Month: June 2010

Categories
personal

Stinky lunch

Location: my steaming apartment
Mood: relaxed
Music: get-tough girls turn into goldmines, but oh

Tribeca NYC

Been busier with work this past month than quite a while. Running all over the island meeting with clients and hustling for scratch. Although my definition of scratch doesn’t really compare much with that of my friends.

Case in point, just yesterday, met up with Sheridan for lunch on onea the hottest daysa the week. Am constantly amazed at what he manages to get himself into.

Me: What’re we talking about?
Him: 420.
Me: Thousand?
Him: Million. My cut’s $600,000.
Me: Why am I buying you lunch? You should be buying me lunch!

My own life’s decidedly less interesting.

Her: What’s that smell?
Me: Some salmon I had in the fridge.
Her: (shaking head) Why don’t you have a TV show and call it, “Logan eats the worst smelling food in the world.”
Me: I’d totally do that.
Although I did splurge and pick up the iphone 4.

My buddies mock me cause I put plastic on the cover and have a protective case around my phones. But the iPhone 4 cost me $199 and I sold my old phone for $250.

Now if only the damn thing’d stop dropping my calls…

YASYCTAI: Go for the big score. (time/2 pts)

Categories
personal

Summer days

Location: yest, all over the damn place
Mood: frick’n hot
Music: walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

Summer night in the Village, NYC

Summer’s my traditional busy season.

Yesterday, woke up to crank on two client assignments when onea my tenants called and told me that a light on a 15 ft ceiling burned out. For reasons I can’t get into, had to be the one to change it so in the middle of the workday, sweating up a storm, I’m perched on a rickety scaffolding thinking, This is totally how I’m gonna get my ticket punched.

Then I dash downtown to drop off some work and pick up some checks. Then go to meet my uncle and the President of the largest bank of some medium-sized nation.

Gotta mention that my uncle’s the equivalent of Allen Greenspan for this country but – to me – he’s just my uncle Jimmy. So here I am in this huge office on Wall Street with my uncle and two others and they’re all treating my uncle like a rock star.

Funny, how we all have our three lives, yeah?

Dash off to the office, deal with some clients.

Then off to a networking event to hear Scott Belsky talk and pound some rum. Then off to pick up some tech equipment at Best Buy and home at 10PM.

Summmer’s my busy season. Just wish it weren’t so damn hot.

———-

auf Deutsch: Tor!
中文:真棒!
English: Yeah, baby!

Go USA. That is all.

YASYCTAI: Consider moonlighting in something. Extra dough’s always good. (time/3 pts)

Categories
personal

Inflated

Location: all over Queens, yesterday
Mood: crazy busy
Music: I take the mile, let me show ’em how

Broadway in NYC downtown

It’s funny but Sabatoa quoted my last entry and had 173 comments back and forth about various people’s opinion as to the number.

It’s interesting what resonates with people and what doesn’t.

———-

Harvard and Stanford law schools have eliminated grades; other law schools’re officially – and artificially – inflating grades. Ok, the pass/fail maybe’s alright, they did still make it into Harvard and Stanford, yeah? The grade inflation’s, however, is uncool.

Not saying that a number’s all y’should be but y’should have earned that digit. In fact, all of your digits should be real.

It says something that people borrow stacksa dough to pretend like they got more than they do; the average American’s $15,519 dollars in debt. That means $15,519 wortha their stuff really isn’t theirs.

Ditto for those inflated grades.

Why would anyone want something they didn’t earn?

On a related point, what’s the pointa working at jobs y’hate, to buy things y’don’t need, to impress those y’don’t know?

