Peter’s Blog V2

The E and F trains transport a majority of New Yorkers living in Queens and Brooklyn.  Now, for supposed work to “make track improvements”, their service will be reduced during rush hours, until the end of the year.  That’s right – our sucky commute will suck even more until (?) 2010.

Dude, it’s only April!

What should the millions of New Yorkers do about it?  Beloved MTA recommends “allow for more travel time”, meaning “fuck yourself.”

On a blog that I visit frequently, I found a link to the article How To Not Be A Douchebag Tourist In NYC.

(Warning: links on the side of the page may be inappropriate for work)

The article speaks all New Yorkers’ hearts.  But it’s funny to read the massive number of comments, most of which are from “the rest of America” who apparently hate and despise New York.  We understand that New Yorkers behave like assholes, but the outsiders don’t understand the kind of shit we live through everyday.

Another random fact about New York… very few places in the U.S. have over 10k people in one square mile.  The second highest population density is in San Francisco at 16.6k.  New York has 26.4k people per square mile, 60% more dense than San Francisco.

Last Saturday night, people around the world turned their lights off to conserve energy, in celebration of the Earth Hour 2009.  Click to see some amazing city skyline transitions from light to dark.

I did not hear about this event until Sean and Alice brought it up, when I took them sightseeing and they questioned why the office buildings don’t shut their lights off at night.  Obviously, you don’t see New York in this series of pictures as an Earth Hour participant.

You’d think I’m a very bitter person if I wrote three continuous posts complaining about the same thing… well, more or less.

The MTA has voted today to increase fares and cut service.  My monthly pass will jump from $81 (which not that long ago was $76) to $103.  The single rides will go up from $2.00 to $2.50.  Among other things, subway lines and bus routes will be cut, and off peak (including weekend) services will be reduced.

MTA’s propaganda attempt at illustrating their low ride cost with bogus math

Since I moved to New York 4 years ago, the subway/bus fare will have increased 30% for single rides and 36% for monthly passes.  That’s an average of 8% per year!  Imagine getting an 8% raise annually… we can all retire early!

Give that it could already take hours to get from one place to another within this city, it’s almost a joke to cut transit services even more.  Might as well take the weekend off so we can all observe Sabbath.

Well, guess what?  We just have to suck it up!  It’s not like we 8 million people have any better option except maybe to get up four hours earlier and walk.

Sigh… enough ranting.  On a more educational note, we should all know that New York is by far the city with the highest commuters on public transportation (call us the greenest city, perhaps?):

US City Commute Patterns

But did you also know that 2/3 of the rapid transit (subway) riders in the US are New Yorkers?

At the same time, we also have 1/4 of the country’s local bus riders.

New Yorkers are also 53% of Americans who take a train to work, served by 3 railroad systems.

What can I say?  MTA sure is screwing over a lot of people.

A. An earlier incident
B. Held by the train dispatcher
C. Train traffic ahead of us
D. Police investigation
E. Unusual track condition
F. Broken rail
G. Signal problems
H. Mechanical problems
I. Collapsed building
J. Construction
K. Congestions ahead
L. Track work
M. Power outage

Note – these are all actual excuses for service delay/disruption/outage that I had personally experienced, some of them on a daily basis.

“your train is no longer going where you’re going.  To continue trying to reach your destination, please transfer here to the crappy 7 train by walking two blocks underground and then two blocks above ground in the cold air, ride it half way and then get back on the street to wait in the cold in a mile-long line to transfer to a bus that you’ve never even heard of.  We’ve got agents scattered around the place but we won’t tell you shit.  Ask a question and we’ll yell at you.  Since nobody in New York is ever in a hurry, if you express your anxiety we’ll make fun of you, too.  Thank you for riding with MTA New York Transit – we never fail to fail you.  Please come again for our latest excuses for why things don’t work.”

Hey Yo!  Tasty Chinese Tonight!

I think “ho jaye” translates to “let’s have”.  Found this poster on the window of Patel Brothers, an Indian chain supermarket.

This wouldn’t have been so funny if it weren’t found in Flushing, where the store was surrounded by a whole city of Chinese more real than “Real Chinese”.

New York is a city that never sleeps.  Like a person that never sleeps, this city never seems to be in a healthy shape, either.

I commute through the Rockefeller Center Subway station everyday.  As one of the only handicap-accessible stations in the city, there is an elevator that takes you down to the platform.  But don’t bother if you’re in a wheel chair, because it’s out of service.  It’s been under construction since last summer.  Or maybe earlier.  After months of changing warning signs and caution tapes, they now have replaced the exterior glass windows.  The latest flier reads that the construction will be complete at an indefinite date.

I’m no mechanical engineer, but am quite certain that it’s easier to fix a single elevator that goes up and down 20 feet, than to maintain a 24-line Subway system that runs through four boroughs.  If the same people have trouble keeping one of the busiest stations accessible, who are we counting on to transport millions of people around?  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

On any given day, traverse through a few NYC Subway stations and I can bet you that no more than 2/3 of the escalators are working.  On a weekend, that number is likely to drop below 1/2.  When you look at the amount and variety of crap that falls on, in, and under those escalators, you will automatically become more sympathetic of the idling maintenance workers, who shall need an amputation if they ever come in close contact with it.  Why the crap never gets cleaned up is a separate mystery.

