Day 1 Thursday 10th July ’08 New York City

I arrived at my hotel , Westin Times Square . around 12 pm , while the checkin time was 3 pm , but they were accomodative enough to let me have the room earlier and in 5 min I had my room keys , the view was not good from the room as I paid their lowest possible rates and all I get to see was Hotel Carter , a $ 100 a night hotel in middle of Times Square just don’t expect any cleanliness or service here , better known for their hourly rates and a Gentlemen’s club located below . The first thing to do was to get a SIM Card for my phone as calling US from Pakistan costs USD 1 for about 40 odd min while on roaming I’d been paying a couple of dollars per min and in a while I was standing in the local ATT store located the Times Square . The service person told me that as I want pay as you go I had to cough up USD 100 plus the cost of phone but when I told him all I want is USD 25 worth of airtime , he directed me to a local Radio Shack located in the bus terminal at 42nd and Eight ave where the nice Indian fellow informed me of the tricks of the trade . He directed me to purchase a 20 dollar phone instead of the SIM as sim alone costs USD25 and comes free with Pay as You go Phone and gave me a Motorola Phone with SIM , then came the Airtime , I asked for USD 25 worth which combined with my phone became USD 45 but as ATT had a deal he shaved off USD 10 and also informed in a few days ATT will credit me a further 10 dollars so for USD 25 worth of Airtime I got a Motorola Phone with SIM , I put the SIM in my Nokia n95 and it instantly connected to the ATT network , I send an SMS to Pakistan informing my family of my new number
Costs of mobile in US are 10c a min whether I call or receive a call , 10c for 100 kb of data very expesnive for me , 5c for local and 15 c for international SMS for me used to 1000 min for USD 16 and unlimited EDGE for USD 7 it was a rip off but I had to use it .
We spent the rest of our day walking around Broadway and Times Square and slept early as all of us were very tierd after having dinner at Burger King