I do not know if it was me or if it was the New Yorkers but it had been several months since I had moved to the city and had not made any new friends outside of work. The ones at work were nice people but under what seemed to be a permeable layer of personality laid a very tough shell like the seed of a peach, it was impossible to break through. So the friendships at work remained limited and gave me as much satisfaction as miniature people on a bookshelf.
The streets, the gym, the clubs, the restaurants were no better. Unlike the people in Austin, New Yorkers took pride in having a wall around them. At first this seemed a little strange to me. As months went by I finally understood. The answer was simple, these people were rude to strangers for a good reason: most of the strangers in New York City were FREAKS! The scariest part of it is the fact that these freaks were perfectly capable of hiding their freakiness. Through years of trial and error a new species of freaks had evolved in this city; a complete new species that on any day you would meet, conduct business with, exchange a simple subway banter but never ever know what you're standing up against.
With so many freaks roaming the streets it would make sense that some people would have these freaks as friends or perhaps at least as acquintances. Strangely enough the people we knew were never freaks, they were weird friends, strange acquintances, dear childhood friends with obsessions, coworkers with addictions and habits that they just can not kick but never full-fledged freaks. It seemed that this city had made it an art of hiding the freak in us all. On any regular day, the battlefield commonly known to others as Manhattan was full of freaks in camouflage. The strangely kind water man, the old nasty neighbor lady, the couple that you ran into in the mornings, people walking their dogs, all were freaks in hiding.
You can only imagine my shock and delight when one day a particularly normal looking guy approached me at the gym and asked about the pair of shorts I had on. I was wearing the last surviving pair of Duke shorts from my college days. It turns out he too was an alumni and we hit it off right away.
I was soon to find out that unlike the Mid-West, people's schools mattered a whole lot more here on the island of brands and images that were applied and re-applied more frequently than Staten Island makeup. Entire friendships and relationships could be based on people's educational background here and I did not mind it. In the land of diploma elitism I had nothing to fear with my BA and MA degrees tucked under my arm.
The guy's name was Bob, and he was in advertising which meant that he was mentally pretty sharp. We soon started working out together and it was fun to be talking to someone at the gym for a change. I always looked forward to running into Bob at the gym because he always had lots of stories to make me laugh.
It was also a no-frills friendship. It was completely clear that I was taken and he also made it clear that he was too tired to date anyone anymore. He had been out there in the playing field and had suffered his share of injuries and disappointments. I think one should always watch out for these people in life; because just two moments after they announce that they have given up and admitted defeat, they turn around and do something really out of character and end up doing better than you are somehow.
Bob was no different. He disappeared for a week or two without a warning. It turns out he went on a gay cruise where he met the man of his dreams (surprise!) who happened to be living in Chicago. I was a little shaken by the fast pace of changes in Bob's life but nevertheless I was glad for him. Next thing I knew he was making plans for moving to Chicago and the full nine yards of kissing adolescent independence goodbye once and for all.
Bob was in what I call the marriage mode. A type of mental state when sentences almost always begin with "We" and mostly are about home furnishings, home improvement, babies, and financial plans for the future. It is most apparent in women but the convergence of gay towards mainstream has resulted in gay men also exhibiting the same type of codependent behavior. What's interesting to me as a foreigner is the word "codependent" almost always carries with it a negative connotation in the US. What is so bad about needing someone to hold onto, needing someone to talk to, needing someone to share an agenda with? I still do not know.
Every brick of every building, the pavement beneath my feet and all the people around me friends or not seemed to be silently whispering "independence, go for independence" when I was not looking. Independence; sounds great. Sign me up but then what happens next?
Codependence, independence, multi-dependence, anti-socialism all become no different than long distance carriers that each have individual benefits and caveats leaving us wishing there was one plan to put all the good stuff together and leave out the bad. So far no such luck so we carry on with our choices...and still get frequent tele-marketer calls from the other carriers.
It bugged me. No it disturbed me that Bob, my independent, never gonna date again, "I will be alone and fabulous for the rest of my life" friend had gone four weddings and a funeral on me overnight.
To cap things off, Bob was having a huge birthday party in a week or two. I was not really looking forward to it but he kept harassing me until I had to say yes. Most people love birthday parties for some reason. I guess it is because they only have fond memories of birthday parties past. What I remember from my birthdays in the past is, I would invite all my classmates and only 5 girls out of 25 people would show up every time. So after primary school I just gave up on the idea of trying to make friends. Something about me was annoying people, I was too young to know exactly what but I knew even then a crowded loneliness waited for me in the future.
Unfortunately before I had time to get ready for it, the big day arrived. Bob had informed me that the party was at a restaurant in East Village. I thought to myself, good at least I do not have to venture to another part of Manhattan.
I am in love and have always been in love with having the option of bailing out when I need to. It is just this noncommittal part of me that needs to know I can hit a panic button and I will be taken out of the current situation with the fewest number of scratches and scars possible. And this restaurants location fit my exit criteria perfectly.
So I get dressed and show up at the party with a little happy birthday card mostly because I did not know what to get him. I was hoping for a party of ten to fifteen people. I was mentally prepared for ten to fifteen people. When I arrived on time at the restaurant there was no one. No sight of Bob, nor his entourage.
It was a little hole in the wall restaurant that specialized in French Armenian cuisine. I still do not know what kind of food that ends up being: very spicy, delicious and very little food that's beautifully arranged on a plate? The food was delicious but the quantity was simply not enough. Oh did I mention more than thirty people showed up. Our birthday party quickly filled the entire restaurant.
Bob arrived and everyone was on him like he was fresh meat in a shark tank. I must have exchanged two sentences with him the whole night.
Bob's best friends were sitting next to me. This super cool Manhattan couple, I bet they thought their dodo did not stink. I was mortified by the size of the crowd but I was making a concerted effort to engage in conversation and maybe get to know some people. Well I chatted with Bob's best friends for a while. The guy was a major player in some startup multimedia company. I told him about my job and my company, and did not forget to put a little Sape plug in there. The moment the words "maybe your company and mine can do some collaboration together" left my lips he snapped at me "I know your company, there is no reason for us to do any work with you all. I was talking to you because we're trying to get more talent like you." This was strike two for me because this couple had previously offered me a joint in the middle of a conversation and it seemed very incoherent and out of place to me at the time.
So I turned to my right, and noticed that what seemed like a random seating of individuals was almost dead on in terms of separating the GAYS into one corner and the straight people to the other. I was dead in the middle and it was appropriate in some ways. I was gay after all but most people did not figure it out until I started making frequent unnecessary references to musicals and movies.
The "gay" crowd was gracious and nice to me. So I pretty much remained turned to my right the rest of the night and had a blast with people I would never see again. I don't think people in Turkey do not have this experience when they entertain in public. Usually when you see a group of people in Turkey having a blast, you can be guaranteed these people have known each other for more than one night; or at the very least I can guarantee you these people will see each other again. I never saw these people ever again for the remainder of my stay in the city.
