A Day in NYC

Boo!! Ping was in NYC at the worst time! Snowing! Raining! Hailing! Half of the time we were walking on flooded walkways while the other half was walking on slippery ice. They are not as efficient as Michigan when it comes to shoveling and cleaning the snow. Plus, people there are not friendly at all. In fact, Ping would consider some rude as they shoulder their way through a crowd. (Haha...can see some of you smirking and wanting to say, isn't that how it is like in M'sia? See..Ping tends to avoid crowded places in M'sia unless Ping has a companion who is good at shoving through a crowd. Bleh!) Don't think Ping would like staying in NY for long term at all.

However, tt and dk's apartment is actually at a very nice place - Roosevelt Island -, and it is literally right in front of a subway station. It also comes with an awesome night view of NYC. Ping went straight to the apartment to meet up with ahdik before we head out to the busy city.

Our first destination was Central Park. Lucky thing we decided to go there first because the weather just went from bad to worse after that. tt brought Ping there the first time Ping went to NYC, which was in the fall and it was lovely! Ping wanted to go see the ice-skating rink as they always look so pretty in the movies but we were there so early that there wasn't that many people and the weather was just depressing.

It then started to rain pretty bad that we went into Time Warner Center to stay out of the rain and cold for a while. We got some hot drink and some snack at Borders before heading out to the 'war with the weather'. The Time Warner Center is just right outside Central Park at the Columbus Circle. Pretty upscale place. We wanted to go to the bakery in there but guess what, it was a sit down bakery where people actually serve you buns and coffee!! Geezzz...

After the warm up, we took the subway to Times Square. This is Ping's favorite place in NYC. The energy, the cheerfulness, the colors, the fun, they are all right here. Just the ads itself is crazy. You can actually stand right in the middle and see the news headlines of the hour! The further you walk away from this area, the less fun and less cheerfulness you get. It is like the heart of NYC.

One wouldn't think that there is an Information Center for a few blocks of commerce center. But there is one. Yup, it is happening enough to have an information center right there on 7th Avenue. If one has a huge budget, there really is tons to do in NYC. If there is lots of time, there are also cheap stuff to jump on such as the Broadway shows lottery tickets.Just a few doors away from the information center is Charmin. Charmin is a brand of toilet paper in US. They did a really good job with their advertisement on TV because they have this blue bear that sings the Charmin song, both of which have pretty strong impression. Even ahdik who just had his first experience with Charmin got the song stuck in his head for the rest of the afternoon. Anyway, the Charmin at Times Square is just a clean, free public toilet with different types of toilet papers and people who actually guides you to the toilet door! Also, ahdik and Ping was lucky enough to get stall number 16 and 17!!! Just above Charmin is Duracell, a battery brand. They have various charging stations for you to charge your cell phones, mp3 players, camera, etc. In addition to that, they also have a bunch of snowmobiles for consumers to help power up the 2009 for the new year countdown. When ahdik cycles on the snowmobiles, the energy is being transferred into a battery cell which they later connect to the 2009 sign which lit up when clock striked 12mn. They required 230 cycle hours just to get 10 minutes of energy!! Sadly though, it seems like they are actually giving out more energy than saving because there were more people there charging up their gadgets or playing Wii and Xbox that they provide than people who were powering up the 2009 sign.

Among other fun stores we went into were M&M's and Hershey's. The M&M's look like the beads that mum use for her crafts (left). The Hershey's store was a lot smaller but they have this machine that allows you to mix the different varieties by random (right).

We also went all the way south to the Bowling Green area to visit the Wall Street bull. And finally, back up to the Rockefeller Center to catch a view of the Christmas tree before we head back to the apartment. Can you spot the Malaysia flag?? Didn't see the flags this trip but probably because it was pretty dark when we got there and Ping was wet and miserable. Ping did manage to go to the roof top during Ping's first trip to NYC though.