The Zoo and the New York City Experience

It's not the skyscrapers or high-profile stores that make up New York City. It's the people. New York City is a giant zoo and all the people within are creatures on display. Buildings don't make a city. The people do in the same sense that animals are the heart of a zoo, not the cages.

It was my first night back in New York City. After 5-6 hours on the bus from Syracuse, I had to take the subway back home. This is when you know you're a New Yorker. When you're at the turnstile ready to swipe and you hear something in the far distance that puts your brain on high alert. The approaching sounds of a train. Judging by how far you estimate the sound to be coming from, you can pinpoint which train is coming. And luckily for me, it was the downtown E train. The one I needed to take. I made a dash for the train with a middle aged man in a suit frantically making a run for it behind me. Without knowing, both of us ended up on the handicap ramp which spirals towards the platform ten times. Imagine running down a ramp that's shaped like a square maze. Both of us are making sharp turns at every corner and running down the straight path until the next corner. I reach the door first and held it open for him. We slumped down onto the seats, look at each other, and let loose a sigh of relief and chuckle at our run. As soon as the train started moving and our laughters subsided, we both instantly took a whiff of the air. A putrid smell swirled around our noses. It could be the man at the other end of the car. It could have been someone who already got off. But both of us sheltered our noses within our arms. Welcome to New York City.

There's also your fair share of bus drivers. You have the ones who see you running down the street trying to catch the bus and graciously stop and hold the door open for you. You have the ones who curse out the man who came out of his car and accused the bus driver of bumping him in the back. You have the ones who let you on for free when they come late. You have the ones who don't care whatsoever and blame their tardiness on traffic.

There are also the people who delight themselves to your misfortunes. An elderly man sat next to me on the bus today. We both got on at the first stop. Seeing as I had a long trip ahead of me, I nodded off and took my usual nap on the bus. The bus starts to come to a halt as I'm about to wake up. The elderly man is still on the bus and tells me, "This is the last stop" with a grin on his face. Cool. I live two blocks away from the last stop. I tell him, "I know" and his grin quickly fades away and he turns his attention back to whatever he was doing.

Don't get me wrong. Like bus drivers, you have your wide variety. Not everyone is out to see you suffer. There was this time in high school when I fell asleep on the train (I sleep a lot on public transportation) to school. I went to school in the Bronx. To many people, you'd find that to be weird. The only Asian to be heading alone to the Bronx. As I was snoozing, a man across from me tapped me on the leg as we reached the end of Manhattan. He asked me if I missed my stop. I said no and went back to sleep. He tapped me again as we reached the first stop in the Bronx. He asked if I missed my stop again. I said no and went back to sleep. This happened two more times until I figured it out and told him I go to school in the Bronx. At least he was looking out for me.

I could go on about the people you encounter in New York City. But there's too many people. Can you fit a description of every animal you find in a zoo in one blog post?

Permit and Passion

Well, I can finally cross this off my "to-do" list after what seemed like an eternity of "I'll do it next week". I finally got my driver's learner permit. Well I don't actually have in my hands the actual permit. They said it'd be in the mail in two weeks (I'll be long gone by then).

I know everyone has been telling me that the test would be easy. But I didn't want to risk being the failure among my friends. Yeah, they were right. I breezed through it in like two minutes. Now to work on getting my licence and a car...not like I'll drive anyways with the subway system and buses right there for me to use. But I guess if worst comes to worst and the MTA raises the fare to $3, driving wouldn't be too bad.

I visited Jon Tam's church this past Sunday (I told him I'd go the week before, but the iPhone's alarm clock app sent thousands snoozing away on that Sunday morning). What a great day to visit. There was a guest speaker, Dr. John Piipo, and the words that came out of his mouth just woke me up from this dry spiritual routine I was getting myself into this break. My prayer life has declined, my Bible reading has become almost non-existent outside of Sundays, and I was feeling like I wasn't being the best Christian I could be.

Dr. John Piipo started off in quite the unusual fashion. He pulled out a conductor's baton and led us all in singing the chorus of Chris Tomlin's "How Great Is Our God". This went on for longer than I would have liked. But then he tied in his message with the little activity and I felt like I was being revived from the dead. The message was long (well, longer than what I had to hear at my home church) and I don't think I could go into detail about his message. Part of it is because I can't do it justice. I can't explain like he could.

The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Acts 10:15

Plus Dr. John Piipo plays the electric guitar and he's old. How cool is that?

So what's new? I got myself a new cap. A customized cap. My sister went into a enthusiastic frenzy when I showed it to her. It has my (and her) initials on the front (SH). On the back, it has our signature trademark name (which I insist that I came up with first): shuanged. It's also the username for my blog and pretty much everything I use now.

That's her hand by the way.

Sushi, Buses, and McDonald's

What. A. Day.

I don't mean that in a good "what an amazing day" way. "Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin, and they end, with no lasting memories made in between." Sure enough, this day was one to remember, no matter how frustrating it was.

I was supposed to meet up with my friends to go eat at a sushi buffet at 12 PM in Flushing. Normally, it takes me about an hour on the bus to get there. Silly me for not taking into account New York City doesn't care if there's two feet of snow on every street.

I walk to the bus stop around 11:10 PM. I'm the second one there so I assumed that a bus just left. I thought to myself that one will come in give or take ten minutes. Ha! I watched as the group of people waiting for the bus stretched to the end of the block. Fifty two minutes. 52! That's how long it took for a bus to finally arrive. To top it off...my stop is the first stop on the route. The only other Asian in this mass of people was this Chinese lady who ninja-ed her way to the front of the line. Needless to say, she threw a fit at the driver screaming that she waited an hour for the bus (when in actuality, she came like ten minutes after I did) and that she refused to pay. She managed to rally a few other middle-aged women to join her outburst. I just wanted to reach my destination in peace.

Once I finally reached Flushing about an hour and a half later, I walked to the next destination: another bus stop to wait for a bus to bring me to the sushi buffet. As I made my way to the bus stop, I saw the bus start to leave. I gave chase. For over five blocks. I lost count at five. Surprising enough, even with all the snow people neglected to shovel and the slippery ground, I was very close to catching the bus. That was until I was stopped by a red light and oncoming traffic. Good try, Stanley. I decided to wait for the next bus for over half an hour. One came, but ignored me and zoomed right by because the bus was "packed". I'm one person. I could have easily fit. I struck up some conversations with other people waiting for the bus. Interesting characters you meet in the city that never shovels, I mean sleep.

I gave up and told my friends to finish their sushi without me when the bus never showed up. I walked back to McDonald's and waited for my friends to come to me. As I walked back, I looked at the first bus stop on the route I was gonna take.

That explains why there were no buses coming my way. The line extended further.

Well, I had hopes of some good sushi. All I can eat sushi might I add. My lunch turned from:

to this

First time ever ordering something from the McCafe. I only got it because I was cold and there was a giant poster advertising the caramel mocha. Not bad.

In a nutshell, the New York City public transportation ruined my potential lunch as it took me 3-4 hours to reach my destination (actually, I didn't even reach it). A sushi buffet lunch turned into a Big Mac, snack wrap, and a caramel mocha.

But the day ended on a much higher note. I got to see friends I haven't seen since the summer. It was good catching up. It always ends up with us having our girly guy talk until however late it gets. At least the train ride home didn't completely screw me over like the buses.