There was a lot of food, a lot of drinking, and it seemed like I was trapped in what seemed to be a re-enactment of the last days of Rome. When I felt that I could take it no more, I got up to leave and one of Bob's friends grabbed me by the arm on my way to the door.
She said: "did you pay Bob for the party?"
I said: "excuse me? pay for a party this size?".
She said: "Yeah we all have to pitch in to pay for the party and you owe $70."
I have never been the kind of guy that winces at the sound of a price tag or restaurant bill but this one bothered me. It bothered me that I was almost the only non-drinking guy there and I was paying for all the booze these people were washing the Armenian koftes with. I had $40 with me so I gave her that and told her I had to get more money. So I left and came back and gave her the rest. In the meantime her husband in his drunken stupor looks at me with recognition and says: "ah the douche bag is back to pay .... great". I was speechless, I really was but anger was brewing inside me and I had to get out of there before I got into some situation.
By this time Bob had also joined his friends in the land of drunken messy faced stupor. I felt like I had been transported to this alien planet and I had to go back, get out of this place before it claimed me.
So I turned around, and told her that I can not believe her husband has the balls to call me names at a friend's party. She was apologizing for him when I said: "that's all I have to say to you". I turned around, I could hear her still gabbing in the background but I kept my steady pace towards the door. Soon I was out, and what seemed like hell was behind the door, nicely contained in the East Village night.
I walked home silently in disbelief, and anger; anger for myself for going to a birthday party for someone I did not even know that well. I called up my cousin later to vent and he could not believe the story, he was convinced I was making it up or exaggerating the details but I was not.
I never saw Bob again, and never heard back from him again. I figured he had moved to Chicago to get married to his dream date and possibly if nature permitted squirt several kids out promptly so that he can commence his life as a soccer mom in the burbs of Chicago.
Bob called me almost a year later, two weeks before I left New York City. He left a message on my machine telling me he was sorry he did not have time to talk to me before he left for Chicago. He and his hubby were going to Turkey the next day so he had called me for tips and pointers for things to do in Turkey. I never called him back.
Category :
It seems that if you're a gym addict, your whole life can fall apart but you still can not miss a workout. At these times of stress, the opposite happens, you actually find yourself going to the gym more often than usual, and spending more time there.
My addiction to the gym is no different than most New Yorkers' affinity to endless number of coctails after work. My poison involves "lifting heavy things and putting them back down". Needless to say, as an unemployed, semi-illegal alien that was having issues with his immigration status, welfare, partner and his own family, my addiction to working out was stronger than ever. I frequented the Crunch Gym on Lafayette near Astor place.
The Crunch gym was not the most expensive gym in town; in fact I would call it a midrange gym. It was prominently located but never too clean and usually lagged on the amenities: locker room, showers, towels etc. Still I liked the layout of the gym floor and it was the closest one to where I lived, Stuyvesant Town. Closest, being at least ten blocks away! It usually took me a good 15-20 minute walk to get to the gym. I did not need much cardio after that.
When I say Crunch was a midrange gym. Midrange classification also applies to its clientele. They were also midrange Manhattanites; not too rich, not too poor; not too successful, not a complete failure. But if you asked them each of them was a VP of something; usually you could not immediately tell what function they served.
Here was a group of people that saw each other religiously every day and still managed not to even exchange an occasional nod. There was this strange invisible and somewhat cyclical pecking order in the gym. What seemed to be at the top of the food chain were the incredible pretty people with extremely fit bodies. These were the gods, they ignored everyone, and socialized with only their kind, other gods. Then the second teer was the really good-looking people that were in way or another flawed; either unemployed currently, or a big spot on their forehead, bad haircut, or a torn muscle. Then came the normal looking people; the people you would walk by on the street and probably not pay much attention to. These were the most mellow of the bunch; don't get me wrong, we're still in Manhattan, so even their mellow is nothing like yours. Then below this midrange was the semi-ugly people; overweight, or too much bodyhair, not enough hair on their head, scars, bad tattoos, crooked noses, or just old --funny how age can put even the hottest person into this category. Then came the ugliest people; these people were so ugly, they were hot. What I have observed is, the ugliest people are also usually extremely fit and to make matters more complex they get to ignore even the gods, the most beautiful of the gym.
So the pecking order continued up and down and around the food chain; a whole gym full of superficial people, 90% of whom were gay and thought that NYC would not be the same city without their own sad original story to tell. What makes all of this funnier is the tagline of the Crunch Gyms: "No Judgements."
Some days I felt very at ease with this crowd of antisocial judgemental bodies and some days I broke a sweat just walking into the gym. I really can not tell you where I exactly fit in this mad world of muscle and fitness; perhaps in the middle somewhere.
I tried to make friends for the longest time at the gym with little success. Most people I attempted to talk to either ignored me or treated me like your everyday stalker. Along the way I met one or two friendly people of course. After all the good people are bound to be out there. I even regularly worked out with one or two. It was good to have gym buddies.
The gym was the modern day version of Cheers, the sitcom; "a place where everybody knows your name". Well not really they did not know your proper name, they knew your gym name. The gym name can be anything that identifies the person uniquely, with the exception of their real name. If you need to refer to someone in conversation and don't know their name, you have the gym name to fall back onto.
A gym name is usually connected with a physical attribute or certain behavior that belongs to the person being named:
--This is of course a completely fictional list, provided here for illustration purposes. Any resemblance to real life characters is just a mere coincidence and perhaps one of the little mind games Manhattan plays on the unsuspecting.
The Crunch gym was not the most expensive gym in town; in fact I would call it a midrange gym. It was prominently located but never too clean and usually lagged on the amenities: locker room, showers, towels etc. Still I liked the layout of the gym floor and it was the closest one to where I lived, Stuyvesant Town. Closest, being at least ten blocks away! It usually took me a good 15-20 minute walk to get to the gym. I did not need much cardio after that.
When I say Crunch was a midrange gym. Midrange classification also applies to its clientele. They were also midrange Manhattanites; not too rich, not too poor; not too successful, not a complete failure. But if you asked them each of them was a VP of something; usually you could not immediately tell what function they served.
Here was a group of people that saw each other religiously every day and still managed not to even exchange an occasional nod. There was this strange invisible and somewhat cyclical pecking order in the gym. What seemed to be at the top of the food chain were the incredible pretty people with extremely fit bodies. These were the gods, they ignored everyone, and socialized with only their kind, other gods. Then the second teer was the really good-looking people that were in way or another flawed; either unemployed currently, or a big spot on their forehead, bad haircut, or a torn muscle. Then came the normal looking people; the people you would walk by on the street and probably not pay much attention to. These were the most mellow of the bunch; don't get me wrong, we're still in Manhattan, so even their mellow is nothing like yours. Then below this midrange was the semi-ugly people; overweight, or too much bodyhair, not enough hair on their head, scars, bad tattoos, crooked noses, or just old --funny how age can put even the hottest person into this category. Then came the ugliest people; these people were so ugly, they were hot. What I have observed is, the ugliest people are also usually extremely fit and to make matters more complex they get to ignore even the gods, the most beautiful of the gym.
