3 hours 34 minutes after arrival...
4 Dec 2004 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayoraaseiBACK!!! But I don't think anyone missed me LOL XD
Gotta get this out of my system first: OMG I LOVE SYDNEY *HUGS COMPUTER* *HUGS SPARKLING CLEAN TOILET* *HUGS SULFUR-FREE CLEAR WATER* *HUGS AUSTRALIAN ACCENT*
Argh, 2 weeks away from the computer and I can't use the keyboard anymore.
This is going to be the first of many posts probably >__>;
Everytime I go to Manhattan my view about it changes. I used to be indifferent but I like it less every time I go. So many of the people are untouchable because they're so into their commercial world. So many of them don't know the basics of manners - there are some behaviours you see there you'd have thought belonged in less civilised places: people spitting on streets, on rainy days, people torpedoing through the crowd using their umbrellas as a weapon. There are some nice, kind-hearted people there but a lot of indifferent, self-absorbed people.
Girls should not travel alone. I've had about six or seven guys walking by and leering at me just as I was standing by myself on 58th St in the space of 20 minutes. Old men in Flushing walk around the crossroads and stick their faces near you if you're not careful. It's a really disgusting experience.
Manhattan itself is such a grey city, especially in the near-winter we went. It wasn't that cold (coldest day was ~1 degrees) and we brought more clothes than we could wear because everyone told us it would be freezing. Got really sick in the last few days because my mum passed her cold to me >.< Worst 3 days ever. Everyone there wears such austere colours, fashion there is very upperclassy, very proper - very, might I mention, unlike Australia. You'd rarely see people walking on Manhattan in anything but neat, carefully pressed and matched clothing. It's a great shopping place if you've got the money to spend it on big brand names. The department stores are luxurious multi-storey constructions, nothing in Sydney even goes close to resembling it. But I thank Sydney Westfields for having more toilets - I think it was Macy's on 34th St that had one toilet on level 2 and the next toilet on level 7...what's with that?? ==; The queue on the day after Thanksgiving was about 10 metres long. The Thanksgiving-Christmas season is also a really good time for shopping because most shops have holiday discounts...but erk, in so many ways it hasn't changed from the days of The Great Gatsby, it's still a place for wealthy, self-centred people. People like Tom and Daisy still exist in Manhattan, and in much larger numbers than you'd see in Sydney.
You walk on the streets of Manhattan in any working day and you see no smiling faces. With the wintery sun never quite reaching the grounds that lie at the feet of its many skyscrapers, this sort of sombre atmosphere adds to the grey overtone of the city. You get the feeling as you swap glances with people that everyone is so defensive and they seem more to be glaring at you rather than just glancing over you.
I think Sydney's evolved into a city that is cynical about its politics, but sympathetic towards human rights and still largely morally righteous. Manhattan's the sort of world that weighs decisions in terms of dollars, I don't know how much the city has learnt from WTC. Individuals must have learnt much, but as a city it plunged obliviously back into the money-saturated world, seemingly unswayed by it all.
We went to the WTC site - or at least, I insisted on going there. We went there a few months before 9/11 and because we lived in NJ at the time, we changed trains often at WTC station. The two levels just beneath ground level used to be full of shops. I remember a toys shop and a shop that retailed Jelly Belly's. Now they're all gone. They've cleared off pretty much everything on ground level and paved it even with concrete. Below ground a lot of the debris still stand in desolation. An empty shop front, pieces of concrete, cords and steel foundations, fenced off from the main station.
Oh, one thing: United Airlines was really sucky this time >.< It was great before, the food used to be the best amongst all the airlines we went by. No way I'm flying United again...they gave us the same menu on to and back, and their lasagne is the sort of thing that you make out of clay and plastic. Give me Qantas again! I thought it was American Airlines that was going down, but even that has better service. Last time the Qantas/AA flight to NY via Japan gave us 777 planes on all 4 legs of the journey. This time we got 747, 767 and 757...all tackily small, old planes....ugh. I love 777...I love computer games ^0^v I love miso soup from Qantas...LOL. And it's nice to hear Australian accent again. Ah.
*Thinks about going to sleep* ^^v
Gotta get this out of my system first: OMG I LOVE SYDNEY *HUGS COMPUTER* *HUGS SPARKLING CLEAN TOILET* *HUGS SULFUR-FREE CLEAR WATER* *HUGS AUSTRALIAN ACCENT*
Argh, 2 weeks away from the computer and I can't use the keyboard anymore.
This is going to be the first of many posts probably >__>;
Everytime I go to Manhattan my view about it changes. I used to be indifferent but I like it less every time I go. So many of the people are untouchable because they're so into their commercial world. So many of them don't know the basics of manners - there are some behaviours you see there you'd have thought belonged in less civilised places: people spitting on streets, on rainy days, people torpedoing through the crowd using their umbrellas as a weapon. There are some nice, kind-hearted people there but a lot of indifferent, self-absorbed people.
