The weather is slowly warming up, and as the trees are slowly starting to bloom, the homeless of the city are slowly starting to emerge out of the subways and head back above ground. They come in all shapes, sizes, and odours, and never cease to be entertaining for all the wrong reasons. This guy was walking down the middle of Fifth Avenue during rush hour tonight, holding his pants up as he went, and completely unfazed by the traffic screaming past and honking at him. Summer is coming!

While heading home from work tonight along Central Park's southern border, I found a small crowd gathered round this old taxi. The first few people I asked had no idea what was going on - they were just there because other people were there hehe. Eventually I found out Lady Gaga is staying at a hotel here, and was soon to emerge en route to perform a concert nearby.

I don't carry my DSLR camera with me 24/7 but I'm starting to think maybe I should. Instead I had to resort to my iPhone and little point-and-shoot camera (seems I wasn't the only one), but neither work too well in low-light.

Before long the lady herself emerged, sporting a very long white wig and some sort of mask over her poker face, perhaps so you can't read it. She said a quick hello to the crowd, jumped in the cab, and was outta there. This was about as good as I could get with the point-and-shoot, but she's doing more shows over the next week so I'll take the DSLR along and stalk her again like the papa-paparazzi :)

These here are the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe where I am not going, but my wife is, tomorrow, for a week. As part of her job as a travel agent, Kristina visits these random destinations, stays in top-notch hotels, and pretty much just lives it up for free hehe. But that's cool, I'll just stay here, hold down the fort and all that.

Meanwhile, David Letterman, host of the infamous Late Show with David Letterman, has announced that after more than 30 years of doing late night he'll finally be calling it a day when his contract expires next year. It would be awesome to get tickets to his show but a) they're hard to get, and b) you need to correctly answer a few trivia questions over the phone about the show which admittedly I know very little about. So I likely won't be going here either.

Here we have an unfortunate example of New York at its not-so-finest. Sometime last summer while cycling home from work I encountered this guy walking along First Avenue, pulling his little case there, and crying out a constant barrage of some of the most offensive things you're likely to hear in public. It wasn't aimed at any one person in particular, more so just his apparent disdain for black people, prostitutes, and homosexuals. I was astounded, as was everybody within earshot! I came to a halt and then slowly cycled adjacent to him in the cycle path. We happened to pass two black security guards at one point and interestingly enough he said nothing around them. I wasn't paying any obvious attention to him but my presence was enough to rile him up hehe. "Why are you following me?!" "Why are you ranting and raving?" "It's a free country, I can do what I want!" "Well by that logic so can I, unless I'm black or gay I suppose." "I know who you are - you're CIA! Show me your credentials! You're not getting my files - just try it!" He then proceeded to inform several (white) people walking past that I was a CIA agent and I was trying to confiscate his 'files' hahaha! He eventually disappeared into an apartment building, still yelling and screaming, but now it was mostly about how the CIA is full of faggots.

Now fast forward to this afternoon. I had just set out for ride when guess who happened to walk by along First Avenue again. This time I had the camera on me. While walking past mothers pushing prams no less, he was at it again. Video here, and I quote, "Dirty niggers! Dirty whores! Me and Russia are gonna kill all of you! China is our partner. Dirty fucking niggers and whores, faggots, (inaudible - something about the KGB)."After I had stopped recording, he crossed First and headed into this place - the Church of Christ the Saviour hahaha! You couldn't make this stuff up! I had a quick look at their website, and although it makes no mention of black people etc, it does have a Russian translation. Anyway, New York City ladies and Gentlemen, and whores.

The whole city awoke this morning to a stench of smoke in the air. Late yesterday a large brush fire broke out in a forest about 90 miles south of us in New Jersey. The wind pushed the smoke into New York overnight and then died down. Good video of it here. *cough cough*

Last month I talked about March Madness - the start of the annual NCAA Men's Division I College Basketball Championship. I also mentioned I had entered a bracket and was first-equal at that point out of the 25-something entries in our pool. Well tonight was the final game of this year's tournament.

One of my gambles in my bracket was against Kristina's college team - the University of Kentucky Wildcats. I picked them to lose earlier in the tournament to last year's champions, but instead they made it all the way to the championship game (which Kristina took delight in rubbing in my face). They played the University of Connecticut, who I had also picked to bow out early. I was therefore rooting for Kentucky but in the end they came up short, and I finished 5th in my pool. Still, not bad for a foreigner to all of this ;)

The royals have arrived in New Zealand for the start of a three-week tour of New Zealand and Australia. Will, Kate and George landed in a typically-windy Wellington, giving Kate a Marilyn Monroe moment as she walked off the plane. She then got a good taste of New Zealand culture - probably a little more than she wanted ;)

74! Or 23 to those of us who use the more logical temperature scale :) It's finally starting to feel like spring here, and the lunchtime crowd was out in droves lapping it up, including me!

