Left turn: next right

If you ever drive in New Jersey, remember this: if you want to turn left off of a major road, you must make a right turn. It's driving me crazy. All left turns on these streets are like freeway exits, so you have to make a right turn and loop around to the street you want to turn onto. Also, you can't turn left when there's not an intersection, so if your destination is on the left side of the road, you have to drive past it, turn right, loop around, make a left turn back onto the street you were just on in the direction you just came from, and then proceed to your destination. What is wrong with New Jersey?

I guess they make it up by not making you pump your own gas.

So my first consortium this week. It's great. Fifteen schools in the Red Bank area (about an hour south of NYC) in New Jersey get together, work out a college fair schedule all on their own, and all you have to do is show up. You get to meet more kids than a regular presentation and also you get to socialize with the other counselors.

The problem with that, however, is if you end up being, due to the alphabet, next to a really annoying counselor, you're stuck with them all week. The two counselors to the left of me have been great, but to the right of me has been an older (looks like late 50s) counselor who talks a lot and really doesn't seem to understand that what he says could be offensive. Very offensive. He's well intentioned - knowing I'm a rookie he's been giving me road tips - but still, can get annoying and uncomfortable - and racist. A few examples:

Today, my talking about living in California led to talk about Schwarzenegger, then Reagan, then Bush. This guy is as rabid of a Democrat as I am, but didn't seem to think that talking about politics might not be appropriate when trying to recruit students.

Consistently referring to some schools as "black schools." For example, saying that a school used to be good but now it has gone downhill since it has become a "black school" in a "black area." What he's trying to say, I think, is that the areas have become poorer, and generally consisting of more minorities, and thus the schools have become poorer. But how he says it just comes out as ignorant and racist.

At one of the "black schools," saying after a, shall we say, "well-endowed" and curvaceous young woman: "she's got a body."

When talking about Boston, saying it is a great city because they've kept the blacks in certain parts of the city, thus making the other areas safe to walk around it.

So needless to say, the next three days of standing next to this guy are going to be not fun at all.

After the fairs today went down to the beach for a while before it got too cold. It was the first time I had really been to the Atlantic Ocean. So I guess it's kind of cool that I've been to both oceans now. It was very nice - to the north you could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and to the south the shore disappeared in the distance. It was good to get out and see it, if not just to get out of the hotel room.

After getting my beach fix, I turned right and headed left, back to my hotel.

First travel trip almost over

Tonight is my last night in Pittsburgh. I actually enjoyed my stay in the city quite a bit. Pittsburgh I think gets kind of a bum rap (kind of like New Jersey) but it's for the most part a nice city. It's extremely scenic, because it's so hilly (almost as much as San Francisco!). I did my one touristy thing today and went up the Duquesne Incline - technically a public transit method - which is a cable car that scales Mt. Washington and gives an amazing panoramic view of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monogahela Rivers, the "Golden Triangle" downtown at the covergence of the Three Rivers, the sports comlexes along the rivers, and the hills all around the city. I'll post a picture once I get home and can upload one.

Some interesting things about Pittsburgh: 1) despite the amazing amount of bridges and tunnels, there are no tolls to cross any of them (what a thought!); 2) it is the worst city I've ever driven in (yes, worse than New York) because there is no rhyme or reason to the streets, the lights are horribly timed, and there are few if any directional signs; 3) driving is further complicated by the fact that freeway onramps have stop signs, so you have to come to a complete stop before merging onto the freeway; 4) it gets very foggy in the mornings here; 5) there is construction on basically every road.

So what did I do today? Woke up at the crack of dawn to drive to a high school about 15 miles north of the city for a presentation, then a second high school about 15 miles east of the city, and then a third school about 15 miles northwest of the city (well-planned, I know). Despite my anxieties, the presentations went well, except for the last school, at which no one showed up. Tomorrow I have two more schools to visit, and then the long, long drive home.

At dinner tonight (TGI Friday's) I was listening to a conversation between the bartender and another person about Islam and the war on terror, etc. The bartender just kept saying things like "they want to kill you and your family and so we need to just blow them up before they blow us up or we won't win." It just blew me away how uninformed he was. If I was less disiplined maybe I would have cut in and said something like:

"You can't win. You can't win the war on terror. That's not the point. It's not meant to be won, it's meant to be perpetuated so that we'll spend more money on defense. There will always be people who hate us, and there will always be people who want to destroy us. That comes with being the most powerful nation in the world. But don't say that they hate us because they hate our freedom because that's not the case. They have wants and needs and desires and we better figure them out soon because right now we're not making any new friends by blowing up their poorest countries. We can't win, so we can either keep killing civillians in Iraq and Afghanistan, or we can start working to alleviate some of the problems that cause terrorism so that terrorist is less attractive to a young, rebellious 18-year-old Musilm man."

