The home of capitalism, democracy and bad service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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