Ice Ice Baby

We had Marcel and Belinda visit us this weekend, so it was great to spend some time with good friends; something we've missed since being in New York. We also lashed out and got ourselves a car for the weekend. Because of the changing of the season (from cold to deadly), the trees are dropping their leaves, so we went for a drive to Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania. The scenery was quite nice, but the weather was awful, so we didn't really get any great benefit from the trip, certainly from a photos perspective anyway. On the way back, we went through Manhattan. Well, I can now tick that one off my list; driving in Manhattan. It was served with seven different kinds of stress. The driving was insane, and I was tired from a long drive. I even managed to try and go the wrong way up one of the streets right next to Union Square, even though there were cars waiting at the lights. I would have pushed through too, except for everybody in the car shouting "You're going the wrong way!!!" Apart from that, the battery on my PDA was going dangerously flat. We needed it to last until we got home. Without it, I would have absolutely no idea how to get home, and New York's such a big place that you can't just stop and ask for directions. Luckily, we made it home.

This afternoon, we went with Marcel and Belinda to Bryant Park, next to work. The best thing about Bryant Park at this time of year is that they have set up an ice skating rink in the middle of the park. It still costs $9 to hire your skates, but if you had your own, the skating itself is free. It's one of the best things to do in Manhattan right now. Alicia and Belinda skated first while Marcel and I looked after Kyan (he's too young to skate). After about 45 minutes, they brought out the ice machine cleaner type thing, so everybody was booted off the rink. So I took over from Alicia on the rink once skating started again. I was pretty wobbly to start with, but it was so much fun that it didn't matter. After a few minutes, I got my ice skating legs back and was flying around the rink. I only fell twice which was great. The first time was right in front of our spectator group, and nicely captured on film, but never to be released in public!

Unfortunately, the second time was a pretty serious stack. The teeth in the front of the skates dug into the ice while I had a fair bit of speed up. My feet effectively got stuck in the ice and the rest of me kept going. I landed on my left knee, which is giving me quite a lot of grief at the moment and is quite swollen. I'll take some anti-inflammatories for a couple of days and I should be right. This is definitely one horse that I'll be getting back on. It was a barrel of fun, takes about 20 minutes to get there from home, and well worth the money. We've still got a pretty good selection of other rinks to go to. There's one in Prospect Park, two in Central Park, and the Rockerfeller Center. It's bizarre having outdoor skating rinks, but I guess winter here is no problem for ice. Tonight, it's getting down to 2 degrees, so it's getting nice and cool, but very pleasant.

They switched off the air conditioner, but...

I'm off to the Stamford office tomorrow in Connecticut. I've been there twice now; it's a nice office, not too dissimilar to the Brisbane office, and since it's considered part of the NY metro offices, easy to get into and set up for the day. I'm working with a Director who is based there doing some work for a Chicago client. I went to Chicago for the day last Wednesday, and am likely to have another trip, probably two days, next week. It's nice to get around, and it looks as though there's more travel to come. What's best about the way things operate for travel over here, is that you'll rarely be away from home more than 4 days in any week; you can always come home. Short trips are great.

Until now, it's been quite nice outside during the day (and the night for that matter). It's been just like walking around in a giant air-conditioned city. But whomever's controlling the thermostat should be sacked. They switch off the air conditioner, but switched on the refridgerator instead. It's very cold out these days, and from what the locals are saying, there's a long way to go. Today's maximum was 12 degrees, as is the forecast for tomorrow. The days are nice; there's a light wind and plenty of sunshine, but that's there to fool you into thinking it's a nice day before you go out into it. When I left for work this morning, it was 6 degrees, with a windchill which took it down to 4. The locals don't believe that this is what the four weeks of winter is like back home. About two seconds after they deal with their disbelief, they laugh at me becuase it's going to get a lot colder. I'm not too comfortable with that. I keep getting comments like "do you have snowproof shoes?" Yeah, sure I do. I need them all the time at home. I don't even know what snowproof shoes even look like, let alone where to get them.

Things are about to get interesting.

The drought's on

So I've been at work for three weeks now and everything's cruising quite well. The tools and methodologies are pretty much the same as home, and the clients have the same needs (although much bigger needs).

Something I'm noticing though that's much different to home is everybody's apparent allergy to beer. Nobody ever has beers during lunch, during meetings, or usually even after work on a Friday. Very, very different to home. So much so actually, that the people I've spoken with can't even believe we have a beer fridge on the meetings floor in Brisbane. It's almost like any suggestion of having a beer during the day would completely remove any trace of professionalism and credibility.

