New York City

Ashleigh and I had two plans for Friday in the Big Apple: go to the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side; and see the play We Declare You A Terrorist, directed by my friend Niegel Smith, the next up-and-coming Broadway director.

The Tenement Museum was interesting. It was inside one floor of an old tenement, where multiple poor working immigrant families huddled without electricity, lights, air conditioning, plumbing, or fire escapes. The guide told us that tenement residents were actually working class people, much luckier than the lower classes which lived in shanties or on the street. The guide told the story of two families which lived in two apartments in two different centuries. The apartments were partially reconstructed to show the living conditions, but the thing that struck me was the similarity between the dilapidated tenement and contemporary New York apartments -- few windows, no air conditioning, crazy railroad-car room layout. Sure modern ones have electricity, plumbing, and refrigeration, but the general style of living for the working class hasn't changed that much in New York City for the last couple hundred years.

After the museum I had a chore, which was to go to the local Apple Store and complain about my laptop battery. In the extraordinary heat of the American Southwest desert a couple weeks ago, the battery for my Mac laptop had physically swollen in size, threatening to burst, leak chemicals, and maybe start a fire. Such battery failures are common enough to worry me, and I was especially worried because I consider my lap to be a very undesirable place for localized chemical explosions. The laptop and battery, however, were out of warranty, so I knew I would face an uphill battle in my quest for getting a new battery for free. Indeed, the girl who helped me told me no because of the expired warranty; I pressed her and she spoke to a person at the genius bar, who told me no because of the expired warranty. I looked at her and said, hey, I know Apple has gone through lawsuits and recalls for their batters, and even though this specific battery's manufacturing code did not fall within the bounds of any of the recalls, the malformed object is sufficient evidence of manufacturing defect. She went back this time and talked to a manager. To my pleased surprise, she said that yes they would replace it, but I would need to have an appointment first, and the first appointments were the following Monday. I told them about my long trip, and that Monday simply wasn't an offer to me. Finally, again to my surprise, they said okay, we'll give you a new battery down at the register. They did. I was shocked. They didn't give me a receipt or take my name or anything, just gave me an unpackaged brand new battery and I left. Thank you, Apple.

From there Ashleigh and I made plans to have dinner with my friend, Niegel Smith, his friend Robert, and Ashleigh's friend Elly. We had some mediocre bar food, then Vijay met Ashleigh and I to watch We Declare You A Terrorist, a new play at The Public Theatre, directed by Niegel. It is a fictionalized account of a terrorist event in Moscow a few years ago, with perspectives given by the perpetrators and the hostages. It was great.

Afterwards we all had some drinks, met up with some other friends, had more drinks, met up with other friends, then some friends in Brooklyn, and at long last crashed into bed in the wee hours. It was a good visit to New York. We drove out the next morning.