I’ve just returned from New York. It is now 1:15 a.m Sunday night (Monday morning, really…). I feel a little tired, but I want to jot down as many of my reflections about New York as I can before I dive back into work tomorrow. How shall I put it? I think this trip has been very beneficial to me, and has helped me grow, though I had never expected it to do so in the beginning.
You see, what happened was the following: If you remember my earlier post about the planning for New York, I was originally intending to go with the NUS/NTU students, and planned out all the places we wanted to visit together. However, the next day, they cut me out, suggesting we book tickets separately, because a group of 11 people was too unwieldy to organise. So the six of them, which formed the core of the NUS/NTU students who had bonded really well together over this trip to Boston, formed one group, and I was left to organise the leftovers. Not only that, but the other group of Republic Polytechnic students and their add-ons also told me that they were relying on me to settle the details. So suddenly, after the 4th of July and two days before we had to go to New York, I found myself with a group of 11 students all relying on me to plan and organise their travel, accomodation and itinerary during the weekend trip to New York. It was quite a big test of my organisational skills and leadership abilities. It was my first time too… I had never been to the city, I had no idea what to find when we get there, have never booked accommodation or travel by myself before… the people I were relying on to travel with had left me to my own devices, and I now had another group of very disparate people to help.
I was praying to God for guidance and grace all the way. Thankfully, my earlier group had at least informed me of the place they were staying at and the bus service they booked, so I just followed their lead for that. And my earlier planning session with them had helped me get a map’s eye view of the city’s organisation, so I roughly knew where all the major landmarks were. More importantly, though, another one of our students – a lone traveller who had relatives in New York – accompanied us on the way to Washington D.C., and he helped a lot during our first hour in New York. Took us to the subway and explained what to do there, took us for breakfast in Times Square, and introduced us to a package tour bus ride around the city. That was enough. All my previous planned itinerary went out the window and I was basically working on the fly to organise things. The bus tour was a Godsend. It helped us orient ourselves around the city, and we got to see a lot of places from the top of the bus. Didn’t actually have time to investigate most of them thoroughly (although we could have hopped off the bus at any time and hopped on another one later… but our tour guide was very entertaining and knowledgeable, so it would have been a shame to miss his intro). We got quite a few shots (taken from the bus) of most of the major landmarks of New York, though. Since I didn’t have a camera, I’ll have to crib the pictures from whoever DID bring a camera to New York.
After that, we unfortunately arrived just ten minutes too late to board the 11:00 a.m. ferry around Liberty Island, which was also part of the tour package we bought. So while the rest got tickets for the 1 p.m. ferry ride, I didn’t join them as I had already booked a ticket to watch Les Miserables on Broadway at 2 p.m. I’ll skip talking about Les Miserables for now, because I think that deserves a post of its own. Suffice to say that I enjoyed my afternoon much more than my 11 other companions did… even though they got to see the Statue of Liberty and I didn’t. Anyway, after the Broadway musical, we had to take the New York subway up to the hostel. And let me tell you – the New York Subway is one of the most complicated messes of train lines I have EVER seen. Singapore’s MRT system has only three major lines. Piffle. KL has four, Boston has four. New York has train lines 1-9, and then A-Z. That’s 35 train lines. THIRTY FIVE. And that’s just the subway. I’m not even mentioning the inter-city railways. They go everywhere in that city… and not often in the right direction, too. It’s an unholy mess. And guess who had to figure it out in order to get the group to the right place? 
Well anyway, we ended up on the wrong end of the street from where our hostel was (mainly because there were two stations called “96th street”… which just happened to be at the opposite ends of the street). So we had to walk carrying our luggage all the way from No. 1 West 96th Street to No. 330. I can’t help but feel responsible for that… if only I had studied the maps more thoroughly I might have noticed that there were two stations. I took the “A” line instead of the “1″ line. That was corrected later, though.
