Waiting for the train at the subway station...
It’s Explore NYC Day today! But I had a musical – Wicked – to catch at 3pm, so I had no intention of using my City Pass today. Instead, I went down to Central Park to take a look. It was humongous! I took a total of 2 hours just to brisk walk the entire park, and I didn’t even cover the entire stock of attractions! It was more like a forest to a Singaporean like me. But it was a nice place to spend some time away from the grey city. There was this plane that was flying and writing in the sky too. It was really interesting except that I could not make out the message. By the end of it, I was quite tired and the tricky thing was that I had to make my way to the musical!
Luckily I wasn’t late. In fact, I was much earlier than the rest! So I waited. When we finally entered, I was sitting at the last row. Lousy ticket. But the singing and performance was great… better than Les Miserables in my opinion. Better story too! I liked it a lot.
Finishing the musical only signaled in the start of something else. I rushed out of the theatre towards Time Square, hoping to get a view of the ball drop for the New Year’s count down. I thought I got pretty close, because I was all the way near the TV screens. But then I realized that the ball was not in sight and there was no prospect of moving forward because of the barriers the police officers set up. I thought I would get out and grab a bite too. But entering McDonald’s, it was simply too crowded. And noticing that they also closed all their toilets, I knew that I couldn’t stay there all the way till New Year. Instead, I made my escape to Chinatown, which was surprisingly empty.
There, I found this Singapore Café, where I had my dinner. I ordered a nasi lemak and a kakong belachan. The kakong was authentic indeed, but I had no idea what happened to the nasi lemak. It seemed more like nasi padang. Not so nice, even though I missed the taste. I took my time there, and soon I was on my way back to Time Square, reaching the area about 10pm only to find out that once you get out, you cannot get back onto Broadway, which meant no view of the ball drop. But I happened to overhear this officer telling this other guy that the best way to get to the ball drop was to go all the way up to 58th street then take a left. I thought I should, since I made it all the way here on such a special occasion. So I walked along with everyone else. And I did manage to squeeze my way through till the ball was in sight. But it was so small it was more like a speck of light. Nevertheless, I then became one of the privileged 80000 who will get to see the ball drop in NYC on the New Year’s Eve count down celebrations. Personally, I thought the fireworks that followed the count down were much nicer. And I happened to film most of it down.
After the count down, I made my way back to West End Studio. I was not to have a room tonight but I thought I would just stay in the lobby till check in time. It took me an hour to get out of the area though, thanks to the silly barricades. By the time I got back, I was so tired. But I didn’t have a room, so I stayed in the lobby, till the French receptionist realized that I was there for too long. I told him my situation and he allowed me to check in early at 530am! Really nice of him… I had a place to sleep after all…
P.S.: I had beef shish kebab along the way towards Chinatown from one of the roadside stalls. It was REALLY good! I immediately ditched the idea of having hotdogs… those are lame…