(Hotel Pennsylvania, Manhattan, New York)

This is a hotel reminiscent of the Hollywood Hotel ride, only this time, it's real. The rooms and hallways are large, even imposing, but definitely falling into disrepair with peeling paint, elevators that stop at all the wrong floors, taps that don't stop dripping and a permanent cigarette-smoke smell that hangs in the air.

Our room reminds me of the Sim rooms we struggle to furnish, leaving just enough space for them to squeeze past the beds towards the bathroom. There are two dressing tables, two lamps, no overhead light, three single beds fitted into each possible corner (one missing a bed-cover), a broken mini-fridge (as in broken and hanging open), a framed picture propped up on the radiator off its hinges, a buzzing closet-area light. This is New York - dingy, the tallest buildings you've ever seen, brownstones, perpertual traffic jams, humongous, maze-like subways that make the MRTs at home look so foolproof. And dignity and business above all.





We got here in one of those famous yellow cabs. Emma was right about the busyness. All the people I saw during the drive were walking briskly or talking into their phones - where are the relaxed expressions, the strolling? CA and NY sure have different personalities, each equally distinctive.




Dinner we ate at Chinatown Square, just across the street near Macy's, a weigh-your-food, red and white, slightly rundown diner, with typically oily Chinese-in-America food. We loaded our styrofoam boxes with spring rolls, fried rice, "vegetarian chow mein", "gyozas", fried egg etc. Most of it was pretty bad, but edible because we were hungry. Han certified the egg the worst she had ever eaten. And we love eggs! Plus Chinese-American girl at the next table was A+ annoying material. She wouldn't stop twitching/giggling/touching up her makeup/hitting and acting cute to her Chinese-gangsta boyfriend /taking off her shoes and putting them back on/scraping her chair around so it kept making that grating sound. I wanted to SLAP the attention-seeking SHIT out of her. [Edit: she was the only one.]

(A police-car just wailed by. It's the sixth one in the short span of a few hours. When Han noted this, my mum retorted that we should feel lucky we haven't heard no gunshots yet.)

The subway underground isn't as seedy as its reputation - from what I've seen so far. At Penn station alone, there's about five different cake/doughnut shops, a small supermarket, two restaurant-bars, a bookstore and assorted gift shops. It also leads up to Madison Square Garden itself. It's not the venue of eclectic proportions I remember from the No Strings Attached tours, with thousands of hyperventilating, sign-waving, slug-eating girls. But we can't see a lot of the place as there are people in purple gowns walking about! It turns out they're the graduating batch from NYU Stern College. They look so OLD. And TALL.



And yes, this is a subway wall



We hit New Jersey - Zach Braff's turf - tomorrow.