Acela Express 2159, departing Boston at 9:15 for Washington, D.C.: I'm on what is almost certainly my last business trip. We've just passed Providence. I've got the Glee version of "Like a Prayer" blasting through my headphones (to block out the shouted conversation of the businesswoman-in-jean-shorts across the aisle).
End of an era.
I'm heading down to our New York for a two-day training that GSMCF is putting on for those of us who are heading off to grad school this fall. The vast majority of the attendees will be going to business school (the usual suspects of HBS, Kellogg, Wharton, Haas, Tuck, etc.). Two of us (I think) are doing non-business related grad degrees. I'm the only one off to a doctoral program and the only one in the humanities / social sciences.
The training seems to me to be a very smart idea in both directions: for us, we'll get time to reflect on our careers at the firm, learn about how to position our consulting experience, dig into our leadership and communication styles, etc. The firm gets one last chance to make sure that we take off on a high note and with happy thoughts about GSMCF in our heads. I'm not sure what my chances are of ending up back in consulting or at GSMCF specifically; hopefully, if I play my cards right and do well in grad school, not very good. But these are the types of things that the firm does for us that make me think that, if I were to end up back in consulting, it wouldn't be such a bad life after all.
Given that I'm on my last business trip, I suppose some reflections on business travel might be appropriate:
Buy pull-on shoes to speed through airport security. I have two pairs of pull-on loafers, one in black and one in brown, for maximum flexibility.
Keep a separate travel toiletry bag. Rather than having to rifle through your toiletries at home to assemble a travel kit for every trip, stock a quart-sized plastic bag (the kind approved for airport security) with travel-sized toothpaste, deodorant, hair product, etc. so that you can grab-and-go in the morning.
Never fly from Boston to New York. It just doesn't make any sense to me to take a flight that lands in an airport that is a $50 cab ride from downtown when you can -- in roughly the same amount of time -- have a leisurely ride on the train into the heart of the city. You get ample leg room, all the electricity you can use, and pretty views of Connecticut. It's not even close.
Never check bags. This goes without saying.
Invest in wrinkle-free shirts and pants. I don't know how I would have looked presentable for the past 4 years without wrinkle-free business clothes. You can virtually stuff them into your carry-on for the flight, hang them up when you get to the hotel, and -- voila! -- the next morning it looks like you've just taken them out of your closet at home (you can hang them up in the bathroom while you take a steamy shower for a quick refresh). Now we just need Brooks Brothers to start making its extra slim fit shirts in non-iron fabric.
That's all I can think of for now. Is it any surprise that Up in the Air has become one of my favorite movies?
The latest PPIC polls released today show that Meg Whitman's campaign has taken a delightful tumble since March, cutting her lead over Steve Poizner in the California gubernatorial race from 50 points to 9 points. All this despite spending $68 million of her own money trying to spin away the fact that for 28 years she never once voted in an election in the state that she now hopes to lead. I'm glad the Republicans in California are finally recognizing what a major loser Meg Whitman is. All you needed to do to predict this inevitable drop was to listen to her ducking questions -- quite incompetently, I might add -- about her voting record at last fall's state Republican Party convention. Have you ever seen or heard a more frighteningly inarticulate and cowardly candidate for public office (besides Sarah Palin)?
I went to the oral surgeon this morning for a connective tissue graft, and was at my desk by 10:30. I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not. We'll see.
You may have heard by now from all of the major news outlets (I'll link to the BBC's article) that gay marriage will soon be legal in Portugal, as President Anibal Cavaco Silva has indicated that he will not veto the marriage equality that passed with the support of the ruling Socialist Party. A couple of things that I think are worthy of note:
Portugal in their national legislature has managed to assemble veto-proof majorities in favor of progressive social legislation. In the mean time, the House of Representatives can barely scrape together the 5 votes needed to provide health insurance as a basic right for all Americans.
As part of his explanation for his decision, President Silva noted that ratifying the marriage equality bill would allow the legislature to get back to dealing with the most pressing issues of the day, namely that of managing the struggling economy. This point is the one that I wish someone would make more forcefully in the U.S.: of all the things we have to worry about these days, why spend your time worrying about who is marrying whom and what their genders are? Even if we weren't in a recession, why would you donate thousands of dollars to an anti-gay marriage initiative (as some of my family friends in the SF Bay area did in 2008 for Prop. 8) when you could feed literally thousands of people with the same amount of money if it went to the local food bank instead? I just don't get it.
In any case, as with each jurisdiction that signs onto marriage equality, the inevitability of gay marriage comes into clearer relief. I'm not foolish enough to believe that one day gay marriage will be legal everywhere, but I am optimistic that one day gay marriage will be legal in enough places that GLBT people around the world won't have to make the difficult decision of choosing between where they want to live and the rights and protections they'll have for their families. One day, we'll all look back and wonder what the fuss was about.
