Tag: NYC

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business personal

A Lecture then Drinks in the Down Town Association

Outside of the DTA in NYC

Gave a long presentation on an aspect of the law called Trademark Dilution last night. The actual speaking went fine – the problem was the forum (a) didn’t have a clock and (b) didn’t have a referee. So I had no idea how much time I had until some guy popped up and mouthed “five minutes.”

Looked down and I still had six slides to go through with the real meat of the lecture. So ran through that the best I could. The thing with letting go of control of something is that y’gotta have faith that the people that’re then in charge of that thing  do what they need to on their end. It was good, not great.

Afterward, met up with two of my friends at this place called the Down Town Association. It’s a oak paneled club that members get to show up at and relax in old leather chairs and glasses of whiskey.

The thing about NYC’s that every nice place, you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with another 1,000 people cause it’s a nice place. So that’s why it occasionally worth it to join things like the DTA – to get some civilization and some space.

No aged rum though, so I had an Old Fashioned. Two actually – before dashing off to my fencing class late.

There’s nuthin like waving around sharp objects with cheese and alcohol in your belly and annoyance in your soul.

Inside of the Down Town Association in NYC

Location: back to work
Mood: mildly annoyed
Music: 3 versions of this story: mine and yours and then the truth
YASYCTAI: Get ready for that next big thing. (time/1.0 pts)
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business personal

It’s been a decade since 9/11

Midtown West of New York City from the river

Causea the vacation last month, plus the hurricane and Labor Day, things have been slow. Actually, all of summer’s traditionally slow for me so it’s when I map out my trajectory for following year.

As I said, all businesses are comprised of three parts so I like the use the downtime to concentrate on the other two (sales/marketing & research/development). More on that some other time.

Yesterday, though, was running around Staten Island for work. Stopped by the Brooklyn Ikea on the way home to pick up some cabinets; HG’s a lot neater than me so I feel I’ve got to step up and get my stuff in order. Spent far more time yesterday pounding together funny flat boxes than reasonable.

Evidently, there’s this theory that obesity is contagious, which I could have told you – your friends’re mirrors to yourself so if you’ve got friends that love to pound food, chances are you do as well, or will. Think that HG’s a good influence on me in a number of aspects, neatness being just onea of those things.

Part of the reason you cut friends is to make room for the one’s that’re better for you.

Other friends you keep around for years, decades, even.

Speakinga decades, Sunday’s September 11th. Ten years, it’s been. There’re all these memorials and constant news clips whatnot. Which I understand, especially for those that were too young to not know what happened.

Thing is that I remember every goddamned minute of that goddamned morning. Suspect mosta my fellow New Yorkers do as well.

Ten years. Man, it feels like it was yesterday.

This video was shot on 9/7/2011.

Location: getting dressed for a meeting
Mood: pensive
Music: I’ll always love you though New York, New York, New York
YASYCTAI: Meet up with an old friend for coffee. (60 mins/0.5 pts)
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business dating personal

Having a date night with the wife

Logan Lo

HG and I have a habit of going to local NYC hotels for a quick night or two away from the house. It’s amazing what the word “deluxe” means inside city limits and what it means everywhere else in the world.

Which is not to say we had a bad time. We had dinner at a new restaurant called Tenpenny, where we had great service and some pretty impressive food as well. It’s nice having a date night with the wife. Afterward, we walked back to our hotel and sat at this very old school bar. I actually had an Old Fashioned instead of rum, just to shake things up a bit.

Made it back in time to wrestle for a bit and practice some fencing. My old injuries are bugging me like mad. Have to schedule another appointment with the doc. Growing old sucks but, to paraphrase Maurice Chevalier, it beats the alternative.

 

Logan Lo

Sunday was church where I spoke to this young lady; she’s dipping her toe back into the dating world.

Her: It’s hard finding the time to date.
Me: Well, you go to work five days a week right? That’s to keep a roof over your head and food on your plate. Finding someone to spend the resta your life deserves at least as much consideration as that, dontcha think?

Speakinga work, client just killed a project I was working on but it’s just as well, this is a busy month.

Trying to stay on topa things’s a lot like playing Whack-A-Mole, yeah?

