So it's January again, and I am a little surprised to find that we are actually here, on account of how 2018 often felt like it would never end, but here we are indeed, and it's time for me to get my yearly quota of personal writing over and done with this month before proceeding to forget about the existence of this little blog for the next eleven months until the next January rolls around and the pattern repeats itself (or I repeat the pattern).
A lot happened in my life in 2018. I started co-leading my small group at church, moved into a new apartment in Hell's Kitchen, turned a quarter-century-years-old, and started a new job. I was denied on my visa renewal petition, lived in a state of unwavering stress and uncertainty about my future for two months, was approved on a second petition, and left and re-entered the country. I attended five weddings in California and one in Michigan, helped my younger sister move into her first college dorm in Philadelphia, and saw my best friend get engaged in New York. I staffed my first TV press junket, walked my first red carpet, played a lot of volleyball, watched more movies than I ever have in a single year (64, not counting rewatches), read more books than I have read in any year since 2009 (31), and, perhaps most important of all these things, binged my way through all seven seasons of The West Wing.
And in between all of those big life events and milestones and travels, I continued to exist on the happiest of planes living in New York and feeling each day that I belonged to this city more than I did the day before. It has been a little over a year and a half since I moved here from the Bay Area, and the surge of deep contentment I feel whenever I walk up and down 9th Ave to my apartment on West 49th Street, or emerge out of the West 4th Street subway station and see the marquee over IFC Center, or retread the exact same path from the Columbus Circle entrance of Central Park in a northeasterly direction to the Alice in Wonderland statues between East 75th and 76th Streets still hasn't faded. Is it a honeymoon period? Conventional wisdom provides conflicting answers. I will get sick of New York in a few years. I will never fall out of love with New York. I will get tired of paying twice the rent of any other city for half the space. I will find everywhere else after New York unbearably dull. I will find out one way or the other, eventually.
For now, all I know is I am very happy here. All the things that most people complain about -- the crowds, the subway, the piles of garbage on the street, the smells -- I either thrive on (the crowds, the subway), or don't mind (the garbage), or don't notice (the smells). The only two experiences that made me seriously question the long-term livability of this city last year were 1) the one major setback I faced in moving into my new apartment, or what I call the Pivot Episode, and 2) Dawn's and my summer-long battle with cockroaches in said new apartment, a harrowing saga during which I, Bird Box-style, never actually saw the monsters but lived in constant fear of them and of the self-destruction that would result if I did.
The move. Really it was just that stupid beige couch from the East Village. Transferring all my stuff from my old apartment was smooth enough. I moved the great distance of 14 blocks, from West 35th Street to West 49th Street, straight up 10th Ave. (Dawn moved into our place from Jersey City, technically a whole state away, but who's comparing?) I hired movers for the first time in my life, after years of bribing friends who had cars (and at least some muscle density) to haul around my college desks and dining tables, and given that I had only one very tiny bedroom's worth of furniture to take with me from my first apartment, the two guys from Man With a Van had me all set up in my new home in no time.
Tong had recommended I look on Facebook Marketplace to find some good used furniture, and once Dawn and I were both settled with all our bedroom stuff I found what looked like the perfect couch for our living room, a beige three-seater that looked promisingly squashy. The girl selling it lived in the East Village, so I promptly rented a U-Haul van for the next evening and roped in Jon and Michael to drive there and help me transport it from her apartment to mine, with vague promises of a reward.
That next evening, Jon and Michael met me at the U-Haul pickup spot and climbed into the front of the van while I voluntarily hopped in the back like a kidnapping victim with a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome and sat cross-legged on the dusty floor, making sure to stay out of sight of cops who might pull us over. It was a quick enough drive cross town but once we got to the seller's street there was, of course, no legitimate parking spot to be found for love or money (because New York). Which is how I found myself, suddenly, sitting alone in the driver's seat with the key in the ignition of a vehicle I was not practically, mentally, or spiritually equipped to drive, much less drive around the roads of Manhattan, offering up repeated prayers to heaven that nobody would come along and tap on the window.
The minutes passed as I waited for Jon and Michael to appear in the rear view mirror walking down the street with a couch... and passed... and passed, until, when over half an hour had gone by and still no sign of Jon, Michael, or a couch had appeared in any mirrors, I finally called Jon. (Or Jon called me, I can't remember.)
"Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, we're, uh, we just have a bit of a problem. We can't get the couch out."
"What?"
"Well, we got it out of her apartment, but like, it just won't fit in this hallway. Do you want to come see for yourself?"
Moments later, Michael appeared at the van door to take my place and I hurried up the street to see what the problem was. I walked in through the open front door of a typical, narrow East Village walk-up and was immediately confronted with a scene straight out of "Friends" (season 5, episode 16, to be specific): Ross Geller, here played by Jon Lee, despairing in the second floor stairwell with a large couch in his arms and on the banister, and absolutely no room to turn it.
