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Monday, 16 December 2013 - Windows to the soul

 
These here are my wife's very dilated eyes after her routine eye exam this evening hahaha! I got a text message about 5pm from her telling me she could barely see a thing (including her phone) and can I please come escort her home. What's funnier is the eye doctor told her she'd be fine to cycle home as is! There's snow-turned-ice all over the roads, she's as blind as a bat, but no no she'll be just fine according to the doctor hehe. Stick to what you're good at, doc.
 

Wednesday, 18 December 2013 - No photos!

 
I've been working with UBS (Swiss investment bank) for 18 months now, and I work closely with a number of folk based in locations outside of New York. One such location is Stamford, Connecticut here - about 45 minutes by train from New York. I drove past the UBS office here with Kristina during our little Connecticut road trip last spring but was yet to visit it. Well today seemed like as good a day as any. So I get off the train and start snapping a few pics for posterity. The UBS office on the right. After taking that shot, a UBS security officer came charging out demanding to know why I was taking photos. I politely explained I hadn't been here before, I'm not from around these parts etc, and I like snow (hehe). I deliberately didn't mention I work for UBS. He then demanded to see the images I'd taken, and insisted I delete them! The conversation then went like so: "Why? I'm not trespassing, I'm standing in a public space (the sidewalk), what's the problem?" "We don't allow photography, it's against our policy." "Well I haven't signed your policy." "Sir, you have to delete those photos." "Did you run after the Google Street View car last time it went past too?" "Sir, delete the photos!" "I'm not deleting the photos. How bloody ridiculous." And with that I walked off, at which point he jumped on his little walky-talky to report this to whomever. Now I could've deleted them of course, but I'm nothing if not a man of principle. Anyway, I now had a problem because that was the front door and I needed to get in there hahaha! I instead called my manager and got her to sneak me in the side entrance.
 
 
And then I took this photo inside hahaha! Though I did wait until most people had left for the day. Until 2011, this was the UBS trading floor but it has since been relocated to my building in New York. The floor is now full of IT staff (like me). While in operation, this was the largest trading floor in the world. At 103,000 square feet (9,600 square metres) it's about the size of two football fields. Impressive stuff!
 
Incidentally, the train that runs between New York and Connecticut, Metro-North, is notorious for derailments and safety issues. The latest derailment happened over Thanksgiving weekend just recently after the driver had a brain melt and took this 30mph curve in the Bronx at 82mph, killing four and injuring dozens. No such issues today though ;)

Friday, 20 December 2013 - Apartment living

 
Stuck on the front door of our apartment building on my way out this morning. Good thing we live on the ground floor. I hope they're not referring to my cooking.
 

Saturday, 21 December 2013 - Christmas overload

 
 
This is the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, and this was about as close as I was willing to get to it (the other side of the street) - the crowds were manic. The illuminated display behind me calmed them down temporarily so I could get this shot.
 
I met Kristina after work and we wandered over to the Bryant Park Christmas markets. Manic. All we wanted to do was find a bite to eat and maybe a little something to drink. Not a chance.

 
 
We continued meandering north along Sixth Avenue, checking out the Christmas goodies along the way. Even the Grinch was out enjoying them (or hating them).

 
 
But even Sixth Avenue was manic hahaha! Out of shot the traffic was equally bad. The weather is unseasonably warm this weekend and it's brought everyone out in droves. It's a shame.
 
So we got the hell out of there and headed home via the relative solitude of Central Park. The most chaotic scene in there was a couple of foraging racoons.

Monday, 23 December 2013 - Trans-Siberian Orchestra

 
 
This here is the Prudential Center across the ditch in New Jersey, home of the NHL (ice hockey) team the New Jersey Devils but also a multi-purpose indoor arena.
 
Its concert capacity is 19,500 and tickets for we had come to see were all but completely sold out. As such, the best we could find were in the nose-bleed section. I'd love to hurl a tennis ball from here and see who it hits.
 
Anyway we were here to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, an American progressive rock band founded twenty years ago now in 1993.

 
 
TSO are best described as rock meets orchestra, mostly because the group actually features an orchestra :) This was their annual Christmas show, full of rock covers of classic Christmas tunes along with various other goodies. The whole performance features a pretty impressive light show, not recommended for those with epilepsy hehe.
 
I wonder what shampoo and conditioner they use.