We had an informal group meeting a few days ago, something which would, in Brisbane, start at 3:30 with beers and continue for a few hours, often progressing into a reasonably large number of beers once the meeting's over. Not here. We were offerred bottled water and iced tea. Hmmm. Things got wild when we went out to dinner though. Most people had one beer before dinner and then another one with dinner. To settle things down, we got back to iced water.

The social scene's quite different here, and it certainly doesn't seem to exist in the workplace, at least not as I've always known it. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just going to take a lot of getting used to. You never know; when I get back to Brisbane, I'll probably look at the office as a bunch of alcoholics!?

On the good side though, there's a convenience store over the street which sells local beer for 99 cents for a 710 mL can, so I can have a quiet beverage at home on the weekend. That eases the pain!

Other than my ongoing infatuation with alcohol, things are going great. We went to Central Park yesterday. That was our fourth trip now, and we still haven't been to the same spot twice. They opened up the open-air ice skating rink yesterday too, so we'll head over in the next few weekends for a bit of a skate.

The weather's turned quite cold now. It's what the locals call 'real Fall weather'. I call it the middle of winter. There's surely more to come. It is very pleasant though, until the wind comes up. We bought ourselves some nice overcoats through the week, so Alicia's been wearing hers. She looks like a true local. I'm holding out for some seriously cold weather before I give mine a run. There's been a fair bit of rain lately, which is still a novelty compared to life at home.

Still having fun,

Michael

Ikea. It's Swedish for pain.

What a weekend. We got our furniture delivered on Friday, so all weekend, we've been putting it together. We got a bed, sofa bed, sofa chair, computer desk, coffee table, TV table, a big cabinet thing, a big shelves thing, some bedside tables, and a few other things. And they ALL had to be put together. Needless to say, Alicia and I are in a lot of pain at the moment. We got it all put together, and the place looks quite good.

We've just got to get the TV and we're set. We're still waiting for it; delivery companies around here are useless. I've found somebody else's net connection which I'll borrow for a couple of days until ours is connected. By next weekend, we should be all sorted and be online properly and set up nicely in the new place.

There's not really too much else for this post. Work's still there, and home's just all about setting it up. Kyan would probably prefer to be out playing, but he'll get plenty of that once we're set up.

mjb

Hi ho, hi ho. It's back to work I D'oh.

OK. So I'm slack. To all those who have kindly mentioned the delay since my last blog entry, here it is, SO BACK OFF!!! Sorry, a bit of NYC attitude brewing there.

Things are going great at the moment. We're now in the process of moving into the apartment, getting our removalist delivery, the furniture delivered, and set up. Well, I've actually outsourced all of this to my darling wife, Alicia. I'm sure Kyan's doing most of the work for her though. We should be mostly settled by the weekend. Our new TV arrives on Friday (tomorrow) and the cable's connected on Saturday, just in time for the playoffs. That's baseball playoffs (I had to ask too), and I'm not sure who's playing off or what they are playing for, but I'm sure it's going to be great.

As for work, I'm there now, and it's going really well. I've met a few people in the group that I'll be working closest with and they're very friendly people with common interests and skills. I'm looking forward to working with them. My new partner is a fantastic guy, obviously very smart and focussed. I was amazed when I found out that PI has over 500 people in NYC. That's a pretty big group. There are a lot of amazing things about being here, but at the end of the day, it's still the same company and most of the processes and methods are the same so it shouldn't take too long to get up to speed.

I went down to Washington DC for my first day. The work itself was not too exciting, but seeing Marcel and Belinda was great. I hadn't seem them for over a year. We went out for a few quiet beverages and swapped stories, and I'm looking forward to their coming up to New York sometime soon.

The new office is in a great location. It's about five blocks from Times Square (but that's only for tourists), five blocks (the other way) from the United Nations, and close to the New York Public Library which has a lovely park next to it, which will have an ice skating rink in about six weeks. There are heaps of things to see, so when I'm not travelling outside NYC, I'll have plenty to do in my lunch breaks.

The weather's cooled quite a bit over the past day or two. It was 14 degrees outside at lunchtime today. People here really don't believe that that's what winter in Brisbane's like. It's the first fortnight of Fall (Autumn) here, so we're in for a pretty solid winter I assume. None of the locals seem bothered. It's great to wander around at the moment; it's like being in a giant air-conditioned room.

That's all for now. No particularly exciting things to report. I guess everything's interesting and new, but getting back to work's pretty big on my agenda right now. Thankfully, dealing with professionals is going much better than dealing with non-caring shop assistants day after day. Have fun. We are!