatever there is left, and I might become just some cynical, sadistic misogynist. Shortly giving this beautiful hug to this girl I liked really a lot, I saw the girl that by then had moved out of my apartment. She was nervous seeing me. I could see sadness and defiance in her eyes. I looked at her and I didn't feel like putting up my wall. I realized by then that I also want her to be my friend. My life is simply easier if I have her and all the new people I meet as my friend. I gave her a hug, a good one, not the kind you would feel if you have a wall between. I apologized for my impatience, my control-freak behavior. And of course, we danced.

I regret that we had to go through this short but still unnecessary episode. But I don't regret having done my part. Not because I am proud of it, but because sometimes when reason has gone out the window, the only way to resolve a problem is to do what you do, even if it's wrong. Because if you refrain from doing everything you think might be wrong, you end up just exploding in the end. In the long run, the small wrongs don't matter much. I am on the train now to meet up with her to have gelato at a new place I want to try. The bad frustration for both of us that night is now a bad dream drifting away. She and I might still not connect, but there is no need for drama. I feel guilty that sometimes my friends, or potential friends, have to go through drama with me as I grow and mature, as I stumble sometimes. But the true friends always stick with me in the end. If you think I have a lot of drama now, imagine all of it, multiply a few times, and apply it to my best friend. She's still my best friend. We still haven't talked for a month now, but that's got nothing do with our love. And she's the one who tells me recently that I shouldn't feel guilty about what I have done and feel bad about who I am. She even apologized to me that like other people she too have been selfish, she too have taken advantage of my generosity. I was touched.

I hope to remember to be friends with people, for now. For now when I need healing, when I need others to help me heal. A romantic relationship, especially a forced one, would just stab me deeper and more frequently. I will let that come to me when I am ready. For now, I need my friends. It's not easy. After all, I am a man, and I would like to show love and get love in that physical way I can't do in any other kinds of connections. And I realize more and more that as a man, I also get jealous of other man when they get what I have been begging from life all these years. And that somehow translates to self-confidence as a man. Logically, all this would stop being a huge deal once I find peace and love inside me, once I am more connected with myself. But as my sister pointed out, I am impatient. I need instant gratification of winning what I want.

One step at a time. I am making new friends.

Seeing Myself, Disconnecting with Other

"God does care" was a heading on this booklet a fellow passenger on my left is reading. Probably some Jehovah's Witness handout. I don't think you can really prove that, but it appeals to many of us through simply faith. And a lot of things we do, not just in the religion realm, are faith based. Or at least requires a lot of faith because trying to reason everything would drive us crazy.

Desire for connection is more about a feeling than a product of reasoning. My claim that connection defines our humanity might be reasoned through, not sure, but so far I make that claim from just feeling. Feeling that it would take me to a more peaceful place. I am still trying to figure it out. Little by little.

But first, a small bit of observation. It is based on one of my little connections with the New York City subway straphangers (though there no longer are straps, not like when I started taking the subway 28 years ago). It was a little Asian boy. He had big, thick glasses, hair cut to little quarter-inch stubs. He has a very small frame. His lips both curve down, but thick. Mine are thick but not curved down. Still, I saw a bit of myself in him. It was 7:30AM and this boy was going somewhere with his cheap-looking gray book bag sitting on the floor between his scrawny legs. He manages to stand and doze at the same time. I don't know if I did that when I was traveling my 90-minute journey to my high school. He didn't look old enough to go to high school, but if he is going to one of the two major magnet schools (oops, I forgot there is a third one, apologies for my sister who went to that third one!), he can be one of those prodigies young enough to be admitted despite the higher chance of being bullied (yes, even in the best high schools in the country there are bullies). His glasses draws most of my attention. For me they epitomize the reason for which he is here, for which he will be. He's probably a science and math genius, judging from the total lack of sense of fashion. His family is either too poor and/or too cheap to get him lighter and smaller glasses. He's taking the 7 train this early so he's probably coming from Flushing where the largest population of Asian-Americans are found in this city (many people outside don't know that). And he is alone. He isn't with at least another geeky student, another stereotypical Asian. He's probably going to his first summer session, optional, because his parents can't imagine a boy taking the summer off doing absolutely nothing. I remember my Dad complaining that unlike in China, here children have no summer workbooks to finish before returning to school in the fall. There were Chinese summer schools that are very fashionable, so much so that I was surprised later in my life that no other ethnic group shared this interest. For me, I didn't go to summer school except when I was very little. Summer was dreadful, though, because I didn't have anything to do. My raison-d'être was school and homework, and its absence made my life empty. I didn't use that word, "empty", but in retrospect, I didn't use it only because I didn't know there was a way to describe the feeling.