So the pecking order continued up and down and around the food chain; a whole gym full of superficial people, 90% of whom were gay and thought that NYC would not be the same city without their own sad original story to tell. What makes all of this funnier is the tagline of the Crunch Gyms: "No Judgements."
Some days I felt very at ease with this crowd of antisocial judgemental bodies and some days I broke a sweat just walking into the gym. I really can not tell you where I exactly fit in this mad world of muscle and fitness; perhaps in the middle somewhere.
I tried to make friends for the longest time at the gym with little success. Most people I attempted to talk to either ignored me or treated me like your everyday stalker. Along the way I met one or two friendly people of course. After all the good people are bound to be out there. I even regularly worked out with one or two. It was good to have gym buddies.
The gym was the modern day version of Cheers, the sitcom; "a place where everybody knows your name". Well not really they did not know your proper name, they knew your gym name. The gym name can be anything that identifies the person uniquely, with the exception of their real name. If you need to refer to someone in conversation and don't know their name, you have the gym name to fall back onto.
A gym name is usually connected with a physical attribute or certain behavior that belongs to the person being named:
- A guy that frequently wore a pair of "Harvard University" shorts could be named the "harvard guy".
- Someone who spends half his life in the tanning salon may be the "alligator".
- The biker guy who at some point in his life completely misplaced the distinction between having a little scent to his body and smelling like a homeless guy working out may be named the "Stink".
- A writer of children's books who has really long red wavey hair may be called "Samson".
- His snooty boyfriend that asked you your age, as the second question after asking your name, and then proceeded onto not talking to you when he found out you were not available for "fun" could be "Delilah".
- The actor who played the waterboard employee in Erin Brokovich, who also can be seen all over East Village on his rollerblades perhaps could be called "Mr. Wheels".
- ...
--This is of course a completely fictional list, provided here for illustration purposes. Any resemblance to real life characters is just a mere coincidence and perhaps one of the little mind games Manhattan plays on the unsuspecting.
Category :
At first it is great, with my severance in my bank account, and all the time I could not have before while I had a real job, I was in heaven.
Typical days consisted of waking up at 10 am if I felt like being more productive thay day. I do not know what it is about the morning hours; it seems if anythingt is going to get done in a day, they seem to get done in the morning hours --perhaps mostly because we are to sleepy to realize that we're supposed to be putting off these tasks in the first place.
I would wake up and have my breakfast in front of the TV. One egg yolk, 4 egg whites, two pieces of toast, glass of green tea and a small glass of orange juice stood on the dark brown coffee table like an odd group of cattle preparing to jump off for their freedom.
One by one they would dissapear from the plates, then the plates would clank as they turned into a stack in the living room. Some people get sloppy when they're unemployed. The opposite seems to happen to me. I become the anal king of the world. The dishes soon found their places in the dishwasher --like passengers pouring into an early morning ferry to Manhattan. Soon the diswasher would be on, humming its rhythmic swish that might one day inspire a dance named the dishwasher. As water whirled around my dirty dishes like the whirling dervishes, I sat down at my only couch to fill out the job applications for that day.
Each morning, I would re-run all my job searches and check to see if any new positions became available since 4 am last night. There would be several per day and they kept me busy for 1-2 hours every morning.
This was your typical mix of job postings: positions I am way too qualified for, others that are so right for me that it's wrong, and finally those I am way underqualified for. For every acronym I knew, there seemed to be three more I needed to know. For every year of experience I had in one thing, I was required a certificate in another. To paraphrase Barbie, "Job hunting was HARD!"
At first I was mass-applying to everything, sending thirty to sixty resumes a day to jobs all over the place. After I attended the job hunting workshop I slowed down a little and I focused on quality applications sent for positions that I have a very good chance of getting. This approach worked better for me. I got some calls but still I was not getting interviews, I was not getting offers. It just was not happening for me.
In an effort to preserve my sanity, I assumed my backup job title for the rest of my time in New York City, a painter. I started to introduce myself as a painter to people. You would be surprised what a big difference it makes to switch from calling yourself an internet consultant to a painter. Suddenly there was more attention paid to me. Being a painter meant, I was creative, strange, and perhaps dangerous.
It was all fine and well but I also was not very good at marketing myself as a painter. I visited galleries all over town, introducing myself, showing my portfolio, meeting gallery owners, their minions and their lovers. Still the responses I was getting were less than enthusiastic.
At a time when I managed to fail at everything I attempted, it suddenly dawned on me that I was probably half-responsible for the miserable outcomes. All my life, when I am not watching, this other side of me has been secretly sabotaging everything. It is almost as if I introduce myself to people and immediately move onto making a fool of myself with this stand up act routine that only comes across as self-effacing. Well maybe, if I was in Istanbul, that act might elicit some form of recognition and perhaps in time even gather quite a group of fans. But here? in New York City? This was the worst place to get my self-effacing mask on -- and it was glued to my face during the unemployment months.
The morning would wrap up with the applications sent to that one way trip to nowhere. Many like passengers departing on a condemned ship never returned and were never heard of. Most days I had lunch at home: chicken breast, rice and vegetables. Some days I felt the need to get out earlier, so I left around noon to have lunch at a restaurant near by.
I frequented the Lemon Leaf on 3rd Avenue, St. Marx Cafe on St Mark's, Telephone Bar on 3rd Avenue, and countless pizza joints on 1st and 3rd Avenues.
Most days I lunched alone. I guess I could have called a friend or two but I feel so much more at ease when I am by myself. I would sit there waiting for my lunch in that raw Manhattan Spring with its brisk breeze and burning sun doodling away in my notepad like a crazy artist I wasn't.
Afternoon usually was spent browsing the stores and going back forth between absolutely indulgent purchases and others not made because of guilt. I think I still managed to part with 20-50 dollars a day at the very least because of these mini sprees. I returned home late in the afternoon with all the killings of the day. There was however little time to enjoy these trophies. I had to change into my gym clothes and rush off to the gym to make it to the 7 pm showing of the "lifting heavy things and putting them back down." The crew at the gym changed by the hour. I like the 7 pm crowd, they were easier on the eyes, and they had lives, and still they were nice people.
After the gym came the dinner and perhaps watched a DVD. Then I chatted on the computer for a while. During this period, I became completely addicted to Yahoo Messenger and spent endless hours talking to strangers all over the US on just about anything ranging from dating to weight training to politics to foreign travel. The greatest thing about online chat is it allows a person to socialize without going through the angst of being there with the real people. So in this sense, chat is the sterilized, pausterized, and homogenized version of daily social life. No wonder there's so much comfort in it.
Extended exposure to chat life however has been proven to create allergic reactions to daily social situations --so one must always exercise moderation when engaging in an online life. Yeah right, like that will happen.
Typical days consisted of waking up at 10 am if I felt like being more productive thay day. I do not know what it is about the morning hours; it seems if anythingt is going to get done in a day, they seem to get done in the morning hours --perhaps mostly because we are to sleepy to realize that we're supposed to be putting off these tasks in the first place.
