New Years Eve

It's 11 hours before the ball drops in Times Square, and we're getting ourselves ready for the big event. They are locking off our street from 2pm onwards, so we need a pass to get back into our own building.

Looking down on the street - not Times Square, but next to it - it still seems fairly sedate,
so we're hoping that it's still ok for us to get into the thick of things.

Key concerns:
a) No toilets around Times Square. Could be a lot of trouble for my weak bladder
b) The crushing crowds will be suffocating, even for a urbanite such as myself
c) Did I mention the toilet issue?

However, this is vintage New York, so when in Rome...

I'll get some pics up in the next few days of the event. Happy New Year for everyone who has already reached 2008!

Edit 1 Jan 2008:
I'm impressed by my own bladder discipline! It was a wonderful event, the atmosphere and the number of people was incredible.

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 :)

Karaoke Lovin'

Having done a reinstall of my Mac, I was going through some old photos that I've imported. I miss my karaoke buddies! Special shout out to Simon "Skeet Skeet" Watt, whom I couldn't find a photo of.

Good Friends

It's always fun to see old friends, especially coming to visit us in New York. This week we had Reenie, Andrea, Cheyne and Mel all loitering around the Big Apple for a few days. We have the pleasure of Reenie and Andrea staying with us for the next few days. The pad is slightly squeezy, there have been some "are you finished with the toilet?" calls, but on the whole it's been fine. Definitely glad that we have a one-bedder, I just feel bad that they don't have much privacy!

People always ask us about the friends that we have made here in NY. I would say that it's a hard thing to do, because:
a) There are many good friends we already have trouble keeping in touch with.
b) Bec and I, being a couple, can hang out together and do things, and not feel as much the need to meet up with others.

Perhaps in time, one will find better friends in new cities. I do remember one my friends who moved overseas a few years ago telling me that there is always a greater comfort level with some people back home than anyone you meet in your new city. Maybe you just don't share that "growing up" stage, and the memories are not as emotionally strong.

Meanwhile, I take this opportunity to hang with some old friends and share some new memories!

Accents, Nicknames and Sayings

An Aussie work friend of mine was describing to a US colleague that there is a pattern in how Aussies make nicknames out of their friends. There are four categories:

1. The "a" ie Garry --> Gazza; Karen --> Kazza
   
2. The "ie / y" ie Stuart --> Stuey; Paul --> Paulie
3. The "o" ie Robert --> Robbo; Damien --> Daimo
4. The "completely random " ie Jo --> SaucyNugget
   

The funny thing was that this was quite a shock for our US friend, it must not be a prevalent here, the "completely random" category maybe, but the "a" version definitely not, most likely because their accents would not emphasise it.

On the other hand, I was a bit shocked hearing an Asian person I had just met cursing and talking as if he came straight out of a black movie! "Yo nigger....sup dog...that shit is wack!" (ok, that last one was my improv :)) I admit I say stuff like that once in a while for fun, but when it's part of someone's everyday speech, it seemed a bit out of hand.

Of course, that Asian-African thing is probably as weird to me as the Asian-Australian accent is to my new friends. As long as we both enjoy listening being entertained, it's all good.

Time To Refocus

There's always something happening in our lives here. Previously it was moving to our new place, then it was buying furniture for our new place, then it was travelling for work, this week it was buying coats in preparation for winter (40% off, by the way!).

What I have found is that I've been very bad at keeping that promise I made to myself a while ago. There seems to be no time for it, or rather I'm still not very motivated to do anything about it. I don't know how to make it more of my life, or maybe the issue is that I'm still not sure what problem I really want to tackle.

All I know is that the problem should be addressed at increasing the ability of people to be given an opportunity to succeed, whether that be education, or cultural change, or financial means. Perhaps I'm thinking too globally, where there are plenty of opportunities here in New York. Just have to find the right trigger for myself to kick into gear.