For all I know, I am completely off the mark with this boy. Though I can't imagine another reason for which a little scrawny boy with big glasses would be riding alone so early on the 7 train. He was definitely not going to work at some finance firm, or else, it's a very casual environment at his hedge fund.

Connection makes me happy. Observing this boy made me forget momentarily my most recent annoyance. Writing about this boy, projecting my own narrow views on him, made me forget, too, for a moment, my recent annoyance. My recent annoyance is with this woman that's "staying" at my place. I use quotes because she's only stayed at my place one night so far. She left all her stuff in my living room but has been spending a lot of time with this tango dancer that apparently likes to massage women's feet. I don't know any of my friends who would dance with him. One of my friends say he has got this "creep factor" because he seems really touchy-feely. But apparently that appeals to the woman sort-of staying with me. The one evening we actually spent some time together was rather unpleasant. It was awkward, a lot of awkward moments. Even though we were at probably the best Korean restaurant in New York, which happens to be in my neighborhood, even though it was the first time we really spent time together since she left a couple of weeks ago, even though we both expressed excitement at seeing each other, now that we were sitting together, there was the continual awkward silence. I thought to myself, wow, if this were a date I would be in one of those silly stories of awkward dates. I have overestimated my ability to turn every awkward dinner conversation into a fun one. Sure, I have had awkward dinners before, but they were all, to the best of my memory, part of some tension, fight. Here the tension comes from the awkwardness, not the other way around. The rest of the night was strange. I didn't want to go dancing, but she was feeling nervous that she would have to navigate through the subway system alone. So I gave up my rest and risked more awkwardness by going with her. She was complaining about the milonga within half an hour because no one was asking her (she's new to the scene, the New York scene!). And afterward she didn't want to talk at all.

I don't need this. I know that. But I don't always do what I need in my life. To make things worse, yesterday she didn't contact me at all. Didn't say hi during the day, didn't tell me about her plans except when I asked her as I was leaving work. And her plan was to hang out with the foot-masseur, not sure till when, though by the time I returned home from realizing I might not have turned off the stove, she thought she would be unlikely to return home that night.

I don't need this. I wrote her an email saying that whatever connection we had before apparently is left in the past. And that I wouldn't be offended if she went and stayed with someone she felt more connected to. What I really wanted to say was that I didn't want to be with someone I didn't feel connected to. To offer my place is a big deal, and it's for someone I feel connected to, a friend, or at least someone I want to build on a connection, which is her case, I was hoping. We had great dynamic that weekend when she was here last. We laughed a lot. And the weeks after that we wrote to each other rather deep stuff, both in prose and in poetry. So I thought we could build on that when she was here. But now that she's almost half way through her stay in New York, I don't feel connected to her at all; quite the obvious, I don't really want to be with her and I don't feel she wants to hang around me.

It's annoying, but I also recognize it's part of life. Sometimes you are connected to someone for an hour, for a weekend, for weeks, sometimes even for years. But there's no guarantee that it will keep being this way. Sure, if it's for years, it takes a lot to break that connection. The important lesson here is that it's nothing catastrophic when a connection ends. Certainly, nothing surprising. There are probably reasons, criteria met, that made us connect so well that weekend and the weeks ensuring. I don't really know what those criteria were, but they probably weren't met this time.

