Weekend Adventures and Lens Shopping in Manhattan

Saturday

After Leena and I got off the phone in the morning I got dressed and made the dry cleaner my first task, to pick up this week's clean laundry.  I also set up the humidifier with a completely full reservoir to run while I was out so the room wouldn't be too dry when I returned.

After getting my laundry I packed up my camera with my best general use lens, put the MacBook into its neoprene sleeve and my backpack, put on my sweatshirt and jacket and headed out to the subway station.

The train felt slow, like it wasn't running fast and spending longer than usual at the stations, with the announcement that "we are being held momentarily by the train's dispatcher, please be patient."  I got off at 14th Street - Union Square, where much of the station was full of people dressed up like Santa Claus, whooping, hollering and jumping over the turnstiles, then walked a few blocks to the Apple Store on 14th.

I ran into roving bands of Santa Clauses, many drunk and drinking, all the way from Union Square throughout my walk up to Times Square, but none at all farther up than Times Square.  The largest groups of them were smoking and drinking outside all the bars between Madison Square Garden and Times Square.

In the Apple Store, I started asking one guy for help, who got another guy, who got another guy.  In the end, it turned out they didn't have RAM for my "legacy" computer in stock (legacy being two years old) at the store, where they keep only things like that for the current models.  The final guy I talked to recommended I go to another store, Tekserve, on 23rd & 6th, and said they'd definitely have it.  He gave me detailed instructions to get there on the subway and said when I got out to look for the red Apple logo.

Instead of the subway I walked, since my plan was to walk all day, except for time in the store.  It wasn't too hard to find, except their big flag with the Apple logo was blue, not red.  It wasn't an Apple company store, but another dealer that specializes in Apple.  At the front information desk they asked what I wanted and I said RAM for my MacBook installed so I got a blue ticket and was told to go and wait by the big fish tank.

I waited.  The iPod help desk went through five or six numbers while I was waiting by the fish tank, and after about fifteen minutes of not hearing any calls for blue tickets, and noticing another whole row of seats on the opposite side of the fish tank, possibly all people waiting for computer service, I gave up and left.

From there I planned to check out all the grey market camera, computer and souvenir dealers that are all around the Times Square area and look for the lens a friend recommended, which also has really good reviews on Amazon and other camera sites.

Beginning around Broadway & 34th, by Herald Square, I started popping into every one of those shops I saw and asking for the Tokina 11-16mm lens, and every one of them shook their head and said they didn't have it.  A few were pretty hardcore salesmen who then tried to sell me other lenses.  One salesman asked, "why would you trust your friends' opinion instead of a pro, like me, would you smoke marijuana if your friends suggested it?"

I stopped at the north end of Times Square to climb up the red staircase and take some daytime photos of the crowds there, and the continued on..

Finally, after around 20 shops, at one shop the guys there said they had one, and did some digging around and some phone calls and said it was in their warehouse.  He asked if I wanted the f/2.8 or the f/3.5 and I said the f/2.8, which confused me.  I thought I'd done my homework on this and didn't know there was another one.  The price he quoted me was very, very low, too.  Maybe that was because it was grey market, but still, that was only 2/3 the regular price from all the legitimate dealers.  He asked if I wanted anything else and I said "no, that's all that's in my budget for now," to which he asked "so, what is your budget?" and I explained it wasn't fixed, just all I'd budgeted for was one lens and he kept on, "come on, tell me your budget, we've got lots of other stuff..."  I didn't, but I gave him my phone number and he gave me his card about when he could get the lens from the warehouse on Monday or Tuesday...

Back outside I kept walking up, in the direction of Central Park, still checking out more shops and all of them saying they didn't have it, eventually I got into a neighborhood with more classy sorts of shops and fancy hotels and no more grey market electronics dealers and started enjoying the walk a bit more and site seeing.

I made my way up to Central Park, but didn't cross the street to go in.  Just walked on Central Park South.  All the fancy hotels had big heat lamps set up over the sidewalk by their entrances and that felt nice, very noticeably warm.

