From Slate.com’s sister site:

http://www.theroot.com/buzz/black-immigrants-overrepresented-ivy-league

If anyone has ideas on getting it wider exposure, please let me know.

And an obvious hiatus from documenting my New Yorkian adventures here.

Now that I’m in Boston, I’m wondering if I should keep updating this blog, start a new one, or desist for awhile….

For my project, I decided to do a graphic on university patent grants/inventions and R&D expenditures (fun fact: UC patented Hep B vaccine and 2 strawberry kinds, and UCSD leads the main campuses with most patents. Go Tritons! ), which was critiqued by one of the online graphics staff. Turns out he went to UC Davis! So we bonded over the UC connection. All those hours spent in Excel and Adobe Illustrator paid off.  My classmates had amazing work. What a great day!

Here’s me and my graphic at the Times.

My graphic: finaluni1

Bloomberg, located on the Upper East Side, is a financial information and news provider, maker of these. The building was amazing- it knocked the socks off the WSJ and the NYT buildings. Curved glass, beautiful sculptures and art that actually makes sense to normal people, and koi fish tanks everywhere. Plus, every room is see-through, to go along with the company’s “transparency” theme. This probably increases productivity and cuts back on shadiness. A la Google, all the food is free– including a snack bar with all the vending machine goods and organic yummies  you can ask for- plus GRIND IT YOURSELF peanut butter, Newman’s Own pink lemonade in a pitcher and potato-starch biodegradable silverware. Truly.

The place just smells like innovation. Office environment and culture are much more influential than I ever thought. The dim lighting, cubicles, and walls of the WSJ betray its roots in establishment reporting, while the NYT’s incredibly orange, psuedo-techy (but slightly inefficient- such as weird programmed elevators) pad bespeaks its attempted adaptation to change, while being moored to its Gray Lady persona. Bloomberg is pure progress, though– you can just tell.  It looks like a fraternity house for iPhones and iPods, if Apple products were people. Shiny white plastic is the order of the day. No cameras allowed, otherwise I’d love to have documented this.

Oh, and Beyonce lives in the condos upstairs. No sighting though.

Then we were off to the New York Stock Exchange. The decor could not have been more different- gold leaf moulding everywhere, grandfather clocks, leather chairs, and some urn given by a Russian tsar in the boardroom.

We went to the trading floor (no pics allowed though, d’oh), which reminded me an awful lot of a Vegas casino. No windows, tons of terminals (rather than slot machines), noise and ringing, and lots and lots of men. I didn’t understand why there was so much garbage on the floor though, when there were clearly trash bins in the area. We stayed for the closing bell. The funny thing is I kept hearing AOL instant message sounds-like doors opening and closing and that sound AIM makes when you get a new message. The guide said it was just standard PC sounds for new emails, etc., but it just brought me back to college dorm feel the entire time and I tuned out while the guide was telling us about the floor. So despite having visited their respective trading floors, I can’t tell you what the difference between an option and a stock is.

Here’s a picture of my female-heavy class, in the giant boardroom with the original grandfather clock from the first days of the NYSE. I thought for a moment it woulda been funny if, instead of business wear, we dressed up in proper attire for female casino attendants (short skirts and suspenders?) and handed out gambling chips and alcohol on the trading floor.

She started complaining to me about her day. About how it possibly could not go any worse. About the fact that nobody would read her poetry. That nothing ever went right.

I told her tomorrow was a new day. And saw her eyes roll. Wow, taste of my own medicine.

I asked her what could be done to make her day better. I had just returned from Trader Joe’s and mentally did an inventory to see if I could give her anything. I hadn’t bought cookies, so I couldn’t offer her one of those. Spinach, no, granola, no, cereal, no. D’oh.

She said “Believe me, if you want to know, you’d have to call the police.”

At this point I couldn’t tell if she was disturbed or not, based on her appearance. She was middle aged, with frazzled brown hair, eclectically dressed, but many New Yorkers were. I began to think that maybe she had a difficult background.

“Nothing goes right for me. Everything is wrong. No one will ever listen to me,” she said.

Hmm.  Earlier this evening, on another subway, I had been reading a book about conversations and finished the chapter on listening. No joke. I guess this is my chance to practice.

“When was the last time something went right for you? What was it?” I asked, trying to get her to focus on something positive while I mentally ran through potential platitudes to offer.

She mentioned her kids as the only redeeming thing in her life. She also started complaining about how no literary agent would look at her poetry, how no one would treat her with kindness, and how some man would tear her down constantly about her life. She described him using several expletives.

Then she said she wanted to sit down. I motioned to an empty seat, but she said she was too fat to sit down. (Though she wasn’t). “Nothing goes right for me, ever.”

