Its been 8 days and 9 nights in the city that never sleeps and so far, my experience has been very comparable to my previous summer. The biggest differences are that I'm making money, not taking cabs, actually working hard at work, living with dudes, watching American sports, and people understand my speech. Actually scratch that last one, no one anywhere understands me. But seriously, like I touched on in the last post, coming to New York has reawakened memories of living in a big city that I haven't experienced since Beijing.
There was the initial first couple days of loneliness - here I was staying at my aunt's apartment and was too exhausted after work to really do anything except some minimal exploring. This only lasted about 2 nights until I moved into this apartment I'm at with other interns. Compared to my first few days in Beijing, before any of my friends got in the city and over their jetlag and when I was barely capable of ordering food...well this transition was easier. But there are many aspects of urban life, whether its the loud streets all throughout the night, the crowded subways and hectic early morning commuters, the sixpack in the fridge and even the urge to chill in the apartment and just blog. For some reason, all of that is missing when I'm in Dublin, Georgetown or Newton. It's a completely different world.
The underlying dichotomy that can be very hard to grasp though is that New York is at once both completely foreign and utterly normal to me. It's a place of real street ballers, the most random street performers, the home of the most important companies, filled with a million languages and just full of superlatives. Sometimes it seems like this city is an experiment: what do we get if we throw a ton of people from all over the world in one small island filled with tall buildings? But on the other hand, if I got in a car and drove East for 4 hours, I would end up right where I grew up. If I headed south for the same 4 hours, I'd be at where I go to college. New York is in the AL east, as well as half a dozen summer blockbuster movies. Both my parents went to college here and my brother has been working here since graduating his college. So New York has often been a topic of dinner discussion and that definitely adds to its mystique to me. Its this place that's always been readily familiar to me, but that I never truly understood. I bet a lot of Americans can say that - nearly all of us know about New York, if not from a visit than from Seinfeld or Sex in the City. But only those who have lived there for a long time really know it, and its a steep learning curve for NYC noobs.
I really approach New York from a Bostonian perspective. You kinda have to if you grow up in Boston. We're taught from birth that the Yankees suck and New Yorkers are rough and rude. Manhattan ruined the clam chowder, tried to take credit for the nuke and consistently overrates itself. But you know, you have to take things with an open mind and a level of impartiality, and so in fairness, I say that New York is awesome and beats Boston in many, many ways. In an odd respect, I think that Boston is a city of areas whereas New York is a city of places. I don't know how to explain it, but in Boston, Back Bay gradually shifts into Copley or Fenway. At some point you're in the Boston Commons, then at some point there's Chinatown and suddenly you find yourself in downtown Government Center. In New York, it seems that there's a formula to the whole city. You type in 21st and 3rd and bam, that's Gramercy. Plug in 40th and Madison and you're in Midtown. It's a city of well defined sections and pinpoint destinations, less flowing and sporadic than Boston, more planned. I may be completely wrong about this whole areas vs. places thing, but this is definitely how I see things in my mind.
Well that's me, and I have work early in the morning so I'll try to summarize my week pretty quickly. Works tough but good, I don't want to get into that. My brother's been a total champ and let's just say that even though my 21st birthday isn't for another 6 weeks (and 1 day), I'm not missing out on any of the bar or clubbing experience that I had in Beijing. Friday night I hung out with my friend Lissy from Georgetown, who's living in the same type of apartment with other interns and went to Bar None down by NYU. The $2 bud lights were pretty unbeatable. We stayed there for a while, just shooting the shit and then headed back to Herald Square where we did find a pub near closing time. Pretty lowkey night. The next night though I had lunch with my brother, his ex-girlfriend, and a bunch of Asian Harvard graduates. That was really cool until it came to the bill. Then I played video games with DJ, his ex-girlfriend and randomly Sol from high school, then went out to Korean bbq with his current girlfriend and bunch of NYU Asians. Finally the night ended with 3 hours of karaoke and lots of Sochou, which is a type of Korean rice alcohol that I misspelled. Sunday I hung out with back-to-back Georgetown girls, Hyun and Laura, one after the other. Both are heading out of New York within a week, but under a great sunny sky, I checked out Soho, Washington Square Park, Penn station 3 times, the Met and Central Park. Basically a great weekend.
So I'm looking forward to this summer. Work and funds will severely limit how much I can take this city by storm, but there is definitely fun to be had. I do want to blog later about how tourism in the US is very different than tourism abroad for me. For now, take care.
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