In 2013, I took my first trans-continental trip out to New York City to attend a launch party for work. At first glance it seem like a horrible trip. I was there for less than 24 hours, flying back the day after I flew in that night. I also got lost that night looking for my friend’s apartment after my phone ran out of juice. I did not meet anyone else, launching a bunch of “aww”s from my former high school classmates - many of whom I have not met in years.

On the surface, this feels like a failure. But it was the first time I have ever left the state in any large fashion. It was a huge step, which the trip to Taiwan then extended. Coming back in mid-May, I decided that it was time to pick things up where I left off. I caught onto a great fare, scheduled it properly with things at work, and set off for my second trip.

Now that I am back, it appears time for another “Things I Think” post. I have a couple more posts in mind lined up after this one. I hope you stay for those too.

Things I Think I Think About NYC

1) Rumor has it that this city has seasons, but it feels like the heat lasts forever

It is an emerging pattern that the second major place of travel that I have gone to, it is massively, incredibly hot. It is also very humid. And all the vegetation and the people seem to act as if this happens all year. Yet at the same time, people note that when fall comes around the seasons “change” and suddenly it is cold again. I grew up in California. The weather never just “changes”. I have never seen snow in person in my entire lifetime. How do people know when it is time to start changing their clothes? Is global warming going to change this? What if it is hot all the time forever?

2) The city is monstrously large…

Some of a city’s personality comes through in the architecture of its infrastructure. I feel like New York City’s personality can be described as being “monolithically ancient”. You see cross tresses and powerful beams of grey-aged steel everywhere. Train tracks burst out of nowhere only to vanish into somewhere and you are at a loss wondering where its ultimate destination might be.

Everything goes deep too. You just happen to notice this tiny little stairway leading downstairs and you are amazed to realize that there is this huge underground subway chamber with titanic air vents forcefully BLOWING air at you, unnaturally forcing it out of its home in the sky into your subway chamber. And there is more than just 1 level. There are levels upon levels. Three plus more stories beneath a city to add up on the thousands of stories above it.

2.5) But old too, in a way no city quite feels like

Everything is fantastically large, but not just in the way fantastically large things are built today. There is a car hanging tram that takes people from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island. The supports holding up this tram, making this perilous journey everyday, are not sleek, demure titanium and carbon fiber material wonders but monstrously massive iron behemoths that remind me of the Greek Gods of yore, slouched but powerful men thousands of feet high pulling their cargo across the River Styx.

Taipei feels like a city with a leg caught in a tar of the past and ends up with one foot aging faster than the other. And I am sure that the sleek, modern-age megastructures in Shanghai and Dubai far overtake anything you see here in pure, cold logical numbers. But New York City feels like it has been monstrously huge for centuries before you, and will still be monstrously huge for centuries after you.

3) Pretty much every NYC home was built during the red lego brick laying craze.

I grew up in (and reside today) a building jacketed in white and jagged lacquer. Having seen so many of those before in my life, I wonder why then that they hardly exist out in New York. Perhaps it is because every NYC building looks like it was built long ago, back when all they had available for use were bricks. I briefly wondered if the brick thing is a facade, but apparently not. That’s real brick folks, which for some reason really impresses me.

4) What the hell is up with the $15 toll bridges?

This seems to me really expensive. So expensive that I asked for a reassessment. Are they trying to deliberately prevent people from using the bridge? Don’t they need to pay it back?

5) Flushing is the closest I have been to Taiwan since … well, Taiwan.

I should just copy and paste my post about Taiwan into here.

6) The borough system makes absolutely no sense to me.

I am sure a quick trip to Wikipedia can solve this but it seems to me that each borough within NYC can be a city of its own. Why did they combine them all together? What does it mean that they were all subsumed together. I heard that there are stereotypes associated with each borough. I only got to see Brooklyn (Williamsburg) and Queens, but I wonder if those stereotypes are true.

7) New York people are totally okay with leaving their trash bags all over everywhere.

Considering the heat, this feels to me like a badly planned decision. And the sidewalks are not all that wide too. Yet at the same time it appears that the streets are more free of trashy debris than it is in San Francisco. In SF you gotta constantly dodge pieces of trash and human feces everywhere. In New York, the trash stays in the bags. This is amazing to me and I am constantly asking people, why don’t the hobos go through it? Why won’t they? Is it because the bags are booby trapped? Are the hobos just nicer and neater here? I spent not an insignificant amount of time thinking about this while on the plane back.

