Life is so good

I haven’t been able to come to work ontime for a while; everyday I am coming to work around 10 AM or later. To bring some changes in my everyday life, I came to visit my sister and decided to stay with her for a couple of days. Today for the first time in a long while, I came to work on time. My sister made me breakfast and tea in the morning; I chatted with her and had my breakfast. I had a good night sleep also. I am sleeping in the same room with my little nephew; so I watch TV with him before going to sleep; he is a funny boy and I watch cartoon and comedy shows with him. Life has got just too good to be true now.

What I did in last winter

It has been getting a little colder in NYC last couple of days; too bad that summer is coming to an end. Today my work was little lighter than other days in the office. So in the afternoon, I started thinking what I have done in last winter as another winter is approaching and decided to write something on it since my last winter was a lot different for me than any other winters.

The reason my last winter was different because I was able to travel quit a bit. I always have had a dream to travel different places; and I started achieving that dream since last winter and it continued until the summer.

I am going to write about my travel experiences and share with my readers. Here is just a brief description of my trips and I will write more elaborated ones on each trip soon.

Seeing different places started off by visiting the NYC’s famous Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree on December 06, 2007 with one of my college friend. The experience was very exciting. The tree was huge, lots of lightening and statues of angels. Even though I lived in NYC for several years already, this was my first time being to this famous Christmas Tree. My friend showed me around. The place was incredibly beautiful. After seeing the tree, we went to have dinner together and we chatted for hours. We had a great time together; then we took the subway to our homes; my friend’s stop was a few stops before mine; so she got off first and I came home around 11 PM. It was my first time staying out that late at night with a friend in a long time.

My next visit was to the World Financial Center (WFC) in downtown Manhattan on December 28, 2007. I went there to have lunch with a friend I did my master’s with. We had lunch together, then she showed me the area, took me by the Hudson river; the place was very beautiful, something that any visitor would like to see when they visit NYC.

Then I increased my horizon a bit and went all the way to London to meet with my sister and her family on February 10, 2008. My sister in law (Bhabi) also joined in London from Dhaka at that time. It was my first meeting with my Bhabi, and I met my sister after 12 years and my brother in law (Dulabhai) after a good amount of 20 years; I was a little child when my brother in law saw me last. My two nieces were off from work and school during that time; my brother in law also took off from work. My nieces took me and my brother and my bhabi to all the historic places in London. When I was in London, I felt like I was in a 16th century city, but with all the modern technology in it. The buildings were old but very well maintained, the streets were smaller than NYC streets, the cars were much smaller like classic cars. The cars looked so cute ; I visited a bunch of museums and other places such as Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, London Eye, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Rensington Palace, Trifalger Square, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Piccadilly Circus, Indian City Tooting, watched the theater show called Shadowlands in Novello, went to South Kensington (National Science Museum, British Historical Museum), did some gift shopping, etc. It was a very busy week, and I had so much fun there.

My next trip was in NJ to attend my colleague’s house warming party on a weekend on Feb 23, 2008. She arranged that party just for the colleagues; she cooked some very delicious food (yammmmy). A total of 5 colleagues from NY went in the same car, and some other colleagues from NJ also joined. After I got back home at night, one of my colleagues called to make sure I got home safe, which was so nice .

After that on one weekend (March 2nd), I went to visit the Met Museum in Manhattan with two friends. Visiting the museum was little boring but at least being able to do something on the weekend made me feel better.

My next trip was to the Atlantic City (AC) with my two college friends: one of them I met after a very long time. First the three of us met at Sunnyside, Queens in the early morning. First we bought the bus tickets, and then went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast while waiting for the bus; the trip was really great. We had so much fun in the bus, we were chatting, jocking, sleeping, reading magazines, watching movie. When we reached AC, we kind of visited every single Cassino there, ate lunch, took lots of pictures, walked by the ocean, took some rides, then came back to the bus in the afternoon. While coming back, everyone in the bus was looking really sad (probably they lost a lot of money there); but me and my friends, we did not play gambling too much; so we were just happy after having a fun trip.

