A Week in New York City 15

Have been arrived at New York City for two weeks now and was waiting impatiently for the arrival of staffs from Time Warner Cable. The reason is simple, we need to get access to the Internet! Luckily, I have my iPhone connected and tethered the network to my Mac and I am able to write my first post during two weeks after arriving at New York City (NYC).

It’s not my first time in the United States, friends follow the blog may find out that I was in Ohio back in one year ago. But New York is totally a different state from Ohio, and NYC is the biggest city in the U.S.. Spent 20 hours on the plane which took off in Hong Kong and connected another flight in Doha, Qatar. It’s about nearly one day that I spent on the cloud before stepping my feet on the ground of NYC.

The first day is the toughest. Culture shock, language difference, and the most important, time zone difference. Luckily I had these problem solved. Never spent a minute to sleep on the plane and the purpose of doing it was to make myself distracted from the actual time. And upon arrival at NYC (Eastern Time, 12 hours behind China), it was the right time for sleep. On the next day, I was totally refreshed.

The next day in New York, guess what, I got an iPhone 4. This is really surprising since I didn’t expect it come so fast. Instead of picking AT&T, I choose the legally Jailbroken T-Mobile one. The cost of the phone is much higher than AT&T but the money stream coming is much more acceptable, plus the change in data plan of AT&T, you will need to be careful when using your 3G network.

iPhone 4 is really standing out of the previous model. One of the reason that I was not interested in the previous iPhone model is the design. The old ones look like unpolished sample to me though they has a better back curve than the new one. As with the Retina Display, the little screen display even better pics than on my mac. After using iPhone 4 for a while, if you happened to have a iPhone 3GS on hand, you will be shocked how terrible the screen of previous models look like. (the above pics taken by Lumix LX3, and the below ones by iPhone 4)

And the camera on the phone is really amazing. Have taken several pics and they somehow turned out to be how Apple advertised, though, not that good. The pics are really acceptable and even better than lots of digital cameras on the market. If you took a pic using your iPhone, the location that you snap the pic will be shown on the map on the Photo Album app. It’s pretty good to share these information with friends either on Facebook or Flickr, regardless of any privacy issues. From then on I no longer need to bring my Lumix LX3 around since iPhone 4 does the job. Also it’s a great function and with the built-in GPS, I managed to ran across the city without problems. It’s good to have a map on your hand telling you where you are and direction of your next location if you are new to this city.

After poking around the city for a week, I managed to find my new apartment. And the next thing on the list, is to get furnitures. Luckily, not much time was spent and I managed to get to the only IKEA in NYC which located in Brooklyn. It’s huge and has tons of great stuffs with really slick design.

Some places in Elmhurst, a city inside New York where I lived. With old fashion buildings, it’s a good place to take photos. It’s the second largest Chinatown in New York and has lots of good restaurants around the corner. More pics can be found on my Flickr.

As I am waiting for the arrival of my Internet service, I cannot help thinking that it’s a great pleasure to live in this city. Probably because I am new and fresh. But anyway, it’s a even great pleasure to explore the city as time by. Would love to continue the series and bring more about how New York looks like in the eyes of a foreigner in the next two or three years.

It is a late post, partly because I was sick upon the arrival, partly because there’s no Internet on my Mac, or partly I hadn’t find the way to tether my cellphone’s data service to my laptop. But they are about to solved now. Good to have the feeling of writing back and am pretty excited to to people coming around the blog. Any words are appreciated for comments!