Posts Tagged ‘New York’
This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 110 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.
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On a lighter note, I was recently introduced to Fuck You! by Cee-Lo Green which I cannot stop listening to.
Other stuff I have recently come across and liked:
Crepes du Nord This place is the best lunch place ever if you work in the financial district. Shockingly, they serve crepes.
Del Posto Don took us here to celebrate a deal closing and it was amazing. It’s Mario Batali (he does great pasta), we had a five-course meal plus a lot of wine and cocktails. I went with my sister to Babo a while back, which is also Batali, but I thought this place was better. They had this cucumber-flavored gin drink slash concoction that I cannot even describe, but I miss it dearly. You know it’s a nice place when they give you complementary boxes of truffles when you leave. Well, that and the 4-figure bill. Anyway, I was impressed.
Dropbox I’ve been using this for a while now, but I finally upgraded to the paid version because it’s so useful. Simply stated, it’s cloud computing, which basically means that your files are saved on a server somewhere, so it’s accessible anywhere. I tried a number of these types of solutions, but Dropbox was by far the best. It basically syncs all the documents in one folder on each of the computers you link to your account, and it stores the files online in their server as well, so all your stuff is accessible through any web browser as well. It’s great because it’s simple, and it does performs a few functions incredibly seamlessly and correctly. If you have multiple computers you work from, or you just like having access to the contents of your hard drive from anywhere (they have an Android app, so I can get to basically all of my files using my cell phone, too), it’s an incredibly useful application.
Crazy Heart I didn’t think I would like this movie, but I did. It’s nothing fancy, but I liked it.
Justin Bieber I love him. Nah, I’m just kidding, he sucks. Sorry to those with Bieber Fever.
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My cousin Caroline came by to visit recently from California, and so I finally got a chance to see her – yay! We ended up going out the Friday before Easter only to discover that our bar of choice was – gasp! Closing early!? Wtf, New York? That’s what’s supposed to make you different from shitty cities like Boston. Come on. But anyway, I had a great time hanging out with her that weekend — we even got to see Mama Mia for about 20 bucks (standing room only), which was a fun time.
One of my favorite things about being in New York City in a job with fairly little responsibility is that there’s always people coming and going and it’s easy to make time for them and to take weekend trips, too. So, the itinerary for the next month or so –
Next weekend, Daniel, who I haven’t seen in over three years now, is dropping by for a visit. The weekend after, (the fantastically talented) Brooke will be here. The week after, I’m going to Seattle for a cousins’ reunion, minus Caroline, who’s off to China. And the week after that it’s off to Florida to hang out with the Emory/Just Loop It gang at Dan the Man’s place in Sarasota. And then, the following weekend, FINALLY, my sister is coming to visit! Which has been a long time coming — so, it’s shaping up like the next month and a half will pass by pretty quickly.
On a less upbeat note, but still pertaining to the topic of comings and goings, now that our two-year stints are up at the law firm, the old guard will be moving out to be replaced by newer, more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed legal assistants. Today was Peter’s last day which was great for him and sad for us, and it looks like at some point in May, Christina will be leaving the firm, which I know is going to colossally suck for me.
Also, I really need to figure out what I’m going to do about law school. I’m a little (read: very) heartbroken to leave New York, but it just seems way to expensive to stay. Even apart from tuition bills, the cost of living is really hard to justify if I have no income. Honestly, moving was not an easy process for me, not unlike how moving to Atlanta was for college. I feel like I finally created some sort of life here and now it’s time to go. At first I was considering just moving home for the sake of getting out of my job, but due to cost considerations, it makes more sense to just stay, work and only move once when it’s time for school — wherever that may be. I found that I was actually a relieved to be sticking around a little while longer.
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So, a lot has been going on the past few months, and yes, I realize I haven’t been posting. Additionally, I have been re-designing this blog/site and working out kinks so any “website” time has been allocated towards that. I’ll probably switch over to the new template soon, but it’ll be a bit messy.
Also, I went to Panama for a week-and-a-half over Thanksgiving and then Texas where it managed to snow the one day I was in Houston. Thanks, Mother Nature. Panama was amazing, except for that one place with bad water that made me break out. Yeech. And I was also tired the first few days — I spoke a lot of Spanish, and I think dredging it out of my memory was surprisingly enervating. However, there was sun, snorkeling and beaches, and I went on a coffee tour, saw dolphins and sloths, met the indigenous people, watched a boat go through the Panama canal locks, went hiking in the mountains, etc., so it was worth it. We also ate a lot of fancy meals and fruit there was so good– I can’t even compare it with the fruit in New York, it’s too depressing.
