NY, NY!

Q: How do you tell whether a man works in wall street or not?
A: Ask the man to go to second floor from first floor on an escalator. If he still climbs the stairs of an escalator, he works on Wall street.

Q: How do you check if a man is from NY or not?
A: Ask the man to walk 5 blocks in down town Manhattan. If he does not stops at any stop light showing red, he is a pure New Yorker else he is just visiting the city.

NY,NY! a city with its own feel, its own pace. NY is American Bombay (or may be it was just the monsoon season).

The best was the stop light for pedestrians. It has a different meaning in NY context. People dont stop and wait for the WALK sign to appear. Whenever a NewYorker sees a red stop light, he observes it, acknowledges that the light is red, and some enjoy the brief microsecond to take a deep breath while others don't need it. And then they continue to move forward. NewYorkers dont need a WALK sign to walk. There were only 2 kinds of people who stopped at red light - (1) People having maps in their hands. (2) People talking to their friends/kin in a langugage that was not english. In both cases aka tourists.


On every street there is a sign says "No Standing" meant for vehicles that they cant stand. But i think it applies to pedestrians as well. They never stand, never ever stand.

Other observations:
(1) Before Penn state station arrives, people start queueing up to get down 5 minutes before the stop comes so that they save that extra 30 seconds of life.
(2) At a Walgreen pharmacy, there was a queue of 5 people ahead of me and all of them were talking on phones. Time should not be wasted while standing in queues.


[Disclosure:All generalizations were made by roaming around Manhattan for 2 consecutive days.]