Central Park, today. Just a perfect day... 

New Digs

The apartment rocks. It's just orders of magnitude better than the shithole I was living in before. I'm sleeping better, partly because there aren't eight other people with their own schedule at all hours of the day and night, and partly because I don't have to worry about the whackjob any more. In fact, my flatmate's been out of town all week and I've had the place to myself. It's been very therapeutic to have some privacy once again.

I've been steadily furnishing the place - now is actually a good time to be moving, since everyone else is moving out and I can pick up their unwanted stuff cheap or for free. I've more or less got my room the way I want it, and tomorrow I'll be moving my couch (also acquired for free) up here from K's place, where I'm storing it. She's not so keen to part with it, understandably enough...

I've also been helping a professor at Columbia with his effects - he's moving to Kyoto fairly soon, and as one might expect he has a lot of stuff that needs processing. I and another grad student have gone out to his house in Scarsdale, which is in the suburbs and marks the first time in nearly nine months that I've actually been outside the city limits. Kind of lame, I know, but this place has a habit of being all-consuming. Picked up some free stuff from him - a couple of books, and the desk I'm writing this on right now.

And summer is here now. It's hot and humid - 27℃ out there today - and I'm off to spend a lazy afternoon in Central Park with K.

One year on

I realised today that it's been a year since I started blogging. I started this whole enterprise on the 13th May 2005, and in that time have managed 190 posts. Not bad, all things considered - that averages a post every other day, although it's actually not all that impressive since quite a lot of those are pictures. But still - it's been quite a journey. One year ago I was sitting at my desk in my place in Shiogama, wondering what life would be like in New York City and at Columbia. A lot has gone on in that year - the last rites in Japan, the terrorist attacks of that summer, the Ashes, moving to New York, Columbia, getting on the PhD track, meeting K (it's been six months now), the whackjob, and now, a new apartment as well. I've put some photos up below - it's not much to look at yet, but it's getting furnished steadily enough.

So it's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, really.

My room, looking inward. It's about 13' by 12', a reasonable size. 

My room, facing outward 

The kitchen and living room. Not a lot in here yet - so far I've concentrated on furnishing my room.  

Good Friday

So I've moved. I'm installed in my new apartment, and very nice it is too. There's one sort of downside, in that there was not a stick of furniture in my room when I moved in, so that's something I'm going to have to sort out. I do have a bed, an air mattress which will doubtless come in handy when people come to visit. The place needs a clean, overall, but I can get to work on that perhaps tomorrow. It doesn't have ethernet, unfortunately, but as luck would have it the building does have a few unsecured wireless networks which I can tap into since I bought myself a wireless card to go with all the other new stuff I've acquired. I'll have photos of the place up as soon as I find the cord that connects my camera to my PC; it's in one of my moving boxes somewhere.

The move itself was smooth enough, though it was preceded by a torrential thunderstorm and I did get a bit wet moving stuff. Sure enough, it cleared up and presented blue skies almost immediately we got my belongings into the service elevator.

I do have a flatmate, a bloke by the name of Matt who seems agreeable enough. He actually left this morning with his girlfriend for a week in Thailand, so I have the place to myself, more or less, and he will be going back to Chicago for most of the summer after that, so for this summer it's basically my exclusive pad. Awesome. But it's a good sign that he has a girlfriend...it means he's not only not a nutcase, but sufficiently socialised that at least one woman is prepared to sleep with him.

It's a huge relief to have managed to get out of Harmony Hall. The place was just a shithole; it wasn't very nice to begin with, but having to live next door to that fucking nutcase took the biscuit. Now, at least, I have a space I can call my own, a proper apartment as opposed to a dorm room, one with natural light, space, and best of all one not shared with eight other muppets.

I think my luck is changing, all things considered. Especially as at poker that night, I came up with a Royal Flush on one all-in hand. Perhaps a bit of background - the Royal Flush is the highest possible hand in poker, consisting of Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten, all of the same suit (in my case Spades). In Texas Hold'em, where you can only possibly have a maximum of seven cards to call your own, the odds of that happening are astronomical - apparently something in the order of 650,000 to 1.

It's not changing that fast, though. I still only finished 3rd. Baby steps, baby steps...

For a few blocks more

I know where I'm going. I'm moving a few blocks north of where I am now, to a two-bedroomed apartment on the third floor of a building just next to Morningside Park. It's slightly closer to campus, and from the floor plans it will even have some natural light, which is a wonder beyond wonders as far as I am concerned. I'll be moving in on Monday. I don't yet know who my roommate is or even if they're there yet, but I guess I'll find out in good time. Frankly, I don't care - I'm just relieved to get out of where I am now and move to a place with a semblance of privacy to it. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my mind.

I and K (and K's parents, actually) went to see the Yankees play again last night. Just as last time, they lost, to the Texas Rangers on this occasion. It was actually a good close game, well worth going to see and we got excellent seats, by which I mean ones that weren't open to the elements as there was a delay or two thanks to showers. I love the atmosphere of Yankee stadium; it's hilarious to listen to the vendors shouting to each other and throwing bags of peanuts at customers.

It's been raining on and off for most of the week, and it was enough, just about, to put a damper on the graduation ceremonies that seem to be going on here at the moment. I myself won't be taking my degree until the autumn, but there're still plenty of proud parents and their offspring clad in blue robes cluttering up the sidewalk. The speaker was John McCain, a somewhat controversial choice as he's a rather conservative Republican who just a few days ago was talking for your friend and mine Jerry Falwell's mob. Not a popular choice amongst the whole of the student community; there were more than a few people handing out, or wearing, badges that said "John McCain does not speak for me" or some such. Not that I paid them much attention; I was too busy with my papers. And fantasising about my new place, too.

