Blokey Blog

The farewell tour

2008-09-25T20:08:00.005-04:00

Knowing that we're about to leave the States for good (or at least for a while), we've been making a concerted effort to see the main things we want to before things are done. In the past couple of months, we've seen DC, Vegas and Boston. I've also been lucky enough to have a few work-sponsored trips around the place, although the timing's shocking. I've been to Philadelphia, Orlando and Rochester courtesy of various clients. Unfortunately, it's to work, not to be a tourist.

Right now, I'm in the airport lounge in St Louis, waiting for another delayed flight home. This one's only 20 minutes late so far, but we'll see how that pans out. I won't miss the travel once we're back in Brisbane.

I managed to get away from the client a little early the other day, so I had a look at the only interesting thing in St Louis (and perhaps all of Missouri), the Gateway Arch. This thing is massive - apparently, it's around 62 storeys high. That's big. The view's awesome (or at least it would be if there was something else in this city to look at). I may be back for a couple of days next week, then it's a couple of weeks in Nashville, TN, then it's all done. Back home to New York for a couple more weeks, then back to Australia. Time's getting short.

Brooklyn to Brisbane - end of the line

2008-09-19T21:24:00.002-04:00

After a little more than two years, we've hit the end of the line. We have around six weeks left on our incredible journey to the United States.

We have mixed emotions about going home. We're certainly going to miss New York, a place we've come to know as home, but on the other hand, it will be nice for everything to return to 'normal' again in Brisbane.

I have a stack of work to get done over the next few weeks, so it's going to be a squeeze to get everything done, but hopefully, I'll have time to drop a few lines before we arrive back home. I obviously have a millions photos and just as many memories of New York, so I hope to share these with our friends and family when we arrive back home. Some memories are funny, some frustrating, and some just downright intriguing.

It's going to be interesting to see how we fit back into the slow pace of things in Brisbane.

See you soon!

The Chairman

2008-03-04T00:19:00.002-05:00

OK, so Alicia took this photo, and you've probably even seen it on her new photography blog, barryfreezeframe.blogspot.com, but this is really just a chance to show off my Photoshop skills. Either way, I don't mind the photo.

Hard day at the office

2008-03-02T02:11:00.001-05:00

I can only apologise to Cameron. He has his father's genes.

Out and about in NYC

2008-02-24T22:57:00.007-05:00

After having a solid dump of snow on Friday morning, New York looks like a winter wonderland. One of the problems with snow is that it needs to be cold outside, but today, luck was with me. It was a couple of degrees above freezing (yes, that's a warm day), so I packed my camera gear and set off.

In all my time in New York, I'd not yet taken decent shots of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, so that was my destination. Here are a couple of those shots for your enjoyment. I hope you like them, but if you don't, as they say in New York, suffer in your jocks.

I highly recommend my newest acquisition - a 16-35mm lens. The wide angles it takes are incredible. I also took the 35mm SLR which gave an even wider view of the bridges - getting them both in the same frame. Once I've had the roll developed, I'll hopefully have something else worth uploading.

Snow day in Brooklyn

2008-02-12T18:50:00.000-05:00

It snowed today, a little unexpectedly. As fate would have it, I was in the area so went and took some photos! These are from Prospect Park, just up the street from us.

Let speak strain

2007-12-12T21:08:00.000-05:00

The first piece of advice I received from an expat aussie after joining the US firm was that after a year or so of living here, all aussies sound like yobbos.

Having been in the US now for a little over 15 months, we're well and truly in the routine of doing the American thing in the American way with American people. Unfortunately, it hit home the other day that we really have become a little detatched from the Australian way of life when we made some calls home.

I've never, even for a second, supposed that the American accent is refined, or even a particularly civilised one, but hearing the Australian accent after a year without it, it certainly takes the cake. In the past couple of weeks, that aussie drawl caught Alicia and I by surprise.

We had to make a couple of calls back home; one for business and the other to David's work. The first one was a 20 or so minute call to the people 'managing' our house which had us in stitches the whole time. Everything they were saying was certainly professional, and was the right thing to say, but it sounded like they'd been living in the outback (or in Far Far North Qld) for their whole life. Every vowel was drawn out and most words ending in 'ing' actually ended in 'un'. Pretty amusing.

We also had to call David at work to wish him happy birthday. Some other guy picked up the phone. Once we asked to speak with Dave, his reply was "ah yeah, ang on. He's round ere somewhere." Again, we were in stitches.

Around the same time, I started getting podcasts of the morning show from Nova FM in Brisbane. Again, we were amazed at their incredibly broad accent; and this was from people who are paid a lot of money to annunciate with dignity and clarity (well maybe not dignity).

What was best about the phone calls is that we could speak at a normal paced voice and be properly understood. The sheer terror set in when we realised that we actually sound like that too. The advice that guy gave me when I had arrived in the US had rung true; we have turned into "one of them".

I also had the pleasure of having Christmas drinks at the Australian Consulate a few nights ago. It was an absolute joy to be in a room full of aussies who had the same background, the same values, and most importantly, the same accent. It was a great function with around 250 expats in attendance. My favourite memory of the night would have to be the way the guests (who had been quite civilised all night) literally jumped over each other when the tray of lamingtons was brought out. It's amazing what you miss when you've no longer got it; but I digress.

Never be ashamed of your heritage, but you can perhaps cringe a little. This would probably be hard for people who haven't lived overseas for a while (especially other English speaking countries) to understand, but if you've done it, you know what I mean. Don't get me wrong; I'm one of the proudest aussies around, but to hear how we talk (when it's not what I'm hearing every day) makes you sit back and think "do we really talk like that?" I'm proud to say we do.

Blog is back. Back again. Blog is back, blog is back...

2007-11-19T21:59:00.000-05:00

I've been getting some feedback that it's been a while since my last blog entry. I swear that I've been doing a new one just about every day, but for some reason, they weren't uploaded (or whatever excuse you'll believe).

So here we are again, on the brink of another winter, and the blog is up and running. Let's just see how long this incarnation lasts. We've been here a full year (and a bit) now, and so much has changed. We are in a new place (in a much nicer part of New York), and Alicia's just weeks away from producing another boy for the Barry household. It would probably make sense if I just listed what we did over the past few months and do a random dump of some photos.

- Mum and Dad visited for a bit over three weeks
- Alicia and I spent a week in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico to be precise)
- Kyan turned 3
- We moved house. New zip code is 11215. That will get you pretty close on Google Maps.
- We had a super-long end to summer; the weather was superb for an unusually long time. It was the warmest October ever, so we made good use of it.
- We did Halloween - New York style, including trick-or-treating and pumpkin picking. Kyan dressed up as a fireman, and loved it. The fireys at the local firehouse loved it too. They told him he had the best costume all night. My favourite was some 8-year-old kid in a freshly-painted, busted up cardboard box; we asked what he was dressed as - the answer: a "suspicious package on the subway". Very cool.
- I bought myself a bike, but now it's too cold to ride it anywhere
- Did a trip to DC to see Marcel and Belinda (and vice versa)
- Had a few interesting jobs with work. Even better - they were local jobs, so didn't have to travel. The best of all is that now I have a client in Manhattan, right on the subway line, so life is back to normal again.
- Had our 6th wedding anniversary - time flies
- Saw the Rockettes in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular - look it up. It wasn't all that spectacular though.
- Performed live on stage at Broadway. No I'm not kidding. I mean on stage during the live performance of an actual Broadway production - the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. This was a worthy follow-up to my appearance in Cirque du Soleil.
- I've been playing around with things on my camera, and am really enjoying photography now, especially since Dad visited. Some of my more recent shots are below.
- Voted. The Australian consulate seemed like the most Australian place on earth for the 15 minutes I spent there. Australians sound so incredibly different when you're not used to hearing the accent. That's another story.

An HDR composite shot taken at Watchung Reservation, near Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. This was originally 6 separate shots and is now a 200MB TIFF file. I need to play with it a bit more, but I think I'll need to reshoot it next year, but with a tripod.

Overlooking a cemetery in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is located next to a big fort that's UNESCO World Heritage listed.

This was Alicia's first attempt at carving a Halloween pumpkin. Not too bad if I do say so, and pretty good according to the great comments we got.

Kyan at the fire station on 11th st (one block away) on Halloween night. The fireys were handing out treats and gave him extra and were even happy to pose for a photo or two!

Me in Puerto Rico.

Her rules for the bedroom

2007-08-07T23:37:00.000-04:00

We seem to have a surplus of pillows in our bed at present. One side's his, the other's hers. Can you guess whose side is which?

Of car noise and a young hoon

2007-08-06T21:52:00.001-04:00

We get a lot of car noise in the area near our apartment. Horns, revving engines and extremely loud (and bad) music are the main culprits. It's half the reason we're moving next month - to be somewhere quieter. The worst problem is that we're on a corner, which means we're next to a set of traffic lights. A typical New York City way of driving is with one hand on the horn to let the person in front know that the light changed to green almost 3/100ths of a second ago, and that they're obviously not paying attention. Some days, it drives me up the wall. You can watch them from the balcony sitting in their cars at a red light with their hand on the horn ready to hit it as soon as the light changes. Having a hire car at the moment, I know that getting off the lights as soon as they're green (which requires a bit of anticipation) is the best way to avoid the horn.