In any case, we spent most of the night wandering around Times Square, doing some shopping and sightseeing. Times Square really is a sight to behold. It stretches for at least 5 blocks, and never have I seen such a large proliferation of gigantic billboards of all shapes and sizes. Or stores the size of these ones. It’s the commercial consumerist center of New York. I went into the Toys’R'Us store, which was large enough to house an indoor Ferris Wheel. Virgin Megastores, which had four huge floors stacked with CDs, DVDs and records of all kinds, a live DJ, and a staff member who was impersonating Michael Jackson’s dances just inside the main entrance. M&M’s World had around 30 huge cylinders full of M&Ms stretching to the roof with a little tap at the bottom. Just get a bag, hold it under the tap, and turn it to let the M&Ms of your choice drain into the bag. 30 cylinders, full of M&Ms of all shapes and sizes. I think I took a picture of that somewhere… will upload it when I get it from my friend. The headquarters of Hershey’s chocolates had this machine which you could turn to send Hershey’s Kisses sliding down from the floor above into a small bucket and filling it up. There was Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, which I didn’t enter though about half of the others did. They said it was really good. There was Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, which we didn’t go to (the admission price was a little too much). There was Nintendo World, where three of my group queued up for four hours early in the morning in order to get the much-coveted Nintendo Wii gaming console. (I don’t expect much work to be coming out of them for the next few days… they’ll be busy playing with the toys they just got).
Times Square took us most of Saturday night and Sunday morning to explore. Some of us broke off to go visit Central Park, but I had to stay with the majority of the group, who eventually went to take pictures at Rockefeller Center. That’s the place where they have the giant Christmas tree during winter, but in the summer it’s filled with flags from every nation. I’ve got a picture of me standing in front of the Malaysian flag somewhere. I wish I could have gone to visit Central Park and the American Museum of Natural History though. But there was no more time, and no more money (not after that Broadway ticket, which cost me $133.50… but that was more than worth it). We actually ended up half an hour late for the bus ride back to Boston. I was praying to God all the way that He would somehow make the way smooth for us, even though we arrived at the bus station at 6:30 p.m. Thankfully, the 6 p.m. bus was overbooked, so a second bus was sent at 7 to pick up the remainder… which we just joined. Of course, the bus was unwashed and unprepared, so it was rather smellier and messier than it should have been… but at least we didn’t have to pay extra for being half an hour late. Thank God, He was gracious to me. I was really sweating buckets when thinking about how I would need to explain to my group that they would need to shell out another $15 for the bus ride back because I made a bad judgement call to take the city buses instead of the subway system to reach our departure point. I thought the buses would have gotten us there on time… and they would have, if we had started earlier as I had planned instead of hanging around yet ANOTHER game shop, and there was not a prayer rally going on in Times Square which drew traffic to a near-halt for 20 minutes. Oh well.
So here I am, back safe in my room in MacGregor House, in Cambridge, $300 shorter, but with precious lessons learned. For one, I gained the practical experience of going through the booking process for travel and accommodations. I didn’t do that great a job, but I now know the process of it, at least. Secondly, I believe I’ve managed to acquit myself honorably in this test of leadership, planning and organisation thrust upon me. Again, it wasn’t perfect, but I was especially gratified to hear one of my group members, when asked about my leadership, say that he was always more comfortable and secure when I’m around. Praise God for that. I think this is the one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned… leadership consists of making sure that the people you are responsible for are comfortable and secure, no matter where you are (except in war, perhaps). If I one day lead my own household, this is something I now have a rudimentary understanding of, and am now more confident in myself about. When others place their trust in you to take care of the details, it’s a heavy responsibility, but one that I’m starting to become accustomed to bearing. In some sense, I’ve been responsible for these young kids (they’re mostly from Polytechnics, so around 19 years old) ever since the trip started. Even at the airport in Singapore, I’ve had to brief them on check-in procedures, and before that I was one of the orientation group leaders in NUS. Taking care of people on a trip seems to come naturally to me… or maybe I’m just the one with the greatest sense of responsibility and willingness to take control if things look like they’re going to be messy.
One of the things that make a mature man is his ability to handle responsibility well. I’m not perfect yet – just look at some of my mistakes above – but after this challenge I feel like I’ve crossed a threshold or a milestone along that journey. That’s worth more than the price of the trip to New York (and that’s not even including the extra benefits I got from Les Miserables on Broadway). I’m glad I went.