8) The public transportation system gets you there, but it’s not all that clean

There is something amazing about a system that was built back in the early 1900s servicing people over a hundred years later. That is pretty astounding if you ask me. It tells you just how well planned it was. You can live in SF without a car but it still is convenient to take an Uber somewhere. However in NYC you really can get from to place to place very cheaply with trains that don’t come along every 45 minutes.

The transit system is not as dirty as BART, which is the ultimate in grungy dirtiness (there is nothing clean about a transit system that the hobos hop on), but there is no disputing that it falls far short of Taipei’s system.

So if you are riding the transit system and thinking that this is pretty crappy, know that this is a middle road.

9) New York City has plenty, plenty of water and they want you to know that.

One time we were driving and came across a fire hydrant blowing water everywhere. Just blowing water. It was a hot day yes but nobody was really playing around in this water. So this water was just being sprayed everywhere for nobody to enjoy it. What the hell? Can this really be true?

You read a lot about cities around the world having water issues. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Texas, Iran, Iraq, Tokyo, etc. It is sorta funny that the biggest city in the United States does not have a problem with their water supply.

10) There’s a street called Dykeman (Dickman) street and everybody who lives there is in on the joke.

Not only is the street itself called Dykeman street, every shop and place on the street named itself Dykeman Pharmacy, Dykeman auto repair, etc. At some point, there was a committee that approved this. They looked at the documents and they were like haha okay let’s do it who is going to complain.

11) Seriously, 5 days is not enough time.

I never got to see Central Park (this became a running joke amongst my friends, as they imagined me walking around asking random locals “WHERE IS CENTRAL PARK?!?!”), never even got to see it. I never got to see Wall Street. I never go to see the World Trade Center. Yet during the time I was there I got to eat in a Polish restaurant, got to eat cornbread flavored ice cream, go into a basement and be transported to Taiwan all over again.

Other Things I Think I Think About Traveling

1) I like the refinements to the traveling system

Though I brought just one backpack to Taiwan, it had been stuffed to the brim with clothes and other things. It turned out to be too much because half of the clothes I did not need, so for this new trip - 4 nights, 3 days - I wanted to be sure to bring exactly what I needed. This would let me bring something back and also not kill my back when I carried it around.

2) Having a second little suitcase in your bag turned out to be a great idea

I did research on packing and traveling and a few things emerged as being potentially helpful. The first is the Eagle Creek Pack-It compression cube. It lets you roll up your clothes and pack them tightly into a resilient cube-case that you can drop into your backpack. Furthermore, when you need to bring your backpack somewhere but want to leave your clothes behind, it is a great secondary suitcase.

3) Yeah okay let’s talk about the underwear

The second thing stemmed from my realization that half of everything that I brought to Taiwan consisted of underwear. If I were to go about a week or so between washings, then I needed to bring 7 pairs of boxers. This turned out to be impractical. After some research, I came across a more elegant solution: Exofficio boxers. They aren’t made of cotton but some sort of synthetic material that dries faster than cotton and is resistant to sweat. Basically you wear one of a pair throughout the day and then jump into the shower to wash them. Scrub them down with soap and water in the shower and leave them out to dry.

It does seem a bit weird but the lost weight to my pack made it worth it. My friend Audrey though has made a field day out of mentioning my “sweat proof underwear” every possible chance she can get.

4) It is not enough to have super practical clothes. They gotta look good too

The clothes that I brought to NYC were practical but still somewhat stylish. The great thing about the Lululemon fashion trend is that it’s made synthetic fiber clothing a bit more acceptable.

That being said, after coming back with my clothing, I think the next step is to refine more on the clothing that I am bringing with me. Sure the clothes have to be practical, resilient and quick-drying, but they have to also be good looking. Hm. This will require an re-examination and some research of brands.

5) I miss my Apple Watch

More often than not, I caught myself lifting my arm to check for the time or any notifications but then slapping myself in the head because of course I did not take it with me. You just get used to it, you know? I know it does not do all that much, but I just miss having that information with me. Sometimes you do not want to fish your phone out of your pocket (since I have such a huge phone).

Where Next?

I enjoyed my time in NYC, which further demonstrates to me that the time that I spent in Taiwan was not an isolated experience. There is still a lot more that I would like to see and ponder on in this world.

I am not sure where to go next. My heart says that I should go to Singapore next - where I have some friends and ties there. However another 16 hour flight sounds to me a bit … unappealing. Recently I have been thinking about Norway though. The challenge of a cold weather environment and the beauty of the fjords are intriguing.