The home of capitalism, democracy and bad service

Whatever did the world do before the internet? Having (almost) been offline for two whole weeks, it felt as though our world was coming to an end. In my defense, moving to a new city does imply a huge need for current, instant information. Borrowing other people's internet with the PDA and hammering out my blog one letter at a time has also been a bit of a slog. But this is now a thing of the past!

We bit the bullet and bought a laptop computer. PCs are incredibly cheap over here (along with a bunch of other things), so last weekend when we were in New Jersey, we bought a new Dell computer, which arrived on Friday. Luckily, the apartment comes included with broadband, so we were online within about 2 minutes of its arrival.

It's great being able to surf the net and get ourselves fully organised before we head out each day. Especially so, given that on some occasions we had to head out in the rain just to find a wireless hotspot to send an email or slog it out in a dodgy net cafe to see if we had any money in the bank. Enough said; it's a computer. People have them everywhere.

Yesterday, we made the trip to Ikea to scope out what will be the bulk of the furnishings for the new apartment. The store itself was amazing, about treble the size of the Ikea in Brisbane. Even the restaurant was cool. It had live entertainment by a five-member band, which in itself was enjoyable, but best of all, it had awesome views of the Newark airport runways and curved windows so you could see the aircraft not only through the windows, but through the celing. To me, it rates as one of the best restaurants I've ever been to. Ikea itself was extremely boring (Kyan screamed himself stupid, yet again), but very productive. We (by that I mean Alicia) have a pretty good idea of how the house will be set up now. We're just looking forward to moving into it.

The Ikea's so huge that it has free coaches running to and from NYC, running every few minutes just shuttling people back and forth all weekend. There are a couple of things driving that; firstly, there's no Ikea in NYC and secondly, the tax rate in New Jersey's only 3.5% rather than 8.25%. If you're spending some serious coin, it makes sense to make the trip over the border to get the cheaper goods. It's kind of like duty free in a way, but you don't have to go to New Zealand to get $15 off a bottle of Bundy.

Alicia and Kyan went out today for some wandering through midtown while I stayed at home and did some tax returns (yay!). Other than that, it really was a quiet day. In the morning, I ducked over to Circuit City in Brooklyn to buy a wireless mouse. It's pretty much a mirror of Harvey Norman. After finding what I needed myself (nobody bothered to offer their help), I waited about half an hour in a queue to buy it. When I finally got there, there was a problem with their computer for that item, so without even asking me to wait, they just pushed it to the side and served the next customer. About five minutes later, they fixed the problem and asked me for the money as if nothing had happened.

After that, I went to Verizon to see if I could set up a mobile/cell phone. I had to go to some guy at a counter to ask my question. Once I got there, he was resting his head on the desk and just glanced up at me and grunted. Aparently, they don't do prepaid mobile plan, so he told me so. No suggestion of how they could help, just "we don't do that." And rested his head back on the desk.

Dead set, the service in this country is pathetic. Virtually every store I've been into, it been pretty obvious that the staff couldn't possibly care less about helping you out. Funnily enough, whenver they're working for tips (even though they're pretty much compulsory), the service improves out of sight. Maybe they should introduce tipping into retail stores to give them a reason to get off their bums and do something. Whenever we travelled, we would usually be humbled by the excellent service, both on and off the tourist track, and especially in Asia. Not here.

BUT, I'm visiting the country as a guest so I'll take the good with the bad. It's just going to take some time to adjust and find the stores with good service. I think I'll find the friendliest service on the internet...

The Guy In Charge of America

Things are settling into a pretty good routine now. We've found our sense of direction and are getting around without any problems.

Since the last blog, we've just been out and about seeing the sights on offer. In the past couple of days, we've visited the Cental Park Zoo (which Kyan loved), went out to Flushing, Queens where the US Open is played, and FAO Schwarz, a cool toy store with a giant keyboard you dance on to play music (it's the one in the movie Big which Tom Hanks danced on) - for Kyan's benefit entirely.

