Flushing Meadows

Signs. I think God was giving me signs all week long about NY.

It starts off on a sunny Thursday morning. I get up do my usual and finish packing. Except, I realize I am running late and slurp down my udon as fast I can get those squiggly noodles down. I realize my cab driver is waiting for me outside to take me to the airport. I rush to finish the last of everything and manage to get out of my place by 10:30. Aren't cabbies always late?

Anyways, I am two hours too early for my flight. So I sit and read. I read and read and read. Around noon, I realize I should get something to eat but as the udon still sits in my belly, I get a scone and a cup of coffee at the restaurant that also serves niman ranch products. Its supposedly Peets coffee, and its not half bad. But that scone, I can't say the same for that scone. Pure cardboard. After three bites, that thing ended up in the garbage. No music was played at its funeral. It deserved the ending it got.

After the five and a half hours of flying over the US, the captain's voice comes over the intercom, "JFK is congested, we are advised to fly around NY until we are able to land."

I grumble. Strike one JFK!

We finally land at 10pm. I was guided to carousel 4 to claim my bags. I stand and patiently wait at carousel 4. As I watch bag after bag glide by me, my patience starts to wear thin. Finally, it stops. A few others are staring in disbelief, bordering on panic. I keep muttering to myself, 'it better not be lost.'

A girl exclaims, "its on 1." We all rush to carousel 1 and there I see my lonely red bag going around and around.

STRIKE two JFK!

I wander around looking for my driver, when I realize he's nowhere to be found, I call the number on the email the HR person sent me.

"Go to Area B, your driver will meet you there."

Ten minutes later, ten minutes shivering later,

"Go to the departure side, Cross the street, go through the building to the other side, your driver will meet you there."

Twenty minutes freezing later,

"You Miss Chang?"

Strike Three JFK.

The driver was extremely nice, chatting the whole way. Really working for his tip. I tell him how I didn't have any dinner and he told me that I had the car for the rest of the time and that he could stop by to a place and I could grab food. "What kind of food do you want?"

I told him that it was ok, I know he wanted to get back home as well. I told him I would order up some room service.

I get to the front desk, "Do you have room service?" "No. There's continental breakfast in the morning though."

*****************

I suddenly wake up the next morning, I look at my cell and it reads 9:55. I shot up, 9:55! I have to be at the office by ten! I throw on clothes and call the front desk asking if they could order me a taxi. They tell me to come to the front desk and some one will arrange it.

I get to the front desk and ask, the guy tells me to go outside and hail a cab. Furiously annoyed by that answer, I wave him off and start rushing off to the office. I started off on Broadway, getting closer and closer to the numbers. Somewhere in between, I realized the numbers were off and I was on Sixth Ave, Avenue of the Americas.

I start running back to almost where I started and realized that Broadway broke off in the other direction. I cross the street and run up six blocks on Broadway and finally get to the office. I am twenty minutes late.

The receptionist tells the VP that I am here to see her. A couple of minutes later, I see a blond woman pop her head out and tells me to come in. I follow her through a narrow corridor and end up in her brightly lit office. I sit at the round table and stare at this woman.

She's very skinny with weathered skin. Her lips look recently injected and her skin stretched tight over her narrow face. She starts talking to me. Asking me the same questions and telling me the same things I hear over the course of seven people. Seven VPs all telling me exactly the same thing. I wonder if they were given a sheet in preparation of what they should tell me once they met with me. I had no real questions for them.

24 hours since I last eaten, my director takes me out to lunch. Giggles. I almost died in french fries bliss.

My director, completely enamored with the city, has a light gait, and turns to me "Isn't there an energy to this city? It's just electric." I nod secretly thinking otherwise.

After a long day of talking and walking, I end up in my hotel room, which is the size of a walk-in closet in the good old California. I kick off my heels to see two fat blisters on the bottoms of my feet.

I change into some jeans and head out to meet my Director for dinner. I get to Bryant Park early so I walk around. It was nice to walk in solitude. It wasn't exactly a picturesque park. But I had a good time walking around, alone in my thoughts.

I see my Director, we talk for a few minutes. She brings up Gis, and we smile awkwardly in silence. She's leaving, she found a better place, can't we just leave it at that?

She, another Director and her husband, and I end up at Koi, a super chi chi restaurant right by Bryant Park. We ate appetizers and entrees and desserts and drank wine. By the time were done, I didn't even want to know the damage. She just handed her amex card over and the company took care of the rest. Ahhh, living off the company's dime is nice.

I met up with Tanya later that night. She took me to downtown and we ended up at some Japanese tapas place with some good sake. Two bottles of sake and many tapas later, we start wandering around. We walk to the Lower East Side, peed in a bar packed with frat boys from out of town, bought some pastries at an italian bakery, and tanya and I ended up at a Starbucks talking until the early morning. Tired, extremely cold, we ended up taking the taxi back to my place and she got the taxi driver to take her back to Queens, which she tells me they hate taking her back to Queens from Manhattan because its far away and they don't get the fare coming back.

The next morning I met up with my brother's wife. She took me to Times Square, Fifth Avenue, up to Park Avenue, we had lunch at the Whitney Museum's cafe (which was pretty darn good), by Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty, and ended up in Soho. I bought some jeans from Uniqlo (which is the Japanese version of the Gap but better).

We end back by my hotel, which is in the middle of Koreatown, and sat at a cafe and I drank some chai tea (which wasn't the best idea of after downing two cups of coffee earlier). My car company calls me to let me know that it is there waiting to pick me up. I grab my suitcase from the hotel and run up an down the street harassing all the black car drivers until my sister in law found my driver. I run to him and throw my suitcase in the trunk. Throwing me an annoying glance, "Are you done? I am blocking the street." I steal a quick hug to my sister in law and thank her for taking me around and jump into the car. I take swigs of my water.

Twenty minutes later, I feel the sharpest pang to pee. I try to think of anything to take my mind off peeing. We get stuck in traffic. The car lurched forward, the seat belt pressing on my bladder, I silently cried. I started to breathe heavily. I tried everything to make the pain go away.

I looked out the window and saw the sign 'Flushing Meadows.' I would have laughed if I wasn't crying. It reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Homer goes to NY to retrieve his car with all the parking tickets. He has to stay by his car until the policeman comes. He waits and waits and a bus rolls by with the sign Flushing Meadows. He day dreams of running through a meadow filled with toilets flushing.

After another jarring movement, I almost cry out. It becomes more and more torturous as I sit and wait to get to the airport. When I see signs to exit to the airport (40 minutes later), I ask him if he has change for a twenty and tell him to keep ten, he starts warming up. I was too busy thinking of the bathroom to notice that his manner had changed as soon as money was exchanged.

He gets my suitcase out of the trunk and I thank him and run towards the bathroom. I almost sang out in a full rendition of Hallelujah.

******************

As the plane took off, I saw the lights of the city. The lights became smaller and smaller and I said goodbye to all those lights that I did not recognize.

When the plane descended into the Oakland Airport, I was glad to be back. I was glad to see the same old dingy airport I left 48 hours ago.