July 28, 2010

  • Travel Blog - NYC

    Prologue: Been an exhausting week dove 6 dives in two days in the Saint Laurent, studied for sailing and passed (skipper as of tonight!), now packing to NYC.  Time to be a girl.  

    My NYC trip is an inception by Novella.  4 days dream, and back to quiet roads and my office.  NYC is like HK in many ways.  They are both financial centers, capitalistic, stinks in some area, a core metropolis of 7 to 8 million but dense, opportunists, crowded, materialistic, ppl are not as nice, lights, lounges, anything you want to do, you can do.... Anyway, Novella and I ate in various new yorker restaurants, lounges/patios, visited NBC - Dr. Oz and saturday night live studios, the Met museum, shopped at times square and SOHO, took strolls in central park.. You know, living like a new yorker.  I almost forgot how small townish Ottawa is.  NYC has momentum which keeps you alive, just like HK.  and so we ate from downtown to uptown.  rent is ridiculous but house prices are just around Vancouver prices.  quite happy just to be in nyc, to feel the vibe, and to lounge around there with novella, imagining our future in nyc.  She would go broke shopping and I would try to be a Manhattan girl, we would stay at her future bfs' apartment or we would rent a 400 sq ft apartment, bunk beds.  Hahaha. Anyway, we had this conversation a few years ago but on HK instead.

    NyLonKong: Among NY, London, and HK, NY I have the least roots, but I like being a minority there.  It forces you to meet not only work and laugh with other races, but to invite them into your everyday innermost circle, with no others.  That always makes one a deeper, better person.  You know it when you get good deals from fellow chinese just because, that there are stores selling chinese junk for sky prices.  Chicago, I heard it provides a metropolitan lifestyle except the bums/vendors and crowds and dirt and pollution of NY and LA.  LA is too spreaded out.. I like Boston and San Francisco.  London, while I am one of them on paper, I dislike its heavy taxes and it is so bloody expensive there I will feel uncomfortable losing my job.  It is more of a relieve when things are cheaper.  Hong Kong, some may say, it is just HK... You are just like the rest of the city, if not country.  that depends on the person.  For me, I believe my roots are there, and I do have an edge there.  My folks are there and I hear crazy/interesting thing all the time.  It makes me wonder why I stayed in Canada.  Yes, I don't like how the general public think, but that is dust compared to the familiarity, the results, having the whole network there for me already, cheap, potential etc... Realistically, Hong Kong would score the highest among the megalopolises, because HK can offer a US lifestyle if you want.  Shanghai would be a tier2 choice.  I love Vancouver the way people love their hometowns.  I would only live in places which speak english or chinese to be happy and to excel.  

    從頭做起，一切為自己。