Big Apple vs. Nation's Capitol

Just a few hours after taking the GRE last saturday, I hopped on a bolt bus from Chinatown DC to Penn Station NYC. The trip there was short and comfortable-- everything you would not expect from a Chinatown bus experience. That evening Thearin treated me to a delicious Korean dinner and then we met up with Hamish for some Chinese food. While we spent the rest of the night bar hopping around midtown, I got to try a diversity of beers, including Brooklyn which Jamie suggested one of the last times we hung out. Apparently, I'm not a fan of Pilsners. I am, however, a huge proponent for $1 slices of pizza which we indulged in around 3 or 4am.

New York City truly is alive, unlike DC. After the bars close at 3am in Adams Morgan or Georgetown, the streets of the nation's capitol are usually completely deserted. The streets of NYC, on the otherhand, were still full of people strolling, dancing, and/or singing even as we headed home around 5am.

During this weekend in NYC, I got to indulge in some Vietnamese, Japanese, American, Chinese and as already mentioned, Korean cuisine. Thearin, Lynn, and I also went shopping on 5th, browsed Chinatown, city-gazed from the top of Rockefeller, and sat for hours on end while people watching.

On my trip home from this mini-vacation, the Bolt bus brokedown. I got to talking to the twenty or thirty-something year old guy sitting next to me and he commented on the book that I was reading, Reading Lolita in Tehran. He said, "you must be from DC because that doesn't look like a book that a New Yorker would read." I asked him to elaborate on what he meant and after giving it some thought he replied, "well, its just that New Yorkers are more heliocentric."

During this particular excursion to the Big Apple, I think I've noticed a few comparison points between NYC and DC-- none of which that fully complement this 20-30 year old's "heliocentric" comment, but interesting enough to me to write about. In all my trips back and forth between the two cities over these past few years, I've noticed that there are distinctive attitude differences between two cities. Let me begin by saying that people in both places hold pretty arrogant attitudes regarding their city. New Yorkers specifically, as Marshall likes to say, "know they live in the best city on planet earth... even though the majority of them have never set foot outside of the city." Washingtonians, on the other hand, pride themselves in their range of knowledge, for being able to hold conversations about hot topics like the Middle East to listing random facts about remote villages-- basically, for knowing all about the different cultural groups that you could find in NYC.

The difference between the two cities' attitudes is pretty well reflected in each city's occupations. In DC you obviously have all your politicians, tech groups, biotech companies, a myriad of academic institutions, etc. Technological, political, and academic lines of work require people to have a background in a diversity of fields in order to cater to their costumer's demands (various contracting groups, international partners, and a liberal arts education, respectively). NYC professions seem to be more specialized, arguably more "heliocentric": you've got your investment bankers, artists and their 239408234 galleries, fashion designers, and even people campaigning to support the homeless (I've yet to see billboards for sustainable support for the homeless in dc).

What led me to originally write this post were actually my initial observations on city demographics. The people of NYC seem to have more cultural depth while the residents of the DC area are characterized by a greater cultural breadth. NYC has significantly more noticeable cultural groups, ethnicities, races, lifestyles, etc. than DC. When you sit on the NY subway, you're surrounded by a melange of socioeconomic classes, you see people of all colors, and you hear languages from all around the world. It seems that people in NYC have a stronger cultural identity in that sense than those living in DC. Washingtonians, on the other hand, tend to know a fair amount about other cultures, countries, etc., but themselves do not really represent one of the above but a detached scholarly perspective of them all. This is why people watching on the DC metro is pretty boring; all you see on the exterior are a bunch of suits or fanny-pack adorned tourists-- nothing distinctive, unique, or really interesting in comparison to New Yorkers.

Feel free to agree/disagree as my experience in both cities is fairly limited by my opinion.

because analogies and antynoms exist.

I wonder if anyone's ever done a study of the vocab lists for entrance exams such as the SATs or GREs. I've noticed that of the 2,000+ (literally) words that I've memorized this summer, many of the definitions relate to matters of secrecy or corruption, the act of censure, to arrogant speech, or sycophant behavior. I guess I'll find out if this vocabulary is a reflection of what to expect in higher education.

(Why I'm not) Singing in the Rain

One Sunday sometime in my childhood, I stepped in to play the Doxology at church. Though having not practiced the song in quite some time, I got up on stage and started to play for the room of 100+ people. Perhaps out of nervousness, I did not notice the pace at which I was playing. If each line represents 10 second intervals, it went something like this:


Praise God From Who
All blessings flow
Praise him all
creatures here
below praise him


...and so on. The slow pace at which I was playing was brought to my attention when one of the college students ran up to the piano waving his arms, telling me to speed up. Once again out of nervousness, I was inattentive to the new pace I was playing. If a line represents a 10 second interval, it went something like this:


above ye heavenly hosts praise father son and holy ghost. Amen.


Needless to say, I don't really take to public, musical performances anymore.