Some of you asked me, why given up a good living in Jakarta with managerial position, good salary and good reputation to go to New York with middle position, decent but minimal salary and no reputation? On top of that, why made a move when I already in my 30s and still not married. Well, sometime I also asked myself, why?
Career
Career-wise, my decision was a step back in career point of view. I was already in managerial position, 8 digits salary (in Rupiah, of course) and had a huge network among multiple disciplines and industries. It was a good career and I was on my way to the top. Here in New York, I was working as a middle position knowledge worker, slightly above standard rates salary and no network at all. In other words, I was pressing a reset button in my career path.
I left my career and the opportunity to climb the higher ladder of position. I even abandoned my 3 years of teaching career.
Rent and Commute
Living in New York is very expensive, especially the rent. Most people were paying around 30%, even 50%, of their salary for rent only. Another 25-30% went into tax. At the end, people were getting 40-50% of their total salary to pay bills, food, entertainment and saving (or investing). That was not much and it would take a good judgement to spend the money wisely. Living like the girls (and boys) in Sex and the City and Friends TV series was a myth. Unless you were born or stayed in Manhattan for more than 20 years, I did not think those TV series lifestyle would be affordable for most New Yorkers. That would be another story, I was still surveying and writing about the reality of rent price in New York.
Commuting was another story. Currently it took me around 45 minutes to commute every working days to the office using bus and subway. Almost the same when I was living in Jakarta. The different was I did not need to drive and fight with the traffic. Hopped in the bus/subway, found a good spot, read or sleep during the commute. Less stressful and more opportunity to rest or read.
Living Standard
Other than rent, New York is actually quite cheap for living, if you know the right place to get what you need. Lunch for $3-$5 was not unheard of, dinner for less than $10 was possible and for sure it would be cheaper to cook on your own. Groceries were cheap, again if you know the place, and there were a lot of bargain shopping around the city. Especially in this bad economy, almost all stores were cutting their prices so people could afford to buy their stuffs. If people could not buy anything then the economy would halt and it would cost more damage than it already was. It would take some experiences, experiments and street smart skill to live as comfortable as possible without sacrificing too much.
Sure, living in Jakarta was way cheaper than living in New York. Rent price was affordable for a start. Lunch for less than $1 was still available, right? Transportation was also cheap, around 30¢ for one busway trip (it used to have a monthly ticket without discount rate but somehow that convenience was eliminated). Phone and cellphone rate, electricity, water were cheaper too and no need to pay for heating.
On the other hand, according to my ‘Starbucks Economy’ point of view, living in Jakarta was also expensive. Using my standard not-so-scientific comparison for the price of a single cup of Starbucks coffee it would goes like this: It was $1.65 for a tall black coffee here and it was Rp. 18.000 in Jakarta. It was practically the same price! Lunch/dinner in the restaurants could cost around Rp. 50.000++ per person; which translated into around $4.5++ here; which of course a bit cheaper. Car price was enormous with or without insurance. Clothing price were varied, branded clothes practically had the same price as here. Electronic price was a bit cheaper but not much, especially computers. Books were on the same ground and most of the time, even more expensive than the original printed price in US dollar (of course to be fair, add around 8-9% of sales tax in here).
Dropped the rent price and suddenly living in Jakarta was as expensive as living in New York. To be fair, it was not exactly the same but I was just trying to share my view.
Decision
Combining all of the factors above, the question raised again: Why the move? Why bargained everything I had for something uncertain? Why now?
There were no easy answer to that questions. The only thing I could think of was; I want change. Three years living back in Jakarta was teaching me a lot about how low people expectation of good quality of life could be. “It’s Jakarta, traffic is always packed, police are always corrupt, raining always means flooding, what do you want? It’s Jakarta”. Was it? Or was it because people did not know any better?
Maybe that was my main reason, I wanted to know more about the world. I wanted to grow, I wanted to experience something new, something great and something different. Even if it meant to throw my current comfort away, I would do it anyway. No regret, no remorse and embraced the unexplored.
Now I really understood the deep meaning of Frank Sinatra’s song, New York, New York:
I’ll make a brand new start of it – in old New York
If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere
It’s up to you – New york, New york!
It’s New York, the city that never sleep and I am living in it.
Welcome to a brand new life!
Things I notice after living and working for around two weeks in New York:
- On the street and public transportation, English was not the major language. Almost everybody was talking with their own language here; Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Polish, Yiddish, Tagalog, Indonesian, Malay, French and others are just a fraction of multi cultural reality in New York.
- Everybody was jaywalking. I mean EVERYBODY. If you were not jaywalking than you better step aside because New Yorker would push you anyway.
