New Jersey & New York City

"I heart NYC."

(sorry if the pictures are too large… I was too lazy and didn’t really have a lot of time to edit the pictures, making them smaller or making them into a collage)

I left the Philippines at around 10pm and arrived in LA at around… uh… nighttime too and took a connecting flight to JFK airport in New York City. I arrived at the ungodly hour of 7 in the morning. I was a mixture of slight nervousness and excitement. I alit from the plane, got my bags, freshened up in the bathroom, and headed out the airport. It was my first trip alone to quite a far place. I mean, sure, I was alone most of the time in Singapore but my mom was still there too, right? If anything happened, she was there and I knew it. So this was my first time to be out of my home country. Alone. And thousands of miles away.

Ina and her mom picked me up, right on time, and after hugging them both, we headed off to their car. My first meal in the land of the free consisted of brunch in Dunkin’ Donuts. Had bagels and coffee. Told Ina to get me whatever since my brain cells weren’t all working just yet and besides, I wasn’t familiar with Dunkin’s American menu. Hehehe

During the drive to their home, Ina and I just yakked up a storm. It was like I never left. Or she never left. And yet we had lots to talk about. Once we arrived at her apartment, I unpacked, gave her Trish’s pasalubongs (a few months back, I had asked my aunt to send Ina some things so that’s why I didn’t buy any pasalubongs this time around) and we cracked up as she tried on the funky pair of pants that Trish gave. I met Leia, Ina’s “beba” and Leia welcomed me by peeing all over the place LOL I rested somewhat, bathed, and we headed off to the great city of New York.

We went to Times Square and met the Naked Cowboy, whom Ina assured me was rightly famous in those parts. Whatever the case, he was cute, he was fit, and he made us squeeze his butts LOL We asked a random passerby to take our picture and NC each grabbed a lock of our hairs (both our hairs were pretty long and we had let our hair down that time) and pretended that we were horses. After that shot, we were about to leave when NC insisted on another shot. He turned around, so we did too. Then he grabbed both our hands and put it on his ass and said, “squeeze ladies” as our picture was taken. I don’t remember if it was because I didn’t hear him say that or I was too shy to do it, either way, I ended up just sorta… patting his butt. In fairness, he did have a mighty fine ass…



We checked out Ticket-something to see if there were any Broadway shows we wanted to see then went around Times Square, going in shops and just browsing. We fooled around in Toys Are Us and found out we both had a thing for tiaras:



On the way back, we passed by a mall near Ina’s place (she called it “her” mall, anyway) to look for things to give to Trish. While there, we met her man Christian and Chris’ best friend Amit. Ina was actually in the fitting room at this point and I was waiting outside, telling her to hurry up coz I sure as heck didn’t want to meet her friends without her, right? I glimpsed familiar faces then hissed at her that they were here. Sure enough, when Ina went out of the fitting stall, Chris and Amit were there to greet us. So. The Best Friend Meets The Boyfriend. And the Best Friend Of The Boyfriend Meets The Best Friend Of The Girlfriend.



I gotta say, I’ve seen Chris in pictures and I knew he was cute. I’ve heard his voice over the phone and I knew it was sexy. But to see him and hear him? Wow. Ina sure bagged a hottie LOL And Amit didn’t look too bad either. Hahahaha We went to… uh… something balls. A place that had a B in it. I forget the name. Anyway, we stayed there for a while before Chris dropped us both at Ina’s place so we can get ready for dinner that night at the Red Lobster.

It was a swanky place. Where I met everyone. From left to right: Luis, Chris Martines, Chris Ina’s-boyf, Sul (why were his eyes closed? I didn’t notice this before!), Law, and Gela. Ina is the hottie in the halter top and I was the one beside her.



I like this picture. Coz they were joking around with our waiter and so the waiter holds up the camera and says, “everyone say ‘Peter North’” which cracked us all up. And if anyone reading this knows who Peter North is… tsk, tsk, tsk…

That was also one hell of an ‘educational’ dinner LOL After dinner, some of them left and then we headed off to Chris’ house to hang out until about 2am.



