Author Archives: pk

lunch break meditations

so i sit here, in my cubicle on the 15th floor of the National Football League office in midtown manhattan, not quite believing that days like this, when i bring up lunch from the huddle cafe to eat at my desk while surfing the internet, are numbered. i wasn’t feeling too well in the stomach the past two days, so i decided to be cautious today and got myself wild mushroom brisket soup, a piece of hard bread, some fresh mozarella with tomatoes and roasted peppers, and a piece of pan roasted salmon with strawberry salsa. at $6.17 for all this, and a tall starbucks coffee included, i don’t know where else in new york you can find as good a deal for such gourmet foods.

since handing in my final paper of my undergraduate career last thursday – a 12-pager for my chinese cinema class (I wrote it on Blue Kite, an excellent movie) – i’ve been bracing myself for the next chapter of my life (I know, how cliche) and i can only wonder what the transition will be like. to work long hours, to have no more papers or lectures (to fall asleep in), to no longer be a part of a campus (if i ever was), and to have the added responsibilites of living outside a pre-furnished, pre-managed college environment. hunting for apartments has been my most time-consuming task. i’ve seen apartments in chelsea, financial district and upper east side so far. i’ll have to check out murray hill and midtown west today.

yesterday i finally finished reading Barbarians at the Gate which chronicles the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco eventually won by the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. in reading about the true life drama behind the scenes and the notion of managing the biggest deal in the history of business not only made me excited about working in finance but also made me question what the whole point of it was. the authors of the book do make the point that this whole LBO craze was an invention of Wall Street which, in the end, had nothing to do with the business of selling tobacco or cookies, which was how the company had made all its money in the first place. it really made me think about the business i am getting into – a place where you try to shift perceptions and profit from the visible difference, charging lucrative fees along the way. but of course, there is no need to exaggerate. financial services exist because companies have demonstrated need for restructuring debt or finding ways to fund new investments. it’s just that every once in a while, the market tends to allow for some questionable maneuvers that warrants criticism, regulation, and even punishment. i do feel good about writing that 25-page paper on investment banking during the Great Depression last semester.

i’m not quite sure how well i’ll use my time in the next month and a half. i hope to be industrious and productive, but that is always just wishful thinking at best. i keep having pleasant thoughts about playing basketball at Hidden Park again with my high school buddies. a few days ago, i wondered why i didn’t have the same male support group at Columbia as i had in high school. i realized that i hardly played the amount of sports here and whenever i did, it was with random people. i guess athletic activity is one of the most effective ways of bonding with people, and i am a bit regretful that i missed out on it during college. but hopefully a great deal of ball awaits when i return to edison next week.

i need to run to broad street now to check out an apartment. i doubt we’ll get this place because it is a bit out of the way, but it sounds like a good deal so who knows. it’s too bad none of us – me, warren, and rich – work at goldman sachs because this place would be an ideal location for it. i hope my j.crew shoes – the pair i bought last week after throwing up on my other black pair of shoes – doesn’t bother me too much. it’s one size too big, but i stuffed a piece of napkin on the back heel to prevent it from rubbing against the skin. i know – i am resourceful.

to quote shakespeare

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i’ve always had a fascination with shylock, the villain/victim antagonist of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. for my 10th birthday, my parents bought me an illustrated book of Shakespeare’s stories written in prose. my favorite one was The Merchant of Venice because there was an excellent illustration of Shylock – dressed in gray garb with curly hair and sharp nose – checking to see if his knife was sharp enough to cut a pound of flesh. i liked the story because as much as Shylock seemed despicable as a character, there was a very human quality to him. i think it was easy to identify with the feeling of being an outsider who constantly gets taunted and picked on, which was how i felt for some time in elementary school. the ironic thing was that the kids who picked on me in elementary school were Jewish. and yet, i still like Shylock.

here’s the oft-recited Shylock speech, which i’ve watched a bunch of times in the course of writing my paper on two adaptations of The Merchant of Venice – John Sichel’s 1973 BBC version with Laurnece Olivier as Shylock and Michael Radford’s 2004 version with Al Pacino as Shylock. both are very excellent, although it’s best to know the play inside out before you actually watch the movies.