I would wake up and have my breakfast in front of the TV. One egg yolk, 4 egg whites, two pieces of toast, glass of green tea and a small glass of orange juice stood on the dark brown coffee table like an odd group of cattle preparing to jump off for their freedom.
One by one they would dissapear from the plates, then the plates would clank as they turned into a stack in the living room. Some people get sloppy when they're unemployed. The opposite seems to happen to me. I become the anal king of the world. The dishes soon found their places in the dishwasher --like passengers pouring into an early morning ferry to Manhattan. Soon the diswasher would be on, humming its rhythmic swish that might one day inspire a dance named the dishwasher. As water whirled around my dirty dishes like the whirling dervishes, I sat down at my only couch to fill out the job applications for that day.
Each morning, I would re-run all my job searches and check to see if any new positions became available since 4 am last night. There would be several per day and they kept me busy for 1-2 hours every morning.
This was your typical mix of job postings: positions I am way too qualified for, others that are so right for me that it's wrong, and finally those I am way underqualified for. For every acronym I knew, there seemed to be three more I needed to know. For every year of experience I had in one thing, I was required a certificate in another. To paraphrase Barbie, "Job hunting was HARD!"
At first I was mass-applying to everything, sending thirty to sixty resumes a day to jobs all over the place. After I attended the job hunting workshop I slowed down a little and I focused on quality applications sent for positions that I have a very good chance of getting. This approach worked better for me. I got some calls but still I was not getting interviews, I was not getting offers. It just was not happening for me.
In an effort to preserve my sanity, I assumed my backup job title for the rest of my time in New York City, a painter. I started to introduce myself as a painter to people. You would be surprised what a big difference it makes to switch from calling yourself an internet consultant to a painter. Suddenly there was more attention paid to me. Being a painter meant, I was creative, strange, and perhaps dangerous.
It was all fine and well but I also was not very good at marketing myself as a painter. I visited galleries all over town, introducing myself, showing my portfolio, meeting gallery owners, their minions and their lovers. Still the responses I was getting were less than enthusiastic.
At a time when I managed to fail at everything I attempted, it suddenly dawned on me that I was probably half-responsible for the miserable outcomes. All my life, when I am not watching, this other side of me has been secretly sabotaging everything. It is almost as if I introduce myself to people and immediately move onto making a fool of myself with this stand up act routine that only comes across as self-effacing. Well maybe, if I was in Istanbul, that act might elicit some form of recognition and perhaps in time even gather quite a group of fans. But here? in New York City? This was the worst place to get my self-effacing mask on -- and it was glued to my face during the unemployment months.
The morning would wrap up with the applications sent to that one way trip to nowhere. Many like passengers departing on a condemned ship never returned and were never heard of. Most days I had lunch at home: chicken breast, rice and vegetables. Some days I felt the need to get out earlier, so I left around noon to have lunch at a restaurant near by.
I frequented the Lemon Leaf on 3rd Avenue, St. Marx Cafe on St Mark's, Telephone Bar on 3rd Avenue, and countless pizza joints on 1st and 3rd Avenues.
Most days I lunched alone. I guess I could have called a friend or two but I feel so much more at ease when I am by myself. I would sit there waiting for my lunch in that raw Manhattan Spring with its brisk breeze and burning sun doodling away in my notepad like a crazy artist I wasn't.
Afternoon usually was spent browsing the stores and going back forth between absolutely indulgent purchases and others not made because of guilt. I think I still managed to part with 20-50 dollars a day at the very least because of these mini sprees. I returned home late in the afternoon with all the killings of the day. There was however little time to enjoy these trophies. I had to change into my gym clothes and rush off to the gym to make it to the 7 pm showing of the "lifting heavy things and putting them back down." The crew at the gym changed by the hour. I like the 7 pm crowd, they were easier on the eyes, and they had lives, and still they were nice people.
After the gym came the dinner and perhaps watched a DVD. Then I chatted on the computer for a while. During this period, I became completely addicted to Yahoo Messenger and spent endless hours talking to strangers all over the US on just about anything ranging from dating to weight training to politics to foreign travel. The greatest thing about online chat is it allows a person to socialize without going through the angst of being there with the real people. So in this sense, chat is the sterilized, pausterized, and homogenized version of daily social life. No wonder there's so much comfort in it.
Extended exposure to chat life however has been proven to create allergic reactions to daily social situations --so one must always exercise moderation when engaging in an online life. Yeah right, like that will happen.
The last you want to be in a country that's been recently hit by terrorism of foreign origin is to be a foreigner without a legal status. I came really close to being an illegal alien in March 2002. According to Sapient's legal representation, my H-1B worker visa was void as of March 15 2002. A conversion of status from H-1B to tourist visa was out of the question. They told me the best bet was to go back to Turkey and try to obtain a tourist visa to come back to the United States. This was some poor piece of advice: Anyone in their right own mind at the time could tell you that going back to Turkey meant that I would not be able to come back for some amount of time.
After the ordeal that was 9/11, United States made the process of getting a tourist visa in a foreign country a complete nightmare. Don't get me wrong, it was not as if it was easy to get a tourist visa at a US embassy in the first place. Even people with F-1s and H1-Bs were being turned down. The most common reason being the immigration officer's belief that the person applying for the visa is intending to settle in the US and perhaps look for employment --heaven forbid, how could they intend to do such a horrible thing.
This country has completely forgotten how it got started in the first place --in more ways than one. The one I have been most exposed to is with respect to its policies about immigration. It seems that one can float to the US shore from Cuba and get instant asylum. This same person could to go to an ivy school and then get a graduate degree; perhaps even proceed to work in the tech industry for several years. This time, he would have to go through a 4-7 year application for resident alien process. The application process involved trying to prove his worth to the Department of Labor and the INS to get a green card.
When I explain this process to an American citizen not familiar with the subject, they’re usually shocked with disbelief. This is because most Americans think that the current immigration progress is similar to what they read in their history books. Well it isn’t; and it has not been the same since the !980s at which time INS made some fundamental changes to the green card application process that made it orders of magnitude difficult to complete.
The current system is geared towards beefing up the lower class that is usually willing to work under harsh working conditions and be paid comparatively nothing for their long hours at work. Therefore the legacy of the first generation Americans continues --we lose this first generation to health problems related to poor working and/or living conditions. The second generation eventually makes it but they too go through a lot.
I do not know why I thought I would be an exception to this rule. Well, I wasn't. The US that embraced my cash so fondly when I was attending college suddenly grew cold and distant after graduation. It seemed that the relationship had ended but I still carried on like a desperate husband, trying to keep everyone under the same roof.
