My experience with Hurricane Sandy is somewhat unconventional compared with what I’ve heard from my friends’ stories.

For one thing, I was barely affected by the storm. The lights never flickered, and the water was unaffected by the storm. The electricity worked, so I had no issue with watching the TV or using the internet. The only real indication that a hurricane existed was the howling of the wind, especially since we lived on the 20th floor of our building. Although I do indeed live in Manhattan, I suppose geography played a part in why nothing inconvenient happened. I live in Inwood, on a hill, where the ground floor of my building is between 150 and 200 feet above sea level.

Since my brother and I had no school due to the hurricane, we invited some of our friends to come up to our apartment. Thankfully, we had a lot of food in our pantry and our stove and oven were working. We made pie, strawberry pie to be exact. We also found the time to make homemade pizza and Oreo cheesecake. They were quite delicious. My friends and I also played both video games and board games to stave off the boredom. Monopoly was one such board game that we actually spent several hours playing. My brother won the game of course, as per usual. He always wins at Monopoly…

As for the rest of the week, since school was closed, my brother and I ended up lazing about, doing nothing except for eating, sleeping, and surfing the internet. We were quite lucky in that nothing horrible happened to us.

I don’t personally have an experience of being homeless, but I’ve seen plenty of homeless people in New York City. It seems like a fact of life for New Yorkers to see the homeless out on the streets and in the subway.

There’s been countless times wherein I would be sitting in the train and a person would enter through the train’s doors and announce that they’re homeless and need help. Most of them ask for money, as well as food and drink to help them last through the day and support their families. They ask for anything, a quarter, a nickel, a dime, and say that any amount of money would help them. However, there have been times in the past when some homeless people would say that exact same phrase and I would choose to give some loose change to them, but they would give me a look and refuse to take the change. Nowadays, I rarely give money to homeless people when they ask on trains. Instead, on the rare occasions when I have food, I give that to them. Many other commuters sitting on the train simply avert their eyes and ignore them, and I usually do the same. I focus my attention to my smartphone and try to think of happier things instead of the bleak reality.

I myself haven’t exactly had any meaningful experience with the police, and neither have my family members. My family actually avoids interacting with the police whenever possible, and this is possible since Asians aren’t particularly targeted by the police. In fact, even though I have had some acquaintances from school who have been stopped by police officers, they have always remained in the background in places such as subway stations or at Times Square. In fact, the majority of times when I’ve actually spoken to a police officer would be when I was hopelessly lost and asking for directions. They were actually fairly polite to me, though that may have been because I looked harmless. I’ve never been stopped by a police officer before. I just occasionally saw other people being stopped during the years when “Stop and Frisk” was actually heavily put into action. Mostly the people I saw who were subjected to “Stop and Frisk” were of Latino and African descent. I understand that the policy was very heavily reliant on stereotypes and racism, and Asians were considered a “privileged minority” which was why I was never stopped by police officers. This sort of system alienates communities of certain races, which builds distrust, and a system based on distrust is bound to encounter major problems.