“To bait fish withal: if it feed nothing
else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced
me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at
my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my
nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends,
heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I
am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a
Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections,
passions? fed with the same food, hurt
with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
healed by the same means, warmed and
cooled by the same winter and summer as a
Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we
not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we
will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a
Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a
Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance
be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The
villainy which you teach me I will execute, and it shall
go hard but I will better the instruction.”

you have to watch when Olivier says “scorned my nation.” damn, so exciting.

recycled note

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note: a very short fiction story (and a bit strange)

“I’ll be sitting at Ella’s having a spinach and mushroom omlette around noon next Monday. Will you come?” he wrote on a piece of Starbucks napkin. He folded it up and put it in his pocket.

Later that day, he saw her walking to the corner grocery. She wore a flower print skirt and a light tanktop. She also wore thick sunglasses and carried a red bag. He walked up to her and handed her the piece of napkin.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” he said as he walked away. He did not turn around but kept on walking.

***

Six days and three thousand miles later, he sat at Ella’s on Presidio Ave. It was foggy outside but the air was still very crisp. He had taken the bus and then walked about twenty blocks to work up his appetite. He had carried a copy of the Guardian that he picked up from the street corner back at his hotel in Nob Hill. He still preferred the Voice, but when it came to free papers, he never held them to a high standard. He read the latest Edible Complex column which talked about Thai food in the Upper Haight – he would probably swing by there later since he loved cheap Thai joints wherever he went.

“I’d like orange juice, spinach and mushroom omlette, and a side order of bacon please,” he told the waitress, a slim blonde with hazel eyes. She wore a maroon apron and navigated her way through the tables, all filled by the young professionals and senior citizens who frequented the place during lunch hours.

He looked through the classifieds and wondered how much rent went for, not that he’d move out here just yet. Maybe in a few years after he had saved up and could handle payments on both an apartment and a car. And maybe a decent job on the West Coast, he thought.

The juice and the food came. He ate slowly and continued to read the paper. He began reading articles that at first glance held no appeal. He checked his watch – a silver Seiko that his great aunt from Japan had given him for his graduation – and noticed that it was already a quarter to one. He paid the bill and left.

***

It was half past ten and the restaurant was fairly empty. An old couple sat by the window sipping on decaf coffee while a father and his son, about seven, shared a stack of pancakes and plump brown sausage.

She sat alone at the table closest to the open counter area, behind which you could see the kitchen staff preparing for lunchtime. Ella’s prided itself for its cleanliness and wanted its patrons to notice. She opened up her Chronicle and read the op-ed page. Definitely nowhere near the quality of the Times, she thought to herself. She decided not to read anymore, folding it up and putting it away in her red bag.

“I’ll have coffee – black, a bowl of fruit, and a side order of toast,” she told the waitress, whose short blonde ponytail and hazel eyes reminded her of a close friend from her college days.

She stabbed the last piece of fruit – a strawberry – and looked at it momentarily before sliding it off the fork with her lips and into her mouth. It was sour at first but eased into a familiar sweetness. She took out her cell phone and checked the time. It was almost eleven. She paid the bill and left.

It had been a nice trip. She loved Chinatown because it just felt older and more established than the one back home. She decided to buy herself a jade necklace because she felt that it would match well with her bluish green skirt. She looked through her red bag to take out cash when she noticed the Starbucks napkin lodged between her book – The Unbearable Lightness of Being (for the third time) – and her sunglasses case. She took the napkin out and read the scribble on it one more time.

She knew he would be there at noon, and yet, she couldn’t bring herself to see him face to face. She had come all the way out here on relatively short notice – the ticket wasn’t cheap – and she could only imagine, sitting by herself at Ella’s, what he would feel a few hours later. It would never work out anyway, she told herself. And yet, she was here, three thousand miles from home.

Her cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Meet me at a place called Lotus Thai at seven,” he said. He hung up.

She smiled. She hoped to get there by five for an early meal.