Jono and the Giant Apple: Trujillo et al

Yesterday was weird. A frantic rush to try to get things sorted out for the apartment, a distinct lack of studying, and a strange unfolding of events that led to a party populated entirely by Harvard grads and yours truly.

The morning flew by - late sleep, awesome FaceTime with Jo (so good to see you, you look beautiful, as always). Then breakfast, at the best little bakery I have ever encountered (Levain bakery, check it out). It's pretty close to the new place, as it's on 74th and Amsterdam. You walk down a little flight of stairs into this tiny bakery that smells incredible, and all the locals get greeted by name. I think I'm going to go broke eating there. I had a cappucino and some phenomenal cinnamon brioche, then sat on a bench around 70th Street to eat it and look around.

After breakfast I decided to take a trip downtown, to see what I could see. I caught the subway down to Wall Street, and walked down the western edge of Manhattan to Battery Park. Battery Park is largely wrecked post-Sandy, so there wasn't too much to see, but the view across the bay to Liberty Island and Governor's Island is beautiful. I then walked around the edge of Manhattan towards the east, and then north, under Brooklyn Bridge, before turning inland at Manhattan Bridge.

I cut through Chinatown, where I got a bit of a surprise. In my head, Chinatown was lots of Chinese restaurants, tailors, supermarkets, and a cosmopolitan population. Not so- I saw only one other non-Asian person in 20 blocks. What was absent from this area (and what is usually prevalent in other such homogenous places) was suspicion or distrust for someone different (i.e. me). In this case, most people treated me like everyone else they encountered, with indifference. I walked up through Chinatown, into Little Italy, and through Little Italy into NoLiTa. From there I hopped on a subway going west from Bleecker Street, and made my way back to Morningside Heights.

I grabbed a panini at Starbucks, which was delicious but ridiculously expensive. The issue of the day then became how to resolve my liquidity issue. I currently have $0 in my Citibank account, and all attempts to transfer cash from South Africa to Citibank via SWIFT were unsuccessful, despite three hours of attempts. I decided to withdraw cash from an ATM on my FNB card, and then deposit it into Citi. This took two hours and three failed attempts. What a nightmare. It finally worked, however, and I deposited money into Uzayr's account so that when he lands on Monday all our pooled cash will enable us to cut a certified cheque for our three-month security deposit and move into our apartment. Subsequently, I went downtown to Macy's to price beds for the new apartment. Macy's is crazy. Furniture is the 9th floor, above an entire floor dedicated to bridal couture, and 7 other floors of clothes, kitchenware and other things. There is an amazing men's store on the ground floor, which stocks millions of shirts, ties, bowties, hats, gloves, coats, watches, cologne etc. Dyl will go mad here when he comes over - I suspect he will bankrupt himself here within a day. I then headed back to Uzayr's apartment to try to study some Statistics in order to exempt out of my Stats course.

I sat down to work, and was interrupted by a knock on the door from Billy, Uzayr's roommate. His friend Tom was in town, visiting from the University of Virginia, where he is at law school. Billy and Tom were roommates at Harvard together. They invited me to join them in having a few drinks before they headed off to a party. In an effort to embrace sociability and putting myself out there, I accepted, and then joined them as we traipsed off to East 59th Street for the party. The party was held in the most incredible apartment I've seen in New York thus far, inhabited by a Harvard friend of Billy and Tom's, who supposedly hails from one of the wealthiest families in the Dominican Republic, hence the title. We chatted, and I met an ever-growing group of Harvard undergrads who are now doing some interesting things (working at the UN, working at Morgan Stanley, working at Deutsche Bank, at Columbia Law School etc). They were all quite pleasant, but I was somewhat surprised that only two out of perhaps 20 asked me anything about myself and didn't monopolise conversation. I eventually grew bored (and rather sleepy, I must admit), and decided to head home.

I got lost, repeatedly, on the way home, due to trains not working or being closed for maintenance. What should have been a 30 minute trip took about an hour and a half. I went south, then West on the 7 train (which was closed for maintenance). So I went back north, and west on the 6. Then I took the 3 north, but didn't change at 96th Street, so I ended up in central Harlem, and had to return south to 96th so I could get to Columbia. By the time I fell into bed I was exhausted, but a few insights for the day had crystallised in my brain during the long trek home:

23 year olds are the same the world over, and being from Harvard doesn't bestow some greater pedigree - in fact, being part of such an elite group leads to greater insularity, and a greater inability to relate to people who do not share the same background. (Note: do not allow this to happen to you, Jono. While you may be at Columbia, remember your roots in the West Rand and remain accessible to people from similarly rural upbringings)
America is built on the concept of "convenient fiction". The subway map is useful, but ultimately bears little resemblance to reality. Similarly, Manhattan runs roughly SW to NE, but everyone here has agreed to the shared pretense that it runs S-N for the sake of convenience. I suppose it is a perfect example of the apparent consensus of the American subconscious - that the world will reshape itself in accordance with the will of the chosen and mighty
Banking in America in annoying
Dogfish Head IPA is spectacular beer

I just woke up, and Stats is still untouched...

Some things at Levain