I arrived in on a Sunday afternoon. I was supposed to meet Xes at my hotel since he was bunking with me for that night. I arrived at the airport only to get a text from him saying that he was waiting for me at the airport so that we could take a cab together to the city.
Well that was fine and all except that…. New York has like.. 3 different airports or so….? And we were both in separate airports… miles away from each other. So when I texted him back to tell him that he said “Ohh no wonder I couldn’t find your flight on the arrival screen!”.
So I got to the hotel soon enough and checked in. The room was okay.
I mean it was clean and nice and all but really really small. And if I thought that was small, the toilet was even smaller.
The toilet literally is about the same size as an airplane toilet. This is it… seriously. This and a small shower on the right.
You know the toilet is small when you can shit and wash your hands at the same time.
Overall though, the hotel was okay because it was right in Manhattan. Manhattan is an island in New York that is where most things are. Wall Street is here, Central Park is here, the Empire State Building is here and the of course Times Square.
We decided to take a walk to Times Square after we finally met up at the hotel. We grabbed a hotdog from a hotdog stand for dinner… you know, trying to be all New Yorker and stuff. After some 20 minutes of walking, we arrived!
HELLO TIMES SQUARE!
Heck this is one place that I’ve seen so many pictures and TV shows of and finally being here gives you a bit of a surreal feeling. The place is full of life!
Lots of lights and billboards.
If you’re wondering why in the next picture there’s a billboard that says “ASS” in big capital letters, it’s not what you think it is. It’s actually just the second half of an ad for the movie “KICK ASS” which was a great movie by the way!
Of course the reason why all that advertising was there was because there were A LOT of people wandering around!
And to protect all the people there (possibly because of the recent bomb scare in Times Square), there were lots of cops. They also sent this cute little police car to protect us all! VROOM VROOOM!!!
NYPD FREEZE!!! OR I’LL….. BUMP YOU WITH MY CAR!
I felt totally safer already. I mean how can you as a terrorist possibly want to do anything to harm this car? It makes you want to go up to it and pinch it in the… err… headlights or something!
Around the watching eyes of the men in blue were also lots people doing all sorts of things like these guys here who were doing the “Free Hug” campaign.
They would all just stand with big signs saying “FREE HUGS”… and announce “FREE HUGS HERE!!!”… almost as if they were selling something. I don’t know what inspires people to take time out of their day and do things like that but I find the thought of it refreshing! I mean here are people who are doing things not motivated by money or any other ulterior motive but just… to give someone a hug! That’s just something!
Of course that’s a little different from this other thing I saw there. There was this person in an ugly looking Hello Kitty costume that looked totally imitation standing around there. If you wanted to take a picture you would have to pay her something. That’s fine and all but here’s what’s worse…
I saw this tourist wanting to take a picture with the imitation Hello Kitty. She took the money, then pushed up her Hello Kitty helmet to reveal the face of an old Chinese lady in her 40-50s or so. Then she started counting the dollar bills right in front of that person before she put her helmet back on and posed with the tourist.
Serious, I even took a picture of it.
If taking off the helmet while still in character was bad enough, the aunty looked really grumpy too. Imagine if this were to happen in Disneyland. Say some children run to Disneyland to take a picture with Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse then takes off his helmet and… SURPRISE!!!
Oh yeah and speaking of tourists, that’s the other thing that Times Square has a lot of…. TOURISTS… LIKE ME!
HELLO!!!
So that everyone.. was my first time at Times Square.
Tomorrow we are going to the Met (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Now My Hello Kitty calls me a philistine because I don’t care much for museums or even appreciate art much but tomorrow I shall go and truly try to learn to appreciate it!
It’s going to be a looong day tomorrow. Oh oh and we’re watching a musical tomorrow night. Avenue Q. Can’t wait for that!
Okay good night guys!
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space