One thing I don't what to do is force in a connection. Maybe I am becoming more cynical, maybe more reasonable, more mature. Not sure. But I am not interested in trying to maintain connections in any artificial way. I tried that with previous romantic relationships when they were ending, and the only outcome was more drama. I was told (accused) that I love drama. I don't. I really don't need it. That's why I want to cut this clean. Nothing to linger. I won't kick anyone out of my house, but I will encourage her to leave, and I don't what to have anything to do with her.

One might say I am being too drastic, that I don't have all the facts straight. Maybe. Maybe I am making a mistake. But it'd be a small mistake, and a lot smaller than the one I have always made when I tried to give a relationship another chance. And I don't think I am making a mistake given the rules of how I want to engage life. Connections are precious, and for that very reason, when they are gone, it would be a colossal mistake to try artificially to revive them.

Ways to Defuse

Not long ago I discovered that if you just sit in a quiet place, sit straight, connected to the ground by sitting on it, and just breathe, something moves. Sometimes for me a lot moves, even scary at times.

I haven't done that in a while. Perhaps I should. I did a lot of that when I was coping with the final breakup with the girl I went to India with. (Perhaps I should just name her India girl.) I don't remember how I figured it out. I guess I had so much pent up in me that my body really just wanted to release everything. I also learned a lot about breathing exercises when I was doing yoga, but that was a long time ago and it was for yoga, not some psychological therapy.

After spending fifteen minutes breathing, I feel more at peace.

This is one of the survival mechanisms I come up with to cope with the barely intolerable. I think different people come up with different ways. Even if it's breathing also they might choose a different place, a different time, a different regiment. Another more recent thing I discovered was scribbling. I would take a pen and a piece of paper and aimless make a continuous line. My eyes would start following the tip of the pen and notice the brief distance of line it traces. And by doing so my mind starts to be set free. Perhaps that's a way to release the pressure: free my mind. I have a similar feeling, though much less intense, when I see other people doing things I want to do, such as making adventures in China, either on the high Tibetan plateau or among the glass jungles of a bursting city. Free my mind, remembering the simple things, remembering the broad possibilities.

Otherwise, my mind sometimes tries to do complicated things. Last night I didn't want to go dancing. I was too tired. I got very little sleep Sunday night after dancing. But my guest, who has only ventured out to the scary New York City subway once in her life before and got traumatized from getting lost, was bracing herself to have to go to the milonga by herself. In the end, I don't know why, I agreed to go with her. I don't even like this girl very much, but I did it. Chivalry or gentleman? Not sure. Either way, in retrospect, it seems stupid. Stupid only in the sense that I wasn't taking care of myself. I don't know if it's generosity that I learned from my Dad, but to use the word "generosity" would imply that I am happy about it. I am not. I think it prevents me from taking care of myself. I think I need to stop having guests so often, especially those who can't take care of themselves!

Yesterday I was going to write about writing on this blog. Meta-writing, I guess. But I ended up talking about connection and my family and sister. I wanted to say that especially in recent entries, I have turned the blog into some ventilation for my anguish and anger and angst. I should have done that in my personal journal that I write with a pen. But typing is faster and more tempting in channeling out the emotions. I remember my first blogs were very descriptive, didn't talk about me directly. I remember writing about the snow, the morning that gradually got brighter and brighter, the observations about the New Haveners that I would soon no longer see. Observations.

Observing others. Observing my surroundings. That's another powerful way for me to cope. It isn't so I can forget about the pain. It isn't so that I can see things in perspective. I think the act of observing details of my environment is itself a channel for my emotions. It's as if I am building a little tube to each little thing or person I am observing, and letting a bit of steam out through that tube. I do that a lot in the subway. I have mentioned several times that I don't listen to music or read when I am in the subway (and obviously not typing on my fancy laptop). I observe a lot, unless sleeplessness overwhelms me. Every face becomes a breeze through the window of my observation, a cool breeze from the outside to cool down all the frustrations, all the anger.

