I Miss You, SoHo

They don't call it Crossroads of the World for nothing.

Observers on Rockefeller Center's Top of the Rock, sunset December 29. Notice the crescent near the spire second from right -- a new moon for a new year.

New York has SoHo, where you can shop till you drop (quite literally), alongside NoHo, NoLIta and TriBeCa. Fifth Avenue is somewhat overrated though it is fun to stroll along, however with the holiday crowd things aren't so smooth. Whatever it is, this is the place to shop (much to my parents' dismay) where bargains reside side by side with pretty much everything snuggled in one tiny island -- it's better than London!

A shopper passes by one of the shops by a street in SoHo, December 28. More and more shops are opening in the increasingly trendy Downtown areas, leaving out the department stores of Midtown to the mainstream shoppers.

I'm sorry for the gap in between updates. All photos in DC are already uploaded into Flickr, a rare self-efficiency if you know me well. New York photos have to wait because both of my computers are lacking space (sigh), and I'm getting another (yes, the current one's full too) external hard disk for the mean while.

I'm planning to not to write any so-called review about the year. I've been searching for words, yet all I got was 'exciting'. Quite a cliche, eh? I might say 2008 was revolutionary, ground-breaking to the least, but that would sound like a TIME or Newsweek review.

But I can't help but to recall. I loved 2008. I don't care (in a diplomatic way) if you don't. At this point, at this eve of another new year, all I want to do is to breathe a sigh of relief -- not really a satisfactory one, though -- for a year is finally coming to an end. With that, a sigh of anxiety too, for another year is lying out for us to go through.

I had a lovely moon sighting -- a Muharram moon, that is -- at the top of the Rockefeller Centre, and the view was spectacularly lovely. Happy New Year too, a Hijrah one, at that. People tend to forget it amidst all the holiday frenzies -- Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa. Well, what a way to finish a trip -- the world's greatest city spread before you like stars twinkling in the sky, set against a majestic orange canvas of many hues.

It gave birth to skyscrapers, and after all these years of outside competition from cities like Hong Kong and Dubai, Manhattan is still pulling it off. The city that never sleeps falls into darkness -- not really, though -- December 29.

New York charms stole my love. And I'm home -- surprise, yes -- ushering into 2009 in a place greater than the greatest city in the world: Malaysia.

Posted in Shah Alam. Just arrived this morning, my flight deliberately forwarded three days earlier as I preferred to be in KL for NYE. And for some other reasons too, of course. SoHo, in New York, stands for South of Houston St., while NoHo is for the northern side of the street. NoLIta stands for North of Little Italy, while TriBeCa stands for Triangle Below Canal St., in which all of these places are tucked side by side in NY's Downtown. I don't know what Malaysian Soho, Tribeca imports stand for...