Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

It's been a wacky few days since my rather quiet evening in on Sunday night. Since then, I've a recieved a shiny new mastercard and have managed to activate my phone - although this involved a rather entertaining scene in which I did fearsome battle with the automated activation service. It would ask me to spell my name, which I would, and then it would proceed to say "please confirm that your first name is spelt Y - R - U - N - A - T". American voice recognition software really doesn't like English accents. There were torrential downpours in the city all day Monday which meant I did little other than pop into Uni to do some admin - which is always a lot of fun. The university seems to run on the basis that all admin is our responsibility whether we know about it or not, and they sure aren't going to make it easier by leting us know there's a really important form we need to fill in by Monday. No one ever really knows quite whats going on, but it does make it very easy to bond with other students - everyone has a Hunter admin nightmare story to tell. In the evening I was invited out by some other NSE students, and 6 of us headed down to the local bar where all the students drink, as it is well known for not ID-ing. It was relief to be out with people and drinking, which led to the usual one slightly too many. I have acquired a great new drinking partner in Jorge, a hilarious Puerto Rican student who was absolutely wasted after a few pints of Stella (being rather on the short side). The barkeeper finally kicked us out at half 3 and we headed back to halls to explore the basement, where there are some teaching rooms for the adjoining nursing facility. There were some interesting moments when we discovered the room where the prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs were stored - but of course being one of the older and more sober people there, I was very well behaved. Ahem.

Tuesday I awoke with the familiar headache headache - as ever, a small price to pay although this may have contributed to some of my struggles with the automated telephone system of doom. However, nothing could stop Ron and I trekking up to Times Square - Ron of course constantly mimicking the announcer on the subway in a fasion that would probably have resulted in his being assaulted on the tube - and attempting to pick up tickets for a show. We managed to get some very reasonably priced standing tickets, and so later that night we returned to the dizzying lights of Times Square to see:

It was amazing. Unbelievably hilariously ridiculously funny, as to be expected from any combination of Monty Python and Broadway show. I think the only song that didn't have me in fits was "You Won't Succeed On Broadway if You Don't Have Any Jews" and I'm guessing thats just because it's an American/New York/Broadway gag. My favourites included "He is Not Yet Dead", "The Song That Goes Like This", and "Run Away!" which included the lyric "We turn our asses as you part, In your direction we all fart!". Even "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" got a look in, but is never quite as funny when not sung from people on crucifixes. On a more personal note, I realised after just a few moments that King Arthur was played by none other than Harry Groener, Mayor Richard Wilkins of Buffy fame. Incidentally, his was the only believable accent in the entire thing, as the English, French and Scottish accents were possibly the worst I have ever heard, probably intentional and it certainly just added to the ridiculous effect. It definitely wasn't the film, but it was in fact rather hard at times to figure out what it actually was, other than very very silly. On top of all that, Times Square was amazing - I've attempted a photo or two, but my camera really doesn't like bright lights, poor thing. I went home a very happy bunny, and attempted an early night in preparation for today, the first day of classes.


Today has in fact been largely successful, Roshni and I making it to all our classes on time - we share three of the four we're taking this semester - and enjoying a rather long trip around town during the 4 hour gap between them. Gender in Modernism was first up at lunchtime, the professor was very friendly and just gave us a brief overview of the course, our reading lists and let us leave early. We then headed all the way downtown to visit Ground Zero, which was upsetting for a lot of reasons, and really clarified for me how angry I am with the way both America and Britain are being run at the moment. I have no idea what that means for me in practical terms, but it was something of a suprise at the time. To shake off any potential genuine opinions I might have forming, we moved on to Century 21, the most hilarious department store I've ever seen. The women's floor resembled T.K.Maxx as it might be in some kind of hellish 80s time warp. Even worse, everything there is designer label, and I think the women shopping for items well generally well over $500 were not too impressed by Roshni and I running around posing and taking photos of the worst of what was available. The basement was slightly more acceptable, and just to proove that I haven't been abducted by kidnappers cunningly using this blog as decoy, I've included a photo of me and a teapot mysteriously named after me. Its a very nice teapot, of course.



We walked back uptown trying to explore Soho and the Villiage, but somehow got rather lost and ended up eating huge slabs of pizza before rushing to catch the subway to our Pragmatism and American Lit class. I was particularly daunted by this one and at first the proffessor seemed pretty scary, lecturing us on lates and absences, but after a few minutes it was obvious that he was actually fairly nice, and certainly made an effort to explain what looks like a fairly complicated topic in a straightforward and understandable fashion. When I figure out what pragmatism is, I'll let you know - the furthest we got today was that it was a method of philosophy concerned with practice, actions, results and consequences. Hmm. The reading for everything looks pretty good, from 'Three Lives' by Gertrude Stein and 'The Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison to 'Mrs. Dalloway' by Virginia Woolf and 'The Sun Also Rises' by Ernest Hemmingway. On top of that, the bookshop for our courses has a very large resident cat, which partially made up for the price of the books I bought today. In any case, tomorrow is my earliest start so I'm going to attempt a little reading - Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'Circles' - before bed, and hopefully my brain will be functioning by the time I get to my class on advanced linguistics in the morning. I leave you with more dodgy night shots from my camera - the Chrysler building and the roof of Grand Central last night and the view of FDR drive and the East River from my room window.