It's when I write about these observations I feel the greatest sense of relief. I don't feel very much better after I write a long diatribe about why life sucks. Why I don't do it more often? The temptation to yell and scream is simply too strong. I don't always have a shoulder to cry on. But I count myself lucky that at times I do. Last Saturday night, after dancing, I was very shaken, like volcano. I wanted to scream. And there she was, one of my closest friends, holding me, and then still letting me hold her as I squeezed her with all the anger that bubbled up. I am lucky.

But I don't have to keep venting whenever I feel the pressure.

I saw in the subway a mother with her son next to her, his head buried in her arms. The sun was setting behind them, shining its iridescent rays through the subway car's window. She looked glorious, almost like La Pietà (that's the famous statue of Mary holding the body of Jesus). And then as the train slows down toward the next stop, she woke the boy up, revealing his sleepy face. He was disoriented. I knew that feeling. When I was a child I had to be woken up too, by my Dad, for whatever reason. While being woken up is not a pleasant feeling, I thought of something warm. It's so nice to have someone to count on waking you up so that you can freely sleep without worry. I can't really nap. I am always worried something bad would happen in my irresponsible nap. I miss the days when I had my Dad to be in control, to wake me up when I needed to, but otherwise I could sleep. The boy reluctantly stood up, half asleep. The mother, being beautiful just because of her maternal makeup called love, took one of the boy's hands and led him through the crowd of strangers.

My world remains full of storms. There are many decisions to make, and there are many consequences of previous decisions I have to face. But in the end, I hope to be more connected with myself and not be too bothered with the overcomplications of the world. I am getting better at saying goodbye, I realize today. That, hopefully, translates to more time for myself, more love.

I just want to add that I was half-way to tonight's dancing when I realized I might not have shut off the stove! So I actually got off the train and waited for one on the opposite direction. That meant I couldn't go out tonight, but it does mean some time alone for myself. Like writing in this blog. Remembering that mother and the son. Maybe even call one of my friends to see how she's doing. Connection. It's what defines our humanity.

Perspective on Connections

Someone is eating something with a lot of garlic in it. The whole train smells like garlicky Chinese food. (There's some sort of a difference between garlicky Chinese food and garlicky Italian food. Perhaps the basil.) The woman across the aisle wondered about the same thing I did. That's after she smiled at my silliness of trying four different seats before settling on one. I am ridiculous, yes. I hate the seats on Metro North trains. My back sometimes hurt from sitting in them before the hour-trip is over. I often don't have the luxury to pick seats that I want. But today I am catching the local train that starts from Stamford. So no hordes of passengers from between here and New Haven, and no hordes of finance people who prefer to take the express either twenty minutes earlier or twenty minutes later. Me, I didn't want to leave too early to give the impression that I am a slacker, but because I have a guest waiting for me to open the door for her, I didn't want to leave later, even though the difference between the arrival time of this local train and the later express is only about five minutes. Really, I just didn't want to be sitting at my desk anymore.

My sister is one of the two people I know who read my blog regularly. The other person is the "French girl/woman" who may or may not be reading it anymore since I told her once again to stop talking to me. It's ridiculous, not what I ask, but the whole pattern. The absurdity is even greater when you see how the two people care about each other. I, for one, miss her a lot, before, during, and after each episode. Nevertheless, for our own sanity, happiness, I hope we really don't have any connection for a very long while. I think connections are precious, real, and important in defining our lives, in defining our humanity. Without connections we are human only in our own imagination and illusion (and for my sister, who believes in God like I believe I am typing on this laptop, let's include connection to God as the kind of connection that defines us).

But sometimes you have to walk away from those you love a lot, maybe even the most, to find yourself again.

