Taking

And so, life rolls on. It has been a busy week, with the scramble of work that has by now become the norm. However, it is time to call it a night, to call it a week, even. Next week brings examinations, more reading and another essay. However, next week is still some days away. And now, at the end of today, this is the time, I think, to take a breather and write for myself. Whether or not I can actually spare the time, this is the thing to be done.

And now that I look back at the week, I think that it has been very good, actually. After a couple of months here, I think I am beginning to learn what to expect, and how to behave appropriately. I am beginning to get a sense of what is important and what is not, and I am more able to tailor my responses to what I encounter, rather than having the innocence of the newcomer that forces you to accept and absorb everything. Yes, it does constitute the closing of my mind to some things; but then, I am able to open my mind further in other aspects. And I realise that even here, the principles that I learned earlier still hold. The principles are sound, and it is something very reassuring to realise.

Anyway, I am on the brink of finishing the script for NOMADS. It has been a rather trying process, but now that the back of the beast has been broken, and we're nearing the point where I will be taking a back seat and letting the actors and director orchestrate the last stages of the production, I find that I can look back with a measure of amusement. The process has taken on the romantic and nostalgic tinge of hindsight. And I find myself coming out of the process with a better idea of what I can write, and how I can write about it. That much, at least, is a gain that cannot be denied.

*

The other big thing that happened over the weekend was that suddenly New York was flooded with students from Cornell and UPenn, because it was their fall break and they all decided to visit the big city. The Singaporean society in Columbia is really tiny, as I've already remarked upon, and suddenly to be among dozens of Singaporeans was rather disconcerting. It got to the point where we were bumping into Singaporeans on the streets in Midtown. Over the last two months, I had grown to treat the streets of New York as essentially anonymous spaces; whereas the Columbia campus is so small that you can expect to run into someone you know the moment you step out into a corridor or walkway, the grids of New York offer refuge from surprise socialisation. So, it was really strange suddenly to see these streets populated with familiar faces.

I think, though, that if you put too many Singaporeans together in a context like this, it becomes exceedingly unhealthy. There is a certain edge in a big group of Singaporeans in a foreign place that immediately strikes me as uncomfortable; it is like you suddenly become highly self-conscious, and you are trying to prove yourself to be worldly and engaged. Suddenly, you need to demonstrate that you are enjoying yourself immensely, to the point when your life and position become enviable by others. This is of course not to say that all Singaporeans are naturally insecure in a foreign environment; however, it seems to be the case that it takes only a few insecure people to set the tone and spark off this sort of status competition, and in a big group, one is simply more likely to encounter one or two of this kind of character.

Anyway, why do we cleave towards the familiar so much? I find that, even though I resolve to expose myself to as many new experiences as possible, I am myself drawn to familiar things - routines, friends, settings. I am perfectly aware that this means that I am missing out on things that I don't even have any conception of, and that I am nurturing a sneaking suspicion that I am shortchanging myself, and yet, the familiar carries such a seductive quality to it. Thus, even though a big Singaporean group is predictably cumbersome, I still want to seek them out, just to see what they are like even if for nothing else. I wonder what it will take to break away from that tendency.

*

But anyway, the weekend was grand because many friends were in New York for the holiday. Picked up Joel on Saturday morning in Chinatown, and then spent the day wandering around Chinatown, a block party outside Columbia, Midtown, Greenwich and Union Square. We spent a good three hours near Union Square, browsing a used-CD shop and the Strand bookstore (18 miles of books! What a bookhunt it was - practically every shelf had some sort of treasure on it). It was really sheer bliss to throw all of one's concerns and work into the air, and to simply walk the streets. And walking these streets with Joel, sinking back into the easy banter that can lead us from Aeschylus to dinky little plastic footstools, from dim sum to the American election, and everything in between, was simply great. What else can I say? I was glad to see him, and to bring him around a bit.

