pathos

I normally don't blog on topics like my social life, but due to the extreme pathos involved, here is an amusing incident from a few weeks ago.

I met a fellow student from Colombia at the Ulpan and we had a nice conversation. Thanks to my time in Washington Heights, a largely Hispanic section of NYC, we had common interests (reggaeton) and my high-school Spanish wasn't embarassing me. I offered to show her Emek Refaim and see if local coffee compared with anything Juan Valdez produces. This is, after all, someone from the same nation as Shakira, Sofia Vandergarra, and whoever else appeared in 'El Especialito' (a NY paper, presumably read for Spanish, but in fact for it's pinouts) and Jewish too. It also would have been poetic justice for two times I had failed socially with Colombian girls (one Jewish, one not).

We agreed to meet in an hour-I told her my room number, but accidentally gave her the one next to me. While waiting, I shaved and cut myself rather badly. I also noticed that eating chocolate spread for breakfast (who can resist that?) had given me some pimples. To make matters worse, I was out of clean boxers and had to wear a swimsuit. I thought of things to talk about, like how ‘Mami’ and ‘Picante’ have become Hebrew words, how a song of Aventura had become Hebraicized, and tried to wipe the blood off my face.

90 minutes passed, and I began to wonder if el Senora was practicing a Latin American convention (to be socially late) or if she just wasn’t interested in meeting me. I later saw her, sitting with a guy from Venezuela who is a master of judo and yoga.

Sex and the City, this isn’t. I shrugged, went down the block to Supersal Deal, bought a cheap packet of Bakalava from Nazareth (certified according to the Hatam Sofer), some candied sliced etrogs and ate them on a bench at 23:00 hours.