This is the view from my desk at work, up on the 37th floor facing west towards New Jersey. One sunny day not long after I started working here (almost two years ago now), I noticed this little white spec on the horizon. Zooming in with my camera showed it was a huge silo or tank or something. Me being the curious explorer type wanted to know where exactly it is, but my several attempts to locate it with Google Maps and Google Satellite had so far been futile.

Until earlier this week that is. I was on a conference call at work and staring out the window, and got the idea to find that big brown apartment building in the distance on Google Maps instead. Once I'd found that, I took a screen-grab of the zoomed-out map. I put a dot on my building, a dot on the apartment building, drew a straight line between the two, and extended it out into the distance. Now I'd narrowed my search down to just the area immediately surrounding this line, and before long, voila! Found the bastard!

Fast forward to today and I set out on the bike to go see it up close, because you know, why not. Getting there involved catching a train out to Newark, New Jersey's largest city by population and probably its ugliest. Here we have the usual collection of looneys loitering in front of the train station.

In 1996, Time Magazine ranked Newark "The most dangerous city in the nation". Times have changed somewhat but gun crime is still rife around here. In fact, barely a week goes by when I don't see something in the news regarding another shooting, usually gang related. Regardless, I had little choice but to pass through it.

If I had to sum it all up in a word, it would be: dump. Here's a local Newark supermarket. Charming.

I have no idea what a 'doobie' is (I thought it was a marijuana joint) but you can pick one up here for tenner.

Yup, just another beautiful day in the hood. I was the only white kid in town, that's for sure. And had the nicest car ;)

As is often the case, you cross a freeway or a train track or something, and everything goes from this...

...to this! I literally passed under a freeway and went from the ghetto to a normal-looking American neighbourhood.

And rather than kids loitering around in groups on street corners in Newark, looking suspicious and staring at me, here they were out playing sports hehe.

I was now in the little village of South Orange. Like so many little towns and villages I've passed through so far in Jersey, it's a really nice spot. Notice the hills in the distance.

Zach Braff (JD from Scrubs) grew up in South Orange. His 2004 movie, Garden State (New Jersey's official nickname), was filmed at various locations around here.

From South Orange I had to conquer those hills, of which this was one of them. It doesn't look as bad here as it does in person!

But conquer I did, and this is what was up the top. Now I can stare out the window at it and know exactly where it is hehe. It's the little things :)

Spring is definitely here at last, and Central Park is starting to bloom. The runners, skaters and bikers are out in full force again, and this afternoon I joined them but for once I was on two legs rather than two wheels. I was going to wait until May (which will mark six months until the New York City Marathon) but there's no time like the present as they say and so I did my first training run today. Nothing major - just a wee 2.5km (1.5-mile) jaunt around the lower loop of the park. I wasn't timing myself nor pushing myself, but rather getting the legs into running shape which is all I'll be doing for a good while before gradually increasing my distances over the summer.

This is what's making headlines today. In response to a complaint from a US Airways passenger via Twitter, the official US Airways Twitter feed responded like so.

That link, rather than going to a feedback form, linked to this image instead hahaha! I'm sure you can use your imagination, but if not, the uncensored image along with the full story is here. The tweet was eventually pulled down a whole hour later, but not before spreading like wildfire throughout Twitter hehe. Somebody's getting fired.

While most of America and beyond enjoyed a full lunar eclipse overnight, during which the moon turns a deep red colour (described as a blood moon), New York did not thanks to overcast skies. Every so often the moon peaked through a break in the clouds, but there wasn't much photography fodder on offer. Oh well, I'll try again for the next one in October.

It's just turned midnight, and as I write this it is absolutely pelting down with snow outside. Un-bloody-believable! It's even starting to settle on the ground. Just when we thought it was all over, one of the harshest winters on record, it's snowing and the temperature is back below freezing again. We're moving to Texas!

Good Friday today, and despite a good bike ride Kristina and I had planned, the weather was average to say the least so instead we opted for this - The Bronx Zoo. Staff of UBS, the client I work for, get free entry here but unbeknown to me that doesn't take effect until next month. At $65 for the two of us, we decided we can wait.