- iPod and/or iPhone was ubiquitous, in the subway, bus and even the street. Most New Yorker were listening to song, watching videos, playing games or even browsing the Internet from their iPod/iPhone.
- The public transportation (Subway and Bus) was superb. As a public transportation lover, I finally found my heaven. It’s not as clean and time-concerned like Germany but still, it’s so reliable and it’s 24 hours. Who could complain about that?
- Most New Yorker are courteous. Maybe you heard differently but from my own experience, they were quite nice to each other.
- Food were abundant. Eating out was not a big deal, you could had from $1 hotdog to $20 pizza or even $100 cuisine. Halal food was not a problem here, they were everywhere.
- New York was very dynamic in every sense. The people were diverse, their movement were just amazing to watch and their behavior were varied.
- New York also full of strange people. Almost every time I was using subway, I encountered strange people. There was a lady who keep on running inside the subway muttered strange thing like she’s being hunted down. Another lady was reading a newspaper and for every 3 minutes look at herself into her reflection in the subway’s window and talking in strange language. Those two were just a small sample of strange people I’d encountered and I bet there would be more.
- All and all, New York was a fun place to live. Yes, it was very busy and very crowded but it also so dynamic and diverse it made me feel very comfortable and falling in love with the city instantly.
Living in New York was an adventure. I did not even seen half of the city, maybe only 20% of it, so I might be wrong about my feeling for this city. But so far, it’s been a very good experience and it made me feel so much alive absorbing the vibe of this great city.
I’ll write more about this city and once I got my paycheck, I would buy a new camera so I could share the visual of New York. So until then, keep on reading because there will be more stories to share.
This entry is overdue a couple of days. I was moving to New York City and will be working with Research Foundation of City University of New York. It will be a new adventure to start a whole new year.
This entry is about my long travel from Jakarta to New York. Some of you were keep asking me about this, so here it is. Enjoy.
SQ 967, Jakarta – Singapore
My first flight was using Singapore Airlines. Not much happening during the flight, it was a short flight, around 1 hour. Landed at Terminal 3, Changi Airport around 10 PM and had to wait for the next flight at 6.50 AM. Terminal 3, Changi was a relatively new transit airport (opened at January 2008) and its amenities were first class. It was amazing how Singaporean serviced their transit visitors. On the first floor it had a huge shopping mall, standard for every transit airport, since it was better if the transit visitors spent some money while they were there, right? The surprising feature of this floor was the Butterfly Garden. It had a huge area filled with butterfly where visitors could get in and enjoy the beauty of hundreds beautiful butterflies flying around. Too bad since I arrived there at night, almost no flying butterflies in sight. Well, maybe some other time.
The second floor hold more surprises, it had small free movie theater, it was showing August Rush when I was there, transit hotel, visitors lounge and a huge eating area. I was looking for a place to spend the night since I need to wait for another 7 hours or so for my next flight so I went to the transit hotel and asked for a room. Unfortunately, it was full and since I only need a place to lie down for a couple of hours, the friendly staff recommended me to get a nap room at the visitors lounge. So I did, a nap room was a very small room, 2×2 m with bed, small credenza and blind (no door). It cost 30 SGD for 3 hours plus a couple of SGD for an access to shower. It was not bad at all, so I took the time to lie down, get some rest and taking a shower before checking in at the transfer counter around 4 AM.
Everything was cleared, my passport and visa checked out all right and I was ready to board my next flight to O’Hare International Airport, Chicago with a short stop at Hong Kong International Airport.
UA 896, Singapore – Chicago, via Hong Kong
Next flight was with United Airlines and although it counted as one flight, it actually required the passenger to change plane once at Hong Kong, so it was quite a short trip from Singapore to Hong Kong, around 2 hours, and not much happening. Once the flight landed in Hong Kong, I did not had the luxury to look around the airport since it was a really tight schedule changing from one plane to another so I just went to the boarding gate and get in on the next flight, the longest one.
The flight from Hong Kong to Chicago was long, really long, around 18 hours, and to my surprise, I’d got an Economy Plus seating which mean more leg room and my seat was a front seat so I did not had any other seat in front of me. It also mean I sat in front of the screen which was always good. I did not remember all of the movie but some of them were: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (I slept halfway of the movie, too tired I guess), The Longshots (also slept in the beginning but wide awake for the ending), Bottle Shock (which was actually a good based-on-true-story movie) and City of Ember (which I loved since it had steampunk elements on it). It was a relatively good flight, I mean my body was sore all over the place but what could I expect from sitting (and small walking) inside a Boeing 747-400?
