Bo Chen and Rui Su

Bo Chen and Rui Su
By JENNIFER TUNG
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/fashion/weddings/07VOWS.html

IT was a slow day at the Municipal Building in Manhattan, something that worked to the advantage of Bo Chen and his bride, Rui Su, who were clearly in a hurry. They waited only a few minutes to pay the $25 fee for a civil marriage ceremony and then were whisked into the wedding chapel without even sitting in the chairs lining the hall outside.

It seemed only fair. Since falling in love they had lived on opposite sides of the world — she in Harbin, China, and he in Flushing, Queens.

Just Saying No to the Dating Industry

Just Saying No to the Dating Industry
By KATE ZERNIKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/fashion/30SING.html

BY her own admission, Sara Cambridge was "totally cruising."

She spent hours trolling online dating sites, sending e-mail messages to potential mates and creating "a real connection," which would invariably sour into deep disappointment within the first five minutes of an actual date. At which point she would return to the sites, send more e-mail, make another connection and suffer another snap disappointment.

Finally, there was the left-leaning writer, who took her to a Japanese tea garden and, like so many of the others, seemed so perfect from his résumé.

"In the e-mails, he would say, `Tell me a story,' which I thought was kind of charming," said Ms. Cambridge, 38, a graphic designer in San Francisco. "When we got together it was, `Tell me stories, tell me stories, tell me stories.' I felt like I was auditioning for a play."

That was it.

"I realized I could be starting my own business in the time I was spending looking at these ads and crafting these responses," she said. So instead of going back online, she began taking a Small Business Administration class and designing funky planters.

Now Entering The California State of Mind

Now Entering The California State of Mind
By RICK LYMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/travel/30bpfires.html

OF all the places we've lived over the years -- Kansas City, Philadelphia, New York, Johannesburg, Houston -- Los Angeles was the one where we found that friends who said, ''Oh yes, we'll come visit,'' actually did.
My family and I lived for four years in a ranch house at the top of the Hollywood Hills, our backyard plummeting down toward a cityscape grid of lights and freeways, the horizon a corrugated jumble of mountains against cloudless sky.

We loved it. In all those years, we took not one vacation outside the state. But it was a trickier proposition when visitors came, because driving five hours into the High Sierra to stare at a giant sequoia was not what they had in mind.

What did they want? Celebrities. Big houses. Conspicuous consumption. A sense of dipping their toes into a hedonistic way of life they'd seen fetishized on T.V.

Getting a Job in the Valley Is Easy, if You're Perfect

Getting a Job in the Valley Is Easy, if You're Perfect
By MATT RICHTEL and LAURIE J. FLYNN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/technology/19techjobs.html

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 18 - As the economy bounces back, even Silicon Valley's job market is showing signs of revival. But it has a long way to go. Employers are being extremely picky, the few jobs being offered pay less than they once did, and they do not come with the bountiful benefits and sterling opportunities of the 1990's boom, job seekers say.

Just ask Cary Snyder. After 16 months without a job, he is joining a four-person start-up as a technical analyst, having given up his search for just the right position. He may not have job security, but he says it beats combing through want ads.

The Phone Call

The Phone Call
By JEREMY SMERD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/16/nyregion/thecity/16rami.html

Fernando Ramirez felt surrounded by people who loved him, the people he worked with and sold coffee to at the Fairway supermarket near 125th Street in Harlem. Like a lot of solitary New Yorkers, cut off for one reason or another from their real families, he had found another kind of family in one of those peculiar improvised communities that spring up so randomly in the city.

This family sustained Mr. Ramirez for 15 years, first at the Fairway on Broadway at 74th Street, then when he moved to the store's Harlem branch. At the very end of his life, his son re-entered it, and briefly sweetened it in a way that seemed miraculous to both of them.

Aiming to Be the Next Big Amenity

Aiming to Be the Next Big Amenity
By MOTOKO RICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/garden/13TURF.html

AS the horizon turned to a deep pink outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of their serene living room, the Cantone family looked out over the Hudson River and pondered the meaning of living "green."