Anyway, I returned to the dank coldness of the city and managed to get sick. Fast forward two weeks later, I’m all better and now there are inches and inches of lovely power-like snow all over the place. Also, since returning from my trip, I’ve gotten admission into Duke, Georgetown and NYU Law (I’d already gotten into UT in the beginning of November)! (!!!!!) So, I’m excited for law school, but I’m a teeny bit scared of how much work it will be. Regardless, thanks to the happy news, I’m sure it’ll be a very merry holiday season.
Now that law school is close to definite, I’m starting to realize that my time in New York might actually be coming to a close — at least for now. It went by extremely quickly. My two years of indentured servitude to the firm is up in July, so I’ll probably be leaving then or even earlier. Seven months. Weird.
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I think this is probably going to be the last weekend that isn’t completely hectic for me. Between people coming and going, work, my intern project and getting ready to move out and packing for Taiwan, I’m not planning on having too much free time in the next couple weeks.
Anyway, other than purchasing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at my handy-dandy Barnes and Noble across the street and going to Pinkberry, I don’t have much else I wanted to do in New York. I even went to a Yankees game the other week! It was Old Timers’ Day so that was interesting in a kind of realizing-your-own-mortality kind of way. It was odd to see all these people who are supposed to be such legends but are now struggling to run across the field. We had fun, but honestly, it was more due to the cracker jacks, peanuts and dippin’ dots (which came in a cool Yankee cap/cup thing. Fun!). Here’s a shot of the stadium:
Oh, and my roommate and I went to this little movie theater called the Ziegfeld Theater to watch Ratatouille. The movie itself was really cute, the theater was an experience in itself. I can’t imagine seeing one of those in Plano – it was decorated like an old-style theater with lots of velvet and red draped curtains. The guy directing you to the theater had a really deep movie-fone voice, and they only had one screen and played one movie at a time. The whole thing was decorated beautifully and ornately, and when the movie started, the curtains parted, etc. Loved the whole experience.
Actually, one caveat, I really wanted to do Shakespeare in the Park, but I never really found anyone else who wanted to do it and didn’t want to go by myself. (And now it’s closed until August.) Ahhh, well. I guess I’ll just have to come back some day.
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Alright, last post about the past month in New York. It was originally supposed to be about my activities outside of work, but since all we seem to ever do is eat at various restaurants, this has essentially become a restaurant log. There’s also a bunch of places we’ve been to that I never caught the name of. Shame. But anyway, here goes:
Weekends (a.k.a. the Restaurant Log)
The downside of working a lot is that it’s hard to do things during the week. I basically have no time whatsoever from Monday through Friday. I actually didn’t do laundry for the first time until this past weekend – I just kept buying more clothes and underwear, no joke. Right afterwards, I went online and bought more stuff from Victoria’s Secret so I could toss the crap I’d purchased from Duane Reade. Yuck.
Instead, I keep most of my social engagements on the weekends so that I don’t end up canceling on people all over the place and feeling like a jerk. Luckily, people have been in and out of New York every weekend so it’s been pretty fun with sooo much good, delicious, savory, flavorful food. For example, Heartland Brewery has really good mini-burgers.
My first weekend after starting work, I spent most of the time with Rita shopping in Soho and checking out little boutiques. At some point, we went out to a little restaurant called the Barking Dog, where we ate outside in this stone fountain area thing. Quite lovely with pretty good food, depending on what you order. Later we went to Cafe Zaiya because they have really great cream puffs. I also got together with Bo and Chen, who are both also working in the city, but we basically walked around, ate at Monster Sushi and ended up going to the Mac store for some reason. Whatever.
Second weekend, Kasey and Jules strolled into town – yay! So, all us IB kids got together again and went to some very, very random Chinese restaurant in (where else) Chi-town and got gelato afterwards in Little Italy. Also, there was this French restaurant later where Bo tried to hit on the waitress. The great thing about hanging out with other Asian people is that we can do family-style food which is always fun. Chen brought some friends and gave me a sew-it-yourself Monster doll — I’m waiting for a time to do it when I can give it the full attention it deserves.