Do you ever get the feeling that you're just more clued in than almost everyone around you? That's how I feel these days.

Five years later

It's been five years since our world changed.  Being in New York on the anniversary of September 11th is sobering, indeed.  But no, I'm not going to wax poetic with tributes to those who lost their lives that day, or resolutely declare my resolve as an American.  There will be plenty of that today.  Besides, I think that lost in all of the patriotism, ceremony and refrains of "God Bless America" is a real examination of what happened that day, why it happened, and how we've responded to it.

 

We were attacked.  We were told we were attacked by people who "hate freedom" and "despise our way of life."  We retaliated.  We were inundated with the idea that America could do no wrong.  What could we have possibly done to deserve this?  Why would anyone hate us?

 

Those who tried to examine this issue were accused of saying that 9/11 was America's fault.  How could it be our fault, they responded angrily.  We are America, and we are always right.  Instead of a true look into the causes of this tragedy (as all events in history occur in a sequence of cause and effect) we were told simply that we were in a battle of good vs. evil, and don't you dare question who is good and who is evil.

 

No where in the "debate" did anyone mention the 1953 covert action by the United States in Iran that removed a democratically-elected Prime Minister and placed the pro-U.S. Shah in power, adding to the anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East.  No where in the "debate" was it mentioned that Osama bin Laden and his Mujahideen Army was armed and trained by the United States just 20 years prior, during the Soviet-Afghanistan War.  No where was it mentioned the constant presence of U.S. troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

 

It's amazing what 20 years can do.  We armed bin Laden in the 1980s because he was fighting the "evil" Soviets.  We gave no thought of the consequences of those actions, or how our perception of who was “evil” would change.  But that's how the United States operates.  We police the world, engaging in conflicts here and there, bombing to the Stone Age the occasional tropical island or third-world country to flex our muscles, never thinking about what might actually happen to us as a result of those actions.

 

I am by no means excusing the actions of the terrorists on 9/11.  Innocent civilians did not deserve to die that day, especially not as an indirect result of actions unknown to them taken by their government.  But to say that the action was unprovoked is not entirely true.  September 11^th was part of a chain of events stretching back to the mid-twentieth century and before, a chain that continues today.  Again, cause and effect.  In fact, it is critical that we understand why we were attacked, because if we do not accept our enemy as real human beings with wants and desires, some legitimate and some not, we will not defeat him.

 

President Bush has said repeatedly - to defend his administrations actions since 9/11 - that "America has learned the lessons of September the 11th.  I don't think he could be more wrong.  I think the main lesson of September the 11th is that we live in a world that is not content to exist in the shadow of American economic, cultural and military imperialism.  The jubilant celebrations in the streets that took place across the Middle East on 9/11 are examples of this.  They were an indication that bin Laden was not just an anomaly, that there were millions of others who also were happy to see us attacked.  The lesson is that if we continue to ignore what the other 5.7 billion people in the world want, we will suffer greatly.

 

President Bush and his cabinet of neo-conservatives, bent on a world dominated by American interests, have ignored that lesson.  They ignored it first by bringing down the military might of the world's strongest nation against its weakest, Afghanistan.  Then, with Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains, they removed our troops from that country to begin their next campaign, against Iraq.  Is Iran next?  When will it stop?

 

President Bush today claimed that we are in a struggle akin to the cold war.  Again, he could not be more wrong.  The cold war was not only a struggle between two nations, but a struggle in which both sides exercised restraint, understanding that too much force would destroy them both.  Today's conflict against terrorists is not a conflict against a nation, yet it is being fought as one.  And it is certainly being fought without restraint.  It is also being fought without any real thought to cause and effect.

 

I fear that if we continue along this path, another 9/11 may soon be on the way.

 

P.S. – Interesting story by one of my favorite Newsweek columnists, Jonathan Alter: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14753927/site/newsweek/

Travel planning (almost) done

Fridays are wonderful, especially after a short week. My travel schedule is 99% done, and I've sent all the confirmation letters out. What a big relief. Now I just need to figure out how to send something out to all the students at all of the schools to let them know I'm coming, which apparently isn't done here. I'm determined to create a process for it if there isn't already. Yay ambition.