I was thinking about my sister today. With women I want a romantic connection with, there's often a lot of rules, a lot of expectations. With my sister, there's not really any. We talk nearly every week, on Tuesday. But that's never expected. And sometimes we only talk for five minutes. Sometimes for an hour. We don't talk much about hard stuff. If she's concerned about a blog entry, she'd send me an email. On the phone it's a little hard to bring up difficult topics, I guess. There're no rules on what to talk about, though we often talk about my niece and nephew. And sometimes when there is disappointment (usually caused by me who break appointments), there's no drama.

There have been disagreements, hurt feelings. Very rarely. As adults, I mean. When we were children, that's a different story. And when feelings are hurt, it's usually because of something unresolved from childhood, such as big brother not really taking the little sister for an adult. But those moments are rare, the the cause is not as complicated and deep-seated, for me, at least, as the drama I have with women. With my sister I never need to feel brave, need to feel I am doing the right thing, need to feel nothing goes right.

It's almost like this with my other sister, the littlest one. With her, sometimes I do feel inadequate, that I have not really succeeded in "rescuing" her from our parents by moving her with me to New Haven. Sometimes I still feel a jolt in my heart when she doesn't seem to have changed from that little, materialistic brat who expects the world of men to take care of her, one way or another. But even with her, I have a lot of peace.

Even with my aging parents, there's a lot of peace. Funny, because it is with them, it is through them, because of their failures raising us, that my traumas rose and my peace depleted. I remember all the fights, still, I heard they had downstairs. I remember being scared even though the yelling wasn't directed to me. And that doesn't count all the direct assaults against me from them. Peace was gone as a teenager. Gone were the days when I walked through the fields of golden rice that stretched to the golden sky as I dawdled from returning home in the old country. Gone were the days when just me and my sister and my Dad went to some bamboo strewn riverside and swam; well, I didn't really swim; I had styrofoam lifesavers to hold on to. I remember holding on to the smooth skin of my Dad that was made slippery in the water. I remember laughing with my sister. I remember the smell of the river, which now is one of the most polluted in the country that has made nature pay for its progress. That peace was gradually eroded during the immigrant teenage years.

Still, somehow, that peace made some a comeback in the past years, also gradually. And if it helped me deal with what I want from women, well, it's not so obvious how it has.

It probably has something to do with connections. That same theme about connections defining us, defining our individual and collective existence.

I am trying to do more art stuff, but with the theme of connections. I have to say I am stealing this idea in part from my art friend, who talked a bit about her final projects at Yale that involved two women dancing in a single suit that she made. It's based on tango (she being one of my favorite tango dancers), but it's really about human connection. I've decided that unless there are logistical and financial barriers, I will do martial arts instead of yoga. The two choices were based, you got it, on desire to improve my tango. But I think martial arts will be a better choice because I am working with connecting with another person. Martial art isn't fighting, but rather, a path of discovery of one's body and its connection to another. It requires awareness of the other person's physical state as well as your own. And coincidentally, the first tango dancer I asked about his involvement in martial art does Kungfu. That also brings back some childhood memories when I tried to imitate the kungfu fighting on movies and TV.

Before I can connect to those I want to connect, to those I love, I need to replenish some of that connection to myself. And so it's not the best idea to have a guest again this week, who will undoubtedly drive me a little batty, but hopefully, not totally insane and out of this world.

Other people's shoulders

One of the ways you know you have a real friend next to you is when you aren't sure what you're doing is right or wrong, whether your feelings are justified or not, she still stands by you, offering her shoulders to you. I don't always know what I am doing is right, often have doubts about my decisions, but I know in the end good things will happen to me because when I look around, I see cheering faces.

I will leave that abstraction there, for now. The first real friend I feel I have in New York is this teacher I have known almost as long as I have been doing tango. (When I use unqualified nouns like "teacher" you can assume it's about tango!) I don't get to see her much, except occasionally at a milonga. We have never spent time together. She's always traveling, practicing, teaching. But what makes me feel I have a friend here is that she writes to me, even when I accidentally reveal the not-so-cheery side of me, she writes to me. And at other times, she tells me cheerful things. She encourages me in indirect ways to look at things in a cheerful way, to not let the drama bog me down. When I tell her I am considering giving up tango, she reminds me how much I love the music and the dance.

