I'm taking a holiday to New York, for holiday and "work" purposes. I'll hopefully do the usual sightseeing, museum and galleries, maybe a Broadway show, hit up a McDonalds to see if their food really is bigger or not....
But at the same time I will also be looking for job advertisements in the paper, making some calls if there are numbers, and I will attempt to arrange some visits to some of the universities also in the region to see their academics and so forth.
At the moment, where I am staying is sorted. It's near 1st Ave and East 11th Street, it's about four long blocks to the Broadway strip (Broadway is a long strip mind you), so it's about a mile or so from the major bustle.
My flights are booked and I am flying with Cathay Pacific. My choices were United Airlines, Qantas and Cathay Pacific. The prices were $1400, $1800 and $2000 approximately respectively. A few considerations that I took included quality of airline, duration of flight, service, food and time of arrival. While the other three could be overlooked, the realistic cause of choosing the more expensive carrier was time of arrival.
For both United and Qantas, their flights arrived late at night. With the information I have found, after clearing the customs and immigrations at John F Kennedy airport, it will take between one and a half, to two hours to reach Manhatten. You need to catch an AirTrain to Jamaica Station, then the E-Line into Manhatten. For me, I have been advised to change again once I hit Lexington and 53rd/51st streets onto the 6 line (green) which runs parallell to 1st Ave by about 3 blocks. Then I get off a little further down and walk. Now, if I was staying at a hotel, with 24/7 check-in, when I arrive wouldn't be a problem. I'm not however. I'm staying in a studio apartment that I arranged via Craigslist New York. My friend however is picking up the keys for me beforehand (hopefully) and I will need to swing by their place (thankfully also on 1st Ave, but much further up) to get the key first.
Had I arrived late into the night, by the time I get in, it would be quite late and not very convinient for me to bother my friend for the key, especially because I know they have a very important exam the next day. Instead, the Cathay Pacific flight lands just after one in the afternoon, meaning by the time I get into Manhatten, it will be around three or four in the afternoon, and much closer to their finishing time (hopefully) for their university classes, where they can then meet me to pass on the keys before going home to study for their exam.
The studio should be nice. The original asking price was $125 USD/night with the offer to make it cheaper if staying for longer than a week. I emailed and told them I was staying for eighteen nights and they dropped it to $100 USD/night, which brought it to $1800 USD. Then my friend called up and haggled it a little bit lower, bringing it to $1600 USD, which is quite good I believe, as it comes to just $89/night for a full furnished studio apartment with a single bed, kitchen and laundry (supposedly). For anything in Manhatten, accomodation besides hostels are very expensive. The best I could find was actually $79 USD/night at a hotel in Brooklyn, not even in Manhatten, with prices about $109 USD + tax. So, getting a place for $89 is brilliant, especially the location. I really can't complain at all since from what I've read, anything under $100 USD/night for New York in general that isn't a hostel (which you can get for abour $20-35 a night in a ten person dorm room with shared bathroom) is very cheap.
So with most of that set, I don't really have much else to spend until I get there. My new passport came in the mail also today with the new chip page inside, which is pretty nifty. The only other thing that I am thinking about at the moment is buying/aquiring a laptop to take with me. While I say laptop, a netbook would also suffice quite well for this trip.
Why do I want one? Well, I am going for quite a long time. The studio apartment has wireless internet apparently, and I need to keep in touch with my research students that I supervise even though I am away. I also need to keep ontop of my inboxes to stop clogging up of general junk that I get. I would like it also for job hunting so I can find adverts online and call numbers that are on them, since I can't really do that easily while here at home. Then the final point is also word processing to generate my applications, that I can get my friend to print for me, to send off also via email. If the netbook has a decent hard drive capacity, then I will use it to dump photos from my camera to gain more space than on my compact flash cards that I will bring with me.
The down side is, I don't know what to get, and really spending the money. There are so many models out there and it is hard to decide. There is the ASUS EeeePC, Acer Aspire One, Dell Inspiron Mini 9, HP MiniNote 1000, Lenovo IdeaPad S10 and also the MSI Wind. They all have good and bad points, and at least in Australia, retail wise, they are quite expensive. One option is to get one in the US and have it sent to my friend before I arrive, so I can pick it up at the same time, but then it means I can load up stuff onto it like my camera softwares, though for job hunting that isn't a problem because I can USB/Portable HDD my files across. Nor can I use it to while the time at Hong Kong airport when I have a four hour transit time. So, decisions decisions.
In any case, I still have nearly two months to fix up everything, and recoop the costs of what I have spent so far (I paid half the accomodation as deposit already) and save up my spending money for my time there.
While I am not scared at what New York might be like, despite the general stereotyping of muggers and murders, I found this image funny. It was on one of the forums I visit. In any case, all cities have muggers, murders and pickpockets, so just got to always keep your wits about you.
But at the same time I will also be looking for job advertisements in the paper, making some calls if there are numbers, and I will attempt to arrange some visits to some of the universities also in the region to see their academics and so forth.
