Nothing Tastes Better Than Five Hundred Dollars I’ve been living in my office these past few months because the house is still half packed. I thought it was the perfect moment to write my first piece for Five Hundred Dollar House with a nice view of the city’s skyline. I started my job six months ago with the plan to move back in December, to move back to a place that would not be under construction. The apartment I moved to six months ago was on its way to being finished, but it was still half empty and under construction. I was not ready to move. The job and I did not sync. Six months into it I’ve realized I’m not an apartment manager. The job and I don’t have a happy ending. I moved back to my old apartment in the middle of all that. It will take me a week to move out and six months to get back into a groove. So far this year I’ve spent three months in three different apartments in one very nice high-rise overlooking Manhattan’s skyline. The last two have been really nice, but right now I can’t see the Manhattan skyline from any of my windows. They are all being painted this week. For now the city’s view looks like this: How the view looks right now. I decided to write this article to show you what it’s like to work in a very nice neighborhood and office during a very bad time. I wrote it for myself, in order to record my memory of these strange times. And here’s what I found: My office is not finished yet, so instead of sitting on my couch I move around the office in an office chair and sit on the edge of tables and stools I have around me. The tables are all full of paper, but the desk is free. Every corner is full of boxes that are always being moved somewhere else. I have friends that tell me I should write these days. Maybe it’s because they think that being a writer makes me think of the right things, or maybe it’s because I am lucky to have friends who read my work. Whatever it is, I always enjoy reading something new when it comes my way. My new apartment has been empty for six months. My previous apartment was full of noise. My current apartment is dead silent, with big white walls that create a sort of dead space in between. I could really enjoy working in my current office if I did not have a co-worker working on the other side of the apartment’s wall. I’m alone in this apartment, and yet my office is very full of workers. It is quiet and clean and dead. When my co-worker vacates for the night, his office door opens and closes. I hear voices coming out of it, but they don’t sound like voices. It’s as if I’m hearing a recording of voices. For the record, they sound like the voices of a young woman and her baby son, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. At the time of writing this, I don’t even know their names. The way they sound reminds me of a scene from a TV series I used to watch as a child. Sometimes, when I hear those voices, I find myself thinking of the show’s name instead of a simple name like Bob or Alice. Here’s the TV series. They used to play it on a local cable channel every Saturday morning. It’s the one called “Wonder Pets.” I used to watch that show every Saturday morning and I would always think about this one scene in particular. The TV show used to have a very nice sound effect whenever anything moved on-screen. It was so special that it reminded me of the times I used to watch the show. Here’s a scene from the series. For me, it stands out as one of its best. So, when I hear voices like that, it brings me back to those great times of my life: Here’s a similar scene from “Wonder Pets.” I can’t find that original scene on the internet anymore. Here’s what I could find. Whenever I hear this music I can only think of the times I used to enjoy it when I was a kid. I remember watching a lot of cartoons, mostly Japanese cartoons, and of course I was fascinated by “Tom and Jerry.” During my childhood I did not see the very first episode, because it was never shown in our TV cable channel. Nowadays, “Tom and Jerry” makes me think of a lot of good things. I think about what life was like before the Great Recession. I think about how the New York of ten years ago used to be full of energy and excitement. I think about a different time, when my father would take me for walks at night. I remember he used to point to the stars, and say: “Look at the stars. Stars are the light of our dreams. They can be our dreams, too.” “Wonder Pets” was very similar. It used to have a very unique soundtrack that was very powerful, but in a subtle way. I don’t think many people could tell, but for me it was as if the music created a sense of magic, of hope, of childhood’s light. It reminds me of a time when I used to look up at the sky, because sometimes, when I looked at the clouds I felt my soul would take me away. If you listen to this music (or watch this scene), you can almost feel that your soul could carry you away to better times, where the universe would be beautiful and full of light. A very short post from a very busy student. This post is about my best friend. The photos are from his visit this past week. He arrived on Tuesday morning and stayed until Friday night. Since our relationship started, I never felt like it was one that is permanent. But now it seems it might never end. The first thing we did after I arrived in the new apartment was to go for a walk together. During our walk, we talked about nothing and everything, including about how much we love our families. He told me he was a father to a little girl, and as much as I wish I could be a father, I didn’t know what to say to him. He told me he wanted to have a bigger apartment someday, because he was scared to grow old alone in a small place. That was it. Nothing more than that. And we got back to my apartment and talked again, and then he showed me the photographs I hadn’t seen since that day in late September. I have a couple of photographs, from that very day, which I have not uploaded to Flickr yet. They were taken by a good friend, who gave me his camera and told me to use it like I did back then. I still remember the way he talked about photography, and I have kept his camera since. He wanted me to upload the photos, but they are too sensitive. We took photos that day because that was the day he told me he had leukemia. I was very glad he told me before he told anyone else. I wanted to remember him the way I knew him, before he had that disease. He lived for five more months after that day, but he never came back. He passed away a month after his diagnosis. On the picture below he was holding hands with his girlfriend. I always feel bad when I see men holding hands. He gave me all of those photos as part of our friendship. That was the first time I showed them to anybody else. I didn’t even upload the photographs to Flickr. Now I want to upload them and tell him I’m sorry for everything. After he passed away, I spent a lot of time trying to upload those photos to Flickr. I found them again. They are my favorites. It was funny to see us smiling and being happy. They are the only pictures I have from the last year and a half of my life. Here’s a picture of the man who has given me the greatest friendship of my life. Here he is holding his little girl. It was a wonderful feeling to see him on this day, after so much time. It’s nice to talk to him through the photographs we had taken that day. He and I used to go for walks a lot, and I miss our walks. We talked about a lot of things, including life and death. My father’s father died six years ago, and my father and I haven’t gone for walks in six years. But now I feel like talking to my father through these photographs we took together. I’m happy to have him as part of my family. The two pictures above are the only ones we have together. This was a very important photograph to me. I hope this is the last time I ever see the two of us, but until now it’s still too soon to tell. Yesterday was a wonderful day in my apartment. Two good friends came for a visit. For my birthday this month, my mother gave me this book. It has a really nice message, and I was surprised how much I liked it. Here are a couple of pictures of the book: When my good friends arrived to the apartment and saw that book, they asked me about it. They also said they had come to the wrong apartment. I was wondering if they knew about the message I wrote inside. They didn