All of a sudden, a tall old man with a yarmulke storms into our conversation and starts yelling at the top of his lungs. Something about how the woman has no business talking to me, and talking badly about him.

They seem to know each other, and he just starts berating her as she backs into a corner and yells back.

“She’s the only one that will listen to me! She’s the only one who cares!” she screams, as she shoots me this incredibly lonely look with her tired eyes, like an “I told you so.” I won’t forget that look anytime soon.

I try to intervene at this point, telling the man it’s okay for her to talk to me, but he ignores me. I don’t know if I should step into the space between them. I reach out to touch his arm, but rescind it. He moves in closer on her and the entire subway car is staring at this scene. “Why the hell isn’t anyone else trying to intervene?” I think. I figure it’s because the fight is still verbal, and can only elicit intervention if it becomes physical.

Several others around us shoot me glances as I step forward to intervene again. They also shake their heads, as if saying “Don’t do it.” So I don’t. I stand there, tense, with my groceries, as I get to my stop. Should I get off, or should I stay here and… do something?

I get off, I touch her arm, hoping it brings her reassurance. I excuse myself of this episode.

I stumble onto the street, feeling shaken up, and with a million thoughts. I hope she’ll be okay. I hope she won’t get hurt. I hope she will feel joy in the coming week.

I think,  there must be so many lonely people in this city of 8 million. We all sit or stand together silent in a train, with thought bubbles full of struggle, torment, joy, and wonder. We’re encapsulated in our own invisible boxes, mentally separating us from the strangers a few inches away. When a day comes such as today, when those boxes open and interaction occurs, it comes as such a surprise. It catches you off guard. Talking to another human being feels… foreign, if only for a moment. That’s New York for you. That’s this world for you.

But add singing, and that mundane bus or plane ride all of a sudden becomes pretty fun, not to mention memorable.

Here’s one clip of a flight attendant rapping the in-flight instructions to a flight bound for Oklahoma City, which we all know of course is the thriving rap capital of the United States. That would explain the measured reaction of the passengers. Shoot, if it were me on that plane, forget the fasten-seat belt sign, it’s time to boogie. Put your hands up, people! And of course this takes place on a Southwest flight.  Sure, I like my 36 channels of  JetBlue satellite TV, eye masks,  earphones,  and selection of Terra Blue chips, animal crackers, gingerbread biscotti, Doritos Munchies and….oh wait, what was I saying? I must be hungry. Anyway, still, nothing can replace the homespun quirkiness  of Southwest Airlines. LUV as a stock ticker? Brilliant. I remember more than one comedy routine during their flights (flight attendant: “Please put on your own oxygen mask before assisting your child or husband.”), which made all that pre-boarding stress melt away.

Here is also another clip of a opera-singing NYC bus driver, featured in the New York Times.

Sadly, musicians on the subway are dime a dozen, and rarely does anyone take much heed then.

Overall though, these welcome intrusions into otherwise routine, tiring, and sometimes frustrating bus/air travel make me smile. They also inspire me to sing more next time I drive- with passengers or not. 

Southwest Rapper:

Opera Bus Driver:

That’s about the nastiest thing I’ve heard in a long time.

Well, the mouse and its brethren continued to make frequent visits, at one point sampling 10 of my granola bars (and forcing me to take a hiatus on my granola bar and squirrel food consumption since the mental association was too much).  Daily screams could be heard throughout my hall, as the mice paid visits to other female suitemates. The security guard would run in, be ready to use his/her training, and then dejectedly walk out upon discovery that it was just a mouse sighting.

After spotting mice regularly in the kitchen and in the bathroom, my suitemate decided to plant some poison. Since then, haven’t heard from any mice.

So I was dismayed when I heard scurrying around in my room again. I was working on an assignment, listening to Janet Jackson on Pandora, and heard the scurrying. I put the music on mute just to make sure it wasn’t a sound effect. And to my horror, there was a huge cockroach exploring the smooth terrain of my plateware next to me. Fabulous.

I didn’t scream. This was it. This was the moment when I would transition from being a newbie to a true New Yorker (never mind that I might leave). Like… becoming an adult. Or puberty.

The first thing I did was what any student caught in the middle of working online would do- I changed my Gchat status. To: “world’s biggest cockroach crawling over my plateware.” Now to be fair, I just spent about an hour trying to reconfigure my Twitter life, downloading an iPhone app and tinkering around online. So “ambient online intimacy” was on the brain.

The damn roach kept scurrying. I didn’t really care *that* much since it wasn’t going to harm me. I don’t live in a pile of filth, so I wasn’t insulted by its presence. But the sound it made, hitting up against plastic bags,  evoked images of half-chewed out Kashi bars from the mice-reign days. And those infuriatingly squirmy little antennae. Blech. It was too much to bear.

