Sunday, Sept 20, 2009

The last time I felt the same loneliness was in one of the late nights in the fall semester of 1998 when I was attending Columbia University. I believe it was the 4th month after I arrived in New York. I decided to work from home instead of staying up in the studio. My feeling of loneliness started developing a vortex in my apartment at the very spot where I filled it with a TV first thing the next morning after a trip to J&R.
The same loneliness is surrounding me this very moment. I think it is not only caused by being away from home, Jim and my many dear friends who are now my family. It is also caused by finishing the Frank Bruni's new book - Born Round. I was anticipating the book to come out since I read the excerpt from NYTimes a couple of months ago. His childhood obsession with food and being chubby was the exact parallel to mine. I completely understand the sentiment he described in the book about, lack of a better word, stuffing his face with food. As some of you know, I can devour anything in front of me in alarming speed. I ordered the book online. It arrived the very day it came out. I saved the book knowing that I need some reading materials for this long trip to Tianjin. I started the book earlier this week, and finished in bed this morning. The usual sadness from finishing a good book has turned up a notch this time by discovering that Frank Bruni lives on my street! Imagining his trip to the Levine bakery for the baguette with butter and jam, his date at Kevi the Greek Restaurant on the UWS and the bodega at the corner of 74th and Amsterdam he frequents for his late night ice cream treats (or breakdown)...
Meanwhile, this new environment and the pressure from the work became the perfect excuses to indulge in food. Since both breakfast and lunches were served at the hotel and the job site, we only have dinner to worry about. Being the first week, and Marlon having no idea where to go, I took complete control of the dinner venue selections. Not only we have already been to 2 of the famous local attractions -- Go-believe steam buns and Little Fat Lambs steam pot, we have also sampled several local restaurants and tried different combination of dishes. Of course I over ordered every time. I just can't order only 2 dishes in a Chinese restaurant! I can't choose between the hundreds of things on the menus. And there are so many of my old favorites here. I have said this before, but I am taking this opportunity to declare again that Chinese food in New York is far from meeting the standard. In case you haven't notice, I have posted more pictures of food on the blog than I have about the city and the sights. Here is the reason. This week, our only main activities are work and eat dinner. Nothing else worth documenting.c
So, back to my loneliness...
Yet, even though there are such abundance of Chinese food, I still want my salad, a good chicken milanese, and cold chilled vodka martini. And speaking of which, I had the WORST martini ever at a bar last night. And it is not promising in finding a good "western" restaurant and a good cocktail. How am I going to last the coming weeks? I can do beer. But I NEED a stiff drinks after a long week of working. Did I mention we put in a good 10 hours on Saturday? Not only it was 10 hours, we have made several very important suggestions to the client, resolved several issues and walked the site twice.
We have decided that, in order to avoid ballooning up to beyond recognition, we will start to prepare our own dinner. I just spent almost 300 RMB (which equals to about US$40) of groceries. Still, they are just fruits, some condiments, frozen buns, pre-made and vacuum sealed small chicken, a small ball of roasted ham, a bag of oatmeal, milk,half of a lettuce, 4 tomatoes and 2 small green peppers. I am determined these will be my dinner for the next 5 nights until Friday comes. It is not only trying to curb my food in take. I just don't have the energy to go out every night after a long day of working in the filthy construction site office (and you have no idea about filthy until you have worked in a Chinese construction site. And seriously I bet this one is not as bad as most others). It is also tough playing architect and translator at the same time. And again, I am translating between TWO 2nd languages.
I am hopeful, though, this coming week will paint a better picture of the project and we can get into a groove of working out the problems. I think we are getting there. I hope we don't jinx ourselves, but Marlon and I both think that the client is liking us and trusting us on our opinions and ideas. Now we just have to be able to keep up with her. She is, by the way, absolutely fabulous as a client. So far, we see how she keeps with the energy and enthusiasm working 7 long days a week, leading the mostly men environment where these men are also unfocused, generally lacking enthusiasm and just wanting to dodge the bullets. She also has the manner to sweet talk anyone into doing things for her... and speaking of which, I had better finish this and get on with the sketch I promised her.
I sincerely miss all of you. I can't wait to be back in New York and have a good cocktail, my Pinkberry, and to work out with my trainer, Damon, to work off these Chinese food on me.