I spent the past two days recovering from a trip to New York. Recovering from the stress of meeting an old friend in whose company, the both of us inevitable live larger than life.

Abhijit and Shweta drove me down to NY – a 16 hour drive from Bloomington, Indiana which we covered in two days on the way there.

Bad weather

and the general monotone of a long drive in a closed car on a US highway were the dominant aspects.

Anand is doing his PhD in Social Anthropology at Columbia University.
New York, with Anand, was great city to visit

with sky scrapers

and statues,

and seagulls,

and interesting cuisine,

and public transport,

and strange dancing light creatures,

and buildings with character.

Christmas night was spent over poker with Jose and Shweta, Marilyn and Ashok and Shweta’s sister and her husband. The day after Christmas was spent at a Jazz bar in Harlem which had great music – partly prompted by the fact that the godfather (James Brown) has passed away. All of this punctuated by fairly insane amounts of walking, drinking, late nights running into early mornings and several other things that one can do insane amounts of, in three days.

All in all, much to recover from.

Here's linking to Anand who has more intense things to say.