Take the 6 from Grand Central. Pick up coffee and boyfriend for extra points.

After having scared the bejeezus out of Miss THB by calling her at work to say hello (being the nice soul she is, she took it very well and even invited me out for drinks) I decided it was time to stake out my territory in Manhattan - i.e. find a yoga centre, find a bookstore and just generally get in everyone's way.

"Do you know where you're going?" M. asked over a burrito at a Chipotle near his workplace.
"Yes, I have the addresses all written down," I said. I showed him the addresses.
"Um, OK. This place is on the other side of town from that place, so how are you planning to get there?" He asked. I shrugged.
"I think you're going to have to take the subway," he said. He then looked at my map. "You have the subway lines all here."
"But I can't make any sense of it," I said.
"I'll explain, don't worry," he said, "but you'd better write this all down."
I know the underlying theory behind taking the subway. You buy a Metrocard, scan it through the gate, find your platform and then take the train. What I don't know is how to keep track of subway lines which are named after apparently arbitrary numbers (like '6') and letters (try 'R' and 'W') and then coloured differently to boot. Can't these lines have proper names, like 'Piccadilly' (which is a line that goes through Piccadilly Circus, hence the name) or 'Tung Chung' (guess where that one goes)? Or is there a logic in here somewhere that I'm missing? Thus grumbling to myself, I got out at Astor Place to find the Jivamukti Yoga Centre. Only, I couldn't find it.
"Hello, I'm trying to get to your yoga centre, but I can't find it. I'm at Astor Place," I said on a phone call to the receptionist, feeling stupid. I knew it was very, very close.
"Try getting onto Lafayette Street then walk north," the lady said. North? And which way is that?
"Um, could you give me more specific landmarks?" I said, feeling stupider by the minute. My wish for Christmas is for a sense of direction.

It was nice to be walking around under blue sky and sunshine, even if it was only 3 degrees Celsius (M. has taught me how to convert the Fahrenheit degrees to Celsius. I know I learnt it at school, but you can't expect me to remember, surely). My holiday spirit needed some caffeine, I decided, so I called out a friend for coffee at Starbucks.
"Can I have a small cappuccino with skimmed milk, please," I ordered. The huge lady wrapped in a green apron yelled to the skinny boy making the coffees, "Tall cap skimmed!" then said to me in a quieter voice, "That'll be three dollars twenty."
"Oh no, I want a small cappuccino," I said to the lady. She looked at me as if I was from Mars.
"The tall is the small one," she said. But the size order of these drinks is meant to be 'short', 'tall' and 'grande'... isn't it?
"Er, so you don't do 'short'?" I asked. She just looked at me.
"OK," I said. I walked over to the front of the skinny boy who handed me a cup which was the same size as the largest size - the grande - that you can order in Hong Kong's many Starbucks. Apparently, the order of these coffees here is 'tall', 'grande' and 'venti' and they don't believe in anything being smaller.

"But everything here is supersized!" M. said later, grinning and gesticulating to demonstrate the size difference, when I told him about the coffee.
"But who even drinks that amount of coffee?" I said. "That was a bucketful!"
"Well, people here do drink a lot of coffee," M. said.
"That's crazy! I mean, that coffee was three coffees, really," I said.
"I know," M. said. At least he knows what I'm talking about, having visited Hong Kong so many times. "That's why I think we should order just one, and ask for an extra cup, then split it."