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September 19, 2006

Update from Jersey

NEW JERSEY - I'm in New Jersey, as always on the weekdays. The Marriott again has me in room 327, the giant two-bedroom suite that I end up booking at the last minute when everything else is sold-out.

Sometimes I'm amazed at how much life changes over a couple of years, and other times it feels so eerily similar. It's 11.23PM and I'm in a hotel room, a bit chilly, making slides, just like I was two years ago. Two years ago, I would have gotten up and walked from the hotel to Place Vendôme to Place de la Concorde to the Pont de la Concorde, which affords the best view in Paris, with the Tour Effiel on the right, the Notre Dame lit-up in the far distance, the National Assembly down the road, and the Seine flowing beneath. Place de la Concorde lies at one end of avenue des Champs-Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe at the other. Despite its glamorous appearance today, it's among the bloodier places in Paris. It was the site where nobles and wealthy bourgeoisie watched criminals get dismembered, and a guilliotine was set-up there in 1793. The guilliotine eventually severed some 1300 heads, including those of King Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, and the revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre.

New Jersey just isn't Paris. Until recently, I had lived 5 years within a couple miles of New Jersey (in Phila and NYC) but hadn't actually been here except to buy alcohol for the fraternity (at age 20) and to transit the state. Paris, by contrast, was the first city I traveled to when I finally left the USA for the first time on 5 July 2001.

Fortunately I have been keeping myself entertained, although the IRS and some bill collectors are still coming after me. The IRS is convinced I got income from the pension plan of Colgate-Palmolive, which would be absolutely laughable if they didn't expect me to prove that I didn't actually retire at age 24 from a company for whom I've never worked. How the heck does one prove that? Maybe I can go testify in Congress for the sheer incompetence of it all? Heaven help me if the IRS actually accused me of something that's not so easy to prove. Then there's the New York tax authorities who also think I'm up to no good or at least just a moron--how many MBAs does it take to figure out a basic New York State personal income tax form? Clearly more than one. Obviously our tax system is too complicated when even someone trained in graduate-level tax policy can't seem to satisfy tax authorities that he's filled out the forms right.

And the bill collectors? One of the credit agencies has crossed my credit report with some deadbeat's, and they've now linked my address to 32 delinquent accounts. Unlike the 2001 identity theft, which was relatively straightforward, this one requires letters to asshole bill collectors explaining that no, I didn't write a bad check for $90 to a ghetto grocery store that shouldn't be accepting checks in the first place. (Why does this shit always happen to me, and why are bill collectors still based in the USA but United Airlines has farmed-out its customer service to Indians who have never been on a plane?) The one bill I didn't pay until recently was the bill for innogize.com, which resulted in this website being out-of-service for a day, as some readers pointed out.

On a more positive note, I spent the past weekend in Boston having a little reunion with some folks from the Chicago office, many of whom have ended up in Boston. Harvard is still as leafy and Ivy-covered as always, though the tour busses actually stop at Harvard. Over at Columbia, the busses keep on rollin', probably because few New Yorkers, let alone tourists, are willing to step anywhere beyond 96th Street.

I leave for a weekend in Brussels on Thursday. I'll try to put-up pics when I return. 85 days until Tiffany returns.

Posted by adrianjo at 11:14 PM

September 09, 2006

Watching balls go back and forth

Yesterday a guy sent out a message to the office that said something like the following: "I have two tix to the US Open tomorrow (women's final). Face value $98, sold for $40 to whoever writes back first." Needless to say, there was a huge reply. I missed the boat, but Maria and Justine's match is proving quite entertaining. Tennis is perhaps the only sport where the best female competitors are so often really attractive.

Another item from the Hot Women Department: as of today, Tiffany is halfway through the cruise. That leaves just 92 days to go.

