I Heart NYC

"Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen."                                                         ~Benjamin Disraeli

A musician with a homemade instrument performing Christmas tunes at NYC subway. His instrument was crudely crafted from a can, a curtain rod and four strings but sounded like a weird mix of bass, cello and violin. Awesome!  

Flowers and plants for sale at the Union Square Farmers' Market. Can you believe that two dozen roses only cost $10.00 in NYC?

Lower Eastside's Artists' Sidewalk Gallery. Doesn't this look like Paris? There are some great as well mediocre artists using different  mediums selling their labors of love here.  

 

Country in the city. A stall owned by a vendor selling dried flower arrangements and chili wreaths. 

Remember this? This vendor is selling plaster replicas of  the famous "skyscrapers'-construction-workers-taking-a-mile-high-break" scenario.   

More to come. Stay tuned. Same station. Same Bat Channel.

Shortlived Moveable Feast

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,"    Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities    

New York City is a city of harmonic contradictions. It's a blend of the old and the new, the exotic and the familiar, the rich and the poor...  

It does not only tell of the tales of two cities but of multiple ones. This little city can take you to all the seven continents on a walking tour. Go to Chinatown and learn something about Asia. Walk to Little Italy and get a glimpse of the European lifestyle. Visit the little galleries and shops in  Chelsea, SoHo, Greenwich and East Villages, and at Union Square to find interesting arts, artifacts, products and oddities from Australia, Antartica, Africa, and South America!   

No other city can be as divisive as NYC. Its little pockets makes you aware of the gap between the haves and the have-nots. A neighborhood in Park Avenue contrasts greatly to one in Clinton, Brooklyn or even the Lower Eastside. A lady in floorlength fur coat alights from her chauffeured Mercedes next to a dirty and unshaven homeless man on a Fifth Avenue curb. NYC showcases the many ironies of life.      

This is not a scene from Hong Kong or China. It's from NYC Chinatown. It's like going to a foreign country. Advertisements and conversations in Mandarin, Cantonese and Fookien! This place's ambience is very exotic and intoxicating!

    

This is the Cantonese chef at the chinese restaurant in Mott Street. He looks like an unhappy fellow but he sure can cook Cantonese dishes with magic!

 

Back to the English speaking side of NYC. This is in the vicinity of Times Square. Neon lights and advertisements are on 24/7. Big city atmosphere. Can be disorienting for the out-of-town visitors. A lot of neck craning to check out skyscrapers.

Yes, Virginia, Einstein lives in NYC! Darling Son with his hero at Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum. They look so charming together.

He also found my hero, Ernest Hemingway! He writes like an angel and looks like one, too. Too bad, he's made of wax and he's too big to carry on a plane.

 

The exterior of the Empire State Building. I took this because I like its contrast with the older buildings near it. This is NYC at its finest, a harmonic contradiction. The old stands proud next to the new. The rich walks in same streets as the poor.

NYC skyline as viewed from the observatory atop the Empire State Building. I did not feel like Ann Darrow in King Kong upon reaching the 80+  floor where the circular observatory is situated. I did not fear heights until I looked below. All I can think of was: "I am dead/minced meat if this breeze sweeps me off this ledge!!!"   

More to come. Stay tuned. Same station. Same Bat Channel.

Happy 2006!

 

Arrived back in Florida intact and full of New York stories. The kids walked around NYC barefoot and sporting their bib overalls to my mother-in-law's chagrin (Just kidding!). 

New York City is awesome. I would not mind living there. Actually, I looked at lofts' prices in the Chelsea area and told my hubby that the next time a hurricane strikes our neck of the woods, I am moving to NYC. 

Where to start weaving my tales of NYC adventures? There is so much to absorb and see in a very little cosmopolitan city! Going there is like going to Venice. You leave the city with a heavy heart knowing that you missed 2/3 of the sights you wanted to see.

We stayed at the Marriott Marquis smack dab in the middle of the Great White Way and fronting Times Square. It's next door to the MTV Studios. It was great because there was a public transportation strike the first two days we were there (spoken in cynical tone). We made a mistake of  taking a taxi to take us to Chinatown. They (taxis) have the transport monopoly so they were charging heaven and earth to go anywhere outside of Manhattan. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our Chinatown forays and ate like little southern piggies. Cantonese and Schezuan foods are marvelous. The dimsums are like what we used to get in Hong Kong and the best thing is the price. Peking ducks and charsui (chinese barbeque) hangs in restaurant windows and the freshness of the ingredients in even the simplest of dishes was heavenly. 

I am a foodie and the NY experience is wonderful because of the array of ethnic foods available in such a small city. Yes, we also went to Little Italy and sampled some of its gastronomical delights. We also had Irish, Indian, Greek, and all sorts of Mediterreanean foods. I am getting hungry so I need to leave the subject of foods for now.

The sights and shopping possibilities are endless. The kids loved FAO Swartz and Toys R Us. We all enjoyed the museums, the Broadway shows, Central Park, Rockefeller Center, Empire State Building, the TV studios, the modern buildings and classical churches, Madame Liberty, the Wall Street Bull, the street musicians and performers, the subway system, and many other fabulous  multi-sensory experiences.

I have tons of NYC pics but I have yet to manipulate them so they will be of the right size. I tried downloading them in the FTP but it was taking too long.