Yesterday, I heard the usual horn beeping, mainly managing to ignore it. This time, it was a short beep every second or so, but it didn't stop. Some idiot decided that it would be entertaining to continually keep tapping the horn. I figured they were trying to let somebody in a nearby apartment know that they were ready to be picked up. I was about to get up and have a look when it stopped.

About 30 seconds later, it started again. A short beep every second or so. By now, I was quite irritated, so I got up to have a look at what was going on. As always, there were cars sitting at the lights, but this was the same horn as before. I could see one car with a driver inside on the side of the road, but could also see that the he wasn't tapping the horn. I couldn't figure it out, which made it all the more irritating. Every now and then, when somebody's doing hitting the horn, a grumpy stare stops it, but I had nobody to share my grumpy stare with. This was ridiculous - it had been going for about 5 minutes.

I gave up and came back inside, only to see Kyan come out of the bedroom with the keys to my hire car and an enormous grin on his face. He was saying "I'm making Daddy's car noisy" and having a great time. It was right at that point that I realised that he'd been playing with my keys for the last 5 minutes, pressing the remote lock button. Every time he pressed the button, the car went beep. He was pleased as punch.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn't really abuse this young hoon, especially since he was being so cute. Fortunately for everyone else, this hoon's key privileges have been revoked!

Hard day at the office

2007-08-02T20:43:00.000-04:00

I came across a bit of luck at work today. More specifically, I came across 4 box seats to the New York Yankees game at (of all places) Yankee Stadium in The Bronx. I found a few people who had a little time to come along, so we had a good time. Not only did work give me the tickets, but it was in the middle of the workday too. The Yankees played the Chicago White Sox. It was an extremely long game, lasting over 4 hours, having 16 runs in the second inning. That's some kind of record apparently.

Alex Rodriguez was expected to hit a milestone 500th home run today, but choked. The crowd were getting very excited each time he got up to bat, holding up cameras, standing in the stands and going crazy. They seemed pretty deflated when all he managed for the day was a single RBI (you can look it up).

Going to the baseball is very similar to going to the cricket, so obviously it was a great day, although pretty hot. I know it was a hard day at the office, but somebody had to do it!

MIC...KEY something something MOUSE

2007-07-31T09:54:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Orlando, Florida for a work conference. It was absolutely incredible. They flew about 3,000 Partners, Directors and Managers from all over the US (and a number of other countries) to Orlando for three days of intensive training. It was very well delivered, and we learnt a lot from it. The venue was incredible. We took over two hotels, which looked as though we actually owned them. There were big banners out the front, the lobbies were in stunning corporate theme, even down to the room keys which were presented in a holder that was specially themed and printed for the conference.

The conference venue was incredible. It was like a normal office. Obviously with so many senior staff there, the conference wasn't going to stop work for a week, so they provided complete work facilities, including LAN broadband connections, printers, on-site support for technology, office supplies and everything. It was so amazingly well done that you couldn't help feeling incredibly proud to be part of the event and the firm.

For dinner on the Wednesday night, we had an off-site function, so we went to Universal Studios. It was oppressively hot, so having more than one or two beers was not going to happen, and the hot food didn't go down too well either. Fortunately, work paid for our admission into the park, so we went through searching for all of the water rides. Luckily, there were no queues so we cycled through the rides and managed to get completed soaked every time. It was nice and refreshing.

What I found most amazing was the number of people that I knew from other offices. I've only been here 10 months, but already I know an amazing number of people from the different jobs I've been working on. Particularly seeing them in the one place at the one time made it clear that I've certainly established some good networks and friends throughout the US in the time we've been here.

Once that was over, Alicia and Kyan flew down for a few days. There was only one reason they came down, and that was to see Walt Disney World. Over the three days we were there, we went to Magic Kingdom, Disney MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom.

Magic Kingdom was very much like Disneyland in Hong Kong, and similar to the one in Paris. It was a lot of fun, but we felt like we'd already been there before. On
the Saturday, we went to Disney MGM Studios, which was great. It had a lot of the things that Kyan liked, including Little Einsteins, Jo Jo and some of the other characters from Playhouse Disney. At all of the parks, Kyan loved seeing the characters, almost as much as Alicia did.

It was certainly the best day of the three, although the heat and humidity were killers. Orlando's the same distance from the equator as Brisbane, so it certainly felt like being back home for summer. It made us remember part of the reason why we left in the first place! Every afternoon at 3 o'clock on the dot, we received a thunderstorm for about 30 minutes, then it went away. It was very much like the
storms we used to get in Brisbane, and made the afternoon cooler, if not a little muggier.

On the Sunday, we went to Disney's Animal Kingdom. It was very different to the other Disney parks we've been to, having an animal theme (believe it or not). I don't know the history of the place, but it seemed a lot newer and was certainly better laid out than the other parks. The weather was just as hot as on the other days, but there was a lot more shade and water sprays around which kept us going.

That night, we have flights back to New York. Unfortunately, these were on different airlines, and Alicia and Kyan had a connection in DC. There were a
million reasons why that wouldn't have worked, but we actually landed at La Guardia airport about 4 minutes apart. It couldn't have worked out better. We got home very late and very tired, but it was a great weekend, and certainly worthwhile; even if the weather was so hot. We've done Disneyland in Hong Kong, Paris and Tokyo, and Disney Sea in Tokyo, each time without children. We could certainly get more done and have more fun for ourselves. A word of advice - Disneyland is not for kids. Leave them at home!

The funniest thing about the whole weekend is that I keep having to leave Kyan at home to fly off to work somewhere. This time was the same, except Alicia and Kyan came to meet me. Kyan probably thinks I work with Mickey Mouse now that he's seen me at 'work'. Some days, I think the same too!

Rove in New York City

2007-07-22T22:50:00.000-04:00

I headed into Times Square last night to watch Rove Live being taped. His guests were Adam Sandler, Kevin James and Ben Lee (and a few others). It was a fantastic show, and Rove was in totally top form. Unfortunately, Dave Hughes was still in Melbourne, but Pete Hellier came over and was great.

Unfortunately for Alicia, she was in Chicago for the weekend, so I gave my spare ticket to Sarah, a girl I know through work from the Melbourne office. We all had a fantastic time. It was amazing to actually get tickets. Only 49 people were allowed into the audience. Thanks heaps to Shaun and Lesleigh for the heads-up to get tickets.

What was unusual though, was the realisation that I'm slowly (or quickly) becoming American. A number of jokes they did were obviously based on current events in Australia; not so much the events themselves but the commentary and public perception around them. When they did those jokes, I didn't quite get it, and neither did most of the audience, who were comprised of Aussie expats. I guess that when you lose the perspective of current events, the jokes about them become less funny. What was the most interesting about that was that before the show, they obviously anticipated that so in the warm-up, they said "if you don't get the joke and it sounds like it's probably funny, laugh anyway." Interesting words of advice which I can take into my life beyond TV celebrity.

Daddy Day - Summer edition

2007-07-21T17:34:00.000-04:00

Alicia's out of town doing a scrapbooking thing again, so it's Daddy Day version 2. This time, it's the summer edition. Last time Kyan and I went to a very frozen Central Park (-10C in the park wasn't much fun). This time, the weather was superb, so we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Central Park Zoo and the 4th Avenue Pub (his idea, not mine).

It was a lot of fun, and Kyan loved the zoo. We're members of the zoo, so we've been there a few times now.
He didn't go much on the Museum, but 4000 year old Egyptian treasures are entirely over-rated apparently. Luckily, thanks to work being a corporate member, we could get in for free, so no big loss there. Certainly something to go back to.

Tonight, I'm off to see Rove being taped in New York. I haven't seen it in a while, so it will be good to watch again. Just so long as Hughesy's there, it will all be good. Anyway, the show's on 9pm tomorrow (Sunday) night, so WATCH IT!!!! It was on Channel 10 last week (courtesy of the web), so I assume that's where you'll find it. With any luck, you'll find me in the audience!!!!

NYC gets a little steamy

2007-07-18T22:13:00.000-04:00

Some amazing news this evening. At 5:56pm, there was a huge steam explosion in Midtown Manhattan. For those of you who've come to visit, you'll know that I happen to work in Midtown on 42nd Street. In fact, it was about two blocks from the office. Thankfully, I was working in New Jersey today, so missed the drama. I've since spoken to people from the office who have incredible accounts of the amount of steam, rubble, noise and commotion in the area. It took Con Ed (the power company) about two hours to shut off the steam.

There was a massive plume of steam shooting into the sky. Apparently, people over 20 floors up had rubble hitting their windows. Public transport was completely thrown into chaos and traffic came to a virtual standstill.

So why steam? Apparently, there are a number of steam generation plants in Manhattan (and the outer Boroughs) which are used by businesses for heating, air conditioning (?) and cleaning. It is piped through the city under extremely high pressure. The pipe that burst was built in the 1920s. In a city as old as New York, things are bound to fail. Even the subway is over 100 years old. This place was bigger a century ago than Brisbane will be 100 years from now. Unfortunately, one person died and that number may increase through the night.