Robin Cantone was enthusiastic about the air filtration in their apartment at the Solaire, which opened in Battery Park City in May to great fanfare, billed as the country's first high-rise residential "green building." She pointed out the energy-saving washer and dryer and the kitchen cabinets, made without the usual formaldehyde.

Her husband, Robert, talked about living for less. Though the apartment has three bedrooms and three bathrooms, its electricity requirements are about the same as for the smaller apartment they used to rent in Chelsea.

The Rise of Homeschooling

[a trend is growing, and my sister is doing it too...]

Unhappy in Class, More Are Learning at Home
By JANE GROSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/10/nyregion/10SCHO.html

In Penny Kjellberg's modest living room in Stuyvesant Town, one of her 11-year-old twins conjugates French verbs while cuddling a kitten. The book shelves sag with The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Einstein" and Ken Burns's videos about the Civil War. Ms. Kjellberg's other daughter devours a book about Ulysses with periodic romps outdoors when she grows antsy.

The Kjellberg twins, Caroline and Jessica, were in a highly regarded public school until two years ago. But they were bullied, their mother said, and referred to psychiatrists when, miserable, they misbehaved in class. So Ms. Kjellberg, neither a hippie nor a fundamentalist, decided to educate them at home.

"I was always too afraid to take that giant step outside the mainstream," she said. "But now that circumstances have forced us out, our experience here on the sidelines is so good that I find it harder and harder to imagine going back."

The Kjellbergs' choice is being made by an increasing number of American families — at least 850,000 children nationwide are schooled at home, up from 360,000 a decade ago, according the Education Department. In New York City, which compiled citywide statistics for the first time this year, 1,800 children are being schooled at home.

The Opt-Out Revolution

The Opt-Out Revolution
By LISA BELKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/26WOMEN.html

The scene in this cozy Atlanta living room would -- at first glance -- warm an early feminist's heart. Gathered by the fireplace one recent evening, sipping wine and nibbling cheese, are the members of a book club, each of them a beneficiary of all that feminists of 30-odd years ago held dear.

The eight women in the room have each earned a degree from Princeton, which was a citadel of everything male until the first co-educated class entered in 1969. And after Princeton, the women of this book club went on to do other things that women once were not expected to do. They received law degrees from Harvard and Columbia. They chose husbands who could keep up with them, not simply support them. They waited to have children because work was too exciting. They put on power suits and marched off to take on the world.

Yes, if an early feminist could peer into this scene, she would feel triumphant about the future. Until, of course, any one of these polished and purposeful women opened her mouth.

Calling In Late

Calling In Late
By KATE ZERNIKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/fashion/26CELL.html

ON Wednesday night, Schiller's Liquor Bar, the brightest new bauble on the Lower East Side, throbbed with diners, drinkers and loud music. Customers waiting for companions and tables stood pressed against the front doors, their faces reflecting the glow of the cellphones clutched to their cheeks.

One, Nick Goldin, looked particularly peeved. "He's late," he told his wife, Carrie, clamping his phone shut. "He's always late."

"We said 8," she said reassuringly. "It's only 8. He's not late yet."

"You give him a grace period?" Mr. Goldin shot back.

At 8:07 the phone buzzed. "Where are you?" Mr. Goldin demanded. "What?"

Two minutes later, in walked the tardy one, David Goldin, Nick's brother, looking utterly unrepentant. After all, he had called.

When a Doctor Stumbles on a Family Secret

When a Doctor Stumbles on a Family Secret
By BARRON H. LERNER, M.D.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/health/policy/16CASE.html

A group of health professionals were evaluating potential donors for a kidney transplant recently when they received a surprise. Through routine genetic testing, the group inadvertently learned that one of the adult children was not the child of the man with kidney failure.

The transplant team struggled with the question of what to do with this information. Should the family be told? To whom did the knowledge belong? Was it ethical to use the child's kidney without telling him?

Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?

Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?
By STEPHEN S. HALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazine/14BUDDHISM.html

In the spring of 1992, out of the blue, the fax machine in Richard Davidson's office at the department of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison spit out a letter from Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Davidson, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, was making a name for himself studying the nature of positive emotion, and word of his accomplishments had made it to northern India. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists was writing to offer the minds of his monks -- in particular, their meditative prowess -- for scientific research.