A-B-C-1-2-3-X-Y-Z

It's the end of my first week in New York, and right now I'm feeling a little subdued about the whole experience - largely, I expect because I've been in my room with a headache for the last few hours, and there's no sign of anything exciting happening this evening. However, the last few days have not been wholly uneventful. Friday involved a considerably long and very enjoyable lie in and much pottering around until I headed downtown to Bleecker Street for a night out with Mehreen. She decided we’d explore Alphabet City - named after Avenues A, B, C and D, the only ones in the city to have single letter names - where she had previously not been out: apparently she had "done the meat packing district to death", which sounded a bit morbid to me. Unfortunately nether of us knew the area, and after a very enjoyable dinner and stroll through Washington Square Park, we hopped in cab and got totally lost trying to locate a bar a friend had recommended. After a considerable about of walking we found the B-Bar, which turned out to more of a restaurant than a bar - but I did get the pleasure of catching a Pipettes tune, which was an unexpected and very pleasant snippet of home.

After we were kicked out for not ordering food, Mehreen dragged me onwards to Schillers, a fairly cool if unbelievably loud bar on the Lower East Side. Mehreen seemed to think it had a very authentic American feel, but the number of English accents and the Aussie behind the bar left me unconvinced - apparently the food’s very good though. A few pints later, I'm prepared to be dragged to Libation, a rather posh looking bar/club/restaurant thing. As we got in free I didn't pick up on how expensive the place was until Mehreen offered to buy me a drink in an attempt to get me talking to people - a dirty vodka martini for $15. Given where we are, I guess it still isn’t that expensive, but I am a student after all. In any case, it was easily one of the most horrible things I've tasted, and that's after being forced to down vodka, gin and gummy bears at Boat Club events. In all honesty, I only wanted the thing so I could hold a martini glass, which I thought looked so cool that I held on to it for at least 10 minutes, taking sips until my stomach could finally bear it no more. Personally, I thought the place was nothing special, but it's becoming more and more obvious to me that unless I'm in the right setting with the right people, clubs are really pretty tedious.

The following morning was another late start, with only the vaguest twinges of a hangover, and we set out to have a quick look round the Union Square market. Mehreen got bored pretty quickly, and decided to head off up to Madison Square Park in search of bargains, and I wandered round the market, packed with organic fruit and veg. Not for the first time since arriving here, I felt a little cold to the whole experience, and what really should have been and fun and useful shopping trip quickly became stressful, and I decided to leave once I'd picked up some interesting looking zucchini (courgette) bread. The feeling quickly faded as I walked home, and I managed to pick up some really useful stuff on the walk back (as well as locate an amazing discount shoe shop). As I walked in, Emilie came by and offered to take me out to a local street fair - which was mostly random food, jewellery and souvenir stalls, with some interesting stuff and lots of free samples in between. I also had my first experience with bubble tea - cold tea with balls of tapioca in it - which is seriously weird. The rest of the day was spent hanging out with a few people from the floor, and ended with a viewing of Silence of the Lambs and a two-hour Mac repair job – I’m still not sure which was scarier.

This morning I was up at the crack of dawn - well, 8am anyway - for the first National Student Exchange event - a world yacht brunch cruise. Which would probably have been pretty good if it wasn't really wet and comparatively cold this morning. I was really hoping that all the NSE students would bond and be a reasonably close group, but it turns out there are over 100 of us across the city, which really makes it hard to meet everybody. Quite a few of us from the dorms did start chatting though, so with any luck that will certainly lead to at least a few people I can pester when I'm bored. There are certainly some interesting characters, and because it's a national exchange, some of the accents I've heard are incredible. Ron in particular, who is I think is from somewhere around Kentucky and sounds exactly like Forrest Gump, kept bursting into really inappropriate songs from musicals, which was so insanely over dramatic everyone on the table was in fits of laughter half the time and deeply embarrassed the rest. The views of the city and especially the Statue of Liberty, given that it was my first viewing, were pretty impressive, but going past Ground Zero seemed to dampen everyone's mood. Ron's estimation of the trip (expressed rather loudly in front of all the staff) was that while having the piano played moderately well while you ate reasonable food on a yacht was nice, it seemed like the kind of place people went when they were trying too hard to be classy. Maybe these American kids just expect a little much of their yacht trips, but I was inclined to agree. Off the yacht and undeterred by the rain, a bunch of us trooped up to Times Square in a half arsed effort to get matinee standing tickets for Spamalot, and failed miserably. By the time we finally got back to the dorms, everyone disbanded soggy and bedraggled, and the most exciting event since has been the false fire alarm, for which no less than 5 fire engine's arrived. It's nice to know they take it seriously, but it does seem a little extreme.

