I arrived yesterday evening. Jet lag helps with getting up early. Today is my first morning back, 7am, sitting at the Starbucks on 3rd Avenue and 28th Street, in Manhattan. It’s time to begin again. Starbucks has never been my type of thing, but this morning, it’s just right for me – I’m staying in my friend’s place while I look for a new place. I need the free Wi-Fi and power outlet so that I can work with my computer. Space is like gold here; free stuff is like silver. I’m the only customer at this hour. I’m feeling the luxury now. I order a hot almond milk latte, request a free cup of ice water, and sit in the corner. Customers keep stopping by, joggers, office workers, dog walkers. But still no one stays.
7.20am – I’m still the only customer sitting here. Yellow taxis are the major vehicles driving on the street. Seven out of 10 cars are taxis. The street is not busy yet. September mornings in New York are already a bit chilly. I have my sweater on. It will be warmer later in the day. Then it will be perfect, neither hot nor cold; neither humid nor dry. A mixture of energetic, dynamic and fresh air is what I’m breathing in. I can now forget the hectic and suffocated surroundings Macau has to offer, and as an added bonus, I don’t have to miss out on a cosmopolitan style of living.
Don’t get drowned in this fantasy of New York though. God knows the other things I have to struggle with. After living here for one and a half years, I still have nowhere to settle down. I’m meeting a friend later today hoping we can find a nice, budget place to live together. This is the third time I have moved homes. Besides that, the hope and anxiety of looking for a job or internship position is still something which I have to struggle with. Internships in the art field, small galleries, big galleries and even museums, are mostly unpaid and basically require three full working days as a commitment.
7.30am – more and more people line up to order coffee. People also start to stay-in. A 50-something gentleman in a stylish suit is sitting at the high table, drinking his iced coffee and browsing on his iPad. An oversized 40-something guy is wearing his baseball cap, holding his Tall size paper cup, and putting one of his legs on the other chair. An Hispanic duo are sitting at the bar table, having a bite on their pastry. A young Asian lady with glasses just opened her MacBook; I suppose she is a university student.
I almost forgot today is Labor Day. School starts tomorrow. This semester I will take Painting, Bio Art, Electronic Devices, and a Humanity course Ideas in Art. This will be the second semester of my junior year, and I’ve decided to be more focused on painting, and meanwhile to try something new, Bio Art. The latter is one of the special courses in my school, the School of Visual Arts; it involves making art with food, mold, and bacteria. I know some people in previous courses who made projects with holy water from church, experimented with auto painting via the walking tracks left by ants, and used different colors of mold generated from human bacteria to make paintings. I guess bio art and painting aren’t that different, just different mediums.
8.30am – Starbucks is half occupied with more university students, mums with babies and kids, and couples of different kinds. The gentleman in the suit is already drinking his third iced coffee. The Asian university girl is still working on her computer, just like me. A middle-aged man with long hair, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, covering himself with a blanket, just brought a Grande coffee and walked passed me. He left a certain kind of smell in the air. I guess he hasn’t taken a shower for a few days. Is he homeless? Is he an artist, or is he both?
Most of the time I may be critical about New York, but once I landed back here, I started to remember how energetic and diverse it is. And that’s its charm. People of different ethnicities, different ages, and different backgrounds all sharing the same place. From the way they dress and laugh, full of confidence and daring to have nothing to lose. Daring to be judged. Daring not to judged. As long as you speak up, no one looks down on you; all you need to do is to speak up.
10am – Starbucks is packed. More computers, more mums with more kids. The music has changed from early morning hip hop to Spanish folk songs. The baristas and cashiers don’t have time to rest.