I am making other friends too, like that woman I had gelato with and talked about all the dramas of tango. I haven't forgotten about making male friends. That's why I had dinner with this guy Thursday night, though I knew him before he moved to New York. I want to be carefully close to this guy who happens to be the teaching partner of the girl I call my first real New York friend. I say "carefully" because he's a complicated man. In many ways, he's not a nice guy; in many ways, he typifies my disgust with men. But he welcomed me before I even started thinking about moving to New York. And most of all, if this friend of mine considers him one of her best friends, there's something beautiful about him that people don't have a chance to see. For whatever reason, he made two efforts to invite me to their milongas as a guest, and that made me feel very welcomed before I even moved to New York.

To embrace tango more I have to, ironically, get away from it more. Do something else. I write a lot about drama in my blog, but that's not because I love drama. I just want to have someone to love and that hasn't happened yet. My sister told me I have to be patient. I think more importantly, I need to focus on myself more than the silliness of finding someone. I talked to this guy I mentioned about. He does Kungfu, which helps with his tango. I am seriously considering doing that. I am seriously considering taking up singing lessons. I know, in both cases it's about tango. There's nothing wrong with centering my life around tango; it's only a problem when dancing tango is the only thing I do. That guy I had dinner with told me how frustrating (and "angering") it is that tango girls can be so flirtatious, making you think they're interested when they are not. Whatever are their intentions, if all I do is dance tango, I am easily sucked into the dramas it creates. This teacher I am calling my first friend told me that if drama makes me feel disillusioned, I have in my power to just get over it and love tango without the drama. She's right. I trust she's right because she's been doing this a lot longer than I have. I know she had experienced worse drama than I can complain about, and every time I see her she's happy. For most people, even those that know me well, I am almost always happy at a milonga. There's no falsehood here. Tango makes me happy. Even if I have to be reminded of the drama because I see this or that person that broke my heart, tango always offers a cheerful arm to embrace me. I talk a lot about drama and complain about it in this blog, but it's important for you to remember that it is a very skewed view of how I am most of the time. Most people write poems when they are sad or heart-broken, and if you only read those poems, you would think the whole world is full of manic-depressives. On Friday I again had to deal with seeing those two together in the same room, but most of me was cheerful, energetic. My two visiting friends from New Haven told me they didn't feel anything was wrong with me because I looked so positive and happy.

It's easy to let the drama take over, not just my blog, but how I feel. It's important for me to take advantage of the majority voice that should overwhelm the complaining tweets of the drama-loving minority.

This weekend is coming to an end. I will go to some art exhibit and then to a photography exhibit. I haven't seen photography art in a while. Photography being one of my other passions in life that gives me just as much joy as tango, minus all the drama. And before I can breathe a little, another guest is coming. Another beautiful woman, just as flirtatious as any I have met. If there's drama flaring up between us this week that she's here, well, whatever happens, I will do my best to focus on the cheerful, optimistic side of me and not let me smile become hostage of the drama-loving minority.

The Marathon

It can't be said enough that tango is full of drama, and not just in the lyrics or in the hearts and minds of those dancing. It's a social dance and there is bound to be a lot of drama beyond the limits of the dance floor.

I met up with a tango friend last night. Someone I would consider a "friend", not just someone I say "hi" to and chitchat a bit at a milonga. We ran through the rain after I got some expensive raw chocolate from Wholefoods, the first time I went shopping at that super expensive organic food store. And we settled on one of the cold metallic benches of one of the more popular gelato places in the city. And we chatted, unsurprisingly about tango, and we chatted for hours. I was exhausted by the end.