What's worse is, my employer, Sapient, used the green card as a carrot to motivate me to move to New York City. The harsh truth of course came up once I had uprooted my whole life and moved to New York City. The person in charge of foreign workers there informed me that unlike the previous information given me, the green card process did not take 2 years, it took 7-10 years. I felt so betrayed as I held the phone in my sweaty palm. Her calm voice carried on telling me how difficult the process was –as if she was just telling me about the congested traffic on the West Side Highway. This was so disheartening for me but I still had to believe in the process, and the good will of the corporation towards its employees. Sapient's behavior near the layoff and afterwards proved my hope to be in vain.
After the layoff, everything Sapient legal team told me involved leaving the US, going back to Turkey and forgetting my life in the US. I was not willing to give up just like that. I had spent a good ten years in the US. I had a life, a career and a loved one here. It did not make sense to give up all that just yet.
The only help I got from the most unlikely source ever, the cleaning lady on our floor. She was an Indian national and she had obtained a green card. She recommended her attorneys and gave me their contact information. I called the attorneys the next day; Khine and Napolitano LLP.
Theresa Napolitano met with me that week and she was very helpful. She informed me that my status still could be changed to tourist B2 visa. We swiftly completed the application and sent it to the INS. We heard back from INS in a couple of weeks. My visa was approved for 6 months. I figured this was plenty of time to find another job in the New York City area.
So the job hunt began; I was excited. I felt that this would be a new beginning, and another chance to find my place in this big city. I kept saying to myself, "if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere". I sounded like a bad Broadway musical. But it was spring; how depressed could I allow myself to be when the trees in Union Square park were blooming, when the streets called out my name, when afternoons at the Virgin Mega store were followed by a walk uptown on Broadway to meet my cousin for dinner.
I had money from the severance, my parents were reluctant but still supportive --for a while I was on top of the world.
After the ordeal that was 9/11, United States made the process of getting a tourist visa in a foreign country a complete nightmare. Don't get me wrong, it was not as if it was easy to get a tourist visa at a US embassy in the first place. Even people with F-1s and H1-Bs were being turned down. The most common reason being the immigration officer's belief that the person applying for the visa is intending to settle in the US and perhaps look for employment --heaven forbid, how could they intend to do such a horrible thing.
This country has completely forgotten how it got started in the first place --in more ways than one. The one I have been most exposed to is with respect to its policies about immigration. It seems that one can float to the US shore from Cuba and get instant asylum. This same person could to go to an ivy school and then get a graduate degree; perhaps even proceed to work in the tech industry for several years. This time, he would have to go through a 4-7 year application for resident alien process. The application process involved trying to prove his worth to the Department of Labor and the INS to get a green card.
When I explain this process to an American citizen not familiar with the subject, they’re usually shocked with disbelief. This is because most Americans think that the current immigration progress is similar to what they read in their history books. Well it isn’t; and it has not been the same since the !980s at which time INS made some fundamental changes to the green card application process that made it orders of magnitude difficult to complete.
The current system is geared towards beefing up the lower class that is usually willing to work under harsh working conditions and be paid comparatively nothing for their long hours at work. Therefore the legacy of the first generation Americans continues --we lose this first generation to health problems related to poor working and/or living conditions. The second generation eventually makes it but they too go through a lot.
I do not know why I thought I would be an exception to this rule. Well, I wasn't. The US that embraced my cash so fondly when I was attending college suddenly grew cold and distant after graduation. It seemed that the relationship had ended but I still carried on like a desperate husband, trying to keep everyone under the same roof.
What's worse is, my employer, Sapient, used the green card as a carrot to motivate me to move to New York City. The harsh truth of course came up once I had uprooted my whole life and moved to New York City. The person in charge of foreign workers there informed me that unlike the previous information given me, the green card process did not take 2 years, it took 7-10 years. I felt so betrayed as I held the phone in my sweaty palm. Her calm voice carried on telling me how difficult the process was –as if she was just telling me about the congested traffic on the West Side Highway. This was so disheartening for me but I still had to believe in the process, and the good will of the corporation towards its employees. Sapient's behavior near the layoff and afterwards proved my hope to be in vain.
After the layoff, everything Sapient legal team told me involved leaving the US, going back to Turkey and forgetting my life in the US. I was not willing to give up just like that. I had spent a good ten years in the US. I had a life, a career and a loved one here. It did not make sense to give up all that just yet.
The only help I got from the most unlikely source ever, the cleaning lady on our floor. She was an Indian national and she had obtained a green card. She recommended her attorneys and gave me their contact information. I called the attorneys the next day; Khine and Napolitano LLP.
Theresa Napolitano met with me that week and she was very helpful. She informed me that my status still could be changed to tourist B2 visa. We swiftly completed the application and sent it to the INS. We heard back from INS in a couple of weeks. My visa was approved for 6 months. I figured this was plenty of time to find another job in the New York City area.
So the job hunt began; I was excited. I felt that this would be a new beginning, and another chance to find my place in this big city. I kept saying to myself, "if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere". I sounded like a bad Broadway musical. But it was spring; how depressed could I allow myself to be when the trees in Union Square park were blooming, when the streets called out my name, when afternoons at the Virgin Mega store were followed by a walk uptown on Broadway to meet my cousin for dinner.
I had money from the severance, my parents were reluctant but still supportive --for a while I was on top of the world.
My job title changed from Flash Tech Lead / Internet Consultant to Aspiring Painter, Writer, Loser overnight. I was willing to let myself go though; it was as if I wanted to see if there was a bottom to the pit I had feared so much for so long. I was in the pit now, and slipping down slowly but I wanted to find out how deep this pit went and if I could hit the rock bottom after all --after all these years of almost impeccable record and good reputation.
Odd Todd's merit lies in his ability to turn his misery into art and also make some money from it. You should check out his new book, I really liked it. I am also tempted to buy his mugs and other merchandise.
Category :
This Wednesday I had to drop by our client's office located on 55 Broad st. After the meeting, I was trying to figure out the best way to get back to New Jersey, where my office is located. Wandering around on Wall Street, I found myself walking towards the WTC direction. It was as if my mind was tricking me to think that there were still ferries running between the Financial Center docks and Exchange Place.
As I approached the site, it got quieter. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of activity on the streets but people were quieter. It seemed like fewer people talked, fewer people smiled, in fact fewer people ever looked up from the ground to catch someone else's eyes.
Several stores were still closed. Some restaurants were open serving meals for the volunteers and construction workers at the site.
Everywhere were tired construction workers, their faces covered with white dust and disbelief. Even after working at the site for more than a month, it seemed like they were not able to accept what had happened. Another thing that factors into the disbelief is the scale of the work ahead. These people are being asked to clear up a site where two 100-storey buildings stood in a frame of time shorter than it original took to build them.
The streets were all dug up from West to East and there were tens of pipes, cables running in the trenches. I guess they were bypassing all the lines that went through the site but the resulting the view was very chilling. It reminded me of a biological organism that had been injured, now in the aftermath there were many more blood vessels in the area, lots of scar tissue, security for making sure that the site of injury does not get infected.
Then without a warning I looked north and I caught more than a glimpse of the South Tower's remains. The remains stood at least 10-20 storeys high and it all did not look real. It was as if someone was projecting this image from somewhere in the sky. To the left was Batter Park City, a symbol of pleasures and rich living and to the left was the proud Wall Street buildings standing proud and tall and in the middle of all of this the WTC site was completely out of place.
