[article] [nyc #1] The Girl That Sleeps Moves to the City That Never Sleeps

First in my series of articles where I log my adventures in New York, as I trudge my way through software engineering, expensive restaurants, dirty subways, and of course - laundry and taxes.

I was dispossessed of $700 within a couple hours of landing in New York City. That’s around 56,000 rupees - which is a HUGE amount of money by Indian standards. Not a moment I like to relive, as much as my friends like to remind me of it every opportunity they get. I’m going to keep it short. It was 4 AM, Indian time. In my sleepy stupor and haste to get home (or as close to home as the corporate housing I had been provided with could get), I gave away three hundred dollar notes instead of one dollar notes to the guy handing out luggage trolleys at the airport. Obviously unintentional - unlike Indian currency notes, notes of all denominations are of the same color here (why?).  If the trolley guy noticed my blunder, he didn’t point it out. As if this wasn’t enough for the day, I then got scammed by one of the unofficial cabs into paying $400 for my ride to Manhattan. A piece of advice to anyone flying into New York - if you choose to take anything but an Uber or Lyft at the airport, prepare to part with all your wealth at the end of your ride. 

At home that evening, I decided to sleep through the next couple of days. We’ve all heard of stress eaters. I’m a stress sleeper. I will sleep until I have dreamt up a way to handle the stress (that has never happened, but can’t one hope?), or until there’s no more sleep left within me. Thankfully, the rest of my time in New York has not been as tragic. It has, in fact, been largely delightful. Living by myself has been everything I imagined and more. Having the house to yourself and interacting with people only when you choose to? Organizing stuff exactly the way you want to? Having a color theme to your furniture? Wearing what you want to? I think everyone should live alone sometime in their life - just to experience the highs and lows of it. The absolute joy of coming home to yourself after a socially laborious outing and sinking into your mattress with not a care in the world, but also the sheer loneliness of you and your walls in forlorn times. One needs to experience it all, in my opinion.

To my own wonder, working at the office laid out a feeling of routine in my everything-is-new life. I met the people I had been working with remotely for the previous couple of months. Plunging into a world of everything Google was handy. The most mundane of exercises like navigating the maze that the office is to find meeting rooms, or comparing the food in the different cafeterias at lunch - put my feet back on familiar territory. Today, hours pass by as I take in the breathtaking view of the skyline from the 14th floor of the office, while I wait for my unit tests to build or write a design document. Thinking back, although it’s just been a little short of five months, I have come a long way. I learnt to brave the winter chills. I learnt to pronounce “New York” the way New Yorkers do. I learnt to time my laundry runs. I learnt to make my own food. I learnt to plan my time and schedule my activities. I learnt that the correct reply to “How’s it going?” is to just say the same thing back. I learnt to overtake tourists on the sidewalk. Most of all, I learnt to just show up and do things. From discovering my favorite desserts to attending comedy shows, and first-time experiences like taking a tango class or (trying to) play kayak polo or throw axes, to continuing my Indian classical dance lessons here - it’s been an exhilaratingly rosy few months. And I cannot wait to see all that the city holds.