Excitement plus

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?

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?

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.

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)

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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)

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).

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

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

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!

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!

I finally came home from work in the snow.

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

Boys' Day Out

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

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

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

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!