Long week of fun

It's been a busy week - surprise, surprise. Done something everyday - many experiences.

Monday: Naveen's friend Elise was still in town on business, so we went down to Houston St. for sushi. BTW, it's pronounced House-ton, not like the city in Texas - very confusing. So we met her and her cousin there - it had good sushi. We had some good conversation too. It strikes me that Naveen is very close to his friends - her really does treat them like family. He was already sharing dinner with Elise before I had determined what I was getting last weekend! So that was pretty fun.

Tuesday: I worked. Let me just say for those that wonder if I get anything done - I do work from 8:40 to at least 5:15, sometimes till 7pm everyday. So there. But today I went home early to go swimming. And I did 26 laps! I was so proud of myself - it was wonderful. For some reason it was an easy day, and I just flowed. I got a bit tired of the frog-stroke, but was awesome at free-style (that's the one with the regular kick, right?). I just chugged ahead. I gave myself 45 minutes, and when I had completed my goal of 20 laps, there was more time, so I just kept going. And made it to 26 in just under 45 minutes - go me. So that was the goal I set for myself. Now I looked it up - officially 1 mile is 29 laps (about), so now I'll go for that goal in the next 2 weeks while the pool is still open (closes at Labor Day - boo :-(). I love swimming. Then went home, got a quick shower and dinner, and Naveen and I headed to a concert of "Badly Drawn Boy" at Spiegeltent down on South Seaport. It was awesome - this semi-large tent (but only held maybe a couple hundred people) set up on the pier for concerts. Nice atmosphere - dark curtain-like material and booths lining the side, then a wooden floor in the middle in front of the stage. And the pier outside also was right on the water and had a bar and tables and a beautiful view of the Brooklyn Bride! Great spot! So we listened to the band and the guy from Manchester was just fabulous. Really into his music - emotional, passionate. He was in a funky mood, but he seemed to just play what he wanted and had fun with teh music. I liked his songs about wrestling with life. Naveen and I sorta bonded over the music. And the guy played several different guitars, harmonica, piano, and sung lead. Awesome. Just good fun. I sat and wondered - why Naveen likes somewhat melancholy music (lots of emotions and talking about the hardships of life and love) when he doesn't tolerate negative emotions in real life. I asked him after and he said it was just more poetic. And some of the songs of this guy made me just want to experience life more - that's when I really wanted to go and live in another country for awhile. Although I have to say, I'm doing a pretty good job of experiencing life now. :-). For some reason I thought Matt would've really liked the concert. It was just good stuff. Made me happy.

Wednesday: Work again. Stayed late, but got home and rushed out the door again to meet our guests for dinner - Bret (Naveen's roommate) and his girlfriend Alison. They are really fun people. They had seen this guy try this Kabob place on that show "No Reservations" where a chef travels around the world trying whatever food wherever, and tries to appreciate it. So we went to the place from the show in Queens. Sorta darker than Manhattan - a little different feel. But wow was the restaurant neat. Tiny place - like 5 tables crammed in a 8 x 25 foot place. Colorful eclectic art all over the walls. We sat down and asked the guy behind the counter if there was a menu. He said (in an accent) "I'm the menu. You nice to me, I give you good food, you not nice, you get no food." Ok then! We asked for drinks - they have no water. You have to order something. He listed a bunch of things that they had that day for food, and we said yes we like lamb, and then he said he'd just bring whatever he wanted for us and we'd really like it. Which was true. We had this awesome hummus and falafel place to start with pita bread. Then he brought 4 huge plates of meat sauteed with vegies and some were over rice. 1 was hunks of lamb (on the bone), one was beef ribs, one was beef kabobs, and one was chicken, rabbit and duck. They each had their own vegies which I loved - okra, squash and eggplant, tomatoes, greens. I don't even know about some of them. All was just so tasty - so much food! We were very pleased :-). Crazy place. As with a lot of places in NY I don't know the name and only vaguely know the cross streets of this place :-). But it was a great experience. And the company was fun too!

Thursday: Work again. But briefly this time - Naveen came to work with me and gave a talk at IBM - a fabulous talk, by the way. Went well. Then we left at lunch because a guy in my department organized a large paintball match for IBMers that afternoon. We had to drive 45 minutes to get to the paintball place in the middle of the forest. Holy cow. Paintball is a bit intense. I'm glad I tried it, but wow. So we put on all this camoflauge gear and we had a protective mask thing, then our paint-guns. It was a hot day and I had 2 layers of clothes on and heavy boots. So we sweated a lot. And we were just running through fields or trees shooting at each other, hiding behind little obstacles set up. Dude, I couldn't do real war - too scary. And believe me, it hurt to get hit with paintballs. I wasn't very good at first. Well, to give an example - although I bruise easily, I found 10 welts on my body when I came home - most larger than golfball size, even though the bullets are like quarter-sized. Ouch bruises. Naveen couldn't find any on him. His team won most of the time, and he definitely killed more people than I did, and ran more because he was in the game longer. But I had fun, and I felt like I was getting more tactics down by the end, but it maybe is more of a guy's game? Don't know - a bit intense really. We mostly played capture the flag on various fields. It was fun to play with work people, though, and we took pictures - I'll post them sometime I promise!

Today is Friday! I actually got 8 hours of sleep last night so that was fun. Our guests are here until Sunday morning, but another guest comes tomorrow (Sat) morning and leaves Monday afternoon. So I'm sure it'll be a full weekend of city things. Tonight we are supposed to go to see MacBeth in the park :-). And I'm sure dinner after that.

I've been having a ton of conversations lately about life, computer science, career, work/life balance. I'm slowly figuring things out, but it's hard, and there are always unknowns. I still really feel fortunate to have met some of the friends I have here - especially Emina and Shan Shan. It's fun to have these long conversations with people in a similar sitution. Awesome people. But basically I'm not cut out for cutthroat research. I don't know if other fields are like this, but often it seems like Comp Sci people - really successful ones - sacrifice their life for their career. And that just won't make me happy. In several ways I don't quite fit into this field - it's competitiveness and all. But I think I can still do good work and I can't measure myself by other's standards. Now I'm actually thinking of industry - I guess working for IBM basically. Industry does afford some work/life balance - more so than some academic jobs. And the culture is great here. But I wonder if I'd miss teaching. It's really that, or going to a lesser place to teach - not so stressful. Or moving to some random country and working at a coffee shop :-). We'll see. At least I'm evaluating things and it's nice to have these conversations!

Alright - enough for now. Happy weekend from NYC!