Most self-respecting American neuroscientists would shrink from, if not flee, an invitation to study Buddhist meditation, viewing the topic as impossibly fuzzy and, as Davidson recently conceded, ''very flaky.'' But the Wisconsin professor, a longtime meditator himself -- he took leave from graduate school to travel through India and Sri Lanka to learn Eastern meditation practices -- leapt at the opportunity. In September 1992, he organized and embarked on an ambitious data-gathering expedition to northern India, lugging portable electrical generators, laptop computers and electroencephalographic (EEG) recording equipment into the foothills of the Himalayas. His goal was to measure a remarkable, if seemingly evanescent, entity: the neural characteristics of the Buddhist mind at work. ''These are the Olympic athletes, the gold medalists, of meditation,'' Davidson says.

Some New Riffs on the Rollaway

Some New Riffs on the Rollaway
By ELAINE LOUIE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/garden/11WEEL.html

In his SoHo loft, Chico Lledo, a graphic artist, is the master of a 4,200-square-foot urban universe. Every piece of furniture — bed, sofa, coffee table, bookcase, television cabinet and an 18-foot-long titanium dining table — is set on casters. With just one hand, Mr. Lledo, 29, who shares the loft with his companion, Doris Fontanilla, 28, an olive oil importer, can reconfigure the space all day long — and sometimes, it seems as if he does.

The bed is in constant motion. "If I work in the back," he said, "she'll sleep in the front. Or if I watch TV in the front, the bed goes in the back." If it's cold, the couple roll the bed to the fireplace. For dinner parties, the sofa is rolled to the kitchen counter. Even Mr. Lledo moves on casters, riding a scooter on his gleaming hardwood floor.

Snacker's Paradise: Devouring Singapore's Endless Supper

Snacker's Paradise: Devouring Singapore's Endless Supper
By R. W. APPLE Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/10/dining/10SING.html

SINGAPORE -- "FOOD is the purest democracy we have," K. F. Seetoh said as we dug into breakfast bowls of bak kut teh, a peppery, restorative Teochew soup of pork ribs, mushrooms and kidneys. "Singaporeans recognize no difference between bone china and melamine."

Slurp, slurp. Yum, yum. The clear, aromatic broth, full of tender, close-grained pork, perked up by herbs and whole garlic cloves, was cooked in a hole in the wall next to a busy expressway and eaten at a sidewalk table. Cab drivers, teachers and a few junior executives slurped around us. Bak kut teh is the city's preferred hangover remedy, and Ng Ah Sio makes the best, which is why Mr. Seetoh took me there.

A Star's Real Life Upstages His Films

A Star's Real Life Upstages His Films
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/09/movies/09TAB.html

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 8 — Over the past 20 years Tab Hunter, whose blond, Malibu beach boy looks made him one of the biggest screen idols of the 1950's, has had a heart attack, a quadruple bypass and a stroke. But at 72 he still looks like, well, a beach boy, albeit older. And his career and personal life, if not exactly sunny, are far livelier than most of his films, which he groans about.

Babies Are Riding High

Babies Are Riding High
By DAVID HOCHMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/fashion/07NOTI.html

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- THE supermoms in the organic bread aisle couldn't stop staring. And who could blame them? My new baby was surely the finest-looking creation the store had ever seen, what with the adorable curves, the crimson bonnet and the ergonomically correct brushed-aluminum chassis.

So what if my wife wasn't scheduled to deliver our firstborn for another three weeks? As soon as our tricked-out red Bugaboo stroller arrived from Babystyle.com, I had to take the little addition for a spin.

Designer diaper bags do nothing for me. Sippy cups are for kids. But the $700 Dutch-engineered Bugaboo Frog had me rolling down the path of conspicuous conception. Maybe it was the 12-inch all-terrain tires or the squishy grip bar or the fact that the Bugaboo steered more like a Porsche than a pram, but there I was, wheeling an empty stroller through a grocery store for the adrenaline rush.