More New York travel tales

One of the things that I've particularly enjoyed about being on exchange is the opportunity to meet with a pretty diverse range of individuals who are highly intelligent but don't channel their energies and intelligence into becoming corporate scumbags like yours truly (I've got to stop using that phrase). For example, I've had a number of discussions with Andrew, Joon and Jenne (an ex-neighbour of mine) about all sorts of issues (a large part being political) but it's so interesting to gain people's views on just about anything especially if they're sensible, coherent and of course, deferential to my supreme intelligence. Erm, right.

But seriously though, I really do enjoy meeting people who are really smart people that do pursue their own things and are really comfortable in their skin. In fact, it's actually the presence of this amount of diversity that gives me some pretty good vibes about America (despite them electing the monkey man - twice). People aren't drones and there's always something to be said about that.

One such example is Meghan, Stanley's housemate and probably best described as a trueblue New Yorker. I had the chance to speak with her quite a bit today and let's see, maybe a bit of a background. She's extremely tall (maybe 6"1? - taller than me anyway) and quite attractive (complained about getting hit on in the library just today). An engineer of sorts (can you believe it - a tall and attractive female engineer?). Originally from Canada but sorta grew up in Texas, a.k.a. George W. Bush land, so that was enough to leave me worried about opening my mouth. Hmmm.

Turns out that apprehension was best put aside because I probably forgot to think about the Canadian background too. Like most New Yorkers, her political views were clearly quite liberal. But it was interesting talking to her because she has a personality, a rare trait for most engineers, as we know. In fact, we started talking about some articles in the Economist, their writing style and political coverage and somehow drifted to finding things to do in NYC. So her recommendation was to check out West Village, NYC's Bohemian/Gay Central (can you imagine - more gay than Broadway?) for good reasonably priced food and also to check out jazz clubs, naming off a bunch of people I've never heard of. This moved on to suggestions of alternate things to do, like visiting an exhibition by Schiele (google the guy's works - I think you'll all be amused) to attending performances by punk groups, amidst a story of how she was at a Bulgarian bar enjoying Middle Eastern music and then listening to a Ukrainian band performing punk. She's almost overcompensating for all the engineers in the world with no personality (that's quite a list we've got there). I mean, how far out (I hesitate to use that phrase) is that, really?

So, anyway, yeah, meeting new people with interesting personalities is always an experience - we even discussed politics in Singapore vis-a-vis the US (surprisingly a conversation that lasted more than 5 minutes, given the lack of real material). But experiences like this leave me puzzled - why is it that we rarely find people who know stuff outside of their academic pursuits, particularly in Singapore? I seriously wish at times that I could discuss all sorts of things with people back home but right now, I just worry that I'll lose the richness of these interactions.

On a totally different note, I'm wishing I had much more money and much more time to explore NYC. But now, I must sleep - off to meet Becca and Kairen tomorrow for dinner, let's hope they're up for some jazz afterwards.