 
Colourful stuff! I shot this video here of them in action, running around and waving their luscious locks everywhere, though there are plenty of others on YouTube.
 
And two and half hours later when it was all over, they set the stage on fire. ROCK'n'ROLL!

Wednesday, 25 December 2013 - Merry freezing Christmas!

 
 
 
Merry Christmas to us! Santa somehow broke in overnight, and even brought a package from New Zealand ;)
 
The usual gift opening ensued, including a flannel shirt from Kristina. This is the start of her attempt to prepare me for our eventual relocation to Texas hahaha! Hat, boots, and spurs to follow.
 
At -5 degrees Celsius outside, it was definitely a day to stay indoors but we did venture out to see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The preview looked questionable, but it was absolutely brilliant! I actually saw part of it being filmed right outside my office in Midtown Manhattan during last summer. Very cool :)

 
 
Then we made a complete mess of the kitchen to bake up some gingerbread men, hearts, and a dog poo. Kristina initially floated the idea of making a whole gingerbread house some days ago, but we settled on these instead. Maybe next year.

 
Big ham and roasted whatnot for dinner, and that was that for another year :)

Sunday, 29 December 2013 - Smart

 
Parallel parking - there's no avoiding it in this city! And often, any gap will do, regardless of whether your vehicle will actually fit in it. I regularly see people blatantly shoving other vehicles out of the way with their car to make room for themselves hahaha! I just noticed this little Smart car parking up - no such problem. If all else fails these little things just park facing into the curb hehe. Big city living :) Meanwhile, as you can see, the weather is miserable and once this clears it's forecast to stay below freezing into the new year. Northern city living :(
 

Monday, 30 December 2013 - I touched the ball!

 
 

This is a shot I took of Times Square in the summer of 2012 (my first in New York). And way up high in the distance there is the Times Square Ball. The ball is located atop the One Times Square building and is a prominent part of New Year's Eve celebrations in Time Square, colloquially known as the "ball drop". At 11:59pm EST every New Year's Eve (since 1907), the ball begins to descend 43 metres (141 feet) in 60 seconds down the specially designed pole you can see here, and resting at midnight to signal the start of the new year. The Times Square ball drop is one of the best-known New Year's celebrations internationally, with a million spectators packing Times Square to see it in person, and a billion more tuning in to watch it on TV and the Internet. Yup, at precisely one minute before midnight a billion people will stop what they're doing in order to watch a big ball slide down a pole.

 
And here's me standing next to it hahaha! Since 2009 the ball has sat on its pole throughout the year, except for the week leading up to New Year's when it is brought down and prepared for its big event. To make a long story short, Kristina and her workmates were invited to attended a "Ball Viewing Party" tonight, and yours truly made sure he was on the guest list too ;)

 
 
Looking east along 42nd Street from 25 storeys high atop One Times Square. Incidentally, the tower was originally built to serve as the headquarters of the local newspaper, The New York Times (which also gave its name to the area as a whole, i.e. Times Square). However, the Times stayed in the building for less than 10 years before it moved to a new building (which I've also been into).
 
This area is obscured behind the top-most Toshiba sign in my shot of the square above. The ball has gone through various incarnations since the initial version in 1907. The current version (the fifth) is an icosahedral geodesic sphere measuring 3.7 metres (12 feet) in diameter, containing 2,688 Waterford Crystal panels, and weighing in at over five tonnes!

 
 
The ball is lit by 32,256 LED lamps, capable of forming virtually any colour. She's a bloody impressive sight!
 
We don't really have any big plans for this year, so we'll likely join the billion other folk who'll be watching the ball descend this pole at 11:59 :)

Tuesday, 31 December 2013 - The ball has dropped

 
It's several degrees below freezing, a few snow flurries came through earlier, so really a good New Year's Eve to be spent indoors somewhere. Be that as it may, the usual one million folk crammed into Times Square to witness the ball drop at midnight (which we saw first-hand for ourselves last night :). I went in about 10pm to check out the action first hand, but the closet I could get was 15 blocks away. Kristina and I instead enjoyed a front row seat in front of the TV to witness it all hehe. So that was that for another year in the life. Happy New Year everybody!

Wednesday, 1 January 2014 - The Guggenheim

 
 
This is the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, or simply "The Guggenheim", plonked on Fifth Avenue. This is one of several attractions I get free access to throughout the city thanks to working for UBS. Goody.
 
