adventures in astoria

ekay & ambi moving in from jersey

did my volunteering saturday morning at the art director's club. swam a few laps after in the nyu pool. and next thing i knew i was on the subway on my way to the last stop in astoria, queens. set to help ambi and erika who were moving in from jersey. i came right in time, they just got done with unloading all the first trip stuff from the truck.

not willing to make the trek worthless, i volunteered to help them with their next haul. only problem was that there wasnt any space infront of the truck so i had to sit with ambi at the back. think container van, almmost total darkness, no air circulation. big mistake. after the longest hour and a half bumpy ride (although nothing still beats that plane ride from chicago with a hangover and no sleep), i was this close to puking. good thing though was that ambi and i were laughing our brains out talking about elementary during the ride so that created enough of a diversion. the van was finally parked and i almost thought we had crossed the border and i was finally in mexico. but i was wrong we were in jersey city.

we loaded the truck. and on the way home, there was space enough for all of us to sit infront. whew. we had to contend with the traffic though but there was no big an adventure as being on the queensborough bridge realizing that we were on the no trucks allowed lane. that was totally messed up. i tried to make light of the situation by telling erika that if she was ever going to tip over the very narrow road that she should do it to the left coz to our right was the hudson. a few thousand meters down. didnt get any laughs from that joke coz i guess they really were dead nervous of the seemingly narrower and narrower bridge. well, i was bit nervous too. but i guess the thought of that tram ride of the bridge in universal studios eased some of the nerves away. or i guess it could be the yoga too but that's too much of a stretch.

seng celebrating her 25th

anyway, we got over the bridge safely and we got to the apartment just as safe. i helped til all the stuff were unloaded and brought up to their floor. none like good manual labor. and they were very gracious as to promise me a dinner one of these days. that would be nice. once the moving was done, freshened up a bit and headed 2 subway stops and couple blocks away for seng's birthday party. lots of food, thankfully coz between the swimming and the moving, i could eat like a horse by that time. there was a fair amount of booze too coz the swimming like a goldfish made me want to drink like one. nice. interesting collection of people, especially that there were some from DC to break the newyaker tude a bit. and some from other cultures as well to break the filipino clickishness.

was supposed to head to another party in manhattan after but since it was 1 in the morning already, i figured it was time to start heading back to billburgh coz this grandpa was already getting too old for all this partyheartying. nevertheless, it was a much appreciated trip to the predominantly greek and polish astoria neighborhoods with a bonus sidetrip to suburban jersey.

---

very nearby mccarren park

sunday was mostly spent spring cleaning up the apartment and realizing how therapeutic cleaning glass and windows are but how extremely tedious getting the dust out of window blinds are. aside from the tidying up, i did however get a good amount of neighborhood discovery on my bike. after an authentic polish brunch up in greenpoint, i discovered mccarren park which is right on the border of g-point and billyburgh. absolutely great park. even had a footie league match going between a japanese and polish team. and a bunch of drunken loud brits watching hilariously. the ref with a brit accent almost kicked them out of the sides as he got taunted for an obviously terrible call favoring the japs. fun stuff. even got to go for an early morning bike ride and run around the tracks yesterday morning. now that spring's slowly but surely creeping in, great to discover a very nearby park perfect for runs to wake me up in the morning. and maybe watch some exciting soccer matches drunken brit-style on weekends.