A very unusual day, and thankfully we've not been involved. Also, it looks as though commuting to Midtown tomorrow will be chaos. Luckily, I'm in New Jersey again tomorrow, so won't have to deal with it. The second photo is immediately out the front of our office.

New York is certainly a place with a lot going on. Since we moved here, we've had a plane crash into a building on the Upper East Side, the steam explosion today and the (very embryonic) plot to blow up the fuel store at JFK and its supply pipeline. Life here moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you miss it.

(Thanks to the New York Times for the photos I ripped off)

Update (also courtesy of NYT): The pipe that burst is part of an underground network that Consolidated Edison acquired in the mid-1950s, when it absorbed the old New York Steam Corporation, which started selling steam to Manhattan buildings in 1882. The steam company’s huge generating plants once powered elevators. But as electricity became more widely available the demand for steam power leveled off.

Now the steam is used to spin turbines that make electricity in Con Edison plants. After that, it is piped to about 1,800 customers in Manhattan, mainly large buildings. In most cases, the steam provides heating and, with the help of compressors, air-conditioning.

Excitement plus

2007-07-16T16:05:00.001-04:00

This morning, I signed the lease on a new apartment, which we'll be moving into in mid-September. This is very exciting for us, becuase it means we're out of the noisy, dirty part of town that we're in now and into the proper leafy, trendy part of Park Slope. It's all confirmed, the money's paid, and we're going to be official residents of a whole new (and far nicer) zip code, 11215.

We also spent the weekend in Florida going to Walt Disney World. There's a separate post coming on that one.

I've been travelling a bit since I got to the US, so I thought I'd put together a map of where I've been and what I've been doing. It should cover everything I've done to date, so I can hopefully keep it up to date. Anyway, here's the link

Enjoy.

Is this where I get a script for beer filled?

2007-07-06T19:40:00.000-04:00

This city just keeps on getting better.

Poor Kyan caught a cold so he's feeling a bit miserable at the moment. Being the great father that I am, I stopped by the pharmacy on the way home to get something that might make him feel a bit happier.

Then I made the discovery that has changed my life: you can buy beer at the pharmacy! The pharmacies over here are not so much a place where you get a script filled as a place where you can just about buy anything. The whole medicine thing is just a side business they're in to keep the customers coming through the front door. The one I went to tonight had two levels - the main floor where all the general merchandise is sold, and then you go down to the basement level to buy the medicines. Very much an afterthought.

I guess the best way to describe it is as a mini-Target store. By the way, even Targets have a chemist in them, so the distinction's not as clear as you'd think.

Unfortunately, in the ultimate twist of irony, they also sell cigarettes. Are these people trying to help the community or kill it? Maybe this is the definition of supply-induced demand.

At the end of the day, I didn't actually buy any beer. Just seeing a sign advertising that they sold beer was enough to keep me excited for today. Maybe I'll go in another time and actually buy some.

And yes, even with all that excitement, I still remembered to get something for Kyan's cold...

A word with two apostrophes?

2007-07-05T22:32:00.001-04:00

Back in the motherland, I used to know my grammar quite well. Having moved to the US, I have very quickly found myself unable to spell basic words, and quite often being completely misunderstood. Brace yourself, but you're in for an English lesson today.

The worst violation of English is the inexplicable and constant overuse of the letter Z. For starters, they call it 'zee' which is entirely unhelpful due mainly to the fact it's pronounced the same as C. When somebody spells something here with a C in it, sometimes if you substitute a Z, you'll probably find what you're actually looking for. Also, any words with the -ise suffix become -ize. I don't get it. But then there are words like compose, which are pronounced the same, but spelt with an S. I find myself constantly asking how to spell basic words. I probably look like a complete goose when I have to ask a Director how to spell a word like compose, but that comes with the territory. What's even worse is when your work comes back reviewed with basic spelling 'errors' that need fixing. Apparently there's something called US English. It's supposed to be a language, but it sounds like a cop-out to me.

There's worse to come. Americans, particularly in the south, abbreviate "you all" to y'all. It's roughly equivalent to the Australian "youse". The problem gets more complicated though. On a number of occasions, I've had the word y'all used when I'm the only one there. What do they mean by you all? There's only one of me, so who else are they talking about?

It gets even worse - brace yourself. The possessive form of y'all gets ugly. In the same way that you becomes your, y'all becomes y'all's. How on earth does a word actually come to have two apostrophes in it? One's a contraction, and the other's a possessive. Any 'language' that has a polyapostrophic word in it just doesn't qualify as a language as far as I'm concerned. The sooner they realise that, the sooner we can get rid of the letter Zee.

Two Words: In. Sane.

2007-07-03T16:35:00.000-04:00

I've started a new job for a client in Kenilworth, New Jersey, and work has given me a car to get there and back each day (how very nice of them). I've travelled there and back for two days now, and I've discovered that New York traffic is absolutely insane.

Driving back this afternoon, I came via the Holland Tunnel. The run through New Jersey was fantastic, but as soon as I hit Chinatown, all bets were off. There were cars driving in whatever lane they felt like; pedestrians walking across the flow of traffic; cars deciding that they were about to miss their street so blocking four lanes of traffic so they could turn across; three UPS vans double-parked and blocking a lane; the list goes on.

I've got a hire car at the moment, and now I know why any cars that live in the NY City area have all got dints on them. With traffic like this, it's inevitable.

I saw a pretty decent accident yesterday. A woman decided that she wasn't going to wait for the traffic to ease up for her to come out of a side street. So she just pulled out anyway. Because she squeezed through a gap in the cars coming in the other direction, she had absolutely no idea where the cars were. Sure enough, she cleaned up the front of her car, made a nice dint in the poor car that had right of way and decided that when she was done, she'd stop where the accident occurred and blocked off the road that she wasn't even supposed to be on.

The traffic in this town is insane. Good thing we don't have a car. I don't think we'll be getting one in a hurry.

Lots of visitors (must be summer)

2007-07-02T15:49:00.000-04:00

What a busy month it's been. Not only has work kept me busy, but the warmer weather has brought a train of people from out of the woodwork (aka Australia) to visit the Big Apple (aka New York).

Since the past blog, we had Shaun and Lesleigh grace us with their presence as part of their epic world tour. We did a few of the standard New York things (Statue of Liberty, Times Square), but also a couple of the more local things to show them how us locals do things here. Best of all, we did a Broadway show, and that show was Xanadu. Without a doubt, the best show I've ever been to. The music was fantastic, the venue was nice and intimate, and the show itself was an absolute blast. Alicia and I are dying to get back and see it. Another one to look out for is Young Frankenstein, the new Mel Brooks musical which opens in a couple of months. Xanadu totally deserves its own blog post, but there's been so much going on that I'll just have to mention it and move on. Best. Show. Ever.

After Shaun and Lesleigh, Lachlan from the Brisbane office came over for a couple of weeks. It was good to be able to show him around some of the sights of New York, and take him on a tour of the office. It was bizarre talking to Lachlan in the office; it was just like being back in Brisbane like last year, but this time, we were on the other side of the world. It sounds like Lachlan had a great time, but travelling with a couple of girls seemed to get on his nerves a little - he doesn't strike me as the shopping type.

When Lachlan headed off, Marcel and Belinda came up to visit from DC. As predicted, it was a fantastic weekend. We went to Jones Beach on Saturday. The sun we beautiful, the water was freezing (but great once you're in), and the sand was very prone to having a hole dug out of it. We went to a pub/restaurant on 5th Avenue for dinner, and then settled into the 4th Avenue Pub for a couple of nightcaps. On Sunday, we went to Governor's Island, which is in New York Harbor. It's a National Park, and a very historical part of New York. Everything was free, and there were hardly any people there, so it was a great day out.

In the middle of all our visitors, we've been doing other bits and pieces around town. Of particular interest was the Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Bisexual Pride
Parade in Manhattan. It was very interesting to see, very noisy, extremely colourful and had thousands of people in it. Kyan loved all the colours, and it was good to see so many people having a good time. The parade itself went from 53rd Street down to Greenwich Village. I'm not exactly sure how long that is, but it's a good number of kilometres.

All our visitors got back home in one piece, so that's always good news. The weather's now fantastic. Every day is lovely, although the humidity in Manhattan seems oppressive on some days, especially since the buildings block any breeze that comes through. The beach was great; the parks are great. It's a good time to come to New York.

So don't be a stranger. Be our next visitors to New York!

We're looking at moving late-September, early-October into a nicer part of Park Slope, so if you're a previous visitor, don't be afraid to come back!

Michael J comes up for air

2007-05-31T14:56:00.000-04:00

It's been a while now, and quite a few things have happened since I actually had a little time to keep my blog up to date. I'll give you the executive summary and then inanely ramble for a while.

Highlights
- Spent a weekend in DC with the family
- Went back to Brisbane for a week
- Finished work in Chicago
- Had David visit for a fortnight
- Worked in Dallas, Texas for a few weeks
- The weather's superb - what a difference!
- The Barry family becomes American

Weekend in DC
The weekend after almost being stuck in Chicago and flying to DC to spend some time with Marcel and Belinda, funnily enough, we had a planned weekend in DC with Marcel and Belinda. Except this time, the weather was great and the rest of the family could come too. Because Alicia hadn't been to DC before, we spent some time checking out the sights of the nation's capital. It was supposedly cherry blossom week, but we didn't see the promised cherry blossoms. I think we beat it by a few days, judging by the photos we saw in the papers the following week.

