new york... again

aarrgh. got spurned by TED. was only able to make it to their lift lobby when they rejected me from going up cos the receptionist said it was only an 'office' and there is nothing interesting to see.

got a little lost looking for marvin, kelly and zhou zhong. got so tired that i fell asleep during chicago. damn sad. 

NY is a wonderful place though. saw the sight from Empire State Building. many things to upload. 

I'm not going to say much more since at present not going to upload anything. 

New Yorkers have been wonderful people, and the words, 'thank you very much' going a huge distance here.

The thing that surprised me most was that many people in NY still don't speak English as their native tongue. And that in the places that I've been to, there is still a significant immigrant population, though they are largely Hispanics. The place we are staying, uptown near the Hudson River, seems to be predominantly immigrant. 

 

There is still so much to feel and understand and know in this place, and all I've done hasn't even begun to know the tip of the iceberg. I would really want to ask how this multiculturalism adds to NY... at the same time, I'm really curious about the fact Enligsh... is still... not spoken by everyone as their first language. 

Maybe in NY there really is a sense of a 'core' and 'periphery' - that the 'core' of NY hasn't really changed - Times Sq, Downtown, and parts of Midtown, but beyond that, people are still moving in, mixing around... Not a NY expert, so can't tell. 

On the flight here to NY, there were any Vietnamese, so... hmm... thinking about why some ethnicities have done better than others... 

And then... how come there's Chinatown in some countries but no, 'India-Town' in many others? I don't see an Indian-diaspora conglomerate here in NY... but that answer may be kinda obvious, its because massive numbers of Indians didn't come here, so there was no impetus to come together, since the numbers were probably insufficient to stay together as a community. Timing of the immigration matters too. But what about Korea-Town? 

and a more random note, egos build skyscrapers... reminded of the fact last night. 

So back again. multiculturalism seems to split people, and fails also to acknowledge differences between sub-communities. Like THERE ARE STILL AFRICAN immigrants coming to the States, but their positions are drastically different from the rest of the slavery-African-American community that we have come to recognise as the 'African-American' community. And they might have different linguistic backgrounds, especially French. Or maybe I heard tourists, but can't help thinking. These communities are going to diverge, if they are immigrants, and there will be different trajectories  in their status here in America.

thats all for now. obviously i'm in a 'black pacific' mood currently...

On a last note, I'm beginning to feel things again... about the privileged lives that others live. I'm a swakoo, and I'm also definitely out of my league , trend-, style-wise in NY. Also, I'm thinking about peers who have gone to the States like no-one's business, and I just marvel at their savviness, at that trend of thinking, at just their 'wise-ness' in handling things in a foreign land. Weird, how I'm always thinking about my place relative to others here... arrgh. Gotta get that thinking out of my mind. 

Been told that American students are passionate about learning, and I'm thinking, maybe its a different culture of education here, that those who made it to Ivy Leagues - they just have the opportunities to study more, do more work, do more projects, and maybe its just their mentality to want to learn... maybe its nuture, and inculcation, that they can afford to think this way. Its also a socioeconomic thing too, I bet.

been also forced to reevaluate assumptions a bit, suprises that there are people in USP who didn't come from the top-5 JCs and yet who are doing very well now. There is something to be said about university being a leveller of people, and really demands from people things that socio-economic status might not necessarily endow people with.

Thats all for now. Last day in NY today!

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