Come Away With Me...
 What's a New York Minute?Upon arrival at New York JFK, we were whisked to our accomodations to experience New York. And what better way to experience the life of a New Yorker than to live with one! But no, unfortunately we weren't staying at one of those uppity up-scale high-end penthouses in the heart of Manhattan. In fact we weren't even staying in Manhattan. We were staying in the borough of Queens, at Flushing. We were staying at my mother's friend's house. Homely accomodations, I must say. We had a light seafood pasta lunch prepared by Auntie SY's brother, Uncle X. Made ourselves comfortable, unpacked, visited the nearby Target store. Then we were off to meet my cousins for dinner at Chinatown.   NYC's Chinatown is huge. The population of Chinese here is pretty big, so its natural that this city has a few Chinatowns, the one at Manhattan being the largest congregation of Chinese. Its so Chinese, like a section of Beijing transplanted here. The signs are mainly in Chinese, and so are the commodities and foodstuffs sold. They've got ready-to-go Chinese take-away, roast ducks and char siew hanging at the window, tantalizing the tastebuds of passers-by... And they even have durians sold here! In the cold though, it doesn't smell as strong as it does in the tropics. Hmm you know some time ago there was this DHL ad about this driver knowing his way around Beijing, passing through a street just before it was transformed into a pedestrian street? Picture that street. Well ok so its not as crowded. But it's pretty noisy. The lingua franca in this area is Cantonese, but one can sometimes hear Mandarin, Hokkien and English spoken too.So we arrived at the Vietnamese restaurant just in time and met my 3 cousins currently staying in New York. Two of them are studying design and fashion, while the oldest one is working for fashion firms. Slurping the last strands of our beef noodles, we left soon after as we were all suffering from jet lag.  This night I slept at the pull-out bed in the living room, and surprisingly rose at 6.30am even with jet lag. After our fill of a big American breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage and toast, we were off sightseeing. First stop was Union Square. So happened that on one Saturday every month, a "Farmer's Market" would be held here, and our visit happened to coincide with this event. It was a gathering of stalls selling organic produce from their upstate farms. It was a hive of activity, with stallholders hawking ham, greens, chillies, flowers, meats (bison and buffalo meat), syrup, fruits etc. In short it was like a smorgasbord of farm produce.     Lunch was boxed food from this organic store. Its a simple concept. Theres this large supermarket with a cooked-food section, one just takes a plastic lunch box, fills it up and weighs it, paying py the pound. To partake in this wholesome, healthy fare, we "lunched" at the 2nd floor or the store, overlooking Union Square. Great view of fall trees! By now, the market was emptier, and once again the square was filled with people enjoying that bit of green space. Helped that the weather wasn't cold, just comfortable; some people were even in shorts and shirts.Post-lunch had a schedule just as packed as the pre-lunch schedule. We hopped onto the subway, onward a few stops to Canal Street, one of Manhattan Chinatown's major streets. Wanted to get a pair of cheap Levis, but I sensed that it wasn't genuine and gave up the idea of getting Levis here completely. Not that I need one anyway. Tired, we then took a break at McDonald's Canal Street outlet. It's located at Chinatown, thus the sign is in Mandarin...unique huh...  Wow they sure charge alot more here for the fast food. The burgers cost the same figures here and Singapore, only difference is that you pay the amount in USD here. Later on, I learnt that pricing varies with location. The city-dwelling New Yorkers are more well to do and can afford to pay such prices. True enough, during a stop later in the tour in the middle of nowhere among mountains and forests, our Big Macs and soda cost much less. All of us were so lethargic, we just stoned at Macs, sipping sodas, licking lollies...when finally someone suggested we moved on to ward of this lethargy. Macy*s was our last stop today. Supposed to be the largest store in the world, though personally I had doubts. Harrods looked bigger. But then what I could see of Macy*s was only the storefront, not how far back the store stretched. We ventured in. The large cosmetics hall was full of people. Having no interest in purchasing or utilising any form of cosmetics at the moment, we went to the upper floors. This was when I encountered the cool wooden escalators of yesterday. Or rather, yester-century. Following this brief encounter of Macy*s (all we really did we go in, go up one level, then exit), we moved on to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. Finally, our first day of sightseeing in New York came to an end. What a relief to my untrained legs.   
 With regards from Solar Sojourner at 8:29 PM
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