At the moment, where I am staying is sorted. It's near 1st Ave and East 11th Street, it's about four long blocks to the Broadway strip (Broadway is a long strip mind you), so it's about a mile or so from the major bustle.
My flights are booked and I am flying with Cathay Pacific. My choices were United Airlines, Qantas and Cathay Pacific. The prices were $1400, $1800 and $2000 approximately respectively. A few considerations that I took included quality of airline, duration of flight, service, food and time of arrival. While the other three could be overlooked, the realistic cause of choosing the more expensive carrier was time of arrival.
For both United and Qantas, their flights arrived late at night. With the information I have found, after clearing the customs and immigrations at John F Kennedy airport, it will take between one and a half, to two hours to reach Manhatten. You need to catch an AirTrain to Jamaica Station, then the E-Line into Manhatten. For me, I have been advised to change again once I hit Lexington and 53rd/51st streets onto the 6 line (green) which runs parallell to 1st Ave by about 3 blocks. Then I get off a little further down and walk. Now, if I was staying at a hotel, with 24/7 check-in, when I arrive wouldn't be a problem. I'm not however. I'm staying in a studio apartment that I arranged via Craigslist New York. My friend however is picking up the keys for me beforehand (hopefully) and I will need to swing by their place (thankfully also on 1st Ave, but much further up) to get the key first.
Had I arrived late into the night, by the time I get in, it would be quite late and not very convinient for me to bother my friend for the key, especially because I know they have a very important exam the next day. Instead, the Cathay Pacific flight lands just after one in the afternoon, meaning by the time I get into Manhatten, it will be around three or four in the afternoon, and much closer to their finishing time (hopefully) for their university classes, where they can then meet me to pass on the keys before going home to study for their exam.
The studio should be nice. The original asking price was $125 USD/night with the offer to make it cheaper if staying for longer than a week. I emailed and told them I was staying for eighteen nights and they dropped it to $100 USD/night, which brought it to $1800 USD. Then my friend called up and haggled it a little bit lower, bringing it to $1600 USD, which is quite good I believe, as it comes to just $89/night for a full furnished studio apartment with a single bed, kitchen and laundry (supposedly). For anything in Manhatten, accomodation besides hostels are very expensive. The best I could find was actually $79 USD/night at a hotel in Brooklyn, not even in Manhatten, with prices about $109 USD + tax. So, getting a place for $89 is brilliant, especially the location. I really can't complain at all since from what I've read, anything under $100 USD/night for New York in general that isn't a hostel (which you can get for abour $20-35 a night in a ten person dorm room with shared bathroom) is very cheap.
So with most of that set, I don't really have much else to spend until I get there. My new passport came in the mail also today with the new chip page inside, which is pretty nifty. The only other thing that I am thinking about at the moment is buying/aquiring a laptop to take with me. While I say laptop, a netbook would also suffice quite well for this trip.
Why do I want one? Well, I am going for quite a long time. The studio apartment has wireless internet apparently, and I need to keep in touch with my research students that I supervise even though I am away. I also need to keep ontop of my inboxes to stop clogging up of general junk that I get. I would like it also for job hunting so I can find adverts online and call numbers that are on them, since I can't really do that easily while here at home. Then the final point is also word processing to generate my applications, that I can get my friend to print for me, to send off also via email. If the netbook has a decent hard drive capacity, then I will use it to dump photos from my camera to gain more space than on my compact flash cards that I will bring with me.
The down side is, I don't know what to get, and really spending the money. There are so many models out there and it is hard to decide. There is the ASUS EeeePC, Acer Aspire One, Dell Inspiron Mini 9, HP MiniNote 1000, Lenovo IdeaPad S10 and also the MSI Wind. They all have good and bad points, and at least in Australia, retail wise, they are quite expensive. One option is to get one in the US and have it sent to my friend before I arrive, so I can pick it up at the same time, but then it means I can load up stuff onto it like my camera softwares, though for job hunting that isn't a problem because I can USB/Portable HDD my files across. Nor can I use it to while the time at Hong Kong airport when I have a four hour transit time. So, decisions decisions.
In any case, I still have nearly two months to fix up everything, and recoop the costs of what I have spent so far (I paid half the accomodation as deposit already) and save up my spending money for my time there.
While I am not scared at what New York might be like, despite the general stereotyping of muggers and murders, I found this image funny. It was on one of the forums I visit. In any case, all cities have muggers, murders and pickpockets, so just got to always keep your wits about you.
3 comments:
When we were transitting through Singapore we were able to pick up wifi at the airport, although I think we had to sign up for it. It was free though. Wonder if Hong Kong airport would have any; not all international airports do. The little notebooks are handy though.
Yeah, according to YanYing, HK has free WiFi, just have to detect it and select it.
Awesome! :) I wish you the very best of luck and look forward to hearing about your experiences! :)
LOL We'll have even walked the same streets... :)
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