Posted 6:35 AM by e*star

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I am blogging from sunny 'ol...Irvine. :) I must apologize for my absence, but I actually just recently came back from New York. Needless to say, it was a much-needed vacation, and an excellent, excellent one, at that. Visiting has made me want to move there! With all things considered, though, I know that Los Angeles is my home, at least for the next few years. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could even survive in the city, with how expensive simple living costs are--such as rent. Anyway, the last thing I need is to get distracted from my career path. My mission, now, is to hone in on developing my skills as a broker. If anything, these are the very skills that will take me where I want to be in the future. For now, I can settle with visiting New York say, once per year. :) Patience, Esther, patience.

I had an excellent time in New York. Raymond, I know that if any of your co-writers are responsible for making you second guess making the move to Los Angeles, it would ultimately be me. Alas, my love-hate relationship with LA. But really--I swear that it is more love than hate! Really!

You can take the tone of desperation in the former pleas to whatever extent you may, but I know it would be useless to lie that I wholeheartedly love this city, and that I would never, ever leave. The summary of why I love NYC more than LA in my personal web journal touches upon a moment where while I was in New York. I came at a point where I had to explain to my boyfriend, Ian, why I disliked LA. In fact, it was while we were on the ferry to Staten Island. My qualms and even pure discontent at the city has always been a comedic topic between Ian and me, but I guess this was probably the first time where it had taken a serious tone. Specifically, "Why wouldn't I want to raise kids in LA?"

I mean, What position do I have to even answer this question? I, myself, haven't even grown up in Los Angeles. Where is my own point of reference? Wouldn't I be generalizing to say that it isn't a good place to raise kids? These are many of the questions that Ian, my boyfriend, could ask--and he did in so many words. I guess from my point of view, you could say that I might have a phobia of convenience. Of luxury. Of all things that affluence brings. This is because affluence brings spoiledness. Snobbery. It brings the "luxury" of having tunnel-vision and living the affluent life-style and not thinking of others less fortunate.

Southern California and its lack of efficient public transportation requires everyone to have a car. So, everybody does. However, this allows for making your automobile a symbol of your status--much more so than any other city. Great weather lets people own the car they want with money as the only obstacle. There's no salt in the roads to wreck or ruin your car. Rain is an infrequency. And, there's no snow. Somebody should do a study on this, but I would bet that in terms of mere percentage of yearly income, people spend more money on cars here than anywhere else. There is a lot of wealth in LA, but I doubt that it is so much more that the 3 Porsche 911 turbos I see en route to work everyday were paid in cash, or even 50% down.

In the subway of New York, I came across so many different types of people--be they different because of ethnicity, race, income, profession, you name it. I experienced 10x's more diversification riding in those subways than I ever have driving 6 miles to Beverly Hills and back everyday for work. But, that's what we do here in LA--drive where we gotta go and back with our eyes straight forward.

When I was growing up in Milwaukee, I noticed that my parents had a sort of phobia of black people. They didn't mean any ill will or anything--I just noticed that they tended to think of them in a certain way and that certain way included a kind of scaredness and plain aversion. But I had no idea why. I knew that people also classified *me* a certain way when they saw me, but all I knew was that they didn't really know me nor did they have any right to do that, either. So, I saw parallels--and the reasons why my parents and everybody who classified people of certain races in general was because of information they got from the media, advertising, plain 'ol marketing--not because of actual interaction. If it was interaction, it was very limited--such as basing your perspective of an entire race on the interaction of say, *one* person who was supposed to represent the entire race. But. How the heck were my parents to have access to more than a few black people while living in Wisconsin? How the heck were my peers, my schoolmates supposed to have interaction with more than a few Asians, or even Taiwanese Americans or Chinese Americans? I was the only one in reach, and heck. I was good at school (including math), and I played 2 classical instruments. I somewhat fit the stereotypes, although I wasn't very accommodating nor soft-spoken.

I value appreciating diversity when it is available. This means diversity and everything it brings--including culture, backgrounds, you name it. To me, it is an absolute waste when people just drive by each other day after day and really have no desire to learn about the other even though they are a part of each other's daily lives. I appreciate cultural spillover, but I guess that Los Angeles tends to strike me as a city where it happens, but not nearly as much as it should. Additionally, with the luxury factor, I don't deny that New York doesn't also have a lot of money, and *old money*, at that, but I guess factored in with the public transportation, I just love that New York doesn't necessarily allow you to shut yourself off in your own little world.

Back to when Ian and I were discussing why I wouldn't want to raise my kids in LA (after all, Ian turned out okay, didn't he?), I guess it is because I tend to think particularly about raising daughters in Los Angeles and I cringe. Yes--girls. No, not all girls I have come across are superficial and shallow. But, when they aren't, it seems very much against the norm. With all the pressures in society--yes, the media--that say that a woman's worth is *largely* based upon how good she looks, not on what she can do, I have come to conclude that LA, combined with its attention to image, is probably the city that most emphasizes this. Again, I am speaking of my own phobia. This is my issue--that I hate those traits so much that I would actually run away from them when it comes to raising my kids.

Los Angeles has *many* resources that are valuable to me. I just think that they are valuable to me only after having already established who I am and where I stand on the large issues. Not when I am responsible for establishing those things in my children.

Then again, maybe I am just a sheltered, midwestern girl at heart.

*e