Day 3 - The (Social) Circle of Life

Wednesday already!!!

Seems the week is flying and the city has been struck by the first snow draft of the season. As House Stark would say in "Game of Thrones": WINTER IS COMING lol!!!

So today I won't be leaving home since I can work from my bedroom editing text, finishing some sketches and, of course, blogging a little bit. Thank God we have social networks so I'm not gonna feel lonely. That reminds me when I first moved to NYC four years ago. I didn't have a facebook account and I wasn't into social networks, honestly. I never had Hi5, not even MySpace. I used the typical MSN Messenger and my regular e-mail to communicate with people. But NYC proved to be a tough challenge when you're on your own...

I am lucky enough in life to have a huge amount of friends and people I know. Back in Merida I would hang out with different circles. I owned a theater troupe there so I have lots of friends that worked with me in several productions and became really close. We call ourselves La Mafia Persa and we hang out very often whenever I'm visiting. We've been friends since 2005 approximately and we had a very fun routine. After teaching or rehearsing, we would end up drinking coffee at Café La Habana, a very nice coffee chain that's open 24 hrs and they refill your cup endlessly. We talk about theater, we discuss projects and we complain about how the Department of Cultural Affairs sometimes mishandles money and lacks organization LOL!!! La Mafia Persa grew smaller when some of our actors left town, moved away or decided theater wasn't paying enough to make it in life (smart asses!!!) But whenever we get the chance to be home at the same time is MANDATORY to hit Café La Habana until the sun sends us cawing back to bed!

A few Mafia Persa buddies at S-nario karaoke bar in Mérida.

 We loved going to our favorite karaoke place, S-nario, to sing our lungs out (awesome singers in this group, actually.) --- I recently found out, last time I was home, that our friend Hugo sold the business and now it's pretty lame. So sad when times change and YOU NOTICE IT!

But we have many good memories of S-nario, like Patty's All Pink Birthday Party many years ago. I LOVE PINK, so of course I enjoyed the theme!

More Mafia Persa members.Some of them are currently away...

 Here I have 2 pictures stolen from Patty's old albums on facebook...

 

The other group I hang out with whenever I'm home is the best friends. We call ourselves Karmitas or Petit Comité and they are the main circle I hang out with. It's funny cause this group is actually younger than me since most of them went to college with my sister Gina. However I've been always very close to Gina, we do a lot of things together and we are actually best friends (I know, brothers and sisters do not share as much as we do, so I consider myself incredibly blessed!) The majority here are lawyers so they're all pretty talkative and smart. Almost all of them are married now which makes the group a big beautiful family.

This is the circle I'm always with. We love to party, play board games, go out, get drunk, spend weekends at Rommina's apartment by the beach and share life. We've been together for many, many years now and I'm sure these are the friends that will last a lifetime. 

The Petit Comité celebrating (not the best picture after a boot of beer but the whole team is here lol)

The Petit Comité subdivided when one of the couples broke up, including my best friend, so he went back to some old buddies and we formed the Mandriliza, an all-guys circle to socialize and just be dudes.

Here's my awesome Mandriliza buddies!!!

Of course I sometimes hang out with old high school buddies, old friends and even my cousins, but these 3 groups are the most beloved ones.

Moving to NYC was a huge challenge considering I left behind a loving family and so many close friends. Thank God my dear friend Paola was already living here. She was one of my closest friends in college, we did a lot of theater together and we shared many good memories since I grew fond of her whole family. She had a circle of Mexican artists (and a few Americans) living in the city already so they embraced me and opened their houses and their hearts to me, so I've been very lucky. We call ourselves The Family and it has grown considerably since I joined them 4 years ago. We share a lot of things together. We love getting together at someone's home (it is a couples group, almost all of them are young marriages) for dinner, indoors karaoke bashes, Mexican food caterings and to share life in the city itself. We get together at least once a week, sometimes even more, so we truly are a family. They all share a connection with the performing arts or similar branches so we're into the same things. And I love them so, so much!!!

Some members of The Family´s version of "The Last Supper" LOL!!!

So, ok. I've always thought that a person should belong to something. We all have friends and family. But, what about Community? I mean clubs, aficionados, geeks, cos-plays... A lot of people are part of something like that. Well I am a Jane Austen addict. We call ourselves Janeites, which means I am an active member of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) and I'm proud of it!!!

I found out about JASNA a few months before moving to NYC. I was surfing the net in search of information concerning Austen and I opened a very cool blog from a lady that mention on her bio to be a proud member of JASNA. I wrote to her, she sent me some info, I looked for it and voilá, I became a member in November 2008 and I'm still with them.

JASNA gave me a community of enthusiasts, scholars and incredible people (mainly women, of course) who share the same love and obsession for the authoress of "Pride & Prejudice", "Emma" and "Sense & Sensibility". We get together for book clubs, meetings, conferences and conventions, studies, trips to museums, exhibitions, tea parties and even Regency Balls in which we all dress up in period costumes and dance all night long like Lizzy Bennet and Mr Darcy should have done. 

JASNA holds its Annual General Meeting in October every year, and it rotates location yearly. The New York chapter just hosted the 2012 AGM in Brooklyn and we had a BLAST. The topic was "Sex, money and power in Jane Austen's fiction" so we had a lot to learn, share and experience. It was a 5 days convention at the Marriott Hotel by the Brooklyn Bridge and was one of the best experiences in my life.

It is so nice belonging to a club that shares something with you, specially if that something is an unusual activity like celebrating a Pre-Romantic British Author. 

The Juvenilia Branch of NY's JASNA, dressed in Regency garments for their gorgeous ball at the 2012 AGM in Brooklyn.

Yes, I am a social butterfly. So of course technology has become a main TOOL to stay in touch. Thanks to facebook and twitter I always know what's going on with the friends I left at home, as well as knowing about upcoming events, meetings, parties and even birthdays! 

I LOVE Skype. Skype makes me tremendously happy. I connect with my sister via Skype almost every day to say hello. Thanks to Skype I've been able to "attend" parties thousands of miles away just by sitting in front of my laptop and sharing a few hours with my faraway friends. Isn't it cool? Technology has made distances so relative. And what about those awesome smartphone apps out there? Like Viber, Whatsapp and FaceTime! I use ALL of them to stay in touch with my friends and family. Picture tagging on facebook is also a nice way to share something with your friends. So I do it all the time hahaha. 

The social networks have changed the way we communicate today. I don't know what I would do without them now. I would probably get homesick or worse! So, yeah, GOD BLESS TECHNOLOGY and those little things that keep us close to those we love immensely!!!