On 5th Avenue, on the opposite corner from Central Park was another Apple store.  I'd seen it before, but never gone in.  It's so busy there it has a line to get in.  The store is below ground and on street level all that's visible is a big, glass cube with a big Apple sign and the elevator to go down.  The elevator is circular and all glass, with the glass bent into a circle.  Fortunately there were stairs spiraling around it, so I went in to check it out without waiting in line for the elevator...  But it was super busy and I didn't stay long, almost straight back up to the street again because it was crowded it was hard to move around.

From there I felt like using a bathroom, so I figured I'd just walk back down to 42nd Street and use the one at Grand Central Terminal.  It was quite a bit of walk.  On the way, St. Bartholomew's Church had a big Christmas shopping fair set up on the sidewalk, and some orange juice company was giving out free samples so I got a bottle of that for quick refreshment.

I walked down Park Avenue because from a distance I was curious what the buildings were that were sort of blocking the street.  That turned out to be the Helmsley Building and the Met Life Building, and though I didn't figure it out at first, Grand Central Terminal.  After going under the Helmsley Building I found out where I was and entered Grand Central Terminal, but a door I'd never gone in before and I got lost inside and couldn't find the bathrooms.  I exited it so I could see where on the streets I was and walk around to a place I knew, so that worked out.  Inside the line for the ladies' room stretched some way into the food concourse, with probably at least 50 women waiting...

Back on the street again I decided to walk up Lexington Avenue.  I watched the movie, The Seven Year Itch with the iconic photo of Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate, enjoying the wind blowing up from underneath (in the movie it's summer and the wind is cooling).  I figured out where that was and figured I'd walk up there.  The buildings are all different, or completely renovated at street level, so nothing looks the same and the older shops and restaurants, visible in still photos, are all gone.  But in the cold, the warm air blowing up from the subway, sure does feel good!

After that, on my way back down to a restaurant I saw on Lexington and thought might be good for dinner, if it wasn't crowded, I passed a good looking camera store, Camera Land, a real camera store, not a discount, grey market camera and computer dealer.  So, I went back and stopped in and asked if they had the lens I wanted.  One guy directed me to another, the "lens expert" who said he did have one stock.  I said I'd take it.  He had to search around the store a bit to find the cabinet key, but he got it out and rang me up and I walked out with it.  So, that was great, after all that searching and not even most online dealers having it.

A couple of blocks from there I stopped on a bench and swapped lenses, putting the new one on the camera and sticking the old one in the new one's box.  My first photos with the new lens ended up being the same St. Bartholomew Church where I got the orange juice earlier, simply because I was on the same street again, but the lens was great in the evening light.

I worked may way towards Times Square.  Last week, when those women on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn asked me about Rockefeller Center, I looked it up online and found out there was some park like stuff there and thought I'd go check it out.  And that was a mistake.  Because of the Christmas tree there, the crowd was insane.  I ended up in Rockefeller Plaza and packed in so tight I couldn't move at all some of the times, and couldn't not move some of the times as the whole crowd would just sweep me along.  A few times when a stream of people were actually moving, my camera strap would get caught in other peoples' accessory straps because we were all so close and it would take a bit of quick untangling to get loose.

It took around half an hour to move just over a block and get out of the worst of it.  Fortunately my camera, backpack, wallet and phone were all still with me.

It was a relief to get to the relatively uncrowded Times Square again.  Relative, of course, as it was as crowded as normal, but Rockefeller Center was just that much more crowded!

I wanted to test out the new lens at night in Times Square and see how it performed.  I worked my way up the red steps on the north end and had some fun playing around.  I tried various settings on the camera to compare how they came out.

Once I was done up there, I hit the streets.  I worked my way down, on Broadway, 7th, and 6th Avenues and some of the cross streets.  I stopped at Madison Square Park around 23rd Street to take some photos.  I thought I'd grab a quick bite at the Shake Shack there until I saw the line and decided not to bother.  Instead I continued my way down Broadway to Union Square, where I stuck my camera back in my backpack and hit the subway to Brooklyn.

Getting off at 53rd Street, I dropped my backpack off in the apartment and headed up to buy groceries, thinking I'd fry up another salmon fillet, but when I got to the store around 7:40pm, it was closed and shuttered.  I got a couple of slices of pizza next door instead.

