I know we're gonna meet someday in the crumbed financial institutions of this land

Well, it's been awhile.

Since my last post, I've done my internship in New York City, come to Shanghai for two weeks (so far), and learned ever so much about life. This summer has been one of the busier one's in my life, and I'm looking forward to my one week home in California, where I'll be able to enjoy my In 'n' Out, and Panda Express while I watch Tivo'd Blind Date.

That's another thing that happened since I've been gone...they cancelled Blind Date. I'd like to be more upset, I mean I've seen at least 500 episodes of that show, but to be honest I think it had run its course. And after all, I'll always have Elimidate...what they cancelled that too? This is very bad.

Look at this, my first blog post in three months and half of it is about awful television shows. You're probably wondering what I've been up to in these two metropolises I've called home for the summer.

Well before that I had to move out of Princeton. A lot of funny stuff happened during packing up. For example, because I have to fly home, there are just huge amounts of boxes that I end up putting into storage. There's supposed to be a two box minimum in the free storage, so I sort of put on disguises and space out my trips so that I don't get recognized. But eventually the guy who runs it, Tony I think, caught on. He sighed, and said, "fine just bring up whatever you got". Big mistake, I put my fridge, guitar, and boxes upon boxes into the hot attic where it is probably all melting right now.

The second thing that happened was that I had to spend the change jar that I had accumulated over the year. All told, I had more than 20 dollars in change. The first 5 dollars, I made a huge tactical error on, by going to the school cafeteria and buying a salad. My second tactical error was insisting on "getting rid of some of the dimes". The cashier soon lost her patience as the line behind me piled up.
I spent the next 10 on boxes for the previously mentioned packing. The rest of it was really hard to get rid of. I'm not sure what the moral of this story was, except for, change jars may seem like a good idea at the time, but there really kind of annoying when it comes down to it.

So then I went home for a week before going off to New York. As college juniors are wont to do, I worked at a bank for the months of June and July. For two months, every week day, I woke up at 6:15 in the morning, put on the New York top 40 radio station, took a shower, and went to work. I'll say this, the only music I have any patience for that early is top 40 radio. Of the 45 days I did this, I probably heard Panic! at the Disco 20 times and Gnarls Barkley 25. I have no problem with this, because when you're that tired you're just looking for something familiar to grasp on to. And this is exactly what you get when you tune into the Z100 morning zoo. Aside from the exact same songs, you also got a prank phone call at about 6:30, as well as some wild stunt from a guy they call "Roundhead", and stupid news with John Bell at 6:50. That was what the bit was called "Stupid News". I swear it was the same, predictable anecdote every morning.

So a guy goes into rob a bank. He gets away, but accidentally leaves behind his wallet. With his name in it!

So you're probably wondering how I was able to listen to stupid news at 6:50 and make it into the office by 7:00. Well this is where I got really lucky. When we were hunting for apartments earlier in the year (we started far too late, are you surprised) my friend Rob and I got very lucky to draw a short straw from the NYU housing department, which lead to our eventual placement in Bryant Park Place, a lovely 12 story building located smack dab in the middle of Manhattan. The best part of all this was my 100 yard commute to work every morning. My big mistake was telling the boss that I lived 100 yards from work. I lost basically any excuse I had right there.

Blogging is fun! I don't know why I stop like this sometimes. Blog let's never fight again.

I had two bosses at the bank, Sarah and Scott. Both were great. Sarah was my boss on paper, but I saw her a lot less than Scott. Scott has a desire to teach and lead, which was great for me, because it meant lots of hands-on instruction. One of my tasks was to capture more interns for Scott to control. I got three, which was a number that satisfied Scott.

I won't get into too many details of the job, for fear that I might somehow violate the extremely thick non-disclosure agreement I signed, except to say that it was nothing like what they lead you to expect from I-banking. It did start off a bit rough, but by about week five things started to click into place. The bank did make me an offer to work there after graduation, so we'll have to see what happens. The offer would include time in London and Hong Kong as well as New York, so it would be hard to say no.