Instead we had a bit of a wander around The Bronx on the way back to the subway. Always a delightful adventure, in fact the whole borough is a bit of a zoo. On the right is the Christ Jesus Baptist Church (as opposed to the Jesus Christ Baptist Church?). I've seen nicer churches ;)

This is Flushing Meadows in Queens. I talked about it here when I checked it out during my first summer in New York (while the US Tennis Open was going on at the tennis center next door). With two weeks until the 40-mile Five Boro Bike Tour, we were out on the bikes again today getting Kristina's legs (and ass) ready for it.

Look, there's New Zealand up there. That's where this guy's from ;)

Today we headed right through Queens and out of New York City into Long Island, to a couple of peninsulas on the north of the island that jut out into Long Island Sound.

As always, once you leave the chaos of the city behind, this place gets real nice! I forget what area this is exactly but it felt like some remote village out in the sticks, miles away from New York. Don't get me wrong - I love the city, but it is nice to escape it once in a while.

There are a lot of hills around here though. I ride them (or do wheelies up them) while Kristina walks them :)

Got a spare $2 million floating around? Well you can get yourself something like this on Long Island or, for something not too dissimilar in size, less than half that price in Texas. And the weather is better.

30 miles later we were on a train heading back to the big smoke. She'll be snoring like a wild boar tonight.

Two weeks ago I recorded one of our local neighbourhood crazies, who walks down the street spouting generally offensive comments. Well here's another one of them, who we found rifling through the neighbour's garbage today.

He was certainly enjoying himself, even having a wee sing-song. "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, Zip-A-Dee-A. My oh my, wonderful day." I think he found a Walkman in there too. Video here. There's another crazy I see from time to time who hangs around Central Park and scares all the tourists by screaming gibberish at pigeons. I'll see if I can get him on camera - he's one of my personal favourites.

What do you suppose this business card might be for? Food? Moving company perhaps? I picked this up from a guy standing on the street corner outside my office today quietly calling out "Medical marijuana" to passersby hahaha! Interesting. What a shame we live east of First Avenue ;)

Before Kristina and I set off for Southeast Asia in 2011 (the start of a seven-month jaunt around the globe) I bought my first DSLR camera for the trip - a Canon Rebel T3 (1100D), Canon's cheapest entry-level DSLR. Over the course of those seven months the camera got pretty well beat up and broke down a couple times, but saw it through to the end. It finally crapped out completely about a year ago when it decided it was only going to work whenever it felt like it. While digging through old receipts recently (my mother always taught me to keep my receipts) I happened on the receipt for the camera and noticed I'd also purchased a three-year warranty with it, which I'd completely forgotten about! The warranty expires this August, and states that if the item cannot be repaired then it will be replaced with an equivalent item, free of charge. Well the T3 has since been superseded by the T5, so I turned up expecting to score one of them after the store confirmed mine was beyond repair. But alas, it appears they still had an old T3 kicking around out back so I've ended up with the same camera hehe.

Not long before the T3 crapped out I upgraded to a much better camera anyway - the 7D here. This guy wasn't cheap, and it was second-hand (albeit in virtually brand-new condition at the time) so I therefore have no warranty for it. I did think about selling the T3 but have decided to hang on to it and continue to beat it up, while my big guy here gets saved for more important occasions. In another three years I'll 'accidently' drop the T3 and see if they'll give me another one ;) Snap snap!

Push-alert on my phone today from a local news station. 16-year-old boy shot on a Brooklyn street in broad daylight, and meanwhile in the Bronx a 19-year-old girl was found stabbed to death. 'Twas just another day in the hood, yo.

Last week outside of my office I was handed a rather anonymous-looking business card for medical marijuana, and today I was handed this in Central Park. I had just finished a run (training for the marathon) and was stretching when a random black fella wandered up, mumbled something about "tail" (as in, you know, women), and handed me this card. The "Satisfaction guaranteed" I think says it all hehe.

As I write this it's cold, wet and horrible outside with flood warnings in effect for New York. But never mind, because this time next month Kristina and I will be here! May 31st marks our first wedding anniversary, and the following day marks my 32nd anniversary (of being born). To celebrate we're spending a week in the on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Specifically, Cancún (seen here) and Playa del Carmen further south. Kristina has already had an opportunity to work on her tan in Guadeloupe a few weeks ago with her work, but I'll be as white as those snow-white beaches.