The air was surprisingly clear, the wind must have been blowing northward, I was to the south of the site. I found myself walking as close as I could get and there were tens of people there, all silently staring. The feeling was very similar to what you feel when you enter an old cathedral. The grief had subtle but dense presence at the observation points which were the closest a
civilian could get to the site.
After a few minutes of staring into the emptiness that was called WTC, people would turn back with perhaps wet eyes and walk to wherever they were headed originally. I too stood there for a while and absorbed what I was seeing before me. Then something in me clicked and I too turned around and continued my walk.
I reached Battery Park City that was much quieter than I had ever seen it before. Those handsome apartment buildings I had so desperately wished to live in before had changed. They did not shine with that carefree glitter of wealth anymore. Several windows had no curtains in them that lead me to believe that some tenants had moved out. Strange as it is I could not help but wonder what the current rent is in these buildings? Even in the middle of all these mixed
feelings the New Yorker in my head was thinking of the possibility of moving to these previously overpriced apartments.
I finally figured out that I would not be able to catch a ferry from the World Financial Center side so I walked back to an NR station and took it uptown to 9th Street Path Station and then I was off to NJ for the rest of my uneventful day.
When I look at the WTC today, it does not create anger in me, it creates sadness, and a need to reflect on what was before all this happened, and what has changed since. I do not feel like lashing out at the rest of the world, I do not feel like taking over the Middle East, I do not feel like bombing anywhere. I feel like going into a Starbucks and watching people walk the streets of NY as if nothing happened. I longed to catch a couple exchange a prolonged kiss at the corner. Many people speak of their lives returning to normal; strange I never quite felt mine ever was normal and I do not think that it really will return to any previous point it was at before.
November 17 2001
As I approached the site, it got quieter. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of activity on the streets but people were quieter. It seemed like fewer people talked, fewer people smiled, in fact fewer people ever looked up from the ground to catch someone else's eyes.
Several stores were still closed. Some restaurants were open serving meals for the volunteers and construction workers at the site.
Everywhere were tired construction workers, their faces covered with white dust and disbelief. Even after working at the site for more than a month, it seemed like they were not able to accept what had happened. Another thing that factors into the disbelief is the scale of the work ahead. These people are being asked to clear up a site where two 100-storey buildings stood in a frame of time shorter than it original took to build them.
The streets were all dug up from West to East and there were tens of pipes, cables running in the trenches. I guess they were bypassing all the lines that went through the site but the resulting the view was very chilling. It reminded me of a biological organism that had been injured, now in the aftermath there were many more blood vessels in the area, lots of scar tissue, security for making sure that the site of injury does not get infected.
Then without a warning I looked north and I caught more than a glimpse of the South Tower's remains. The remains stood at least 10-20 storeys high and it all did not look real. It was as if someone was projecting this image from somewhere in the sky. To the left was Batter Park City, a symbol of pleasures and rich living and to the left was the proud Wall Street buildings standing proud and tall and in the middle of all of this the WTC site was completely out of place.
The air was surprisingly clear, the wind must have been blowing northward, I was to the south of the site. I found myself walking as close as I could get and there were tens of people there, all silently staring. The feeling was very similar to what you feel when you enter an old cathedral. The grief had subtle but dense presence at the observation points which were the closest a
civilian could get to the site.
After a few minutes of staring into the emptiness that was called WTC, people would turn back with perhaps wet eyes and walk to wherever they were headed originally. I too stood there for a while and absorbed what I was seeing before me. Then something in me clicked and I too turned around and continued my walk.
I reached Battery Park City that was much quieter than I had ever seen it before. Those handsome apartment buildings I had so desperately wished to live in before had changed. They did not shine with that carefree glitter of wealth anymore. Several windows had no curtains in them that lead me to believe that some tenants had moved out. Strange as it is I could not help but wonder what the current rent is in these buildings? Even in the middle of all these mixed
feelings the New Yorker in my head was thinking of the possibility of moving to these previously overpriced apartments.
I finally figured out that I would not be able to catch a ferry from the World Financial Center side so I walked back to an NR station and took it uptown to 9th Street Path Station and then I was off to NJ for the rest of my uneventful day.
When I look at the WTC today, it does not create anger in me, it creates sadness, and a need to reflect on what was before all this happened, and what has changed since. I do not feel like lashing out at the rest of the world, I do not feel like taking over the Middle East, I do not feel like bombing anywhere. I feel like going into a Starbucks and watching people walk the streets of NY as if nothing happened. I longed to catch a couple exchange a prolonged kiss at the corner. Many people speak of their lives returning to normal; strange I never quite felt mine ever was normal and I do not think that it really will return to any previous point it was at before.
November 17 2001
Category :
Why is the sky blue: Discussion
Transmitted light (from the sun, light bulbs, fire, etc) is made up of a spectrum of colors. The longest wavelengths of light are on the red end of the spectrum and the shortest wavelengths are on the blue/violet end of the spectrum.
When transmitted light such as sunlight enters our atmosphere it collides with the oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The color with the shorter wavelength is scattered more by this collision. Because violet and blue are the shortest wavelengths the sky appears to be violet / blue. But because our eyes are more sensitive to blue light than they are violet light, we perceive the sky as blue.
Our eyes contain thousand of rods and cones, which are the receptors for light. Whenever one of the 3 Stooges pokes you in the eye you see a giant blue spot. This is because the blue receptors have been activated. Blue is one of the primary colors and thus more easily activated and seen by our eyes.
Blue is also how I feel when my baby leaves and my hound dog dies. Also, how I feel when the cops pull me over and I see their blue lights flashing in my rear view mirror. Then, again, blue is the color of the K-mart special, so this color isn't all bad.
Why is the sky blue: Summary
So, why is the sky blue? It is because blue light from the sun strikes the air molecules and scatters and our eyes perceive it as blue.
Why is the sky blue: Short Summary
Why is the sky blue, you ask? Blue in sunlight collides with air molecules and our eyes see it as blue.
Why is the sky blue: Condensed
Sunlight collides with air, scatters blue wavelengths.
Why is the sky blue: Ultra-Condensed
You are seeing things. Stop asking.
Source:Why Is The Sky Blue
Transmitted light (from the sun, light bulbs, fire, etc) is made up of a spectrum of colors. The longest wavelengths of light are on the red end of the spectrum and the shortest wavelengths are on the blue/violet end of the spectrum.
When transmitted light such as sunlight enters our atmosphere it collides with the oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The color with the shorter wavelength is scattered more by this collision. Because violet and blue are the shortest wavelengths the sky appears to be violet / blue. But because our eyes are more sensitive to blue light than they are violet light, we perceive the sky as blue.
Our eyes contain thousand of rods and cones, which are the receptors for light. Whenever one of the 3 Stooges pokes you in the eye you see a giant blue spot. This is because the blue receptors have been activated. Blue is one of the primary colors and thus more easily activated and seen by our eyes.
