Travelin Monkey

Never in my life has it been so hard to get home! I had a flight that was leaving at 5:45 pm from philly, we had tickets to get back, and it was going to take about 2 hours. The bus, we thought, left every hour, so we planned on heading out at 1 pm.

Well, it turns out that the bus left every 2 hours, once at 12:30, then again at 2:30. I couldn’t wait for the 2:30 because that would be cutting it WAY too close for comfort. So, we decided to inquire about the chinatown bus that leaves every 30 minutes, no go.

Then Roy suggested the amtrak, PERFECT idea. Wrong. The quick ticket counters were all shut down and the line was long as all hell to purchase tickets. So, we tried to find internet service to print tickets and check myself in .. everyone kept on telling us to go to STAWbucks, but all we found was Starbucks.

At around 2 pm, the terminals went back up and we ended up purchasing tickets ($68) to ride the 161 to philly. Just my luck, the train was 20 minutes delayed. THEN, when it finally showed up, we got delayed another 45 minutes because some genius parent decided not to listen to the guy that said “watch your step, there is a big gap between the train and the platform” and had the kid fall through to the tracks. Mother fucker. Roy just looked at me and laughed! Everything was conspiring for me not the make it. The worst part was that if I missed the flight, I was going to have to pay $400 to change the ticket and catch a 5:30 am flight to get to Vegas by 11 am!

So, we landed in Philly at 4:45 pm. I have exactly one hour to get to the airport, check in, go through security, and make the plane. I ran out of the station, hopped in a cab and told him “buddy, we have 45 minutes before my plane leaves, get me to the airport as fast as humanly possible”

Of course, on the way there there were not one, but TWO fucking accidents on the highway to the airport! GREAT! Somehow this guy ended getting me to the airport at 5:05 pm. I checked in and RAN to security. This was the moment of truth, how long could the line possibly be for me to miss the plane?!

Well, the line went all the way from the security check point to the END of the moving walkway. I HAVE NEVER SEEN A LONGER FUCKING LINE IN MY LIFE! HOLY SHIT! I started to panic. I ran to the VIP line and told them “my plane leaves in 45 minutes, can you let me pass?” Bitch said no. I contemplated paying someone to let me cut in front of them, when an angel saved my life. I went up to her and said “my plane is leaving, will you let me pass?” She smiled, signed my paper, and off I was, saved by the goodness of a wonderful woman!

I ran past security and barely made it on the plane. 6 hours later, here I am.

Total cost for Sat: $500
Total cost for Sun: $160

What a great fucking weekend, I LOVE NEW YORK! But holy shit, you spend more money in NY than LV!

Not the lesser east side

We ditched that piece of shit waste of time and headed to meet up with Roy’s friends at this bar. Edward & Baha were going to join me there and head out to party NYC style. We get to the bar and there was this short girl with a clipboard surrounded by 4 bouncers. She looks at us and says:
“What’s your name? Are you on the list?”
“Nope, not on the list”
“Well, who do you know?”
“Umm… we know each other.”
“Why the hell are you here?”
“We are drinkers”
And you know what! It worked! She looked at us like “with what nerve did you just do this” and let us in, no cover! WOW! We met up with these people, and almost immediately Ed & Baha showed up. They asked me how the place was and I said it sucked major cock. These girls overheard me and asked me why.

“If this were your last night in NY, this would be the last place to go to”
“Why, are you a tourist? Who said anything about our last night”
“Fuck no, I live here. I just assume everyone is a fucking tourist, just get the fuck out of here.”

Ha! Baha was laughing his ass off. Something about that 80’s thing had me doing different ‘characters’. We ended up at Bulgaria Bar, finally, and had a delicious shot called the Bulgaria Shot, highly highly recommended! We started drinking and fucking around with the bartenders. We even got a hooka and I kept blowing the smoke in the bartender’s face. This place, imagine being transported to Bulgaria. That is what it is like. Roy said it best, ‘i was expecting some bulgarian decore, but it turned out to be bulgaria itself’

I went outside and for some reason pretended to be an immigrant that couldn’t speak english too well. I was talking to some guy about stuff and he ended up giving me his card. I am going to email him and figure out what the hell we were talking about! haha! We drank some more, and circa 3 am everyone bounced. Ed & I kept bar hopping around places and met with some of his med school friends. This is where the night gets blurry. I remember being extremely belligerent and just holaring to everyone and everything. I was in FULL FORM BABY!

