New York

Watching an opera at The Met is an incredible experience. But not everyone lives in New York. This past year was the second season where people could watch the operas, live, in theaters.

The Met’s transmissions of eight live performances to movie theaters reached 908,000 people, more than the total number who attended performances at the house this season (about 850,000). The transmissions do not yet earn a profit, but they do pay for themselves, Mr. Gelb said, through ticket sales and rebroadcasts on public television.

The 2007-08 season showed in theaters in the US and in many countries around the world.

This is a wonderful way for The Met to increase participation. Opera can be viewed as stuffy, old-school and inaccessible. Showing it in movie theaters at a reasonable ticket price ($22 in the US), allows people to check it out without too much of a commitment. It also allows opera lovers around the world to access the performances.

The next step is to stream the performances online. The movie theater screenings in the US (including three theaters in NYC and one in Long Island) did not reduce the attendance at The Met at all –

Against that background and the national economic downturn, the Met has some encouraging box-office figures. The company sold 88 percent of the house this season, an 11.3 percent increase from two years ago. Out of a total of 219 performances, 127 (58 percent) sold out, up from 10 percent in 2005-6, Joseph Volpe’s final season as general manager, and 40 percent last season, Mr. Gelb’s first.

Those who are able to attend a live performance at Lincoln Center (time, location, money), will certainly continue to do that. There is no way a movie theater or a computer screen can replace that experience. The Met could charge a fee for viewing the performances online if streaming for free is too hard to swallow. That initiative could bring The Met a whole new group of followers who are much more likely to buy tickets if they are in New York during the season.

I certainly hope that Mr. Gelb is willing to be that bold.

_{Quotes from this NY Times article}

Once our choice set has been expanded to include things that we never dreamed of that are gloriously better than what we have, it’s very tough for us to be content with the things that used to give us pleasure.

While the article is about real estate in Manhattan, the statement holds true for most things in life.

Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Condo – New York Times

The plan that could have made Manhattan more livable was nixed in Albany.

Mr. Bloomberg and his supporters — including a vast array of civic environmental organizations, as well as key city officials like the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, and other elected officials — viewed the proposal as a farsighted and essential step toward the city’s future growth. But the plan was strongly opposed by a broad array of politicians from Queens, Brooklyn, and New York’s suburbs, who viewed the proposed congestion fee as regressive and Manhattan-centric.

So instead the people who actually live in Manhattan need to continue to suffer?! The city should be a world leader. But the infrastructure is crumbling. This plan was critical to allowing the city to absorb more people and was supported by multiple environmental groups.

Some version of this plan has to come back for the city to survive and thrive.

NY Times:

Some of the Internet chatter on Tuesday suggested that Ms. Wall Spitzer’s silent presence at her husband’s side represented a dark day for feminism, with one writer railing, “Someone needs to tell his wife that ‘stand by your man’ does not apply here!!! … She needs to have some pride.”

But others turned the feminist argument on its head, detecting ample sexism in the notion that Ms. Wall Spitzer was dragged to the podium against her wishes.

“To me, a lot of this commentary seems patronizing to her,” said Suzanne B. Goldberg, a professor of law at Columbia University and director of its Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic. “She might have felt this was the best strategy in a terrible situation for protecting her children or her own reputation. We have no basis for assuming that she’s a mere pawn here.”

I agree with the latter perspective. She’s a strong woman and is likely making what she thinks is the right choice for her family.

This post sums it up nicely:

It is one thing to walk out on your husband privately, another in a public forum.  I give Silda a huge amount of credit for standing up their on the podium with her husband.  Time will tell what decisions she makes for her future and her childrens but I am not sure you can do anything after 25 years but step back and be very methodical.  After all, her husband certainly hadn’t been thinking with his head.  Believe me, I’d leave but it would be so incredibly painful that I am not sure I would be willing to not stand by my man, for my children, at least for the moment.

[Updated] And here’s Charlie’s take on it – LOL!!

Dear Future Wife (Whoever she may be)

If you should discover that, after decades of marriage and a meteoric career, I have spent $80k on high priced hookers, please dump my ass…

…right on the street…

…in public…

…right in the middle of my press conference.

Do not be supportive.  I do not deserve it.

