god bless america #2
13 Apr 2007 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayoraaseiAccomodation
As soon as I heard that we were going to be living in Manhattan for around $100/night during Easter, my expectations plunged through the floor. Don't get me wrong, you can get pretty good accomodation for around $100/night, but that's during July in Washington D.C. I still think Ramada Hotel's the best we've had in America, even though it was a bit far from the city.
Well, considering our last accomodation in Flushing Meadows (yep, where the US Open is held) had one toilet shared between eight rooms, said toilet floor being awash with drowned cockroaches, and the water from the sink was yellow.......I'd say Carter Hotel was an improvement.
There's a lot of horror stories about it from the net. Fleas, bedbugs, cockroaches and mice... Fortunately we encountered none of these, although our floor did smell mysteriously like our immunology mice labs for a few days... It isn't so much a "hotel" as a room to sleep in, but anyone who expects more from living right next to Times Square should be ready to fork out at least double the price. All amenities had to be requested and there wasn't any housekeeping (or maid service, as they like to call it in feminist America). The sheets were clean if you changed them yourself. There was toilet paper if you remembered to ask at the counter. The TV had about 7 channels (by comparison, Ramada had about 30 something channels), of which only 3 had fair reception (then again, my home TV at the height of its achievement could only receive 3 channels out of 6). There was no hot water, kettle, microwave, or any food-making device. Only one powerpoint worked and it had the TV plugged in. The walls were a non-descript pink with many non-descript stains on it. The heating wasn't switched on for the first day. The "hot" water was fixed with an error margin of 2 degrees at 35 degrees. And the toilet plumbing had problems sucking, er, stuff down the drain. Despite booking a 4 people room, the room came with one double bed and a sofa...at least it was cosy.
On the upside, since there was no housekeeping - there was no need to tip!
You could live in it, and if you're going to live at Times Square, you really shouldn't be holed up in your room watching cable. Within two blocks you had food from (practically) every continent on Earth and subways to anywhere in New York. And the subway is cheeeaaaaap even though we didn't use it much this time and I detest how its staff give me blank looks when I refer to it as "train".
People
When a book called Why Don't Cats Like to Swim had this to offer in answer to its name: a page-long digression best summarised as "because they're too lazy", one wonders if schooling in America is purely fictional.
Being a big city, New York is as much a centre of opulence as weirdos. On the one hand you have the big CEOs in their pristinely pressed suits, and on the other jobless bums that infest the streets. Neither end sees any point to courtesy, apparently. Hold the door for someone, they will walk straight by you as though its their god-given right. And that's probably a good thing.
At one McDonalds, while I was munching on my burger (it irks me that they refer to their burgers as "sandwiches" and give me blank looks if I say otherwise, but nevertheless refer to cheeseburgers as cheeseburgers), a black guy slithered towards us, bent over, feigned biting on my food and swaggered off, while everyone sitting around us glared collectively at him.
On the streets, apart from getting ogled by middle-aged creeps, one gets accosted by beggars sticking their hands in your path and coughing on you, passing on the latest strain of tuberculosis.
I have also never understood the appeal of matching tracksuits. I would never wear it anywhere near the door unless I'm going for a morning jog. It baffles me that people wear it as a fashion statement. And preps? Oh yeah, one week in America and one learns that preps are not just a Mary-Sue author disclaimer.
Apparently personality changes are also in fashion. We walked in to a restuarant and the janitor was shaking his head and snorting at us because he couldn't hear our answer to his question. We walk out after eating and he's bowing like some obsequious ass-wipe and repeating "thank you" over and over again. Erm, someone tell me where the secret button is, please?
As soon as I heard that we were going to be living in Manhattan for around $100/night during Easter, my expectations plunged through the floor. Don't get me wrong, you can get pretty good accomodation for around $100/night, but that's during July in Washington D.C. I still think Ramada Hotel's the best we've had in America, even though it was a bit far from the city.
Well, considering our last accomodation in Flushing Meadows (yep, where the US Open is held) had one toilet shared between eight rooms, said toilet floor being awash with drowned cockroaches, and the water from the sink was yellow.......I'd say Carter Hotel was an improvement.
There's a lot of horror stories about it from the net. Fleas, bedbugs, cockroaches and mice... Fortunately we encountered none of these, although our floor did smell mysteriously like our immunology mice labs for a few days... It isn't so much a "hotel" as a room to sleep in, but anyone who expects more from living right next to Times Square should be ready to fork out at least double the price. All amenities had to be requested and there wasn't any housekeeping (or maid service, as they like to call it in feminist America). The sheets were clean if you changed them yourself. There was toilet paper if you remembered to ask at the counter. The TV had about 7 channels (by comparison, Ramada had about 30 something channels), of which only 3 had fair reception (then again, my home TV at the height of its achievement could only receive 3 channels out of 6). There was no hot water, kettle, microwave, or any food-making device. Only one powerpoint worked and it had the TV plugged in. The walls were a non-descript pink with many non-descript stains on it. The heating wasn't switched on for the first day. The "hot" water was fixed with an error margin of 2 degrees at 35 degrees. And the toilet plumbing had problems sucking, er, stuff down the drain. Despite booking a 4 people room, the room came with one double bed and a sofa...at least it was cosy.
On the upside, since there was no housekeeping - there was no need to tip!
You could live in it, and if you're going to live at Times Square, you really shouldn't be holed up in your room watching cable. Within two blocks you had food from (practically) every continent on Earth and subways to anywhere in New York. And the subway is cheeeaaaaap even though we didn't use it much this time and I detest how its staff give me blank looks when I refer to it as "train".
People
When a book called Why Don't Cats Like to Swim had this to offer in answer to its name: a page-long digression best summarised as "because they're too lazy", one wonders if schooling in America is purely fictional.
Being a big city, New York is as much a centre of opulence as weirdos. On the one hand you have the big CEOs in their pristinely pressed suits, and on the other jobless bums that infest the streets. Neither end sees any point to courtesy, apparently. Hold the door for someone, they will walk straight by you as though its their god-given right. And that's probably a good thing.
At one McDonalds, while I was munching on my burger (it irks me that they refer to their burgers as "sandwiches" and give me blank looks if I say otherwise, but nevertheless refer to cheeseburgers as cheeseburgers), a black guy slithered towards us, bent over, feigned biting on my food and swaggered off, while everyone sitting around us glared collectively at him.
On the streets, apart from getting ogled by middle-aged creeps, one gets accosted by beggars sticking their hands in your path and coughing on you, passing on the latest strain of tuberculosis.
I have also never understood the appeal of matching tracksuits. I would never wear it anywhere near the door unless I'm going for a morning jog. It baffles me that people wear it as a fashion statement. And preps? Oh yeah, one week in America and one learns that preps are not just a Mary-Sue author disclaimer.
Apparently personality changes are also in fashion. We walked in to a restuarant and the janitor was shaking his head and snorting at us because he couldn't hear our answer to his question. We walk out after eating and he's bowing like some obsequious ass-wipe and repeating "thank you" over and over again. Erm, someone tell me where the secret button is, please?