In fact, on this point, I got to thinking about all of the opponents of marriage equality like Matthew Holland and Orson Scott Card and Maggie Gallagher (all current or former members of the National Organization for Marriage): would they have supported interracial marriage, or would they have decried Loving v. Virginia when it was handed down through "judicial activism" in 1967? Of course, given the wide acceptance of race as a protected class now, I'm sure that they would all hail the issue as a vastly different one such that they would have been on the frontlines protesting anti-miscegenation laws from the get-go. But I'm not so sure, especially if, like Prop. 8, the Mormon Church had taken a strong position against interracial marriage.
Let me be clear: I'm not suggesting that these people are racist. What I am suggesting is that they follow too willingly and blindly the dictates of an organized religion. And when that organized religion prizes obedience and is also led by people whose worldviews about how society should be organized were shaped generations ago, you get the dangerous result of otherwise reasonable, fairly smart, and young people going along with social policy ideas that should have died out at the end of the Victorian Age. Call it the timelessness of morality if you want, but I think that's how crazy ideas get passed down.
Anyway, good for Portugal, especially since the Pope was just there peddling his bat-shit-craziness. Sucks not to have any credibility as a religious leader, doesn't it, Benedict?
And on a final note, it looks like Glee will be covering Bad Romance! (Everyone who is surprised by this should leave. Now.) You can listen to the full version of the song here (thanks, Morgan!).
We just came back from seeing El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes) at the Kendall Square theater, and it was such a spectacular movie that I had to blog about it right when I got home. El Secreto de Sus Ojos was the Argentinian submission for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film; I haven't seen the others, but from what I can tell there's a very good reason it took home the Oscar. Actually, I'm still a little speechless -- it's really the perfect thriller with just the right touch of romance and humor. "Sperm Bank, loan department."
More than the movie itself, though, it was just the perfect date night after a roller coaster week at work. We strolled to the theater after a dinner of chicken and orzo and an outstanding gazpacho. I've really come to love having the Kendall Square Cinema so closeby for the last 2 years: in addition to El Secreto, I've seen some truly excellent and thought-provoking movies there including Food Inc., Babel, An Education, and The Cove. Pedro did some research into theaters around Morningside Heights, and unfortunately I don't think we're going to have the same kind of luck in terms of a right-down-the-street, first-run art house/indie/foreign films theater near the new apartment.
There are some perks to living in the Republic of Cambridge.
Pedro and I got our housing assignment from Columbia yesterday! We were assigned to 434 West 120th Street, #2H. Our rent is $1,445 a month (a little under $100 less than what we're paying now for a 1-bedroom in Cambridge), utilities not included. The single move-in date offered is August 13.
I guess we're moving to Morningside Heights!
We are a one-bedroom on the second floor of what looks to be a ten-story building named the Poinciana. I love buildings with proper names -- think the Dakota at 72nd and Central Park West -- that almost seem like they don't need to have an address or cross street when you talk about them in conversation because everyone knows exactly where they are. I'm already getting a mental image of us getting into a cab and telling the driver: "Please take us to the Poinciana." But who am I kidding? We won't be taking cabs in New York on a grad student budget!
Here is a Google Maps satellite image of the building and its environs, with our unit highlighted by the red circle: Although the building sits at the intersection of W120th and Amsterdam (which, I understand, is a major truck route), our unit is actually set further in and has a view of the "courtyard," which means that we won't get much sun light but that we (hopefully) also won't get much of the truck traffic noise either. The building looks like it's about a 3-minute walk from Fayerweather Hall where the history department is housed, and is around the corner from a number of useful stores like a pharmacy, pizza shop, stationer, and cafe. It's also a block away from Morningside Park, which, when I was living in Morningside Heights in summer of 2003 and working for the Parks Department, I was always told was a dodgy place. Yelp reviewers agree that the park continues to be a questionable hangout after dark, but that during the day it is quite nice. Alas, upon browsing the Parks department website, it's clear that there are no tennis courts. The closest subway station appears to be at W116th and Broadway, where the 1 makes a stop. We'll get to see plenty of Columbia's campus because we'll have to cut through the campus for the most efficient path to the subway.
The Google Maps street-view of the building's front shows what appears to be a doorman/security guard in front. We'll have to make friends with him; I hope he likes chocolate-covered macaroons.