Do not keep my kids around me.  They’d be better off if I wasn’t around.

Joseph Stiglitz won the 2001 Nobel Prize for his work on the effect of information asymmetries on markets. He used that lens to talk about the current sub-prime mess and its effects globally.

Very illuminating. And quite entertaining as well – with some amusing and pointed digs at Greenspan (considering that Stiglitz was the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton years, you know how he leans).

These Nobel Laureates are sharp cookies.

On May 10th, 2004, I started blogging.

I had been in New York for about six months (albeit with a horrendous travel schedule to California) and I quite disliked being in Manhattan. After the wonderfully warm weather and incredible open skies of the Bay Area, I found Manhattan claustrophobic, dirty and over-crowded. And, to be fair, I was never here long enough to establish any kind of routine to help me feel settled.

I thought a lot about my own attitude and decided to try to focus on the positives. So, I committed to blogging about the best of the city each week. Three years ago today, “My Space In A Place” with the tagline “They say loving a place is all about attitude. Let’s see, shall we?” was born.

I didn’t focus too much on the title (obviously!) or the aesthetics or the logistics (no Feedburner, no Technorati) of the blog – I had a very clear purpose – to start sampling the variety that the city offers and to document it online to make myself see the pluses of the city.

My first post included the following:

On that topic, I realized I need to give big, bad, Manhattan a chance — yes, the winter sucked, but we are past that and I hope a glorious summer will let me explore more and enjoy this city. I’ve heard that it takes about a year to fall in love with Manhattan. Which means that I have till October or to be fair, till May of 2005 (arriving in winter can’t count, can it??!!!).

So, a post a week till October and we’ll re-evaluate, shall we? 🙂

The blog lived on Blogger and I did not list it publicly. I shared the URL¹ with family and a close friend who was also adjusting to Manhattan.

With each post I wrote, I started to fall in love with Manhattan – opera, ballet – no, not just ballet, but Swan Lake with Nina Ananiashvili!!, Carnatic music, concerts in Central Park… It was a fabulous summer. Soon, I was missing NYC when I was in California on business. My experiment was working!!

I hit my goal of starting to love NYC by October of 2004. And I was having so much fun with my blog and I kept it up. Finally, in late 2006, after I had quit my commute to California and taken a little breather, I felt ready to blog publicly. That’s when this blog and my Tatvam blog appeared².

I’ve loved my three years of blogging – I’ve fallen in love with my city, made wonderful new friends and had great conversations!

To my incredible readers, thanks for making this little blog, which started out with only imaginary readers, so much fun! 🙂

1. Since that blog had so much personal information, it is now only open to invited users. ↩

2. A couple of times I’ve wondered whether I should have blogged publicly earlier. The answer is no – my earlier blog was a personal journey and one I was not ready to share with the whole world. ↩

In the four years I’ve lived in New York City, some things have gotten better and some things have gotten worse – much, much worse. One of the key things has dramatically deteriorated is the traffic situation.

There is gridlock in so many parts of the city and not just at rush hour, but almost all the time. It is unbearable. Don’t ever try gong up Sixth Avenue – except late in the evenings, and a few short patches in the mid-morning and mid-afternoon, it is like being in a parking lot. While I often take the subway, sometimes I can’t and I sit in traffic wondering how much worse things will be in another year’s time.

Well, if you leave it to Mayor Bloomberg, things will get better not worse. He has proposed a plan that addresses a lot of the environmental and infrastructural issues that NYC faces, including the traffic issue. Having spent a fair amount of time in Singapore, I know that they have a surcharge for going through the CBD (Central Business District) during rush hour. Perfect – all non-essential, non-urgent traffic will use another route.