 

Location: home, listening to the rain outside
Mood: injured
Music: til the day I die I run more game
YASYCTAI: Have some fish today. (15 mins/0.5 pts)
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personal

Who are you to tell people what to do?

Logan Lo

Her: Do you ever look or is it an unwritten rule that you don’t look?
Me: We don’t look.
Her: So you guys just stand there and do your business?
Me: Yep. How is it you never talked to other boyfriends about this?

———-

Allow me one little rant.

Am finding on FB and other social sites that people – mostly white people not from NYC and not the least bit affected – keep tsk, tsk, tsk-ing some of our celebrating the death of a man that killed 3,000+ of our friends and family. Anyonea these people could have been me or my kid sister on a given day.

I’m not screaming for joy in the streets but won’t judge the ones that are cause I know nonea their stories.

Look, just cause you find something offensive doesn’t mean it is.

Your opinion as to how I should act means as much to me as your opinion as to what I should have for breakfast.

What you think is your opinion and why should your opinion rule me?

———-

For those of you interested, will be having chili for breakfast. Cause that’s what I do.

 

Location: home, listening to the rain outside
Mood: irritated
Music: would follow and believe with faith like a child
YASYCTAI: Know that your opinion’s just that. (lifetime/2 pts)
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personal

Just cause I don’t like to fight, doesn’t mean I won’t

Me: (turning to face him) I gotta punch him.
Her: Don’t.
Me: Fine.

Went to have dinner to celebrate my buddy’s 30th. On the way there, this guy said something mildly racist – which I don’t actually ever hear any more in this day and age. Felt a strong urge to do the fella grave bodily injury and said as much but then I was reminded that I’m a 37 year-old lawyer fulla injuries. So I decided to get to the party and focus on some pernil asado, which was probably a better choice.

This’s all comedic cause I’m about the opposite of pugilistic. Unless you step up to my girl. Or if you’re a side of delicious Cuban roast pork.

At which point, I’d watch myself.

Wrestling coach: (in middle of class) Wait, you never saw Alien?
Me: No. (pause) Scary movies scare me.
Coach: (shakes and drops forehead into hand)

Location: Renting another car
Mood: productive
Music: call out the KKK, they’re wild after me
YASYCTAI: Know what you are. (60 minutes/1 pt)
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personal

NYC Blizzard of 2010 / Books I read in 2010

Snow storm in NYC

Him: “Streetsmart?” That’s what stupid people say when they don’t like to read or know anything about anything.

Did you have a nice holiday? Hope you did. Didn’t do much myself, just saw the folks and ate my weight in Chinese good. Nuthin beats homemade food, yeah?

Just got in from shoveling a ton of snow in the UWS. About two feet of drifts where I am. NYC’s pretty for about 20 minutes in times like this. Then everything turns grey and icy.

Since I’m working from home today, figured that I’d read. Don’t think I ever told you but I’m a business book reviewer for the New York Journal of Books. Read twenty-one books for them in 2010:

  1. The Power Formula for Linkedin Success
  2. Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business
  3. Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms
  4. Never Get a “Real” Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business, and Not Go Broke
  5. SuperFreakonomics, Illustrated Edition
  6. Comebacks at Work: Using Conversation to Master Confrontation
  7. The Referral Engine
  8. Rework <- Excellent book
  9. How the Mighty Fall . . . And Why Some Companies Never Give In <- ditto
  10. The Law (in Plain English) for Photographers
  11. The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers
  12. Mastering the VC Game
  13. Design Is How It Works
  14. Linchpin
  15. The Wisdom of Bees: What the Hive Can Teach Business about Leadership, Efficiency, and Growth
  16. The New Rules of Marketing and PR
  17. The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics
  18. Living Trusts for Everyone: Why a Will Is Not the Way to Avoid Probate, Protect Heirs, and Settle Estates
  19. Legal Guide for the Visual Artist
  20. How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish Without a Trace
  21. Free: The Future of a Radical Price <- ditto

Probably read about 25 books total this year. Use to read a lot more but I’ve been sleeping better so that’s gone down a bit.

Did you read any good books this year?

