Brief Life Update No. 6: Day of Nostalgia

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I was going to update earlier this week regarding a trip I took on Sunday, but time was short and my will was weak. But, since it feels like I haven't updated this in a while, I figure that I owe some of you faithful readers an update.

Basically, I think I'm currently in one of my "recharging" phases: a lot of introspection, a lot of worrying, a lot of hanging around before I'm forced to focus my mind on the coming barrage of Rutgers-related business. In slang terms, I'm "chillin." I think I need it.

One of the things I did as part of my "chillin" is accompany my family on Sunday on a nostalgia trip: a return to my old home in Queens. Recently the tenants that were living there moved out, and so my family decided to return to our old home to see what kind of repairs and stuff needed to be done.

It was actually one of the more genuinely fun days I've had in quite a while, mostly because of the nostalgia factor: I didn't realize how much I remembered---however faintly---of my old hunting ground in Queens. As we drove through Main Street---Queens' main drag---I kept seeing old buildings---a car wash here, a Queens Library there---and feeling subliminal flashes of familiarity in my mind. It was a pleasurable feeling, actually.

My mother also filled in on details I had forgotten. That school on the right as we went down Main Street, for example, wasn't just a regular big elementary school, as I had thought all these years: it was actually a branch of CUNY, the School of Law. And the predominantly Jewish area of Queens eventually transformed into the predominantly Asian area of Flushing.

There was a library in Flushing that I remembered fondly, a Queens Library which housed a whole lot of Asian pop cassettes that I was very much into when I was young. Shame that it was closed on Sunday; I really would have liked to have gone in and see if anything changed (especially now that tapes are out and CDs are in). But somehow I don't remember traffic being so bad in that Flushing area, which my mother informed me headed down to Chinatown. Driving in New York traffic: it's a bitch, especially with drivers cutting each other off in jammed quarters and not even knowing where they're going. (We witnessed a near-accident happen right in front of us as a car almost collided with a bus as the former vehicle tried to change lanes to the left.)

As for my old Queens house: well, it's certainly not quite as nice as my East Brunswick house---it's a lot smaller, like a bigger-than-usual apartment---but it seems to be situated in a nice neighborhood, and the people that passed by all seemed personable. (Queens, it seems, certainly ain't Brooklyn or the Bronx.) It almost seems like the kind of neighborhood I wouldn't mind living in in the future, if I had a family---or heck, possibly even if I didn't.

Kinda-amusing moment: there was an old framed Fujishima family tree that we all thought had been lost, but which turned out to be still around the joint and kicking. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring it home with us. Maybe next time.

Well, that's all for now for this update. (Told you it'd be brief!)