It was nice to see that you can put your hand up and a cab would appear to pick you up. But that was in the morning. I could have been waving at someone and the cab would have appeared too. In LA you would have to call in advance to get a taxi at your door in most of Los Angeles. But it was in the evening of Friday when it was drizzling after a 100 F day that I realized what hailing (rather flailing for) a cab meant. None of them would stop even when I tried the idea from the movies where I held up a 10-buck note in my fingers and waved at all cabbies. That was when I realized that 10 greenbacks mean nothing to cabbies in Manhattan. Off-duty means off-duty!
After a short discussion about NY and LA cities and their relative benefits and problems, we headed midtown for a post-work dinner. Dr. Prasanna picked an upscale "Pondicherry", with French-Indian cuisine. It was a slightly hep and costly place but since our advisor was paying we had some good food. I had three-course meal of zucchini soup, chicken and almonds and pistachio pudding. The pudding had a really nice and novel taste to it. I did end up shelling out 10 dollars to the coat check lady as all the guys ahead of me walked out after taking their heavy laptops and loaded bags. The lady downstairs made a sly comment about tipping the person who had taken the heavy bags off us earlier. I should have actually tipped the lady who returned the bags. I had hesitated as I didn't have any dollar bills in my wallet and I ended up paying 10 dollars to the lady upstairs. The note brightened up Shaleen's face like a Christmas tree.