Is that little dot on my sheets moving?

Due to a variety of rather pleasant circumstances, for the first time in several years, I read the Sunday’s Times while sipping (or trying to sip) coffee while lying in bed. To my horror, one of the front page stories, which then continued onto several other pages deeper into the A section, I read a story on bedbugs, which, apparently, are taking over New York. Now, we all know that the front page stories are fluff stories accompanied by a dramatic picture of a malnourished child or a dying “peace keeper” in the Middle East - sort of like fluff stories you get on the Fox 5 Channel. But the reason why I was so horrified is that I’ve always had a fear of bedbugs and they made it to the front page of the New York Times!

It all started when a few years back my friend announced that her roommate had bedbugs. After telling me about her roommate’s repeated attempts to get rid of them, I was traumatized (I am sure) for life. That evening I ran home, tore off my sheets and, while shaking in fear of what I may find, I inspected every crevice of my mattress. Fortunately, there weren’t any visible creepy crawlers. Nevertheless, that night was followed by my tossing and turning and scratching while imagining tiny little buggers crawling all around my bed. Later on, say a year or so, my roommate started to complain about bites on her arms and chest which, to my paranoid and untrained eye, looked pretty much like bedbug bites. Then again, it was the year when construction started in our backyard and there were puddles of rain everywhere which would have easily lead to an infestation of mosquitoes. Yes, swarms of mosquitoes in Brooklyn. Haven’t you heard of the West Nile virus on the Fox 5 Channel?

The other thing is that in my previous life, I traveled in the US and to several countries and I managed to stay in a variety of fancy and not-so-fancy hotels. According to the bedbug article, that’s where a lot of people have gotten their bedbugs. So, according to it, I’ve managed to place myself in several high-risk situations – my friend’s bedbug infested apartment and somewhat seedy hotels. Not that the hotel in Mongolia was seedy, but judging by the amount of black hair left by the previous occupant of my bed, I doubt the sheets were changed carefully or regularly (hmm, wait, should I have someone inspect my head for lice?).

Despite some comforting words and assurances that this is probably a ploy set up by some bedbug fumigation company which will soon reveal a brand new bedbug killing machine, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ll probably toss and turn all night tonight while scratching every part of my body. I should just stop reading the Times; really, it’s day old news anyways.

Loins on fire

I would imagine an average reading is thinking that I’ve been spending a lot of time writing about the New York City subway lines. The problem is that I take the subway almost every day of the week (that is if the L is working on the weekends, but that’s a whole new post) so I can’t help but spend a lot of time thinking about it. Plus, since I’ve fallen into this slump of not doing any school-related work any more, there is not much to do in the subway but stand/sit, listen to my iPod and ponder.

Anyways, the guest of honor for today’s post is an average man who takes the subway in New York City. It’s your typical, average, non-descript man who sits on a really crowded subway seat, smushed between other riders, perhaps wishing he was still in bed or somewhere completely different. So no big deal, right? Well, the thing is that about 90% of the time, this typical man would sit with his legs spread so far apart that he takes up about 2 seats therefore causing further smushing of seated passengers around him.

When I see such a man, the only thing that crosses my mind is that he must have enormously gigantic genitalia. I mean, if you can’t keep your legs closer together, there must something special going on in your pants. Alternatively, this man is on fire and the spreading of his thighs will cool his loins.

Otherwise, I just don’t have any other rational explanation for lack of any awareness of his inconsiderate actions that lead to discomfort (and, on my part, bewildered wonder) of anyone around him.

It was NYC marathon today. Guess who won the women's race? A Latvian, of course!!! Wooohooo! 

(Smelly) Ode to Greenpoint

I’ve been reading everywhere that sometime last week parts of New York, mainly Lower East Side and apparently some parts of Brooklyn such as Williamsburg and Greenpoint, smelled like maple leaf syrup. Um, wait, I think I mean to say maple syrup. It doesn’t matter; the point is that it smelled sweet and syrupy. Which is quite unusual for New York because usually it smells like garbage or bus exhaust. Sometimes you get a whiff of someone’s body odor but usually happens when you standing in a crowded subway car.

Well, whoever wrote that it smelled sweet and syrupy in Greenpoint which is where I live, must have gone bananas.

Greenpoint has its great spots, there are parts of the neighborhood that still have old brick mansions and some parts of the river have amazing old factories with spiraling stairs that lead right to the water so that a ship can unload. Major streets are named after families who were big in merchandise and trade. Also, some of the architecture in Greenpoint is really beautiful. My friend who is Irish told me that her aunt in her childhood days would go to Greenpoint to see the shops and go to the movies. Apparently, Manhattan Avenue used to be a bustling shopping district with movies theaters and there was a trolly that ran up and down the street. To this day, when you walk down Manhattan Avenue, you can still see intricate decorations carved into buildings and there are remnants of trolly tracks at the very end of the avenue.

There are also remnants of the McCarren pool which was built during the Depression and apparently had floodlights that illuminated the whole pool at night. Also, judging by the size of the ruins, it must have been one gigantic pool.

I don’t live in the historic part of Greenpoint. I live in the shabbily built buildings that barely comply with the NYC construction code. All the buildings are uniform and none are decorated in an interesting way. That is if you find an American flag a boring decoration. It did not smell like syrup where I live. In fact, there is a sewage processing plant near by which is located right next to a garbage processing plant. And when the wind blows in the right direction, my neighborhood smells like a combination of shit and garbage. There was definitely no syrupy smell.