And have just been preoccupied with grad school, so the blog that’s getting updated is this one. Still, I want to tell stories of my life, not just news in New York City, so I’ll be posting once a week from now on.

New York, the city that never sleeps, is devoid of people on the streets today. People are home, nervously boarding up windows and stocking up on bottled water and canned goods in preparation for Hurricane Irene. I’m not so sure what to make of the situation myself, as I come from a place where typhoons occur on a regular basis and week-long class suspensions aren’t unusual. I’m a tempted to say that shutting down the train (for the first time in over 100 years) and pre-hurricane evacuations are a little over the top, but then I realized that this is what sets places like the U.S. apart from developing countries such as the Philippines. The only thing is that I wish my country could afford to be paranoid, but we don’t have the resources to de-clog streets and prevent floods, much less evacuate millions of people who refuse to be displaced.

With all these hurricane-related thoughts, I dug up an essay I wrote for the Inquirer right after Typhoon Ondoy:

Thoughts from a half-submerged house 
By Bianca Consunji
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Last updated 07:27:00 10/03/2009
“I’M NOT so sure, but I think I just saw a turtle swim past me.” This was the first thing I told a friend when I called him up.

“Where are you?” he asked. “Get back inside your house!”

“I am inside my house,” I replied. “I’m knee-deep in water, and it’s looking worse every minute. That turtle that just swam by is from our fishpond outside.”

“What?” he said, stunned. “Then why are you even talking to me now? Go somewhere safe!”

“Right now, the house is the safest place for me. I’ll die if I head out in this weather,” I said. “And to be honest, things are so terrible, I just saw a frog ramming desperately on our window, trying to get shelter from the storm.”
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Daydream, delusion, limousine, eyelash
Oh baby with your pretty face
Drop a tear in my wineglass
Look at those big eyes
See what you mean to me
Sweet-cakes and milkshakes
I’m a delusion angel
I’m a fantasy parade
I want you to know what I think
Don’t want you to guess anymore
You have no idea where I came from
We have no idea where we’re going
Lodged in life
Like branches in a river
Flowing downstream
Caught in the current
I’ll carry you
You’ll carry me
That’s how it could be
Don’t you know me?
Don’t you know me by now?

It hasn’t even been a month, and the ugly pangs of distance are starting to needle their way into my relationship with J. The thing with long distance relationships is that you get to go over only the major, necessary details when you tell someone about your day—that is, if you get to talk at all. I’m grateful for the invention of Skype and the Blackberry, but even those aren’t of much help when what you want to share is all mundane.

So far, my life here is on the dorky side. I’d never been much of a clubber and I can actually be quite shy sometimes; add the fact that I’m basically supporting myself for my living expenses, and you’ll understand why I can’t hit the bars as much as many of my classmates do. I felt really lame when J started telling me about his day while he was nursing a hangover. Everyone seemed to want a piece of him last night; I got a text message from him at 4.30am telling me that he was just on the way home. I spent half the day online, waiting for him to call, and when that failed, I headed out to Marshall’s and Staples. The trains took ages to arrive. On the way home, I dropped by the grocery and got a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s because it was the last day they were going to be on sale.

Today, I barely recognized myself. If you had read that last paragraph without having an idea of who I am, or what I do, or what I look like, your mental image of me must be this: a fat, lonely girl waiting by the phone (or laptop), gorging on ice cream and aimlessly flipping through TV channels, going to bargain emporiums and office supply stores.

The thing is, I live in New York. I go to grad school in one of the best universities in the world. I hop from dress size 2-4, depending on the brand. I have fantastic family and friends who love me. My boyfriend loves me.

That’s what I’d like to think.

Being in a long distance relationship can shake your core and make you doubt a lot of things you value and believe in, because you’re no longer physically—and sometimes, emotionally—close to the person who is supposed to be nestled in the center of your being.