Back to Australia
In early April, we managed to get back home for a bit of time in "normal land". I only went for a week, but Alicia and Kyan managed to get almost two weeks. It was good to be back home, where the food was normal, the people were normal, things were, well, normal. I ducked into the office a couple of times and caught up with my old friends from work. They've moved buildings, and it looks like a pretty good layout. Best of all, everyone gets their own desk, so no more hotelling problems.

It was especially great to catch up with the family and spend some relaxing time at home. I kept waking up at 4 in the morning for the first few days (love jetlag) so spent a couple of early days drinking coffee and watching the World Cup Cricket. Mum's cooking was great (of course), as were the meat pies and Ice Breaks.

Back to Chicago
The day after I flew back to New York, I had to get on another plane and travel to Chicago to continue the work I had been doing there. I was pretty tired, but had nothing else that I needed to do that day, so I took my time getting to the airport. It takes a couple of hours to get to Chicago, so I was in no rush. Anyway, when I landed, I turned on my phone to find that I had a voicemail message. No surprise there. What I didn't expect was that the message was "Don't come to Chicago. We're having a quiet week."

Great. I'd just flown half way round the world and backed up for another flight to Chicago, just to be told not to. Oh well. As it turns out, the team was shrinking anyway, so I will ahve already done my last work on the job. It took most of the next day to figure out the new team structure (and that I wouldn't be part of it), so by the time I was trying to get back to New York, most of the flights had already gone or were full. That worked out pretty well, because it gave us the chance to have a farewell dinner with the team. I flew back the next morning and actually got to spend some quiet time back in New York.

Visit from Dave
Five days after I arrived back in New York from Australia, the rest of our family showed up, with an extra. David (my brother) came to visit us for a couple of weeks. Initially, it was looking like I'd be spending most of the trip in Chicago, but by finishing on that job, I was based in New York again. That was fantastic. I think Dave managed to get most things done that there are to do here, and even got me out and about seeing a few things I hadn't done yet. One of these was going to a baseball game. We managed to get $5 tickets to see the New York Mets. It was good to go to a game and see what things are like. The stadium wasn't too full, but there was a good crowd and a decent atmosphere (although the atmosphere was lacking oxygen up where we were sitting; they weren't cheap seats for nothing).

Because I was still working, we did quite a few of the things at night. This made for a tiring couple of weeks, but we certainly saw a lot. Alicia and Kyan looked after him during the day, and I looked after him at night. One of these trips was to Coyote Ugly, as in the original bar that the movie was about. It was certainly interesting, and another thing to cross off the list of things to see in New York. Unfortunately, all of us missed out on what seems to be Dave's favourite bit of the trip, his visit to Popeye's in Harlem. That's his story, and perhaps a good reason to start a blog. Very funny.

Down in Texas, y'all hear
After finishing with Chicago, I had a new job start in Dallas, Texas. Even better, this was a Finance Function Effectiveness review. Exactly the kind of work I moved to the US to do. Very long story short, the job went well and the boss was happy.

Anyway, Dallas is an interesting place. Compared to New York, it is very new, very clean and everything is very big. The cars are enormous. Every second person is driving something with an engine that would probably be useful in an aircraft carrier. Luckily, they've got the enormous roads and open spaces to cope. One of the coolest things in Texas is the food. In the couple of weeks we were there, we went to a huge range of different places. The best was probably a place called Texas de Brazil; a Brazilian-style barbecue restaurant. You have a disc, red on one side, green on the other, which you put next to you. When the green side's up, they keep bringing skewers of every kind of meat imaginable to you, carving off whatever you want. When the red side's up, they leave you alone. After a few rounds of meat, you're thankful for the red side, just to have a breather.

The most unusual food was called Chicken Fried Steak, and this is how it goes. First, they take a piece of steak and sear it in a pan, like a normal person would. Once it's nearly done, they take it out and crumb it in herbs and spices and bread; not completely normal, but not totally bizarre. Then they put it in a basket and deep-fry the lot of it. Yes, deep fried steak. The seasoning tastes a lot like Kentucky Fried Chicken, except there's steak in the middle. You wouldn't want to have it more than once every, say, lifetime for fear of an instant heart attack. Needless to say, it was an interesting experience.

Winter's over - bring it on!
We're finally out of all the coldness of winter. Amazingly, it coincided with Dave's visit. When he left Australia, it was 3 degrees C. When he arrived, it was 19, and varied between 15 and 28 for his whole trip. It hasn't gone backwards since, and has even warmed up a little. This weekend was a long weekend, for Memorial Day, so we headed out to Jones Beach on Long Island for some time in the sun. It was absolutely fantastic to get back out in the sun. We've actually had two winters in row, and no summer since early 2006 because we moved at the end of Australia's winter into the start of America's winter. Jones Beach was fantastic because they were having an airshow with a heap of US Air Force demonstrations. The best part was the Thunderbirds, an acrobatic group who did an outstanding performance. I've got some good shots, but they're classified.

The Barry family becomes American
No, we haven't become citizens, nor have we gotten Green Cards or anything like that. The exciting news is that we're about to grow by one. We're expecting a new addition to our little family, due on Christmas Day. The good news for the new bub is that they'll automatically gain US citizenship, so they'll be welcome here long after we're not. Alicia and I are very excited, and happy to be expecting again. Kyan is very cute; he's signing songs to the new baby. We had some scans done yesterday, and the little jellybean just wouldn't stay still. That's just what we need; another kid that won't stop for 10 seconds. Anyway, she looks healthy and happy. We can find out in about 10 weeks whether it's a boy or girl, but I'm pretty certain it's a girl this time.

So it's been a pretty busy time for the Barry family (+1). Now I'm up to date, so it should be a little easier to get back into the routine again. I might even be able to make them entertaining again, rather than an infinitely long diatribe about life in New York.

It doesn't rain, it... well, I don't know

2007-03-16T18:58:00.000-04:00

It's Friday, and usually that's great because I'm on my way back to New York to see my family. Well, it's not so simple this week. What a drama. Where do I start?

I was at the hotel last night having dinner when I got a call from one of the people on our project saying that the Partner on the job told everybody from the East Coast to get out of Chicago as soon as possible the next morning. He had heard that there was a snow storm approaching the whole North-East and there were likely to be problems flying home. I checked out the weather forecast and there was nothing major going on and I almost didn't do anything about it, but when the boss lets you see your family a day early, there's no point trying to convince him otherwise. So after dinner, I rang our corporate travel centre, and that's when the fun began.

The travel agent said that there had already been a bunch of cancelled flights (this is 12 hours in advance mind you), so there was absolutely no availability on flights to New York. I already had a 6:30pm confirmed flight, but he said I should get to the airport early in the morning just in case.

We (by we, I mean he) cancelled my flight and booked a different flight on United for 11:00am. That was a good move because it meant I had a confirmed seat to get back home. Just in case, I also had waitlisted reservations on two different American flights. Things were covered.

When I woke up this morning (otherwise known as "the smorning"), I jumped on the net to check whether my United flight would be on time or delayed. I didn't consider option three - cancelled. No problem - they had so many other flights I should be OK, so I checked out of the hotel and headed out to O'Hare airport. I returned the rental car with no problems and went to the United terminal. With United, you've got no choice but to check in yourself at the touch-screens. It told me that not only had my flight been cancelled, but there was absolutely nothing else available today. Would you like to check for tomorrow? Sure, why not? The best it could do was a stand-by ticket at 6:20 am. I asked the lady who was in charge of the machines and she told me to go to ticketing where a real person would help me out. After quarter of an hour of the line not moving, I knew that I was probably wasting my time. Even if I got served, having absolutely no status with United wasn't going to get me anywhere. I cut my losses and went to the American Airlines terminal.

When I got there, it turned out that all of the flights to La Guardia (New York's short and medium haul airport) were cancelled. Because of my Qantas status, I can check-in at the First Class counters. They're the same as the economy counters, but the queues are shorter and the staff are friendlier and happy to spend more time to help out. That's a good thing because I was in a bit of a pickle. Not only had all flights to La Guardia been cancelled, but they also had been to JFK (the international and long-haul airport) and there was a raft of cancellations and waitlisting for Newark (in New Jersey). Thinking outside the box, I asked whether they had anything to White Plains. White Plains is a bit of an obscure airport about 80km north of NYC. There's not too much that goes in an out of there, so I figured it was worth a shot.

Unfortunately, the next two flights were already on a waitlist, but I put my name down for them and got a confirmed seat on the 2pm flight. When you waitlist, your checked luggage goes on the waitlisted flight, so if you end up catching the later one, it's waiting for you at the other end. If you get the earlier one, it gets there early. The aircraft that go to White Plains are pretty small, so getting on the waitlist usually doesn't do you any favours. That was true for this flight. My bag left, but I was waiting. No problems. The next flight got cancelled, so there was just mine left after that. After hanging around the airport for about two and a half hours, they finally cancelled my flight too. It turns out that a plane had run off the end of the runway. I'd already booked a hire car to drive from White Plains, so I cancelled that and started again.

