07 Jan 2010

R: In New York you spend a lot of time just waiting around. You wait for the train, you wait for a cab, you wait for the light to change, you wait to pay for your groceries, you wait at 2 a.m. for the best chicken and rice in the city. I wonder how much of my life has been spent in line just waiting. I try not to think about it a lot because then I would have to think about all the things I'm not doing in that line, namely living.

Those endless queues can do real damage to a person's psyche. Take any normal, happy person and stick him in a line with dozens of other seemingly sane people and see what happens. That person becomes irritated, impatient. Then the foot tapping followed by the sighs and throaty sounds of protest. He yells at no one in particular and kicks the ground. Before you know it irritation has turned into anger, anger into rage, and that otherwise normal happy person has stabbed the guy in front of him while screaming "Viva la Revolucion" and inciting mob violence all around. This is why New Yorkers are so angry and hostile. Everywhere you go you're confronted with hundreds of people and forced to just get in line.

However, on very rare occasions you might just walk into a public space and find it devoid of that dreaded line; you might, in fact find it completely deserted.

C: While living in Brookline has its perks, grocery stores are not one of them. Two days ago I went to Stop&Shop by my office because I knew that large bags of Jasmine Rice do not exist within a reasonable proximity to the apartment (after all, I wasn't about to carry 25- or even 10-lbs of rice all the way from Allston). We went to Trader Joe's first, and what you see here was basically all that could be found. Okay, so I kind of exaggerate because we did pick up a couple of vegetables, too, BUT for the most part, it certainly did not cover the whole grocery list. Next stop was Star Market which is literally a block away, and I still went home missing something. Probably a couple more grocery store trips to fill my fridge and pantry. I guess it's just the price you pay for living in such a "beautiful" part of the Greater Boston Area. Or maybe it's just what happens when you're consistently part of the smallest minority in town.