Chinatown Bill

Bill was sitting right by the entrance of the Chinatown McDonald's, asking pedestrians for change. He was wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt and black sweatpants, folded where his right-leg prosthesis should have been. He sat confidently, with his left leg stretched, his prosthesis to his right and with a black beanie with some pennies in front of him. Most of the crowd walked right past his heavily-urban-accented requests for change. I was waiting for someone, so I stood just a couple meters away from him, looking at my cell-phone and at the white-tourists in search of cheap, fake Louis Vuitton bags.
I lit up my lucky (last) cigarette while I was waiting for my lunch partners. Bill asked me for a smoke. I told him it was my last one, but that he could finish the half that was left. He took it and thanked me. I kept standing there. I got there about 20 minutes early, and I couldn't just leave. A few minutes later, a middle-aged Chinese man passed by and gave Bill a pack of cigarettes, and he offered me one. I didn't take it because I didn't feel safe smoking something from a beggar, but I thanked him and gave him a light.
We started talking and he told me about a Chinese lady who was doing yoga at Columbus Park a few blocks from where we were. She had given him a hot plate of rice. "I love that Chinese lady," Bill told me. "If anyone messes with her, I'm gonna kill them! I love that Chinese lady." He smiled. "And I love rice."
Bill told me other things too, but I couldn't understand much. He spoke as if to himself, with a really Black-stereotypical vocabulary and saying "You kno' I sayin'?" every other sentence. From what I could make up, he grew up in New Jersey and lost his leg in a war about a year ago (which war he wouldn't say), in a place where there were a lot of Black people. He also told me he wasn't a thief, and to underline his point he said he could have taken my stuff if he had wanted to. "I just sit here and ask people for change," he said. "I don't bother nobody."
My people arrived a few minutes later and I told him I had to go. We shook hands and I left thinking I would bring him some food on my way back from lunch. After I had eaten dim sum to my heart's content, Iwalked across the street from the McDonald's on my way back to the Canal Street Subway station. I didn't stop by to say hi to Bill and I didn't bring him food.

Hookah-ing Up Astoria

I've become a cheap bastard in New York. My money supplies have been reduced to the point I have to put foreign currency and maxed-out cards in my wallet, just to feel like a functioning member of Capitalism. I've been surviving on pasta, stolen Wireless and cigarettes.
To save money, I've been hanging out in my place with friends and beers. A couple days ago, we decided to change things a little, so we went to a 5-dollar hookah coffee shop in Steinway Street, in Astoria.
The place looked like a run-down house. Some Egyptian men were chatting in there, and they greeted us as we walked in, smoke coming out of their mouths. "Hello," they would say, and as I asked them how they were doing, they smiled like fruit-flavored chimneys.
A man dressed in a yellow shirt, who looked like the owner, sat in the table next to us with his friend. "Hi, how are you doing?" I said, and he said he was doing good. He said he was from Egypt, and his friend recommended us the apple-flavored hookah, so we got it.
"So, why did you come here?" I asked him, and he started talking in what I presume was Arabic. I kept on smoking my apple-flavored hookah, letting the bubbles rise. No Arabic came out of my mouth, just apple-smelling smoke. I turned to talk to the people in my table.
As we were leaving, his friend told us to come back anytime. "We will," I said, and we stepped out into a street with parked yellow cabs and smoking coffee shops. I jumped over a few trash bags to get into my friend's car, and we took the expressway out of there.

Art in Harlem

On Friday, I was feeling artsy and cheap, so I went to the Museum of Modern Art with a friend. We meet a few of her friends there and we walked around, getting lost in art I did not understand but thought was incredibly creative and generally useless. After a couple hours, I was still feeling artsy and cheap, and when one of the new acquaintances mentioned the words "art exhibit" and "free snacks" I was immediately interested.
After a little nap in the A train, I arrived to a Harlem townhouse that was rented for the occasion. A lady welcomed us into the house. "Hey, I'm Narissa," she said, after a polite hug, "nice to meet you." The five of us proceeded to state our names and, with a very big smile and holding a glass of wine, she said "don't test me on this later; I'll let you go around and introduce yourselves to the rest," and left to mingle with the crowd.
I looked at the paintings by Raquel Ríos and pretended I liked some of them. I might have even liked them at the moment, after consuming my fair share of cheese cubes and wine glasses. When my friends were done eating and throwing grapes in my wine, we headed out. Narissa was there, and we said goodbye to her. "It was nice meeting you," she said, and we returned the niceties. "I'll see you around," she said, and none of us tested her on our names.

White Man in Chinatown

The other day, I met up with some friends in SoHo. Our limited budget and ethnic alliances ended up leading us to Chinatown. We walked and my friends were being loud and giggly, like high-school girls on Ecstasy, and eyes kept turning to us as we walked by. We made occasional stops at interesting shop windows, blithely blocking the way of people 5-times our age, stopping them from being functional members of society.
As we kept on walking, we passed an old white man -- the only one I remember seeing in Chinatown. "Stay in highschool," he said, "so that you can do something with your lives." I stopped walking and corrected him. "We're actually all college students," I said, "we go to school upstate."
Mr. white man looked happy about it. His white biker beard morphed into a grin, and he told me to then stay in college. His two daughters did, and now they are nurses, "so stay in school," he said. "That's some solid advice," I replied, and left.
As I caught up with my friends a block away, I thought, "This guy fathered two nurses: He must know what he's talking about." I mean, nurses are awesome. I've always liked nurses. They're hot.

My Conversations with Strangers: First Post

Hi. My name is Jin. This post is the first of many conversations I will have with strangers throughout this summer. To make it special, I thought, why not make it with you, readers? I don't know you, but I would certainly like to get to know you better. If you don't mind me asking, Why do you think we do not talk to strangers in real life?
When I was a little kid, the kindergarten teachers used to tell us not to talk to strangers, because they were bad. Nobody ever told me why, but I assumed it was true. As I got a little older, the explanations became a little more elaborate, and strangers became potential rapists, con-men and internal-organ salesmen. But they don't convince me anymore.
I think there are some very amazing people out there that I still don't know. I'm sure I can have some very nice conversations with some of them. Some might be nasty, but the vast majority of people have some degree of inner good and intelligence.
Of course it would be easy to try this in places like suburban Ontario or the metro in Paris, but what better place to try this than New York City? I've heard that people over there don't stop for anything and push old ladies to the ground just for fun. I have to see that for myself.
I'll get back to you soon and will let you know how things go.
Is there anything you would like to know about the people over there?