And one of the things we talked about was the incestuous tango drama that happens in the tango community, and apparently that happens a lot in New York. To epitomize this claim, I would rephrase what she said: "my boyfriend sat down once at a table of tango people from New York and realized every single one of them had slept with a few others at the table." This friend of mine had gone through two before meeting this stable third. The first ended in the familiar drama of "Don't talk to me" and "I don't want to go to your milongas" and "I am leaving because I saw him there."

When I walked into the this past weekend's tango marathon (a milonga that lasts the entire weekend, not just one night), the first thing I saw was the French girl with her dude sitting right there at the table nearest to the entrance. I thought how a great way to start the weekend. I had completely forgotten about preparing myself for this. I was too excited to remember my walls. But that didn't bother me for much longer. But the idea of dramas in tango dogged me the whole weekend. I talked to a friend who now has a boyfriend outside tango. They are happy. They were an instant match and he quickly moved in because they were willing to take the risk. I know another friend, not at the marathon, who, after all the drama in tango (and you get more as a teacher) decided on a boy from outside tango. She seemed happy. These little stories reminded me to think hard about being close to women in tango. And they put me on a course of disillusionment for the weekend. My disillusionment continued as I watched ex-couples dancing again. They never seem completely happy. They laugh, perhaps, but there's something off between them, or perhaps I was just projecting my pessimism on them. There's this really beautiful woman dancing with her ex; after they broke up he soon left their country and got married, and she disappeared from the tango scene until now. They were teaching and performing before they broke up. Somehow this saddened me a lot, especially watching them. Tango offers you the opportunity to really connect with someone, the feeling sometimes even stronger than that which you can ever derive from any romantic relationship, even at the beginning when your heart is all butterfly fluttering. But that feeling also isn't allowed to go beyond the tanda, beyond the dance floor. And I guess this weekend I wondered what it was all about.

I wasn't really even getting that feeling. That was the biggest problem of all. I realized this last night talking to my friend. I realized my disillusionment was compounded by the gnawing question of why I was doing tango at all. The question was really, why I was doing it if I can't have that beautiful feeling beyond the dance floor, if I am simply "dancing." I realized my technique has changed. I realized from that that has allowed me to become more creative, more musical. But this past weekend I didn't feel that emotional connection. There's the technical connection. My analogy is that in a marriage you could make things "work." To raise great kids together, to have a great house together. To make each other's life better, happier, even. You can work toward this; you just need a brain and faith and love for the other person. But there needn't be an "emotional" connection. You don't need to wake up every morning looking at your spouse and fall in love again, with every little detail of his existence.

And I realized last night that was what I was missing: being present, being in love, having that feeling. I complained that I was missing that feeling, but last night I realized I have forgotten to seek it. I was too involved with the technical part, too busy trying to make the dance "fun" and musical. But I forgot about the person I was dancing with. We were partners, but somehow I forgot about each of them. My friend's boyfriend, she said, is a popular dancer not because his technique is good (you can't really practice much when you live on an island and with a five-year old daughter), but rather, he always made the woman feel loved.

I've forgotten about that this past weekend, perhaps this whole year. I was too tired. I was too jaded with the dramas in my life. I forgot to do what I told my friends I try to do in a dance: fall in love with the woman who made me feel so lucky to be able to hold her. My heart has been crushed too much this year, and I realized last night that it had no room left for women of my favorite dance.

I am still going to do all I can to improve my technique, improve my musicality. In fact, on the train I will start listening to as many tango songs as possible, study the songs, learn about all the orchestras. I love the music, in addition to the dance. But I will make room in my heart for the dances. There are dramas in my life, and no doubt so long as I continue with tango, there will be dramas in the future. But then I remember what my friend said of her boyfriend's experience at that table. People break each other's hearts, but in tango, in the end, many of them are able to sit together at the same table and presumably have a grand time. Heartbreaks happen much more often here, in this curious little world, but it also demands that you mature faster, heal faster, move on with your life sooner.

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.