On Sunday, went down to Chinatown to pick up a whole group of UPenn people, most of which I had met on my previous trip down to Philly. Then, spent the whole day bringing them around, from Chinatown to Times Square (where the girls singlehandedly boosted the American economy by indulging themselves at the Hersheys and M&M's stores) and then to 5th and 6th Avenue. There, by sheer chance, we bumped into a parade and a colossal street fair, both of which closed the two avenues for a good thirty or forty blocks south of Central Park.

It was apparently a Latin American to-do, with samba music, Carnivalesque costumes and a kaleidoscope of flags. On 6th Ave, floats carrying TV stars, singers, bands and dancers rolled past - and I think one of the cars carried the ambassador of Argentina, with that country's Miss World nominee in the next car. On 5th, stalls selling Greek, French, Thai and Dominican food tesselated themselves at every junction, while the stretches in between were filled with all manner of stalls. Whereas the street fair got repetitive after a couple of blocks, the pulse of the music from the parade and the crowd of people out on this stunningly sunny day gave everything a festive air nonetheless. And all this, of course, was taking place in the midst of the the towers of Midtown, a stunning setting for a huge party.

Later, I found out that this was part of the Columbus Day celebrations. But at that point in time, I had not known that something was going on on 5th and 6th Avenues. I had actually intended to bring them to the NYPL via these avenues so that they could take a look at the ridiculous pricetags, and we ran into this event out of sheer luck. In Singapore, to run into a single street performer is a thing of delight; elsewhere, I would be happy with chancing upon a flea market (like in Penang, or the spontaneously appearing night food market in Kota Kinabalu). However, in New York, and on the very day that these people came to visit, we had the luck to stumble upon a colossal celebration stretching through the spine of Manhattan. What can I say? Things simply happen here.

After that, we finally ended up at the NYPL, and then from there we went to Grand Central, took the subway down to the Financial District and visited the Century21 discount store, which is right next to the WTC site. After that, I had to pop back to school to attend a NOMADS meeting, but Joel took the UPenn people to the Staten Island Ferry, and they took a ride just as the sun was setting. Apparently, there were incredible sights to be seen from that trip. And then, after that, it was back to Times Square, dinner on 9th Avenue, then back to Chinatown to send some of the UPenn people onto the bus back to Philly.

It was great to be able to spend this weekend showing them around New York, to finally put my trusty guidebook and the experience of two months in this city to its best use so far. And as luck would have it, the weather and the city itself was all too happy to cooperate to throw surprises and delights into our path. It was a great chance to see the city on one of the last days of summer; and certainly, if these people had not come down to New York on Sunday, I would have totally missed the Columbus Day event. As it turned out, though, it was one magic day, and I'm glad that there were people to share it with.

*

Oh - one more thing. I spent the weekend redecorating the room, rearranging the furniture and the posters a bit, and I created a little sitting area, so now I can actually have people in my room and not have them sit on the floor. Anyway, part of that sitting area is a great upholstered dining chair that I picked up on the street in Midtown on Saturday when I was walking around with Joel. Apparently, someone had just thrown it out, and it was just sitting on the sidewalk. It looked perfectly good, freshly dumped, so I decided to take it. And so, for the evening of Saturday, I was walking around Midtown with this chair tucked under one arm, eventually taking it to NYU and Rockefeller Centre, where we met up with some of the Cornell Singaporeans, who predictably though it was ridiculous to take a chair off a sidewalk. And maybe it is. But now, I have a nice chair in my room, courtesy of New York City and its overly-rich denizens in Midtown, and it was well worth the investment of time and effort to carry it back.

It was also a great sociological experiment. Things are such in New York that no one found it strange that I was carrying a chair along the sidewalks, and even when I took it into the subway, people were happy to accommodate the extra bulk. It did attract several comments on the subway, though, especially when I sat in it right next to one of the normal, un-upholstered subway seats, but they were mostly made out of amusement. No one begrudged me my new chair. Of course, if you tried the same thing in Singapore, you'd probably attract a lot of unwanted attention from the MRT staff or the police before you got it back home. In Singapore, I would not even try a stunt like this. But, luckily, this isn't Singapore, and you must make the most of the opportunities that you find in front of you.