New York’s Not Really So Big After All

Here’s why:

Yesterday, I decided to venture out of my “safety” containment area of Columbia University, the 1 line, and 50th street Midtown (where the Time Inc. buildings are located) and attend a second-hand Open Air Book Fair that a fellow intern at work had mentioned earlier in the week. I invited my cousin Kim along, and—after some confusion—she agreed to meet me at the site. The fair was located in SoHo which, conveniently enough, I had been to the night before with two of my suitemates. Therefore, I was fairly confident I knew how to get there, especially since the subway stop I needed for the fair was the exact same one we had used the previous night in order to go to the bar.

To make a long story short, I got lost. Very lost. First I got off at the wrong subway stop for my transfer, then the subway ran past my transfer stop (apparently because on weekends, all trains run express to Times Square, which I did not know), and then I wandered around Midtown for goodness knows how long looking for a subway entrance that would access the B line. When I finally got off at my final destination, it was over an hour after I had left, and who did I see getting off two cars in front of me? My cousin! Talk about bad fortune turning into good fortune.

Here is another story that shows what a small world the humungous city of New York can be. As I already mentioned, two of my suitemates and I went to a bar in SoHo on Friday night. Aileen (one of my suitemates, who is from Texas) knew a boy who knew a girl who knew a girl who knew a girl, so there were six of us in total when we initially entered the bar. As it turned out, the boy had just moved to NYC in order to start a job…with Random House! He was a book cover designer and would be starting work Monday. What’s even crazier is that one of the other girls was also going to be working for Random House—in the Alfred P. Knopf division!

So basically, I want to be her.

I asked a lot of questions and was really enthusiastic on her behalf. Maybe she will be able to help me get a job, maybe not. Either way, she will be a great source of information about a company that I am interested in working for. Therefore, I asked for her email address.

Who knew a bar night could turn into a networking night?