Random stuff from my visit to NYC

I was in New York City for work last week, and stayed at The Club Quarter Hotel in downtown Manhattan. The hotel was nice, business-oriented and clean. However, there were two drawbacks: (1) My room directly overlooked the old World Trade Center site—a bit creepy and very sad; (2) They stuck me on the 14th floor. There's nothing wrong with the number 14, but there's plenty wrong with the number 4, if you are Chinese. This ominous number symbolizes death in the Chinese culture, so between the view and the location of the room, I almost requested a room change.

But...I ended up getting distracted by the water unit that was right outside of my room. It was a purified water unit with a rack of empty plastic bottles for the guests to fill up and take to their room. Pretty cool and convenient. But, I wondered if these bottles were actually clean. Do they re-use these bottles, and even if they don’t, what’s to keep the other folks from putting their dirty bottle in amongst the clean ones? While I liked having access to clean drinking water without having to pay the rip-off fee of $4/hotel-room bottle, I couldn't get over the fact that I could be drinking out of someone else’s saliva/germ-filled water bottle. The solution? I used my own bottle that I had brought with me on the trip. Here’s to thinking ahead.

Are the bottles clean? Dirty? No one will ever know...

Every time I’m back in the City, I realize how much I miss its energy and its different neighborhoods. And the food. Over a dinner meeting, a co-worker mentioned that the downside of living in NYC is the cost of living and the cost of food. The latter puzzled me, because when I lived in NYC, I was always able to find great food for less than $20. To be fair, I did not dine in expensive, see-or-be-seen restaurants. Rather, I loved going to different ethnic neighborhoods and eating at a little hole in the wall where the focus is not on the atmosphere but rather, on making their food well. I didn't have a lot of time this trip, but I did manage to stop in at a Japanese noddle shop for a nice bowl of Udon ($5.75), and swing by Chinatown for some of their pastries (two for less than $5). I was in heaven.