Blue is also how I feel when my baby leaves and my hound dog dies. Also, how I feel when the cops pull me over and I see their blue lights flashing in my rear view mirror. Then, again, blue is the color of the K-mart special, so this color isn't all bad.
Why is the sky blue: Summary
So, why is the sky blue? It is because blue light from the sun strikes the air molecules and scatters and our eyes perceive it as blue.
Why is the sky blue: Short Summary
Why is the sky blue, you ask? Blue in sunlight collides with air molecules and our eyes see it as blue.
Why is the sky blue: Condensed
Sunlight collides with air, scatters blue wavelengths.
Why is the sky blue: Ultra-Condensed
You are seeing things. Stop asking.
Source:Why Is The Sky Blue
Category :
The whole routine of expecting a major layoff became a part of our daily lives after 9/11. The office was crawling with layoff banter. It was becoming harder and harder to be productive. I could not get any work done because just when I was able to bring myself together to concentrate on my project, another person from the 21st floor would come by to tell me all about their version of the news.
When I first started working, my coworkers took pride in the number of personal artifacts they had in their cubicles: toys, games, action figures, memorabilia, the list goes on. As the times changed from bad to worse, as our stock took a freefall dive down, and got kicked off the Fortune 500, the personal items started to decrease in number.
The personal toys were the first to go. Later the toys belonging to the office were hidden in a closet on the 20th floor. Soon we were all reduced to a bunch of people sitting at empty desks with our laptops.
In the good days, there was this fond term called the "beach" that is new economy's term for the "bench" as in not currently assigned to any projects. The beach used to be most sought after status for Sapient employees. Most employees worked 60-80 hour weeks during their project assignments. Therefore, several weeks spent on the beach were thought of as a rest time between projects.
As the company struggled, beach became the worst place any could be. No one wanted to be caught without a project assignment. Even those that were assigned to internal projects were at unease. All these people from other offices were calling our project managers almost begging for assignment to our project.
Being on a project felt like being in a lifeboat as Titanic sent. The sea was full of people struggling to keep afloat. If any of these people came close to our lifeboat they either tried to climb on or tried to turn it over so that they could get on it. It was THAT ugly at times.
The dress code changed also. Sapient employees were notorious for going to client meetings in raggy jeans and dirty t-shirts. Well, that was then and this was now --as our CEOs put it in a company wide e mail: the times and the economy was a lot more somber which meant that we were recommended/required to wear business casual now. This did not stand too well with the artistic branches of the company. But as we went from one layoff to the next, it became apparent, compliance with the dress code mattered.
Sapient had several core values. These core values were studied, elaborated on, and written about more than perhaps most of our client projects. Sapient was core value obsessed. One of our core values was "openness". This value meant that anyone at any level of the institution could speak freely about their observations on the company and would not be penalized for it.
Well, for one thing, this value is very hard to grasp for some; after all what is really the difference between "openness" and constant state of discontent and criticism of everything? Naturally, the distinction was easy to miss for many. Needless to say, these people were the first ones to go.
Sapient suffered from all the ailments and neuroses of any old corporation despite the fact that in its roots was the best of intentions: to become a non-traditional corporation, one that cared for its employees.
When I first started working, my coworkers took pride in the number of personal artifacts they had in their cubicles: toys, games, action figures, memorabilia, the list goes on. As the times changed from bad to worse, as our stock took a freefall dive down, and got kicked off the Fortune 500, the personal items started to decrease in number.
The personal toys were the first to go. Later the toys belonging to the office were hidden in a closet on the 20th floor. Soon we were all reduced to a bunch of people sitting at empty desks with our laptops.
In the good days, there was this fond term called the "beach" that is new economy's term for the "bench" as in not currently assigned to any projects. The beach used to be most sought after status for Sapient employees. Most employees worked 60-80 hour weeks during their project assignments. Therefore, several weeks spent on the beach were thought of as a rest time between projects.
As the company struggled, beach became the worst place any could be. No one wanted to be caught without a project assignment. Even those that were assigned to internal projects were at unease. All these people from other offices were calling our project managers almost begging for assignment to our project.
Being on a project felt like being in a lifeboat as Titanic sent. The sea was full of people struggling to keep afloat. If any of these people came close to our lifeboat they either tried to climb on or tried to turn it over so that they could get on it. It was THAT ugly at times.
The dress code changed also. Sapient employees were notorious for going to client meetings in raggy jeans and dirty t-shirts. Well, that was then and this was now --as our CEOs put it in a company wide e mail: the times and the economy was a lot more somber which meant that we were recommended/required to wear business casual now. This did not stand too well with the artistic branches of the company. But as we went from one layoff to the next, it became apparent, compliance with the dress code mattered.
Sapient had several core values. These core values were studied, elaborated on, and written about more than perhaps most of our client projects. Sapient was core value obsessed. One of our core values was "openness". This value meant that anyone at any level of the institution could speak freely about their observations on the company and would not be penalized for it.
Well, for one thing, this value is very hard to grasp for some; after all what is really the difference between "openness" and constant state of discontent and criticism of everything? Naturally, the distinction was easy to miss for many. Needless to say, these people were the first ones to go.
Sapient suffered from all the ailments and neuroses of any old corporation despite the fact that in its roots was the best of intentions: to become a non-traditional corporation, one that cared for its employees.
Category :
Unlike most Americans, my TV and I have never been that good friends. I hated broadcast TV and was even less fond of cable. I always ended up watching a DVD. Truthfully most nights I just did not have time to sit for hours in front of the TV.
After 9/11, I now watch TV. I, the guy who never watched news, now watch news every morning religiously. If I do not see dead people, a bombing in an embassy, a fire in a nightclub, a failed election in a third world country my whole day is thrown off kilter. News media has bred the need for disaster into our souls so in this sense our perpetual state of catastrophe is a self-fulfilling one. It is not because the world is coming to an end, it is not because anything getting worse than it was before, it is just that our definition of being alive includes a healthy appetite for mishaps, losses, missed chances, and even the demise of others.
To this day whenever there is a documentary on 9/11, I can’t watch anything else. I have to see those towers come down one by one, one more time, as if I was not there; right there twenty blocks away, smelling the fumes, feelings the rush of air as they came down. As I cried for no apparent reason that day all through the event and the rest of the day, I tear up still today when I see images of the event.
When one experiences something this traumatic, the logical course of action would be to get away from the event, and all references to it. This is done for one's own sanity's sake and not because of disrespect to people who died. I could not do this. I reveled in the pain; a pain that really was not mine to be had. I knew no one from the towers, no one I knew really was harmed by the event. So why was I grieving the loss of something that had nothing to do with my life?
