背包走天涯之纽约

Arrgh I hate to fall

My daily walk through the woods

posted by wayne @ 7:02 PM 0 comments

The Little Things That Matter

My stay in America has not been without its issues. These problems, when they occur, do cause me quite an amount of stress. In retrospect I have realised that these are actually little things such as walking and heat that we have often taken for granted. Here I present the list, in no particular order, that I have grappled with.

#1. Slipping on the Ice
It was naive of me to think that a nice pair of boots can solve this problem. I must have slipped like 6 times last week and each resulted in me falling backwards with a loud thud. I have learned that the ground is most slippery after a snow sleet and when the ice starts to melt away, and that for better friction you would have to step into the shoe imprints laid down by others when the snow was still soft. There were times I had to climb at a painfully slow pace to my house from the bus stop, even though the distance is only 100 meters.

#2. Getting caught with no heat
There was a particular windy day when I heaved a sigh of relief after reaching the house, only to find that the central heating wasn't working. I asked my landlord, "Has the gas for the heat ran out?"
He doubted me for a moment and went downstairs to check the heat in the kitchen. It was working. "Well, it is slow sometimes. Give it more time and the temperature would be up," he said, brushing off my suspicions and went back to his work.
I waited for half an hour and checked the thermostat. Instead of going up the temperature went down. I grabbed my coat and alerted my landlord again.
Finally it dawned on him what had actually happened. Apparently he put the heat to a low during the day in an attempt to save on the gas. When you do that, the water in the pipes freezes and no water to the radiator means no heat. Suddenly there were clouds in our heads, as we pondered the cold night in wait for us.
"Well, it happens," I said. It was more of a reassurance to me than to him that everything would be ok. I climbed into bed wearing my coat and covered myself fully with the blankets. Now I know how the beggars I saw in Boston Park felt. No, I think they had it worse, because my sleep didn't turn out to be too bad. In the middle of the night my landlord moved the temporary electric radiator into the room. I appreciate the gesture, but the electric one gave off a "ZEAAAA" sound all night and that made me wonder whether it would be better to do without the heat at all.

#3. The ATM refuses to dispense money
Weng Chew told me the ATM in the company premises would work. Well, it didn't for me. I attempted 5 times and all of that turned up "Transactional Error". Eventually I found one near my home that did.

#4. The ATM eats up my money
Even worse than not getting money is to see your money disappear into thin air. The 5 transactions that went wrong were debited from my account when I checked using internet banking. It was highly stressful seeing hundreds of dollars lost in cyberspace. Eventually they rolled back the errors after a week. Thankfully.

#5. The Internet Connection
Internet connectivity allows me to write this blog, do internet banking, watch soccer gamecast, read channelnewsasia, write emails, talk to my family. (No, I can't listen to Singapore's radio channels, for some reason they don't support US ip.) The first thing on my mind when I moved into here was to set up the connection. When it didn't work I was sweating. Even though I am a computer engineer it doesn't mean I can fix all kinds of computer problems. People tend to have that notion, I realised. In the end I did the hard reset on the router, and used the old WEP encryption instead of WPA. WEP is weaker, but it should be enough security for my landlord. Whatever. When I finally got it working my landlord said, "Wayne. You are a genius!" Yeah, he has that notion too. Sigh.

(I thank Eugene for showing me this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-DWGF9hzIo that had me roaring in laughter and gave me the impetus for writing this entry.
Uploaded album "Washington D.C")

posted by wayne @ 4:51 PM 0 comments

Letter to my Landlord

Dear landlord,

first and foremost I would like to thank you for providing me accommodation for these 6 months. Our tenant and landlord relationship has progressed to one of friends. I could never have foreseen that. I know for sure there is no perfect landlord in this world, for we all have our differences and peculiarities. No one would ever willingly wish to live with a stranger for 6 months, as we all value our privacy and space. The prospects of making a few hundred dollars per month to help you pay the mortgage is too enticing, and that I think, removes all your reservations in renting out the room which you, as you have said before, would rather keep for your overnight guests.

When I first arrived you were nice to drive me from my hotel to the house. But I had a shock when I entered your bathrooms. I saw gay magazines that had covers like "Which celebrities would you prefer to have a homosexual relationship?", "Top gay fashion for the month" and "The ins and outs of gay sex". I knew then that you are a homo. I wasn't petrified because I have had bad experiences with gays. Quite on the contrary it was because I had no prior experience with homos. I was fearing the unknown. I had no friends that were homos and so I had completely no idea how you would behave. Do gays like every guy that they see? Did the years in the Columbian monastery have any influence? Would you pounce onto me in the middle of the night? Do you have a partner? If you have, are you the "male" or the "female" or is there such a differentiation at all? Could you tell that I am straight and all I wanted to do was to see America, complete my internship and go home in one piece and would you allow me to do just that? I must admit that in the first few nights, the adjustment to the time difference was made worse by the preoccupation with those thoughts and the lack of a lock for my door. I could wake up to the sound of a pin dropping on the floor and I would peer at the door from time to time from the corner of my eye, keeping watch for the slightest movement. All that stress proved unnecessary, for you turned out to just like any other person.