The next day, we decided not to get any Broadway tickets since there wasn’t anything we really wanted to see anyway. So we headed off to Ina’s favorite place: The New York Museum of History. And while people might think: “ew… museums, boring!” I actually like museums. And that’s another thing we both learned about each other LOL imagine that. We’ve known each other since forever and yet we were still finding things to learn about each other. Actually, we talked about that before. Like, how well we knew each other but that the little details escape us. Maybe because we’ve never really even gone out together before, even when she was here, and this entire NYC/NJ trip was pretty much our first ‘gimmik’.

Sheryl Crow did one of her videos in this museum and we were trying to remember what song it was throughout our entire stay there. There were quotes in the place and I took a picture of two that I really liked. One said, “In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing” by Theodore Roosevelt and “Take heed to the world of our grandfathers who instructed us to ‘take care how you place your moccasins upon the Earth… for future generations are looking up from the Earth, waiting for their turn for life”. I loved all the quotes there, because I’m such a huge environment-person.

During our stay there, I made Ina my model LOL check it out:



Sayang yung flash… obvious tuloy na picture. Ina and I were both game in being the bear’s meal but Ina said she wanted to do it, so she did. We waited until there wasn’t anybody around and quickly took the shot.



I made Ina stand on the side and pretend the nice little doggies were running towards her for petting.



And there’s Ina, making her own offering to the Pilgrims.

We didn’t have a lot of time (missed out lots of places we both wanted to go to) but we did check out the space place. Why? Because it had a thing called the “Hayden sphere” LOL am I weird or what? Just coz they have a place named after my Star Wars crush, I totally wanted to go there. Anyway, to be fair, I love space, so, really, whatever the name, I’m sure we would’ve gone there anyway. I loved how they designed the place, the idea behind it. It was just nice. It wasn’t a big space, but it covered everything you needed to know. And it was a take on space I’ve not seen anywhere.



Can you guess which foot belongs to whom?

There was a spiral walkway that was arranged around the Hayden Sphere and each step you took was equal to a million years – as you walked down to the lowest level, you would be walking down the life story of the universe.



After, we headed to Serendipity (because I said I absolutely wanted to eat there due to the movie Serendipity) but, just our luck, the kitchen was closed but would be open the next day. On the corner before heading to Serendipity, there was a big candy store called “Dylan’s” that was just heaven. (I want to put pictures here, but I think it’s too much for one blog post, yes?). And Ina and I both adored this shirt:



But at $30? Forget it.

That night, we were supposed to go out for dinner with Chris, but decided against it. I was tired and I think Ina was too. Then we did the one very simple thing I always wanted to try while in NYC/NJ area but never told anyone because it wasn’t really that much of a big deal for me to try: Chinese take-out. We ate it in the kitchen and I bonded a bit with her parents.

The next day, my last day, Ina and I went to her school and it was a really nice school. Saw Sul again, hung out a bit with Chris as well. We sat in one of the classes in the science building and waddya know? It was an anatomy and physiology class LOL kayang-kaya, diba? Hahaha There were differences between American college and Pinas college… and I kind of like Pinas J After Chris’ classes, we went to Serendipity and I ordered the frozen hot chocolate that was shown in the movie. It was good. It was sinful. It expanded my waistline by at least an inch, I’m sure LOL



We took the train back and checked out this guy:



Is this called stalking? I think so hahahah Ina had her digicam on silent or something and proceeded to click away while we pretended to be looking at pictures. Although I think the guy might have some idea that we were checking him out. He did look up once to find the both of us staring at him. I insisted Ina take this picture:



Because I liked his arms and the way his hair seems so soft LOL and besides, that kind of hair tossing was such a guy thing to do, it was adorable! LOL

Chris dropped me off at the airport and Ina went with me. At first we were fine. We checked out the souvenir shop because I still didn’t have a magnet (I collect magnets from places I’ve been) of NYC and NJ. So we bought and she got me this cute magnet wherein you can insert a picture. I already know what picture to put on it but I haven’t had a chance to have it developed. I’ll take a picture of it once it’s all fixed J but all the magnets are on my refrigerator door now.

Last shot:



Then Ina gave me a book and a card and that’s when we began to lose it LOL so, yeah, we had this whole airport goodbye thing. I read the card and browsed through the book while waiting for my flight (which got delayed).