Last but not least, the apartment itself:
We were lucky to have gotten floorplan, although Columbia's housing office didn't send any pictures. The place is probably just a smidgen smaller than our current apartment; the bedroom is narrower but longer. The living room is just about the same size, with a nice nook to the left of the closet that would make for a nice home office for Pedro. The lack of storage is going pose a real challenge (where will we put our giant stockpot or the food processor or the KitchenAid mixer?), as is the kitchenette. I'm not sure why there is a random wall separating the kitchen from the living room, which kind of limits the space and mobility that we'll have in the kitchen. When I was first planning to move to Cambridge in 2006, I had spoken with one of my favorite professors at Amherst (who happens to live in this rambling New England farmhouse with a kitchen the size of a New York deli) about my disappointment in the apartment's rather squalid kitchen. I can still remember her response: "There is a special pride that comes of preparing a good meal in a small kitchen." It looks like I'm going to have a lot of that special pride next year.
We're pretty much locked into this apartment, because Columbia doesn't guarantee housing again if you turn down their initial offer. Now that we have a moving date in mind, we can start to plan the rest of the summer around landing in New York on August 13. I have to give Columbia credit for being as accommodating as they were with our demands (on our application, Pedro and I listed "one-bedroom" as the only option we were willing to work with) and for making the process relatively simple and painless. Although the housing assignment lacked transparency, I can understand that, when one office is in charge of doling out 7,000+ units of housing, you don't really want a back-and-forth with every single tenant.
It's becoming more and more real with each passing day that we're moving to New York and that I'm starting grad school this fall. Getting the housing assignment is one more step in that direction. Hooray!
So I know that terrorism is no laughing matter, but I can't really help but chuckle a little at all of the media coverage surrounding the recent bomb scare in Times Square.
First of all, some of the quotes in the original New York Times article on the incident were downright patronizing, if not taunting. Mayor Bloomberg said that the device "looked amateurish." Piling on, explosives expert Kevin Berry noted that, if the bomb had functioned as intended, "it would be more of an incendiary event" rather than explosion. I'm not sure what an "incendiary event" means (the phrase conjures up images of July 4th fireworks), but Mayor Bloomberg and Mr. Berry almost seem like they're saying to the perp: "You know what? Your plan flopped not just because we're awesome at our jobs, but also because you suck at making bombs." Terrorist fail.
And then there was the reporting in the Times. The original article covering the incident struck a strangely patriotic tone in its closing sentences. A police sergeant from Florida who was in town while chaperoning a school trip was quoted as saying that he was impressed by his New York counterparts; "I just sat back and learned a lot," he added. The Times also found a Brazilian tourist who leaped to a broad sort of sympathy, saying: "I feel sorry for America. I'm at your guys' side." I'm not sure why the Times felt the need to jump straight to this type of "defend-the-Motherland" reaction without having more thoroughly ascertained the other, arguably more relevant details of the bomb scare. The Floridian made the scare seem almost more like a Broadway spectacular rather than the real threat that it was, while the Brazilian went in the opposite and overly dramatic direction. Reporting fail.
And now the NYPD is supposedly looking for a White man in his 40's as the "person of interest" in the case. It's a good reminder that, before 9/11, Timothy McVeigh had been the deadliest terrorist in American history. Can you imagine if we tried to racially profile every White man in his 40's in New York to catch the alleged suspect (in fact, I'd kind of like to see them try)? Police fail. Crazies comes in all shapes and sizes. We're lucky that our modern law enforcement agencies can rely on much more sophisticated methods to identify suspects and to make their case. Except in Arizona.
I know I'm pushing the envelop with this post, and, to be honest, all of this joking masks a certain unease I feel about the episode. What's clear from the whole affair is that a partnership between a vigilant public and a crack law enforcement team helped prevent something that turned out to be merely alarming from becoming something far more serious. I am truly thankful for that. Even from afar, I've always felt a certain protectiveness of New York, and not just because I'm going to be moving there. When I was a senior in high school, I had a chance to visit Ground Zero in February 2002 and to volunteer at the St. Paul's Chapel for an evening. St. Paul's is a small church across the street from World Trade Center, and in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks it was used as a staging area for the emergency workers who continued going down into the rubble to search for survivors, even five months later. I spent 12 hours working an overnight volunteer shift in support of these emergency workers, fetching food, drinks, and blankets for them in between shifts and talking to them about what they saw. At sunrise, I went with one of the chaperones (a photography teacher from a nearby high school) to the family viewing platform on the southwest corner of the site. I started to cry when I saw a half-used box of tissues on one of the chairs. I didn't know anyone who had been directly affected by the attack (at least until I went to college on the East Coast), but staring at the gaping hole in the ground, I felt like I shared a small bit of the pain and a lot of the anger. It sounds weird to say it, because it makes me sound like a raving lunatic a la Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin, but that experience made me feel like I was -- that day and a little bit ever since -- a New Yorker.
It's especially important during these potentially chaotic times to make sure that level-headed discourse prevails in our press and ethically responsible methods in our government. And I reserve the right to laugh a little at the absurdity when they fail to do so.
(Yes, I made that graphic at the top. And yes, I know it's sensationalist. But that's the angry New Yorker in me coming out.)