Then I attended one event in Manhattan on a weekend (March 23rd) arranged by a group called Adhunika. I met a bunch of great people in that event and made a couple of new friends there.

Then on March 29th, I went to Boston with my two friends from my masters. That trip was also very fun. I went to NJ to my friend’s house in the morning from NY by NJTransit; I picked up my friend and her car and drove to the other friend’s house. Then the three of us went to Boston. In Boston, the weather was much colder than NY; we went to the downtown area of Boston by the river. The people in Boston seem to be much calmer than the people in NY. We went to Quincy Market. We came back to NY on that night.

These are pretty much what I did in last winter. It was the most active winter in my whole life . Let’s see what I am going to do in the next winter. Hopefully it will be as much fun as my last winter.

Today is my Birthday

I have not posted anything on my blog for sometime now; so I decided to write something on my birthday.

Yes, today is my birthday. So far I have not done anything today that is different from other days. I again came to work late, as usual, at 10:20. I dressed a bit nicer today though at work.

So far my day has been going fine; I got a lot of work in the office, exchanging emails with friends, checking Facebook, a lot of my friends wished me a happy birthday and a happy year ahead on Facebook; I am thankful to all of them for their wishes. Lot of my colleagues also wished me a happy birthday, and I am thankful to them as well. My sister in laws (Bhabi) called me from Bangladesh to wish me a birthday; they also mailed me the birthday cards earlier. My best friend called me at 12 AM to wish me a happy birthday. Some of my friends living in other states also either called me or scrapped me on Orkut to wish me a happy birthday.

My family wanted to arrange a family gathering to celebrate my birthday; but I told them not to do anything special this year.

Yesterday some of my friends took me to dinner; today I am going to have dinner with my two best friends, and on Sunday I will have dinner with another good friend of mine.

I should be very happy on my birthday; and I actually AM very happy today; but sometimes some sad feelings are gathering in my mind today. Is it because of missing of having someone special in my life on my special day?

But other than that, I am very, very happy today. Happy Birthday to me

—————

UPDATE: My colleagues just surprised me with a surprise birthday party they arranged for me. It started like this: one of my senior colleague came to my desk; he had this usual serious face and telling me: “Mahbuba, can we discuss about something if you have time now?” I said, “Yeah, sure.” He said, “ok, come with me in the conference room” (with his serious face). Then when I went to the conference room with him passing few of my colleagues who are in my group, there were about 20 of my colleagues waiting for me in the conference room and screamed at me saying “Happy Birthday!” And the colleagues who are in my group and I passed them while going to the conference room also joined there immediately (it was all pre-arranged so that I would be surprised). I was so surprised and happy that I felt like to cry. They had a cake for me. I made my wish and cut the cake. The cake was very delicious

Then all of my colleagues came to me one by one and wished me a happy birthday. I am very thankful to my coleagues for doing this surprise birthday celebration for me.

I am thanking my family, coleagues and friends for making me so happy on my birthday!

Some philosophical thoughts

There are some people in this world who try to be satisfied with what they are getting and what they already have, and there are some type of people in the world who think they want this thing but when they get it they start to think, no they don’t want this, they actually want something else — this type of people are never satisfied with what they get. People can give big speeches on everything, but we have to look at how much of that they are doing in reality, and we have to judge them based on what they do rather than what they promise that they will do.

A good friend of mine once told me the following:

(1) You should treat people the same way you want to be treated. When you treat someone badly, you are kind of asking to be treated poorly yourself.

(2) God Himself won’t forgive you if you are mean to other people.

A Former Colleague’s Wedding

Yesterday evening I went to attend the wedding ceremony of my former colleague. We worked together four years ago.

When I first received an email from her telling me that she was getting married and she would mail me the invitation card if I was coming. At first I thought: wow! this little girl is getting married!!!! I responded with an yes and gave her my mailing address.