When I returned to the apartment I found the bedroom, which I'd left closed hours earlier and the humidifier on, was quite warm and tropical.  I don't know if it was the door being closed, since I'd never actually closed it before, or if the humidifier really put out that much heat.  It was nice..


Sunday

Okay, a bit less today...

I didn't mention it one way or another, but I had a light migraine in the morning when Leena and I talked on the phone, and was in the "denial" phase of hoping it'd go away on its own (which is extremely rare).

It was raining heavily while we were talking, but after I finished with shower after we called and stuffed my camera with the new lens into the waterproof, underwater camera bag, got my shoes on (first time I've worn shoes instead of sandals in a couple of weeks) and my double layer of sweatshirt and jacket, the rain pretty much stopped...  It wasn't obvious from inside, with the rain splattered windows, though...

I got outside and took the R train towards Manhattan.  I almost gave up, as the train was running so slow.  The announcement was a problem on with signaling on the Manhattan Bridge, which was backing up train traffic with all the trains that share lines with ones that go over the bridge.  It took much longer than usual to get to Manhattan.

My first goal was to try out the new wide angle lens at a neat plaza, with an interesting configuration of circular and spiral benches, outside the Javits Federal Building, a few blocks up from City Hall, so I got off the train at City Hall and walked up.  I'd been to that plaza once before, but tried a funky program on the iPhone to take panorama shots, which didn't work well.  Only this time it was blocked off with fences.  I walked around it and found a notice on the fence that it was closed for construction, with an expiration date of the construction permit in April.  No idea when it'll be open again for photos.

A little bummed out, and no rain to try out the waterproof bag, I worked my way up and west towards the High Line.  It was fun walking through neighborhoods like TriBeCa, Greenwich Village and whatever else there was.  I stopped by at Washington Square Park, near NYU so I could use the public bathroom.  On a bench there I also removed my camera from the waterproof bag, giving up on any possibility of rain by then, as there wasn't even a drizzle from the sky...

Once I got to the lower end of the High Line, I took my camera out of my backpack and started taking pictures.  It was fun.  I walked the length of the park, trying out different settings on the camera to see how things would come out.  It's the first time I brought such a wide angle lens there, so my pictures are a closer approximation of what I see when not looking through the camera.

Fortunately everyone seemed to be up at Rockefeller Center, so it wasn't crowded at all.  I was even able to get down to the windows in the "Living Theatre" part of it, which is a set of benches going down to some windows that overlook 10th Avenue where it the High Line crosses it.  I got a bunch of photos of cars going by underneath.

After getting to the end of the currently open section of the High Line I went back down to the street.  It felt like it was getting a little late for a Sunday, especially given how slow the subway was getting to Manhattan, so I worked my way down to 14th Street.  On 14th I stopped for a quick frozen yogurt, then grabbed a train at Union Square back to Brooklyn.

In Brooklyn again, I got off at 59th Street, a stop past mine, so I could hit the grocery store on the way back and pick up another salmon fillet.  Fortunately it was open this time and I got what I wanted.

In the apartment I fried it up, pretty much like last time, but with a lid.  This time, though, I let the pan really heat up before I dumped stuff in.  I had the gas on kind of low, but the butter scorched the instant I put it in.  It was already turning black and smelling burnt after I put it in and before I even got the wrapper in the trash bag.  The fish got a bit burnt on the outside, and still undercooked on the inside, but less so than Friday's.

Manhattan and the Queensboro Bridge on Saturday

Okay, I lied on the phone this morning when talking to Leena, I really did have a light headache.  But as almost all migraine sufferers do in the early stages, attempt denial, which almost never, ever works...  And it got worse and worse all day...

After she and I got off the phone I got dressed and headed out, carrying my camera with the 50mm f/1.4 prime lens I bought last month, and no other (mainly because I'm totally uncomfortable swapping lenses and juggling expensive gear in crowded places where it'd be easy for someone to snatch a part while I'm focused on the delicate work).

I walked up to 59th Street to catch the N train, instead of the R that goes by my apartment, since the N is an express to Manhattan and a lot faster.  There was a bit of a wait for some reason, and two R trains stopped and left before the first N, although the N I did get probably passed them both long before we got to where I wanted to go.

