New York Day 1

There is a bus that runs from China Town in Boston to China Town in New York and it only cost $15. It is called the Fung Wah and it reminded me a lot of the buses in Mexico. I didn't know this before the trip but my friend Stephanie, who's place we stayed at in New York, told me that it had pretty bad PR. In the last month a bus had caught on fire, another one had flipped and another had killed a person, but it was a smooth ride there and back for us.

Stephanie came and met us in China Town and then we went back to her place to drop off our stuff. On our way to the subway, she spotted an exotic fruit that she had read about recently; unfortunately I don't remember the name, but I think it sounded like mango. She and her boyfriend, Nick, had just gotten an apartment on 18th and 5th Ave and it was amazing. There is a game room on the bottom floor for all the residents with pool, ping pong, air hockey, and darts. They have an exercise room as well. The roof is tiled and has tables and chairs to chill out and view the city. The only “problem” that we had was they hadn't moved in anything yet and so the floor was our bed. However, Steph had brought an air mattress which worked out wonderfully. Actually, Wuera and Kezia took the air mattress and so Yves and I were on the floor. So they were probably pretty comfortable. Around 2 in the morning, I woke up and realized that Yves and I could use the cushions for the chairs on the roof for our “mattresses” and so that is what we did and then it was great...except for Wuera because Yves snores haha.

Showering was fun too because we forgot to bring towels. Yves ended up buying some but they really sucked because they did the opposite of drying. You actually felt wetting after “drying” yourself. I mastered air drying though. Because the air conditioning was on, I went out to the deck, where it blew out hot air and dried myself. Awwwwww yeah.

Anyway, that day we went out for some sushi and then walked the Brooklyn Bridge and surrounding areas. There were 4 waterfall installments around the area that tried to mimic the architecture around them. When we were walking on the bridge, a couple about to get married was being filmed there. Wuera wanted a picture with them and so I took it without them noticing. At another point, I wanted everyone to do "Spirit Fingers" for the photo. As you can see from the photos, it didn't happen on the first time and I think I'm the only one with real "spirit" in the photos haha.

After that we went to Prospect Part for a free Electronica concert. By that time I was pretty tired though and while we were waiting for it to start, I fell asleep multiple times haha. When the concert started, we didn't really like the music that much. The first song was like the Opera from the 5th Element except the combination of her voice and the music was not a good one. I think I would have loved to hear her sing with a different set of music or just to hear the music by itself, but the combination was awful. We stayed for another song and then decided to order some pizza and take it to the roof. Steph and Nick's landlord is from Cyrus and is a wonderful guy. He brought us some dessert and offered us cigars. And while we were eating on the roof, there were fireworks going off by the Statue of Liberty. Wuera made us caipirinhas and Yves and I shared a cigar... more like I took a couple of puffs and he took the rest.

Wuera's pronunciation in English sometimes needs some work. At one point, Steph ask her if she liked something and instead of saying “A little bit” she responded “A little bitch.” We had fun with that one for a while.

Wuera told us a story of when she was 20 days old and her sister wanted to welcome her to the family. Her sister loved carrots and so she put a carrot and Wuera's mouth which made Wuera choke. Fortunately, her parents saw this and quickly rescued her. She told this story in her Spanish and broken English and so at the time we were trying to figure out exactly why her sister had done this. “Was she jealous of the attention you were getting and was trying to kill you?” I think Wuera didn't understand and so she replied yes. And then Steph was reminded of Old School and said, “Hmm, maybe she wasn't trying to kill you. Maybe she was trying to teach you how to do a blow job.” “Qué eso?” And so I had to explain to Wuera what a blow job was in Spanish.

Whenever Yves likes you, you will know it because he will give you a chocolate bar when he doesn't know when the next time he will see you will be. He gave one to Nick and then went back to his chair, smoking his cigar quite happily. And then a thought occurred to me, “Yves, you love milk, you love chocolate, and you love efficiently. You should combine all of those and like write a computer program to make the whole thing more efficient.”

Yves puffed his cigar, looked at me dully, smiled and then replied, “Yeah, well, that would be a good idea. But you know John, not all things done efficiently are good.”

I was surprised at his response and inquired, “Like what?”

Smugly, he stated, “Sex.”

I couldn't help but laugh. That is such an Yves thing to say. And then it got even funnier because no one else had heard our little conversation and so I had to tell them.