“You want a what?”

That’s what the woman at the muffin and coffee shop in the basement of the Time Life Building in New York asked me every weekday morning for at least two months right after I ordered my usual on my way to my summer internship upstairs at Sports Illustrated: a blueberry muffin and a coke.

Every. Single. Time.

I stood in her line every day after the first few because I learned that she moved faster than any of the other 5 people who worked that shift. But every morning, my order caught her completely by surprise, and she looked at me like an alien from another planet when I repeated my order. “I’ll have a blueberry muffin and a coke.”

The fact that this order caught her by surprise is what was the surprising part about it. Every other commuter coming off the subway and in line with me was ordering some sort of muffin and a coffee. I feel confident that I was the only one of her customers that summer of 1989 who ordered a soft drink first thing in the morning. Wouldn’t my unique order make me even a little bit memorable?

That woman came to represent everything that I disliked about New York City that summer. It’s not that she was physically dirty or smelly, but her attitude most certainly was. And although it was definitely not all bad, I grew to dislike that crowded, dirty, smelly city very much. I thought of it as the opposite of wonderful.

Then, the following summer, I got the opportunity to take on my second big international travel experience by undertaking a travel study in Thailand with much of my time spent in Bangkok in order to complete the research I needed to do for my Senior Honors Thesis at the university and government offices there. The crowds, dirt, and smells of New York paled in comparison to those of Bangkok. And yet, I found Thailand to be the most wonderful, enchanting place I could imagine.

The difference, of course, was (and is) the people. Unlike the gruff, stand-offish ways of New Yorkers in the late 80s, the Thai people were so warm and welcoming to this farang that it made all of the difference. I loved the two months I spent there.

Just like the fact that not everything about that summer in New York was bad, not by a long shot, not everything about the following summer in Thailand was rosy. Not by a long shot. How those summers compare in my memories, however, has everything to do with the interactions I had with those I met.

That feels like a personal lesson I have been slow to learn in my life but am starting to get: the fleeting impressions we make on others matter.

The good news, perhaps, is that impressions can change. The New York City of today is not what it was. I’ve had the pleasure of spending much more time there, and I find its residents to have a lightness and warmth to them that I did not experience at all in 1989. Or maybe I just didn’t know where to look at the time.

Perhaps even better news, sometimes impressions don’t change. I re-visited Thailand in 2015, 26 years after that first trip. Lots has changed in startling ways, but Bangkok is just as crowded, dirty, and smelly (maybe more so), and the people are just as wonderful.