New Year

I had to abandon my plans of going to Florida for the new year when ashok pulled out. Finally we decided to hang out in New York city. Ashok reached there on 29th. I reached there the next day. We stayed at Vaishnav's appt, which is close to Columbia university. After catching up on old times, we went around the city. We went to a lot of restaurants, Turkish , Indian , Chinese and what not. Late at night we went to pubs. We went to a pool bar once and a hookah bar another time and another time ... Don't remember. All I remember was that I was swaying to some music and so were many of them.

On New Year we went to a Karaoke bar. We reached there pretty early. There were five of us. Apart from Vaishnav and Ashok, Vaishnav's appt mates, Dhruv and Bhavesh were also present.
After a few gulps of Vodka, I mustered the courage to go and sing. I wanted to sing, Naturally. What I mean naturally is singing in an Indian accent. So there I was within a few minutes singing to the tune of Enrique Iglesia's "Be with you". What I didn't expect was the immense amount of support that I received. The mostly American crowd in the bar were having such a good time, they were cheering and doing what not. At the end of the song, I went back to my table. A white chick walked up to me and said that when she heard me singing it brought a smile to her lips. I Don't know what she meant. But I was too caught up with other things to pay much attention to that.


The remaining time I took ashok and vaishnav to Empire state building and to some other places around the city. Ashok left to Hanover on 3rd. The same day I left city to come to stony brook. I did some shopping that day for folks and friends back in India. On 5th I left for India.