Girls should not travel alone. I've had about six or seven guys walking by and leering at me just as I was standing by myself on 58th St in the space of 20 minutes. Old men in Flushing walk around the crossroads and stick their faces near you if you're not careful. It's a really disgusting experience.
Manhattan itself is such a grey city, especially in the near-winter we went. It wasn't that cold (coldest day was ~1 degrees) and we brought more clothes than we could wear because everyone told us it would be freezing. Got really sick in the last few days because my mum passed her cold to me >.< Worst 3 days ever. Everyone there wears such austere colours, fashion there is very upperclassy, very proper - very, might I mention, unlike Australia. You'd rarely see people walking on Manhattan in anything but neat, carefully pressed and matched clothing. It's a great shopping place if you've got the money to spend it on big brand names. The department stores are luxurious multi-storey constructions, nothing in Sydney even goes close to resembling it. But I thank Sydney Westfields for having more toilets - I think it was Macy's on 34th St that had one toilet on level 2 and the next toilet on level 7...what's with that?? ==; The queue on the day after Thanksgiving was about 10 metres long. The Thanksgiving-Christmas season is also a really good time for shopping because most shops have holiday discounts...but erk, in so many ways it hasn't changed from the days of The Great Gatsby, it's still a place for wealthy, self-centred people. People like Tom and Daisy still exist in Manhattan, and in much larger numbers than you'd see in Sydney.
You walk on the streets of Manhattan in any working day and you see no smiling faces. With the wintery sun never quite reaching the grounds that lie at the feet of its many skyscrapers, this sort of sombre atmosphere adds to the grey overtone of the city. You get the feeling as you swap glances with people that everyone is so defensive and they seem more to be glaring at you rather than just glancing over you.
I think Sydney's evolved into a city that is cynical about its politics, but sympathetic towards human rights and still largely morally righteous. Manhattan's the sort of world that weighs decisions in terms of dollars, I don't know how much the city has learnt from WTC. Individuals must have learnt much, but as a city it plunged obliviously back into the money-saturated world, seemingly unswayed by it all.
We went to the WTC site - or at least, I insisted on going there. We went there a few months before 9/11 and because we lived in NJ at the time, we changed trains often at WTC station. The two levels just beneath ground level used to be full of shops. I remember a toys shop and a shop that retailed Jelly Belly's. Now they're all gone. They've cleared off pretty much everything on ground level and paved it even with concrete. Below ground a lot of the debris still stand in desolation. An empty shop front, pieces of concrete, cords and steel foundations, fenced off from the main station.
Oh, one thing: United Airlines was really sucky this time >.< It was great before, the food used to be the best amongst all the airlines we went by. No way I'm flying United again...they gave us the same menu on to and back, and their lasagne is the sort of thing that you make out of clay and plastic. Give me Qantas again! I thought it was American Airlines that was going down, but even that has better service. Last time the Qantas/AA flight to NY via Japan gave us 777 planes on all 4 legs of the journey. This time we got 747, 767 and 757...all tackily small, old planes....ugh. I love 777...I love computer games ^0^v I love miso soup from Qantas...LOL. And it's nice to hear Australian accent again. Ah.
*Thinks about going to sleep* ^^v
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-04 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 02:26 am (UTC)Oh, I'm glad you changed your mind about Parfait Tic! Yeah...I can see where it's heading with Daiya ==; Argh, I don't think she's going to end up with Ichi >.< Damn it.
How did you go with NaNoWriMo, by the way?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 03:07 am (UTC)OMG, ICHI <3<3<3 *cry*
If Fuuko ends up with Daiya, it's going to be so lame. But if Fuuko ends up with Ichi, she'll end up looking like an idiot, to be kind.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 03:51 am (UTC)*Goes back to leeching Bleach off IRC* ^^
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-04 08:46 am (UTC)whoa, Manhattan? I thought you were in China.. *pause* oh yeah, cept you said you weren't going there. wow, I never really thought of Sydney as sympathetic towards human rights o.o
"An empty shop front, pieces of concrete, cords and steel foundations, fenced off from the main station."
:/ what did you think about that? I can't imagine.. hey, is america like a second home to you? you seem to go there very very often.. (well, relatively)
australian accent? o.O
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 02:19 am (UTC)That's why this time I was adamant to go to the Empire State Building (tallest building remaining in NY) and take photos from there LOL.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-04 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 02:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-06 09:32 am (UTC)Anyway, Manhattan certainly sounds ... friendly. I think I prefer Orlando better. The people there are quite cheery, though maybe that's because most of the people we met were tourists like us??? I don't know...
Hmm, I think I should probably stop flooding ur page, and post something on my own gloriously empty one.... Ah, I'm so lazy... yet sadly contented to be so^^ h0h0h0h0~