So I went to the counter and started thinking of other options to get home. I tried to fly to LGA (airport closed), JFK (no flights), Philadelphia (no flights), Boston (go home on the train, but flights were all full) and even Islip on Long Island (American doesn't fly there).

The lady even found a flight that went to some hick town in Carolina (she didn't even know whether it was North or South Carolina), but couldn't confirm the flight to New York. I gave that one a miss.

The only thing you could get to on the East Coast was Washington DC. So I made a couple of quick calls; one to Alicia to see if she wanted to meet in DC, and one to Marcel to see if he could put me up for a couple of days. It looked like DC was the only was I was going to be leaving Chicago this weekend, so I took it.

So now I've been at the airport for six and a half hours, and am likely to be here for another six. Because DC is the only thing open, the waitlist is bigger than the capacity of the plane itself, and my confirmed flight doesn't leave until after 8pm.

What a day. This just goes beyond anything I've ever seen. Every now and then, Sydney gets fogged in for a while, but this is huge. I'm sure I'll have a good impromptu holiday, but it's not exactly what I was planning!

Update: The entire East Coast has pretty much closed. The DC flight got cancelled, so now I'm flying to Norfolk, Virginia. It's the only flight on the entire East Coast of the USA, north of Florida, that I could get a confirmed seat on tonight. I've booked another hire car and have a 4 hour drive in ice and sleet ahead of me.

I've been ok all day, but right now, I'm just fed up.

Another update: They've just called for volunteers to get off the aircraft because it's been weight restricted. Great. I doubt I'll ever get there.

Final update: I made it. It was a long and tiring drive, but I got to DC in one piece. I didn't have my luggage, because that went to DC on one of the earlier flights. I went out to the airport this morning and I actually found my luggage. I was hoping to find it there, but after yesterday's disaster, anything could have happened. So now, I'm still not home, but I got somewhere to sleep and I have my luggage. If I ever have to go through that again, it will be too soon.

Yeah, that's what I said. EGG.

2007-03-13T22:43:00.000-04:00

There are some things that Americans do very well. Pizza, New York, steak, big cars, everything on demand. There are some things that Americans really don't do well. Hamburgers fall squarely into this category.

When we got here, we expected the usual mass-produced McDonald's-style hamburgers - you know, flavourless pickle-infested stuff. What I didn't expect was how badly one-off hamburgers are done here. Burger with the lot? Forget it. A lot of what?

I'll talk you through the hamburger process. Firstly, when you order a hamburger, you need to decide how you want it done (as in steak). I found out the hard way to just order it Medium. The first time I did this, I ordered Medium-Rare, just the same way I have my steak. Bad move. It came back half-cooked, oozing blood all through the bun; absolutely disgusting. Note to self - burgers are medium; always.

The second trick is that if you want it with chips, don't ask for it with chips. Ask for fries. Here, fries doesn't mean those thin, salt-coated things you get at McDonald's. Fried just means chips, as in they're fried. I made the mistake of ordering steak and chips at a restaurant. He asked "Are you sure?" Sure I'm sure. So out comes a plate with a nicely cooked steak and an emptied packet of chips on the plate next to it. Now I know why he asked if I was sure that I wanted chips with my steak. Note to self - chips don't go with steak. They come from packets in vending machines.

The third trick is forget beetroot. They don't even call it beetroot here; it's beet. Don't even bother asking for it. It's not worth the effort. There's one place in Manhattan that does beetroot on a burger, but that's an Australian restaurant, so it doesn't count. Note to self - beetroot belongs in an obscure part of a supermarket, not in a US burger place.

The final trick is to ask for egg on your burger. I've done this a few times now. What is completely normal in Australia is as foreign here as eating raw fish with long sticks. Every single time I ask for egg on my burger, they ask, "Are you sure?" or "Did you say egg?" Well of course I'm sure, and yeah, that's what I said: egg. I wouldn't have asked for it otherwise. They must thing I'm messing with their minds. The good thing about egg (unlike beetroot) is that everywhere has eggs, so if you push your point, they'll always be happy to oblige. Even better, having egg on a burger is such a "foreign delicacy" here, that you usually don't get charged for it because they don't have an "ADD EGG" button on their registers; that's what a good tip covers.

The locals are always fascinated when a burger comes out (usually served open-faced) with a giant fried egg sitting on top of it. They watch in morbid fascination to see if this guy who ordered egg with his burger is actually going to eat it. Hell yeah, I'm going to eat it. Watch me. And they usually do. I'm often asked, "Is that how they have it in England?" (anyone here that speaks English without an irritating American accent has to be from England of course). Sometimes they're genuinely interested to know how it adds to the flavour of the burger. Some even decide to try it some time. I'm sure they're humouring me for a better tip, but you never know, they might do themselves a favour.

Note to self - nothing beats a good old Aussie Burger with The Lot from a dodgy Fish and Chip shop.

Achtung! Sprechen sie Deutsch?

2007-03-06T21:01:00.000-05:00

And then there was Germany! I made it in one piece, having about three hours sleep on the plane. Business Class in Lufthansa was great, as was the A330 we flew on. If you have the need to burn a lot of cash and get to Germany, Lufthansa Business is the way to do it. They had lie-flat beds which were about 6 feet long, so space and comfort wasn't a problem. The service was excellent, and the food was great. I even slept so well (once I finally got to sleep), that I missed the breakfast service. I asked them if they wouldn't mind grabbing a bite for me (knowing I had a long day ahead), and they put on the whole show, just for me. I had a choice of what I wanted, and they specially served it for me. Sometimes, flying Economy just doesn't cut it. Had I done this trip in Economy with the notice and timeframes I had, I wouldn't have gotten through the day.

And what a day it was. I met the client people at the hotel we were staying at at 8am to go to the meeting site for a 9 o'clock start. Apparently, all the European Ministers of Defense were meeting at the hotel that day, so I went through a metal detector and my bags through an x-ray just to get into the hotel itself. The meeting itself started at 9am (3am New York time) and was still going after 7pm. I can't go into detail, but it's fair to say that I'm no clearer now as to why I was there than I was before I left Chicago.

When I got back to the hotel, exhausted, they'd already checked me in and taken my bags up to the room - fantastic. I met up with the client people who were staying at the same hotel and we found a place called Paulaner, which is the name of a beer brewed in Munich (or München as us locals call it). They brought out these enormous steins of beer, which would have easily been bigger than a litre each. I guess that when you ask for a really big beer in Germany, you get a really big beer!

The beer was great - who could have known that the Germans make good beer? Actually, as a side note, the beer all trip was fantastic; I hope to get back to that later. I ordered schnitzel (as you do), and out came the best schnitzel I'd ever had. Who could have known that the Germans do German food so well? After that, we called it a night. Tomorrow would be Saturday and we had a meeting teed up with at the site for Saturday afternoon to go through some things. Yuk.

To cut a long story short, the meeting got cancelled, but I only found out at about lunchtime, so there wasn't much opportunity to get out and do things. It didn't turn out too bad anyway, because I'd only slept about 10 hours in the last 50, so I had a great sleep. Once I knew my day was free, I jumped in the hire car and hit the road. My target was Cologne (Köln to the locals). I was still pretty tired though, so after about 100km, I had a look at my travel guide and settled on Bonn, which was closer.

Bonn used to be the capital of Western Germany and was where Mozart was born. It was quite a nice city, but I didn't venture too far. I parked the car, but didn't know what the name of the street was, or even the general direction in reference to the centre of the city. It was raining and quite cold, about 4 degrees, and very windy; not pleasant at all. I wandered around the middle of Bonn for a while, which was very pleasant and certainly very European, with the cobbled plaza blocked off to traffic. I made a mental note of which shops were where and which turns I made so I could get back to the car. Even if I found somebody who spoke English, I wouldn't have been able to ask them how to get back to it. After about an hour of wandering, the camera was getting wet (so was I), so I headed back in the direction I'd figured out. As it turns out, I was out by 90 degrees and only luckily picked it up because I looked down a side street and saw the same series of shops I had walked past earlier. Lucky I saw it, because I'd still be there looking for my car now if I hadn't.

Driving in Germany's every bit as good as anyone ever said it was. The roads are wide, open and easy to drive. Contrary to popular belief, there are sections of the autobahn with speed limits, but these are usually 130, and only in the areas where there are on- or off-ramps. Apart from that, all bets are off. There's no speed limit, so I was sitting on about 140. That seemed to be about the average speed of the slower lanes. In the left hand lanes (they drive on the other side to Australia), the speed's a lot higher. On plenty of occasions, I was cruising along and the faster cars would pass by at least another 60 kph. There are a few things the Germans do well. Two of those things are making fast cars and fast roads. It was incredible to see the traffic flowing so smoothly, both forwards and between lanes. All the drivers were quite courteous and very aware of the other cars around them. I've done some reading since, and apparently the German autobahn is no less safe than regular highways. Having seen how well they're built, I can understand why. I think we need the autobahn in Australia.

