1998, New York

In 1998 or 1999,  roaming the streets of Manhattan,

I stopped!

Yes, it  was a beautiful summer, windy, busy, rich and contended summer. I was so excited I walked the main street, which name I can't recall anymore; I walked  back and forth, checking this and that place. I ate in Chinatown. I concluded  only New York offers the best Chinese food in the entire USA. I checked out sales and bookstores and clothes and everything a tourist would look for. My friends in Park Avenue (oh yes, they own their expensive cribs in Park Avenue or...were they still living in Brooklyn then?) told me to watch a Broadway show. They said the best way to get a cheap ticket was in World Trade Center. It was a big structure, so big that when you're inside you don't even feel you are in a tall building. What I really wanted was to get a picture of me beside World Trade Center, the way I wanted to stand before Taj Mahal. Everybody wanted me to go to World Trade Center, it seems like everything  is there and if I missed it, it's like getting to San Francisco without seeing the Golden Gate. There I got my ticket to watch Miss Saigon. The only live Broadway show I've watched. Since that summer, I rarely went back to New York because it's expensive there.

Now that I am much older, now that I have lived on earth for four decades, I am reviewing my life in pictures. And I see these pictures  taken beside World Trade Center. I  checked with a friend who is familiar with New York geography what building this is and just like any New Yorker he said, "Yeah, that WAS world trade!" sounding like any typical New Yorker, he has a tone that said, "You should not even ask that, dummy."

   Alex Maskara is Pinoy

Volume 1