New employee orientation (followed by wine social) in about 20 minutes, then weekend. Don't know what I'm up to tonight, but some more work clothes shopping tomorrow afternoon and then hopefully drinks with Jenna and Chris.

Met my future new roomate Stephen last night too, which was awesome. He, my roomate/landlord Markus, Markus's fiance and I went to a great little restaurant down the street and got to know each other. The guy is just out of college and landed a part as a swing in the Broadway revival of Les Miz. Pretty sweet. Anyways, we're going to a Yankees game next week which I'm pretty jazzed about too.

Four days until my first MC college fair, and 9 days until the drive out to Pittsburgh that will officially start my travel.

Labor Dabor

I've always found it interesting that while the rest of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1st, we celebrate it at the end of the summer. May 1st in many other countries, mostly in Europe, is always a day for the workers. I guess we were too worried that celebrating the worker with the rest of the world would make us too "communist," so we put our Labor Day at the end of the year where, instead of celebrating the worker, we celebrate the capitalist by going shopping one more time during the summer. It's amazing how much of our modern culture is dictated by reaction to the supposed communist threat in the 50s and 60s (see: Pledge of Allegiance).

Anyways, I did have a good Labor Dabor. Woke up and moseyed (sp?) down to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue to get a case for my new iPod. The store is really cool. It's right at the border of Central Park and the Upper East Side, so it's in the midst of all these old, ornate hotels and residences. Except the Apple Store (at least at the surface) is just a big, crystal clear glass box. It just looks really cool aside all the other buildings. But all the "box" has inside are stairs to the lower level, which has the actual store that sprawls out underground. Very cool.

Oh, and Saturday I bought a very slick suit at Men's Wearhouse. I look pretty dashing in it I must say. It will be ready for pickup just in time for me to start traveling.

Anyways, back to Sunday: after the Apple Store I came home and had some lunch before heading out to New Jersey to Daryn and Kathy's place. They had a few neighbors and friends over and Daryn made a ton of food (although my margaritas were a hit). Since Daryn was trained as a chef in his younger days, it goes without saying that dinner was very, very good. It was also good to see them and of course my cousins Hailei and Lindsey again.

The only thing worse than having to come back to work after a three day weekend is having to come back to work after a three day weekend when no one makes coffee. It was literally a scene out of "Dilbert" or "The Office" in that the person who normally makes the coffee was out today, so no one made it. We all just complained about it. At least I can say I'm new and I don't know how they make the coffee there. But regardless, it was a long morning before I became frustrated (and got a headache) trying to schedule more and more high school visits. My first college fair is in a week and I'm no where close to finishing up my schedule.

Another three-day weekend, anyone? Rise up, proletariat....

Travel planning stress

I spent most of the past week stressing out about planning my fall travel. Even without the numerous errors I've now found on the college fair schedule I was given, it's a big task. But it's been complicated by several problems I luckily discovered on Friday, such as me supposedly having to be in two different parts of the state at the same time. Hmm. My first fair is September 12th but I hit the road the Sunday after by heading to Pittsburgh. I also hit southern Jersey and Philadelphia at the beginning, then spend the next few weeks in northen Jersey, and then back to Philadelphia and Atlantic City in November. I'm lucky in that most of my stuff is in a pretty concentrated area, I guess.

Besides that, not a lot going on. I finally caved and bought myself a new iPod, and I need to get a suit for travel season. So yay for spending money. Picked up John at the airport yesterday, so it was kind of nice to see a familiar face in the city and get out of my apartment a bit. It's been kind of a lazy weekend because it's been raining. So I'm just kind of stuck in my apartment because I don't want to go outside. My evening will pretty much be here, and then back to work tomorrow to continue the stress of planning fall travel. Wonderful.

Another year older, another year wiser?

And I'm 22. I must admit that I wasn't looking forward to my birthday that much this year, at least not after moving. Not knowing a lot of people in the city, I wasn't sure if I would even be doing anything on my birthday aside than my usual TV watching from my apartment. Thankfully, the lovely and talented Mr. and Mrs. Chris and Johanna Buckels were willing to go out with me that night, and good times commenced. We went to a pub in the village that's basically an NYU student hangout and then up to a bar in midtown. So that was a lot of fun. The only sucky part of it was that it took me almost 2 hours to get home because the subway station I was at basically shut down. But I also got to talk with Mary - thankfully she gets cell phone reception where she's at - and my parents, so in the end it was a good day.