Saturday night was spent doing some work with a guy from the client. Believe it - working on Saturday night is no fun. We did some on Sunday as well. We managed to catch up for lunch on Sunday and he went back to finish some things he had going while I had a little time to check out Wiesbaden. I went for a bit of a drive and found a small village about 50km away and took a few photos. Germany is such a nice place, at least the bit I saw was. The people from the client site we were at were mainly expat Americans and Brits, some of whom had been there for a long time (like 15 years). They seemed to think that life in Wiesbaden was pretty nice. I can see how it would be.

We were due back at the client site on Monday, but due to a series of errors and misunderstandings, we didn't go. However, we didn't actually confirm this until about 1pm. In the meantime, I was sitting in the hotel room waiting for some direction on what we were supposed to be doing. Once I knew I had some free time, I decided I'd have another shot at Köln, except I wasnt' up for another 200km each way trip on the autobahn. You want a fast trip in Germany? I give you the ICE. The Inter City Express is one of the fastest trains in the world, hitting 300 kph on some sections of track. Fortunately for me, those sections of track were between Wiesbaden and Köln. I walked down to the station and finally found a ticket machine (all self-service), but it was all in German. There was a very helpful man who worked for Deutsche Bahn (the German rail company), but he didn't speak any English. I got to the machine 3 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave. All he could do was shake his head, point at the clock and point at the train. Something must have changed because all of a sudden he decided to start madly punching buttons on the machine which looked like a ticket to Köln. He motioned for me to pay for it (29.00 Euro), so I got out the Amex and put it in. It didn't seem to be doing anything, but after what seemed to be an eternity, it finally spat out a ticket. I then looked around to find that my new friend had disappeared. That wasn't good. So I got my ticket and receipt and ran to the train; it was right on departure time. As I got to the train, I found that my German friend had actually held the train for me. These trains are like the Japanese Shinkansen. They're never late, no matter what. Well, this one was late - for me. I jumped onto the closest carriage as the conductors' whistles were going and my friend was madly explaining something to me and pointing to the ticket. I'll never know what he said, but it seemed pretty important.

When I got to Köln, I went to the information booth and they explained that I had a return ticket back to Wiesbaden, and they even gave me a list of the times the trains left. Very handy. I wandered around for a while and had the chance to take some nice photos. The light wasn't very good, so I'm not entirely sure they'll turn out too well, but I tried. I also managed to convince the US team that I was wasting my time in Germany and should go back to Chicago a day early. From Köln, I changed my flights (or at least my great PA did) and I was set to head back 'home'.

The train ride back was uneventful, and we arrived back into Wiesbaden exactly on time at around 8pm. I had some Chinese for dinner and went back to the hotel. From there, it was a pretty easy matter of having a good sleep, checking out, filling up the car and getting back to Chicago. I managed that without too much drama. I ordered a hire car with GPS which was a godsend. What on earth did people do before satellite navigation? Oh yeah, memories of driving in Holland come flooding back now. That's another story, and totally pre-dates this blog.

I flew with American Airlines to Chicago (again in Business). They also had the lie-flat beds, although it didn't quite have the finesse that the Lufthansa flight did. Unfortunately, I'm kind of stuck with American because I get Qantas points which will come in handy some day. Also, it was a 767-300 which just wasn't quite as nice as the A330. It was a daytime flight, so we were over northern Canada for quite a while. Wow - there's a lot of snow and not a lot of people up that way. So, here I am in Chicago absolutely exhausted. I'll just have a feed and collapse in bed.

I'm dreading tomorrow - back to work. A long, crazy day, I'm sure.

Busy, busy, busy.

2007-03-02T23:14:00.000-05:00

I've been pulled into a new job with work at the moment. Again, it's in Chicago, and again, it's actually outside Chicago, which means a lot of traveling, and not much of actually seeing the US. It's a full-on job, with 12 hour days being pretty standard. Not only is it not in my area of expertise, it's not anything I've ever done before. That's good from the perspective of broadening my experience, but it would be nice to actually get in and do what I flew half way around the world to do. I'm assured that's coming.

One of the cool things about working in the Chicago area is the winter weather. It's by no means pleasant to be in, but they got some serious snow this year in exactly the same way that New York didn't. The first day I was on site (Monday), it snowed outside all day. It was pretty cool to be doing what we were doing, but at the same time feeling like we were on holidays in a chalet at some ski resort. That's my fantasy anyway, and I'm sticking to it. They had a meeting which hadn't been covered in Germany, so with 26 hours' notice, I was on a plane to Germany. This meant booking flights, getting back to the hotel in Lincolnshire, Illinois to check out, getting to the airport back to New York to get my passport and to repack for a week and a half trip and hit the airport. Things are pretty tight. I assume there's a really good reason I'm going, but the project team has been so frantic, I'm not actually sure why I'm going.

On the positive side though, company policy is to fly Business Class for all travel outside the US, Canada and Mexico, so Business Class it is. I'm flying Lufthansa to Frankfurt, landing at 6am. I have to meet up with the client in Wiesbaden at 8am, so I'm hoping things go according to schedule. If I'm delayed in any part of the trip, the wheels are going to fall off very quickly.

Gong He Fat Choi (新年好)

2007-03-01T20:57:00.000-05:00

Last weekend saw in the Chinese New Year. Actually, Chinese New Year itself was a week before, but the parade through Chinatown came a week later - don't know why. So we bundled ourselves up and popped on the D Train (Kyan's favourite) and headed into Chinatown. We saw parts of the festival, but there were too many people, and being New York, inconsiderate people, to see it properly. So we didn't get to see much of the parade, but there were plenty of festivities to keep us amused. At least, Alicia and I amused, Kyan slept through the whole lot.

The best thing about the Chinese is that they like things that go bang. So we got ourselves some big things that go bang! They launched streamers about three storeys into the air.

For lunch, we found a restaurant called the New Big Wang. Apparently, it's not just a name, but a condition of entry. Luckily, I passed and got us in for a feed which, as always in Chinatown, was tasty, plentiful and cheap. Chinatown's always good for a visit, especially so at this time of the year. Best of all, it's the quickest thing to get to in Manhattan from home, so I can see us going there a lot more. I think it's going to be disappointing when we move back to Brisbane to not have things like that anymore.

These people are normal (kind of).

2007-02-28T18:30:00.000-05:00

The night after doing Broadway, I was invited to have some drinks with a few people from work. People in New York actually do drink; they just do it at insane hours. His little drinks get together started at 11pm at a place called Village Underground. It was bizarre. Firstly, you had to give your name at the door and tell them which party you were with. If you weren't on the list, you didn't get in. Secondly, they're pretty serious about checking IDs here. I haven't been asked for ID yet in New York, and it's not something that's enforced emphatically either, possibly because I don't really look under 21 any more. The NY night scene seems a little different. I've got a New York ID card which they not only looked at, but inserted into some machine which read the barcode on the back to verify that it was legitimate and that I was over 21. You'd really have to have your act together if you were going to produce fake IDs here.

Finally, I found out later in the night that the guy whose birthday it was had to book a certain number of people to get in, which cost him about $250. He then had to guarantee that the group would spend another $250 on drinks. It was certainly a happening place, and when I left, there was a queue a mile long (not quite, but there were hundreds of people), but to spend that kind of money just to get people in seems a little crazy to me.

Long story short, there were a lot of people from work there, so it was my first opportunity to actually kick back and have a drink with these people. They're normal people as it turns out, just being American seems to be their only major problem. Once it got to about 12:30, I called it quits. The best thing about living in New York City is having the subway. The Village Underground practically on top of the D Line, and I was home in about 15 minutes.

I was speaking with the birthday boy a few days later, and he said they went until about 4am, and he passed out in the cab on the way home. Good luck to him; there are too many things to do in New York without doing that.

A bit of catching up

2007-02-26T20:53:00.000-05:00

I've been absolutely flat out with work and life in general lately, so I haven't really had time to update my blog, so I've got a few posts which will catch things up. I'll break them down into smaller bits, because there's a bit to get through!

Last Friday night, we were fortunate enough to get some tickets to The Producers, one of the plays on Broadway. They announced on Friday morning that the Broadway production is to close in mid-April after a 6 year run. I thought that it would be good to see it before it closed, especially with Tony Danza (from Who's The Boss) in the lead role. Luckily somebody from the office had previously offered, very generously, to give us a night off some time, so being in a tight squeeze for babysitting, I called in the offer. I'm sure I'll be able to return it some time soon.

We were able to get great tickets through work, about 9 rows back in the dead centre of the theatre. Even better than that, because I booked through one of the deals with work, I got them at about half price. When we got there, we were surprised how small the theatre was. Not that it was especially tiny or anything, it's just that we're used to seeing plays in QPAC where you can fit about 5000 people per performance. We didn't know anything about the show before it started, so whatever was to come would be a surprise.

We weren't disappointed. Of course, something which Mel Brooks had a part in was always going to be good. It was pretty cool having Tony Danza performing live in front of us, even if we missed the original cast which had Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane (who is now on another Broadway show, The Drowsy Chaperone). It was a fantastic night. These things come through Brisbane once in a while, but in New York, they're on every night - and every show. We're truly spoilt for choice; the only trick is looking after Kyan.