As previously advertised, I've cleaned up and taken some photos of the room. They're really bad, and I might try a few in the morning, but I suspect it's more to do with the camera than anything else. So, in no particular order, my bed:

My beautiful lamp of joy plus fridge and dresser - with mouthwash and water, rather than booze bottles:
Note the stylish use of feather boas and Mucha prints... my room's dead classy:
So that's my humble abode in all it's glory. There's another fairly decent shot of the view from my window but I can only get five pictures in a post so I'll put it up next time.

There's a song, there's a song, there's a song, it's in my head...

I've been a bit less busy the last couple of days, I think the fevered excitement of being in a new place is wearing off, and by this morning I felt totally exhausted. Yesterday I managed to meet up with Roshni, the other girl on exchange here from QM. She had arrived late on Tuesday to be faced with my worst fear - there was no room for her. She was given a temporary room, but had no way to contact me until the following morning. After many transatlantic phone calls and impressive amounts of admin, Roshni did get a room and everything looked a lot rosier.

Next we wandered down to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get some supplies. It's a pretty impressive store - a combination between Ikea, B&Q and Superdrug, stuffed with random home items that are all very tempting. I picked up some basics (cutlery and the like) but also got the most amazing floor lamp which I am already trying to figure out if I can ship home because I love it so much. Once I've found some functional batteries for my camera I'll put some shots of my room up - I spent a couple of hours today cleaning up and totally rearranging the furniture in the hope of improving my internet connection at my desk, which failed, but my room is a lot tidier. I also picked up a shiny black fridge today, which is amazing - the outside looks a bit battered, but the inside is brand new and works perfectly, and I can get plenty in - it even has an ice compartment which is much appreciated. I've stashed my new addiction in there - Vanilla flavoured organic Soy milk. Mmm. I have it in the mornings with (very expensive) apple & blueberry granola, which makes me feel better about the rubbish I eat the rest of the time.

Apart from shifting and tidying most of today was pretty quiet as I was so knackered, although some thrilling NY facts were learnt: T.K.Maxx is called T.J.Maxx out here, and to get from dorms to college, I take the 6 subway, which goes through Manhattan up Lexington Ave into the Bronx - famously ridden by the ever ridiculous J.Lo before she was famous, who called her first album 'On the 6'. If I ever write an album, I really hope I don't call it 'On the Piccadilly Line'.
At about 4 Emilie, my shiny new music friend, came by and we left for Brooklyn to catch Martha Wainwright, Joanna Newsom and Neko Case in concert. All went well as we queued outside, until a few spots of rain alerted us to the rather large and ominous looking black clouds approaching the decidedly outdoors venue. After some debate - apparently forecasts varied from severe downpours to possible showers - Emilie decided to go home, but as I'm a Londoner and a rower, a bit of rain seemed a poor reason to leave early, and I decided to stick it out. On my own. In Brooklyn. With no map, phone, or even watch to speak of. Wearing a vest top. I'm so cool.

After arriving at the place at 5pm, Martha kicked off just before 6 with a storming set as ever. It chucked it down during the entire thing, but the humidity and temperature are so high at the moment that it really wasn’t much of a problem, and after she finished, so did the rain. Joanna Newsom played a lot of tracks off her forthcoming album which were very long, several seeming well over 10 minutes. There were a couple off The Milk Eyed Mender which sounded good - it seemed to me that she'd toned down the strange childlike squeaky voice a little since the last time I saw her, and found it to be a bit of a relief. Her long new tracks were not crowd pleasers, and it was a bit odd to watch the audience getting increasingly fidgety - by this point we'd all been standing for around 3 hrs and I was very close to the stage so no hope of sitting down. Neko Case was in no way what I was expecting (possibly because I hadn't even bothered to find out what kind of stuff she did, just whizzed through a few New Pornographers tracks) and I did quite enjoy her take on the country kind of thing, which I will usually avoid at all costs. However, her set went on for what seemed an eternity once my back and feet were throbbing, and she came back for three encores, which seemed excessive. At 10:30 it was all over, and I managed to find my way back to the L station, get on a train going the right way, get off at the right stop, get a subway sandwich and walk 11 blocks home without consulting a map or asking directions. I'm very proud of myself, but - as I mused while checking out the Empire State on the way back - I need to stop buying Subways and find a proper late night deli.