I got out at 14th Street - Union Square in Manhattan so I could get some smaller stuff at Best Buy, a trackball, a couple of games, CDs and DVDs.  Outside Best Buy I crammed them in my backpack and then got on the subway again, intending to head to the Museum of Modern Art (the MoMA). I got off the subway again at 49th Street, near the upper end of Times Square, where it was super crowded.

From there I walked to the MoMA on 53rd Street, which wasn't too far, but all the sidewalks were pretty crowded with people.  Inside the MoMA's lobby it was jam packed with people, even more than the sidewalks and I didn't feel like getting through it all.  It wasn't obvious, either where to check my bag and stuff, so I left.  I'll go back again.

From there I figured I might as well walk the Queensboro Bridge, which wasn't too far, on 59th Street and a few blocks east.  I wended my way up and east, staying in the shade where I could because by then the sun was really heating things up out there, and with all the glass in buildings reflecting it, hurting my eyes and headache.  I was getting hungry and thirsty, and read lots of menus in the front of restaurants (all Indian ones had $20 and up dishes!) but with the headache my stomach was a bit upset, too...

As I got closer to 59th I could see signs directing drivers to the Queensboro Bridge, so I knew I was getting closer, but it wasn't obvious how to get onto the pedestrian walkway (except for jumping a 100 feet into the air, but I can't do that when I have a headache (okay, I can't do that except when I'm daydreaming...)).  Under the bridge there a giant inflatable building, like the kids' jumping things, but huge.  That turned out to be a tennis club!

Also along the river, alongside the bridge was a small park, the East River Pavillion, so I wandered down there and took some photos.  Overhead was a cable car, sky tramway going across the river to Roosevelt Island, which the bridge passes over, but does not have an exit, on its way to Queens.

It was a good walk, though I was definitely getting hungrier and thirstier all the way.  I had to take off my light sweater because it was just getting way too hot out for it, even though it's mid-November.  One disappointing aspect of the bridge is that someone would have to be eight or nine feet tall to take photos unobstructed by the fence along the walkway.  So all my photos have the fence in them.

On the Queens side the Queensboro Plaza neighborhood didn't look very nice, and I wasn't sure how to walk down to the Gantry Plaza Park that I wanted to see, or if it would be safe walking through the intervening neighborhoods...  I didn't see any place near there that I wanted to eat in, either, so I got on the subway and took the 7 towards Manhattan...

The 7 went pretty close to the Gantry Plaza Park, but I was thinking more of lunch than the park by then.  The ride on the 7 was cool, it was above ground for much of the distance I took it, so I got to see a bit of Queens from there, before it went underground near the river.

I got off it at Grand Central Terminal.  In there I found the Dining Concourse and had a good burger and fries at Junior's.  I also got an ice cream soda, which was delicious.  But I couldn't finish the ice cream soda or the fries, it was just too filling.  As I was getting near the end of my lunch a group of four slightly older women took the table next to me, all talking with extreme southern accents and struggling to decide just what sandwiches to get for their lunch.  They kept debating about reubens or ham and other stuff and I thought about interjecting, "can't go wrong with a reuben" (which of course, would work better spoken than written…)

I took a couple of Excedrin with lunch, too, hoping they'd help my headache.  Grand Central Terminal also has nice public restrooms.  It's a great station, a throwback to when train travel was a luxurious thing.

I got out of there on 42nd Street and figured I'd just walk a bit, in the Queens direction.  By then it was early evening, the sun still shining, but noticeably less bright than earlier.  I ended up near the U.N. Plaza (in the classic movie, Heavy Metal, one of the characters, Harry Canyon, narrating a sequence says "The U.N. Building. What a joke! They turned it into low rent housing. It's a dump.").  I walked around there a bit, but with all the fences and security it was hard to photograph the art well, though there were some interesting buildings near there.

A block away a respectable looking fellow was sitting on the sidewalk, having a smoke, and saw me with my camera and said "take my picture" so I did.  We talked about photography for a couple of minutes, with him suggesting I look up some French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, I think, who always shot from the hip and used Leica cameras, and I was on my way again...

