背包走天涯之纽约

A Typical Day

In the morning on Friday I woke up at 7:38am and wondered why the handphone alarm didn't sound at 7:30. Most probably it did, but somehow I just switched it off unconciously and that might be due to the fact that I was still in the very dreams I was having every night since I came. Even though the dreams were weird I wasn't particularly disturbed by them. After all they were not nightmares at least and if you dream you are supposed to be in deep sleep isn't it? I liked sleeping in the nights here because it was all cool from the natural aircon and I didn't have to worry about the electricity bills at all hahaha.

Just the other day we had daylight saving and I had to adjust my time backwards by one hour. So if the sun was supposed to come up at 6:30 it would come up now at 5:30. I checked out the origin of daylight saving in Wikipedia and it said, "Governments often promote it as an energy conservation measure, on the grounds that it allows more effective use of natural sunlight resource in summer time." I didn't know how true was that but I didn't like the idea because I woke up everyday with the sun glaring in my face, even though it was nice to wake up with a view of the Hudson river out in the window.

Breakfast was simple--two toasted pieces of whole grain bread with nutella and a glass of orange juice. Every now and then I would have cereals with milk too. The bus would come at 837am and I had to be on time for if I miss the bus it would mean another 40 minutes of braving the strong chilly winds. There was once I missed the bus and that was truly a unbearable experience. It came on time today, thankfully. The passengers were a mixture of hispanics and blacks. (Yes at this point I know you are worried for me but they are just like any other people so they are pretty harmless. Being hispanic or black doesn't make you a criminal.) Most of the passengers were sleepy and there would be some listening to their ipods. As far as I had noticed the only music players I had seen in use here were ipods. Sony and Creative were non-existent. I wondered whether the Americans even knew these brands in the first place.

I was glad to have company on the bus today. There was this guy named Marco Zimmerling living in the same area in Ossining and he was working in IBM as an intern too. He was tall like all Germans so it was funny when he stood besides the short hispanics because he seemed like a giant besides them. Marc was a friendly guy who spoke fluent English. He did not have a Bachelor's because the German's system only recognised a Master's and he had a year and a half before he would get it. He told me he was glad we could understand each other's accent because his Malaysian mentor was tormenting him from the way he was speaking. "Even the Americans employees don't understand my mentor sometimes," he chided and he said what good was a mentor when you could not understand him and I was glad I didn't have a problem with my American boss at all.

Our conversations were mostly on IBM and the cultures in our country. I asked him about the no speed limit autobahns and the Oktober Fest and the education system in Germany. Not surprisingly I knew a lot more about his country then he knew about mine. After all Germany was a big aggressor in World War 2 and who in the world cared about the little red dot falling under the Japanese rule. Most of the time I felt like an ambassador of Singapore. After three weeks here I thought Singapore was still a much better place(minus the customer service) and I felt compelled to let the Americans or anyone in the world know about our country. In the end I had to clear up a lot of misunderstandings about our country.
"No Singapore is not a city in China. The city is the country. We are in South East Asia and yes, you can check the map and read up more on Wikipedia."
"Yes we did ban chewing gum but no, it is not because we want to keep the place very very clean. We only want to prevent the gums from disrupting our train service."
"Yes we do not have free speech but we do not mind that as long as it keeps the racial tolerance."
"Yes our national language is Malay but I can speak English because we use it in business and school and thanks for complimenting my English."
"Yup we have left hand drive and yes I am still trying to adjust to this right hand drive system."
"No we do not have winter and our place is hot and humid all the time and I would not trade that for this hahaha."
It was a pity that Marc would leave IBM soon. If not I could have hang out with him on some of the weekends and I didn't have to end up watching movies alone.

Work was enjoyable because my colleagues were nice people but on Fridays they would usually leave the place early to enjoy their weekends. Some would go up to upstate New York to see their family. With almost everyone gone I saw no point in staying that late so I walked out to the bus stop at 520pm. It was already pitch dark and it was all the fault of that daylight saving again. When I got back home I whipped up a quick meal of pasta before laying down on my bed to catch the dramas on ABC and Fox. There were Lost, Desperate Housewives, Day Break and Grey's Anatomy on ABC and Fox had Prison Break and House. I could catch something every night and I was thankful for that, for if not my mind might wander......back to Singapore.

posted by wayne @ 6:31 PM