an article about a bicycle delivery man in manhattan...pasted some of the parts that stuck out...
"This first delivery of the dinner shift was more than a mile from the restaurant. Arriving, he surged off the bicycle, lashing it to a nearby pole with a heavy chain. A doorman stepped from the gleaming entrance of a prewar building on Park Avenue and pointed him to a side alley.
Mr. Lin hurried down a ramp, past trash bags and through a door into the basement. There, a building worker waited to take him up in a manually operated freight elevator. He exchanged few words with the customer, who handed over $15.50 and a $2 tip.
Deliverymen and women have few defenders or advocates. They lack the cultural aura that once gave bad behavior by bicycle messengers an outlaw appeal. Nobody romanticizes deliverymen — and they are almost all male — as urban cowboys.
“It’s one of those things that New Yorkers just look away from,” said Kevin Bolger, 40, a former owner of a messenger company who has worked as a food deliveryman. “Delivery workers are like dishwashers on wheels.”
He was awake at 8:40 a.m., and his routine was simple: brush teeth, take 10 minutes to dress, compose himself and pray before heading downstairs to buy breakfast: one roll, one milk tea, $2. It was the only money he would spend on food all day.
“A customer returned this food, so I get to eat it,” Mr. Lin said of his dinner, sweet-and-sour chicken with green beans. “Our boss is really good.”
Mr. Lin, who works six days a week with Mondays off, was initially vague about his earnings but eventually said he received a base pay of $30 a day, with additional tips totaling $30 to $50. In a good week, he could pull in nearly $500
He removed a wad of cash from his pocket and counted the day’s haul from nearly 25 miles of travel for more than two dozen deliveries. His helmet still on, he fingered through the folded $20s and wrinkled singles to count about $50 for the day. That would become less than $40 after the tips were pooled and split, he said."
...and some people wonder why occupy wall street started here...this is the other side of nyc...about a woman who wanted to buy a place in manhattan...has a phd in electrical engineering but works as an analyst at a financial firm (as charlie brown would say, "ugh"...one of the many things wrong with today's job market/economy)
But “the apartment screamed for renovation,” said Ms. Giannelli, who is from Florence, Italy. The floor “had little hills, it was all up and down.” Her rent rose over time, though not a lot — the increases averaged 1.66 percent per year, she said. She ended up paying $2,450 a month.
Ms. Giannelli, 43, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and works as an analyst for a bank, started running online calculations. “You can see, based on certain assumptions, if it is more convenient for you to rent or to buy,” she said. “For me, I was a little better off buying because my rent was so expensive.”
Ms. Giannelli’s price began in the $600,000s, and she saw a lot of places that were dark and overpriced. Realizing that finding a nice apartment under $700,000 was going to be difficult, she soon raised her limit.
Last spring, she saw a spacious one-bedroom at the Hamilton, a postwar co-op on East Ninth Street. It was listed at $725,000, with a maintenance fee of almost $1,300 a month, which to her seemed high.
“When I heard there was this blind bid where you have to present your offer and see if it goes through,” she said, “I was very stressed out. You never know whether you offered enough.” With an offer of $715,000, she hadn’t, but she wasn’t terribly disappointed. The apartment sold for $730,000.
Farther uptown, a large one-bedroom in a prewar Art Deco co-op building on 16th Street had a beautiful terrace with a view of Stuyvesant Square. The price, originally $985,000, had been lowered to $925,000 — over Ms. Giannelli’s budget, but maybe it could be negotiated down further.
A few months later, good news arrived: The owner of the unseen twin on East 18th Street would be moving after all. The price was $759,000, with a maintenance fee of almost $1,100. Ms. Giannelli offered $775,000, “just to be on the safe side,” she said.
this is just ridiculous...i'm not blaming the woman...she probably worked hard to get where she is...i'm just pointing out that there is something wrong with the system when someone who is willing to work as hard as mr. lin can make only enough to eat $2 dollars of food a day, and the financial analyst's (what do they do that is so difficult?...electrical engineering i can understand...finance, not so much) main concern is wondering if a million bucks is too much for a tiny apartment...that's my take on the two articles....now on to some side ramblings...
i guess i should be grateful for what i have when compared to what mr. lin goes through, but i am not...it reminds me of a passage i read recently about us being slaves to our consumerism from a korean book titled pavane for a dead princess...it talked about how every time we buy something, every time we reach a certain financial level, the bar goes up...buy a new car, the bar goes up...buy a house, the bar goes up...we are conditioned to want a little more each time we get what we thought we wanted...i have definitely experienced this...i buy a gun...then i want another...i buy a car, and then want something better...assuming i can close on my house, i will probably want something better...there must be a way to just be satisfied with what i have...that's why, sometimes i think if i have nothing but the essentials to live, then i will remove the bar and want no more...i don't think i'm the only one who feels this way since there are more people starting to do things like try to live with only 50 or 100 possessions...i'll have to work harder to not buy so much crap...except books and firefly...those are essential
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