It was also my last Friday off of work. Tomorrow real work starts as I have to put together my travel schedule, which is just such a daunting task. I have a list of all the college fairs I'm attending (NACAC fair in Atlantic City: here I come...?) and all the high schools I'm responsible for, and I somehow have to make sense of all of it. It doesn't help that I just plain don't know the geography or anything. I just don't really know where to start. But I also know that I'm one of the most organized people that I know, so I'm sure eventually I'll get the hang of it.

Finally, I (finally) got a desk today (see below for Office Depot fiasco). It was pretty much the last thing I needed to get to make my apartment what I wanted it to be (save for some stuff to fill the walls) so it's good to finally have a complete space.

Anyways, I promise more prolific thoughts eventually, rather than just a recap of my day. Seriously.

Rochester tomorrow

So no going back to work this week until Thursday. Well, technically not going back to work. Tomorrow I head up to Rochester, NY for a four day, new admissions officer conference. It's about a six hour drive, so that will be fun. The other new MC admissions counselor had a family emergency so I will be going alone. I don't really know much about what I'll be doing up there except I have to at some point give a short presentation on MC.

Besides that, I've just been adjusting to living in the city. Living as far uptown as I do I don't always feel like I live in New York City, or rather, the New York City that I've always known - and most people know - through movies, pictures, and trips. I've spent both weekends here taking the subway downtown and just walking around, usually reading in Central Park. Maybe its just to remind myself that I do live in New York City. Most likely though it's because it's just really enjoyable to walk around the city or the park. I haven't really met anyone in the city yet so I'm hoping that comes next. As much as my apartment is nice it's geting old hanging out here (which is why I try to get out when I can).

My main gripe for the week is the fact that Office Depot screwed me. Last Sunday I went downtown and found a good, inexpensive desk that I liked and ordered it to be delivered on Friday. Since the package is too big to be left with anyone, I stay in my apartment all day long so that I'll be here to receive the package (I didn't work on Friday). Throughout the day I speak to three Office Depot representatives. Only when I speak to the third one, an hour after the desk was supposed to be here, am I told that the item is out of stock and they won't be selling it anymore. Therefore, I'm not getting my desk. I just can't believe they would not tell someone that. I'm just pissed because now I have to get another desk somewhere else. Such horrible business practices...

I most likely won't have access to a computer in Rochester so I'll try to post again when I get back. Have a good week everyone.

I've never been to Philly...

Work definately picked up this week. Had my first two admissions interviews yesterday, and another today. I think they went pretty well. Yesterday my business cards arrived so now I feel "official."

Today I found out where my travel territory will be: mostly Southern Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. Which will be kind of cool because I'll get to go to Philadelphia, and I've never been before.

I'll post again before Sunday, when I leave for Rochester for a first-year college admissions counselor seminar.

First post and pictures

It's been a week and I'm getting all settled in. I'll share some of my more profound thoughts later on, but first I just thought I'd throw up some pictures. Hopefully people will enjoy them. Any comments or messages in the form of comments are welcome. Love to hear from people.

The first few are my apartment. It's still a bit messy as I'm still getting settled in.






This is the view out of one window, up 181st street:



Here's the other window, not as thrilling. Onramps to the George Washington Bridge:



All I have to do is walk one block for an amazing view of the Hudson, Pallisades, and the GW Bridge:



And only a fifteen minute walk to this view:




Here's a cool pic of downtown and a pic of midtown taken from the Brooklyn Bridge:




And a pic of the World Trade Center site:



Finally, some work-related pictures:

Here's the inside of the Manhattan College chapel:



Here's the outside of the chapel, which is actually on the second floor. On the first floor is the auditorium.



This is the quad, which is the primary gathering place for students (during warm weather). The building is Memorial Hall, where most of the administrative offices are. Unseen are the other buildings on the quad: classroom buildings De La Salle Hall and Miguel Hall, and the chapel.



This is the O'Malley Library, where I work. The Admissions Office is on the top floor.



Finally, here is my brand-spankin' new Dodge Caliber, which I wish I could drive more. Sadly, since there is not a lot of parking near my apartment, I won't be driving it to work. Travel season should be more exciting now though.



And last but not least, here is where I'm living, courtesy of Google Earth, so you can see where my place is relative to the rest of Manhattan. I'm waaaaay uptown.



Anyways, I'll post more soon...