New York Pictures Are Up

Yes, it's taken a new install of Mac OSX as well as five days of leave to get them ready, four of which were spent doing other things.

Enjoy!

New York - Summer 07
New York - Fall 07

Winter coming soon, I'm waiting for some more snow.

Festivus

Christmas got off to a rocky start today, with my first NY accident.

Bec and I finally made our way to Brooklyn Bridge on a very sunny Christmas Eve. There are two distinct lanes on the bridge, pedestrians and bike riders. I wanted to get a better view of the Manhattan bridge that is just off to the side. Forgetting my "Crossing the Street 101" lessons, I looked one way on the bike lane and forgot the other. I only took one step forward before I heard a "Watch out!!", and the distinctly unpleasant sight of a bike rider going over his own handlebars.

Nasty stuff, having experienced that type of fall myself.

The guy was bleeding from his nose, with scrapes on his arms and legs. Luckily the clothing shielded him from some of the damage. The strange thing was that the guy went into the closest thing I have seen to shock, not being able to breathe or stand properly. We had to lie him down, and get him to calm down a bit. Called 911 - also a first - and they arrived very promptly, within 10 min. Glad to know that my NY tax is paying for some decent service.

They strapped him up and carried him off to the ambulance. I just hope that he's ok, with no lasting injuries, and that I didn't ruin his Christmas.

On a brighter note, our Christmas Eve home cooking was a marvelous success.
Have a wonderful holidays everyone, I hope you'll still be reading in the New Year!

Miami Fun

I kept hearing that 'Shake Your Tailfeather' song as I stepped off the plane. At least it was a decent temperature, better than that -2 degrees we had in New York.

Two things that struck me about Miami; the vibe around South Beach with no honking and cars slowing down for pedestrians; and the oversized boobs on display - from women (real and fake) to mannequins (definitely fake).

The beach was calm, low waves and a stretch of sand as long as Gold Coast. It was a wonderful place to read and relax.

Bec and I ventured into a club - Mansion - as well as a boutique hotel - Delano - where Jamie Foxx had his 40th birthday the night before we went. $20 to get into Mansion was money well spent, that place was as close to a 'superclub' as I have seen. Plus more oversized boobs on display at the club.

I would recommend the stone crab as Joe's Stone Crab, if you come during the crab season, and make sure to order the large claws. I wonder, in a restaurant that could seat 300, and each person orders 3-5 claws each, and there's 3 rounds of people eating night, how many crab bodies do they chuck away in one night??

Check out Flickr once in a while, I'm still working on the photos.

Expectations of New York

I always wanted to go overseas, to experience new things, meet new people, visit new places.
Have a chat to Bec the other day, and when asked "are you really happy here in New York?" my answer was "it's ok".

Is New York what I expected it to be? What did I expect to achieve in the first place? Why did I want to come here?

Going overseas to me was always a chance to refresh myself, to get that "newcomer" perspective that I did not have when in Sydney. Part of the "living overseas" need was from friends who had made the jump aready, and their "experiences" and (when I was a single man) their "escapades" aka hoey stories.

Given that the hoey stories is now not part of the equation, what "experiences" would I want, especially in the New York?

It's strange, I haven't had the urge to read up on the goings on here in New York, prefering the trusty www.smh.com.au. I don't know what's happening, I don't know what's good to do. Lucky for me Bec has made a lot more inroads in this part, so I'm still able to get out there and do new things.

Work has been fairly slow, so it hasn't motivated me to any high level (damn delayed projects).

I would like to meet more people, and I'm beginning to realise that this is a slow process:

1. Being a couple usually means I'm more than happy to chill out ourselves
2. There's so many friends overseas that I would like to keep in touch with but do not so not much energy is expended on meeting new ones.
   

Time will help establish some more friends here.

In the end, for me New York was a place, it sounded good, but I have no expectations.

No expectations => no way to measure results => no passion.

OK, gotta get involved then. Let's tick off some stuff:

• I promised myself that I would do some acting classes here (it's Broadway and all that) so will add that to the list.
• Picking up some volleyball will be good for me as well.
• Having got into the photography stuff, New York is a great place to capture life. I would like to take one scene in New York, and capture it every week and see how it changes
• Trapeze class! Wait till the summer
• Read up websites like www.nymag.com and see what's going on (oh the snarky gossip hurts to read!)
  

Anyone else have advice on getting to know and love a city?

Exhibition Fun

Georges Seurat was showing at MOMA. Better known for his dot paintings, he did do a lot of sketches during his short career. The exhibition focussed on those sketches, as well as how those sketches contributed to his final paintings.

So of the stuff he sketched was amazing, and the word sketch doesn't quite describe it. It was more of a tone on tone shading, and the differences between certain sections was what defined the shapes. The subtlety of where the shades changed was very impressive.

I've always liked the use of charcoal and graphite in paintings, because of the diversity of the product. There can be a sharpness and intricacy in the picture that brushes would be hard pressed to achieve. And, as shown by Seurat, a blending of shades that rivals mixing paint.

What was also great to see at the exhibition were all these amateur artists bringing in their sketch books and mimicking some of the drawings there. A few of them were really skilled! Made me want to buy a sketch book and get into it.

MOMA is a great place to spend the afternoon, especially when it was snowing outside. The more I live around Midtown the more I like the fact that so many of these places are accessible by foot. I'm pretty sure I don't want to move for a while :)