The building's spiral rotunda is quite a sight, and is much harder to get a decent photo of than it looks! The museum was founded in 1939, and is "the permanent home of a renowned and continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year." Lovely.

 
This is one of several rooms that lead off from the rotunda, and right away Kristina and I could make little sense of what we were seeing. I got the impression the same went for everyone else. The dude on the left there was just staring at the wall; there was nothing on it!

 
 
 
Alrighty.
 
On the right is the description and explanation of this piece. What a load of nonsense.
 
And here's something I did at kindergarten. Someone's ripped me off!

 
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Art man, I don't get it. I'm too much of a logical thinker and not enough of an abstract one. Give me a problem and I'll solve it; methodically and logically. Give me a piece of art and expect me to find meaning or purpose in it - no chance.
 
I did like this though - a series of rods hanging from the ceiling in rows. Looked cool as you walked around it.
 
 
I often wonder how this stuff qualifies for display in such a famous museum.
 
Well whatever, this rotunda is awesome!

Thursday, 2 January 2014 - Logical

 
So yesterday I mentioned that I'm too much of a logical, methodical thinker to understand art, which requires a more abstract school of thought. Here's a good example. This is Kristina's old combination lock for which she'd completely forgotten the combination. She wants to start using it again, and so asked for my help. In my mind I figure these things are fairly cheap pieces of crap, and so can't be too difficult to pick. And sure enough, about thirty minutes later, I had her open (note to self: 7-33-7!). How did I do it? Well I used Google ;) This YouTube video explains the convoluted yet methodical (and logical based on the lock's inner workings) method of picking this type of lock. If I had more of an abstract artsy mind, I might have just painted a picture of it open instead, and smoked some weed.

Friday, 3 January 2014 - Hercules

 
 
It's a belated white Christmas as the northeast and Midwest regions of the US and parts of Canada are being hammered by yet another winter storm, this one named Hercules by the people who are paid to name storms. More info here and here. Left is a shot of my street, and centre is a shot of York Avenue at the end of my street. These were taken around midnight last night while the ambient air temperature was a balmy -11 degrees Celsius (about 12 degrees Fahrenheit), made worse by a brutal wind chill. I was wearing a thin pair of gloves so I could still work the camera, but within ten minutes my hands were in pain and falling snow-turned-ice was freezing my gloves to the camera hehe.

 
 
Rush hour this morning - completely dead. Any other day and this would be a scene of vehicular chaos. New York receieved around nine inches of snow overnight but other parts of the country had a much greater dumping. Schools are closed, flights are cancelled, public transport is a mess, cars are sliding off roads because people can't seem to drive here - usual stuff.
 
Meanwhile the temperature is set to plummet even further - potentially down to -22 Celsius (-8 F) in New York tonight and into tomorrow morning. To put that into perspective, the average residential freezer runs at about -18 Celsius (0 F), so we may as well turn it off to save electricity and leave the ice cream out on the front steps.

Saturday, 4 January 2014 - No veges!

 
The snow has stopped and the sky has cleared (in fact it was sunny today). However the temperatures are still frigid, and with the quantity of now-frozen snow on the roads authorities are advising to stay the hell off them. As such there doesn't look to have been any deliveries to our local supermarket. Most of the shelves had plenty of stock left but the fruit and veg section was mostly empty. Good to see folk are getting their five-plus a day ;)

Tuesday, 7 January 2014 - Am I too late for the garbage?

 
 
There are various pieces of news going round at the moment about records being broken or outright smashed by this extreme arctic cold snap that is punishing most of the country. Even down there in sunny Florida they're feeling a bit chilly. Up here in the north however our nipples have never been so erect. In New York today we managed a high of 8 degrees Fahrenheit (-13 Celsius), and I just got done riding my bike around town in it hahaha! It's not so bad once you've warmed up; bit cold on the face though. 8 degrees is still nothing compared to the Midwest states where they've been hit with wind chills as low as -60 F (-51 C). Ouch! Meanwhile no one's bothered to come and collect the garbage for days, and it's all starting to get a bit out of hand now.