There was a Saturday night when you were dressing up to go out and I asked in politeness, "So where are you going to?"
You replied in your Spanish accent, "I am going to this club in Queens where they have nice music and I could sit around and relax with my friends." You hesitated for a while and continued ,"Well. You know, it's a gay club. I would like to bring you there someday if you are curious."
I wonder, whether you said that to see if I were a homo, or were you just being polite. Whatever it was, frank openness is healthy and you should know by now that I am straight, because I deliberately left the swimsuit issue of 8 days on the table. I had to, just to make sure you get the idea. I told my friend I was afraid you would fall in love with me. She ridiculed, "Who do you think you are." I thought about it. She certainly had a point. Then again she warned that I shouldn't be using that red lip balm I bought without giving a second thought.

Dear landlord,

I am perplexed by the effort you take into decorating your house and making sure the bed is as flat as a pancake. You have paintings, photo frames and sculptures all over the place at the expense of precious space. It isn't practical to me. What is the point of having a table in the room when I can't use it because you have it decorated with a lamp, a set of old books, a clock and a pair of fairies. I also don't understand why you suddenly put up a cross with Jesus. Is that for decoration? Or are you trying to bless me? I would never know.

There were times when I would see you fall asleep in your couch, after spending hours in front of the tv alone. I felt pity for you because I know that despite your peculiarities you are inherently a good man. I read in 8 days that most dog owners receive love more that they give to their pets and thus they are selfish in a way. But you are different, as you didn't really intended to have your 2 dogs. You took them in after your friends found the homeless dogs wandering in a New Jersey jungle. How selfless is that? You also told me you worked hard to bring up your 2 younger siblings in Columbia. Your brother is now a politician. I respect you.

You asked me how much am I charging you for creating your cleaning company's website. I said,"Nothing." I wasn't trying to ingratiate myself with you. I believe we should do things out of goodwill sometimes. I admire you for being an entrepreneur and I am glad to be of help. Besides, wouldn't you agree that, more often than not, we don't see the immediate returns of our actions? We shouldn't be short-sighted.

When the first snow came I mentioned to you that I nearly slipped. You told me of a superstition that if I had slipped and fell in my first snow in America, I would have to stay in this country forever. I didn't slip, though you must have quite a few times apparently when you were first here.

Dear landlord,

by the time you read this I would have been back in Singapore for a few years. You would probably never have a chance to read this letter. But there is a slight possibility in this well-connected world that you will. If you are reading this, I just want to let you know that I am thankful for your friendship, and for providing me that comfortable queen size bed.

posted by wayne @ 4:47 PM 6 comments

American Football

In my desperate attempt to satisfy my cravings for soccer action I turned to Gamecast from Soccernet. If you realised that Gamecast broadcasts nothing but live minute textual updates of a match you would know how much I miss my soccer. When Gamecast didn't prove to be enough I went on to American Football. It's hard not to catch a game of football in America because they are showing it all day long on the weekends on tv. To be frank it bored me at first, for I had no idea what these big, burly guys were doing on the pitch.

It took me a few games to make sense of it. It can be very complicated if you go into each and every rule, so I chose to summarise the game in my own way. Basically a team has 4 chances, named "downs", to score points. If a team fails to score any points during these 4 downs, the other team would take over and do the attacking. A player can score points by kicking it into the goalposts or bringing it to the other end of the pitch, which is also called a "touchdown". A touch down is the equivalent of a goal in soccer because you don't really get that many. It is no less exciting than watch a soccer goal, for it is amazing when the player dances his way through a maze of oppositions and races to the finishing line.

To be frank I derive guilty pleasure from watching the big guys tumbling on top of one other. And when the referee isn't looking a player can throw a fist or two and get away with it. During halftime the concert band and cheerleaders would perform. The cheerleaders are all beautiful, but nobody can lay his finger on them for they are all taken by the big burly footballers. There was one match where a player scored the winning touchdown and in celebration he ran all the way to the sideline to propose to his cheerleading girlfriend on national tv. The next day the couple were on "Good Morning America" explaining how all that happened.

During SuperBowl it was even more spectacular, they had a stage in the middle of the pitch and a rock star was performing with exploding fireworks in the sky above. It certainly seemed more like a Singapore's National Day Celebration.

Despite all of the above I would take soccer over football anytime. Football is not a fluid game because the game is punctuated by downs and between each down the teams would have to take time to reorganise. As such a lot of commercials advertising chips and soda are shown. It is amazing how a one hour game can stretch into a 4 hour program and I wouldn't be surprised if half of that time went to commercials. Imaging having 2 hours of commercials. I don't need that many pee breaks.

posted by wayne @ 3:54 PM 0 comments