Thursday, September 8, 2011

One Year in New York

Well, it was just a year ago today that I arrived in New York City after nearly a decade in India...

It's been good to be here and I'm totally loving New York City.  It's a great city to explore, with fascinating architecture, both old and new, next to each other.  Old, run down industrial areas have been revitalized as new, modern parks.  And there's a million restaurants of every variety to try out (though no Indian food I've had compares to what's in India...)

I've been walking and walking and getting exercise.  While no one will mistake me for skinny, I've lost a bit of weight since I got here, while my legs are definitely a lot stronger and I'm in better shape than I was.

During my year here I've switched from reading up to 100 books a year to reading five or six (well, maybe twenty if you count comic books) because I just want to be outside all the time, not sitting in the apartment.  

I've developed quite a taste for sushi...  And I'm thoroughly enjoying New York style pizza and hamburgers, which I missed in India (but admittedly, not a single burger I've had in NYC compares to the Ultimate Burger restaurant in London where I traveled on business...)

I'm still thinking about one of the things that annoyed me in India, coworkers talking on cell phones a lot more than I thought was appropriate for work time.  Only to come here and find the same thing.  So maybe that was time, working in Oregon was before cell phone usage exploded...  Maybe?

Overall my health is better than it was in India.  While not perfect, I'm not falling sick with fevers and sore throats and colds every few weeks.  I'm still getting migraines, but not as bad as the last few years in India, especially the long, long one in 2010.  My stomach problems aren't completely gone, but I'm not having diarrhea three weeks a month...  So that's all good...

I've only gotten my hair cut once, in May, and it's getting long again...

I've been trying various green teas here in New York, but can't get any of them to taste as good as I was making in India.  I've talked to a couple of coffee & tea store owners and the general consensus is it's the water...

But I am getting lonely...

Leena and I didn't realize how long it'd take for her to get a green card.  We envisioned that I'd get here, get an apartment, make sure my job was okay and stable, start the application and she'd follow a few months later.  Well, it turns out that this is a one and a half to two year project...  And the immigration service hasn't even started processing our application yet...

And when I got here Leena's cousin, Nitu, was over in New Jersey, not far from New York.  We used to get together once or twice a month to explore the city, bowl, get a nice meal and chit chat and all that.  She's one of my closer friends.  However she flew to India on April 1st for a two week vacation, during which something went wrong with her visa and she hasn't been able to return to the U.S.

Since then I've pretty much been going about New York City solo all the time.  While I enjoy solitude, possibly more than is healthy, it's been a bit much...  I met up with another friend from India and some of his friends on August 20th for the Indian Independence Day parade.

Over the year, I enjoyed autumn, winter and spring, but found summer a bit hard to handle.  I know that sounds funny after having spent ten summers in tropical India, but I think some of it what I do.  In India I mostly stayed indoors, not just because the weather, but the pollution, the crowds, the noise, the chaos and all that, and I was happy enough to laze around the apartment playing computer games or reading books (especially with the unreliability of the electricity).

But here in New York City I want to get outside almost every waking moment.  It's hard enough just sitting in the office all day, but on weekends I don't want to stay in the apartment, I WANT OUT!

But it was hot outside...  Whew...  That really slowed down my photography and even more my writing about my adventures and sorting my photos, requiring sitting at the computer in the heat to do it.

Of course, with summer, I enjoyed reading in parks and watching people, especially women in short skirts, so there was that...  Compared with India in the summer, though...  In India summer is mango season, sweet, juicy, tender mangos...  Summer in New York is women in short skirts...  Look & smile vs. touch, taste & smell.  Which also brings to mind what a lesbian former coworker once said around fifteen years ago when I brought some mango to work as a snack...  She said the color and texture of mangoes, especially when heated up, was just like giving a woman oral sex...  Which I probably thought of every single time I ate a mango since...

Yeah, missing Leena, coming home every day to an empty apartment is about the toughest part of the year here...

So, that's a quick rundown of a year, written late, at bedtime...

Here's hoping Leena's visa comes quickly....

No comments:

Post a Comment