America Nov-Dec 2014

american stuff isn't that cheap. food is only slightly cheaper when you add in taxes and tips. most stuff is  cheaper than aus, and outlets are definitely cheaper, but a lot of stuff aren't really necessary to have. tipping is annoying since you actually have to grab out your calculator/phone and add in 15%. some more popular touristy place include a gratuity since some people don't know how to tip. we tip min 15% since there have been many cases where they may chase you down if you don't tip and ask you what they did wrong when serving you. there were other times when at the end they ask you to write down how much you want to tip, but they don't take back your card. i figured out that they still have you credit card details and then they add the tips amount onto it without using the physical card.

you know how austrlia has changed to pins? well i was surprised to see america still signing off their cards. they don't even have pay wave facilities, hence i don't understand why america needs an iPhone which you can tap to pay if hardly any places even have that function. signing does take time and unnecessary paper...

i do love america! everyone has iPhones! i only saw one samsung my whole entire trip, and that was on a subway away from chinatown.

NYC is super convenient if you know how to use the subway. they have plastic cards which you insert when you go through the gates. NYC is one of the older subway systems, so it's definitely not clean, and most trains aren't that new. down there, no one touches their phone. why? because there's no reception for internet, even if you have the best carrier, no gets data down there as they haven't installed any fibres stuff down there. on newer trains they have an electric panel which tells you how many stops till the stop you need to go to, but older ones don't even have any maps, so you do need to know where you're going, or look out the windows to see where you are. also, since their subways are super old, most of them don't have any elevators or lifts. only about every third stop have access for wheelchair/disabled, so for the elderly, i really don't understand how they can get around with just stairs going down to the subway. even mothers with prams have to lag it up the stairs whilst holding onto their baby. no one to help you there.

their trains are either letters or numbers, and you have to know which ones are express since some take you out of Manhattan into the other boroughs. trains aren't super frequent in places further away, once we waited 15mins for a train, but that was on a sunday...transport is cheap, $23 unlimited train and bus for a week for adult. they don't have concession, only adult and child. here, it's around $27 for a concession my multi. $23US is still pretty cheap.

trains only go up and down town, only about 2 trains go across the city. mainly you either walk/bus it to go across town, so i planned in the itinerary to minimise the across town walking. ended up only taking a taxi once, i.e. going from JFK airport to our apartment. the only bad thing about NYC is that the main airport is about a 45min drive. there's another two, which are mainly domestic flights which is around 20ish min drive.

NYC is filled with police and police cars and police stations, so you actually feel quite safe there, and during events, there are actually police everyday you look.

we stayed in an old style NYC apartment to experience the NYC lifestyle rather than expensive hotels. if you go to a new country, you always want to try immerse yourself into their culture. the apartment was on the first floor, but the stairs to get their were super narrow and small, coming with tall ceilings, the first floor was more like 2 floors. the apartment was very narrow, but there were enough beds for all of us to sleep comfortably. since it's an old style apartment, the heating using some sort of gas was on continuously, so not once did we wear a long sleeve inside, just t-shirts since it was that warm. housing in NYC is expensive, so no one has a place to do laundry inside. ended up wearing the same thing for a few days then washing it in HK. when i go on holidays, i actually wear non-decent photo taking clothing, but clothing which i can run in and is weather proof.

outside of the main city, and into the country, houses are big, mainly 3 levels, but they don't have fencing which i find weird. in florida, all the houses look them same, but most of them are super big as well.

we spent about a week in NYC and that was still not enough. so many things to do! half the time we woke up before 6am and came back at 10pm. everyday you get back so exhausted, but so worth it. didn't actually gain too much weight in america, so you mainly walked everywhere, and basically walked off all that you consumed. unlike super small HK, where the next suburb is a 5min walk away..

it actually is a city which never sleeps. things feel like they're all open when i wake up in the morning  until past midnight. i think since our street was a main street, we would tend to hear quite a lot of ambulances/firetrucks/police throughout the night. if we stayed in a more touristy place, it would be even noisier.

NYC streets are surprisingly not that clean, and kind of remind me of HK. many streets are only way, so each alternating street goes one way, and the other ones go the other way. but it's super easy to navigate yourself! all of them above the financial district (the bottom of NYC where the Europeans colonised the land and gave the street names) use numbers, well most of them. going down you have the "avenues" and going across you have the "streets". occasionally you have tiny streets with names, but as a tourist you can easily calculate how much time you need to get from one place to another just by looking at the intersections of the roads.

customs when boarding a plane in america is stricter than australia. even for american domestic flights, they treat it like an international flights where you have to take off jackets/laptops/creams etc. also, america has the money and they installed a fully body scanner at every customs counter/desk for body screening. unlike australia we don't have this type of funding, so they only randomly select a few people to conduct the test (well in sydney they only have one full body scanner on each side of the airport). surprisingly leaving sydney, i didn't go through the body scanner, because for the past however many times i've been to the airport, they always select me to do it. they did end up selecting me randomly for the bomb check though....i guess all these are for the safety of everyone.

i still love flying, despite what has happened to the aviation industry last year. tbh, i would rather pay that extra hundred, or even few hundred if it meant the safety of your life. how much is a few hundred more for a plane ticket than the cost of your life? normally budget airlines cut out regular/proper maintenance checks on their planes, according to one of my uncles who work with planes. even though they do have checks in place, it's not that thorough, and then some of their equipment is quite old. i think as i grow older and travel more often, i'll still stick with the most trusted and non-budget airlines.

lastly for this post-the weather. i could still survive new york with just a t-shirt and a thickish jacket. -2 degrees is very nice, but nyc tends to have unpredictable weather like sydney. so if there's wind, then makes it a few degrees colder, and snow showers are kind of annoying (yet pretty at the same time). it rained  twice while were were there, and snow showers for part of a day, but i guess you can say we were blessed with good weather. rainy weather prevents you from going out, since new york city is a city made for walking. i remember checking the weather during finals and it was raining continuously. the has actually arrived late for once since it didn't snow during christmas so we didn't have to leave that early to avoid the snow (again, snow is annoying, especially like NZ if it melts/turns to half water), but i guess i was lucky enough to even go there in the first place.

have yet to sort out photos...

congrats if you made it this far about my general thoughts on America. i guess it's some holiday reading for you if you have nothing to do (: going to be quite busy from next week onwards...