The Portrait of a New Yorker as a young dreamer (2)

Miamo is a crazy Japanese character so in love with reggae music that he spends two weeks out of every year in Jamaica. He is known to be ready to sing a Japanese tune whenever he's challenged at any given time or place and he does it while dancing like a true Rastaman.

He has never had sushi in New York and he finds it impossible to describe Japanese New Years' food in English.

One of his hobbies is reading with a high degree of seriousness any English text including and especially grammar exercises. This is the only time when he becomes Japanesely solemn and that's when he's the funniest.

He's continuously looking for love in the very Italian way of the word.

His mind must be working in film images as his mouth speaks in screenplay cuts as follows:

"My ideal lover would be as ideal as a Coke when you're thirsty. She would love to cook for me, and sing for me and dance with me. After dinner she would wash dishes and I would wipe them thinking I am the happiest man alive."

The Portrait of a New Yorker as a young dreamer (1)

Yaron born Israel has a master in Jazz music at the Conservatory in Haifa. Lived in Japan for three years working as a cook. He loves his wife, his jazz band and Sunday barbeque with friends.

He's my ipod's most reliable source of old, unbelievably hard to find music.

He married an Asian girl that my Albanian ex-co-worker thought to be black from a picture taken at their dream wedding in Hawaii despite his family discontent.

He was keeping this picture on his desk in the dusty warehouse he was managing. He was a warehouse manager that called himself a dispatcher studying to become a customs specialist while we were colleagues.

He has a Friday cult expressed in his favorite sayings:

• "It's Friday and nobody can take that away from me"
• "Every Wednesday morning while shaving I say to myself : This is the last time I am shaving before Friday"

One phrase musical treats!!

The fact that I love all things Japanese is well known but seeing a 60 year old Japanese guy rocking a Lady Gaga song with an electric guitar in front of a cheering crowd of commuters on Brooklyn train station platform at 7.30 am is pure delight!

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Late at night, when going back home after a tiring day, the best idea you can have is taking the longest way to the train, through Central Park, in the exactly the same night in which an obviously crazy guy thinks the best idea is to get his huge real size piano out in the center of the park for a short concert for friends. At night, Central Park is the center of universal cool...

Only in New York...

By the time I first heard these words out loud, my mind must have screamed, whispered, sang them ever since I got here.
It was my first time at Tiffany's. I was never a big fan of formal earings and rings, I actually got there accidentally and sort of forced by a friend in need of an engagement ring ( yes, these kind of needs are considered normal to certain people).
I was impressed with the atmosphere and laughed a little too loud at some poor guys trying to get some piece of ring that will buy them a "yes".
However the unexpected part and the most unbelievable surprise came from the elevator attendant who was a one man show singing Dean Martin and Sinatra, reciting poems of love captivating us with a sort of magic power.
And when the doors opened, that's when he said "Only in New York, baby! Only in New York!!"

wonders from the days with no ipod

A girl and a guy both probably somewhere in their late 20s were trying to arrange their hair in the train door glass at the same time.
The guy said to the girl: " Bad hair day, ha?"
The girl looks at him and smiles. " Thanks, I guess!" she said, still smiling an endless smile.
"Oh no", he said, "I meant... only for me. I wouldn't normally care but I have an interview in an hour."
"Don't worry you'll get it" she said not looking at him.
"It's funny" the guy said " I had the same conversation with my girlfriend an hour ago.She was mad I didn't tell her about the interview. And about the bad hair joke...I just don't get it... "
"Don't worry you'll get it" she said again looking straight at him as she rushed through the closing doors.

Romantic era

I had one of the first Jane Austen moments that I can remember when I was about twelve.
My parents were building a house in the countryside and the living room was the only room with the wood floors installed so far. The floor was not even polished yet but my cousin and I thought it would be a good idea to transform the room into a ballroom. She brought in the cassette player with a very treasured cassette from Strauss the father and we danced waltz all afternoon, spinning around the room without even feeling any dizziness. I, for one, remember this as a very happy moment of my life. It was a time when there were no computers, the TV remote could only switch between two channels and we were spending our days reading Dumas. In those times all girls my age wanted to marry a prince and all boys our age wanted to build a rock fortress in the playground.
Few more than few years later, I hear young girls want to get bitten by vampires. Make no mistake though, it's not Bram Stoker's type of vampire, but a classy gentlemen no-fangs type of vampire that practices abstinence and reads Emily Bronte.Now that's scary!!!
All these thoughts were crossing my mind while I was in the subway few weeks ago. To my left an asian ten year old boy wearing cute glasses was reading Jane Austen's Perssuasion and to my right a forty-five year old woman was reading a novel called "Do me twice".I tried to figure out what would be the book that I should be reading to gain my right of staying in the middle of the time line between them. Sandra Brown maybe?Alain de Botton? Fowles?
Every now and then I go back and think of the fact that we are all chasing our childhood images over and over again and then I take a book I used to read back then and read it again. This time I took Persuasion as a first read trying to picture it as the little boy did...He may be laughed at by all his schoolmates but I might be on my way to discover what the "prince" really wants and where is he hiding when we grow to read the book that the lady was reading on the subway...

top chef

I am not the world's worst cook!

I am the world's worst cook that's still trying perseveringly, getting worse every time while preparing elaborated dishes from Chinese non-cuisine to French pastry.

This would not make me feel so much on the "worst" side if my boyfriend were not this great creative genuine cook.
And if my mother would not literally be the greatest baking master of all times, while a perfect traditional cook as well.

Don't get me wrong, I can pull a soup or some other type of food anybody can get right.
It's just that I love cooking so much that my imagination is pushing me to attack all these mixtures that make sense in my mind but my execution is so amateurish and the result so bad that I cannot even force myself to eat it in my stubborn pursuit to show my boyfriend that it's a matter of taste.

Last night my boyfriend told me that my food was good (not delicious, just good) and asked me the chicken recipe.

It was not the first time hearing that but this time my soul felt that the most appropriate reaction would be a smile. It came out to be a wide one and he must have felt like he'd said something funny.

It all seemed to me like my father was telling my mother "I love you!" in an ancient way and I smiled again remembering... how my mother would always ask if the food was good and my sister and I would never understand why the food critique is so important. Only my father would say the food was good while watching my mother's reaction.

I may have over the top culinary ambitions because of my love for cooking but it's not all that it is...I feel now that it's all related to my struggle of becoming the woman that was implanted in me while I was a child.

And I know that next time I'll eat my mother's food I'll say it's good out loud.