背包走天涯之纽约

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was on Thursday and to the North Americans this festival is as important as Christmas. Thanksgiving is about family gathering and Christmas is more for the kids. New York City celebrates by having a parade named the Macy's Parade. Macy is a really old departmental store in midtown Manhattan and it is apparent from the the type of escalators they have. The escalators look so antique you could take a piece and sell it off in a shop. Macy claimed to be the biggest store in the world. Well, maybe it was in the past, but now I think it is only a small fraction of Singapore's Takashimaya. Macy started the parade a long time ago and a main draw of it are the gigantic rubber balloons that come in the shapes of Garfield, Snoopy, Big Bird and even Pokemon. When I say gigantic I really mean it as the balloons are 2 stories high. There were incidents when a balloon would veer off course because of the winds and hit a lamp post and injure spectators.

The parade would start at 9am and last till 12am, so I got up really early at 6am that day. When I opened the door to check the weather I saw that it was raining heavily. It was the biggest rain I have seen since I came. I figured even if I could reach NYC I wouldn't be able to take nice pictures anyway so I went back to bed and woke up later to watch the parade on the tv. I felt really sad that I couldn't attend. I have missed the NYC marathon and the Halloween parade and now I missed this one. It makes me wonder what the hell I am doing in New York if I couldn't catch the parades and I might not get another chance again. I am afraid that I would go back to Singapore without catching much of New York and to make things seem better I went online to buy a ticket for the "Phantom of the Opera". Of course that means I would be watching it alone but I don't care. When I watched Macy's Parade on tv I almost wanted to take pictures of the tv scenes. The next biggest upcoming event is the New Year countdown in Times Square and if I miss this one I am going to feel miserable forever.

In the very least I got to attend an American Thanksgiving dinner hosted by my boss. David's wife Yuan is a Chinese so the dinner was more of a mixture of American and Chinese food. There were Turkey, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, bacon, sprouts, fish and rice. A turkey is really a very big chicken. It is heavy and slippery and it really isn't something an amateur would try cooking. We had a bottle of white Riesling wine from Germany and the taste was fantastic. Its not as bitter as the cheap wine and not as sweet as the Ice wine. I do not really enjoy alcohol anymore but this wine is different from other alcohols. Riesling, I shall remember this word so that I can buy it next time.

My colleague Ning and his wife were there as well and they were from China so I decided to take them on for a game of table tennis after dinner. I should know better, for later I received a thrashing and a valuable lesson in table tennis. The table was located in the basement. The basement, was not a dark and eerie place. David had it furnished so it was like a play room for the children, and it was big and the table was a real table tennis table unlike the make shift one I had when I was young. When I was a kid my brother and me would join up 2 small tables to play table tennis in the balcony. The tables were usually the ones grandma used for placing offerings during praying and we would use books or bricks for a net. If you hit the ball too hard it would go flying out of the balcony window onto the platform on the 3rd floor and you would have to go running from the 8th floor to get it.

Ning's wife was skillful and Ning himself was even better. He applied top spins and bottom spins to his balls and kept me guessing and running in the wrong directions. When they served the ball they had this stance that screamed "I am an expert and you don't fool around with me". It didn't help that we were playing pairs and I had David as my partner. David was used to playing single player with his son, and after he hit the ball he would forget to back off to allow me in for the next ball. As he was a big guy I couldn't get around him to the ball. If there were a game that involves a racket twice the size of a tennis racket David would be up for it, so it was cute seeing his big hands handling a small ping pong bat. Nevertheless I have to give him credit for hitting some good balls hahaha.

When it was time to go Ning drove me back. He is really a nice and helpful guy and has a few peculiarities like not having a mobile phone and insisting on taking shortcuts when driving. His reason for not having a mobile phone is that he doesn't believe he is so important to be reached anytime, anywhere. As fate would have it we were struck with a punctured tire on the way home. It was still raining at midnight and it wasn't a nice feeling to be out in the cold at night. I kind of feel guilty for his punctured tire because if he wasn't trying to drive me back it wouldn't have happened, even though he said nails got in because he took shortcuts. We left the car at a petrol kiosk and Ning suggested I call his wife to drive and get us. I called with the Cingular network but the reception was poor. Tried as I might I couldn't get any reception. Fortunately I had my other auto-roaming phone with T-Mobile network and I was finally able to get through and Ning's wife got all of us home.

Well, we all need hand phones don't we?

posted by wayne @ 7:49 PM