4 days in New York
It was super cold. It’s 50 degrees normally around this time of the year. We were greeted with rain and 25-35 degree weather. After getting out of the plane we met up with Andrew at the next terminal. Then we had to figure out how to get downtown to our apartment. The air train was out of order that day so we decided to just Uber, it costed around $60.
Our place was really nice. Now I see what a fully furnished house can look like. It was in the lower eastside of Manhattan, only a 20 minute subway ride to Times Square.
I made that ride the next day since one of my coworkers was giving a talk at Yahoo. I had to do a double take after seeing that their office was pretty much at Times Square. It was really awe-inspiring to see the huge buildings, neon lights, and jumbo screens all over the place.
I immediately met up with JP to help out with the talk. They served us New York pizza which was really good. That’s another thing I noticed here. There are a lot of $1 pizza shops, it’s like a race to the bottom in pricing. Overall things felt equivalent to what we pay in San Francisco, besides the pizza. In SF it costs about 20-35$ for a fully loaded pizza. After the talk we met with more of the Yahoo engineers and saw some of their secret alcohol stash including Absinthe. Then I met up with more friends in Japan town on the east side and had some yakitori at an izakaya.
Below our apartment was a dumpling place that was really good. It only costs about 25 cents a dumpling so we ordered a ton. A full meal that fed 4 people only cost $14.
On Tuesday I spent a lot of time at my grandmas house in Rye. I went to grand central station which was really cool. Theres like 50 trains that run through there or something, it was very nice. They have a lot of shopping and restaurants in there as well. While in Rye I also met with my Uncle. We had dinner out in Porchester (this is all north of downtown NYC). It’s very interesting learning about the problems non technical companies face. There were more talks about insurance, housing, mortgages, non-profits, and grants than the usual consumer facing stuff. Overall it’s exciting times to be a technologist.
My uncle dropped me off at the train station with seconds to spare to catch the one back to Grand Central station. I immediately went to meet up for dinner & drinks with some really good iOS developers. We went to Distilledny and Tribeca Tavern. Dinner was paid for courtesy of Yahoo! Then we went to get drinks and those were paid for by Realm. I ended up getting a little lost on my way back with my phone dying. It was really cold, I don’t know why I decided to try to walk back haha. Some how I kept ended up further south than where the apartment was. It was nice strolling through the city at that time though. Thankfully when I got home Andrew was still awake and let me in.
Our last day in New York was fairly relaxing. I just had a meeting at 1pm so we got a quick lunch at one of the top 10 ramen restaurants (based on Tokyo ratings).
The portion size was small but perfect for a first meal. This place was half a block from our house. Kevin did a really good job picking the place, because it had everything we needed. We then went to our local coffee shop and got some tea. I did a quick google hangout to catchup on some work. Then I started preparing my slides for the talks I will do in Europe and Japan. The coffee shop was getting a little cramped and distracting so we ended up getting a breather.
It’s basically a room for working/resting and the one we ended up getting was on the 28th floor of the Trump Building on Wall street! It cost about $25/hr.
With our flight at 8:30pm we started our way to Brooklyn via train. It took about an hour and a half. By that time we were pretty hungry so we got our tickets and through security. I still had to sign my passport haha. At this time we met up with the rest of the group, 9 of us so far. We ended up eating at this american style take out diner. I had some nachos, buffalo wings, and a ceaser salad.
We saw a few other people who got the $200 flight deal, and gave our secret hand shakes. Now I’m 1 ½ hours away from landing in Milan. I still haven’t slept, its 3:45am New york time, 9:45am Milan. I will probably be very tired but its also very exciting.