Dang, a year has passed...I feel like I almost can't remember anything about this year, that's how quick it feels like it's gone past. Though, I'm sure the fact that I was also working and otherwise keeping my mind busy like a maniac has plenty to do with it. Anyways, a quick recap of the holidays...Christmas was fun, a friend of my aunt invited my and my aunt's family to a big dinner gettogether at her house. Pretty good food (nothing to drink though! the water filter in the fridge was broken and that one half-full bottle of flat soda was gone before half the people even knew it existed), but the company was also fun - the kids in the families that were invited were all people I used to hang out with playing basketball and hockey back in the late high school years. So it was fun to meet them again, playing XBox, pool, ping pong downstairs after the dinner, and overall just catching up. It was weird though, their lives are so different than mine; most of them are in the working world, with decent jobs etc...though now that I think about it, I guess that's the path my life would have taken if I had decided not to go for a music degree and instead accepted the job I was offered at the Penn GRASP lab right before I left...Butidigress. So Christmas eve was fun.

The following couple days I think my brother and I were the most useless, lazy bums ever...we slept on average until like 1 in the afternoon, got up, ate, played video games, went to the Y for a little bit of basketball and working out, then came home, ate, and played video games until like 3 or 4 in the morning. And it felt sooo good. HAH!

On the 31st and 1st, my brother and I went snowboarding at nearby Spring Mountain, joined on the first day by Mike Cho '04, who took a lesson in the morning and by the afternoon accomplished the impressive feat of going down the easy slope making turns in both directions. All the falling that inevitably happens in the early phases of learning how to snowboard left him pretty beat though, so he left early - in time before it began to rain, which sucked because while my brother had a waterproof jacket and I had waterproof pants, we both lacked what the other had. It would have been so much smarter for my brother and me to switch jackets no? That way, only one of us would have gotten wet. Silly brother, never listening to the prudent suggestions I make. Bah!
Anyways, except for the rain, it was a pretty fun two days, though by the end of the second day, we were kind of getting bored. Spring Mountain, PA just ain't no Austria...but then again, it also cost us about 100 times less. The few pictures we took are in the process of being put up - they'll be in the [photos] section, as usual.

The actual evening of New Years Eve I spent at home with family...we watched a movie and TV broadcasts of New Year's celebrations across the world. The Taipei one was sooo impressive!! I found a [video of it online], it really is worth taking a look.

And that pretty much sums up my winter break. I had to come back to NY on the evening of the 1st for Mannes Opera rehearsals which started on the 2nd and went until yesterday...that's 6 hours of rehearsal every day! Pretty tiring. But rehearsals are done now, all that's left are the two performances tonight and tomorrow night. Then, I get a paycheck for a lousy $175 (but more than people got last year, which was nothing) and more importantly, I don't have to be in orchestra again until the May concert, which is good because I need every bit of time during the semester I can get to prepare for my graduation recital...(Shhh, it's on Sunday, April 9th, at 1:30pm in the Mannes Concert Hall).

It is April 25, 2005. My roommate Frank shake hands with Paul, landlord of our just secured apartment in Jersey City - a 1 1/2 bedroom apartment, not terribly big, not terribly good location, but not too bad, and given the short amount of time we had the best option we could find. Despite his somewhat intimidating size, Paul seems like a nice guy, reasonably chill. "Any problems you have," he says as we wrap up the paperwork, hand over our security deposit and head out of his apartment, " just call me, and I'll take care of it. You'll see I'm the best landlord there is."

Fast forward 8 months. We have a problem. Our monthly gas bill jumped from an average of $20 dollars in the summer and fall months to a whopping $170 for December. Pretty clear that it has something to do with the coming of the winter season, right? But that means something's wrong, because our contract says that heat and hot water is included in the rent; all we're responsible for is gas used in the kitchen by the stove. We call the landlord. He doesn't pick up. No surprise though, and like we've had to for the last 8 months, we leave a message, and a couple days later another, and so forth. Almost a month and countless messages later, he gets back to my roommate with some news. "The utilities company can't separate out how much was used for the kitchen and how much was used for heat and hot water. But I'll give you a deal, I'll pay [an amount that comes out to less than half of the bills]." When I hear about this, I am furious. I know I'm not cooking almost 10 times as much these days compared to in the fall, so why should I pay anymore than I did back then, right? I call the landlord myself. This time, my call gets rejected, I can't even leave a message.

