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New York and back

I love travelling and going on vacation. A couple of weekends ago, a few friends and I went up to New York City. I met up with more friends there. New York city is awesome. And getting there from DC is cheap, fast and easy. You hop onto a bus right by the office, spend four hours on it and viola you're in the middle of NYC. So that's what I did with a couple of friends. We headed up to New York on Friday morning. We took the Megabus double-decker (with glass roof!) bus there and got seats on the upper deck.

The bus got us there on time and we decided to go check into our hotel. The hotel is right across from the UN building and once we had sorted that out, we did what most tourists do in NYC, wander around.

We walked a lot that day. We ended up going to a comedy show on the upper east side in the evening and because my friends smoke, we ended up meeting one of the comics. He was quite the interesting guy. He wants to change the world with humour and his ideas. He seemed to know a lot about the world and was a lot more accommodating of our differences. We also had an ethnic Hungarian who was born in Holland and grew up in Sweden there... spouting the benefits of Sweden and its version of social democracy. His girlfriend was just Dutch...

Anyway, the next day, I was supposed to meet up with a friend of mine from back home in the old country as it were who I hadn't seen for over 13 years! He just so happened to be in NYC the same weekend as me and I wasn't going to miss the chance to meet him. So I did. Right by the Empire State building. Technology is amazing. If it wasn't for Facebook, I would not have known he was going to be there... nor would we have figured out when and where to meet.

Anyway, Nikhil, his friend from REC and I hung out around NYC, took in the sights, sounds and so forth of the city. Then my travel companions finally made their way to find us... and after a few beers, we decided to go see things. We made our way all the way down to the southern tip of Manhattan to catch the Staten Island ferry to go past the Statue of Liberty. That was awesome. We made our way back and we saw two Marine 1 helicopters (used by the US President) and a whole bunch of polo ponies coming off Governors Island where Prince Harry (3rd in line to the Canadian (and British) throne) was playing polo! Only in New York I suppose. Mind you, the White House is on my way to work... and I see it every day that I go...

Somewhere along the way, another one of my friends had met up with us and the six of us went to see another comedy show, this time by Time Square. We wanted to go see a Broadway show but that wasn't to be. The lines at TKTS were just too long to be worth standing in. After the comedy show, we split up, I said goodbye to Nikhil and a couple of us went to get food at the halal cart on 53rd and 6th. The food there was just plain awesome. After that, we headed back to the hotel.

The next day, we packed up and headed out. We came back to DC in the early evening so that we could get ready for the work day. If only I could have stayed there longer. I guess the big thing for me was meeting someone I have known for sooo long in such an interesting city. My friend had not really changed that much. And it was a true pleasure to discuss what happened to us since we last saw each other... from the various people who went to school with him to those who got married, who are engaged, who have kids... to discussions on politics and just societies and what is fair and what is not, it was sheer joy. I am glad I got the opportunity to meet up with him in this part of the world and to hang out, albeit just for one day. It looks like I'll be heading out to San Francisco if all goes according to plan, so that should be another chance to meet up with him.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures from the trip



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