Happy New Year everyone!!!! 

 

    

  

Floridians in Big Apple

"Certainly, travel is more than seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."                         ~Miriam Beard  

 

 

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
--Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

 

 

AOL's add-an-entry feature does not work well this morning. It will not let me change font color. No time to whine to Joe (AOL Journal Editor and techie god). We are headed to NYC and there is a public transport strike. But NOTHING can dampen my spirits. I am beside myself and looking forward to my first trip to the Big Apple.

I will try to download pics and what nots while I am there.

My mother-in-law's advice: "Make sure the kids have their shoes on.  Don't pack their bib overalls."

Happy Holidays to everyone! 

Simpler Holidays

Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.

-King Whitney Jr

 

Our kids have grown and the gift giving mode in our household changed this year. Instead of buying expensive gifts for each other, we bought tickets for the family to go to New York City. We’re spending our Christmas holiday there.

 

Christmas is just so commercialized now-a-days and the older the kids get, the heftier are the price tags for the gifts they want. We put our foot down and decreed that we will make memories this year instead of subscribing to materialism full on. Instead of buying each other gifts, we wrote a check to help Red Cross on its ongoing hurricane drives and donated some to USO to help deployed young military people pay for their airfares.

 

Thorstein Veblen was right on track about his conspicuous consumption theory. We are ashamed to admit that wewere once caught in the waves of consumerism and technological ostentation. We went to the department stores/malls and braved the holiday crowds to get that perfect gift for each other. We spent so much money on things that did not even give us joy after a week of having it.

 

This is not a change of philosophy because of necessity. We are at the point in our lives where we can go out and get what we want if we want to. We  reflected on past Christmases we’ve had that were centered on the material bounty and we want to take a step towards what we hope is a higher plane. We still want gifts but we want those from the heart. 

 

This year, we will try to celebrate Christmas’ real meaning: sharing, giving, and togetherness. We will make memories to be treasured for eternity. We hope our kids will take their children on vacations at familiar places and say, “Your grandfather and grandmother took us here and we did this.” Each of us is giving each other the gift of time so we can share a memory-making adventure together.

 

For friends and families: we bought consumables, baked cookies, made personal gifts and we’ll be visiting some. For our nephews and nieces: we got them gift cards from their favorite stores. Yes, that is all we are going to do this year. It is actually liberating to do away with all the holiday spending. We look at people who are frantically searching for that perfect store bought gift for that special someone and feel sadness welling in us. We were once those people.  

 

 

Happy Holidays!

Kids Made Me Do It!

“You can tell that it's infatuation when you think that he's as sexy as Paul Newman, as athletic as Pete Rose, as selfless and dedicated as Ralph Nader, as smart as John Kenneth Galbraith and as funny as Don Rickles. You can be reasonably sure that it's love when you realize he's actually about as sexy as Don Rickles, as athletic as Ralph Nader, as smart as Pete Rose, as funny as John Kenneth Galbraith and doesn't resemble Paul Newman in any way--but you'll stick with him anyway."

 -Judith Viorst

 

My teenagers are constantly falling in and out of  “love.”  I just have to keep my mouth shut though I am tempted to say, “You do not know what love means, kid!”

 

Does anybody really knows what love means? Isn’t it one of those emotions that only the “lover” could define? My definition of love may not be yours kind of thing?

 

I believe that most love begins with infatuation. Love is not blind, infatuation is. When you are infatuated, you only see the positives and your blinders filter the negatives.  Then the biochemical induced high of infatuation fades and reality strikes. Suddenly he is not that great anymore. He has a funny way of chewing his food. He isa miser. He is not as brilliant as you thought he was. This is when a lot of couples that thought they are “in love” start arguing. That very smile that made you smitten as a kitten now annoys the beJesus out of you. This is the transitional phase where infatuation may turn into a break-up or love.

 

A lot of people succumb to infatuation addiction. They break up with their partners when the rush of dopamine is depleted. They want to experience that high again and again so they have series of short-term relationships. They are no better than drug addicts because they are chemically dependent too. The only difference is that they do not have to pay for it because their bodies manufacture the chemicals. Some would say that these people are addicted to love. They are not.  They are addicted to the biological chemicals induced by infatuation.       

 

Love is the more mature and reality based by-product of infatuation. You see the positive as well as the negative traits of your partner but you keep them around anyway. You look at the whole package and decide that nobody is perfect and you will take him as is. It does not mean you will not nag him into changing but after a while you will just give in and rationalize the flaw as a character enhancement feature. There’re days that you will question your sanity because you find his double chin “cute” and his burgeoning middle “sexy.” Love is not blind: its sight is 20/20. Love is crazy: it consciously accepts, challenges, and defies reality.    

 

***THE OPINION EXPRESSED ABOVE IS THAT OF THE AUTHOR’S.  FEEL FREE TO DISCUSS YOUR OWN TAKE ON THIS SUBJECT***

Time Flies!

                                Happy 15th Birthday, J!

                                             

Smiley Faced Genius

 

Almond shaped brown eyes

Full of mischief

Freckled smiling face

Sometimes goofy

Happy and young

Seemingly shallow

You surprise everyone

With intrepid wisdom

 

 

 

<