I worked my way back to 42nd Street and then up again towards Grand Central Terminal, taking a bunch of photos of the street and the Chrysler Building as I went and it was getting darker...

One of the coolest things to see along 42nd Street was the Ford Foundation's building, with a huge garden visible in its atrium.  Unfortunately it's only open on weekdays, so there wasn't any possibility of going in to look closer.

The train station provided another good place to refresh myself again and then out again.

This time I made my way along 42nd Street, stopping in Bryant Park to look at the ice skaters for a few minutes, then Times Square to try some night photography with the 50mm lens.  It was jam packed there, of course.  Even after dark the signs with temperatures still reported it in the mid-60's (nearly 20 for those who use centigrade).

And after doing some photography and walking around the outside of it for a bit, I took the subway back to Brooklyn, with my headache undiminished and my stomach slightly upset.

The N train was again slow coming, with a couple of R trains stopping and leaving the station before a single N came.  Normally the it's the opposite, with the N coming once or twice before a single R.  But it was worth the way, since the N is so much faster.  It felt like a long ride, too, coming from deep in Manhattan most of way down in Brooklyn...  And I couldn't get a seat so stood the whole way, although that may have kept me from falling asleep and missing my stop...  My plan was to come home and sleep right away.

Back at the apartment, I fired up the computers and then by the time I had a quick shower my headache was gone.  I guess that's just what I needed...

So, that's how my day went...

Headache Medicines

So, after the last follow-up with the neurophysician in Pune in which I asked him about getting completely off the medicines he'd prescribed for the nasty headache and migraines I was having, he agreed to lower the dosage, first to 10mg for a month and then cut it out.

The schedule worked out to stopping it sometime around now.  I didn't calculate the exact date, but having two four-day weekends in a row here in New York seemed good.  Tuesday night last week was the last time I took either of the medicines, figuring that would get me through Wednesday at work and if I had withdrawal issues I'd have four days to recover.

I didn't get a headache till Sunday, but even then it was pretty mild and didn't really interfere with my plans (about which I still need to process the photos and blog).  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week I had headaches.

Monday was the worst of them, and I took four aspirin in the morning before work which helped ease it.  By later in the afternoon it was getting pretty bad and I felt a bit nauseas, too.  Going out after work to deposit my paycheck in the cool rain helped and I didn't notice the headache too much while I was doing that and eating pizza near the ATM.

Tuesday and Wednesday weren't so bad, but it was definitely there.

Today, however, I was in a rush to get out the door and grab a bag of garbage to take downstairs that I completely forgot the aspirin pills.  I didn't remember until I got to work and didn't have a headache at all.

So, this is good.  Hopefully the headaches are back under control again.  And hopefully the side effects will start easing off, too, especially that nonstop ringing in my ears.

Final Follow-up with the Neurophysician

A couple of weeks ago we followed up with the neurophysician about how the medication-based treatment of my headaches has been going. I quickly found on previous visits that when he'd ask me how things were going he wouldn't let me really talk and say what I felt I needed to say, before cutting me off and him talking. So, I got in the habit of writing the details.

This visit was the first one after we got the printer, so I was able to elaborate even more by typing instead of hand-writing, and include a picture, found using Google, to demonstrate what I was trying to say.

With the last visit you increased the dosage of Amitone from 10mg per day to 25mg per day. But we still had a strip of unused 10mg pills, so you said to take two a day, or 20mg, until they ran out, then get the 25mg pills.

The first week, using 20mg a day, I had no headaches whatsoever.

When switching to 25mg per day, I started with the same headaches I had on 10mg per day. After a week of that I went back to 20mg per day, but no change, still had the same headaches, and then after a couple of weeks went back to the prescribed 25mg per day.

Overall I'm still getting headaches a couple of times most weeks. Usually they're not as severe as they were before the month-long one that prompted us to go to you, and the Suminat 50 almost always halts them.

