new york is synonymous with…
…coffee (cups). you know, those ubiquitous starbucks coffee cups (or any other brand, for that matter). new yorkers walk around with those. any time of the day, any place. i am always just waiting for someone to spill it all over another commuter on the tube, but these expert coffee cup jugglers have never spilt a drop yet. impressive. but why do they drink so much coffee??
…high-speed revolving doors. i never used to fear revolving doors, not even when a kid was somehow caught and killed by one in tokyo. but here in new york, i head straight for the push/pull door whenever possible. these people are fast. and strong. one shove by a new yorker and the door goes spinning at… well, jogging pace. that sounds rather reasonably slow, but we’re talking about revolving doors here. every time i had to follow a local through the door, i ended up hesitating as the door whizzed past me, wanting to put my foot in, yet fearing to. i feel like someone who has just started to drive… and like a new driver, end up holding up the traffic behind me. give me the good ol’ single panel doors any day.
…bagels and cream cheese. our lovely bed-and-breakfast hostess has been sending us fresh, warm bagels with cream cheese just about every morning. they are to-die-for (considering that i don’t usually like bagels at all), but… in an ironic twist, i envision a quick death from carbo overdose. bagels, sandwiches, and pasta are about the most affordable food around. chinese food looks dangerous (even though we have been dying to find out at long last what chop suey is. but we haven’t managed to take the plunge yet.) and japanese both expensive and dangerous. i don’t mean to insult – dangerous only means that it is so hard to tell which places are good and which aren’t, that it’s often safer to just hop into yet another deli. it’s hard to go wrong with a sandwich, really. i feel rather like a loaf of bread myself now… in that stage where you set it to rise and watch it expand…
…non-new yorkers. it is possible that more than half of new york is made up of non-new yorkers (random percentage from my random observations). just about every single place is a tourist trap of sorts, which means, of course, that tourists abound. i have been asked for directions no less than three times, and i cannot see how that is even possible when i look obviously lost, obviously tourist-y (camera, shopping bags, and all), and obviously asian. but maybe it really can be hard to tell. after all, even among ‘new yorkers’ (meaning those who live and work/study here, i guess. because how many people would actually have been born and bred here…?) there are any number of non-americans swimming around. it is so interesting watching and listening to the people around us; there are so many new and unknown accents and indistinguishable types of faces, you cannot help but marvel. i heard a woman speaking cantonese that sounded strangely like vietnamese. really fascinating.
more to come!
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