Oh, when I met up with Rita and her friend Chelsea, we went to this really cute restaurant painted in blue that I need to remember to get the name of. We had a really overzealous waitress who listed off specials for at least a couple minutes. It was a little weird. That, and the crepe place (called Crepe Creations) we went to afterwards that had no food. Seriously. We tired to order stuff and each time they said they didn’t have chocolate, or didnt’ have “fluff” whatever that is but it’s in half their menu or whatever else. When they finally had the stuff, they ran out of apples in Rita’s apple crepe and they ran out of whipped creme and substituted powdered sugar on mine. I know the guy was no Mario Batali, but come on – whipped cream and powdered sugar are so not the same thing.
The weekend after that was busy, to say the least. My sister was in town, so we got together with two of her friends, Monica and Theresa, both people from Plano. Also, Rita came in again, but with James and Ben, so of course we have to get together. At the same time, both Brown and Beam – Emory people – were in town, too, and they managed to run into Suhas in the subways on the one day she came into town. My sister and I ended up hanging out with her friends during the day and my friends at night, basically. It’s not worth detailing out everything that went down, but it essentially was a really fun weekend. I also went to, like, five really good restaurants that weekend and got really fat.
RESTAURANTS INCLUDED:
Havana with the Asian crew, New Yeah Shanghi Deluxe as well as Sala with Monica and Geg, Smorgas Chef and Choux Factory thanks to Theresa (and Geg), and finally I think the Emory kids went to Tigerland but I’m not sure. It was good.
My sister managed to miss her flight out three times in a row (okay, twice it was because she was standby, but still.) The last night she was here, we went to a Japanese restaurant near my place, and for dessert, we ordered some banana sushi concoction out of curiosity. After some slight confusion regarding complementary green tea ice cream (I wanted to know where the bananas were) – it was actually really good.
Finally, this past weekend, my fourth weekend in New York, marking my first full month to be in the big city, was Rita’s birthday! Her not-quite-surprise party was held at Gyu-Kaku, and I met a ton of her friends from high school. Justin showed up because he was in town visiting Stephanie, as well as James and Jimmy-James. Justin ditched us to go to a ballet. Uncool, man. Uncool. Chaussie was also in town for Rita’s 21st, so we all hung out afterwards (Halal on 53rd and 6th, Dylan’s Candy Bar and the ever-reliable Jamba Juice), as Rita went out and got crunk with her high school people.
Anyway, that’s my story up until this point. I have half and hour before work starts, so off to breakfast. Ciao!
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Alright, I am officially determined to finished jotting down my notes on the past month if for no other reason than the knowledge that a) I will finally be done with it and b) I can move on to blogging about other things without feeling like I’m jumping back-and-forth time-wise. So, picking up from where I left off in the post before last –
Working It
After starting to work under essentially a new supervisor, things got busy really, really quickly. Also, about a week afterwards we were assigned our team projects which, for a lot of interns, is the main thing that they do all summer. Between work and intern stuff, things have been pretty hectic, but essentially a lot of fun. I have to say, I don’t have too many more questions about how advertising agencies work anymore. Also, I’ve gotten to know the mailroom people and the late-night security guards pretty well, haha.
On the bright side of leaving late, there’s a restaurant across the street that sells prepackaged salads and mini-meals from an auxiliary shop next to it. The food is really quite delicious, and after a certain time the salads and stuff are half off, so I can get a lovely Waldorf salad and some frozen yogurt for less than 6 bucks. Not too shabby considering it’s New York where everything costs an arm, leg and firstborn.
I’m not really sure how much I can say about work without running into problems, so I’ll keep it general. People in advertising are a lot more laid-back than I thought they’d be. There’s too much work to get done to be all superficial and whatever like those ad execs in the movies, thank goodness, though I’m told those people exist. At the same time, a lot of the work is a lot more inane than I had originally imagined. While doing design work at the newspaper requires the same attention to detail, here, you have to discuss everything with a client and then do research and testing on it instead of just making a decision.
I’ve been told by a lot of people to get out of the industry while I still have a chance – it’s no coincidence these statements usually come out as people are faced with an impending deadline, but I’m glad to say they haven’t scared me off quite yet. Also, I rather like how having deadlines makes really quite mundane work seem much more dramatic, haha.