The real adventure started in Chicago…
O’Hare International Airport, Chicago
I landed at O’Hare around 4 PM and since I need to change my flight to domestic flight, O’Hare was my point of entry to United States. So when I presented my passport and visa to the Custom and Border Protection officer, he asked if this was my first visit to the US and since I answered yes… the adventure began. The officer asked me to follow him to another room to process my documents. Well, some of my friends already warned me that this process could take at least 2 hours and they were not joking. My problem was, I need to catch my next flight to New York in 1.5 hours…
So there I was, inside a room with a dozen or so people waiting for my document to be processed. Then, another officer called my name and 4 other people and we were moving to another area. Just my luck, I was number 5 behind 4 middle-eastern looking guy… So while my documents were processed in less than 30 minutes, 21 minutes to be exact, I had to wait around 3 hours before my documents were actually processed. That was a very long wait in a not so comfortable waiting area. Was it worth it? At least, it trained my patience… But to my delight, most officers were courteous and polite, of course there are some rude officers but fortunately I did not had to deal with them. That was a little incident happened with the first person in my line, he was a Pakistani and he was standing because he said he was tired sitting for hours in the plane and in the waiting room. The officer was asking him to sit, he said no and somehow the officer was irritated and push him to sit, he was yelling and telling that he was being treated unfair and impolite. It was quite a scene, more officers came into the scene and there were a yelling contest for quite a while. Fortunately, the incident was not escalated to an arrest and it was solved quite nicely and the Pakistani guy was finally passed the process. Other than that, not so much happening, for 2 hours or so before finally, after the airline staff told me that my two baggages were left at the carousel 6 and I should picked them up before I continue my travel, my documents were processed and I was finally allowed to enter United States.
I supposed to miss my next flight because of the custom procedure. While the custom officer assured me that the airline will definitely replace my flight with another flight, I was still worried and irritated about the fact I was missing my flight and had to trouble myself with rechecking with the airline. So I brought my two large baggages and walked to the transfer baggage check-in. A friendly Philippine baggage officer checked my baggage tags and to my surprise, told me I had not missed my flight since my flight was delayed for 2 hours 47 minutes! My good luck but bad luck for others. So I checked my baggages and walked happily to the boarding gate.
O’Hare airport was so crowded and the security were really tight. And so I waited for the delayed flight, getting some lunch and coffee and waited… Until finally, after waiting for almost an hour, I finally boarded the plane. On the runway, the pilot announced the plane would had to wait 27 minutes before the tower allowed it to depart, well, great… another delay. Well, at least 27 minutes was true and the plane finally leave Chicago after the long delay. Great!
UA 646, Chicago – New York/New Jersey
The plane went to Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey. It’s actually one of the three airport servicing New York, the others are La Guardia (mostly local flights) and JFK. I went to Newark because my new boss could only picked me there since it was the nearest airport to his place. So, Newark was my destination of choice. The flight was uneventful, except for the 27 minutes of delay, again I had an Economy Plus seating at the window side and there was no movie on the 2 hours flight. It was practically a night flight.
Uneventful as it was, at the end of the flight, as the plane dived toward Newark Airport, my eyes caught a view that I will never forget for the rest of my life. It was Manhattan, glowing with thousands of lights and it was so beautiful and so grand, it almost brought the tears to my eyes. This was the first time I laid my eyes upon New York and I was staring at the main city glorified lights. Paris could take the title as “The City of Lights”, but I’d seen Paris and I think Manhattan could took that title now. It was amazing. I was so amazed, I made a mental note to recommend everybody who would visit New York to land on Newark at night time, it was an unforgettable experience.
Photos from dead-squid
Newark Liberty International Airport
Get off my plane, straight to the Baggage Claim area, waiting for my bags and while waiting, my new boss greeted me and finally, after communicating back and forth using email, instant text and video messaging, we finally met. I was tired, the total travel time was almost (or more?) than 36 hours, but I also happy because this was a start of a new beginning. So after collected my baggages, me and my boss walked outside to the parking lot and there I was greeted by the winter weather. It was quite a shock, since just a couple of days ago I was living in the tropic and suddenly the temperature drops to almost 0° Celsius, reminder to self: started to get used with the Fahrenheit system in this country. So we entered the car and drove away from Newark to his house, somewhere in New Jersey…
Epilogue
The story ends here. For now. Next will be about my first trip to NYC… I hope all of you, especially those who keep asking me to write this, enjoy the story as much as I enjoy experiencing it. Always have faith that things will get better, as long as we tried hard and harder.
Happy New Year 2009! Time to make our life better!