WRITING CULTURE 2012: Film, Food & Beyond

My first thought when I heard Hurricane Sandy was coming was essentially: “Phew, thank god I managed to make it back to New York in time, because I was NOT spending another night in the Detroit airport.”

To clarify, I’d only recently gotten back from an emergency trip to China to see me ailing grandmother, so news of Sandy came really fast and leaving me with little idea of what to expect. My family took very limited precautions, moving a few bits of furniture that wasn’t tied down or heavy enough from the terrace, locking down all the windows, etc. My biggest concern wasn’t even for me or the members of my family with me at the time, it was for my father who was told by the hotel he was working for to come in for work the day before Sandy hit. They would provide him and other members of the staff rooms there, but it would essentially strand him in Upper Manhattan until the storm passed. Profit waits for no man, even during a Hurricane apparently.

As for myself, my apartment complex is several stories high, made out of solid brick and mortar, while resting on a hill in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Willamsburg, resting in land and away from the river. You couldn’t really ask for a more storm, flood, and tree proof facility, so it was all about hunkering down and waiting for Sandy to pass. Besides the howling wind and oncoming rain my family and I ran into almost no inconvenience,  both power, phone lines, water, gas, and the internet were still running for the most part. And in the event that they weren’t we had one of these nifty heavy duty flashlights on hand to help out.

There was one scary moment I do have to admit though, sometime towards the end of the night the box-crate locker on our terrace where we kept most of our heavy tools came open, and I in turn got stuck with the job of braving the storm and shutting closed. The winds had died down by then, so it wasn’t too bad, but I had no inclination to linger and bolted back inside with extra hop in my step when the job was done. Afterwards, it was just tracking the storm, and then going to bed with the howling winds for a lullaby. Not the most exciting time in life, but there was some anxiety for some of my relatives scattered across the city, in Long Island, and New Jersey  Everyone came out alright by the end though, for that I’m extremely grateful, and more then willing to take the boredom of waiting the storm out versus the consequences that could have happened otherwise.