So then I made a series of bizarre decisions that frankly made me question my common sense.

First, I opened the door, just like I would for any guest that overstayed its welcome. Looking back, that wasn’t very rational (and probably could be explained away by Malcolm Gladwell). What, was the roach going to tip its hat, say “good day, ma’am?,” and exit?  And then I thought about taking a picture of it (again, I was on the whole online-social-mindset).

Second, I changed my Gchat status to “big but probably regular-sized cockroach crawling over my plateware.” Because my biggest concern at this moment was Gchat status accuracy. Goodness, is this what j-school has done to me?

Third, I googled “kill cockroach” and was brought to a frustrating page of many paragraphs on roach spray. Unhelpful. Then I googled “kill cockroach crush.” Meaning with a shoe, not repressing an infatuation with an insect. “OMG I think Roach was just looking at me!”

I was cheered to know you could indeed kill cockroaches manually. For some reason I thought you couldn’t, or that it was a really bad idea. Too many Men in Black viewings (like when the giant alien is offended by Will Smith stepping on a cockroach).

Fourth, as it scurried back under my desk (was it TRYING to get my attention?) I threw my Croc shoe at the roach, and it quickly dodged it a la Pres. Bush. Then the roach ran back, as I grabbed my Croc again and realized that I was holding a CROC shoe, which is made of the softest, nicest rubber wannabe material ever. Not exactly a murder weapon. No wonder the roach scurried back. It felt sorry for my pathetic attempt and taunted me for another try.

Fifth, I grabbed my newest shoe, a Tommy Hilfiger patent leather loafer, out of the 10 other pairs by my door,  because I subconsciously wanted to ruin my nicest shoe. Right. So I smashed the little vermin. And smashed it again. Yucky-smelling black gunk oozed out of the bludgeoned roach. Then I quarantined my shoe outside in the hall.

I saw the roach’s  antennae moving, so I put it out of its misery, taking the other loafer (again, why did I want to use my best shoes? Was this pent-up anger at buying nice shoes? Hmm.) and smashing it repeatedly and dragging it around the floor.

Then I swept it up, wiped down my shoes, and threw away the carcass. Then I decided to blog about it.

Here is a recap of a similar but more hyper centipede killing of 2007. Because no insect murder is complete without online publishing.

1.  Obama is speaking at Notre Dame. And Arizona State, and the U.S. Naval Academy. I’m sort of surprised that Harvard didn’t snag him, but it did get Steven Chu! That should be really fascinating. I hope I’ll have the chance to catch Dr. Chu’s speech in person (and watch my former roommates graduate). Will he continue the “Do Good” streak to which Bill Gates and JK Rowling contributed?

2. Everyone is atwitter about Twitter. While I am still somewhat skeptical of its overall social value, this article about Twittering for traveling advice made a lot of sense. You blast a request for advice and instantaneously get recommendations. Who needs Yelp? One guy actually traveled from England to New Zealand solely on the advice of his fellow twitterers. Now that’s trust.

3. Short-selling, as I understand it, is betting against a stock and making a lot of money off of it. One of the major short-selling hedge fund founders quoted here, Jim Chanos, came to speak to our class tonight about that and Enron. He was one of the first people who suspected Enron’s shadiness and catalyzed events that led to its demise. I’m not sure how much I can quote of what he said, but he basically outlined what industries he thought were cresting and his reasoning as such. His primary advice to us: take accounting classes, because then you won’t be punk’d when you try to figure out businesses.  He challenged my idea of what a hedge fund founder who spends his life betting on others’ failures might look like. Actually personable, not stuffy or arrogant, and “interested” in transparent companies who do honest business. Or maybe I just drank his PR kool-aid.

Seriously, though, as is evident from several of my posts, encountering all different sorts of people this year really does a great job of dismantling the categories and stereotypes I’ve so carefully constructed, consciously or not, from consumption of biased media or being raised in a certain class stratum. Over the weekend, I organized my browser bookmark folder (yeah, it’s fun, ok??) and reflected that people, like websites, just can’t be put into just one or two folders/categories sometimes. Obvious, yet not.

4.  A NYTimes blog, melodramatically titled “The Choice” details college admissions. I found this post about applying to college by a senior who got into every single one of his 12 schools particularly instructive, not only for high school kids, but for everyone- in terms of how to view our lives and balance expectations and our own passions. His insights are simultaneously wise yet simple. The future is safe if it will be run by youth such as these. The gist: Take ownership over your work, learn constantly, and take responsibility for your life. He’s only 18!