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A quick pause in my journaling — July 4th was fun, but no fireworks this year. It was raining and so we chose to duck into a movie instead.
Most years it’s a tradition for my family, Iris’ family, and sometimes some other Asian families my parents are friends with, to get together on July 4th at Jeffrey’s house. We watch fireworks and eat Chinese food.
This year, I spent the morning playing Desktop Tower Defense instead of studying for LSATs as I had planned and then only left to watch Rescue Dawn with Chris. As tends to be the norm with him, some shady shit went down.
Basically, we bought reduced-priced child tickets and then got stopped by the ticketing people. Fine. I ended up getting in to save us some seats, but he had to go back and pay for the rest of our tickets. I would have been fine with this, but then 2 minutes later, I got a text message telling me to find and open an exit door. Called him back: too many employees in the lobby. Then, I went to find a seat. He comes in a second later, saying that he found an elevator that led to the basement and then snuck in that way. Saved us 6 bucks, w00t.
Rescue Dawn ended up being, like, a really depressing movie. It’s about a guy (Christian Bale as Deiter Dengler) who gets imprisoned by Laotians during the Vietnam War and then has to find a way to escape. All his buddies first get obscenely skinny and then die or turn against him. I’d just like to state for the record that I wanted to watch Ratatouille. (To be fair, Rescue Dawn is not a bad movie, I just wanted something less dreary to celebrate a national holiday.)
Anyway, we parted ways after the movie and I got together with Ben, another friend from Emory interning in New York. Originally the plan had been to get dinner and then get together with other people to watch fireworks, but since it was raining I wasn’t really in the mood for fireworks. Also, I hear it gets crowded as all hell, so needless to say, the idea of being wet, sticky and pressed against gross and potentially crazy people did not seem all that tempting.
We watched Knocked Up instead, which was pretty solidly funny, even if a lot of it was venturing toward the bathroom humor area which I normally dislike. We also got Jamba Juice and waited in line – in the rain – to get lamb and rice at the famous Halal stand on 53rd and 6th. This was all wonderful and yummy except I got a major sense of deja vu because we actually did the exact same thing last Saturday after Rita’s birthday. But anyway.
Overall, it was a fun day, mostly because it beat going to work, though it would have been nice to be back in P-town chilling with Iris in Jeffrey’s living room. I’m still very determined to watch the Disney/Pixar flick though. Expect my review of it by this time next week.
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Okay, so, it’s proven exceedingly difficult to find time to chronicle my time in New York, but I’ll finish eventually. Let’s see, where did I leave off? Oh right, so after my first few day…
Agency Life
So, right before I started work, I got together with the two other Ogilvy interns from my school, Jeff and Vanessa, as well as some other random people. That was a blast, we spent most the night at Off the Wagon over by Washington Park. I made the decision to wear heels, which showcases my lack of good judgment – so I ended up asking to sit down at a table with some random people because everywhere else was full. They ended up being, like, the nicest couple ever – they were out celebrating her brother’s birthday – and we chatted for a while, and they bought me a gin and tonic. Later, back with my group, we ended the night by going to a Papaya Dog and heading home. Yay for delicious hot dogs.
I gotta say, I was pretty freaked out about starting work. I guess I figure you only have one chance to do a post-junior-year internship which is “the big one” so you better make it the best thing ever. Additionally, I knew I’d decided on this internship pretty early (probably about 2 years earlier than necessary), so maybe I’d limited my options by having my mind set on working here. Maybe.
I left super early and ended up reading at the nearby Starbucks for almost an hour before going into the lobby. I waited along with the rest of the earlybirds for an additional half-hour at least while being asked to move repeatedly (apparently we were in the way no matter what). There was a lot of small talk. A lot.
By the end of the first day, I still felt somewhat unsure. We were supposed to have gone to lunch with our supervisors but mine was out. Instead, I sat an read a competitive analysis during my lunch hour. The other interns seemed okay, but I accidentally asked the same guy what school he went to — three times. We also did a city-wide scavenger hunt, which turned out to be a lot more competitive than I thought it would be. Odd.
The rest of the week plodded along as I got to know the team I was working with. I started to feel better as I saw how friendly and helpful they were, but I wasn’t sure about what I’d really be doing around here. I spent a lot of time worry about what clothes I’d wear instead. Hmm. I remember sitting around in Starbucks, sometimes with the other Emory people, for long streches of time after work that week. To be honest, things looked a little grey. I was having fun and learning some, but essentially it looked like it would be a pretty long summer.
