New York Nagaram VI

1st August 2008

Having missed a Bon Jovi concert, I wasn’t going to miss the next one and while Miley Cyrus might not be my cuppa tea , Sheryl Crow sure was. The plan was all set. We’d get up by 5:30 AM (#$#$%) to catch Sheryl Crow and then head over for CTW. Having rolled up our sleeves to hide the company insignia :P , we reached Rockefeller Plaza at cracking dawn to find we weren’t the only ones. We were easily a block away from the stage blocked by a semi stand in between the crowds. While we all joke about how we Indians love our ISTs, fashionable late seems to be in vogue everywhere. With the NBC centre being right there, we got cameras stuffed at our faces a couple of times but the wait was getting tiresome and the other two would have slept off there if they had a chance . Passing time reading the hundreds of posters folks brought, Sowmya and Shravani finally decided to give up since it was already 8 and there was no sight of Sheryl Crow. We had one false alarm when an NBC reporter turned up and the crowds went ballistic. On grabbing some breakfast, bagels and orange juice, we heard the crowds roar and Ms. Sheryl Crow finally made an entry right where we had been standing! So close yet so far. The crowds too had doubled by the time we came back and Cops blocked entry to prevent overcrowding. Catching faint throes of Sheryl’s voice, we moved on hoping we weren’t late to get to our CTW at Highbridge Park.

After having been on the smooth 4,5,6 line, we soon found ourselves transported into one of the older routes of the metro with the train actually visibly vibrating as it picked up pace especially once It came out into the open air. Legions of white t shirts landed at this out of sorts station and soon huddled around at the park as we got divided into three major groups which were further sub divided into 4 groups and started our weeding campaign. The weeds looked so healthy; it was tough to figure which was the weed and which wasn’t. After ruthlessly murdering few (understatement) innocent bystanders, my gang consisting of (Dr.) Swati (now why do we call you doc??), Sue, Sowmya got a hang of it and did manage to kill the evil weeds and avoiding its henchmen: the poison ivy. A lucky few like Rubaina, Sahil did manage to brush their clothes with poison ivy and then get infected whilst washing their clothes. The rashes must have been torture for them, but equally gruesome to look at for the rest of us. Back to happy stories. The ball barrow was lot more fun as we pushed it up and down the lane picking up weeds and dumping them into the compost heap racing against one another. Suddenly the place had turned really hot and humid and everyone’s enthusiasm started dying with every passing hour. Lunch seemed a distant future and well… America still needs to learn about packed vegan lunches. Not doing a good job at it. Soon we were back to leveling the road and the grass lawns at the edges though the way we were at it, it was one of those moments that would have inspired Elvis to sing “A lil less conversation, a lil more action”.

While people started heading out, a few of us stayed back to go trekking on the hill on the opposite side of the park. A motley crew consisting of Rubaina, Karthik, Manu, Raagini, Patil, Shravani, Arun, Sowmya and I started randomly climbing up the hillside egged on by a physically challenged young man on his Stephen Hawking’s type motorized wheel chair. What started off as a random trek soon turned into a scavenger hunt for baseballs. As it turns out the top of the hill is home to a ball park and all lost baseballs end up in the wilderness that we were scouting around. A la “A mad mad mad mad world”, we scrambled around clinging to edges, brushing past thickets to catch as many balls as we could. Maybe more of Crystal Maze without the time limit J and the balding Richard O’Brien. With a majestic haul of 14 baseballs and 1 softball (Ruby doo’s prized scalp) , the buccaneers split up as a few of us headed back to prepare for next day’s early morning trip to Pocanos in Pennsylvania for a cycle trekking weekend.

New York Nagaram V

This one goes out to the NAPAs of 2009 to inspire me to relive the moments and get down to continuing on my trip blog. Who’d have thought documenting two months of the best time of your life takes more than a year to write down. So Back from Washington, the New York NAPAs are already in awe of the Bangalore ones who seem to be catching the sights and sounds of New York and around as if there is no tomorrow. We finally get around getting our CHASE debit cards which made life so much easier especially since America has this fetish for .69 and .87s and numerous other decimals on their items and they actually give back all the change. Soon you understand why Americans love their plastic, it just easier to use than calculating change and figuring all those nickels and dimes and quarters. With the amount of walking that we had started doing, I figured I didn’t have to get up early to use the gym. Mornings were soon becoming routine. After having literally been the ants of an optimization program having tried all the routes possible to reach Grand Central, everyone had got used to choosing the shortest path and you could be sure to bump into someone on your way to work. There is this whole new kick to life when you are suited and booted walking down Wall Street with a FT / WSJ in your hand and people wondering is this some super brilliant brown guy earning millions of dollars. Wishful thinking because none of the Americans thought aloud about it. With money in my bank account, I could finally get down to wonders of online shopping and started visiting the International Spy Shop, The Tech Geek and numerous other places to find some weird boy toy to satisfy my craving for those oddball spy gadgets. Watches that could record conversations from a distance, sunglasses that allowed you to see behind you, and all those Inspector Gadget, Q contraptions you were brought up on.

Another routine we had set upon ourselves was to find out new cuisines to try out. The falafel dudes outside office removed any traces of home sickness I could have though they never managed to replace the awesome falafels we get back in the Gulf. One day we decided to try out Taz’s pizza and having checked them on the site, we went on our search for real cheap pizzas. We walked by Taz twice before realizing that they looked nothing like the pictures on their site but the pizzas were still good enough and cheap. I soon learnt to bookmark another great site www.menupages.com for NYC dining. While Subway and Chipotle were regular fall backs, we’d get adventurous and try out cuisines that spared a thought to vegetarians including Chinese (yes!!) , Thai, Mexican, Ethopian etc. Though the best lunch sessions were when we introduced the non Indians to Indian cuisine and saw how they struggled with our daily staples. A note to general public: Dosas don’t come under the fork and knife category.

With project work, assignments and stuff, emphasis started shifting towards weekend trips while random roaming around marked the week especially since we had covered most of the landmarks that NYC guidebook would provide. This is certified by the fact that we peered through to a souvenir book to confirm we weren’t missing out on anything. I was soon becoming the in house Google search expert on NYC events, deals , and places to check out but NYC - a city that never sleeps turns into a city that never rests in the summer as the NYC calendar is brimming with activity.While we did manage to lose out on the Jon Bon Jovi concert a day before we landed, I was already on the lookout for the next one. Miley Cyrus and Paula Abdul didnt seem to have the star attraction to have me wake up at 6 in the morning. Nor did we get out early enough to catch the open air movie screenings at Bryant Park though there also was the other reason that none of the movies were appealing enough.

Kanye West phenomenon was hitting the city. There were actual ads of pills that would give you a Kanye West complexion and a surgical treatment to look like him / Sound like him and god knows do what else like him. The other addiction we all had caught onto meanwhile had to be bubble tea (Bubble tea, also called Boba tea or simply Boba, is a tea beverage with tapioca balls. source: Wikipedia) Mango, Lychee and numerous other mix and match flavours are available and it had become a daily ritual to sip it during the after lunch session of training.

Addictions are fast forming and the most fruitful one was the urge to head out on trips on weekends and the same we would do this weekend.