Location: my warm living room
Mood: cozy
Music: She looks around There are snowflakes on the ground
YASYCTAI: Stay in if you’re in NYC. It’s horrid out. (24 hrs/0.5 pt)
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personal

Aerelon: No one that was born poor wants to stay poor

Mona Lisa on a NYC Building

1983
Me: Why do I have to know what a salad fork looks like?
Him: (exasperated) Because, one day you’ll sit down with people that have a fork for salads and you’ll need to know which one to use. Now’s what’s that?
Me: Soup spoon.
Him: (beaming) Yes, soup spoon. That’s right. Good.

Thanks for taking the time to write a comment or email. Found it all really interesting the very different views people had. It’s funny but minorities & native-New Yorkers saw one thing (the second exchange) while non-minorities & non-New Yorkers pretty uniformly saw another (the first exchange).

As I wrote, that was the entire conversation; she never even bothered to respond. And rather than deal with any of the points I made, she sniffed, “Ugh, Logan, ugh! Privileged sentiments bore me.”

Like Nietzxche said, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” She’s so smugly certain she’s right, she has no need to respond to new information.

Switching gears, you can always tells someone that used to be fat. They lumber. They walk as if they still carry the weight.

When I did lose the weight, onea of first things I did was ask my mom to buy me a nice sweater. She brought me to Alexander’s and I picked out a grey sweater from a bin. Got it big just in case I got fat again.

Wore that sweater proudly cause I got it at a department store. At the time, we didn’t usually get our clothes from a department store. When I told Grace in school about it, she laughed and said that only poor people shopped at Alexander’s and that I probably got it from the bargain bin. So I put the sweater away and only wore it at home.

It took me years to unlearn how to walk like fat person. Just like it took me years so that people didn’t immediately say, “You sound like you’re from Queens.” And years to know that what other people think of me is nonea my business.

Still, gotta admit that “privileged sentiments” made me pause. But not for reasons y’might think.

That I don’t sound like someone born to penniless immigrant parents outside an industrial park in Queens, New York, I take as a particular compliment. No one that was born poor idealizes it, only rich folk that have no clue.

Take it as a testimony to those parents who made sure, even though we grew up with halfa nuthin, we still got a proper upbringing – jia1jiao4. They taught me manners, how to love reading, and how to figure out which one was the salad fork.

“Privileged sentiments” – gotta tell my mom. She’ll take that as a particular compliment too.

And now, geekiness:

Location: hopefully Croxley later
Mood: lethargic
Music: You got the talking down, just not the listening
YASYCTAI: Seriously, stop idealizing things you know nuthin about. NYC in 1993 is hardly NYC when it was gritty. Try five years earlier on for size. (2 mins/1 pt)
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personal

Privileged nights in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Le Parker Meridien, NYC

Lobby of Le Parker Meridien, NYC

So, Le Parker Meridien was pretty nice. They were giving away two tix to Paris and called out the name of the firm first – my firm. Told my boss that I hoped it was me and then he won.

Thought that was pretty funny. I ended up winning a candle holder. It’s better than spending a buck to win a buck, I suppose.

The next night, had dinner with the lawyer that represented the first Guantanamo Bay defendant. Was a pretty eye opening dinner. Not at liberty to give away much but the facts are that the government had five years to prep against this lawyer with really only two people helping him. The government brought up 260 charges and only one stuck.

Makes one wonder how strong the government case was to begin with.

———-

Below is an actual conversation, verbatim, on my previous post with a female friend – not HG.

If you’ve read me for a while, I’d like to know your thoughts on the conversation? Note, it was a public conversation so she expressly wanted this read. Specifically, how do I come across to you and how does she come across to you?

I’ll give you my thoughts next time.

Her: I’m one of those people who miss the old NYC. I moved here in ’93 and there was a real sense that anyone could move here and create whatever life they wanted. No way does that still exist. I think when people say NYC isn’t what it used to be, what they are trying to get at is the diversity back then meant NYC was open to anyone. It’s not about grit being cool. It’s about a city that had a place for everyone, regardless of class. That’s just not true anymore.
Me: Heya! I think that, in that regard, NYC’s an even better place now that it was back then. We have a mayor that’s expressly pro art, with major art install oftions all over the city. Moreover, its safer and more tolerant here than ever. We still have places for everyone: artists, businessmen and – surprising even to me – families. I would never have considered raising a family in the UWS or Battery Park before and now it’s an option.
Her: Ugh, Logan, ugh! Privileged sentiments bore me.
Me: (I’m) perplexed. Are you saying I’m the privileged one?