The owner of the couch appeared from behind it as I walked up the stairs to join Ross/Jon. She looked just as perplexed as he did, if not more so.
"How did you get this into your apartment when you moved in?" I asked her.
"I don't know... I hired movers and these two guys just... they turned it somehow and got it in here in like five minutes, no problem."
I looked at Jon. Later on he would tell me, in a faintly disgruntled tone, that the girl had emphasized multiple times to him and Michael that the guys who moved her couch into the apartment were really big dudes. ("It's not about strength, it's about knowing the right angles.")
"Here... maybe Yurie, you can try standing below and pushing it up from there and maybe we can lift it over."
I obligingly hefted from below while Jon tried to lift from above, not fully comprehending the directions he was giving me or the physics of the operation, but game to try whatever he suggested. No dice. The couch was simply too large, the hallway too narrow, and the stairwell too small, for it to go anywhere.
After about ten minutes of fruitless huffing and puffing I resigned myself to the obvious and told Jon it wasn't happening and that it was fine, but he was determined to keep trying. I headed back to the van and sent Michael back to the apartment at Jon's insistence, expecting the two of them to return soon enough, but apparently Jon was much more invested in the couch than I was, as more time passed and neither of them appeared. Eventually I called them and told them to give up and come back, and the the three of us drove back up to Hell's Kitchen, couch-less and defeated.
It was a lesson for me that things that are take-it-for-granted easy to do (or for your friends to do) anywhere else can be a thousand times more complicated, if not impossible, in New York. (This principle also applies to shopping for groceries at Trader Joe's.) And it was a lesson for Michael and Jon to never again say yes to any favours I might request of them.
Dawn and I did manage to get a couch, soon enough after the Pivot Episode. I found another squashy-looking couch for sale in Hoboken, rented another U-Haul, and this time made Edwin and David drive it there to pick it up while they were both visiting for the weekend -- but not before I confirmed with the seller that her building hallway was wide and that there was plenty of room to pivot.
As for the cockroaches, well, I guess they are a rite of passage for people who move to New York. But that didn't make them any less traumatizing.
Dawn and I moved into our Hell's Kitchen walk-up in March, and for the first few months of our residence had no fault to find with what was -- and still seems to me now -- a too-good-to-be-true apartment for the neighbourhood, and for the rent. Even the crooked floors which Edwin made fun of and which give my tall bookshelf a significant right-leaning slant in my eyes lent the apartment an endearing, homey air.
Until summer came, and with it the yearly wave of New York City humidity.
The first roaches we spotted were tiny; I initially thought they were woodlice (or roly-polies, if you're American). Claire was living with Dawn and me for the month of June in between her lease ending and her temporary move back to Korea, and she texted us a picture of a tiny bug one day while she was home in the apartment and Dawn and I were at work, with the accompanying message "potential roach issue."
I didn't think too much of it until I showed some friends the photo that evening as we were leaving from small group and they solemnly confirmed that it was, indeed, a roach, at which point I went into a full-on meltdown and Matt and Wesan, alarmed by my outburst, reassured me (repeatedly) that it would all be fine. Wesan made me stop by her place and generously gave me her Raid, as well as some roach traps ("Traps? You mean I have to CATCH them and then they will just be sitting in the corners of my apartment?!" "No no no, it's like bait for them to come get the food, which is poisoned, and then they take it back to their families and the poison kills all of their babies" "They have BABIES?!"), which I gingerly set in various corners of the apartment as soon as I got home.
After that first day, we saw a couple of others, but no more than that, and my fears subsided, until the middle of July, when Claire (again) texted our group chat:
Claire: pmfogmgkgm
Claire: there's a bog ass roach
Claire: help
Claire: someone
Claire: come home
It was a Friday night and I was out at a rooftop bar in midtown, and Dawn was out with Nancy, who was in town and staying with us that weekend.
Yurie: Omg Lord
Yurie: I'm out at a bar
Claire: f
Claire: i went to get something to try and cover it
Claire: and its gone
Claire: wheb r u coming home
Claire: it was so effing big
Claire: idk where it went and i feel like we need to find it
Yurie: shit how big
Claire: like
Claire: the ones you see on the street
Claire: like my pinky lengrh
Yurie: dawn sos
Claire: sos dawn
Dawn eventually replied and the three of us ran through our list of friends we could call to help with this Grade A emergency while also making plans for alternative lodgings for the night.
