5 Years of NYC!

Note: This essay was meant to be published in June 2023, but I went on a writing hibernation again and never ended up finishing it. Today at the end of 2024, I wish to come back to this article and give it the ending it deserves. Enjoy!

I visited New York for the first time in the Spring of 2016, when I nervously flew in from Chicago for an internship interview. Being a naïve college junior that I was, I booked a very old hotel in Times Square, where rats came out in the middle of the night and chewed on my suitcase.

Still, I was excited to take a yellow cab for the first time (just like the movies!), and watch the city unfold outside my taxi window. I saw all the skyscrapers, the neon lights, and the street artists dancing at Times Square. Bars and vendors bustling with energy. People walking their dogs at 3am in the morning. I was in love with the liveliness of the city.

200 job applications and 2 years later, I finally moved to the city of my dreams, with a job of my own. I couldn’t believe it! This was too good to be true. In this city, I slowly grew into myself.

Sitting in the subway, I no longer felt self-conscious as the only Asian on the train, because there will be other Asians too in the same car. On the street, I not only saw people from all ethnicities emerge from different corners, but they also walked together as the same friend group, or as a couple. One day at work lunch, I found myself listening to my colleagues each explain New Year traditions of their own culture (Indian, Arabic, and Jewish), and then they asked me about mine. We then bonded on food - giving recommendations of the best Greek food in Astoria, and trying out the best Vietnamese food truck of New York right outside our office. Having used to being perceived as a minority, I felt more comfortable in my own skin living in New York.

I also opened up my own senses to all the arts and culture in the city. One cold winter afternoon, I took a walk at the Central Park, and ran into a girl, dancing ballet as a street performance. I was so deeply touched by the music and the dance, that I started my own journey of dancing adult ballet, even though I had never danced my whole life. I was able to sign up for beginner adult workshops at one of the best ballet schools in the world, and going to classes in a typical west village brownstone building felt like I was living in a movie.

Another time, I was brought by a friend I met at a party to a tea saloon in Chinatown. Having previously only drank from tea bags at big chain supermarkets, I was introduced to the academics of tea for the first time. There, I was taught to open up my senses, and connect myself to tea and nature. I drank tea like tasting wine, and sat around to chat with guests who were strangers a few hours ago but soon became my friends.

Time flies, and now I am over 5 years living in the best city in the world. I am grateful for my younger self who followed my curiosity, who enabled the older me today to say that I have explored everything I wanted to in New York. This city truly taught me that everything is possible, and I can’t wait what adventures follow up next!

Dinner at Boucherie in West Village