Happy Halloween!

For the past week all that people were discussing was baseball games and Halloween costumes. I’ve heard all sorts of ideas ranging from getting dressed up as Wall-e, cookie monster, getting coupled up as Harold and Kumar (the two guys that went to the White Castle) to going as a slutty pumpkin :) My personal idea was dressing up as a couch potato, not sure exactly what inspired me, but it turned out to be spookily accurate for me !

I’ve been planning to go and take a look at the Halloween parade in Manhattan, but having hurt my knee I actually did spend my Halloween evening as a couch potato checking out the functionalities of my new TV and catching up on 30 Rock (on demand TV rules !), Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl. The best thing about watching the TV shows in real time as they air the episodes or on demand a couple of days later is exactly that – the time is real ! On both Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries they had a Halloween party and the actors were all dressed up, even though I was not a big fan of the sexy nurse outfit of Elena

Finally having TV and internet connection feels soooo good. A funny detail is that it rained on the Halloween parade. Literally. Lots of rain. I hope they had umbrellas with them :) and I think that anyone dressed as Mary Poppins would win the costume contest. Pity I missed it…

Another great event that I missed last week was the first NYC Dumpling Festival

Check it out here/ http://www.bromography.com/2009/10/24/nyc-dumpling-festival/

All sorts of dumpling-like food from all over the world was there and I was not there due to moving… :(

Anyways, on a happier note, as far as new food tasting and keeping your mind open goes – I ate something really weird last week. I ate a baby crab. That’s right, the whole thing, as it is. I was hesitating for 4 days, it just looked like a little pet to me. One of my colleagues is Chinese and she was eating these as a snack and dared me to eat one too. Considering in China they eat all sorts of things that are much less appetizing than a crab, I thought that I might take my chances and try something exotic. I still feel bad about that crab, it just looked so nice and cute and it was actually food!

There’s actually another person who very well describes the experience in this blog/ http://www.theanimeblog.com/japanese-snack-reviews/japanese-snack-review-tamagogani-meisauki/

I was thinking the other day of all the bureaucracy I see so far on every step and it is actually very surprising, considering that my American friends are always complaining how inefficient things are in Europe :-) You have to have a social security number for every little step you want to take. If you do not have one or just got a new one, be prepared to shell out some serious cash for every little thing you want to do such as:

• renting an apartment (your rental guarantee will be double the normal amount requested)
• getting a cable TV and internet ($150 deposit)
• getting the electicity contract ($380 deposit!)
• getting a decent postpaid contract for your phone (just forget it, you’ll never get it without SSN)
• getting a credit card (they don’t care that you are employed and live here)
• getting a membership at a store you like (they don’t want you to shop there more if you do not have an SSN)

and the list goes on…

I guess objectively speaking it is a bit complicated for all people that find themselves working in a foreign country, be it the US or elsewhere, but I was just thinking that here they take it to a whole another level! :-)

But America is great in other ways, such as the enormous selection of my favorite Haagen Dazs ice cream!! Gotta go visit the freezer again and have some more of that awesome dulce de lece :-))))