singing in the dead of night

this is the green wall i painted in my room. i had always left it empty because it was so beautiful and textured just with the paint. but lo and behold this beautifully delicate gold bird found it's way to my little room and landed there... i think it looks absolutely wonderful, yes? [the perfect amount of negative space :)]

the bird was actually a thank you gift from a dear friend - i semi-forced her to move away from a horribly abusive man-friend in queens last friday and crash at my place while she got her life back in order. as many people close to me know, this proved incredibly stressful in the first days. abusive and manipulative relationships are not to be trifled with, and it is scary how much damage they can inflict on usually sane women. but the grand news of it all is that my friend has absolutely triumphed in the last days - despite a few setbacks.... - and i am so so SO proud of her for the changes she's made. she's becoming a different person - independent and self-motivated and a bit wiser. the future is so bright! and now i have this lovely bird here to remind me of such grand life lessons :)

and of course! yes, unicef is proving to be wonderful. i admit i have guilt complexes about the whole notion of the UN and IGOs and real poverty in the grand scheme of the world and all that, but i think working inside unicef for awhile will be the absolute best learning tool i could have. i'm enormously grateful for it.

so i do hope all is well with everyone tonight - best wishes from our little isle manhattan!

i can have my cake and eat it too

two weeks ago i had an interview at unicef for a really wonderful dreamy consultancy position. however, i told them that my summer plans meant i would be away from new york for a good 8 weeks, and i just wouldn't give up my time with the fam or in berlin.

so.... after much back and forth, this morning i got an email from them informing me that they restructured the position so they could hire me even with all that time away from new york!!!!

and so not only am i unicef's newest full-time-benefited-paid-with-my-own-UN-desk-and-everything employee, but i can also snuggle with sadie and eat as many german pretzels as i want this summer :) the fact that they worked around my schedule is pretty incredible, and i am honestly more excited than i could ever say. it has all come together, and not only can i stop selling off my wardrobe on ebay to pay for groceries (yes, i did resort to this), but i am actually working for something i believe in, and not sacrificing my private life and personal priorities for the sake of a job.

how lucky is that?! how many people can say that? ah! i'm so thrilled and relieved... forgive all the gushing, but really. i just had to announce it to the world :) after nearly a year of job searching, i am finally settled into something that actually works on all levels (i.e. it's a stimulating job in my own field, full-time, and actually pays me). and in this economy no less. truly it is a glorious day :)

nostalgia creeps up again

in soho last night i watched dozens of impeccably stylish women careening down prince street on their shiny bicycles. and i suddenly missed oxford with a deep pain: i missed living only by walking and cycling everywhere. i missed that feeling of your skirt flowing in the wind as you cycle past the ancient stones of oxford... pretty dresses look best on a bicycle i do believe :)

but by no means did this at all make me consider getting a bike in manhattan. o.m.g. i would be flattened in seconds - i'm not that stellar of a cyclist, haha!

but maybe if i lived in brooklyn.

or i could just move back to oxford :)

yumminess

for dinner tonight i made some fresh guacamole from a perfectly amazing avocado i picked up yesterday on a street produce cart in williamsburg [brooklyn, not colonial] - why do i not do this more often?! oh my goodness i had forgotten how yummy avocados are - c'mon i'm from california you think they'd be more of a staple in my cuisine.

so. these culinary thoughts reminded me that i am cooking dinner for a friend this week who just had ACL-surgery. but she's allergic to garlic and onions. i'm at a complete loss! everything i cook has either one of these essentially yummy ingredients in it [including my guacamole, mmm....] so all of you much more experienced cooks... any thoughts or suggestions on delectable onion/garlic-free dinner entrees? :)




or maybe i should just bring her a few of these:


new york's very own levain cookies. yes they are a.ma.zing!!! mom and dad can attest. i think that's all i'd like to be eating after surgery :)

narcissistic singledom

ok ok i realized this morning that my blog is really getting overly self-indulgent. i hate the fact that when you are "single" you have no one else to blog about but yourself really. of course i could tell interesting stories about my friends or family, but they all do a better job of it on their own blogs :)

but still. sorry for all the self-aggrandizement. so instead of more me, here's one of my favorite photos of two of my favorite people :)

you've all seen it before, but who can complain about seeing it again? haha - oh miles' outfit and stance as he's walking is seriously classic. i love love love it :)

happy weekend ya'all!!!

i'm going to talk about work for a bit.

i don't feel like i talk in too many specifics about my various jobs very much on this blog. even though they do actually occupy nearly all my time :) so indulge the long post........

so i have been working for african refuge in staten island the last 4 months. my boss had asked me [among other things] to plan two large educational forums/events to highlight african issues in new york city when he took me on in february.