Posted by adrianjo at 09:04 PM

September 04, 2006

So much for $300/mo in discretionary spending

The Barney's Warehouse Sale wrapped-up today. I have to say: it was the craziest sale I've ever been to. The menswear is sold from a cellar-level clothing warehouse in Chelsea. (In LA, the sale is in an airport hangar.) It was a half-hour line to get in, then another 40 minutes to check-out. Although you might agree with the 10 Reasons to Avoid the Barney's Warehouse Sale, it's hard to resist the urge. There were perhaps 100 suits in my size, plus thousands of shirts, sport coats, and trousers. Shoes were almost fully sold-out. Many of the styles were were avant-garde experiments that went over like a lead balloon, but there was also a wide range of relatively conservative attire like pink shirts and black suits by designers like Burberry and Varvatos. All in all, it took 2.5 hours, but I saved $1800. So much for trying to live on a $300/month discretionary spending budget. (I was succeeding since July!)

I didn't go up to the womenswear section, but the Village Voice says I should have:

"Ladies, please keep your undergarments on, thank you," reads a wall sign, alluding to the lack of fitting rooms and the propensity of certain modesty-free types to strip down in front of the crowded mirrors. (What could be more fun than trying on a Balenciaga surf suit over your panties and bra while a roomful of strangers looks on?)

Meanwhile, a forum writer puts in his two cents:

I walk downstairs to the sale, which looks pretty much what I imagine prison is like. The whole place takes place underground in a huge, unadorned, and rather dilapidated warehouse. I'm talking chipped paint on the walls and ceiling, exposed pipes, the works. Sections of the sale are separated by large chain link fences, you are required to check all your bags before being allowed to enter, and there is a large security guard present just about every 5-10 feet. In case of a yuppie riot I guess?

Shopping at this sale is seriously surreal. People are picking through giant cardboard boxes of $100-$300 t-shirts and sweaters. Random brands of "premium" denim are messily piled up about 3 feet high on foldout tables. Giant metal racks of suits and coats were the only things organized enough to be browsible.

If you ever want to see a lack of dignity displayed by the upper-middle class, this is probably the event to check out. Want to sit down while trying on shoes? Better learn to balance because there are no seats. Guys in suits were stripping down to undershirts in the middle of the warehouse because the place has no changing rooms.

To my surprise, most of the people here were early 20-30s. There were a lot of popped polos, untucked dress shirts, and giant aviator sunglasses in play. And lots and lots of pink. ... The hot accessority seems to be the Asian girlfriend, as about 1/3 of the white guys in the room had one in tow. The place buzzed with some sort of jackass uniformity which I will attribute to the finance industry. The underlying hum told me "junior analyst".

Junior consultants, too. Why do the Wall Street guys get all the credit for everything in this town?

The Wall St Journal suggests the women on the prowl go in the evening:

Notes Barneys' Mr. Doonan: "The warehouse sale is a great place to meet a husband. That's where all the guys go when they're starting out on Wall Street." The secret for the single shopper is to go at night, says Mr. Doonan. "They've all got jobs. Go in the evening. It's nuts with guys."

I guess Barney's knows its target market.

Posted by adrianjo at 10:44 PM

September 01, 2006

Not ready to say goodbye

I was out last night for a birthday party at a restaurant-cum-club in Union Square (Happy 25th, Brandon), but the real focus was on Agassi's legendary, epic battle against some orange-shirt-clad unknown with a curly pony tail. I don't usually get into sports, but this match was one of the most memorable ever. I got so excited that at one point I knocked a drink out of the hand of a friend returning from the bar. Simon Barnes writes of Agassi in the Times:

He stands for a principle seldom accepted by anyone in any walk of life: that you can be one kind of person and then, if you have the ability, if you have the desire, you can be another kind of person entirely. A wild and adventurous woman can settle down to domestic bliss; an unreconstructed lad can find a taste for responsibility and order; a waster can become a person of substance; a loser can become a winner. [HT: daily fix]

Posted by adrianjo at 10:48 AM