'...hey, come on, we are villagers...how do u expect us to know about what we are going to do there... '- anonymous
The trip started with a struggle - getting up at 5:30 in the morning, especially after getting drunk the night before, was not easy. Amit, Mr. I-will-be-there-on-time arrived before time to pick Maity and me up. We had to succumb to Amit's continuous calls and had to leave without finishing our tea, which I had made to escape my 'alcohol burps'.
Obviously, if we leave before time, we will reach the station before time. The same thing happened to us. We tried everything to kill time - reading crappy ads to staring at people. Finally, our journey began. 'We should have brought something to read', I said to them. Obviously, I wasn't serious coz I am not the kind of person who would spend time in reading books. But before I could finish my sentence, Mr. Desai found something for me to read. What a great paper to start my reading career...many thanks to Amit. I had to read almost every sentence in it twice to figure out where it was going and what it was trying to say. Sodium channels, gates, voltage - these were the only words that I could remember after reading the whole paper. It was his research paper. It took almost all of my 5 hr journey time to read it. He wanted me to listen to his presentation after I was done reading. I said I would if I could understand any bit of it. But at least, each of its paragraphs helped me sleep on the bus. I usually can't fall asleep during any trip.
We were almost in NYC. I was supposed to give Ms. eSs esS a wake up call at 11. I thought she would change her habits after leaving college. I was mistaken. It took me literally 35 mins to wake her up...thanks to the amazing T-mobile network in NYC, unlike in Clinton, that her phone still had the connection. She usually tends to sleep on her phone.
Port Authority...came out of the bus...and the first site we saw was a dead man lying on the floor by the exit door. What a welcome! But before my brain could process the horrific scene, I got a message from Shraddha. She wanted '15 mins' more. We all knew it was going to be at least half an hour. We all burst into laughter. We then decided to spend some time in the building. Suddenly, Amit stopped and started talking to the three statues by the stairs. He was acting as if he was trying to check their tickets. 'What the hell are you doing, Amit?' - No reply. He continued. A couple of people right next to me were also appalled and were staring at him. Then, I looked at Maity and he was laughing like a maniac. Apparently, he had challenged Amit to do so.
It was nice to see the good-old New York city once again. It had been a while. Mr. Desai really wanted to go to the Apple store...he was like a fish desperate for water...nothing really interesting for me. Then we went to another store...I don't remember which one. The rest of the group was busy checking out stuffs. I was bored there. But then I found something to entertain myself. They had a video game - 1942, waiting for me. Well! I was able to write my name as the highest scorer before we left. Later in the evening, our dear Amit realized that he had forgotten his bag in the very store I was playing game in. Maity and I accompanied him to the store. It was closed. But we could see few people inside - clearing up stuffs. We waived our hands from the outside. Which store would open the door to three weird looking people after they are closed? It took us 10 mins of waiving to get their attention. Amit even tried to call them up. Finally, one guy opened the door with a weird face and tried to explain that the store was closed already. Judging the way he spoke to us in the beginning, I think he must have thought that we couldn't communicate in English. So much for Amit's 'I am sure it's in this store', we had to walk all the way to the Apple store to look for his stuff. Luckily, he found it there.
Our journey back wasn't anything less interesting. Everyone except me and Mahee passed out. Mahee had a reason to be up. He was the driver. I accompanied him for a while. Four in the morning, I started feeling sleepy, my eyes slowly relaxing a bit. I don't know when I must have fallen asleep. Then the next thing I heard was the Maity's talk with Mahee. I opened my eyes and saw Maity freaking out. Turned out that Mahee himself had fallen asleep while driving at 85. I don't know whether Maity was making up the story or it really happened. Whatever it was, it wasn't pleasant to hear something like that while in the car.
Finally, the three of us were able to come back in one piece. And, what did we do once we reached college? --- slept all day, especially me. It was a good trip, after all. No matter what the costs were, the reward was good - final few hours with Shraddha - don't know when we will ever have time to sit and play risk that way.
