Late Nights/Early Mornings

So here's the deal with New York City: you can't sleep full nights and experience what the city has to offer, period.  I am fortunate to be in the city at the ripe age of 23 while I can still occasionally get away with missing an entire night (week) of sleep and survive.  And by survive I mean drag my non-coffee drinking, groggy butt into the office to be harangued by my secretary who immediately notices that I am wearing my glasses.  She follows her bemused facial expression with something like: "somebody needs to learn how to handle the city... Bendito!"  I still tend to be the earliest one in the mornings, however, so I normally have time to make it look at least like I've been rubbing my eyes to cure some terrible itch rather than look like the only one who can't make it in the big city.  Fortunately, my office is full of 'young professionals' such as Julie, my housemate, and myself and, therefore, it is not uncommon for someone to show up late and/or look a tad (understatement) under the weather.

One of the most important things to realize about partying in this city is that the party don't start till I walk in - Terrible Ke$ha lyrics that come into my head every time I hear the words 'party start'.  Where I was really going with that is that the parties don't start until 10:30PM at the earliest!  What this means is that if you want to be cool and hang out with your friends out at the bar, you're going to be out until at least 2AM but probably more like 4.  On top of that, you will be paying the princely sum of $6 for any single beverage you order - unless you would like a mixed drink in which case you can safely double that number.  Summary: Overtired, broke, and still uncool.

On the more positive side of the nightlife in Astoria is that I have met and continue to meet some of the most interesting people I have encountered this far in life!  One of them, my new friend, Newell, gave me the idea for this post's subject (here is my shameful apology for having not maintained my blog since November - I should spend less time out and more time in doing productive, self-developmental things like blogging).  I have developed a simple methodology for meeting new friends - I go out with my housemate.  Julie talks to everyone and this provides great opportunity for me to overcome the awkwardness inherent in all engineers and magnified in myself.  I wait for a break in their conversation and then poke my head closer to Julie's which causes her to both remember that I exist and introduce me to her/our new friend(s).  The surprising part of our nocturnal endeavors is how friendly everyone is that we have met.  Regardless of where we go, we leave having met amazing people who we are surely going to meet up with again in the near future.  This has, for me, disproved the widely-held belief that New Yorkers are rude.  I would say that such a sentiment comes from travelers and tourists who spend short spurts of time in this beautiful city and see a few monuments and museums (full of rude tourists), ride the subways during peak travel hours (full of disgruntled, uncomfortable workers and hobos), and dine in fancy restaurants (undoubtedly feeling pretentious).  In fact, some of the nicest people I have encountered so far in life have been random run-ins or eye-catches or people that Julie has fallen onto (don't hate me for that one, Julie)! 

As is only appropriate for this post, it is 12:30AM and I have to get up for work at 6AM.  Looks like the score still stands:  New York - 1, Scott - 0.  And with that, I wish you goodnight!