Biding one's time

It really is a great feeling to be getting out of here, to be honest, and I'm looking forward to it immensely. Not least because Mr. Whackjob is still here. And I'll be gone before he will.

It seems to boil down to legal matters. His lease (and that of most other people) expires at the end of the month and he will then have to leave anyway. New York housing law does not allow for immediate eviction except in the case of criminal acts, and so were CU to decide to evict him, which they quite easily could, proceedings would take longer than the remaning duration of his stay here anyway. So they've offered other people in the building the opportunity to move to another suite elsewhere in the building if they want. There was some discussion of asking him to leave voluntarily, but they either didn't do that (it's a little iffy legally) or he refused to do so.

An uncharitable way of looking at the situation, of course, is that once again they're doing nothing. It is, as you say, Tori, a shit situation and one which has been, in my view, mishandled by the college administration. Not uncharacteristically - the admin side of things here (in sharp contrast to the academic) has left me deeply unimpressed whenever I've had to deal with them.

So there's unfortunately not a lot I can do now in instances where, for example, I was woken up by him sobbing in the communal kitchen (like at 7:30 this morning). Let's just hope nothing major happens between now and the end of next week.

I can not wait to get out of here.

In other news, I finished a paper and turned it in this morning. One down, one and a half to go. This summer will be a complete change in my living circumstances, and a major one for the better, no doubt.

Out of Harmony

I'm getting the hell out of here. My PhD student housing application was approved, I will be assigned a new, proper apartment on Monday, and I will be able to move into it at the end of next week. Finally. The process was in no small part expedited by the actions of the whackjob next door to me, I think - seeing as I was due to move anyway, I guess they thought that it'd be a good idea to hurry the process up. But it's most welcome nonetheless.

This comes as a huge relief, because the crappy nature of my current accommodation has been a real source of irritation this semester. And while I don't know for certain where I'm moving to yet, I do know that it really couldn't possibly be any worse. I've been a bit of a pack rat recently, picking up articles of furniture that those who are leaving are donating, including a couch, rice cooker and microwave, all of which will now have a new home. I'm rather optimistic that my new place will be several orders of magnitude more comfortable, spacious, tranquil and generally like a home. Not hard given the current competition. Guess it turned out that living in Harmony isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Clobberin' time!

Hulk SMASH!

Well, sort of. I certainly imparted a few home truths to the powers that be here. The lawsuit line certainly got their attention (as well it might, I suppose). I think I actually got them to do something this time...it's still pending and in theory confidential, so for the moment I probably shouldn't talk about it on the web as there are some Columbia people who read this (yes, I find it rather hard to believe as well, but apparently it's true). I'm still going to talk to the University Ombudsman tomorrow to register my dissatisfaction with the way the whole thing was handled.

A good vent can be therapeutic sometimes. Anyway - what the hell. I'll be moving out of this shithole shortly.

On a completely unrelated note, I saw a wonderful headline in the New York Daily News on my way past the newsstand today. In reference to Iranian President Ahmadi-Nijad's letter to Bush it said "Nuke Kook's I-rant". Wonderful. Not quite on a par with the Sun's response to Inverness Caledonian Thistle's 3-1 defeat of Celtic (Super Cally Go Balistic, Celtic Are Atrocious), but getting there, certainly.

Tipping Point

I live in New York. It's a strange and sometimes bewildering experience. One thing I still can't seem to work out it tipping. I and some friends went for lunch at a place across the way from Columbia the other day. We finished eating and left a tip that was double the tax, which is what I believe is generally acceptable. Not to the wait staff, apparently. They chased after us and said that they'd miscalculated the tax and wanted a bigger tip. Not something I think has ever happened to me before, but my more learned friends say that waiters basically don't get paid and have to get by on tips here. I would have thought that was illegal in several ways, but apparently not.

And tipping bar staff is something I feel to be rather nonsensical. After all, as I understand it a tip is for good service. A friendly and attentive waiter who brings you your food promptly and efficiently, well, fair enough - but there's really not all that much to go wrong with pouring a pint. And if, as it seems, it's obligatory if you don't want spit in your drink, it seems rather redundant. Might as well just add it on to the cost of the drink in the first place. Oh well. さすが異文化交流だね。

The whackjob next door is back in full swing again after an absence of a couple of months. CU public safety were called last night, for the third time. Talking to the officers who attended the call, I learn that he has had an episode like this in Butler Library (WTF??!!) in the last month, and moreover, and I quote, that "sometimes he forgets to take his medication".

Let me just pause for a moment or two to allow that statement to sink in.

I'm absolutely fucking furious about this. Housing and the University have done nothing about this guy despite repeated complaints. I am going over there to tear them a new arsehole, or possibly two, on Monday morning. I will point out that next time this happens, for my safety and that of others around me I will be calling not CU Public Safety but the nice gentlemen at the NYPD.

Something else which I find astonishing, as well. It may not have occurred to Columbia that, having been warned repeatedly about this guy by me and others and taken no action, if he does now hurt somebody, they will be liable for a massive lawsuit on the grounds of negligence. I don't know if it will come to that, but I doubt that the University wants to take that gamble.

It's even more ironic, I suppose, because on Wednesday I went to a "focus group" for the housing department and told them that the whole procedure for dealing with complaints of this nature was unclear and bureaucratic and that I thought the whole affair had been mishandled. Now I guess I have abundant proof of that.

I have rarely in all my adult life been this angry. Nobody should be expected to put up with this sort of shit, especially not at the end of term when I have final papers to write.

I'm here to kick ass and chew gum. And I'm all out of gum.