The big apple and its charms..

I gotta say this - New York is dirty, at least most parts of the regular city.

I got to see the big apple this time like never before - Up close and personal. For one, I stayed there for almost 10 days. For another, I commuted like any other NewYorker - in the subways and NJ transits. For one more, I saw the NY of the wee hours (May be I should add that I did not get to visit the SOHO as I had planned earlier).

Our Jersey city office by the Hudson was great. It had a spectacular view of Manhattan and there were ample light reflecting from the waters. Central park was great too - got to explore some more parts of it this time. But, the surrounding areas or the areas leading to it were pretty dirty. Some of these areas had garbage and dirt piled up in the mornings - I guess they were waiting for the garbage trucks to pick them up. Others like the Harrison station along the NJ transit route looked downright ugly (I thought it was an un-used station since my trains did not stop there. Later on, one of the trains did and I was shocked!)

If you walk around the regular city at a time when the regular guys are not around, you will get to see a lot more dirt and folks that live in the dirt. But, I think - what is amazing is that the city is so old and yet, has moulded itself with the times. Like the numerous subways/trains developed and connecting almost every part of this humongous city.

Many people over the decades must have thought like Annie Hall in the Woody Allen movie by the same name - Annie: "What's so great about New York? I mean, it's a dying city...". But, the charm of the big apple probably lies in its undying spirit - that it has thrived beyond its age. With and without its WTCs.

And it is so different and levelling.. you see executives (well, may be not the top honchos) wearing blazers traveling in the transits/subways.
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The NJ transits are another animal altogether. Once I got onto a train only to know that it was not going to stop at my station. What worse, the first stop in that train was an hour ahead, much after the station I was to get down. Another time, I got into the wrong train because my train was late and this train came to my platform (also late by itself) at the time it was supposed to come. (They don't even mention the destination on the sides of some trains) [Lessons - you gotta carry a schedule with you and find out the exact time of the train you need to catch - after looking at the stops listed on the schedule for each train. And confirm with the ticket checkers/staff before you board, especially if the train is delayed]
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On the subject of Annie Hall and Woody Allen,

this is what he says about California!
Alvy Singer (Woody Allen): I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.

And here is a classic dialogue from the movie:

Alvy Singer :[addressing the camera] There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women.