New York State Of Mind*
Is it weird to base
all my aspirations and dreams on a mere city? Is it plausible that one of the
major reasons I have chosen to pursue my higher education overseas is to visit
the city? Too immature, don’t you think? A little bit childish? The good news
is, I don’t care! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I mean the city that people refer
to as The Big Apple, The City That never sleeps, and also, mistakenly, Manhattan,
NEW YORK CITY!
For as far as I can
remember, New York has served as my inspiration for nearly everything I do, from studying to ace my
midterms to making sure that my customized seven day plan while visiting the
city is periodically updated. I don’t recall a night, in the recent past, where
I haven’t dreamed of it, whether I was standing next to Audrey Hepburn as we
ate bagels at Tiffany’s, working as Tina Brown’s assistant at Newsweek or
sitting next to Kurt Hummel and Rachel Berry in Parsons while Kate Hudson gave
us a lesson (pretty sure this was the result of watching too many episodes of
both Glee and Project Runway). Believe it or not, in one of these
extremely elaborate dreams, I eloped in Times Square right after watching Wicked!
To cut it short, No
words I could possibly say would explain the passionate drive that consumes me
when it comes to New York City. Many have tried to cool me down by pointing out
that it was no Utopia. The answer would always be, “I know, and it doesn’t
matter that it isn’t. I don’t want to live in some fairytale land”. It doesn’t
matter if I am living in a shoebox apartment struggling to make ends meet while
writing my daily post for this blog as I serve customers in a Chinatown $3 Food
outlet. It’s where I was meant to be. I just know.
Every one of us has
dreams like these. Most of you, readers, however, will choose to suppress them
to follow your dad’s legacy and run the law firm he started or to become a
doctor with a 100K salary. Well, to quote Selena Gomez, “It’s all the money
that you’re saving while the good life passes by”. You can call me naive,
dreamy, and even stupid, but to be completely honest, I believe it’s the other
way around.
*My article’s title is homage to Billy Joel’s classic with the same name, popularized by one Ms. Barbra Streisand.
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