YASYCTAI: If you got credit card debt, pay it down. There’s nuthin you need so much to be in credit card hell. (a while/2 pts)

Categories
personal

Numbers

Location: work with garbage trucks outside
Mood: busy!
Music: It’s a question of lust, it’s a question of trust

A couple in the NYC spring

Him: Dunno…it depends on how you count I guess. (thinking) Like 30 maybe?
Me: Jeez! (laughing) That why I don’t shake your hand, I might get the clap.
Him: So what I do?
Me: (sighing) Well, I suppose y’gotta just tell her the truth. I mean, you’re a whore, yeah. But it’s your past and what can y’really do about your past?
Him: Why does it matter so much? I don’t care.
Me: Y’don’t? What if she said sixty? Then you’d care a little, right?
Him: A little, sure. But cm’on…
Me: There’s always a price to pay. People always thought it was funny I didn’t hit every chance I had. But that’s cause I knew, someone might care someday. And this girlie cares. . So all y’can do is tell her that y’hope she can see past this but respects her decision if she can’t.

Hope it works out for him cause he finally found a girlie where it matters.

Off to New Joisey…

YASYCTAI: Update your address books. Some people gotta go. (120 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Back to Alphabet City

Location: 11AM yest, Alphabet City (again)
Mood: cranky
Music: I’m going down, to Alphabet Street

First Avenue facing south

2010.06.11
Hit up this networking event with PB near Alphabet City. He came to just hang out, cause he’s a good friend. Didn’t even bring any business cards. They had a raffle and were about to pull out a card.

Him: Should I toss in a card?
Me: Toss in a card.
Him: Don’t have one. Just the onea the guy that interviewed me today.
Me: Toss that in – but if you win, we split it 50/50.

Guess who won?

2010.06.12

Him: Y’know what’s the number one reason for happiness?
Me: Purpose?


Caffeineguy came to town and he met up with Metrodad for dinner at a french restaurant. Woulda gone but just got hit with that newest legal matter plus already had a dinner date with a protein shake and several cansa sardines.

Instead, ran around and ended up watching Julie&Julia; with the lady. But then at 11PM, get a call from the two boys and soon they’re ringing my door and sitting in my guest room.

Offer em up a selectiona my finest rums and we pound for hours. Funny thing’s that we’d never met till that night – like Julia Child and her friend Avis DeVoto. But I suppose you know who your people’re, regardless.

Him: Nah, man. It’s more than purpose. It’s this. People. Friends.
Me: (grinning) That sounds about right to me. (holding up glassa rum) Cheers, fellas. Thanks for dropping by.

2010.06.13
Went back to do more work in Alphabet City. Then headed over to meet up with some old co-workers at a bar. Was the first guy in the whole bar so the owner – little Japanese lady – sticks her head out the door.

Her: You, hey you! (motioning over) You want sit? Come in, sit.
Me: Sure. (take a seat and chat with her)
Her: You’re a nice boy. I’m a gonna buy you drink. What you want?
Me: (laughing) Rum and diet coke, please.

Then everyone came and we caught up over cheap drinks and rich food.

Back to Alphabet City on Monday and then wrestling. Some days y’get some court papers. Some days, y’get some win.

Not a bad few days, yeah?

YASYCTAI: Caffeineguy’s right, you know. Friends’re the best, go see one. (120 mins/1 pt)

Categories
personal

Bits

Yet another bar in the city.

Her: I didn’t know until right now what you did for a living. (later) I’m amazed that you can tell people so much and not tell them anything at all.
Me: (grinning) There’re some parts of my life I like to keep private.

Furison came into town recently and we grabbed a drink tonight. She got an aged rum with a slice of orange and liked it.

Always ask people that meet me in RL if I’m the same as they read.

They tell me I am and that I manage to say a lot without giving away too mucha my personal bits. That’s the goal.

Her mouth literally dropped open when she found out how much money I’d lost in my life.

Like I said in my last post, funny what a body can get used to.

Walked her through the pouring rain and put her in a cab on Broadway.

Me: You and my girl’re the most Asian white people I know.
Her: (laughing) I’ll take that as a compliment.
Me: You should, you should.

On a different point, a fella took the time to write me an email to say that he liked this blog.