Claire: i think .. im not sure
Claire: it fking hopped
Yurie: fuck no
Yurie: Shit claire you're on your own I'm sleeping at Eunice's
Yurie: actually Bryant Park is very nice right now I think I'll stay here
Yurie: a man is singing it is pleasant
Yurie: I shall live here
Claire: GET YO ASS HERE
Claire: fuck i am not sleeping here tn omfg
Claire: we goin to patties
I eventually, very reluctantly, arrived home, to find Claire curled up on our armchair, which she'd pulled out into the very center of the living room, with her feet (with their shoes on) in the air. I climbed onto another chair and peered into my bedroom in the general direction Claire pointed to having seen the offending intruder.
We were both too scared to actually go into my room to grab our pyjamas and pack for our stay at Claire's friend's place so we stayed perched atop our chairs, alternately wailing and swearing and cry-laughing about our ridiculous predicament until Dawn and Nancy arrived home and Dawn bravely ventured into my room, whereat Claire and I followed behind her.
There was no sign of the cockroach (who Claire had by this point decided to christen Tyler) anymore, but we two scaredy-cats still fled and headed for Claire's friend's apartment a few blocks away. We slept soundly, safe from Tyler's clutches, and the next morning, in the bright of day, felt cautiously optimistic that perhaps he had left us forever.
That night Dawn, Nancy and I went out with a group of friends for Ray's birthday, with the celebrations lasting (or at least, our energy lasting) until about 3am. The three of us hopped on the C train uptown with Jon, who we bid a goodnight to when he got out a couple stops ahead of us at 34th St, and immediately started getting ready for bed. Claire was already sound asleep, and I had just finished washing up and putting on my pyjamas when Nancy came flying out of the bathroom in a quiet panic: "ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod there's a cockroach! And it can fly!"
What did we do? Of course we called Jon to beg him to come over and help us deal with this giant cockroach. Of course we did, even though it was almost four in the morning, and even though we had just parted with him not half an hour ago, and even though he had to head in to the office early the next morning. Because he was the only person in Hell's Kitchen who we knew was definitely awake at that time, and because that effing cockroach could fly.
And because Jon apparently had not learned his lesson from the Pivot Episode in saying no to favours I ask, and because he is underneath all of his deliberate efforts to wind me up a Good Friend, and maybe also because I told him we'd pay for a Lyft ride to our place and that I would never give him a hard time about anything ever again if he came to help us in this crisis, he appeared at our door about twenty minutes later, in his basketball shorts and tank and looking very much like someone who had been seconds from drifting to sleep moments earlier before being rudely disturbed.
And of course, by the time he gamely poked his head inside our bathroom -- which brave, brave Dawn, who is laying up many treasures in heaven for having been dealt such a pansy-ass roommate, had also ventured into shortly before his arrival, fully suited up in a hoodie and long sweats tucked into boots -- there was no sign of any cockroach, flying or otherwise. It was probably long gone from the moment Nancy had seen it and reacted, but sometimes it takes dragging a friend out of their bed in the middle of the night to come and carefully examine the whole bathroom for you and quadruple check that there is no cockroach currently present for you to be able to go to sleep with some peace of mind.
Unless you are Claire and have been asleep for hours already, blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding around you.
Thankfully, we never saw Tyler or any of his friends after that weekend. But for weeks afterward I would continue to scan the floor from the doorway before stepping into any room in our apartment, and prick up my ears for any suspicious scuttling noises in the silence.
Ultimately I don't think I learned anything valuable from our war on roach(es) other than that Dawn and Nancy were likely wise that night to tell me not to go into the bathroom to see it for myself. I haven't watched the movie Bird Box and probably won't plan to, but I am fairly certain that I essentially lived it out in real life last summer, minus the two children and the rowboat. To wit, Claire, Nancy, and Dawn all saw the giant roach(es) with their own eyes and were clearly destroyed by what they saw; I on the other hand actively prevented myself from seeing them and emerged from the ordeal at least unscathed in never having known what we'd been up against. I am Sandra Bullock.
So that's that. Of all the big and wonderful and momentous and stressful things that happened in my life in 2018, moving a couch and dealing with cockroaches are apparently the two things that stick out the most vividly. It be like that sometimes.
But all couch and cockroach related nonsense aside, there's a lot to be thankful for from the past year. My little crooked apartment. My new job, which I love, and the new work visa that came through after the tireless efforts of my CEO and manager and HR and our lawyers, not to mention the prayers and fasting of my small group and of so many other friends. My church community. The xiao long bao and beef scallion pancake at Real Kung Fu Little Steamed Buns Ramen. The way the sidewalks in New York all come alive at once on that first warm day of spring. So many great movies. My family's good health. The list goes on.
I am feeling optimistic and not a little curious to see what 2019 will be all about, just as long as there are no more damned cockroaches involved. Please pray for Dawn and me this summer.
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