Teen Life Stories you should know about Growing Up

It's New York! (Part 2)

Grand Central Terminal is another spot where you must go when you visit New York. Grand Central Terminal is characterised by its grand and spacious design, with the classic "meet me at the clock" rendezvous for friends and loved ones to gather under the opal-faced information clock booth. Opened to public in 1913, Grand Central Terminal is a great story of engineering, survival and rebirth. In 1978, architect Philip Johnson and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis campaigned to secure landmark status for the terminal, ensuring the terminal would serve New Yorkers in generations to come. It is definitely a place not to be missed for New Yorker travellers alike to witness the working of this grand architectural landmark.

I remembered when I was there in Grand Central Terminal, my friend and I were walking around the clock circulating like little kids in a big room whilst all sorts of businessmen were carrying suitcases around and passing through busy crowds.

"Maybe I should film you and make a music video here for you," my friend suggested.

"Here? With so many people here? Are you sure?" I asked her and knew that she was not kidding.

"Yea, why not?" she was serious about it.

"Just pretend that no one was here. Put on your earphones, lip sync and act like no one was here," she said.

"But it is going to be super embarrassing, people are going to think that I am out of my mind or something," I laughed and said as I was holding her phone with all the lyrics on the screen.

"Just try. You never know," she said and I thought, well it never hurts to try. Maybe it is not a bad idea, after all.

I put on my earphone connected to her phone and started lip syncing whilst walking randomly around Grand Central Terminal. It was speechlessly embarrassing yet exciting because my friend was holding a huge camera filming me whilst I was acting like a naive teenage girl who holds the dream of being a singer in a train station. 

I never thought I could do it. I never thought me as a person who had serious stage fright would be able to overcome this fear. It was never easy but I did it.

And probably because many crazy things happen in New York, no one even cared what we were doing. I was probably the one who cared. But I still was proud that I could do it. We were just kids back then. Kids who had wild dreams. Call us dreamers, but it could never have felt better.

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Then we went to the Empire State Building at night. The view at night at Empire State Building on the 86th floor made you feel on top of the world. It was windy that night and very chilly. It was May in 2016. The lift ride to the top was arduously long and painful that your ears felt like they could pop. My friend and I met my high school friend and her friend on our visit there, so we decided to go visit together. They were really kind because my high school friend's friend paid our tickets to the observation deck for us, which was really kind of her.

When we got on the deck, the air was really cold and we were exciting to take as many photos of this iconic New York top-down view from this imperial building as possible. We were doing as much as we could to capture the moment, like how I am now writing this down to capture this moment lest I forget.

After taking millions of pictures from every angle, the friends of ours were really kind and they called us an Uber home. It was past 10pm and it was absolutely not safe to roam around New York that late at night. "I think we should really go," I said to my friend.

"Yea, it's late," she added. I was really worried because the night before, we were walking around the streets in New York and the streets were scarily dark and sketchy. "I swear that there were only the two of us roaming in the streets," I said worriedly.

"I don't think you should be that scared. It's gonna be fine," my friend said as we were scurrying through these dim streets.

"It's past 11pm. And we were unarmed. What if some sudden strangers were up to no good and they were just passing by and seeing us..."

"You over-worry, there are still people walking, look," she said as she pointed to a man who was very far away from us and he was barely visible to our sight.

"I am seriously scared...," as I was clutching my coat close to my chest as it was really chilly.

"I don't think you should be, we're only a few blocks away," she said calmly.

I looked at the google map from my phone and was dying to reach home.

The hotel we booked in New York was very noisy and far from quiet. Even at 2am, the police car sirens were everywhere and there were noises coming from the peripheries of the building, which is a huge juxtaposition from the quiet sketchy streets we walked on earlier. 

Since we did not buy any water to bring to our hotel, we were getting water from ice that was provided from the room that supposedly supplied ice for drinks. "I can't believe that we're doing this," I laughed at our humorous and weird behaviour.

"No one is going to know," my friend said as she shh-ed at me.

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Things are spinning lately for me, I'd probably need a rest with all the stress from work and this writing sort of gave me a relief from stress. I miss New York too much! Anyways, will update soon if I have time~