Once the show was over, we ducked back to Sarah's place to pick up our little man. Apparently, he had been very well behaved, which we were very pleased about. By the time we got out of there, it was getting close to midnight, so Kyan had a little screaming episode on the train home. It's entirely understandable because his little body couldn't stay awake any longer, but it's also very frustrating at the time having to talk sense into somebody who just wants to scream. When we got home, we popped him straight off to bed, which ended a great night out.

The sky giveth, and the sky taketh away

2007-02-15T15:18:00.000-05:00

We've now had the first decent snowfall of the season. Less than 24 hours after it hit, the sky is cloudless and a crystal-clear blue. Most of the snow has been expeditiously taken from the streets and sidewalks (read footpaths) and whisked off to some less populated destination. Perhaps Brisbane could do with a few thousand tonnes of snow for the Wivenhoe Dam.

The weather's still nice and cold outside, -6 with up to 50kph winds taking it down below -15. That can only mean one thing. Ice.

The footpaths are slippery beyond belief at the moment, so I've been advised to invest in a pair of galoshes. I finally know what the locals have. They're made out of rubber, look exactly like a shoe and just slip over your normal shoes. Why didn't I think of that? Next mission - figure out where to get them.

According to the weather commentators, this may well be the last winter storm to hit this season. It's been an incredibly tame one. The cold is brutal, but if there's no rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow or whatever else comes out of the sky, it's easy enough to cope with.

Off to work!

2007-02-14T10:58:00.000-05:00

This photo was taken this morning on my way to work. We got quite a bit of snow last night, so the whole area looks very nice and certainly very white. It was fun walking through the snow. Luckily, I don't have too far to go above ground.

Everything seemed a lot more peaceful this morning. Maybe because a lot of people are staying at home, or the schools are closed, or people don't want to drive with snow and ice all over the roads, or people tend not to hang around in the streets when it's this cold, or maybe the snow absorbs all the sound. Who knows? I hope we get a lot more snow to really get buried in. The forecast says we won't, but you never know your luck in a big city...

About time too!

2007-02-13T23:30:00.000-05:00

I finally came home from work in the snow.

I have nothing more to say. It's about time.

Boys' Day Out

2007-02-10T11:33:00.000-05:00

Alicia has taken off for the weekend, so Kyan and I have three days together. Yesterday, we thought we'd make the most of it, despite the cold. It was actually a pretty nice day. It was about -5, but with not much wind, so we thought we'd get out and about.

We stayed at home in the morning playing games, reading some books and watching a little bit of The Wiggles. It was fun to spend some time together.

We headed off to Chinatown for lunch; it's our newest discovery in New York. The food's great, and cheap, and it's only one subway stop away on the D Line. Kyan loves his rice, so he had plenty of it. He also shared my noodles while I enjoyed a Tsingtao; something I'll have to seek out, quite pleasant.

After that, we headed up to Central Park to have a bit of a look around. It was much quieter than the other times we've been there. We hadn't been in a while, mainly because the weather's not exactly as pleasant as it was when we got here in September. We ended up going to the lake where you can hire a rowboat in the warmer months. There wouldn't be much point now, unless those boats had wheels. The lake was totally frozen over. I read about it in the paper the other day, but to see the entire lake frozen was pretty impressive. I wanted to go walking on it, but I'm sure that wouldn't have been a good idea! On our way home, we went past a playground, and Kyan just had to have a play on the slides. So even though the playground was completely empty of people, we went and played on the slides. He had fun anyway, and burned off a bit of energy. Kyan slept for about 15 hours last night, so he must have been pretty tired at the end of all that.

So today (Saturday), we'll have a quiet day at home, playing with trains, reading the New York Times, and drinking coffee. It's a beautiful day outside; not a cloud in the sky and it's even forecast to get above zero this afternoon. We'll probably go out tomorrow; we just don't know what to do yet. We might just do something quiet like head up to the shops, or maybe something a bit more interesting, like go to a museum, or take the Staten Island Ferry and see 'the green lady.' Who knows? That's one of the best things about New York - you're never spoilt for choice.

Life - on hold

2007-02-06T07:55:00.000-05:00

So my blog is probably starting to sound like an endless series of weather reports now. It's not that cold weather's anything new, or even interesting. The thing that amazes me is that it's just so incredibly cold that it seriously puts life on hold, or at least slows it down a lot.

Last weekend, it got down below -20 with the windchill, so poor Kyan didn't even get to go outside. It's just too cold for his little baby body. I managed to take a run down to Home Depot (like Bunnings, but a fair bit bigger) to get a new shower head. That was exciting. I've done the trip before on the bus, but this week I took the subway so I didn't have to wait above ground.

Apart from that, I made a couple of quick trips to the shop over the road, and a longer trek to Key Foods, the supermarket about 400 metres away. That was to get the ingredients for pizza - yum.

We watched the Super Bowl (a game of American Football) while we had our pizza. The Super Bowl didn't hold much interest, but the commercials were great. Companies advertising during the SB spend millions on their ads and quite often never show them again. I can at least say I've watched the SB now. Tick that off the list.

There was a picture in today's Metro (free newspaper) of the main lake in Central Park completely frozen over. I might try to get up there on the weekend and take some photos. During the warmer months, there are people having wedding photos taken next to the lake, and people in row boats on it. If I can brave the elements, it should be a worthwhile photo.

We're in for another arctic front to come through, so no warmth for a while yet. It's probably why you can fly to London for $400 return at the moment!

When freezing is warm

2007-02-02T12:18:00.000-05:00

It certainly looks as though we're in the thick of winter now. We're all decked out in our new winter gear (still no snow shoes though), and life in a seriously cold environment is not anywhere near as harsh as we thought it would be. Except for a day here and there, the temperature hasn't gotten over zero for the past couple of weeks now. What's even worse, when it's zero outside, it actually feels warm!

It only feels cold when it's -15 outside, which is our best so far. It's funny how in Brisbane, you'd say it's 30 outside, but with 85% humidity to truly express how unpleasant the weather is. Well they have an equivalent here, and it's called windchill. When the wind picks up, even though it may be zero outside, the wind can take another 10 degrees off that pretty easily. Then there's something called RealFeel, which takes into account the wind, humidity, precipitation, sunlight and a bunch of other stuff to calculate how it really feels like to be in. For example, tonight, it's forecast to be -4, but because it will be windy with some snow flurries, it will feel like -13. Not great to be out in.

The worst to come will be on Monday. The minimum is forecast to be -15, with the RealFeel at -28. That qualifies as seriously cold in anybody's language. The forecast for that day is "Mostly cloudy, brisk and bitterly cold with a few flurries". Nice. By the way, flurries are a poor excuse for snow, kind of when the snow couldn't quite be bothered falling down. We haven't had a serious dump of snowfall yet, but it should be coming.

Well, the good news is that it's Groundhog Day today! Punxsutawny Phil the groundhog has predicted an early spring this year. We'll just have to wait and see how clever the groundhog is.

I'm sure this is bad karma

2007-01-27T13:52:00.000-05:00

We had a group function last night at the Museum of Modern Art. It's about 10 blocks north of the office, so we decided to walk up there. That sounds OK, except it was -15 outside, so we made it a very brisk walk indeed! There was also a fairly decent wind cutting down the streets, so it made it all the colder. Apparently, there was an Arctic front which came down in the past day or two. According to the weather reports, it's the coldest New York's been for three years. Anyway, I digress...

We had about 50 people at the event at MoMA (the museum) and we were broken into teams for a treasure hunt. Each team was given four questions relating to different pieces of art on display. This was the first hint that not everthing was above board.

Obviously, as soon as the teams were given their questions, there was a mad rush to get into the museum and find the pieces of art we were looking for. MoMA's 7 storeys tall with priceless pieces of art from artists like van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Cézanne, Matisse and Dali. According to Wikipedia, MoMA is "considered by many to have the best collection of modern Western masterpieces in the world, MoMA's holdings include more than 150,000 individual pieces in addition to approximately 22,000 films and 4 million film stills." Many pieces are worth millions of dollars each; and we ran past the lot of them!

We saw people admiring paintings, taking photos, making sketches, considering them from different angles and trying to determine their underlying meanings. If it wasn't a painting on our list, it might as well not be there at all. I was totally amazed at the collection of art on display. I don't follow art closely, but there were so many famous pieces I recognised, I was blown away. I'll probably go back quite soon to have a proper look through the museum.

In all, we spent about 15 minutes going through MoMA. The good news is that our team was the second one to take the completed answers back, but the first one to return it correctly comleted, so we won! It felt kind of bad that we spent so little time in a place which was obviously so amazing. Am I going to hell? If I go back and actually look at the exhibits next time, does that make it ok?

I've got a few bits and pieces which I need to put up on the blog, so stay tuned for the omnibus update!

Cranky baby

2006-12-17T19:35:00.000-05:00

We've been going out quite a bit lately. Most weekends we seem to see something new in Manhattan. Unfortunately, there's a trend for Kyan to go crazy every time we get on a train. It's getting frustrating to say the least, especially given the fact that he loves trains so much, and even asks persistently to go on the trains each weekend.

This might give you an idea of what we put up with.

He was so much sweeter before he learned how to talk!

