Code|Beta

This past week I flew into New York on a vacation trip. I didn’t do a lot of shopping this time around but I did get to share a lot of great times with friends and my girlfriend.

New York has changed a whole lot since I last was here, especially with everything that has happened, yet that didn’t ruin my trip to the city. The weather was cold but luckily it didn’t rain and that did allow me to visit a couple of places…hopefully next time I’ll spend more time out in the city and visit more places.

The flight to New York took up my whole Saturday since I had a layover in Houston, Texas that lasted a couple of hours, I arrived to that airport at 11:30am and the next flight took off at 4:30pm. While I was there I met another traveler who also came from Costa Rica but he wasn’t coming to NY…he was going to another state which I really can’t remember right now and it was his first time in the US…so we did spend some time walking around the airport and we also ate at McDonalds.

The flight went without much problem, only a delay at the take off time, but nothing severe or to cry home about. Besides the Costa Rica airport…the Houston Texas airport is one of the bad airports I’ve been at…what I didn’t know is that the terminals are not actually connected…or at least I didn’t see them like that…since the airport was a lot different than the time I took that trip to Colorado which also had a layover in Houston. But I guess you don’t really want to spend too much time at an airport so it really doesn’t matter as long as you go in and out fast.

On my flight to New York…it got delayed…at first it was supposed to take off at 4:15pm but it was delayed until 4:30pm. I assume it was because of the bad weather that was happening in the east coast and especially in New York. During the wait there was this one girl whom was also flying to New York and she was so annoying because of the way she talked…she was talking with her boyfriend over the phone and the way she was talking was so annoying that I just had to get up and go somewhere else. On the plane I met this other girl who was nice and she did talk to me during most of the flight…she’s from Trinidad and Tobago and was on her way to Manchester…so I take it that she was pretty tired of being on a plane…unfortunately I didn’t understand much of the things she said to me since she had this Caribbean accent which made it really hard to understand her English…well if she was actually talking to me in English…and despite that fact she kept talking to me and I would understand every other word that she said and I strongly believe that she knew that I could hardly understand her yet she kept on talking.

The flight wasn’t that bumpy at all but that all changed at the landing in JFK airport. There were strong winds which caused for the flight to be really bumpy and the landing to be difficult yet the pilot did a great job at putting that aircraft on the ground safely. During the getting off the plane part one of the passengers was not careful and pulled his bag dropping my bag and hitting a teen that was traveling on the aisle seat and knowing that my laptop was in that bag you definitely know that must have hurt especially since it was her face that took the hit.

Once out of the airport and waiting for the hotel transportation to pick me up, since I knew I was going to arrive late to the airport this was one thing that I went for, the temperature was 15F and I wasn’t really prepared for that temperature which means that I was freezing while outside waiting for that van to arrive and take me to the hotel. Despite the heavy traffic that night the van didn’t take too much time to arrive which was good.

Once at the hotel I checked in pretty fast and got to my room which was on the first level…well it was the second floor…ugh these hotels make it so confusing…well not really. I was originally told that since the room is located above the hotel’s restaurant I would hear the loud music on Saturday night and I was expecting the noise level to be so high that it would be hard to keep asleep…but to my surprise the noise level was very low and you actually had to stop and pay attention to actually notice that there was music playing downstairs.

One of the things you have to keep in mind is that not always things go as planned. On Sunday I originally planned to go into the city and do some light shopping but that never happened as I went over to a nearby shopping center and bought a couple of things and never went into the city during the day. In the evening I was contacted by Viza, one of my friends from the NYLUG group, and he invited me to go out and he picked me up at the hotel and we headed to the city. He took me through the Queensboro bridge into Time Square and to other close places…we went by RonG’s house but he wasn’t there.

On Monday I met my girlfriend and we hanged out and also went to a mall in Queens and had lunch there. Since my sister was pregnant we bought some baby clothes on that visit to the mall and also a jacket for me.

