Girl and City

I missed Valentine’s Day this year.
It wasn’t until I read the blogs of my Internet friends that I was reminded of the fact. By then, Valentine’s Day had already passed.

I don’t make it a point to “celebrate” Valentine’s Day. However, in the past, it was the anniversary of MFL and I, so it was always announced with suitable fanfare. Even after I broke up with MFL, Valentine’s Day has never gone unnoticed (despite my feeble protests). I have always received attention from a gentleman on Valentine’s Day, short-lived as some of those attentions were.

This year was the first Valentine’s Day where I received nothing. No phone calls, no roses, no chocolates – not even a heart-shaped card.

You’d think I’d be disappointed, since one of my New Year resolutions was to spend this Valentine’s Day with someone I was actually interested in. And I am – a little disappointed – now that I think about it.

But I didn’t even notice.

This year’s Valentine’s Day coincided with Chinese New Year, which is a much more important event to me than Valentine’s Day. I was so concentrated on Chinese New Year festivities that I completely forgot about Valentine’s Day. All the better, it seems, considering the circumstances.

Instead, I celebrated Chinese New Year with an abundance of good food and good cheer.

I may have missed Valentine’s Day, but I don’t miss it.

“You should see the way the girls in New York swarm around the geezers once they find out they’re bankers,” I said in between mouthfuls of fried rice. “It’s disgusting. They’re old!”
My lunch companion laughed. “But from the bankers’ perspective, it’s their only hope. I mean when else are they going to get any action?” GSB said. “Their hours are too long for them to have any kind of real relationship.”
“Why even bother having a relationship? Did you read that quote on Overheard at The Business School? ‘I don’t understand why people have relationships in The Business School. It’s like an extra-curricular you can’t put on your resume.’ It’s exactly like that.”
“So they don’t have relationships. They just have a few girls on their speed-dial that they can call. Call-girls,” he said earnestly.
“Are you being serious?” I could never be sure when discussing the banker lifestyle with a banker, since he would be joining their ranks in a few short months.
“Yeah. Well a lot of times when they have an event or when they go out, they don’t want to be embarrassed by not having a girlfriend. So they have a few regular girls that they call upon.”
I made a face of disgust. “Too bad it doesn’t work the other way around.”
“Why not? You could have call-boys. Just tell them how much you make,” he said, this time I was sure he was joking.
“And what, offer to pay them to be my boyfriend for the night, weekend, whatever?”
He laughed, “Yeah I guess it doesn’t work as well for girls.”
“The attraction of money and success doesn’t work in the other direction. Girls will be all over a successful, wealthy man, but guys aren’t the same,” I said, with a hint of bitterness. “Plus, it’s even harder for consultants than bankers, we’re on the move all the time.”
“That’s true. So you could have a call-boy in every city, however long you’re there.”
“I’ve already started collecting names,” I said, giving him a wink. If GSB played his cards right, he could be on my list. After all, he was going to be in Hong Kong. That’s just a short hop from Singapore.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I met a guy at a conference. GS Japan. If I have a project in Tokyo, I’m thinking we could hook up.”
GSB shook his head in disbelief. “You are something.”

I seem to amaze people, although I am at a loss for why. Maybe they just don’t see it coming – you know, innocent little me, planning to have boytoys in every major city in Asia? Or any other scheme I come up with, really.

Later that day…

“Let’s meet in the morning on Sunday and spend as long as we need to to get through these cases.”
“9am?” Someone suggested. “That’s when we normally have class anyway.”
“I don’t think I can make it for 9. How about 10?” I piped up.
“Why? Do you have plans in the morning?”
“Well… sort of,” I said sheepishly. My teammates looked at me, waiting for me to continue. Finally, I said, “I have to make breakfast. You know, weekend breakfasts are pretty elaborate, they take time.”
Everyone burst into laughter. Then, when they realized I was being serious, they stared at me incredulously. “Your plans… are to make breakfast?”
“Well, normally I can eat breakfast on the go. But on weekends, I usually make a big breakfast – you know, scrambled eggs, pancakes… it takes time.”
Now they were looking at me like I was an alien. What? Was I so crazy to want to make myself a good breakfast once a week?
GSB finally chuckled and shook his head. “You are…” he trailed off, at a loss for words.
As the rest of my group begrudgingly agreed to meet at 10, I smiled smugly. Maybe I was “something” but I was going to have a big yummy breakfast on Sunday morning, and that’s all that mattered.