A shot of our group at the international student orientation scavenger hunt by the Alma Mater. Racing around the Columbia campus and its surrounding area was exhilarating—like seeing the sky after a long period spent in captivity. My classmates intimidated and impressed me, and I’d like to be able to prove that I belong in their group. Now, if only I can get started on this paper due on Monday..

I’ve been in New York for just over a week, and I’m already starting to count pennies. The city bleeds you of cash like few other cities can; it’s difficult enough as a tourist, more so when you actually live in it. “The rent is too damn high,” complained Jimmy McMillan of The Rent Is Too Damn High party. I can’t complain too much, because I live in an apartment in Harlem where the rent is reasonable by Manhattan standards. But the other things—groceries, utilities, transportation, other little necessities I never thought of—do tend to run up. Of course I can live comfortably for as long as I have to stay here, but I’d gotten used to having a respectable amount in the bank. Looks like that may change for now.

While I was at the subway this afternoon, loaded with bags after running up another $50 tab at Trader Joe’s, I started to wonder if I really knew what I was getting myself into. Of course I had no idea what it would all entail when I first applied to Columbia; I just knew I wanted to go to the J-School. I went through a period questioning that as well, and here I am on the eve of my first day at school, questioning my intentions once more.

I’m 26; at my age, some friends are settling down, getting married and gearing up to have kids. I’m living in a rented apartment for the first time in my adult life, sleeping on a mattress set on the floor, sharing a common space with strangers (who are thankfully very nice), shopping for secondhand furniture. Actually paying rent on my own. It’s a strange new life, one that involves self-assembled furniture and doing the dishes as often as I pick up something to eat, and I’m entering it with anxiety as well as wide-eyed wonder.

I haven’t been here for a week yet, but my first few days in the Empire State have been pretty eventful. I’ve gone from sleeping at a luxury boutique hotel in SoHo, eating in Michelin-starred restaurants, to camping out on an air bed in my new apartment in Harlem, eating cereal out of a box. I’ve gotten lost, tanned my feet under the scorching sun, hiked up the Morningside Park, renewed my MacBook battery and charger at the Apple store, finished a book, and bought furniture (still waiting for them to be shipped here). Classes haven’t started yet, but I’ve already dropped by Columbia just to try to find my way around town.

I met a couple of J-School alumni—bought secondhand furniture from them—who are leaving town. One of them told me that he was moving because it was cheaper to go back home while he was trying to figure out what to do next. It’s not a reassuring thing, knowing that an Ivy League diploma is no guarantee of success anywhere, least of all in New York. I’m a little anxious, especially since I’ve come from so far, but I’ve had plenty of time to think about things. No turning back.

Starr the Slytherin and Bianca the Gryffindor

This is a shot from the 2007 launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Starr, a good friend of mine since the sixth grade, worked for the Buensalido PR firm and made sure that I got an invite to the event, where they transformed the bookstore into the Great Hall. They even had ‘floating’ candles and a live snake contained inside a glass cage (I refused to go near it). I lost the trivia game because I couldn’t remember the address of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes—93 Diagon Alley, I had put in 91—but I had a pretty good time. I got to keep the robe too, so it’s somewhere in my cabinet.

This was also the night that my boyfriend James first brought me home. Of course, he wasn’t my boyfriend back then; I was single at that time, and I could barely remember his name because for several months, I was calling him Sam for some reason. My siblings and I hitched a ride with a friend, who met up with him at the mall and asked him to take the wheel. He thought I was a geek for being nuts about the Harry Potter series, but a couple of years ago, I managed to get him to enjoy reading all the books. In return, I do my best to pay attention to basketball games and literature. I’m still working on that last aspect.

10 days to New York, and I’m wondering if I should get an iPad just so I could read more ebooks as I can’t haul hard copies in my luggage. Not just Harry Potter, mind you. I do try to read whatever I can get my hands on because I rarely watch TV; I still remember those book-deprived months in Berlin when I had nothing but Lonely Planet Central Europe and a battered copy of Pygmalion to read! I had a laptop and plenty of literary websites at my disposal, but articles just aren’t the same as an interesting book. Once a bookworm, always a bookworm.