Tips and Hints
So, on all those advice sites for college students, there’s a few pieces of advice that tend to be pretty standard. Among them, a) handwritten notes are best in order to get through the corporate clutter and b) you have to take the initiative in internships if you want to get anything out of it.
Fine. So, after getting the okay from my supervisor, I started to offer out my services to other people on the team. Having read heard the benefits of a handwritten note being extolled repeatedly, I scribbled a message offering to provide any sort of assistance and left it on someone’s desk. Later that day, the lady gave me the option of helping her out, but only if I didn’t mind staying a little later for a couple days. I obviously wasn’t going to turn the offer down, and – to steal a line from Kurt Vonnegut – so it goes. To be continued.
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I love New York — not the show. I hate the show. I love the city.
I’ve been here for roughly two weeks now, give or take a few days. I’m living with three other girls – Becca, Allie and my roommate Ashton – in mid-town Manhattan. I think they grouped us by major because we’re all marketing people, which worked out pretty well. They’re fun, lovely girls so we all get along pretty well.
So, I haven’t posted in about two weeks because a) my site was having some issues that were finally (FINALLY!) resolved last night, and also b) because I’ve been too. damn. busy. No joke, I’m exhausted, but the good kind of exhausted. Anyway, I’m going to detail the past month here just because I know I’ll wish I’d done it if I look back in a couple years. So, here goes:
Moving In
Alright, so right after moving in, it was freaking hot. I thought there was no air conditioning (incorrect) and just lived in this sort of disgusting heat for about two days until Ashton moved in and turned it on. Dorm Room 1, Jennifer 0. Fine. I concede. Anyway, because of the heat, I wanted to get out as much as possible (and plus I’d forgotten a bunch of stuff), so I went on my own personal shopping spree and basically cleaned out any last money I had. I bought about 4 dresses and various other pretty things and necessities.
I also had to pick up a computer mouse and a laptop lock so I walked to the nearest Best Buy and by some weird twist of fate ran into two people I knew from Emory, Ben and Chaussie! Except I hadn’t showered yet, had been rained all over and had been sweating for hours. Not flattering. But anyway, it was nice to see familiar faces.
Slowly, the roommates started to show up – they’re all really pretty and tall, which was intimidating at first – so that was exciting with a hint of deja vu from freshman year. We were all look, oh, did you see the cute guy on 21st? etc. etc. which is a familiar line (substitute 21st with 2nd) from three years ago. Ahh, memories of Alabama Hall.
Oh yeah, I was also afraid of the subway the days before work started (after that, I had no choice to enter the fray of the underground in order to prevent being late to work) so I ended up doing a lot of walking. I’m talking like 5 miles a day at LEAST. The third day in New York, I climbed out of bed in the morning and fell on the ground. Nowadays, I can scale 24 flights of stairs and not feel a thing the next day. I am superwoman. Muahaha. More later.
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I spent over $3,000 yesterday. I bought a Fabergé egg.
Just kidding. Okay, but seriously, I paid for my housing for this summer! I found out a week or so ago that I’d gotten an internship at Ogilvy & Mather (I’m so excited!), which is the advertising agency that I hope to work for someday. It’s the 10th largest agency worldwide (5th in the U.S.) with clients such as Dove, BP, IBM, Kodak, and so forth. I won’t know which account I’m working on until I get there, but I would love (love) to work on the Dove or Kodak accounts.
Anyway, Ogily is located on 8th Avenue in mid-town Manhattan (309 W. 49th Street, New York, NY 10019), so I booked a place that was just a couple streets down (intersection of 3rd Ave. and 55th Street). It’s going to be back to college, dorm-styled living, as opposed to my lovely apartment which I will miss, but honestly, I’m just happy to be there.
Being the dork that I am, I came up with lovely excel chart, listing out all my options before finally deciding on the one I wanted. See?
Unfortunately, even with the excessive planning, I’m still going to be broke off my ass because doing anything in New York is ridiculously expensive, which means I either need to bankrupt my parents or find another job for the next two months. What to do? Also, I’ll be turning 21 during my internship, so I’ll need to party it up NYC-style that weekend. Yay!
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