Classes have started, although that is not as ominous as it sounds. Last semester, I had to take a couple mandatory courses that were dreadfully boring, but this semester is all electives. So in order to pick ones that I will actually enjoy (it is my last opportunity to get a bang for my buck tuition-wise), I registered myself in eight courses even though I am only allowed five. So after I went to the first class of each, I had to cut three. The result? I have an excellent schedule and some very interesting classes.

One of my classes is called “Global Strategy,” taught by a Taiwanese professor with a very thick Chinese accent. Half the time, I can’t understand what he’s saying, and I’m Chinese! It doesn’t help that listening to him speak makes me want to laugh. I can’t even hold it in, it’s that bad. His accent is so classically Asian, he can’t pronounce ses for the life of him, and he kind of makes up his own sounds when he doesn’t know exactly how something is pronounced. Like “strategy” comes out sounding like “training” – I mean, how do you even do that?
But even without the accent, he is a very amusing professor. In our first class, he was trying to convince us of the necessity of this class by showing us the extent of globalization (foreigners invading our home environment even if we don’t have any intention to go abroad).
“You wake up in the morning, you put on your underwear, made in China. You put on your jeans, made in Bangladesh. You put on your t-shirt, made in Pakistan. You drive to school in your car made in Japan. You buy a coffee, imported from Columbia. And then you get to class and you realize, your professor is imported from Taiwan!” (Imagine this whole monologue with a thick Chinese accent, the kind that Russel Peters imitates.)

Anyway, other than school, I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get things back on track with PLB. I knew a month-long break at the start of a (potential) relationship would be hazardous, and I was completely right.
Actually, it’s more my fault that his. Ever since we came back from the holidays, I have been really awkward around him. It’s not like I want to be, but I just get really nervous around him, because now we are both fairly aware that we like each other¹. He was in my first class when I came back, and I didn’t prepare myself at all for that, so I barely acknowledged him there and left right after class. The second morning (we had the same class again), he did come over to talk to me, but I wasn’t really helping the conversation and avoided his eyes the whole time. The same sort of thing happened over and over again as we ran into each other over the next few days; I would be too nervous to flirt or say something remotely interesting, even if I told myself not to freeze up.
I was hopeless, and my awkwardness was going to ruin this!

Last night, I decided to try to redeem myself. I was going to Zee’s going-away party², and afterward, DG and I were going to The Club (the club that The Business School students go to every Thursday night). He was going to be there, that much I knew. So I drank, a little bit more and a little bit faster than normal, at the going-away party, so I was sufficiently drunk (but not sloppy) by the time we got to The Club. He was one of the first people we ran into, but it was in passing so I didn’t get to talk to him. The rest of the night I spent switching between the dance floor and the table where he was sitting. But every time I went to their table, some guy I knew would spot me and come over to talk to me. Many of them were my classmates from last year, so we’d always be very excited to see each other (one guy even picked me up and twirled me around – he’s really strong). I don’t know how it looked to PLB, that every time I sat down, a new guy would come to the table. Somehow, I wasn’t sure the jealousy card was a viable strategy for me at that point. In between guys, I tried to have a conversation with him, but it was hard with the loud music. I did find it more easy to talk to him, and flirt, now that I had lost my nervousness. But still, he did not make a move.

DG got frustrated and decided that I needed to redeem my self-respect, so she dragged me away from him for nearly an hour. When we went to the washroom, we ran into him at coat-check. He was leaving?!
I waited outside the washroom for DG so that he would have an opportunity to talk to me. He did come over, explaining how he had an interview the next day so he didn’t want to party too hard tonight. Understandable, but I was still disappointed. We hugged a couple times, but he seemed no more interested in me than any other guy I’d seen that night.

DG was more upset that PLB left than I was. “What the hell is wrong with him?” She shouted, a little too loudly. A guy nearby overheard us and said, “Forget him. I would never ditch a girl like you.” I rolled my eyes as a signal for him to move on³. Why was it that, today of all days, when the last thing I felt like was hooking up with a random guy, guys would hit on me so aggressively? Even the cab driver had offered to go out with me to “make that guy jealous.” (Yeah, I was pretty creeped out. I mean, obviously cab drivers eavesdrop, but isn’t it a cardinal rule to pretend not to be able to hear the passengers? Much less getting yourself involved and hitting on a girl at least ten years your junior?)
“Come on, let’s go get you a guy,” DG said as she dragged me to the dance floor.
“But I don’t want a guy,” I whined, although I didn’t think she heard me.

In the end, DG found a guy, and I went home alone. Am I really that pathetic? I guess I am.

