A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

(Jump to Sunday the 15th.) We started the day by going to the Trade Center Site. (Click the image to the left.) Informational signage has just been erected along some of the perimeter fence. The information is useful and inspiring. In the news, the design for the new tower looks great. Still, there's something missing as they're not planning a set. It just seems as though, even symbolically, there should be twin spires.

Next, we rode around on the subway for an hour. On the weekends there are some service changes; we kept ending up in Brooklyn! We were searching for Chinatown around lunchtime as we had previously found a nice, cheap place to eat there.

The second major event was walking the Brooklyn Bridge. (Click the right-hand image above.) One hundred and twenty-two years ago, people paid a penny just for the same privilege. It's been free for the last 95 years though.

Lastly, we took the subway up to 96th Street and walked back through Central Park. What an amazing space in the center of the city!

Labels: New York City

We started the day at the deli on 3rd E46th. Later the train took us to Wall Street to look around. We had to return to the Vanderbilt YMCA to check out at 11:30. We did so and made our way back to Times Square and then took Line 1 to Columbus Circle. The West Side YMCA is here. We had to check our bags because the room wasn't ready until 2:30 pm. During the interim, we went to find Rockefeller Plaza. We'll never be able to get up in the morning early enough to stand out on the Plaza to participate in NBC's Today Show. We also cut through the southern corner of Central Park.

After a nap and extra shower, we ventured out again. We stayed on the subway and peeked into the part of Harlem that surrounds the stations. Perhaps there is gentrification but it sure didn't look as prosperous as everywhere else. I'll have to write more when we return about my thoughts on New York City. It's grand simply because it's NOT homogeneous.

After 10:00 we went back to say hello to Jay's brother again. As his schedule is not compatible with ours, we won't have many chances to socialize. I am so tired, no wonder I sleep long hours ...

Labels: New York City

"We're at an Internet shop in Times Square. There are about 1000 machines. Things are going fine. More when we get back ..."

(I wrote that message online but now I'm filling in more details of the day.)

The day started even later than yesterday. We went to South Terminal after breakfast, yet it was too late to catch tickets on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. I should clarify: The tickets are always available but there are limits to the number of visitors that can actually ascend the base section. We were too late to be able to do that, so we decided to try the lady later in the week.

Still feeling in a touristy mood meant we went right to the Empire State building for a trip to the observation deck. Eighty-six stories sure beats the mere ten of the apartment in BC. Of course we have lots of pictures of us in front of the view. You, however, can see the less restrictive view north and south by clicking on these small images.



Lots of walking also allowed us to see Hell's Kitchen and the East Village areas today. Boy, are my feet tired! I'm glad I got a good pair of running shoes before coming.

Labels: New York City

Today, we didn't get up till 9:00 am. The rooms at the Vanderbilt YMCA are quiet and adequate. All have televisions, but they are incredibly small. Still, the Y is a bargain and in a convenient location and very near the 2-3-4 lines. From Vancouver, we were only able to reserve for two more nights here.

We ate breakfast at a deli. Good old New York delicatessens are as perfect for tourists as those workers who are on a dash to and from work.

We caught a train to Battery Park and took the Staten Island Ferry. As we have enough time to see NYC without rushing, we took a leisurely MTA above-ground train line that cuts south to the tip of the island. It was interesting to see how rural things can look an hour's commute from downtown Manhattan.

We went back to Times Square tonight. The 'crossroads of the world' seems to be busy whenever you happen there.

Labels: New York City

Yesterday evening when we got to the Vancouver airport, we discovered that the America West plane to Vegas was about three hours late. This meant that we wouldn't have been able to make our connection to Newark. After one false try, we were finally booked on an Air Canada flight via Toronto. "Oh good," we thought, "they still serve meals!" We got into Newark about 40 minutes later than our original flight would have put us there.

We then hopped on a bus to Grand Central Station and walked to where we were staying. The transportation got us there too early to check into the Vanderbilt YMCA but we left the bags, ate in an Indian restaurant and walked a few blocks to the United Nations Building.



After a nap, bought one week, unlimited-travel MTA cards for the subway system. We walked to Grand Central and took the Shuttle to Times Square.

Eventually, we went to see Jay's brother who works nights. I'd not seen Piyatissa since visiting Sri Lanka in the 1980's. It's now after midnight. Yawn.

Labels: New York City

I blog as regularly as clockwork, generally. However, it's time for a short vacation to New York City. We'll leave here late afternoon and connect to catch a red-eye from Las Vegas. We might find our way into an Internet cafe, but the full run down will not appear until after we return to New Westminster on May 18th.


Sometimes there is no better way
to express a feeling than by finding a
person who's already said it.

Labels: Las Vegas, Mediaplayer, New York City

I plugged a firewire connection from my digital camcorder to the computer. Inside, it had a tape which I'd just copied from my old analog camera. I captured one hour's worth of events from the summer of 2000 to the hard drive. The resulting file was about 13 gigabyte.

In order to find these old tapes, I had to hunt through the closet shelf and open a bulky and unwieldy box. It contained all sorts of old, computer paraphernalia. I took a breath and threw away an old Quantum disk drive. You see, the one-hour video file was larger than the entire 12 gig drive! I really should've chucked it out long ago.

There was also a zip drive (pictured above). It had a parallel port connection because it was used before the days of USB. The cartridges held only 100 meg. I wondered if it would run under XP and I did manage to find an iOMEGA driver. It worked fine but the device is fairly useless. Why couldn't I gather the courage to throw it out too?

Labels: analog, Hardware

After ten months, this grew into this ...

Labels: pets