New Yorkers are friendly

A couple of weeks ago, a good friend was visiting from London. He had lived in New York for a few years before moving across the pond and he still harbors feelings for the big apple. We were sitting in a small diner on the Upper East Side (the quintessential NYC experience) and witnessed a man arguing for 15 minutes about a $2 difference in the price of an item on the menu that was posted outside of the restaurant and the updated menu that was actually being used inside. He clearly did not have a problem paying the $2. He said so himself: it was about the principle. If a restaurant is going to post a menu outside, they should charge costumers the amount that menu shows. I tend to agree with him, but would never make a fuss about it. However, New Yorkers are principled people. Even if they owe a large condo on the Upper East Side, they might argue over $2 at a diner. Not only that, but New Yorkers also love to argue. During the time we sat in the diner, another costumer - a young man dressed in a very fancy suit, especially considering the midday hours of a Saturday - starting arguing with the man about the fuss he was making. New Yorkers value their meals and their personal space - they do not want to be bothered while eating out. New Yorkers are principled people.

Witnessing all of this, my friend promised me that no matter what, New Yorkers were so much nicer and friendlier than Londoners. The Brits tend to be colder, more closed off, which I don't disagree with.  Living in Europe, especially in the eastern parts, it also becomes obvious that New Yorkers are not unfriendly at all. It's only compared to the rest of the US that the unfriendliness of New Yorkers holds true. After spending a few days in the Kansas City area, I was nearly surprised when a lady yelled at me at Trader Joe's yesterday for not moving up the line, cutting the person in front of me while she quickly left her cart for a second to grab an item off a shelf. I even - how could I be so silly?! - tried to explain to the angry lady behind me that the girl in front of me just went to the aisle next to us to grab something and she would be right back. In return, her and about 4 more people cut me and the girl in front of me off. I always tell myself in those situations that in the end, I will probably live longer without all that anger built up inside me. And really, on a Sunday evening, where was I in such a hurry to get to? Besides, you never know whether those extra 65 seconds I stood in line for might have saved my life from a falling crane. Right? You just never know!

Ok, so, back to why I am still arguing for New Yorkers being a generally friendly bunch. Last weekend, a friend and I went to see a movie. It was a Sunday evening on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As we walked in to the theater, a rather large man walked in with us. We were all scouting the theater for good seats. As my friend and I were sitting down, we head the man ask a guy who was sitting by himself just one seat from the aisle if he could sit next to him. I think it's generally understood, that if you sit alone, one seat off the aisle, that you probably don't want anyone taking that seat unless there are no more seats left in the theater. There were plenty of other seats. The guy who had been sitting down kinda grunted at the other man, obviously disapproving. In response, our hero started explaining to him how he was there by himself and thought it might be nice for the two of them to sit next to each other and watch the movie together. A novel idea in New York. The guy did not seem very much into the idea but he wasn't going to get into an argument over that seat, so the two man ended up sitting next to each other. Then I got distracted talking to my friend for a while. Maybe 10 minutes later I got up to go to the bathroom, and to my surprise, the two men were in deep conversation. When I came back from the bathroom a few minutes later, they were talking and laughing and were obviously having a good old time. I would have thought they were the oldest of friends who had obviously come to watch a movie together. Here is the thing about New Yorkers: they are principled, they value their personal space and their precious time; but overall, they are a friendly bunch. If you give them a chance, they will talk to you and they will be nice and some of them might even become your friends. It is absolutely untrue that New Yorkers are unfriendly and I still cannot think of a better place to live than right here.

Back in my old neighborhood

It's funny how life plays tricks on us sometimes. Here I am, for the third time in the past week, studying at the Cornell medical library. This is where I first studied for Immunology exams during first year of graduate school; this is where I spent time writing my qualifying exam during second year; this is where I often studied for the MCATs just a few years ago; this is where I came to do Organic Chemistry problem sets the summer before I applied to medical school. Then I thought I had gotten away for good. I was all set to move to the Bronx, pretty far away (well, everything is relative, right?). A last minute decision kept me on the East side of Manhattan, just 40 blocks south of Cornell. Then a freakish hurricane flooded my school and practically destroyed its library. I am so sad about that. I love libraries. All the books, the smell, people studying, reading, relaxing; maybe I am weird, but I like just spending time in libraries.