We had a bit of a stroll through Midtown and the Upper East Side today; both very nice areas, entirely unlike where we're moving to. While we were wandering, we walked past Michael Douglas. Alicia even got to see the back of his head once he had walked past and I pointed him out to her. I recognised him from that movie where he was The American President, and The American President fell in love with a lobbyist, and The American President's daughter liked her, even though the press thought The American President wasn't doing the right thing. I think it was called "The Guy In Charge of America". (Lara, you'll get it)

After struggling with the stroller, an agitated baby, and a peak hour expres subway train, we managed to get home in one piece, so are looking forward to a quiet evening. Tomorrow, we'll probably go and do a few touristy things, and on Saturday, we're off to Ikea for some furniture shopping.

Still having fun, and don't plan on moving back any time soon. We are missing home a little though, so are looking forward to getting the net set up properly to touch base with home.

mjb

We're locals now

Just a short one today, but there's news to be shared. We've now got ourselves a place to live!

We ended up getting pretty much what we were after, kind of near where we wanted for a pretty good price - good news in all. I don't have the exact address yet, but it's around the corner of St. Mark's Ave and 4th Ave in Brooklyn. It's incredibly close to the express subway line, so getting to work will be a breeze.

We went out to Parmus, NJ yesterday. There's a shopping centre (mall) with about 350 shops, so therr was plenty to look at. The transport was a killer. It took us a couple of hours each way, so we'll have to sort out a better way of getting around now that we're the proud owners of exactly zero cars.

On the way there, we stopped off at Greenwich Village, a very nice neighbourhood in South-East Manhattan. If and when we make the move to Manhattan, this has got to be the spot to be. It had tree-lined streets, little cafes, and a cool little park where people were selling their organic fruit and veg. Just like Park Slope, but nicer.

That's all for now - the weather's been pretty rotten over the last few days, so things have slowed down a bit. The weather's great today, so we'll get outside and explore something new.

Still having fun,
Michael.

New York - we're there!

We made it! After 28 hours, door to door, we have arrived safely in Manhattan. The flights didn't end up being too bad, and Kyan was a perfect little angel, except when we were leaving LAX, when his little body just couldn't stay awake any longer. Thank goodness for the pickup at JFK; we had 10 pieces of luggage and a baby to carry. Public transport was never going to be an option.

Day 1 (11 Sept) was spent generally seeing Manhattan. We did Ground Zero (which was a dud event unless you were a survivor or family), Times Square (including Toys'R'Us for Kyan), the Upper West Side and Central Park.

Day 2 (12 Sept) was reconnaissance day. We went out to Brooklyn to see if Park Slope was anything like my research said it was. Well, it looks as though the internet was spot on. It's a lovely area which will do us very nicely, if we can afford what's on offer. The streets are lined with beautiful big green trees, and the housefronts look like they're out of Sesame Street. A very pleasant neighbourhood, which I can certainly see ourselves in for a while. If you're interested, look up 11215 on Google Earth/Maps).

Day 3 (today 13 Sept) was quieter. We finally shook the jet lag, and for a change, Kyan didn't get up at 4am, like he did on the first two days. We had a relocation consultant talk to us this morning to give us the low-down on how this place actually works. It was a very interesting and useful conversation. Some things were new to us, but even the things that weren't were great to know coming from a local rather than relying on what we read or heard somewhere.

Tomorrow, we're hunting for an apartment, probably the most critical task of our three weeks. I don't hold particularly high hopes of finding a great place, but something secure and clean will do.

Hopefully, we'll have a free day on Friday and do a couple of touristy things then.

I hope you're enjoying the blog so far. I'm certainly enjoying being here to be able to do it.

Internet access is very scratchy at the moment; I'm lying in the floor typing this into my PDA using a 'borrowed' internet connection. I should have that resolved in the next couple of days, so send me an email and say g'day.

