Moving On

This blog never had a theme, which all good (profitable) blogs should. You loyal readers have mused, made fun of, and even made T-shirts of my random thoughts and raves, but it's time to grow up a little and move to a space that folks could learn a little from. There comes a turning point in everyone's life that needs to be written about, and in this case my turning points were personal record breaking sushi buffets, dreams no human being have ever had before, and intoxicated escapades. Now I've come across something that will take more than one post to write about. Months in the making, please join me in counting down the days at BabyIncluded.

In Training

All New Yorkers have heard of an imminent Subway fare hike on the horizon, plus an additional increase a couple of years down the road from the first hike. Currently at $2 for a one way trip anywhere in New York, any non-New Yorker considers this one of the lower fares for Mass Transit compared to other parts of the world.

Yesterday, our faith in our economical transit system was tested yet again, when the tornado from the night before caused flooding in the tunnels , halting service and re-routing trains all across the city. During the morning commute, there were enough simulated, more costly events to well exceed the $2 I paid for the ride.

· Crowded nightclub admission ($20): people pushed up against me with speakers blaring pleas to wait for the next train

· Day at the Sauna ($50): although the AC was on, it didn’t cool off the people squeezing in from the unventilated underground platforms. Especially the large, tank-topped gentleman who snuggled up against my arm looking for standing room. My apologies to the other man next to me, who I wiped my newly sweated arm up against.

· Ticket for rated R movie ($11): Enough scolding and cussing from the people pushing each other on the train to rival any Samuel L. Jackson dialogue.
· Bus ticket to Philly ($20): Two hours to get to my destination.

Over a $100 value, for $2. What a bargain!

Oh and the inevitable tagline:

· Watching people still holding seats for the elderly and standing aside for baby carriages: priceless.

Join The Club

In another attempt to hold onto my youth, I accompanied a group of friends this past weekend to hit one of New York’s trendier night clubs. While researching the venue, the ringleader, whose birthday we were celebrating (Happy Birthday, LW!), searched for a venue appropriate for our age group. That’s between dancing with glow sticks and dancing with canes and top hats. She settled on a place in the dimly lit cobblestone streets of the Meat Packing District. (For the throngs of ladies in high heels, I was expecting to see a lot more injuries than I did watching them cross those cobblestone streets.) The place was called “Cielo,” and not surprisingly, we were the very first people in line, since we would probably be the only people in there with a strict bedtime. While waiting, another group of young women sauntered up to the bouncer. As I was noticing how young they were, they too seemed to be seeking an older crowd, and asked the bouncer, “How old are the people in there? Like twelve?” That made me feel so much better, as I fumbled through my pockets looking for my arthritic medication.

Inside, the place was quite nice, with two steps leading to an in set dance floor in the center, and a 3 foot wide disco ball hanging from the ceiling. First one in, and first ones to the bar, as we plopped down $11 to $14 for various fancy drinks. We walked around leisurely, like fire inspectors, checking out the furniture and outdoor garden. Party goers filed in slowly in small teams, separated at the bouncer’s discretion. It reminded me of watching a class field trip enter pair by pair into a museum playing house music.

Over the next hour, the place filled up pretty quickly, and the temperature got warmer as the music got louder. Then as the strobes flashed faster with the beats, quickly came the signs of getting old…

• A shift of the non-dancers in the group, the ones with the bad knees, were designated to watch the bags
• The strobe lights blinded our eyes, causing much visual confusion and pain
• The music was too loud
• We held onto our chests when the bass went up to make sure our hearts were still beating to their own rhythm

We were yawning and too tired to stay past midnight

It was a fun evening, and something I haven’t done I think since I was in my twenties. I think I would probably do it again, after a good night’s sleep and maybe an afternoon nap.

Iron Man

I got the lab results back from my check up. Everything was OK. Cholesterol is split into LDL (bad cholesterol) and HDL (good cholesterol). Surprisingly, my LDL levels were at 115; they should be less than 130. Even more surprisingly, they said I have "elevated iron levels." I have no idea what that means, but they want me to go in and get another test in case the results were wrong.

A little research on WebMD says that high iron levels is a condition called hemochromatosis:
Hemochromatosis is a condition that develops when too much iron builds up in the body. Your body normally stores small amounts of iron in the bone marrow, liver, kidneys, and heart, but excess iron will eventually damage these organs.