Welcome to New York!

Well, after three days in the big city, I've finally got wireless internet up and running on the ol' laptop. True, it does only work at really random hours, and to get any reception I need to sit in the middle of the corridor, but it's still something. Anywho, welcome to my blog, which will hopefully be a fairly regular record of my activities out here for anyone who's interested. I'll try and get photos up once my camera starts co-operative, so you'll even get to see me doing moderately interesting stuff - hooked yet?

In any case, everything so far has gone reasonably smoothly. Despite all the extra security and panic with the airports, my flights went perfectly, even had window seats the whole way (and loads of airplane food which bizzarely I always enjoy) and found my luggage no problem. Once at JFK, I decided to economise a little and got the Supershuttle (like a crazy minibus packed with people) which worked out at about 1/2 to 1/3 of what the cab would have been, and luckily I was the first to get dropped off. Driving into the city was incredibly exciting, if somewhat sweaty - the humidity here is something else. Luckily, there was in fact a room waiting for me at the halls, despite threats to the contrary (and they haven't even demanded any money off me yet!) and it's a pretty decent size room, which I am about to hire a big fridge for. The only slightly odd feature is my bed, which is incredibly high for some unknown reason, I literally have to jump onto it.

For my first night in NY I was absolutely exhausted (having been up for a grand total of something like 38 hrs, my own fault) so rather than fart arse around with bedding and the like, I went and shouted at Mehreen from a rubbish payphone, flagged my first ever taxi (but only having to actually ask someone how to go about it) and went downtown to Bleeker Street. Mehreen's duplex is absolutely amazing, and we wandered round town eating pizza, looking for various bars and restaurants while my overwhelmed brain altogether shut down. Poor Mehrs - I slept like a log for 12 hrs, apparently snoring the whole time!

The last two days have been a mental blur of trying to find my way around town - mostly the area around where I live which is far south on the upper east side, and just north of the east village. Union Square and Madison Square Gardens are both just 12 minutes walk away as is Broadway, where I have already been shopping (only for bargain basement essentials of course). On Monday I spent most of the day trying to figure out where to get a phone from and sorting out my American bank account while getting hopelessly lost all over town and completely failing to find anything I actually needed - for some reason, it's really difficult to find clothes hangers here. Mostly my brain was overwhelmed by catching glimpses of the Empire State or Chrysler buildings, or by all the yellow taxis wizzing by, or by the sheer number of American people, they're all over the place! The grid network of the city and the wide streets mean that every time you cross a road, you can see literally across town, sometimes to the horizon, with huge skyscrapers on either side. The constant incredible views and perspective are amazing, but I do have to make sure not to keep stopping in the middle of the street, as I will undoubtedly be mowed down by a cab.

Today I walked to Union square, which is totally surrounded by shops, not least of all a few wholesale food shops - supermarkets here seem to sell absolutely everything apart from food which is pretty annoying. Everything seems to be some kind of snack in a packet, and it was a relief to find somewhere that actually sells fruit and salad at an almost affordable price, as food also seems to be incredibly expensive here. Unlike travel - I paid the equivalent of about £35 for a monthly subway pass, which should be very useful if I ever figure out how the subways work. I also went into college today, which is about an hours walk from the halls, but only about 15 mins on the subway (plus a 10 minute walk at one end), which was pretty daunting - Hunter has over 20,000 students, all of whom seemed to be attempting to get their ID cards at the same time as me. After I escaped the admin monster, I walked the three blocks over the Central Park, which has definitely been the highlight so far. I'm still pretty overwhelmed by the place, it's so huge and such an amazing place to be (despite being packed with insane runners), and this evening I watched the sun go down while a couple of guys were playing jazz on saxophone and double base on one side, and on the other a couple were practicing some amazing freestyle dance moves. There was some free opera on tonight, but by that point I was totally knackered and had to head back, but hopefully I'll catch it later in the week - Mehreen wants to go and watch some Shakespeare there too, which sounds like heaven.

Since then I've been home and had a salad dinner, and made my first potential friend as I sat in the corridor trying to get reception - Emily, who within five minutes had invited me to go and see Martha Wainwright and Joanna Newsom on Thursday night in Brooklyn, so unbelievably cool. I'm very excited - I've finally met someone, and they actually seem to have some damn good taste. We may even be going to the Guggenheim tomorrow to catch an exhibition. Well, for now I need to have a shower - this city makes you very mucky very fast, especially as it hasn't cooled down in some time now, although the humidity is just about bearable - and then get some sleep. Feeling generally rather euphoric and light headed, although it might be the really dodgy tasting pretzel I had in Central Park earlier...