i don't know why i always seem to get stuck with event planning. i honestly hate doing it, but seem to have been assigned events to execute ever since i was 12 :) but this request was something new as it was on a much larger scale. i must admit that it brought me some serious stress. finding venues on a $0 budget, plus coordinating speakers, publicity, and all that [basically on my own] was overwheeeeeeelming.....

but i wouldn't have believed it: it all absolutely paid off. tonight was our second event: african liberation day! (i designed the flyer, shown here - my first foray into illustrator - SO FUN OMG) the night was actually incredible. we booked a room at columbia university which had a huge conference table in the middle - instead of pushing it aside and putting chairs in rows, we decided to just keep the format. around 35 people were there.... but despite the smallish numbers, every person was extraordinarily passionate, articulate, and voiced in the real complexities of african issues. we had all ages in attendance - a mix of african refugees, academics, professionals, students, preachers, football players, lawyers... africans easily outnumbered anyone else, and everyone had a heartfelt opinion to share with amazing life experience to back them up. so in the end the discussion was actually meaningful. we shared real debate and collected everyone's email addresses so we could meet again, perhaps annually, and flesh out more issues, find more practical solutions... the conversation went much longer than 9pm, all of us around the table, disagreeing in many cases, but actually exchanging something real.

when i set out to plan this event i knew what i did not want: an empty and meaningless panel discussion, one where the same academic arguments are rehatched and everyone is bored and leaves with nothing. i had sincere doubts about tonight, but can honestly say that i am so happy to have this done, to have put work into something that did yield something with purpose. this was my farewell to african refuge - it's a good group and i believe in it, but the disorganized and scattered state of affairs was driving me slowly mad :) so i'm happy to have done what i did, and now say adieu.

sigh... one job down, two more to go! :) :) in june i start my summer life, filled entirely with time spent with loved ones. my flights are all booked and i am so thrilled :) see you all soon!!!

mom and dad are here!!!

so after church...

we visit the cloisters :)

[they're just up the hill from my church building. absolutely gorgeous!!! truly one of my favorite places in new york.]






don't you think dad and i look so much alike in this picture? or maybe it's just our mutually round faces? :)













and thank you leslie! she's advertising my sublet request on her fabulous blog! huzzah!

2am photo shoot.

last night around 2am there was an absolute torrential thunderstorm over new york. the rain created this massive waterfall plunging down from the rooftop of my building.

my window looks out into the well in the middle of the apartment building, and the mini-iguazu-falls was right outside my room.

so i took these semi-abstracted photos [pink sky and soft blur of the water due to super-long exposure time].






and i realize the pictures kinda make it look like i live in chechnya. but don't make fun of me if i think they are super beautiful.

and i love her

last night i heard salman rushdie read a yet-to-be-published short story he had just written.

a few days before i attended a discussion between jonathan safran foer and zadie smith.

tonight i went to a book launch/reading/discussion of "gods and soldiers: an anthology of contemporary african writing", with authors binyavanga wainaina and patrice nganang. last tuesday it was a reading by antije krog and adrienne rich.

ok i say none of this to brag, and i hope this post doesn't come off in that way: i simply had to share because i feel that since moving to new york over 3 months ago i have been in a literal intellectual explosion. i have had years worth of cultural experiences crammed into a few months time. this last week is not even that unusual - if i actually documented on this blog every fascinating artistic and intellectual event i attended and my copious notes and thoughts and insights learned, i would have crammed up blogspot and bored everyone to tears - i would suddenly find myself with a blog with no audience. haha - truly i feel my blogging of my new york experience is horribly lacking, but its paucity is only due to my constant feeling of sheer incapacity to process the absolute brimming richness of day-to-day life and experience. toni recently asked me if it's actually possible to attend a movie screening in new york where the director isn't present for a post-film q&a, and i laughingly admitted that you have to seek out a discussion-less screening of anything :) new york is like a continuous film festival, literary seminar, museum exhibition, and contemporary art festival happening all at once - there's never an excuse to be un-inspired or un-challenged or bored, and you're bound to miss four events while sitting at the reading or exhibition or screening you chose among the endless crop of possibilities.

i cannot express enough how deeply and terribly lucky i feel to actually be here. my life is so near perfect... except for the huge gaping hole that is left by the fact that all my dearest loved ones are at least 5 hours away by plane. so speaking of, stella is now cast-less!!! and i can't help but say that as inspiring as salman rushdie is in person, i'd rather squeeze stella for an hour :) congrats steph on making it through such an ordeal. you are my hero.

and a brief fyi and p.s... post-title from the beatles of course. ah! how good is this scene?! i can (and am) watching it over and over...again, mom - i will always have the deepest gratitude to you for raising us on the beatles :)