Plus I managed to settle things with that newest legal wrinkle although it means bologna sandwiches from now until winter for me.

Man, it’s always giveth and taketh away, isn’t it?

Location: 9PM yest, my fave Dive Bar
Mood: Lit
Music: too long we’ve been living under a raincloud (Spotify)

Categories
personal

How a body can fall

 

Bar in New York City

The ability for a body to get accustomed to things is just mind-blowing. If you ever watch things like The Pacific, you wonder how a body can fall asleep when people’re trying to kill them and bombs’re going off. And yet they do.

Got another letter and it looks like I’m off to court yet again. While I’ve won or settled pretty much all of these things, it’s still nerve-wracking.

And yet, you get used to it a little, somehow.

On another point, should just never check my mailbox. Nuthin good ever comes by post, except maybe my subscription to The Economist.

Wonder if they ship rum via mail.

———-

Started fencing and wrestling again and left my keys at the westling place. Hadta run back downtown to get them. That wasn’t the bad part.

Me: Where’re my keys?
Owner: Right in front of you.
Me: Where? (looking down at the men’s protective cup on desk) Oh for goodness…I gotta wash them now. (removing keys from cup) I don’t know where they’ve been.
Him: (laughing) Oh you know exactly where they’ve been!
Location: room, pacing
Mood: craptastic
Music: Scared of losin’ all the time He wrote it in a letter

Categories
personal

Parasitic fear

Location: off to see KG Betty in midtown
Mood: busy
Music: My feet is my only carriage

Koreatown, NY

This recent BusinessWeek article says that some sick people given live parasites have gotten better. Evidently, we live such sanitary lives that our bodies, which spent hundreds of thousands of years fighting something, had nuthin to fight. Ergo, it starts fighting itself leading to stuff like Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, peanut allergies, etc.

By introducing parasites to the body, the body has something to fight besides itself.

But you knew this, yeah? That the suffering cuts the fat to show the muscle underneath.

———-

Been writing like a madman; some stuff for fun, most for business. None for scratch, but figure that’ll come when it comes.

Summer’s usually my busy season and it’s still busy but slightly more cause I’m doing stuff wouldn’t have time to do if I were busy making coin.

It’s unnerving, the uncertainty. Then again, my fear is my only courage.

YASYCTAI: Write something for fun. (120 mins/1 pts)

Categories
personal

Pity Party

Gary Coleman passed away last week. The odd thing for me was that I thought about him the day before he died cause of something my brother said to me about ten years ago.

Me: Feel bad for the guy. It must be hard to have it all and lose it all.
Him: Well, which would you rather be? A guy who once had it all only to lose it or just a dude that never had anything?

Thought about that conversation cause I saw four old friends last week.

The first is a President over at this $54 billion company; not a vice-president, the president of his entire division. Hadn’t seen him in four years cause…well, embarrassment’s the only word for it.

See he’n everyone else thought I was gonna be someone. Instead, had a few rough years.

But he came to open the door for me to his floor personally anyway and gave me a huge hug in front of all his employees.

Was very touched.

The second was a buddy from law school. The third, PB. The fourth, another old friend.

Onea them asked me a question that hit me hard.

Him: What happened to you, man?
Me: (long pause) Dunno. (thinking) Life, I suppose…dunno…

Threw myself a little pity party on Friday, donated about four suits that didn’t fit me anymore.

Then I had this conversation on Memorial Day.

Her: (motioning over to the television) There should be more stories like this, about the people that survive and have to live like this.
Me: You’re right.

A woman once said something like, the job of the soldier’s to protect us; and the our job’s to remember them.

Sounds like I got the better of the bargain and for that I’m grateful.

A one day pity party’s plenty, especially for a lucky guy like myself.

Keep getting these chances I don’t deserve.

Location: Madison Avenue
Mood: hot
Music: feeling lonely I had a life to give many dreams to live
YASYCTAI: Throw the party if y’gotta but keep it short. (60 mins/1 pts)