One of the electronic devices that I was going to buy was a DSLR camera, I had spoken with my friend ocnarfid from NYLUG and he had recommended the Nikon D80, I actually wanted a Nikon and that’s why I asked him for advice on which camera to get, but at the end I got the Nikon D60 since it wasn’t as expensive as the D80. It came with a 14-55mm lens which is just pretty basic for your everyday photograph and I do intend on getting another lens with a bigger zoom range and getting one for macro photography. I had originally planned to spend some time in Central Park to take some photographs like the ones that ocnarfid has taken but I actually never did get around to.

I also took the chance to meet Kingsley…twofour…threefour or whatever nick he is using right now on the LILUG IRC channel. He picked me up on Tuesday to go to the meeting that LILUG was holding in Farmingdale State College. The meeting was quite interesting since it was about Free Culture and they had a guest speaker that was presenting about the subject. There was a raffle done at the end of the meeting and a lot of us were going for the Hacker book that was on the table and I can’t remember who got it but I can assure you that it wasn’t me. After the meeting we just headed home since it was late and nothing really much to do. You can check the photographs I took of the meeting in the Photography section on the LILUG album.

On Wednesday ocnarfid said that we were going for beers…well I don’t drink beers but I hardly ever turn down an invitation to go out to a bar and hang out…so I arrived at his building in E Houston St were I would meet Viza to go get some beers. Well ocnarfid bailed on us that night so we changed our plans and went to play some pool and then to get some Thai food but before we got the food we met gotd0t over at the Apple store that’s near the E Houston St and spent some time sitting near that store talking about…well I forgot that conversation

It’s sort of a tradition that the NYLUG group organizes a Wingfest for special occasions or just because. So RonG organized one for Thursday night, which was my last night there, so that we could get together. Now the Wingfest tradition started a while back and it got the name of Wingfest because they usually went out and got buffalo wings and they just kept calling it Wingfests when it really didn’t matter if someone ate buffalo wings or not…well this one person that arrived, unfortunately I can’t remember his name, did eat buffalo wings. Not many people showed up but it was still good we had a laugh and chatted…we did also chat over IRC…well you know after all we were a couple of geeks getting together.

I needed to do some last minute shopping, though I did forget some things and didn’t really have time for those things I forgot, so I planned my route and got out of the hotel as early as possible. I needed to go to the B&H store once again to buy a case for my camera since I wasn’t carrying it in what anyone would call a proper manner and would really hate to see that camera get damaged because of that not to mention the fact that I do take care of the electronics that I own. After the B&H store I had to hit the Best Buy store to get my sister’s husband the laptop that he wanted and quite certainly got him a good deal on one. I did have to get on a couple of trains and switch like three times on my way to the Life Café where the Wingfest was being held. I actually understood the way the trains work…ok ok…I can manage myself on those trains now…it’s not like I can sit down and talk for hours about them…but my point is that I understood how to do that on that one night than every other time I had been on the trains this week. One thing that I found funny is the fact that two tourist came up to me and asked for directions on the subway…luckily they had a map and showed me where they wanted to go so I was able to help them get on their way otherwise it would have been the worst.

After we got out of the Life Café, which is a good place to go and I’d recommend it to anyone that goes around the East Village area, we took a small drive over to the Brooklyn bridge for a little walk over the bridge and so that I could take some pictures of the sky line and the buildings there. We met n2aag like half way on the bridge and he was riding his bike…we spent close to an hour standing there in one spot talking about…well there are some things we talked about which were quite interesting…but I won’t mention here…

The weather was cold and I really wasn’t prepared for that so I did get cold a couple of times and others it was just nice. Going back to Costa Rica I stopped at the Houston, Texas airport and it’s hot out there just a reminder of the type of weather that awaits me back home.

At the end of the week the experience on this trip was great and this is the first trip that I do all by myself and I’m glad that it went this great and that I didn’t run into much trouble moving around…well for the little I moved around in NY. I do sure hope to come back to the city soon and see everyone again especially my girlfriend.

-LM