I live in New York. For roughly two years, I’ve always taken the 7 train to my school, a roughly thirty-minute commute. I’ve never put much thought into my mind how intricate and complex something so minor in my life, such as a train ride can be. The New York Subway System has twenty-three different train routes and more than six hundred fifty-five mainline track miles. Without switching trains, the A train travels thirty-one miles to one of the stops along the route. What makes the New York Subway System especially unique though, is how many people have to work in order to keep functional. There’s first the people who conduct the trains, of course, then those who power all the machines, including the trains, those who supervise the safety of subways and tunnels, and then the engineers who keep the trains in proper shape. That’s only at surface level though. The MTA Staff ranges from an elevator manager to a cabinet maker. I’m sure there are hundreds of things that I didn’t even touch on, but it’s amazing what you can find when you look into the most smallest of things a little more deeper.
March 2017

I love my Chinatown.
I really mean it when I say this. Chinatown is a place that only very lucky cities have. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, the New York Chinatown is a densely populated neighborhood, filled with a variety of foods stalls, shops, and bubble tea cafes. At first visit, Chinatown might be unsettling to you. The streets are always crowded, the area is very loud and sometimes, it doesn’t smell like a bouquet of roses. But once you look past that, Chinatown is truly an otherworldly place. I seriously don’t feel like I’m in New York anymore when I enter Chinatown. Usually, I go to Chinatown to eat whatever they have to offer. Usually, my family and I go for hotpot, spicy soup or Szechuan cuisine. Either way, we always go home with filled bellies and me fanning my mouth from the spice of some of the certain dishes. To cool down, I usually drink bubble tea too, which is slowly becoming one of my favorite drinks. At first, I thought it was really weird. Why drink and chew something at the same time? But gradually, I learned that bubble tea is an acquired taste for some, and I started to like it more and more. With our drinks, we will often walk around, either around the street, observing the foods being sold and the things up for sale, or we’ll go to a mall and window shop. Often though, we pick up fruits from Chinese groceries, as their fruits are really cheap and of good quality. After the day is done, we end up home, usually skipping dinner because Chinese food is that filling.