Culture out the ears

Hi all. Thanks for all of your support about Naveen. I really appreciate all your nice words, encouraging statements, and advice. I do feel loved by special people :-). People are always amazing that way. Let me just say I am fine. I actually think although this took awhile for me to understand, I had been slowly getting less vested in the relationship as it required me to be more independent anyway. So although I have cried some, I really do feel, on the whole, strong and confident and excited about my future. I already have my continuing lists of what to do in the city updated. And I feel fairly happy and I know I'll be ok. Here, btw, is the current plan:

Labor Day Weekend: Spend last bits of time with Emina and Shan Shan while they are here. Go to Coney Island. Sleep!

Sept 7 + Weekend: US Open + Christine and Jeff visit! Yay :-).

Sept 15 Weekend: Go to Boston to visit Emina and Aled - yay :-).

Sept 22 Weekend: Weekend in NYC! Do last bits of summer activities - park concerts, storytelling, maybe kayak? Wander.

Sept 29 Weekend: Mom visits - nuf said. Yay :-).

Beginning of October - move somewhere. Also see fall colors.

Mid October - visit Christine in Maryland? Or convince her to meet me in Philadelphia which I've never seen?

First half of November - work hard before PLDI conference deadline which is Nov 15.

Thanksgiving - maybe go visit Grandma?

December 1 or 15 - move back to Austin - yay!

Christmas with the fam.

So that's the plan, and I'm sticking to it. I think the time will fly by. And it'll be interesting to see this city in different seasons!

So, with the culture update. Although there were a lot of chaotic emotions going on, Naveen and I decided to make the best of his last weekend in New York. As I say, the breakup was amiable.

Friday night we went out to a Greek place in West Midtown suggested by our doorman George. It was tasty! Got an awesome cheese and shrimp baked appetizer. I got the traditional Greek Mousaka - kinda like their lasagna which was really tasty. And Naveen got their lamb kabob which was good. I heard their fish is good and I gotta go back for spanikopita sometime!

Saturday was a sleep in day. But finally got up and went to the pool since the weather had been crummy all week and I hadn't been able to swim. The water was chilly, but I forced myself to swim another 26 laps! Was slower, but still proud of myself. And the laps were in the middle of the pool so slightly longer than my normal lap so woohoo! Gotta love the swimming. I'm bummed the pool closes Labor Day. Also met a new friend there who I hope to see swimming this week at the pool - a girl who just moved to the upper east side and does investment baking. Yay maybe I can make friends in the city! So got a late start on the actual day, but finally left the house and took Naveen to the MOMA - Museum of Modern Art. Although neither of us are big fans of modern art, I heard it was a must-see. So we saw modern art. Some was cool - I really liked the architecture section with funky chairs and lamps and functional things. It was neat to see some of the artists whose pieces were there - Picasso, Miro, Matisse, Mondrian, Monet, van Gogh. But I really am not a big fan of the "red canvas with white stripe" being real art. I could've done that! But it was good to go and see it, even if we didn't need more than an hour and a half to see it.

So we actually decided to catch the Riverside Park's production of MacBeth on one of it's last nights and lo and behold it WASN'T raining! So saw MacBeth which was very well-done actually and enjoyable. Nice company. Small crowd. Then we decided to head back down to Grand Central for the famous Oyster Bar Restaurant down there - friends had recommended it. It was nice with wood panels and such. I had some New England clam chowder which was really tasty, and enjoyed 1 of Naveen's oysters. It was a bit fishy. Then we got some fried scallop dish which was ok, and a sampler of 4 seafood salads which was fun. Crab meat caesar salad, poached salmon, squid marinated and on top of a bell pepper, and jumbo shrimp. Pretty good :-). I'm really broadening as far as seafood!

Sunday we got up earlier to meet friends at Dim Sum - this time at a place in the west side. It was fancily decorated with mesh coverings over lights in the shapes of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Interesting. It was more hoisty-toity and expensive than our Chinatown place which I liked better. And they tried to force some food on us that we didn't want. Weird. But the food was generally good and the company of course was fabulous - Emina, Aled, Shan Shan, Naveen and I. We definitely nerded out, but also talked about clothes and products too! It's fun to hang out :-). Then we went our separate ways, and we made it down to Battery Park - Naveen and I - because I wanted to see a free modern dance festival I had heard about down there. Unfortunately we got there a bit late and I mostly got to see south Asian dancing - troupes from India or American troupes doing some modern/Indian mix. There was 1 cool group that did a sort of martial arts modern combo with storytelling which was interesting. But I missed the true modern groups which I wanted to see. Oh well. Naveen and I meandered through the city for the rest of teh afternoon. We finally ended up at the famous Carnegie Deli for dinner. Sorta commercial, but the pastrami sandwich was tasty, and the knish - yum. We took home a cheesecake with strawberries on top for later which was really tasty. Yum. And the appetizer - how can I forget - it was a bowl of pickles! That made me happy right away :-).

So all in all it was a good weekend if a bit of a rollercoaster. Naveen was pretty emotional and psycho-analytic while I was sort of trying not to think about things. It was odd, but I'm glad we got to spend time together and talk through some things about the relationship which was good. Nice last times of our era. It was sad to realize we had to split - don't get me wrong, it was very necessary. But we were compatible and had fun in a lot of ways. So yeah, sad. But the right thing.

Monday was another day at work. I need to get back into work - I've been so unfocussed lately and distracted. But it was Emina's birthday, so we went out to a nice dinner for that to a Portugese/Brazilian place with lots of seafood. It was wonderful! So much "enjoy life and good friends" type of conversation. I was the American, and then there was the German+Turkish couple, the Bosnian, and the Chinese girl. Very interesting conversations - about pets, marriage, children, parents, culture, education. Random things. It was so much fun, though - we all got along well. And I somehow was the "enlightened American". Seriously. They all advocated moving away from your parents/family to another state to go to college - thought it was so necessary to growth that you leave your family and get some freedom and not be so under their noses. I think you do need freedom to some extent, but I said that kind of movement was erroding our American family because there is no more extended families and there are only small family units. Then they also argued that we should just standardize and everyone should learn English. But I said that was very arrogant as English speakers, and there's something to languages being part of culture in parts of the world and it's good to learn many languages. They said that since they all had English as a 2nd language, it wasn't arrogant for them to say - it would just be arrogant if I said it :-). Very funny. So again, good people, good conversation. We were at dinner for over 3.5 hours! And don't get me started about our lunch conversation about religion and money and suicide bombers. But anyway - I live for these discussions :-). And the food - Emina and I shared a shellfish rice traditional stew thing - was good (scallops, mussels, clam, shrimp, lobster). I liked their ceremony - they brought out bread and sausage automatically before the meal, and grapes to finish. Fun :-). So I got home late and Naveen and I had some time to say goodbye before he our short sleep and him leaving at 5:30am. I was bleary-eyed and in shock, but it really was good that he finally left. I'm sure it'll take a bit of getting used to, but really - I'll be ok. I know how to fill my schedule :-).

Tata and hope all's well.