Thursday, 9 January 2014 - The New York subway of old

 
 
The polar vortex that has been harassing us all week is slowing moving on, but regardless it's still frigid out there. Be that as it may, the city that doesn't sleep is still as busy as ever. Saturday's forecast is for rain, but with a high of... 10 degrees (Celsius)! Won't that be nice ;)
 
Now for something completely different. This here is an archive shot of the former City Hall subway station in Downtown Manhattan, probably shot in the very early 1900s shortly after the subway system as we know it today first opened. Notice the old subway car there is constructed primarily of wood. Safe as houses.

 
And this is City Hall station today. Absolutely gorgeous, almost resembling a mini Grand Central, but unfortunately closed to the public and no longer in use as of 1945. City Hall station opened in 1904, and was the original southern terminal station of the first line of the New York Subway, named the "Manhattan Main Line" (now part of the Lexington Avenue line, our closet since moving to Manhattan's Upper East Side last year). The station was designed to be the showpiece of the new subway with its unusually elegant architectural style, especially compared to most other stations which are nothing much to behold. In the decades following the line's construction, increased subway ridership led to longer trains, and therefore a need for longer platforms. City Hall station, built on this tight curve, would have been difficult to lengthen. Furthermore, the new, longer trains had centre doors in each car which were an unsafe distance from the platform edge given the tight curve. With that in mind, as well as the station's very low ridership and close proximity to the much busier Brooklyn Bridge station, the decision was made to permanently close it. The final day of service was December 31, 1945, and what's left is a bloody impressive but completely unused ghost station, one of about half a dozen or so in the subway's network.

So why am I talking about this? Well it's a nice change of topic from the weather for starters, but I happened to learn of this station just recently. Although the station itself is no longer in use, the track is still used as a turning loop for the Lexington Avenue line 6 trains, after leaving their terminus station (the aforementioned Brooklyn Bridge station) and preparing to head back uptown. Once upon a time you could do a tour of City Hall station but that's no longer the case for Joe Public. An alternative way to see it therefore is to simply remain on a 6 train at its terminus station (ignoring the automated message telling everyone to get out), and gawk out the window as it travels round the loop. So that's what I did today hehe. I met up with a friend for lunch and had nothing better to do afterwards (I'm not really working at the moment but that's another story which I'll talk about soon). The train doesn't stop here and it's mostly dark anyway so decent photos are virtually impossible (I had to steal these shots), but it was kinda cool nonetheless :) So there you go. Story over.

Friday, 10 January 2014 - "Bridgegate"

 
 
Here's another interesting insight into how pathetic US politics can be, although in fairness this instance is specific to just one state: our neighbour across the ditch, New Jersey. This is the George Washington Bridge (shot in summer obviously), spanning the Hudson River between northern New Jersey and northern Manhattan. It is the busiest motor vehicle bridge in the world and so traffic jams are frequent. In September last year, a four-day traffic jam was in fact deliberate.

The governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, was re-elected last November for a second term in office. Incidentally, you may hear his name a lot more in 2016 - he is likely to be a Republican presidential candidate for the next general election that year. The Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, a citythe little town at the Jersey terminus of the GWB, declined to publicly endorse Christie for re-election. Therefore, two months prior in September as part of some kind of stupid political payback against the mayor for his lack of support, members of Christie's administration conspired that two of the three lanes that lead to the GWB's upper level in Fort Lee be closed for an unannounced and indefinite "traffic study". That resulted in massive traffic jams in Fort Lee, bringing the whole town to a virtual stand-still for several days. Nobody could get anywhere, including emergency services, and the mayor's subsequent pleas for assistance fell on deaf ears. The lanes were re-opened four days later after New York's governor got involved. Speculation started immediately that the lane closures were an act of retaliation against Fort Lee's mayor, a claim that was vehemently denied by the Christie administration. However, emails, txt messages and other documents have since been picked up by the media proving that a deliberate act of retaliation is exactly what this was; most notably an email that simply read "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee".

The fallout from all of this has been swift, and the whole scandal (dubbed "Bridgegate") has suddenly became the epicentre of American political news. Deliberate intentions aside, the lane closures caused slower response times for emergency vehicles and may have therefore contributed to the death of at least one woman, and impeded the search for a missing child (who was subsequently found). Several members of Christie's staff have either resigned or been fired and face possible criminal prosecution, and Christie himself has embarked on an apology tour (starting with Fort Lee's mayor). Christie claims to have had no involvement with any of this, instead initially trusting his staff that it was indeed a traffic study of some kind, but as the governor the buck stops with him either way. There is currently a wide range of opinion about the impact of this scandal on Christie's potential presidential bid in 2016. Ridiculous stuff. More info here, and even a Wikipedia article about it all here (gotta love Wikipedia :)

Sunday, 12 January 2014 - The Book of Mormon

 
 
Happy birthday to my beautiful wife, and this was her surprise for the night - tickets to The Book of Mormon, by the creators of South Park.
 