That is the entire conversation.

Location: In my warm room
Mood: Still kinda irritated
Music: Who cares if you disagree? You are not me
YASYCTAI: Tell me what you think of that. (2 mins/0.5 pts)
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personal

NYC isn’t what it used to be. Thankfully.

Times Square, NYC on a summer night

Her: You know, when you go out, you don’t need to eat everything they give you.
Me: (staring blankly)
Her: (sighing) Nevermind…

It’s holiday party time. Got client events at fancy hotels, steakhouses, ballrooms, and hidden bars on tap this time around. This week, heading to Le Parker Meridien.

Not sure if it beats all-you-can-eat wings and pitcher beer but I’ll find out. Should probably hit the gym. Later.

———-

People who aren’t from here often comment about how they miss the “grit” and “coolness” of NYC in the 80s and 90s.

Cannot tell you how much that annoys me.

For anyone that grew up here during that time, no one misses it. It’s one thing if you come to city as if you’re a tourist at the zoo and get to go home to a nice colonial in the suburbs. It’s another if you have to walk by hookers and over bums to get home off Times Square.

People talk about NYC my home when it was a hell-hole back in the 70s-90s as if it was a movie and y’can just turn it off when you’re done. Lemme tell you that being a fat, awkward, minority nerd during that time was unpleasant.

Very unpleasant.

If you wanna see an idealized NYC where you’re safe walking down the street but can still oogle the seediness without smelling the urine or taking knee to the gut off 14th street, rent a film.

You don’t see me driving to your lawn in Connecticut saying, “This is so sterile and safe – but bears and wolves, now that’d be cool. Oooh, imagine if there was one chasing someone right now! Not us, of course. Or anyone we love. Someone else. Maybe a fat Chinese guy with glasses reading Sherlock Holmes.”

Location: Looking out a rainy window
Mood: irritated
Music: Good times never seem so good – so good, so good, so good
YASYCTAI: Stop idealizing things and be grateful for what you got. (2 mins/1 pt)
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business personal

Halloween 2010 NYC

Docks restaurant in midtown, NYC

(c) Someone else

Me: (to cook) Did you just dunk the bread into oil before frying it?
Him: (nodding)
Me: Niiiiiice…

Last Thursday night was not the best night I’ve had.

Submitted the five projects that night – still dunno if I’ll get paid. Anywho, turns out I missed one key piece of information. So I slept for four hours, woke up at the crack of dawn, redrafted and then resubmitted it while HG went to the Caribbean without me. As soon as the paperwork was in, dashed to the office to put in a full day at work on Friday.

Was supposed to meet up with Paul to catch the Jaymay concert downtown and was gonna bail but somehow found my second wind with four hours sleep. Had a grand-ole, rum-filled time. The opening act was way cool too and were dressed like the band in the Muppets with a twist! They wore a joker grill on their teeth so they were “evil Muppets”! Jaymay put on a great show as always.

Felt awake enough to over to his pad and pick up some street Halal food, just like I did last year. Next day, wrestled where the guy I used to school proceed to whup me every-which way.

That Saturday night, did what most geeks do when their fiancees’re away and the women in NYC are tarting it up for Halloween – stayed home with some pork rinds and assembled a quad-core, triple-digital input DVR with 3.5TB of harddrive space and dual 32″ extended desktop display.

Sunday worked again; on the train to meet a client, this four-year-old girl dressed up as Snow White got into an argument with her older brother dressed as Batman. She ended the argument by reaching down and firmly grasping his privates and violently yanking.

Every man watching did a collective sympathy groan.

Quite the dweeby weekend.

Docks restaurant in midtown, NYC

Location: in fronta screens
Mood: still insanely busy
Music: You see, there’s just too much I know already
YASYCTAI: Get out and have a life (after you’re done with work). (120mins/1 pt)
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