After the storm, all of the three other med schools in Manhattan opened their libraries to poor displaced NYU students. So I have been riding my bike or taking the train up here every once in a while. So many familiar faces, nostalgic memories. So many times before, I used to look at the medical students in this library with a certain amount of envy. Now I am here once again, now one of them (well, almost). Ok, now on to learn all the pathogenic worms that live in people, eeeew!

Hurricane lifestyle

I have been dying to write something for a few days now, but the recovery has been a little bumpy here, to say the least. While I have power, heat and water again, our internet service has been very strange. It mostly works, but somehow, certain websites would not load, including our school email sometimes, and blogger. So here I am in the lobby of the wonderful Ace Hotel, with its free WiFi and the best coffee in town!

Last week was arguably the strangest in my life so far. After 2 and a half months of non-stop work and studying and trying to catch up with the rat-race that is medical school, I suddenly had nothing to do for 5 whole days. Without going into too much detail about the storm - you've all seen on TV I am sure - it was windy and loud, but from my 4th floor bedroom, where I spent most of last Monday, it was not that scary. Especially considering that for the worst of the storm I was not alone (I have to say it's a great idea to start dating someone right before a hurricane hits). At one point, there was a really bright flash and then darkness. No internet, no lights, power out. We looked out the window: neighboring buildings all dark. Shit. Where are the candles? I had bought many last year before Irene, but where are they??? Somewhere in a box probably. Not at all prepared this time around... thankfully, I am a little bit of a candle person so there are always some decorative candles in my room. It was very useful. I had enough cell phone reception to snap a picture and post on Facebook. I didn't think at the time, but several people have told me that was a great idea since for the next 24 hours or so, we had very limited communication with the outside world. A few minutes later my phone lost all service.

For a couple of more hours, the boy's phone was still working, but we could not really figure out what was going on in the outside world. What was that flash? What were the screams coming from the street? Was there some dramatic rescue going on? Why were people walking across 1st Ave in the midst of the storm in the middle of the night? He was getting emergency text messages both from NYU and NYC telling us to stay inside. Of course, we had no idea that there was in fact a dramatic rescue of patients going on from NYU Medical Center at the time. Some of our fellow students were going over to the hospital to help with the evacuations - part of me wishes that we had gone, but then again, some people went and were turned away because there was already chaos at the hospital. We decided that getting killed by a falling tree would not benefit neither us nor the patients at NYU. And that was likely wise as this was seen on our street a couple of days later:

Being cut off from the world is a strange feeling. At the time, we had no idea about the extent of the devastation NYU would suffer; the fact that we would not have access to our school email or any online materials for several days, or that all three hospitals would eventually be evacuated and shut down for many weeks to come; or that our medical school was so badly damaged that we no longer have a library, a student lounge, any lecture halls, study spaces or printers. We considered watching a movie on the remaining power of my laptop, but instead, spent hours freaking out about not having any connection. It wasn't so long ago that we were completely fine without constant internet connection, cell phones, social media and other means of communication. It's a strange feeling, to say the least. It took us a little while to come to terms with it and figure out that there were plenty of other things to do, like talking, and other more fun things :)

For about 3 hours, I was actually really excited about the candles and the darkness, and brushing teeth in the dark and eating all the ice cream before it melted. But as soon as our water shut down, I realized this was not exciting at all. I don't think we slept much that night. It was loud, we were too excited, too preoccupied. The next morning, the realization hit us that we were free. Also, that we didn't have water.   No cell phone service either. At certain spots in the lobby, I could receive text messages. There was an amazing outpouring of support from my friends! I got many text messages asking if I was all right and offering places to stay in case our power was out. I was so touched. I still am. To have the best friends in the whole wide world. I literally had at least a handful of options for where to stay for the next few nights.

But our first thought was - yup, we are nuts! - to get on our bikes (yup, it was still raining) and head downtown to see what had happened. I did something similar after Irene last year with Daniel, but that was in August and at that time, the storm had completely passed by then. Not so much this year. We rode in the rain and wind. However, we were in a crowd! There were many people out running, exploring, walking dogs, all kinds of crazy things New Yorkers do the morning after a major hurricane hit the city. I tried to take a similar picture - it doesn't look all that different from last year's day-after-the-hurricane shot. But it was SO different!