A couple of highlights from outside of the office:

Getting literally knocked to the floor in a jousting style event with my boss at an off-site. They had set up some mats, but I flew well-clear of those.

Seeing Jessica Simpson at some event at the New York Public Library. I could've sworn it was Ashley, but the papers proved me wrong the next day.

Bumping into at least five Princeton students randomly on the streets on New York. I tried to calculate the odds of this and they were...pretty high actually. There is a mass migration of Princeton students to New York every summer. It's much like geese, or antelope, or other such migrating beasts. But if you wanna hear something really strange, I randomly ran into a Princeton girl in Shanghai. And she was from my grade. And I'd never seen her before (I recognized because she was wearing Princeton shorts). I spend three years on a 4,000 person campus and never once see this girl. My first week in a city of 10 million and there she is. Wacky!

Going to the gym every day. I've become a bit of a fitness nut. One day I was there for about three hours. I tend to stay longer when there's something really good on TV. In this instance, it was a Fear Factor marathon.

Meeting up with some old favorites from the St. Margaret's era. I saw more of Erin Sale this summer than I had in the three years before it. We never did make it to any concerts together as planned, but we still had fun. I also saw Ryan Baker and Brooke Bircher. Sorry, I don't mean to drop names.

Being depressed by pretty much everything that happened in the World Cup.

Seeing a couple of great movies (Little Miss Sunshine, The Descent), an ok one (Talladega Nights), and the worst movie ever made (You, Me & Dupree, which I saw after my roommate, Rob, guilted me into it. He had been working 100 hour weeks, and his bosses let him off early one night. He was so excited that he insisted we go see this movie at 10 pm. I felt bad and agreed. Never will I do something selfless again).

Being visited by Matt Sauter who was in Maine at a summer camp and getting turned away from a sold out Upright Citizens Brigade show, but seeing one of the members of the act, the guy with the curly hair.

Going on a cruise around New York City, sponsored by the bank, which featured lots of line dancing, and in which I was asked to perform in a terrible Cabaret show in front of 200 passengers, and accepting, and vowing to never accept such a thing again.

Seeing a dissapointingly few number of shows. Let's see there was Smoosh & Eels, Lady Sovreign & The Streets. Wow, I think that might be it. A far cry from the greatness of two summers ago, but if I'm being perfectly honest, the whole scene was pretty slim pickings. I mean how many times am I going to have to see Bloc Party, before something new will come around. Twice? Too many.

Clubbin' with Jay-Z and getting signed to his record label. Well, actually this one isn't true.

Obviously a lot more happened this summer. At one point I declared Chipotle Grill my favorite restaurant of all time before visiting the nutrition section of their web page and adding their burrito to the list of things which are tasty, but which I must never eat. Marie Callendar's microwavable chicken pot pies are also on this list. Rob and I had a number of casual get-togethers at the apartment, and much fun was had by all. Overall, a smashing success.

But I wanted more. Sometime during my NYC jaunt, I got this offer to come to Shanghai. Who was I to say no? I spent all of my hard-earned money on a plane ticket to China and now here I sit, in the amazing apartment of a family friend, writing this blog. I've been riding his bike around the city, exploring, and realizing how much Chinese I forgot. One day I'm gonna snap and just lock myself in a room until I'm fluent. Hopefully soon, because this whole gesturing and grunting thing is really wearing me out.

I will have much to say, hopefully, in the next two weeks. Step one is fixing the awful digital camera alloted to me from the Knight family collection. Let's just say of the roughly 6-7 cameras circulating through my immediate family, I got stuck with the very worst. I am in China. The remaining three are in San Juan Capistrano. This, to me, does not seem like an efficient allocation of resources.

Tonight, I discovered an Indian restaurant that is dangerously close to this apartment. They speak English there, serve ridiculously good food, and accept credit cards. They do also expect a tip, unlike every other restaurant in China, but, also unlike every other restaurant in China, they seem to adhere to some sort of health code. I fear that I may consume the rest of my meals in China at this restaurant.

Has anyone made it to the end of this post? I'm guessing my mom has. Maybe my dad. If you have, let me know, and I will feel as though my life has not been in vain. Thank you and goodnight.