It’s a beautiful evening on our last night in NYC. Tomorrow Doolies and I leave for our respective cities, changed slightly (sort of like being moved to the left a bit). The weather today was again atrocious, unbearably hot and uncomfortable. We slept in the morning, foregoing and exciting-sounding trip to Long Island and the airport to pick up Doolies’s mom and the Master Teacher, the spiritual leader of the Buddhist sect that Doolies’s parents help run. Instead, we went bought a birthday gift for Rachel, and wandered in Central Park for a few minutes, before realizing that the incredible heat was driving my slightly insane.

Looking back, it might have been better had we slept during the day and ventured out only after the sun had safely set. I’d like to blame global warming for the heat, but it’s probably a freak occurrence (I’ll blame other things for global warming, like the melting of the ice caps and the upcoming shift in global climates thanks to certain Republican leaders—but that’s getting too close to politics, something I’ve tried to stay away from to because I have little to add to the fray and little energy or desire to jump in.

Jumping back to my meta-writing, I’m predicting this will be a rather painful musing to write. I’m tired, there’s only a caffeinated Coke running through my veins, and, while I have a few things I’d like to say today, none of them are likely to get enough of a rise out of me to provide me with the energy I need to say them well. I’ll plod away, however, and use these meta-writing paragraphs to pad my count. While cleaning out her bag in preparation for packing, Doolies found a bag of chocolate coins, which I am liberally partaking in—what a terrible turn of sentence. I’m not into this tonight. After eating four chocolate coins, I had Doolies take the bag away from me. I’m so weak.

Doolies and I had dinner with Doolies’s parents, Jennifer, the Master Teacher, and a few people in his entourage. One of his entourage was from Australia and spoke English well, and provided a good translation of the Master Teacher’s words. He provided his thoughts on Buddhism and education after the meal, a vegetarian Chinese dinner, which was surprisingly tasty. The two things I learned about Buddhism. First, there are “three poisons” of Buddhism: Hatred, Ignorance, and Greed. Selfishness is particularly bad since it includes all three poisons. Second, the world would be a better place if people removed the poisons from their lives. The Master Teacher used a Japanese “study” (he made it sound scientific, but I have my doubts), in which a researcher took glasses of water and wrote placards with the words “Love” in front of half, and “Hate” (or Ugly) in front of the other half. He then froze all the glasses, and studied their crystalline structure. The glasses with the “Love” in front had beautiful structures, while the glasses with the “Hate” in front had ugly structures, which just went to show you, as he explained it, that there’s something about happy thoughts being better.

That was a terrible discussion of a rather interesting lecture. I’ve the Master Teacher lecture before on the Buddhist television channel in Dallas and Taiwan. The English that scrolls along the bottom does not do his talks justice, or so I’m hoping. He’s much more interesting when the nuances of his stories are conveyed better. This goes to show you how valuable a good translator is (that’s for you Chuck).

I’m only 600 words in and I’ve decided to take a second meta-writing break. I don’t know why these are easier to write than actually saying something. It might be that I’ve becoming so efficient as saying nothing in these paragraphs, that I can write 2,000 words with nothing but nothings in the form of meta-writing. Or it could be a crutch that I need to grow out of, something I use to pad my writing when I could be spending this time working on something interesting or rewarding. (The same could be said of much of my diary entries, especially the one when nothing of interest has happened to me, and I have little to share). This lying in bed and typing, I’m finding, is not good for my wrists or writing energies. I sat up in the hopes that this will improve my output and save my wrists. I’m lying back down on the bed, after my back hurt. I’m too lazy to do anything constructive. But I’ll keep at it because that’s what I do: keep at it. I’ve used this mantra a bit too much over the last couple of days. I think I’ve been waiting too long to write. By the time I lie in bed, my muse (no pun on the name of the terrible hotel we’re staying in: The Muse—I guess it’s not a pun so much as a coincidence) is already sleeping and trying to drag me down with her. With the scorching heat we’ve experienced, nighttime has become the only comfortable time of day to wander the streets of NYC in comfort—my favorite pastime while here, which explains why I’ve written most of these musings way past what normally would have been my bedtime.

