New York Travel Diary 11th May 2010

Tuesday 11th May 2010

The morning was also fairly relatively uneventful in a sense, with me doing job searching to start with. Not much has really appeared of late, though I did apply for three positions this week. Laundry had to be done, and while Fang went out to deal with some administrative matters, I stayed in job searching. Her friend Elina, I believe Armenian/Russian, came over to exchange graduation tickets (so they could attend each others) and we had lunch at Roxy’s Pizzaria. I had a chicken parma pizza, that was interesting, but it wasn’t filling enough so I further got a pastry wrap. I thought it actually only had a hotdog inside as that was what I saw being made, but when they cut it and plated it for me, it was a solid block of chicken inside. So I was pretty darn full after finishing it.

Returning to the apartment, I set about doing the laundry, having to make multiple trips as the first trip I loaded the laundry into the washing machine, but when it was done, there were no dryers available. There was someone occupying four dryers, drying blankets/quilts by the looks of it, setting the drying time to 99 minutes per cycle. I came back down twenty minutes later to get one machine, with a standard 54min cycle before finally returning again to pick it up. Mishap happened later though in that when I left the apartment to pick up the laundry, the roomie locked me out when she left, so I ended up sitting in the corridor for half an hour sleeping until Fang returned. No-one questioned or looked twice at me with me sitting at the end of the hallway with a grey bag against the wall though. I guess I just don’t look that suspicious lol.

We then got ready for the graduation dinner formal. The NYU Medicine Class of 2010 Formal. It was held at Gotham Hall, at 1453 6th Ave between 36th and 37th streets. It used to be a bank, Greenwich Savings Bank before it became a function venue in 2002. The building is an impressive sandstone building with an upper section that overlooks the oval downstairs space, where they had set up two bars for pre-dinner drinks and finger foods. We mingled, had photos taken, met academics and researchers, before shuffling down to table 21 where we sat with others. I had already met Will and Shalla before, and seen some of the others there from the other dinner at the Brabecks residence, so I wasn’t a total stranger to them.

The appetiser (entree to me) was a salad on a nest made of noodle, with some yellow baby tomato with a balsamic dressing. Entree (main) was a choice of char sea bass with vegetable or a seared pepper crusted steak, where I took the sea bass, while dessert was a pastry wrapped and deep fried banana sliver with vanilla ice-cream coated in caramel dressing and shaved nuts, served in a raw sugar rim coated margarita glass having a strawberry slotted on to the rim. Coffee and petit fours followed also.

There were speeches and awards given from the students to the staff, and a speech by one of their academics, congratulating them and giving them a vote of confidence in their abilities, even if four years seems to be a short time to become responsible for making life-changing decisions. As he said, you’ve been trained at one of the best universities in the US for medicine, and trained with hands-on experience at the best hospital in the country (Bellvue) so any fears and doubts should be gone since they could not have had any better training leading to it.

Afterwards came the dance. The band/orchestra was the Alex Donner Orchestra, but, I must say, I was pretty impressed. During/before dinner they played the classicals, along with jazz pieces for the mood and what not, but then broke into golden oldies for the slow dances during dinner intermissions for those who wanted slow dance, before rocking it out with classics like “You Shook Me (all night long)”, “Simply the Best” and some John Mellencamp, but then pulled out all the stops by switching into the modern era doing a pretty good rendition of Black Eye Peas, and even Lady Gaga. They were still rocking it out when we left, the noise was deafening however and I probably have suffered some minor hearing damage/loss. Though, what they say, work hard/study hard, play hard. These med people, they know how to party hard.

It was a light drizzle falling on the way home, and we walked in the cool breeze, chilling off and looking good in the dark of night before getting home and going to bed.