I still could not believe she was getting married. When we were working together, we were both doing our masters in Computer Science major in different universities; but we had a few classes in common and we used to discuss about our classes during lunch; and we had similar personality. After we both left that job, we kept in touch with each other for a few months, and then we lost track of each other.

In the mean time, she grew up a lot! Yesterday when I met her at the wedding, she no longer looked like that little girl anymore; she looked like a grown up, matured young beautiful bride at the wedding. She looked very happy at the wedding. The guy she was marrying, she knew him for a long time.

At first they had the American style wedding ceremony, then they had the Chinese traditional wedding ceremony.

After seeing her I realized how much time have passed, and may be it’s time for me to grow up too

Frustrated

I have been feeling frustrated for last couple of days; can’t make up my mind and can’t make any decisions. Feel kind of lost in the middle of nowhere. I wish there was someone who could tell me, “Rumana, take this step, don’t take that step” because I can’t decide anything on my own. Not sure if it’s because of the frustration or for something else, I am getting angry very easily. Everything or anything is making me angry; it’s like I am loosing my patience. I have a lot of patience, but now I feel like I am loosing it all …

Renting an Apartment in NYC (Beware of being ripped off)

I have been thinking of getting my own apartment since March, and I became serious about it for last two months. I have been seeing many apartments in Queens in various locations such as Forest Hills, Rego Park, Astoria; but did not like any that I saw and the rent was also very high in all these apartments.

On that day I found one apartment in craigslist.com; the apartment is located in Flushing, it’s a modern 1-bed apartment with Terrace. The pics looked really good. I called the broker and made an appointment to see the apartment.

After work, I went to the apartment to see it, and the apartment was too good to be true for a NYC apartment. I loved the apartment. I loved the terrace so much; the unit is located in one of the upper lever floors, and I get a really nice view from the terrace.

So, I told the broker I loved this place, and I wanted to take it.

She said, ok, I need $200 from you in cash now for the fee. I was like, wow! is this all she charges! (normally a broker charges one month rent or 12 or 15% of the annual rent as their fees in NYC)

So I paid her $200; she and her husband gave me all the papers to fill out, and they said they would give me the result the next morning after I send them all the documents they were asking for.

The next day she said I was approved. And she told me to bring two official checks or money orders for the one month security deposit and one month advance. And her broker fee is 12% of the annual rent. I was like, why the fee is so high!

But anyway, I called her up later again and brought the fee down a little.

But I still was not happy. I felt like they were charging me too much for the fee and I also realized that I made a mistake by not asking her about her fee on the very first day I spoke to her.

So, I arranged a friend to call her up and ask her about her fee. And she told my friend that her fee is one month’s rent! So, in that case I should be paying much less than what she was charging me!

I just wanted to post this in my blog so other people can be aware of that too and be careful when they rent an apartment. Ask the broker about their fee beforehand.

Another point to make here is that always believe in your instinct. If you feel like something is not right, then find out before you step into it.

My San Antonio, TX Trip

I visited San Antonio (SA) in Texas on Saturday, July 12th to spend a weekend there; I came back to NY on Sunday, July 13th.

The significance of this trip was that it was my first domestic flight trip within the US ; yeah sounds a little weird as I am a professional young woman living in the United States (or should I say in NYC) for more than 10 years. I have visited other places such as London, Boston, Washington DC; but this was my first domestic trip within the US that required me to take a plane

But anyway, my flight from LaGuardia Airport was at 7:40 AM on Saturday morning. I woke up at 5 AM, left home at 6 AM, tried to get a cab but could not get any since they were changing shifts at that time. But I was able to get a limousine instead; it’s this long, black limousine; it was my first time riding on this kind of limousine .

I reached at Dallas airport at 10:40 AM; my flight from Dallas to SA was scheduled to leave at 11 AM, but the flight got delayed by 15 mins. So the flight from Dallas left at 11:15 and reached SA at 12:15.