A little more research yielded a site called foodshighiniron.com, which said:

Iron Rich Foods
· Beef, Certain cereals, Green leafy vegetables, Liver, Prunes

So it looks like I don't need to worry too much about the cholesterol, but do need to stay away from those life-threatening green leafy vegetables.

Overall, I think this is good news for a guy who's one-third through his probably potential lifespan.

I immediately celebrated with fried chicken wings and french fries.

Doctor Doctor

A couple of weeks ago, my boss, who is a pretty thin guy and an avid marathon runner, was diagnosed with high cholesterol in his last annual medical check-up. That got me thinking, that I haven't had a medical check up in more than a year... maybe more like a decade. Now if my marathon boss has high cholesterol, I can't imagine what could be wrong with me, working a few stories above a food court and consuming a coffee to water ratio of 2 to 1. (And the occasional alcoholic beverage, which I can't really calculate, since I tend to lose count when I drink those.)

So I promptly researched and asked for a recommendation on a decent doctor. My appointment is tomorrow. I'm a tad nervous as to what may be building up in in any of the many parts of my body over the last few years, and the blood work(i.e. needle stuck parallel to my vein) gets me kinda queasy. I've been trying not to think about it much, and I absolutely forgot about it during lunch when I ordered a chicken pot pie from the Macy's Cellar. It was very good, with big chunks of chicken, thick gravy, and a flaky, buttery crust. I started to complain about my lunch to my co-worker after I finished it, just saying how bad it must have been for me. I would highly recommend it to anyone not watching their cholesterol though, as it was a darn good pot pie for $6.50.

So I go about my day, and by 5 PM, I end up with a bottle of Guiness on my desk. I'll spare the details on how it got there, but know that I finished it, and promptly complained again to my co-worker how counter-productive I was today, right before my appointment. She gave me sound advice, and said "Your check-up isn't going to track what you put in your body today, but what you put in there all year. Maybe you should have been worrying about this a year ago." I work with such smart people.

One Night in Paris

After a 60 Euro cab ride (or $84 US dollars) from the airport, we arrive at our hotel around noon, Paris time. We are told that our hotel reservation doesn’t exist. After a thorough investigation, it is confirmed that the hotel has no vacancies, and none of the occupied rooms have our names associated to them. This is a first for me – not only have I never been to Paris, I’ve never arrived at a hotel in another continent and been told I don’t have a room. They were able to find us a room in their sister hotel, and guaranteed that we would have a room when we returned the morning after. So they graciously called us a cab and provided cab fare to another hotel, quite a distance away.

Now Paris is made out of concentric rings. The center of Paris where all the touristy stuff is is referred to as Zone 1. The further out you are, the higher the number. We were in Zone 5. This is about a half hour away from the center of Paris by train. The sister hotel was also in Zone 5, a bit further North.

We check into the sister hotel without a hitch, but our room lacks hot water, and many of the surfaces seemed unfit for human contact. It will suffice for one night, but after losing five hours of time from NY, a cave and a pile of leaves would have done the job too. Not wanting to waste our first day, we gear up our tourist apparel and head to the lobby to get directions into the heart of Paris. To get to Zone 1, we need to take two trains. Fair enough. Except that we need another ten Euros for a taxi ride to the train station because it’s so far away. But it’s a better alternative than another 60 Euro for the same distance.

