Dear Bombay,

You’re probably wondering what thirteen-twenty-firsts means. Yes, it means that I’m done with thirteen of twenty-one parts of my stay in New York. Now you’re probably wondering why it’s thirteen-twenty-firsts when it should be thirteen-twelfths. My stay here’s been extended. I was supposed to be back last week, but as you can see, I’m not. My flight back is now booked for the 8th of January, and that brings up the total time that I’ll stay here to 21 weeks. 147 days. To tell you the truth I’m starting to get bored again. Now that it’s sunk in that I’m not coming back anymore, there’s no separation anxiety, there’s no rush to do all those things that I wanted to do before I leave here and I find that I’m doing the same things week after week. Things like bar-hopping till 4am and 1 liter glasses of beer have lost their novelty. To add to all this, it’s getting cold. The cold isn’t really a problem once I’ve got out of the house, it just makes it harder to actually get out. And the sun sets by 4:30. Winters here can be depressing. I see now how people miss the sun and why they write songs about how sunshine on their shoulders makes them happy. You get too much sun Bombay, you can only imagine. I haven’t been out in the sun for more than half an hour at a stretch for over a week now. I also see now why they have so many holidays in the winter and put so much effort into being cheerful. You need the people to be warm and bright when the city’s dark and cold.

I’ve got myself into a routine again. I’ve been here long enough to know where I can satiate my food cravings in which parts of town and where I can go for a walk and where I can go drink on a Friday night. The problem with this is that I’ll go to the same few places for lunch and the same few places for cheesecake and the same few places to chill. Enter boredom. All this while I was living like I had only three months here and I had to fit in as much as I could in those three months and now suddenly I have two months more and I don’t know what to do with that time. I plan a lot, I usually have plans and back up plans and back ups for the back up plans. So, naturally I had planned on how to keep myself busy for three months. New York’s still a big big city and I haven’t even seen half of all that I’d be interested in seeing but I’m to lazy to find these things because I can always just do what I’ve been doing so far. You see, I’m good at finding certain things like where you’ll get the best live music and who’s playing where in New York City or where you’ll get the cheapest beer and the largest glass of beer or where you’ll find the best cheesecake but I’m not good at finding good theater shows and museums and art exhibitions and sales. I would still love to go to these things, I just won’t end up finding them. And I don’t have the privilege of having friends who can find these things and drag me there. So I’m going to ask you to do me a favour. By you I mean everyone reading this. I haven’t ever asked you for anything but now I’m asking each one of you to find me at least one thing that I should do or go see in New York because most of you will find something that I won’t. And I, will go do whatever you ask me to do and then tell you about it. Just don’t tell me to do something obvious like going to the top of the Empire State Building or something. Also try not to give me stuff that’ll cost more than $20.

Now I’m gonna go sleep because I really haven’t slept much. Goodnight.