Confessions of a Cat-holic (148)

I knew for a fact that many people might not have known about this, but I really didn't like New York City at all, especially before I first landed there for college. The Columbia College application required us all to answer a why Columbia question. Without a doubt, the most popular answer would be Manhattan, like the opportunities and experience living in one of the world's most happening city. But I had to say that New York City was by far the biggest turnoff for me. I wrote something I saw on the prospectus for my Columbia application, but I knew it was not a good answer. I never visited New York City when I applied and I spotted that both University of Chicago and Columbia wrote in their prospectus that they were an intellectual school, which I would not really agree after spending four years there. Columbia was a highly competitive yet collaborative school. Amongst these driven and smart students, there was somehow an invisible baby blue common spirit that linked up every individual. I liked my school, but I didn't like it so much when I applied there. I thought that I would stand a higher chance at UPenn, taking into consideration that I was a legacy student (my cousin went to its architecture school) and it took a bigger class of Hong Kong students every year. Or Cornell, or Brown. I didn't think I could get into Columbia.

I read about notorious New York and Harlem from literature (texts for my prose reading competition at Speech Festival, for example), news (New York joggers rapped in Central Park), and through word of mouth when I visited California in my F5. I planned to have a college visit at UCLA after I finished my HKCEE. I thought it was a match to my credentials and I liked the location. There in LA, my tour guide told me about the gangsters and black people and their vandalism and vulgar behaviors in the New York subway. I heard they peed everywhere in the streets. I was petrified about black people and their culture, after all I grew up in a rather racially homogeneous city in Asia. I thought I would get rapped in New York City if I ever landed there. But reality had told me that the real dangers were not from outside of school, maybe among the Ivy students. I even asked my mother to buy me a siren and pepper spray before I started college. But of course, we could not really find one here in Hong Kong, one of the world's safest city. I wouldn't like to believe that I finally had to go to New York for college and it still felt like yesterday when I swore to my parents after the LA trip, that I would never ever, never ever, never ever even step on the land of New York City for temporary stay or flight transfer even. It was the Sin City to me. In my impressions, New York City was a melting pot of crimes, drugs, rapes, racial conflicts, 911 terrorist attacks, AIDS plague, vandalism, poverty, urban decay and many more. So going to a college in New York City felt like sleeping with, or falling in love with my worst enemy for the longest time. Definitely not a relaxing experience.

I knew many Hong Kong people liked Boston for its serene and intellectual ambience. It was a hot spot for international students too and Ed's favorite city in the states. He said it reminded him of CBD in Hong Kong, which reaffirmed me that I really should not go there. Wicked like a witch, I somehow worried about my safety in Boston after reading about Abigail from the Crucible.

I didn't know anything about New Jersey before I studied at Columbia. It was only through visiting my friends' homes and malls in Jersey that I learned about the Garden State. I fell in love with its greenery immediately. It was close to city, yet out of the city. And I honestly loved watching Desperate Housewives more than Sex and the City. If I had known what I knew about Fort Lee, Newark, Jersey City, Bergen County, Atlantic City, Paramus, Ridgewood, Old Bridge, etc, I would have applied to a school like Rutgers, or even Princeton, for the sake of location.

By the way, Kelly and her family moved to Fort Lee, my favorite county in United States, in her final year of college. Fort Lee was the only foreign town which I had ever fantasized about relocating after spending most of my life in Hong Kong.