After I reached SA, I went to my hotel room first to freshen up. Then me and my friend went to see the Sea World. The place was huge, but needed a lot of walking and it was too hot and humid. I became tired shortly. They had bunch of great shows, but could not find sits in any of them (it was Saturday and too many people were there on that Saturday afternoon)

Then we went to see the Tower of Americas. It is the second largest tower in the US. Before we went to the top of the tower, we watched a 4-D movie about Texas. When we got into the top of the tower, my friend took me by the corridor where it was so much windy. We could see the entire city. It was already dusk; and the city looked incredibly beautiful.

The next morning I went to the airport and put myself on the wait list for a later flight from SA to Dallas. Then me and my friend went to the River Walk. We ate breakfast there, walked by the river, and then took a boat ride. The ride was sooo nice; but my friend was sweating a lot from the hot and humid temperature .

Then I came back to the airport. Since I was on the wait list, so I did not know if I was going to be able to take the flight or not. Finally they called up the names of the people from the wait list; they let 4 people in, and I was the fourth one .

So I took the flight back to Dallas. But then I had to go to a different terminal for my connecting flight. So, I took the Sky Link train that connects between terminals. I was alone and I felt little adventurous. When I got to my gate for the flight back to NY, they announced that there was some problem in the airplane; so we had to take a different plane from a different terminal. So, I took the Sky Link again to that terminal and came to the gate for my return flight.

While I was waiting at the Airport, my Boss called (I am an IT professional); he wanted to tell me that there was some problems, but I stopped him and told him that I was at the Dallas Airport. He was, oh wow!

After waiting for a long time, I finally got into the plane. But after we all got inside the plane, they announced there would be a storm in NYC during the time the flight was supposed to arrive; so they would let us know in half hour when we could depart. Half an hour later, they announced they would let us know in another hour. I was like, oh gosh! But anyway, the flight finally departed and they said they would take a shortcut to NY; so we would reach NYC by 12 AM. I was soo sleepy but I could not sleep.

Right before lending, I saw one of the best things in my life: the plane was flying right above Atlantic Ocean, and then once it got into the city, the plane started flying on top of Manhattan; the view of Manhattan from the Airplane at midnight was one of the best things I could ever see. The plane flew on top of Manhattan about 2-3 times, then came to Queens and landed in LaGuardia Airport.

I got off from the Airport; waited in the line for a taxi, and took a cab back home.

Overall it was a great journey. The next Friday before I left office in the afternoon, my boss was asking me, where are you going this weekend? He started jocking with me that he can no longer assume anything about my weekends anymore

Mon Kharap

amar prochondo mon kharap ajke; ichche korche puro USA chere dure kothao chole jete jekhane keu amake chene na; abar notun kore sob kichu suru korte parbo, amon kothao.

SATC

Yesterday me and my friend went to watch the movie SATC in Regal cinemas on 42nd street. We bought the tickets on last Thursday (4 days ago). When we went to the theater, we saw on display that the tickets were sold out; we put a smile on our face knowing that we were lucky to have the tickets to see the movie. Some of my friends were also going to watch it in another theater but when they went to that theater, the tickets were all sold out in there too.

Anyway, we met at the spring street station, and we went to midtown and had dinner first; then went to watch the movie; when we went inside the theater, we saw that the movie had already started, and the theater was full; then we checked our tickets carefully and found that the movie started from 7:40, and we thought it was going to start from 8:10.

But anyway, my friend then pulled me out of the theater, and we saw a big line and asked someone in that line what line this was for. She told us it was for SATC, which starts from 8:20. We were like, let’s get in that line, and we did. The theater was on 2 flights up but the line started from there itself. We found good sits when we got in; the movie was simply wonderful. I used to watch the serial, so I bought the tickets at my earliest convenient, could not wait to watch it. The life of those four women in the movie seems so real. The movie ended at 11. I am so glad that I was able to watch it; I am planning to watch it again for the second time in a few weeks.