1. God, I hope so. Because if I’m just making things up in my head again, I am going to feel like a huge fool. [↩]
2. She’s going to Australia for medical school at the end of the week. [↩]
3. Later, that guy found me on the dance floor and I literally had to push him away and tell him, “I don’t want to dance with you!” before he got the message. [↩]

I decided last week that I wanted to go to Europe as my graduation trip. And even though the trip is nearly four months away, I am so over-the-top in-your-face way too excited. If you’ve talked to me recently (or seen my Twitter), you’d think that I was leaving tomorrow.
I wish.

Anyway, my friends have been very supportive of my excitement (maybe they just haven’t gotten tired of me going on and on yet). I was shopping with a girl friend who I haven’t seen in literally two years, and when I started rambling about this Europe trip, she pulled out a few euros from her purse and gave them to me. I, clueless that I was, didn’t even know they were Euros.
“Here, for your trip,” she said, handing them to me.
“What are these? Are these like arcade game tokens?” I pulled out a game token for comparison¹.
“What? No! These are euros!”
“Oh. Right. Of course. I knew that.”

And then last night, when I went out to dinner with some of the friends that are going on exchange (you know, the ones whose couches I will be crashing on when I go), they gave me some budgeting advice.
“When I went to Europe, I ended up spending a lot less on food than I thought,” one of my friends said. “For example, when I was in Paris for four days, all I ate was a baguette, some pickles, and a bottle of wine.”
I chewed on my rigatoni, considering this.

“Ohhhh,” I said, suddenly understanding, “So you replace food with wine, and you get so drunk you forget you’re hungry. Is that the idea?”
They stared at me incredulously and then burst into laughter. Was that not the idea?

My friend took a bite of her beef tenderloin, which looked a lot like salami. “Of course, I’m not a foodie like you, I don’t go out to nice places when I travel. I imagine you will be taking advantage of some of the ‘culinary sights’ on this trip?” She said, when they had finished laughing.
“Well, I don’t eat out that much when I travel either,” I admitted, thinking of my trip to California when I went to the grocery store on my first day in San Francisco, and lived off baby carrots, apples, bananas, and cereal for a week.
“But in Europe,” another friend piped up, “Oh in Europe, some of these places take their food very seriously.” She twirled a forkful of capellini, and after a thoughtful pause, she added, “It’s more like an art to them.”

I groaned in pretend ecstasy. “In that case, I may have to be a little looser with my food budget,” I said, taking a sip of merlot and looking over at my friend’s chicken breast with envy.

For the last 48 hours, other than food, my head has been filled with Europe. I have already planned out a good portion of my trip, for cities that I am definitely visiting: Prague, Vienna, Venice, and Florence. I have put my itinerary up here, although it is still a work in progress. Most of it is based on Internet research, so I will be waiting for feedback from Real Live People who have been there, or my friends who are going to be there over the next few months, before I finalize the itinerary. Or maybe I won’t finalize it, and just let myself travel a bit more spontaneously. After all, that’s what Euro trips are supposed to be about right? Spontaneity, recklessness, embracing flaunting the fact that we are young and alive. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt for me to stop acting like a 30-year-old and start acting my age.

1. Don’t ask me why I was carrying around arcade tokens. I had some left over from last time I went out with friends and we played arcade games while waiting for our movie to start. [↩]

It’s been half a year since I last wrote any grievance letters, but today, I cannot think of a better way to express my grievances.

Dear Mother,

I do not need you to tell me what I look like, that’s what mirrors are for. I do not need you to tell me how much I weigh, that’s what scales are for. I have an eating disorder as it is, so it’s probably not a good idea to tell me I am fat every time you see me. I am in shape. Round is a shape.

Regards,
Your Not Chubby Daughter

—

Dear Professor,

I am not really sure what you want me to write about in this exam since the answers are all pretty much given in the various articles you had us read. I guess I can spend 2000 word giving you a “best of” but shouldn’t you have read these articles before assigning them to us?

Cheers,
A Confused Student

—

Dear PreordainedLoverBoy,

Why have you not texted me in three days? I know you know I’m in The City now, don’t you miss me? Aren’t you going to miss me over the next few weeks? If you don’t contact me, aren’t you afraid that I might give up on you and hook up with someone else over the holidays?

xoxo
Your Preordained Lover Girl

P.S. Feel free to show up at my door with hand-written signs expressing your ardent love for me. My address is…

—

Dear Chocolate,

I love, love, love you. Thank you for being in my life.

Love,
Your Number One Fan

That last one doesn’t count, it’s not a grievance. But seriously, PLB, that’s it? No more texts? We’re just going to go cold turkey for the holidays? That is so anticlimactic.