. . . . . and that is why Christmas of 2011 becomes even more so special to me.
I am never a big Christmas person. My family never had the tradition of celebrating Christmas the way it is supposed to be celebrated, you know, with the exchange of presents, and huge meat loafs, and turkey. We don't even eat beef to begin with. Christmas to us always meant vacation time because it was the only time of the year my dad can take days off work without actually using much leaves days. So we developed the tradition of taking family pictures of Christmas Trees instead in different countries.
This year was no exception of course.
Christmas Tree at Hotel Pennsylvania Lobby.
Christmas in New York is the place to be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NOT. If you're looking for a nice surrounding to spend some quality time with family, New York is definitely not the place to be. It was extremely crowded, not to mention expensive to eat/travel/stay in New York. To me, the big apple will always be the big apple, Christmas or not, counting down to the ball or not. However, this year, my family made New York special.
Oh here is an obligatory picture of the Rockerfeller tree because Christmas + New York somehow equates to the tree.
It was as usual congested, and extremely crowded. If you zoom this picture "out" 2 times you can see me elbowing 20 other tourist trying to take this beautiful shot of the tree.
My family was of course, ecstatic to be in the States. Kinda like how I felt when I first stepped into the big city of NYC and was surrounded by skyscraper high billboards and flashing lights all over the streets and crazy tall buildings all jam packed into a small square of a city block. I wanted my family's experience to be the same, and so I rampaged through the crowd with my family so that they could have the best pictures and memories captured.
And to me, those pictures are the best! Best pictures I have ever captured. Although my visit to the big city has led me to be almost "sien" of the city, and I have countless pictures of Times Square sitting in my hard drive at home, being able to be with my family, in New York, with the flashing lights, in one picture, no matter how blur or how poor quality the picture is, makes the picture priceless.
On Christmas day morning, I whipped out a flimsy plastic bag from the dollar store, and shoved a poorly sewn thin red meshy cloth into the hands of each individual member of my family. And they happily wore it on for the whole day!
I was pretty impressed with the shop decorations though. And even the house decorations. These people went crazy trying to be creative with the decorations. And I have to say, I'm impressed! So are the many million New Yorkers and the thousands of tourist because I have to ward off so many people for a picture!
Tommy and Fendi stores.
Houses in Brooklyn
Big Santa sitting at the front porch of a house.
Another crazily decorated house.
Now you get why I say crazy. The amount of $$$$$ spent on these decors!
Unfortunately, this year's winter is a relatively warm one. The temperature was and still is hovering around 5C to 15C, no where near "winter-ish", very much to my sister's disappointment because I told her she could make a snow angel when it was still summer. The weather remained extremely dry, cold, occasional annoying showers, crazy wind, but no snow.
But despite the wind, it didn't stop us from making a trip to the 911 memorial on Christmas day.
Visiting the 911 memorial on Christmas is actually kinda weird. Because it is supposed to be a day for celebration not for grief. Well, things did not go exactly as I had planned it. I actually wanted to leave visiting the 911 memorial till the day after Christmas when my family and I are headed down south to visit the attractions there. But I did not realize that entering the memorial grounds require pre-booked tickets online, which are free anyways, but that posed as a problem since the tickets for Dec 26th are fully booked for the whole day, leaving only one miserable 5pm slot on Christmas day the only time available. So we had to go out of our way to visit the memorial.
But the trip was worth it. There definitely is a very peaceful yet sad aura inside the grounds where the World Trade Center used to be. Reading the names of the victims engraved around the beautifully sculpted waterfall pool made my dad felt so touched he actually bought a mug from the gift shop because he found it meaningful. In fact the video they played in the gift shop made so many people cry.
Nonetheless, the day ended on a happier note.
My first broadway show in NYC. I know I know, I've been so busy throughout med school I never had the time to watch any plays. Poor momsy and daddy doesn't really like the singing and dancing, and were jet-lagged, and was tired from the whole day's journey, they actually dozed off a couple times. Haha. I told them they're paying for a very expensive hotel.
That was my amazing Christmas celebration. With family. Best day of year 2011 haha.
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