For several months after that day, I watched the TV non-stop. I watched the coverage of the event consume all daytime, nighttime, prime time, downtime TV time. I watched on as other shows started to return slowly claiming to be less humorous than before. I watched as comedians could once again make wisecrack jokes on TV, I watched as humor struggled, I watched as I tried to laugh. Then slowly the images of the towers started to disappear. They first disappeared slowly from TV broadcast. Then the signs around town started changing. Subway adds and billboards were the first to defect. Then magazines stopped printing glorious pictures of them. TV shows that even gave a glimpse of the towers were edited to surgically remove any reference to them. New films being released were delayed so that the twins' absence would not be reminded to unsuspecting New Yorkers.
What were we trying to forget? The towers? How great our life was when they were around? How miserable we are now in the aftermath of it all? Or how badly we were hit after all these years, after all these years we thought we were invincible? All of the above perhaps, perhaps none at all.
Like many people, I did not care for these two extremely ugly buildings until they were gone. Until that day, any midtown building could be the joy of my day and perhaps the love of my life. Any building that had a fancy crown, a gilded lobby, any building with a 306 million price tag could be the smile on my face.
I did not realize I liked the World Trade Center until it was gone; erased permanently from the spot it scarred with its footprint. Now in its absence, I craved its ugly existence --much like a kid missing an emotionally abusive mother once she's gone.
To this day whenever there is a documentary on 9/11, I can’t watch anything else. I have to see those towers come down one by one, one more time, as if I was not there; right there twenty blocks away, smelling the fumes, feelings the rush of air as they came down. As I cried for no apparent reason that day all through the event and the rest of the day, I tear up still today when I see images of the event.
When one experiences something this traumatic, the logical course of action would be to get away from the event, and all references to it. This is done for one's own sanity's sake and not because of disrespect to people who died. I could not do this. I reveled in the pain; a pain that really was not mine to be had. I knew no one from the towers, no one I knew really was harmed by the event. So why was I grieving the loss of something that had nothing to do with my life?
For several months after that day, I watched the TV non-stop. I watched the coverage of the event consume all daytime, nighttime, prime time, downtime TV time. I watched on as other shows started to return slowly claiming to be less humorous than before. I watched as comedians could once again make wisecrack jokes on TV, I watched as humor struggled, I watched as I tried to laugh. Then slowly the images of the towers started to disappear. They first disappeared slowly from TV broadcast. Then the signs around town started changing. Subway adds and billboards were the first to defect. Then magazines stopped printing glorious pictures of them. TV shows that even gave a glimpse of the towers were edited to surgically remove any reference to them. New films being released were delayed so that the twins' absence would not be reminded to unsuspecting New Yorkers.
What were we trying to forget? The towers? How great our life was when they were around? How miserable we are now in the aftermath of it all? Or how badly we were hit after all these years, after all these years we thought we were invincible? All of the above perhaps, perhaps none at all.
I did not realize I liked the World Trade Center until it was gone; erased permanently from the spot it scarred with its footprint. Now in its absence, I craved its ugly existence --much like a kid missing an emotionally abusive mother once she's gone.
Category :
Deutsche Bank was the client of our current project at work. Within minutes all the critical systems of the bank went down and several systems remained down for several weeks. It turns out DB did not have any backup systems or they too were damaged during the attack. The scale of the event was apparent to all of us in New York City but looking at this incident from a German Bank's perspective, the lack of preparation could not be excused. Needless to say the big Bosses were quick to send a few of the administrators in NY to the firing squad pretty fast.
All of the bandwidth of DB NY was overnight redirected to bringing back the system. Of course no one cared about the training software Sapient was designing for them. Sapient team took three days off after 9/11 but then the next Monday we were back at work --with nothing to do. The client was scheduled to deliver us the content that would go into the training software and they were nowhere near ready. What was worse is they could not give us an ETA for the completion of the content. My team was sitting on their hands. At first it was a good thing after our hectic pace in the last few months. Then it got old and we started overanalyzing everything. I can not tell you how many redundant meetings I sat in during this time. We were all going through something and my cooperation was necessary so I played along.
During this three-week hiatus, I engaged in my own form of therapy. On one side I was building towers with the huge stash of LEGO blocks we had in the office, on the other I started writing some code to create automated templates for some of the presentations we were preparing. I was just coding away, I had no development plans and definitely no intentions to use this code in the client project.
I have a bad habit of showing my code to my producers often. This is a remnant of my childhood days; I have always been hungry for attention and approval. This little pet project was no different; I frequently showed it to my producer, Courtney. She was very impressed with it and encouraged me to keep working on it.
The more I worked on it, the more it seemed we could use this code to win some of the time lost once we receive the content. I do not blame any of us really but at some point we went insane and showed my work to the client. The client loved it, and said: "Yes, now you have delivered, this is the scalable solution we have been asking for since the beginning of this engagement."
While I thought to myself that this development was sure to bring me the kind of recognition I have been craving in this office, a storm was already brewing.
Once the client asked for this change, a quick meeting was held with them to renegotiate the price tag since we were now giving them more than we had originally promised. The client agreed to pay us $50k in addition to the original project bid for what we called the "Blackbox".
Blackbox, while sounding quite fancy, was actually a template implemented in Flash 4.0 that had within it a bunch of dynamic text fields and capability to load external graphics. It enabled relatively untrained users to create PowerPoint like presentations within the visual design Sapient had designed for Deutsche Bank's training presentations.
I went to work on the code, to make it more stable, and add the finishing touches to it. I thought I was pretty close to finishing it when without a warning a committee of directors from an unseen location within the company descended on our team and particularly on me. They called the whole process a "project review" and my bit of it a "code review". The idea sounded great except we were under extremely tight deadlines that had already been stretched to the limit.
The directors asked for all this documentation about the Blackbox, that as you guessed it, did not exist. I had to write the documentation in no time; luckily I got some serious help from a fellow coder.
Then I was asked to provide copies of my source code. The directors of technology looked at my code and made recommendations. As I said I am sure the intentions were well placed but these people had never programmed in Flash and did not know anything about it. During our review meetings, I had to answer a bunch of ridiculous questions.
When the dust settled, I finally understood what had just happened. Instead of being praised for spending my personal time in addition to office time to write a piece of code that literally saved a doomed project, I was blamed with a whole bunch of nonsense such as my code's inability to scale up and talk to databases in the future. The list of things I did wrong seemed to keep going and going. Perhaps some of this was my own fault, I was somewhat internalizing some of the angst that was around me. Maybe these people did not really blame me all that much, maybe they did. Sometimes one needs the equivalent of a Greek chorus to tell what the final verdict is because most of the time life never really does.
All I know is, I did not get a bonus that quarter and Sapient got its extra $50K from DB. The project was a success, and DB actually loved the Blackbox. This success story created a whole new set of demos and more work for us from DB.
Just when we thought we had a long trail of projects ahead of us, Sapient made a drastic move and laid off 40% of its New York Office. Times were sure changing, the invincible architects of the new economy were now out on the street, still tipsy from their large severances but when no one was looking fear laid in one corner of their eyes like a dusty old curtain.
I was laid off too, along with the other fifteen people Sapient moved from Austin to New York less than twelve months ago. The severance was nice but not nice enough considering I had eight months of unemployment to look forward to.
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