last tango in the city

So I'm off tomorrow. Can't believe how I got through this neverending break. Dying to go back and make some crucial life changes - for example, chopping off my hair. Yes, I want that guy haircut I had two years back. I don't care if it's still snowing in that shitty place - I was postponing the haircut hoping for spring to arrive, but spring isn't coming until the end of April in that godforsaken freezer of a place.

A quick recap of today, for my grandchildren to read and know how their grandmom was so cool even in her youth ;)

Firstly this happened. I heard about it before I left the hostel, and of course it affected my plan for the day. I headed straight for Times Square! I had to be where the action was, right? Well, there was no action by the time I got there. So, I finally went to the United Nations and took the tour. Umm...what can I say. The Chinese tour-guide had an obnoxious air about him, the kind that is an asset for tour-guides. So I guess he was good at his job, thus made me quite nauseous. As a sign of protest I finally used my handycam when the tour-guide guy clearly warned us against it.

We saw a lot of things - the General Assembly, Security Council, EcoSoc meeting place, and all that. Mostly we saw a lot of paintings and other artifacts gifted to UN by artists from different countries, each of them making UN look like the guardian angel, which is so fucking untrue. All the "achievements" in world peace were told to us with great pride, which is so hard to tolerate when you know that UN mostly is a puppet in the hands of the US president. I know it does some good work, but mostly it is a failure. The stupidest thing was these two maps of the world - one was with the colonized countries of before 1945, and the other was after most of the countries got decolonized. This was to show that UN was responsible for the decolonization of the Third world countries. How can the UN take credit for something people had been fighting for for so long, and something that the world wars made inevitable? Anyway, the only interesting exhibit was about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was this one sculpture made of stone. One side of it was perfectly engraved, and the back side was flattened in a weird pattern. This was the bomb's impact on the stone sculpture, leaving it only to our imagination it's impact on humans.

Why did I go if I hate the UN so much? Good question. I wanted to see the place where it all happens - where lives of nations are changed. I wanted to see the international class system at work - where the rich/powerful nations decide the fate of the poor/weak nations. It was a good learning experience, I think.

I had wanted to buy this one particular 3D painting of Times Square that the street vendors sell there. Its really cool and I had almost bought it on two previous occasions, but its for $20. I had decided to buy it today - I thought I would go and haggle a bit, and buy it for 15 or something. I stood around for a long time, joking with the Chinese guy selling it. He came down from 30 to 20, but refused to go any further. I like it so very much, and I really wanted it, but I too didn't budge. So nothing happened. I left empty handed.

Discovered a whole new cool part of NYC today. It was close to the documentary film venue. It was so cool - so many tiny eateries and tattoo places. I've suddenly been very tempted in the last few days to get a tattoo, but its too hard a decision, but I might just do it very soon. Then I found this really really really cool film store. They had everything, really, everything cool that has ever been made in the history of cinema. I was so tempted, I even picked up a couple of DVDs, but then gave up. I'd rather order them online, I thought, which will be much cheaper than the store.

Okay, so I should really sleep now. Have to check out from the hostel place before 11AM! Can you believe that? I haven't been getting out of bed before 11 since the past 4-5 days, which is a good thing for a sleep deprived, excessively dark circled girl like me.

Just one more thing. I did see the documentary, "what everyone knows", about the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. The film was not well made, but the content was important, and the filmmaker was really sweet. On top of that the organizer of the film festival was a nice young Indian American woman. I got a chance to talk to her after the film. She was really nice and gave me her business card. She has worked for lots of groups for South Asian films in NYC, and is now a film curator in an Art Gallery. So yayy! I could use her resources to get my future films screened in NYC, and also try to find work here for next summer. In the mean time, I should focus on making, as my Brit dorm-mates say, some bloody good films ;)