I heart NY

I'm in NYC this week. This has consistently been my favorite place to teach, because I love being in the city. I love the throngs of people and that it's a place where you can walk to things, or use public transportation. It's the only place that I can think of where having a car is almost a disadvantage.

I'm all about food, as you can tell by looking at me, and there's nothing you can't find in the city. I generally just eat pizza while I'm here, because the pizza that I've been able to get elsewhere is generally chain pizza, and if it's not, it's not much like new york pizza. A pizza place on every corner makes it convenient to do, too, especially when you don't want to spend a lot of time tracking down some place that you've never gone to before.

For the last six months or so, I've actually had DC as my preference, even over NYC, just because of the Afghani restaurant across the street from the hotel. I was in DC two weeks ago, I went out to dinner with a friend to the Afghani place, only to find it empty. Bare walls empty. No booths or kitchen empty. Consequently, DC isn't my favorite place anymore. One of the things I'm going to try to do this week, probably Thursday (a friend is coming into town on wednesday), is find an Afghani restaurant, there are several listed in Zagats.

I stay at the Gershwin apartment building while I'm here, it's at 50th and 8th, right in the theater district. It's a nice place to stay, and they provide a cablemodem in the apartment for the internet addicts that the instructors are.

My company's center here is in the CBS building at 52nd and 6th, so I have about a 6 block walk every morning and every evening, other than the humidity of the city, I really enjoy the walk. Since I'm going up- and cross-town, there are a number of different ways I can walk the route, so there's always something new to see every time I come. I haven't been here in almost 2 years, and not too much has changed, or at least, not along the route that I walked this morning.

It's almost lunch, almost time to go to the Halal cart and get some chicken with rice, my staple lunch while I'm here. Convenient, dirt cheap, and something slightly different from what I can get anywhere else. I have to wait for the lab tech to finish setting up the class computers before I can verify that yes, indeed, they work, and go back to the apartment to do some work.

Yep, I'm all about the NY experience. Even if my experience is plain jane.