We went to KATZ, where they filmed when harry met sally, and has the MOST DELICIOUS roast beef sandwhich and kept on bar hopping. At some point we ended up at his place on 86th and lexington. i don’t really remember much, but around 4:30 I decide to go back to the hotel room.

HA! to my delight there were champagne glasses outside in the hallway. GOLLLLLLLL I shattered them by playing futbol Perfect end to a perfect night….

Noon stopped by and woke us up. The rest of the group was already up, had eaten breakfast, and in Union Square shopping. How did these people manage to do this? I was feeling like shit! Damn Indian food!

We basically wasted the entire day aimlessly walking around Union Square & Washington Park. Why? For some reason Roy & I let them guide us. We grabbed some dinner at a Korean BBQ place that was half decent near Makers Mark, then booked it to the hotel. We were going to catch an off broadway show called “My 80’s Prom” .. i already wasn’t liking this idea!

Well, it turns out I was right! The ’show’ was a real fucking prom. They had everyone in character, and they NEVER EVER broke character once. Even if you went up to them to talk to them. It was strange. The place was a dance hall, all decked out in 80’s stuff. By the way, Roy & I were the only ones not dressed in 80’s gear. The night was strange because there were a total of 5 guys there, the rest were cougars & chicks. We concluded, when the host called for all the bachelorettes, that this is where they go to have their parties.

Well, we saw a group of cuter girls and decided to spark a conversation with them. That opened a can of worms baby! One girl stole a bottle of water and while talking to us, ended up throwing the water over her shoulder at a group of older, fatter bachelorettes. The first time was funny, the second time even better… but then, I don’t know, she lost it, and kept on doing it. Obviously the fat old people got mad and came to ask us if we saw anything.

Nope, sorry, I don’t know what you are talking about! Whoops, ROY! Why did you say anything?!?! Well, they ended up blaming Roy, and after more bickering and an almost cat fight, one lady bought a beer and spilled it all over Roy. I was amazed, never had I ever seen that before. The room full of women was making a turn for the worst.. and we were done with it.

Highlights of My 80’s Prom:
- The fat guy with BEEF 89 written on his back, and me chanting “BEEF BEEF BEEF BEEF” every time he walked by
- Going to the bathroom with Roy to clean the shirt and passing by the changing room for the girls of the show and catching 2 of them topless
- One drunk cougar with cups in her dress to make fake tits.. but she wasn’t wearing a bra?! Strange.
- Ditching everyone to go have a good time

I took a Red-Eye on Continental Airlines to Philly, landed at 10 am, and headed to the School Of Dentistry to visit a friend. We hung out and took a $12.50 bus ride (P2P Bus) to NYC. It took about 4 hours because we were smart enough to leave at 3:30 pm on a Friday!

We got to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the group and got rushed for some restauraunt for reservations. We were staying at the Doubletree on 51st & Lexington, which was NOT worth the $320 a night. Sigh, this is what happens when you let others make decisions!

We got to the restaurant, Leelah’s Lounge, which served the shittiest indian food I have ever eaten… ever. Then I started to complain about why the hell we were eating indian food before going out drinking and dancing! I already felt the runs brewing in my belly!

A group of 13 people headed out to go bar hopping around that area, which quickly grew old. That is when the magic started happening. The people finally decided to go to the Lower East Side and bar hop around there! I wanted to start at Piano’s, but they decided to start and FINISH there too! BOO! BOOOO!

