What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

My plane landed in NYC on May 3 2001. It was the JFK airport, late in the afternoon. I still had a long ride to New Jersey ahead of me. My company had reserved some lame corporate apartment for me in Jersey City NJ. Here I was moving to NY and I was already knocked off the island on the first night.

I had two large suitcases with me and my backpack. I walked out of terminal one and found the yellow cabs. When I told the guy that I was going to Jersey, he was kind of confused. Apparently the sensible thing to do usually is to fly to Newark airport in Jersey. The ride I was asking for was way more than a cab driver expects when they pull into the airport cab line. He was both confused and happy while trying to figure out how much he wanted to rip me off. I think he had a non-New York moment and told me the truth. He told me the best thing to do was to turn on the meter and then compare it to the fixed fees listed on his sheet. The fees were totaling up to something like 100 dollars and I was worried. I was not even sure I had enough cash.

So I jumped in, the suitcases were thrown in the trunk and we started a long ride through the unfamiliar highways of Brooklyn. We went through Williamsburg bridge and then through Manhattan and then through Holland Tunnel to get to Jersey City. I am not sure it was the shortest path possible. It was getting late, and I did not care anymore. This was to become a pattern in my life in New York. This is a city that puts you in such situations in such urgency, or in such exhaustion that you make the dumbest decisions or most of the time you let the decisions make themselves. At least this was the effect this city would have on me.

Finally I was in front of the corporate apartment and $80 short. I got into my apartment and immediately noticed that I was assigned to a two bedroom apartment with another coworker. I was mortified. Being an only child I have never gotten used to living with others. Something I should probably work on but I never had to --well except for my freshman year in college where they put me up with this guy that was twice my size, ate like a hog and never cleaned his side of the room.

Anyhow, I did not care, I was there, I was tired, I had to sleep and I just jumped into my bed. Next morning I called the office. They were being very laid back about things. "Oh yeah, hi, great that you're here. Oh don't worry about showing up to work, look for an apartment first." I was confused. I thought they would want me in the office pronto. One of my coworkers told me that she lived in the free corporate apartment for a month before finding her own place. She was telling me this as an accomplishment on her part -- it sounded more like a nightmare to me. I needed a place of my own urgently.

So the next day I started calling up apartment broker services. One of my new coworkers had worked with this broker, and highly recommended him. So I gave him a call and made an appointment sometime later in the week. In the meantime I was showing up to the office, trying to get my ducks in a row --find a desk, get to meet the team, get my phone, computer etc working. It was all taking a long time. They could not locate my computer that was shipped from Austin for a day or two and then it magically appeared.

My team was another story. It was strange; something was strange. They were acting a little weird around me, or so I felt. Our supervisor was this thin thin almost emaciated tall guy that scared me. He seemed to be dissaproving everything I was doing, everything I was saying. I kept telling myself it was all in my head and I am sure to some point it was. Later I found out this group of people would never really accept me as one of them.