The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre here on March 24, 2011.

 
 
The show is a religious satire, telling the story of two young Mormon missionaries sent to a remote village in northern Uganda where a brutal warlord is threatening the local population. Naïve and optimistic, the two missionaries try to share the Book of Mormon, one of their scriptures (which only one of them has bothered to read) but have trouble connecting with the locals who are more worried about war, famine, poverty, and AIDS than about religion. The shot on the right is an x-ray of the book shoved up the ass of one of the missionaries hehe. As the brainchild of the creators of South Park, outrage and controversy were a given, and The Book of Mormon didn't fail to deliver. It was brilliant! :)

And as if that wasn't entertaining enough, the usual round of late-night entertainment ensued during the subway ride home. Video here.

Wednesday, 15 January 2014 - "You hit me!"

 
The weather has been pretty lousy over the last the few days but it was finally a decent dry evening tonight. Time to stretch the legs! I was hooning around Manhattan on the bike as I do, but was stopped at a red light (the only cyclist in town who does) at this intersection of Broadway and West 62nd Street here in the Upper West Side near Columbus Circle and Central Park. I was heading north on Broadway in the direction of that bus in the background. An SUV passed in front of me heading west along 62nd before turning to head south on Broadway, same as the fire engine here. As he was doing so I suddenly heard a woman screaming and calling out "You hit me!" I raced over there to find her sprawled on the road some yards from the crossing (on which she had the right of way). The driver had got out and was apologizing profusely, claiming he simply didn't see her. At the same time some other chick turned up and was really ripping into him. "What do you mean you didn't see her?! What the hell is wrong with you?!" hehe. A cop on foot saw the commotion and calmed the situation down. After radioing for paramedics he asked for witnesses, to which angry lady said she was a passenger in the SUV hahaha! I thought she was just some random but I guess she was the driver's floozy. Fire and ambulance both turned up within a few minutes and whisked the victim off. She'd had a pretty good smack but seemed ok. Meanwhile the cop asked for my details as a witness before heading off to deal with the driver. I assume he'll get charged with something - you can't go round ploughing into pedestrians when they have the right of way. In fairness I do it all the time, but they don't have the right of way, so stuff 'em. In fact it's rare that this happens and the pedestrian involved wasn't blatantly jaywalking.
 

Friday, 17 January 2014 - Nine years!
Today is the ninth anniversary of my first leaving home (New Zealand) way back in 2005, and embarking on what continues to be the adventure of a lifetime! However, the end may finally be nigh.

This time last year my continued (legal) presence in the United States was contingent on the successful and ongoing renewal of my temporary work visa, which itself was contingent on my actually being employed by my (London-based) employer who was sponsoring the work visa, which itself was contingent on the ongoing renewal of our client contract with UBS (Swiss investment bank) in Midtown Manhattan hehe. Needless to say there were a lot of balls in the air, a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of possible and less-than-ideal outcomes.

Due to all of those balls and the constant threat of being kicked out of the country at a moment's notice, Kristina and I took the plunge a little earlier than intended and hastily tied the knot back in May. Doing so meant I was eligible for permanent residency in the US rather than living on egg shells from temporary visa to temporary visa. From that point on it was a fairly straight-forward process to make that happen, and I'm extremely happy to say those balls have all fallen into place rather nicely :) Furthermore, it's now virtually set in stone that I will in fact be here forever.

Our plan at this stage is to stay in New York for about another 18 months until summer 2015. We're then intending to pack up our life here and set out on a four-month road trip covering the bulk of the United States and bits of Canada before setting up camp in Austin, Texas, most likely permanently (yeehaw!). For nine years now I've been setting up 'camps' all over the world, always wondering where the final permanent camp would be. It looks like I may finally have an answer.

So unless something changes in the interim, it'll be business as usual in the Big Apple for Kristina and I until sometime next year, after which things will start to get interesting again (it's always risky business quitting your job and heading off into the sunset ;)

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