Screwtape Chronicles

31 May 2008

My New Country, Part Two

Posted by Ryan

“Tempus fugit…”

A lot has happened since we last spoke. I have no excuse for my reticence except to say that it has been a busy few months. Ultimately, it is nice to have the problem that I currently have: I am too busy. But, oh, the lessons I have learned. Let’s talk about them. Today’s topics: time and moving.

As I look back at the time stamp of my last entry (March 9), I realize that almost three months has past since I have posted. And heyo, there is lesson number one: time flies in this city. Of course, time flies everywhere; an hour in New York is no different from an hour in Texas or Oklahoma or Japan or any other place in the world: the same sixty minutes go by. The difference between New York and every other place I have lived during my life is the pace. So much happens here. The same amount of events that would take place over three days in Texas seems to take place in one day here. This makes remembering events from two weeks ago feel like a month, and it makes February 2^nd, the day I arrived here, feel at least half a year ago.

And yes, I have been busy. I spend about fifty hours a week doing work related things (8 hours of work per day, 1 hour for lunch, and about 90 minutes commuting overall). The rest of the time is spent going out and writing. Of course, it’s not hard to be busy here. In fact, if you live in New York and you’re not busy, you’re doing something wrong. Now I don’t mean that I am necessarily doing more things than I used to when I lived elsewhere. In point of fact, I actually am doing more than I used to, but even if I wasn’t, I’d still be very busy because every single task of daily life takes longer to accomplish here than it does in other places. It takes at least a half hour to get anywhere. Going to the post office will take an hour (and also, screw the USPS, only use them for letters). Going to the store will take at least an hour. If you want to do anything remotely time consuming after work (which doesn’t end until six), chances are that will be the only thing you do that night.

I’m not complaining about any of that, I am merely observing. Time is at more of a premium here than it was when I lived in Houston, Austin, and Tulsa. So the lesson about time is that you really have to plan ahead if you want anything to happen, otherwise the requirements of daily life will suck away all your free time.

* * * * * *

I no longer live in Brooklyn. Since the end of March, I have lived in Astoria, which is a region of Queens. I made the choice to live here because it gives me relatively easy access to mid-town (where I work) and because the rent is cheaper in this neighborhood than it is in desirable parts of Brooklyn or Manhattan. Astoria is also nice because the buildings aren’t as tall and intimidating as they are in Manhattan. Manhattan is a metropolis, it is endless cement. Astoria is too, but at least the cement doesn’t rise so high into the sky.

I found a roommate via craigslist. My search for a roommate and place to live was done completely through craigslist, and it can be a useful resource if you’re willing to sift through some bullshit. For instance, I interviewed with a potential roommate who was offering a room half the size of the room I am currently occupying. He wanted me to pay a couple hundred dollars more than I am paying for my current room. He also openly admitted that we would be sharing the cost of the apartment in a 50/50 split, even though he got the bigger and better bedroom (he babbled on about “tenure” or something, and seemed to indicate that, if I were to sign on to the lease, I would be able to move into the bigger room once he vacated the apartment next year). He seemed like a nice guy; he was also full of shit. That is a bad deal.

I spent a solid week looking at places, traveling all over Astoria in my time after work. Perhaps that doesn’t sound like enough time to get a sense of things, but it was. A pattern began to quickly emerge: every place I saw was overpriced for the amount of space that was being offered. And every person was trying to sell me on how awesome the place really was, when clearly it was not awesome at all. Sifting through all this crap makes it easy to find a place that you will like, because it will easily stand out. I finally found the room that I am currently living in during one of my last interviews, and my roommate and I worked out the deal within a couple of days (things move incredibly fast in the rental market here). It was an exhausting process, which was still only half over because I hadn’t actually moved into the space yet. And if you think going to the store takes forever in the city, then moving is a nightmare that you don’t want to experience.

Well, okay, nightmare is too strong of a word. It’s just a big damn hassle, much more of a hassle than other cities. Between buying a bed and furniture, it took many weeks before I had my room set up in a fashion that felt like a “lived-in” room, and this is just a bedroom. The first two weeks there was nothing but a bed; the place was actually depressing. My trip to Ikea, which is in New Jersey, took half of a Saturday (otherwise known as valuable free time). Patience is the name of the moving game, patience and praying that all the stuff you’ve bought isn’t damaged during delivery, thus further adding complication to a complicated and expensive process, which of course happened to me. But that’s okay. Everything is fixed and in good working order now, and all that frustration is a thing of the past. Or at least it will be until I decide to move again.