Today, coming back from school, I see Paul in front of our building. I ask him if he has a minute to chat about the gas bill problem. So he gives me his version: blah blah PSEG (the utilities company) can't figure out how usage splits up blah blah. I tell him, look, all the facts are there - assuming during the summer and fall there was no heating at all, then the our bill during those times reflects the amount of gas we use for cooking. To cover for any potential increase in gas used for cooking in december, we're willing to pay $30. Paul will have none of that, he gives me the same PSEG crap again. (Interesting also that while doing so, he starts spitting saliva on the ground periodically.) I tell him, look, whatever goes above that I'm taking out of next month's rent, and if this goes to the next level, then so be it. I turn around and head for the entrance; behind me, I hear him muttering something that sounds suspiciously similar to "Not paying money...fuck you." Then he turns around and comes after me. Now in the building, more of his intimidation tactics: "Listen, do you know who you're talking to? Do you know who you're talking to? Don't disrespect me like that again." "Well, YOU better not disrespect me either - I'm not the one who was cussing out there." "If we're gonna talk, you're gonna talk to me with some respect." "Only if you do too." He goes on, "If you can get from PSEG a statement that says how much was used for what, I'll pay for whatever I'm supposed to, but I'm not going to pay money that I don't feel like I'm supposed to." I try again, and brake my reasoning down again. "In September, we paid $20. Let's say that was all for cooking. Agreed?" OK, go on, he says. (The possibility that our real cooking use would be even lower if those $20 included water heating for the shower - a very real possibility, I think, at this point - I don't even attempt to bring up). "Now in December, we get a bill for $140 more. In the apartment, is there anything used for gas other than cooking and heating?" No, he says. "Then what is this additional $140 coming from?" Really, I think Plato couldn't construct the argument any clearer than that. Paul's response? "Unless you can prove to me how much was used for heating, I'm not gonna pay more than what I offered you before." $30, no more, I say, turn around and head upstairs.

What's so infuriating is that he tells us that the company can't separate heat and hot water from stove usage NOW? 9 months into the lease? This means that either he didn't know about it, in which case he is just hiding behind the company response to get out of paying more money, or he knowingly put a statement on the contract that he knew from the beginning he wouldn't be able to honor. Either way, he's breaking his contract, and his intent is to cheat us out of money. And that really just makes me wanna take him down.

Best landlord there could be, huh? Male bovine excrement.

So my cello teacher is out of town with his family for a couple days. As one of two of his students that he feels he can entrust this important task, I have the honor (along with fellow student Ting-chi) of keeping his apartment running while he's gone. This mostly means that we're responsible for keeping his cats alive; a whopping four of them in this mid-size NYC Upper Westside apartment.

They seem to like me; when I stepped into the apartment, all four of them looked at me, then cautiously approached. A few minutes later, they were rubbing their heads against my hand and trying to catch the wristband dangling off my camera while I took a few pictures of them! And I'm sure they like me even more now, now that I've finally given them their evening meal, 6 hours after their usual feeding time...in anticipation of which they gave me a brief but quite enjoyable demonstration of their musical talent as a vocal quartet :-P.

Having made my way to his apartment only around 11:30pm, I'm staying here for the night (with his permission, of course)...he's offered us to use his apartment as "homebase" for the next few days - our own practice room, so to speak, a 15 minute walk from Mannes, and with two pianos, a Steinway and a Boesendorfer. Oy, better stop writing! One of the cats just jumped onto my lap and from there onto the computer desk and demonstratingly positioned her head right in front of the monitor, accompanied by loud purring. This must be the attention-craving one :-P...

Oh yeah, forgot to mention: quite an eclectic animal-lover, my teacher also keeps two birds and a snake in his apartment!