With the increase of Amitone from 10mg to 25mg, the unpleasant side effects are also noticeably worse:

• The confusion and disorientation when waking up after dawn in the mornings is much worse than when taking 10mg, and that was much worse than not taking anything. If I happen to see myself in a mirror at those times, I don't recognize myself and think there's a stranger in the room.
• The ringing sound in my ears is louder and more persistent. My ears were ringing pretty steadily for some months before we visited you the first time, but as the dosage has increased, so is the ringing.
• I've gotten very fat… Despite actually cutting down my meal portions and eating a lot less junk food (e.g. potato chips, Kur Kure, etc.) I'm gaining weight and getting fatter and fatter.
• When I'm tired and the lights are dim I'm getting more and more hallucinations. These include seeing insects and spiders crawling all over the bed and my arms, though I know they're not real so I don't panic, or seeing things, birds, bats, butterflies, some look real, some look like glass, floating up and into the ceiling.
• When I look at many things that are brightly colored, they sparkle at those times, too, shimmering like they were covered in glitter, looking a bit like this photo:

At first he started answering me about the hallucinations, that they were absolutely normal and everyone experiences them, and write the medical term on the sheet, something including the root "som" which I know has to do with sleep.

But then he said "this is really well written" and handed it to an assistant (or intern or whatever) and said "insert this into his file, I'd like to keep it on record".

After discussing with him I asked if we could work on eliminating the medications altogether and he put together a plan, one week on 20mg a day of Amitone, then down to 10mg a day for a month and then stop it. He recommended keeping on with the Betacap, which he'd actually forgotten he prescribed until we asked about it, as well as recommending I keep using the Suminat when I get a migraine.

He wrote down what he thought were some of the brand names for the same drugs in the U.S. but didn't know which were prescription-only and which might be over-the-counter. He also gave me an address to email him if I need any advice while I'm in the U.S.

Side Effects

The thing about a migraine-type experience is that it's like being only half alive. You find yourself walking through this tomb world, everything gets far away and kind of dull and dead.

- Perkus Tooth in Jonathan Letham's Chronic City

So, I've been taking the two medications as a prophylactic for my migraines since early March now. One is an antidepressant and one is a beta blocker. For the most part they're working. While I'm not completely without migraines, they've reduced an awful lot. And for when I do get them, there's a triptan I can take that usually relieves one.

But wow, there's side effects, too...

• Every time I wake up I'm extremely confused and disoriented. Especially if I go to sleep when it's dark and wake up when it's light. Then I have no idea where the light came from or who's shining it through the curtains. The doctor assures me it's normal, everyone wakes up confused in the morning, but if I compare the roughly 14,800+ times I've waken up before I was on the medications with the 70 times I've woken up after taking it, I know the difference.
• Hallucinations, especially when I'm tired. When I wake up from sleep, the view from the bed is almost always that I'm on the edge of a huge chasm, and the little foot board that sticks up from the bed is a railing to keep me from falling off. The dressing table, a couple of feet away, looks to be a mile away, across the chasm. Whoever's in the mirror on the dressing table when I wake up, I usually don't recognize them for a couple of minutes and I'd swear there's someone else in the room.
• One hallucination I had was when Leena came in on a weekend morning I waved to her in the doorway, but my impression of it was that I was holding a picture postcard of her, with the doorway being the white border around it.
• Songs get stuck in my head more often. It's harder to get them out once they're there, even when I'm concentrating on other things. I think early on, before I recognized this I may have blurted out some lyrics at work when someone asked me a question. It's probably a good thing I haven't been in a Soundgarden mood much to listen to Louder than Love.
• I'm a lot more angry than I was before taking the medications. I've lost a bit of my former easy-going nature. I think I've snapped at coworkers, and I know I've written at least one email at work I regret (not the concepts, but I think I could've phrased things a bit gentler).
• Impotence, I just have no interested in sex since starting the medications. On the other hand, before that I had the interest but was in too much pain to do anything about it, so maybe it's not a bad trade-off for the short term. But it still makes me wonder, "what the fuck's wrong with me?" (which of course, I can answer...)

Hopefully I won't be on these medications for too much longer. From what I've read the usual time is in the neighborhood of six months, give or take a little. Although the one night I forgot to take it (actually, I was super-sleepy and couldn't remember if I took it or not and didn't want to double the doses in case I had) I had a bad, bad headache the second day after that, the worst one since I started it, so maybe I'm not ready to quit them yet...