Bloomberg’s idea is a little different. He wants to impose a $8 fee on anyone who enters Manhattan below 86th street. Great start, but I would also like to see a fine on those folks who violate basic traffic laws! One of the biggest issues that makes the traffic worse in New York (and therefore one of my pet peeves) is the sheer stupidity, arrogance and thoughtlessness of the drivers. NYC is filled with intersections. Tons of them. And every single one of them can become a traffic nightmare with just one inconsiderate driver. Here’s the situation – let’s assume uptown traffic (on an avenue) has a red and crosstown traffic has a green. The cars start moving – all is well so far. The light starts to turn to red for the crosstown guys, but a stupid jackass decides that he can still get across. Of course he can’t. There is no where for him to go. So what does he do? He blocks the avenue, preventing uptown traffic from moving. What the heck?? Since most streets and avenues have timed lights, the avenue gets backed up and then those drivers block the intersection and the vicious cycle continues… I say, ticket them all! Just a day a week, get cops to hand out big fat tickets. It will solve the problem within a month. Where are all the traffic cops??! I have yet to see one ticket handed out for this gross misbehavior.

The traffic rant aside, I like a lot of Bloomberg’s other ideas too, especially the bit about adding trees and parks –

The mayor is proposing 127 new initiatives dealing with land, air, water, energy and transport. His proposals include introducing molluscs into the city’s waterways as natural bio-filters, adding bicycle lanes and hastening the cleaning and rezoning of 7,600 acres (3,100 hectares) of contaminated land. He hopes to add 1m trees. New parks should mean that every New Yorker lives no more than 10 minutes away from one. School playgrounds will be open to the public.

Some of his provisions are even more ambitious. He plans to cut the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30% in part by improving the efficiency of power plants. To pay for this, a $2.50 monthly surcharge will go on electricity bills. He argues that by spending $30 a year until 2015, every household will save $240 a year after that. This bid for energy conservation would be the broadest attack on climate change ever undertaken by an American city.

I hope the residents step up and support him. We need to think ahead and make the hard decisons to save our city. It is the only way to continue to keep it the coolest city in the world!

_{Photo courtesy of The Economist, which retains all rights.}

Vidur Kapur took to comedy after an undergraduate degree at the London School of Economics and a PhD from the pinnacle of Economics, the University of Chicago. And thank god he did. The world needs a comic of his caliber more than it needs another economist – he is fabulously hilarious!

**Warning** The following clip has adult content. Please only view this if you are an adult. ***End Warning***

Ok, with that warning out of the way, forget the first 25 seconds, but the rest is ROFLMAO material.

Maybe I find it funny because I’ve had my name mangled so many times, albeit mostly well-meaningly. I wonder what would happen if the next time I answered with – “Look, my name is Shripriya. It is a classical, ancient, Indian name…” Even if I never use his line, the thought of doing so will certainly cross my mind!

_{I discovered Vidur here}

I was out and about one day when I got a call on my cell phone. Unrecognized number, but I pick up. “Hello? Ms. Mahesh? This is Wilson… your mailman…”

Apparently my passport had arrived in the mail, but he couldn’t leave it for me (I have to sign for it), and he was wondering if I needed it urgently. Yes, I did, so I headed home and took it from him.

That’s what I call great customer service. I have no idea how he got my cell phone, but he’s used it ever since, any time there is anything important. He’ll call me and say that there’s a large package – should he put it in the elevator instead of leaving it under the mailboxes?

Wilson is now in my phone’s address book. With such enterprising mailmen, the USPS is in safe hands!

Sometime last year, I went with friends to see the Bodies Exhibit in South Side Street Seaport. Amazing.

Using a special technique, they get rid of all tissue and fill every cell with a polymer that replaces the muscles and the bone and everything. What’s amazing is that every part of the human body right there for you to see.

The exhibition is huge – you can see the details of all major muscles groups, every major organ (in healthy and decayed state – the smoker lung was frightening), and how all the organs are aligned. For example, imagine a large opening in a human being that allowed you to see their lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach and intestines – that’s exactly what you see, without any blood or gore. They show bodies in motion – throwing a ball or doing an activity and show you which muscles, tendons and ligaments are in play. So cool.

There’s also a room where you can see a fetus develop from a week old. Given the sensitivity of the subject (these are, after all, real fetuses that have been through their preservation process), they make it really easy to skip the room, should you wish. They even show you blood vessels – there was a human-size example of just blood vessels to show you how they are distributed across the body.

All of it is real – no “models” anywhere. If I had seen this when I was in school, it would have taken Biology to a whole new level. If you aren’t super-squeamish, definitely go see this (details of tickets and dates on their website).

_{Photo source: Seattle Times}