New York, New York

The weekends here..

Its been a month I am here, and every weekend has been awesome! Well New York has a lot of tourist attractions, some of which I saw and some I will visit soon, but the main thing so far has been drinking! Been to a couple of clubs here, and they are VERY SMALL. If not small, they are jam packed! Went to Crobar( a famous club in NY) one of the weekends, and there was no place to stand on the dance floor, let alone dance. Going to a bar this thursday with other interns from Waterloo in the city, lets see how that turns out.

First weekend went around Times Square and clubbing with friends. Second was Aditi's B'day bash. We got drunk and danced like crazy at her place till the cops came. It ain't no party till the cops come I tell ya!!! lol...Well nothing happend, we turned the music down and they went away.
Third weekend here we went to a 3 city tour. My my, what a mistake to take a bus tour that starts from Chinatown. In future I am not going on bus tours, or getting in any bus that even passes through Chinatown. Our host was this sweet but loud lady whose English was incomprehensible sometimes. When she made her first annoucement of welcoming everyone on the bus and in the end said "thanks", I thought that was the end of it. Little did I know that she is gonna keep talking the whole weekend. I got a headache by the end of the first day.

We went to various tourist places in Philadelphia, Washington DC and Baltimore. The thing is she would give us little time to take pictures and come back to the bus. She said as a punishment, the person who was last was supposed to sing in front of everyone. Clearly, we sang everytime. I think it was more of a punishment for people listening to us. We were like prisoners with a few more liberties. On Saturday night we stayed at a motel in Virginia, drank and did stupid stuff in the parking lot. I'll post up pictures for you to know what exactly I mean by stupid stuff. It was so much fun. The only way I remember it happend was through the pictures. I think Saturday night made up for the tiring day, visits to perhaps all the museums that exist in that part of the world. We were told to get ready and be in the bus by 7:30am on Sunday morning. LIKE WHO in the whole wide world gets ready by 7:30am on a SUNDAY for tourism! Obviously, we were unable to get ready. It was funny trying to wake everyone up from their hangovers. Ultimately, we told them to leave, and we caught up with them later.
In the end, during one of her last annoucements on the bus, that lady said something like " I thank the educated people for cooperating and always being on time". Ahem... much deserved thanks, I wouldn't go through that torture ever.

One other memorable event the weekend after that was ice skating (the same weekend we went to Crobar too). So much for being from Canada, I haven't done ice skating before, even though there are rinks at every corner near my house. Although it was my first time, I picked it up pretty soon. If you've done roller blading or skating before, it shouldn't be too hard. It was a lot of fun though.

posted by Nimita @ 7:50 AM 3 comments

New York, New York

After much thought (and also getting bored at work) I finally decided to start a blog while I am here in one of the busiest cities in the world. For my New York readers, one of the definitions in Merriam-Webster of the word busy is "foolishly or intrusively active" (more on that later).

As much as I hate to admit, I think I am having as much fun here as I did in California if not more. I wasn't too excited initially to come here, after all I would be missing so much if I didn't go to Cali. My PSI friends, my relatives in SanFrans and my friends in Sacramento. How can I forget the unlimited road trips to different cities every weekend ( and the unlimited U-turns we made when we forgot the way), the beaches, Vegas, Hollywood, the first time I reluctantly tried Sushi, those entertaining fights between Justin and Ben in the breezeway( the room where we worked), Ivan and Charles coloring their hair pink and also the first time Justin started drinking and almost agreed to accompany Ben to a strip club due to peer pressure.
For those who don't know I spent last summer working for this mainframe computer company called Platform Solution Inc (PSI) with 7 other interns from my university - Ben, Justin, Ivan, Eunice, Ibrahim, Charles, Karam. Looking back, I had a great time there.

This term, I knew absolutely no one before coming here. Lehman Brothers hired 4 co-ops in total, 2 at their New Jersey office and 2 here in NY. On top of that, the company didn't pay us housing! Now which company in the world doesn't pay housing to its co-ops? I still can't get over the shock!

Anywayyy.. the truth is, I am having a fun time , because I met some wonderful people here. At work, I met Jack ( another intern at NY office), Elliot (intern who works at NJ office), Rahim, arif & Joseph (waterloo grads), Alim (UfT grad) and some other people. So many Canadians at work definitely gives a homely feeling :)

I live in a residence on 20th and Park Avenue and made friends with spanish girls here - Paulina, Christina, Ellaina and many more. They are from various spanish speaking countries - Spain, Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico. I am seriously thinking of learning spanish now! I also met Alison & Liz from Texas, Helen from Florida and many more from around the world.

And not to forget my NJ friends from the other side ;) who I have been spending my drunk weekends with. A week or so before coming here, my friend Neha in India introduced me to Prashant who lived in NJ. Through Prashant I met his NJ university friends who recently completed their masters in comp sci and are looking for jobs ( so are basically free to have fun). I met Aditi, Rohan, Gaurav, through Gaurav I met Dipali, Chetali, Shilpi - who are here in New York on their internships ( just like me) but at United Nations from India. And I am in the process of meeting many other new people pretty much everyday.

Thats a lot of names for now. And I don't have the resources to post pictures up here yet, so will do that later.

so for now, life is good here in Manhattan!

posted by Nimita @ 12:28 PM 2 comments