Nata Frye

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Apartments in New York

Living in an apartment in New York, is living with a lot of people...or at least in my part of town. The walls and windows must be very thin because you can hear just about everything that's going on in other apartments. I hear about 5-6 alarm clock go off very morning.

The woman upstairs wakes up about 7am every morning. She definitely wears high heels to work everyday because you can hear here stomping around all morning.

The guy in the other building across my window wakes up about the same time as me, but wakes up to talk radio every morning. He's really annoying because he snoozes it and it plays like four or five times before he actually gets up. The other morning I listented to a very detailed analysis of the Nixon administration's downfall because of the Watergate stuff in the news recently. And the same guy has a Tweety Bird towel over this window instead of a curtain.

The couple that live across the hall play great music in the morning. Sometimes, it's really awesome jazz and other times they play a female singer...who doesn't sing in English. I'm not sure what the music is exactly, but it sounds like it's from the 50's or something.

The gentleman on the other side of the building has a dog who likes to bark in the morning, but I usually don't notice it until I'm about the leave. I've only met the dog once. He's a really happy guy and friendly, so I don't mind his barking.

The person below us takes really long showers. They must last at least 30-45minutes. You can really hear the water running through the pipes in the morning. Every once in a while, you can catch a bit of the song he or she is singing in the shower. You can tell that the person is trying to keep it down...or maybe they are just shy. I say...sing it up!!

I wonder if my alarm clock or walking around annoys other people.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Chef in the window

On my way to the subway, I pass a window and inside a man is cooking. He's always there cooking no matter what time of day it is. He's got lots of steaming pots and pans out and it always smells so good. He's usually pretty sweaty because he works very fast moving stuff around. It's not a large kitchen, just a small stove and oven with a small counter and a table behind him. I haven't figured out who he is cooking for yet. Maybe he has a big family to feed...why the wife doesn't cook, I don't know. Maybe he doesn't have a wife. Sometimes, I get the urge to yell in the window a food order. I'm not sure how he'd take that.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Short People

One of the cool things about New York is that I am not one of the shortest people here. I run into lots of women AND men who are shorter than me. I'm not just talking about children either. Mostly, the short people seem Mexican or have some type of Latin American heritage. It's funny...when I walk home from the subway at night there are groups of these really short guys sitting in their bikes outside of shops smoking or just carrying on. I swear most of them can't be taller than 5'0".