This is the 11th Chinese New Year since we moved to the States.  I realized that the more I grow up, the more it strikes me as a saddening holiday.  Perhaps it’s because I’m in New York?  Back in Virginia, sometimes it was hard to remember there were any cultures outside the White/Christian norm; but in NYC the big melting pot, it’s a lot easier to be reminded of my own roots – and everybody else’s.  And the fact that not everyone’s is equal.

Half of New York stays home on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Hanukkah.  The consultants are out of pocket, the jewelers put away their diamonds, and the Kosher restaurants stop serving food.  On top of that people respect the Jewish population to take 52 half Fridays off every year to observe the Sabbath.  The Chinese?  We work.  We work as if we forgot to check the calendar.  We don’t take the day off to celebrate because our moms and dads and friends all have to go to work, too.  People don’t expect you to celebrate until the following Sunday.  Those who cut school or work are lazy asses.  We despise them.

Last month, an article on New York Times discussed how the Jewish dine at Chinese restaurants over Christmas – because we are the two largest minority groups who don’t celebrate Christmas.  We have no urge to spend the time home with family, so we eat out or keep the business running.  Guess what?  Chinese restaurants open also on Chinese New Year (and the following Sunday)!

When Rockefeller Center lights its Christmas tree, my commute home becomes a nightmare.  When Catholic schools and military units take St. Patrick’s Day off to parade on 5th Avenue, it becomes impossible to grab lunch around my office.  People who drink on Cinco de Mayo and dress up on Halloween also celebrate the right holiday on the right holiday.  They don’t care about screwing over other people’s regular work day – and we Chinese work work work according to everyone else’s schedule.  We want to be team players.  We want to look good.  We want to make money.  And somehow our very own culture goes to the bottom of the priority list, and we gather for a meal on Sunday if everyone else is free.

But Chinese New Year is supposed to be about family!  Clean the house before the Eve, gather for a big family meal around the stove, play games all night waiting for the New Year to come, give and receive red envelopes, eat more big family meals, run around the streets while the businesses closed for at least 3-5 days…

And what did I do on the Eve?  Last year I ate pizza by myself in a foreign town, on a business trip.  This year I feasted on Cheetos while trying to fix the RAM in my computer, and trying to call my parents for four hours without success.

And what did I do on New Year’s Day?  Last year I interviewed 14 students who drained my energy and voice like nothing else.  This year I put on my red shirt, rode on the crappy morning Subway, had conference calls all day, pissed off a senior colleague, and had dinner with coworkers before returning to my desk for more late-night work.  So exciting and festive.

I miss the sound of firecrackers at midnight and the cheesy happy new year songs from the TV.  I miss the smell of red envelopes and the plates of hot food on a big round table.  I miss the sight of empty streets and the burden of saying silly lucky words.  Chinese New Year sucks without them.  It sucks when nobody, not even myself, is doing anything about it.

I got off a half-day today and went to Chinatown for lunch and haircut.  Stepping out of the office, I needed to walk a short distance to the 42nd street subway station.  Since it’s New Year’s Eve, I decided to walk down Broadway to check out the preparations on Times Square.

New Year’s resolution: quit being stupid.

Eleven hours (plus an extra second) to go until 2009, and Times Square was already packed with more people than I imagined possible.  Three blocks to go.  Depending on the date and time, it could be a breezy one-minute walk. Not today, though, as I worried for the weight of the massive tourists to sink the sidewalk below the street level.  Walking through this crowd was like swimming upstream against an avalanche.  People squeezed each other in all directions to a point where lungs could collapse.  I pushed forward, hard, only not to get pushed back.  If I had dropped anything, I wouldn’t expect to be able to retrieve it back.  People screamed for others not to push; people screamed at the noices from the hand-held horns; I wanted to scream only about my hunger. How do you expect a New Yorker to improve his attitude if you keep delaying his lunch?

I struggled for ten long minutes just to get from one door of Toys R Us to the other.  Swatch being a smart store didn’t even open for business today.  Okay, one block down and the station was still far away. I drifted away from the crowd and walked on the one remaining car lane on the road.  It had barricades from both sides to avoid the crowd from spilling onto it.  At the same time, when a car came I wouldn’t be able to get out of the way, either.  My risk management instincts told me that it was still less dangerous than staying on the sidewalk.

As snow covered my glasses and the gusting wind cut my face, I wondered if the folks waving the Taiwanese flags would even make it through 2008 alive.  What’s so great about counting down to just another year?  These crazies were to wait in the damn cold with no food or drink for more hours than most of them would willingly work in a day, coughing their lungs out five inches from the faces of their new best friends who were complete strangers this morning, peeing in a cup when necessary and killing time watching the pee freeze, just so that they could hug and kiss each other randomly when the ball drops from atop and sprinkles confetti that add colors to the street litter for the weeks to come.

Man.  The cheery holiday season makes me so bitter.

Check out the sheer mass of the NYPD: