New York - day 1

our first night in new york... rain rain rain...brrr...

chris and i are in new york! exciting as it may sound, ny first impressions aren't exactly very good ones... it was a cloudy and rainy day, the morning we arrived... you could barely make out the sun... visually the place was congested with loads of cars, all horning away, and the smell! gosh, it smelt like a mixture of industrial estate, chinatown, fish market and toilet... gross... my first contact with the movie-made-famous-new york city was totally filling all my possible senses with disgust... and just when you think things couldn't get worse, well as they say, it never rains but it pours! i had some problems with my credit card, and was trying to make a collect call from a public phone back home to singapore... not only did the operator say "i'm so sorry, i can't seem to help you..." ( i had no problems doing a collect call from the remotest ends of canada, and here in new york city, i couldn't even make a call home?!?!) did i mention that there was a toilet smell everywhere in the streets??? you'd think that peoplpe pee-ed in public... haha... walking down those streets gave me the revelation of the PUBLIC toilet... oh yup, the phone booth and the phone receiver also smelt funny... like stale pee.. gross.. i thought my only use for wet wipes were for cleaning mud off my hands during our hikes in canada... guess they're good for cleaning your ears after making a call in new york as well...

we went to woodburry common in new jersey thgis afternoon... it's thgis super huge shopping outlet, like a mini town actually! each brand has a little house as it's store... and the discounts were impossible!!! 70% off!!! we had a super great time! we could only spare 5 hours there, cos we had to catch the last bus at 9.26pm. so we kinda shelved dinner plans... at about 9pm, our stomachs were growling! so we rushed to the only food outlet that was still open-starbucks.. how new york is that...

i was hungrily eyeing the chicken chedder sandwich, but it was a whopping US$7 without tax! just as i was about to wrap my fingers tightly on it to claim it for my tummy... chris said in his oh-so-logical tone," we can buy 4 pastries with 7 dollars instead of 1 sandwich." so we bought 4 pastries... just as we were paying for our make-shift dinner, the starbucks people asked" is that your dinner??" and in our feeble attempt to not sound pathetic, we mumbled a pai-seh "yes". and guess what?? they actually went" oh come on, take these, go on, you can;t just have sweet stuff for dinner?" as they shoved not 1, but 2 chicken chedder sandwiches into our bags!! boy, aren't we blessed! now we've got more than US$20 worth of starbucks for US$6! come to think of it, chris and i have been given lots of help from strangers on this trip, it's a real blessing that these people crossed our paths... will tell you guys of the other "amazing blessings" that fell onto our lap this past month when we reach home...=) we're off to explore a "world-class" city tomorrow!