By the way, the Eno incident involved tipping an almost full jar of Eno into a half-full sink. It's not one of t ose treasured memories you hold onto forever, but it was certainly fun at the time.

Stay safe and well. mjb.

I think we're done...

It's been an extremely hectic few days getting everything done to get out of Brisbane. We had to pack up the house, clean it, settle all the outstanding bits and pieces and so on. It doesn't sound much, but living the hard yakka for the past few days hasn't been fun in any way.

On the upside, I did get to tip an entire jar of Eno into a sink full of water to see what would happen. It's amazing the experiments you can do when you're chucking stuff out. Sad as it seems, this was the highlight of the past few days.

Unfortunately, being busier than I'd expected has meant a few things have gone by the wayside. I was hoping to do one last karate session before leaving, but that doesn't look too likely now. I was also hoping to get all the admin out of the way, but I'll probably have to finish that up in the next week or so from New York.

However, things are looking up.

We pretty much cleared out the house tonight and one more small load in the car should finish it. Then we're on a break for a few weeks. It should be a good chance to spend some nice time with the family, pretty much like we did together when we were in NZ in April. I enjoyed that time a lot, so am looking forward to some vegging out in NYC.

Our Entertainment Book for New York arrived today. It's not really of the same quality that the Brisbane book is, which surprised me, but it should give us a headstart when we're looking for some tucker in the next few weeks.

I'm feeling ridiculously tired now, so must head off in search of beauty (that's why they call it beauty sleep). If my search for beauty is successful, I'll let you know in my next post.

I know I'll miss all my friends and family when we're gone, so if you're reading this blog and you fall into one of the above categories, I NEED TO SEE YOU IN NEW YORK. If you just stumbled across my blog because you typed my name into Google hoping to seek the meaning of life and the ultimate truth of all mankind (and therefore are neither friends nor family), I don't need to see you, but your cash would be appreciated. ...but I digress.

I think it's about to hit that we're heading overseas to live. Seeing the house totally empty tonight made me realise that this is a massive decision we've made; more than just deciding a long overseas trip would be nice. It really does change absolutely everything and we've not even moved yet. This will be the big one for us and I hope it's everything we dream it will be. It's cliché, but words really can't describe the maelstrom of emotion and anticipation I'm feeling at the moment. There's one way to find out - the day after tomorrow, it's all on. Only time will tell how things go. This will be great.

Stay safe. mjb.

New York, here we come!

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Not long to go now. Both Alicia and I have finished work, and Kyan's off to the family for the week, so we're madly scrambling to get the house in order (packed and cleaned) before the removalists come on Wednesday.

The To-Do list is finally getting smaller. That's not to say that it's getting any easier, but at least the jobs we have left can be done before we leave. Things like touching up paintwork inside the house, packing and cleaning.

It still hasn't hit home yet that we're shifting to the other side of the world, but I guess that's partly due to the fact that we always seem to be getting ready for holidays. Once we get a place of our own, things will probably change a little. It's actually pretty scary going to a new workplace, given that I've been in the Brisbane office for the past 7 1/2 years. This is my big chance to really make it in my career, so I hope it goes well.

Kyan's been very whingey the past day or two. We seem to think that he is getting upset to see his stuff being packed up. He's too young to understand about the move, but old enough to know when his things are being taken from him. It will be good to have him out of our hair for a couple of days and focus on the job at hand.

We're still dreading the flight. I guess if we're expecting the absolute worst, anything that happens will be better than our expectations, and therefore not be too bad. I just hope nothing crazy goes on in the wild world of aviation over the next week. If we can only carry on our passports, there's going to be trouble.

Well, no rest for the wicked. Back to work for me. I've got to get new tyres put on the Barina this arvo so I can get the roadworthy done. ...and paint the walls ...and disassemble the bed ...and clear the shed ...and pack up the entertainment unit ...blah blah blah.