Two trains later, in the center of Paris, we get lost several times and I get pooped on by a fat Parisian pigeon. We had our first authentic crepe and learn how to say “water” and how smoking is as necessary for Parisians as food, oxygen, and wine. As the sun sets, we head back to the hotel via train, and back to our Metro stop. It’s night by the time we arrive, and at the taxi stand outside, there are no taxis. We wait, some taxis drive by, but do not stop. So we ask the friendly Metro station guard with his German Shepard in tow about “le taxi.” He speaks French. In French, we can say “taxi” and “water.” Through much gesturing, he is kind enough to help call a taxi for us. Seems like you can’t really hail a taxi outside of Paris – you have to call for one. In America, that’s better known as “car service.” After a few phone calls, he tells us all the taxi companies are closed. At this point, it’s 9:30 PM, and the taxi companies are closed. Que le hell? Another Frenchman walks by and tries to assist. He doesn’t speak English either. I’m frantically looking up every word I can possibly think of to help in my dictionary, but they’re speaking so fast, I can’t turn the pages before they’re on another subject (I think). This new person I notice has no thumbnail, as he holds our map, pointing in seemingly random directions. Which makes me wonder, how do you lose a thumbnail in Paris? Is he a member of the French Mafia? Did he cross someone in French black market tourist trading? He concludes the best option is to walk. I should clarify: Walk down the darkly lit streets in the suburbs of Paris when it took us 10 Euro to get there, which may have been about 5 miles. Then we had the idea to call the hotel. Since the hotel provided a taxi for us earlier, why couldn’t they do that now? Now right outside the Metro entrance was a newspaper stand closing for the night. The newsstand owner inside was kind enough to call the hotel for us with his phone, where the hotel tells him a taxi will come get us in 5 minutes.

Newsstand owner tells us to stand on the corner, in a highly visible area, as it seems like there is more of Paris’ less desirables roaming the streets now. The newsstand owner checks on us one last time after he closes the gate to his newsstand, and leaves with a wave via the Metro staircase where we exited from. After about 15 minutes, the man with no thumbnail comes back in a white car packed with his buddies, or the rest of the members of his tourist kidnapping ring, depending on how you look at it. The car slows to a halt in front of us, and the back door opens with him gesturing us to enter for a ride back to our hotel. Luckily, I’ve learned in the past to never accept rides from men without thumbnails, so we wisely said “no merci.”

Our five minutes are definitely up, and wifey spots newsstand owner coming back via car. He seems to have forgotten something and is unlocking the gate to his newsstand again. As he closes the gate the second time, he sees me, and asks “no taxi?” “No taxi” we reply. He looks at his watch, shakes his head, then points to his car. “Come.” Having very little choice, we consider the options (which really aren’t many), and walk with him to his car. Now he’s got all his nails intact, is alone, pretty old, and I think I can beat him in arm wrestling, so it’s probably a much safer bet than the man with no thumbnail and his Mafia friends, so we go ahead and pack into his little two door European automobile. The security guard with his dog walks by and gestures to me as if asking if I’m ok. I shrug my shoulders, because I really don’t know if I am ok. So he laughs, and waves au revoir. That may be the last person I see in Paris, so I wave good bye as well.

This newsstand owner is telling us in the car as he's driving that that area isn’t safe at night. “One man, one dog, no security.” (I would have replied “In New York, one person, in one bulletproof box, no dog, no security,” if I knew how to say that.) He ends up taking us on a pretty direct shot on the highway to our hotel, and as we exit his car with a lot of “merci’s,” I offer him 10 Euro, which he refuses. He cups his hands over his heart instead, which I assume meant that he wanted to do it out of the kindness of his heart. (That same gesture in NY means “heart attack.”)

So that’s how we spent our first night in Paris. If you do travel to this train stop and see the newsstand owner at the Emarainville RER stop on the "E" line, please buy something from him and send him regards from NY.

Also, from this experience alone, I would say Parisians are far from the unfriendly snobs they're often stereotyped to be. For the record, in our 6 days there, we were never treated rudely.

Je Mangerai Des Pâtisseries

For the next week, The Big KL will be known as Le Grand KL, as I head off to Paris for vacation. Chatting with veterans of the Parisian tourist set, I'm persistently warned to watch out for gypsies, who are always seeking foreign pockets to pick. This led me to wonder if Europeans who come to NY for the first time are told the same thing by their amis (French for "friends") , to watch out for agresseurs ("muggers"). So we'll see if my New York know-how can compete with Paris' prestigious pick-pockets. With a little help from my pants with secret pockets in the crotch. (Just kidding. I stopped wearing those after high school.)

Over the next few days before my departure, I'll be brushing up on my accents for the limited French I know (basically, croissant and je ne sais quoi, which I doubt can be used in every day conversation unfortunately), and pretending that I'm Canadian, as I hear they don't particularly favor the Americans over there. Japanese tourist was another option, although the height and the uncanny ability to speak un-accented English may blow my cover.

So au revoir, mes amis, and I'll update with tales and learnings when I return, eh?