Sine we had no power or water in our apartment building on Tuesday morning, I had no coffee (not a good way to start my day) and I was beginning to give up on getting any coffee below 26th St. And then, I saw a couple walking by, holding paper cups. "Where did you get those??" There was one building in Battery Park City that had power (don't ask me how) and they happened to have a deli on the first floor. Imagine all the grumpy New Yorkers who couldn't make their morning coffees in their apartments, or go to the Starbucks down the block. They were all in that one deli! I was determined though. 20 minutes later I had a cup of coffee! Life never stops in NYC!

We even found a bar in Chinatown that must have had its own generator because they were open for business - although with candles, but that might have been just for the heck of it.
But in general, the destruction was obvious around the city. Overturned trees everywhere, no traffic lights, anarchy on the roads - awesome for bikers!

When we made it down to the Southernmost point of Manhattan and stopped to take some pictures, we ran into this guy standing by a small building housing public bathrooms. He was standing near a random outlet hanging off a railing as you can see, charging his phone. We presumed that some TV crew must have left the cable there - where the power was coming from, who knows, but we plugged out phones in and I even managed to call home and send a couple of emails.

From there, we headed uptown towards civilization - we had heard that above 39th St., there was electricity! Kelsey had offered her apartment for whatever we needed, so we rode up to 85th St to charge our phones and find some food. On a Tuesday afternoon, the Upper East Side looked like on a Friday night: all pubs full, every restaurant with over an 1 hour wait! People had nothing to do, so they were out eating and drinking. We walked around for nearly an hour trying to find wings - we gave up after the 5th bar and settled for Mexican. And some beer. Later on, we found the same scene on the Upper West Side. It was as if nothing had happened and people just had a day off. The contrast was extremely stark.

At that point, we didn't even know about the condition of NYU. Later in the evening, at the boy's friend's apartment on UWS, we finally checked the news. We found a video on CBS news reporting on the evacuation of the NYU Medical Center and they showed some shots of our very own lecture hall being under 12 feet of water! The reporter called it a "swimming pool". That was when we started wondering what would happen to our school!

Like I mentioned before, last week was the most surreal! We ended up having the whole week off, with very little communication coming from the school. We just assumed that there wouldn't be classes since we had no lecture hall. Now, it is clear that we don't have much of a school at all: just today, we took an exam in a room without any heat, and with no working bathrooms - that is real good motivation to finish an exam very quickly! - and all that I could see remaining from the library was boxes stacked upon each other - no books on the shelves, non computers where there used to me many.

For the rest of last week, I got to catch up with some good friends in Astoria, who took me and one of my classmates, who had nowhere to go, in. We made guacamole, baked brownies and watched girly romantic movies. It wasn't so bad being a refugee. :)

Now, it's back to reality: post-hurricane lifestyle. It has't been much fun. Before Sandy, I finally got into a good routine of classes, studying, figuring out how much time I had for other things, like running, friends etc. This week, it felt like everything has been turned completely upside down. Our deans were scrambling to figure out where and how to make up for the lost week in the curriculum - it's not so trivial as medical school goes just so fast! So we had an extreme number of lectures this week, either in a very uncomfortable small auditorium at an off-site hospital or in one of the surviving lecture halls at the medical center which had no heat, no bathrooms, and smelled like mice!  

Yes, a few words about the devastation of the research departments. I cannot even imagine what those poor people are going through. 7500 mice drowned in the storm! The building lost power almost 2 weeks ago, and much of it is still not restored. Backup generators failed. No power means no freezers. No freezers means dead samples. DNA, RNA, proteins, reagents, tissue samples all gone bad within a very short amount of time. Still today, I saw many people walking up and down 1st Ave with boxes, buckets, carrying valuable samples over to other buildings, other institutions. Other universities in the area sent dry ice to keep freezers cold for a little longer. The outpour of support has been quite amazing. Cornell, Columbia and Mount Sinai opened their libraries to us. Many researchers around the country have offered to replenish the lost mouse colonies. It's still going to be much time and valuable resources lost, but at least there is hope for recovery. Still, I understand all too well the value of these resources and just thinking about what these scientists must have been going through over these past two weeks makes me want to cry. 

Today, walking through the dark and cold hallways of the Medical Science Building was a sobering experience. All the labs were dark and empty; a few postdocs all bundled up in coats, scarves and hats carrying boxes, some sitting in a barely lit conference room with their computers. All because of a hurricane we were so very unprepared for! Very humbling to think about the power of nature, and the vulnerability of our civilization. We are just tiny specks of dust on this planet. We should be more careful how we treat Her.