Sorry I haven’t been replying your comments guys. Even in New York and all I seem to have pretty limited time online. So whenever I get a chance to go online, the first thing I have to go through is all my work e-mails to catch up with whatever’s been happening with all the companies we have back home.
Then after that whenever I have any spare time I quickly upload pictures and come up with a new blog entry. So sometimes by the time I’m done with all this I don’t seem to have any time left to do anything else. Either ways I want you guys to know that even if I don’t get to reply your comments, I read every single one of them.
So okay on with my blog entry now. After visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island the other day, Xes and I took a walk down Wall Street.
You guys know Wall Street right? The one street where everyone there got blamed for whatever happened in the financial crisis we went through last year.
I like the story of how Wall Street got its name. Click here to see it.
Anyway on Wall Street is the famous bull that we always see when we watch CNBC or any of these financial news channels. Whenever they talk about Wall Street they always cut into a scene showing this bull… which represents the street.
So naturally there were tons of tourists there trying to take a picture with it. the big attraction of the bull though seems to be its balls. All the tourists I saw kept posing right next to its two testicles and touching it with one hand. Well all except this one shy Asian tourist.
Her friends kept asking her to touch the balls but she said she didn’t want to.
Apparently you touch the balls for good luck or something.
There was such a queue to take a picture of the bull that I just randomly stole some shot of me and it right from the side. So here’s… half a bull
and me. Notice how right behind me there’s another guy getting his picture taken. Yes the bull is THAT popoular.
After Wall Street we walked further down pass some office buildings
and little parks like this where people from the office buildings will come down and have their sandwiches during lunch hour.
Our destination was… the site where the World Trade Center once stood.
This is how it looks like now. They’re building the new World Trade Center that’s due to be completed next year I think. So go back next year and you will see a very complete building in that picture.
Right next to the site was the World Trade Center Memorial. It was a little museum thingy where you could view what the World Trade Center was like when it was still around and everything that happened on 9/11. There were lots and lots of pictures. Pictures of the disaster when it happened and there was a wall of pictures of all the victims.
I learned so many things about 9/11’s effects that I didn’t know before. Like how after building collapsed there were 9 or so survivors that were dug out from the wreckage. Of the 9 survivors, 7 or so died from lung cancer or any other lung related diseases because of the fumes they breathed in on that day.
Even most of the 150 or so search dogs that helped search for survivors succumbed to other fatal diseases because of the fumes they breathed in. It was terrible.
My favourite part was when they had a volunteer share her story of 9/11. On different days, they would get volunteers from people who witnessed or experienced 9/11 to come share their experiences with the tourists that come to the memorial. On the day I went, the volunteer was the mother of a firefighter who perished that morning.
She told the story of her son and all her sons friends and what they were doing the night before and the day itself. I think 9/11 was a terrible tragedy. What’s different though is when you see a casualty figure on the news, it’s just a figure to you but when you hear the story of each individual that died that day it makes you realize how much one life is, and how many good lives this one disaster had claimed.
The only person I know of who experienced 9/11 is my cousin who used to work in the building opposite the World Trade Center. She told me when they all saw the first plane crash they all just thought it was a small accident and went back to work. When the second plane crashed though everyone scrambled to get out of the office buildings and find cover.
We left the 9/11 Memorial and headed then to the Empire State Building. Here’s me at the Lobby of the Empire State Builidng.
I wish I had taken more pictures of the inside of the building but I was too preoccupied with singing “NUuuu Yoorrrkkk!!!! Big city lights will inspireee youuu”….
I did however manage to take some nice pictures of the view from the top.
Look at how massive New York City is!
I even managed to catch a picture of this bird sitting out here enjoying the view.
And so everyone, that was my trip to Wall Street, 9/11 Memorial and The Empire State Building 🙂
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space