Arriving in East Village at 8.15am on Monday, I dragged my bedraggled self up the subway steps with a heavy backpack cinched around my waist, into a pleasantly cloudy, deserted day. No one was really around – I had somehow stumbled into that no-man’s-land between early-morning joggers, and lawyers with briefcases. I had memorised the directions I had downloaded from hopstop.com, and made my feet take me a few streets south to my college friends’ apartment – down a quiet leafy lane cramped with parallel-parked cars, opposite where a certain celebrity lived in a narrow building dotted with black stars.
I had stupidly forgotten to ask for Emily and Brad’s buzzer/apartment number, so I loitered around the front of their building for a few minutes, hoping that Emily had seen my reluctantly sent text message before giving in and calling her on my Singapore cellphone to be buzzed in. As I was painfully maneuvering myself up the steep, dark stairs of what turned out to be a typical New York apartment building, Emily peeked out from behind the banisters of the second floor and said a brilliant “HI!” that jolted me out of my sleep-deprived state for a few seconds.
Then, it was a whirlwind of hugging, brief catching up, unpacking, showering and gchatting in Emily and Brad’s wonderfully cosy apartment before I had to propel myself outdoors in order to meet Kashmir outside the Bobst Library. But before that, I intended to get grilled corn from Cafe Habana – I was ravenous from having had no breakfast whatsoever, and I wanted to get started on the real eating quickly!
It was 10.15am when I left the apartment, and the day was shaping up to be a pleasant one. I felt clean, comfortable, happy to be back in the country where I had studied for four years many moons ago – a place I had considered my second home. The US is easy to live in and like, though many people who haven’t visited it feel otherwise – and New York City, the most walkable city I’ve ever been in, bar none, is easy to love.
I speedwalked down 3rd Ave, looking for Prince St, which I found without much difficulty. The takeout section of Cafe Habana wasn’t open though, much to my disappointment, and the actual cafe looked cramped and intimidating. After a little bit of dithering, I decided to go in nonetheless.
The server was peremptory – “if you’re alone, you can sit at the counter, right?” – and it turned out that they didn’t start serving grilled corn till 11am (no, I guess it didn’t seem like a breakfast item!). I wriggled onto a barstool and felt like that dreaded thing – a tourist (worse, an ignorant tourist) – amongst the nonchalant New Yorkers, who were using their laptops while sipping freshly squeezed orange juice, and chatting about the day that lay ahead. The two people sitting next to me turned out to be acquaintances who had randomly bumped into each other at the cafe. And there I was, without my grilled corn, temporarily friendless, sporting heavy eyebags, and needing to scarf my breakfast down quickly in order that I could make my meeting time with Kashmir near Union Square. It was enough to make one weep.
I ordered a Mexican omelette that turned out to be excellent, but it came without cutlery at first. I tried getting up to get it myself because the server wasn’t paying any attention to me and was slightly bristly, besides, but I was caught redhanded at the cutlery corner trying to pour a glass of water for myself as well. “Why don’t you ask for the things you need?” she grumped.
My return “home” was turning out to be freshman year all over again, and I started feeling exceptionally Asian in the worst possible way: invisible, bumbling, timid, calculating. I remembered sitting on my bed reading while my loud roommate blithely turned out the light upon exiting the room, forgetting that I was there. And I remembered thinking distinctly that I had never quite known how minorities felt until I came to the US.
But the breakfast was over quickly, and when I met Kashmir in front of Bobst 10 minutes later, I had found my voice again. Past 11am, we wound our way back to Prince St for the corn, which was more than worth it – smothered in cheese and spices, and grilled to a tasty black sheen in parts. I’d gladly go back for more, wearing my own prickly armour the next time.
Some learn how to speak up to survive; I learn how to speak up in order to feed.