Looking back at my engagement, there’s definitely one thing I would have changed: I should have spoken to Doolies’s parents before asking. I was in a bit of quandary before the date, asking everyone (except, obviously, the right people) about Chinese traditions, and whether it was necessary. Jennifer scolded Doolies and I, first for ducking the drive to the airport, and then for me not asking Doolies’s father before I asked Doolies to marry me. He’s not angry—he’s happy as long as Doolies’s happy—but he felt excluded from the entire event. I feel bad about that. I should have called Jennifer or Janie to get the contact information for Doolies’s father. I wanted to keep it a secret (which was why I decided against it, that and according to my research, it wasn’t the custom it is in many other places), and I wasn’t sure if Doolies’s sisters could handle the secret. All excuses now, of course. Nothing to do but apologize and move on. Our wedding, something that’s still a couple of years away in the likeliest arrangement, might consist of two parts: a Jewish wedding somewhere in the states, and a Buddhist ceremony either in the states or in Taiwan. Doolies and I will have to figure it out. Of course, I’m still leaning toward eloping, but after the father mishap, Doolies isn’t so sure we’ll be able to pull it off. Now that there’s no secret anymore, I’m free to write our plans and my thoughts on those plans here. Hopefully they’ll be better than the crap I’m throwing down today. (It’s so easy to write these self-deprecating comments about my bad writing today, a trick I couldn’t use during the Marathon to pad my counting. I’m not sure why I included that here. Perhaps I’m beginning to realize that while my 2k Goal (which is sacrosanct now) is important, I might have to tweak it to start forcing me toward my 10k story goal, which is so far from beginning that, to put it frankly and quite poorly, it isn’t even funny. Enough crap, time for a new paragraph.

I hit the three main points for today. Now I need to finish off the last 700 words and call it a night. We have a busy day tomorrow. We’re waking up early, checking out of the hotel, and heading over to Doolies’s family hotel near the UN for breakfast. My mother is picking us up around 11 tomorrow morning (which is one or two words more than saying 11am, which is eight more words after I type this parenthetical—desperation is a disgusting beast) for a quick trip to visit Eileen and her monsters. From there, we head to the airport for our flights to Seattle and Newport Beach. It’s been wonderful, as always, spending a week with Doolies. I can’t wait until these weeks can last longer, turning into months and years. But that’s another year away. If words were like wishes—or something silly like that.

During the parenthetical of the last paragraph, I came up with another part of the goal. While the 10k story goal is admirable, I’m not sticking my foot into the water on that one yet. What I need is a weekly story goal that moves that 10k goal forward. Perhaps a 5k or 10k story draft goal per week. I’ll give this a little thought before I jump into it. I don’t want to bang my head on the bottom of the pool or anything with a hasty jump.

I’m in the final stretch for this musing. I should start editing these down from the 2k I write. If I did, this entry might end up at around 250 words, and I doubt anyone would believe that I went anywhere close to the Goal for the day. Plus, the process of editing would take effort, something I’m lacking in both writing toward the Goal and writing in general. I need to get back into my routine, find sometime during work to thinking and drink coffee, and then pound out the words early enough where I don’t feel rushed to get this done before going to sleep. I also need to get back to my morning exercises (the physical kind, not the writing or mental). After managing to do them once while in Brooklyn, I haven’t managed another day of them. I was up to 45 push-ups, sit-ups, core, and jumping jacks. I should be able to do that again on Sunday. Maybe.

A motorcyclist is revving his engine outside the window of our hotel. There he goes, finally leaving. Our window looks out onto a brick wall, which make me wonder where the motorcyclist was parked. As I said before, our hotel choice was not great. This place was a bit expensive for the crappy quality (see “pre-dinner show” reservations from yesterday), or small room, or lack of a view, or sufficient toilet paper. One of the entourage at dinner today provided a good way of telling the difference between five star and three star hotels. (The Master Teacher has traveled the world over the last month, going to Paris, London, NY, New Zealand, Taiwan (maybe a few more places, or a few less, it’s just a general list.) A five-star hotel room doesn’t have its own coffee maker, while a three-star hotel room always does. I guess it’s more of a discussion on the type of people that stay in three-star as opposed to five-star rooms: the three-star people want to make their own coffee; the five-star people want their coffee delivered to them in the form of room service. This came up because the entourage needed a coffee pot to make tea for the Master Teacher, and didn’t find one in the hotel in NY.

This will be the last entry I write in this hotel. Tomorrow’s entry should be written on the plane, if everything goes as planned. I received my upgrade notice a few days ago, so I should have lots of room. With the delicious coffee Continental serves, I should also have plenty of yummy energy to get my juices flowing. All I have to do is focus those energies in some direction other than a retrospective musing on all the things I should have discussed on nights like this when I had so much to talk about and so little energy and skill to say them. As I close in on the last thirty words of this musing, the energy starts to flow. Until I took a hug-break from Doolies, these were the easiest words I’ve written all musing. I guess good things always happen at the ends. So long from NYC!