Don't say the C-word

2006-12-16T16:31:00.000-05:00

As Christmas approaches, so do the holidays and the inevitable excitement of spending Christmas with friends and family.

Luckily for us, Marcel and Belinda have been able to get some time to come up from DC during the Christmas period. It will be good for all of us to share the Christmas spirit, even if that doesn't include having beer and prawns next to the pool. In the US, the beer's no good, the prawns are called shrimp, and the pools are probably frozen over by now. Either way, it will be great fun. It looks like there's not a snowflake's chance in hell (literally) that we'll have a white Christmas this year. The weather's been quite warm, relatively speaking, having only been below freezing about 6 days so far. Rain yes, snow no. Maybe next year, or the year after...

On the sad side, nobody wishes anybody a Merry Christmas here. It's a more generic Happy Holidays. If you thought political correctness was crazy in Australia, it's totally out of control here. You don't wish people Merry Christmas for fear that it will offend their Jewish or Muslim sensitivities. As a result, nobody gets a true Christmas. Even the advertisements on TV advertise holiday specials. It's almost like Christmas is an offensive word, not to be used under any circumstances.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that Christmas isn't even just around the corner. Maybe it's not; perhaps they celebrate Christmas in the middle of summer too, just like back home. That actually makes sense; around June I'll start spreading my Christmas cheer!

Regardless, we'll be having a great Christmas at home, so MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Two kinds of rain

2006-11-27T14:58:00.000-05:00

In my various ramblings over the past couple of months, I've had occasion to have a bit of a whine about the weather. In fact, we were unlucky enough on Thanksgiving Day that the weather outside was about 1 degree C, and windy and raining, so we didn't get to go to the parade. It really was miserable outside. The rest of the weekend was beautiful; still jacket and jeans weather, but nothing more. Well, it looks like that's finally over. The cold we've had so far was just a rehearsal. the real thing's on its way. There's a front coming from northern Canada, and it's a cold one.

The forecast for Friday in Brooklyn is around 32 F (0 degrees C), but as the cold front settles in, by Wednesday next week, we're expecting -3 C. Even worse, with the wind, rain and humidity, it will actually feel like -12 C. That should be fun.

I've now found out that there are two types of rain. The forecast predicts "Rain in the evening followed by rain and freezing rain late." What's freezing rain, and how is it different to normal rain? Does it come down in blocks? Do you need a helmet if you're out in it?

There's even mention of snow on its way. Not that I'll be able to ski to work or anything like that, but snow should be fun. I'll keep you up to date.

The three hour bargain!

2006-11-26T20:12:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving weekend's coming to a close, so the holiday season's officially underway. We've just had a four-day weekend, which really doesn't come often enough. I'm sure Alicia's covered the Thanksgiving goings-on in her blog, leishasblog.blogspot.com.

Today, we thought it would be good to get out for a while, so Alicia scanned the Entertainment Book and found something called Johnnyboy's in Queens, close to Flushing Meadows. We had a voucher for one free Texas Johnnyboy; didn't know what it was, but it was free so long as we bought another one. Being in the Entertainment Book, we knew it would be worth the trip. We also had a voucher for mini-golf in the same area, so it would be a good day out. The idea was that we catch the G Train and connect to the Q58 bus, and we're there; easy enough. So off we went and caught the G Train at Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, one which we've never been to before. It was only about 5 blocks from our place, but it took about half an hour to find the station. As it turns out, we actually didn't find the station, but we got on the train at the next station along the line. No drama - the G Train pulled up as soon as we got into the station.

We'd been on the train for about 15 minutes and things were looking good. Then the train stopped, the driver got out of his cab and told us that the train wasn't going any further. Fair enough, we'll just find a connecting train. So I looked at the map and figured the V Train will get us to the station we needed for the Q58 bus. We found the platform for the E and V Trains, and after three E Trains came and went, one of the MTA people kindly told us the V Train doesn't run on weekends (sounds like "the train doesn't stop at Bowen on Thursdays"). So we got the E Train to another station and connected to the R Train and finally got to the station we needed.

After walking around for about 10 minutes looking for the Q58 bus stop, we found it and things were looking better. Anyway, it showed up, we got on, and things were back on the original route, although our schedule had copped a hiding. We arrived at the intersection we needed and went in search of Johnnyboy's. We walked around for a while, but there were only light industrial shops (like glaziers, carpenters and the like) and a the back of a giant Home Depot (just like Bunnings, except bigger; of course). There was no way it was where it was supposed to be. The Home Depot was at the exact address, so we gave up and decided we'd have a look in Home Depot, and see if there was somewhere to get a feed. We went around the front of the store and found a semi-permanent hotdog stand. It turned out that was this was the Johnnyboy's we were looking for. We also discovered that a Texas Johnnyboy is a hotdog with cheese and onion.

By now it had taken us almost three hours to get to this place, and all we got for our troubles was a free hotdog. Even worse, because we'd spent so long getting there, we didn't have time to do the mini-golf we'd planned to do in the first place. We walked around Flushing Meadows for a while, had a look at the giant sphere of the earth (as seen in the opening credits of King Of Queens) and walked past the Arthur Ashe Stadium (where the US Open is held).

Rather than doing the reverse to get home, we went with what we knew and caught the 7 Train to Grand Central, connecting with the 4 Train, stopping just a couple of blocks from home. It took less than an hour.

So that's the story of my three hour free hotdog. It didn't taste very good either.

The etiquette of Excuse Me?

2006-11-13T22:29:00.001-05:00

OK, so New York's a big place, and every now and then you're going to get in somebody's way or cross paths, as you would in any city I guess. What I'm trying to figure out though, is the etiquette around running into people.

At home (meaning Brisbane, not my apartment ), the etiquette is to make eye contact, usually with a brief smile, and say a quick 'sorry' and be on your way. In NYC, it's a little different. You'll say 'excuse me' in a very flat tone and push on through. It's not the wording that I'm having trouble with (I do have a background in speaking English), but rather what they actually mean when they say excuse me.

Is it 'excuse me, I'm sorry for being in your way'? I really don't think so. That's far too polite.

Are they saying 'excuse me, I thought we'd have enough room to squeeze by, but I guess I was wrong.' Hmm, I don't really think so - see above.

Is it 'excuse me, but would you please get out of MY way. I'm very important and I can't have you wasting my time by being in front of me'? More likely, in fact this is the winner so far. New Yorkers are a funny bunch; very driven and extremely aware of their own importance.

Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Perhaps saying 'excuse me' is a warning that they'll just barge on through regardless of fault or likely injury; in much the same way a car horn doesn't say anything, but its meaning is clear enough.

I'll keep on trying to figure this one out. I do know that 'sorry' and a friendly glance doesn't have a place in New York.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

2006-11-06T11:33:00.000-05:00

It's been quite an uneventful week, but kind of eventful at the same time. As much as I want to go out ice skating again, the knee's still a bit too sore for that. It's usually pretty good, but when I hit it or go up or down stairs, it hurts. Hopefully by next week, I'll be fired up again.

On Tuesday night, we went to the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. It was a lot of fun to watch; there were floats and people dressed up as all kinds of spooky things. Kyan loved watching the people go by. Luckily, the weather was beautiful. It was around 63 (18 degrees C), so that seemed to bring the crowds out. Apparently there were 2 million people along the parade route, so we were lucky to get a good vantage point, although we walked for about half an hour to find it.

The next day, I was off to Chicago (again). Because it was an overnight trip this time, we got a hire car. More accurately, I got the hire car and the other guy just kicked back while I drove. No problems at all this time driving. It doesn't take long to get used to driving on the other side of the road. It's certainly not intuitive yet, but I'm getting there. On the morning of the second day, the car had totally died. While the AAA (=RACQ) was playing around with the car, I was standing around absolutely frozen solid. The actual temperature was 28 (-3C), but with the wind, the apparent temperature was 19 (-7C). To cut a long story short, I got another car and on my way to the client (about 10km), it started snowing. At first it kind of looked like raindrops that couldn't make up their mind if they were falling or rising with the wind. Once I got out of the car, it was pretty obviously that it was snow. It's not like the ground was white and people were in toboggans or anything like that, but apparently this was unseasonal for Chicago. I'm going back there tomorrow for a couple of days, but it's become warm again.

Yesterday, the New York Marathon was held, going through all five New York boroughs (Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Manhattan). It went straight past our place, so the street was completely blocked off, as was the entire 42 km route. It must have played havoc with traffic in Manhattan, because it certainly did in Brooklyn. It was great before any of the runners came through. It was the first time the place was actually quiet since we moved in. I've got a feeling it's going to be the last time before the marathon next year. There were 37,000 people participating. We were at about the 4 mile (of 26) mark, and the spread between the front runners and those at the back was about 5 hours. I can only assume some people are still going!

Ice Ice Baby

2006-10-29T22:26:00.000-05:00

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...

2006-10-24T22:58:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-22T21:48:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-10-08T22:37:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-10-05T16:23:00.000-04:00

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!

The home of capitalism, democracy and bad service

2006-09-24T21:00:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-21T03:55:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-16T19:35:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-09-13T09:55:00.000-04:00

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...

2006-09-08T09:29:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-09-03T22:29:00.000-04:00

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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.