Piano’s was a decent place, upstairs had a dance floor with hip hop for $5 cover. The bartenders where fucking morons though. Apparently, they were doing it for 15 years and had never heard of the shots I was requesting. We were there until 4 am, when we decided to have some khap kalash and crab juice kebabs and cokes in front of the place. For some reason being in NY made me feel like I owned the planet. When this black guy came up to order kebab, I told him:

“Sorry buddy, you have to go through me first if you want to order kebab”
“What are you, the guy who heads the kebab industry around here?”
“Actually, I am. And since you are standing there in front of the BBQ, enjoy Eau Du Kebab, on the house”

The moron actually was buying it.. None of us were drunk either because, well, we had indian stew in our bellies.

Total Cost: $400 (why didn’t the rest of the group buy shots too?!)

I know who you are

The photo albums are down because all the pictures got corrupted. I won’t be putting them back up until my entire site goes through a re-design.

Also, some of the links to my stories don’t work. Look at the right hand side under CATEGORIES. Rants & Raves has a bunch of my random writings.

In order to properly understand why we seek acceptance, we must first think  of acceptance as something tangible, allocating the properties of quantity and quality. When one thinks of these properties, one can imagine that there exists a hierarchy in both quantity and quality; you can have a lot of people accept you, but it could be a superficial acceptance. This is known in high school as the “most popular” person around. You can also have zero acceptance by all, also known as a recluse. These two situations represent the tail ends, the eccentricities of the acceptance spectrum. Hence, one can see that acceptance is proportional to shallowness. The more one seeks to be accepted, the more shallow that person is. Why?

Insecurities force us to not want to be rejected and when one seeks many for acceptance, it draws on the fact that those who will ‘accept’ do so on a superficial, what you see is what you get, level.  You can then conclude that this person seeks this level of acceptance because that is the depth in which they understand themselves, to the extent where they are comfortable and secure with themselves. The deeper one dives into the self, the less acceptance they seek, the more narrow the pool of people from whom they seek acceptance becomes.

There are four groups of people you would want to accept you; strangers, family, friends, and lovers. Those on the most shallow end seek acceptance not only from friends, but also mostly from strangers. They care what people they don’t know say about them. I feel that when you seek acceptance from family, you do so with a knife at hand, ready to cut the umbilical cord and become an adult, break free and become an individual to suffer in the adult world.

You seek acceptance from lovers because you share something sacred, something intimate, something that makes you feel special and yet very vulnerable, from your body to your heart, you let them in hoping they take better care of what they find than the owner. Acceptance from a lover is hard to attain, easy to lose, and more valuable and meaningful to the self than anything else in the world.

And finally, we reach what we deal with in a day to day basis, what we question day in and day out. Why do I care if my friends accept me? The answer is a very interesting one and ties in all the other ‘acceptances’ together. Although there are many ‘types’ of friends, the essence is still the same. When you attain a friend, you “let them in” less than a lover and not quite like family. They are visitors whom you tread your path of life with, they are your allies against hardships we all face.

Do you know what happens when you let them in? They walk with you, sometimes they push you forward, sometimes they carry you forward, but no matter what they do, the leave their imprint on your path of life, an imprint sometimes so deep that you can never forget or erase it. An instantaneous view of that short path with a friend can be said to add meaning to that part of your life. You tell the friend “You have augmented tremendous meaning to my life and it is something that will stay with me until my last breath. And in this instant, you have helped give this section of my life a more defined meaning with your imprint”

When one sums up the ‘instances’ of their life with the friends that left these never-ending marks, that is when they attain meaning to their existence. And thus, this is why we seek acceptance from friends, to help give the time we have a touch of spice by accepting their imprints as they accept ours. Mine, yours, your neighbor, it doesn’t matter who passed by. In the very end, at our funerals, if you could sum up the memories all these imprints that are being relived in mourning, you would end up with a movie of what that person meant to the world, to those people, no matter how deep nor shallow.

This is why we endlessly seek acceptance, to exponentially increase the value of our life, maybe selfishly for ourselves, maybe selflessly for the family itself, or maybe altruistically for someone we don’t even know, as a beacon of inspiration. In the end, Memento Mori, remember death, for that is when the movie of your life and your imprints will be relived. Make sure they play the movie you seek to be re-lived by living as if you are recording.