Slip Slidin' Away

The weather has been a little more wintery in NYC this week. This makes a change from just having the biting cold to contend with.

On Tuesday there was an ice-storm warning in effect for New York. I've never experienced an ice-storm, and only have a vague understanding of the phenomenon from the Ang Lee movie of the same name. A little Internet research turned up the most amazing pictures. Luckily for us the storm never came.

But we did receive a reasonable snow fall instead, resulting in about 6-8 inches covering Manhattan.

In London this would have been enough to cripple the city for days on end, but in New York it hardly made any difference. Within a matter of hours the snow-ploughs had cleared the major streets, and busy little bees had cleared walkways along the pavements. Salt was deployed to make things a little easier to manage, and the snow was piled up at the sides of the road. People went about their business pretty much as per normal.

Walking in the snow was a little tricky. The temperature dropped back down to the customary -8C and patches of ice lurked in the shadows. I learned pretty quickly to avoid manhole covers and subway grates. The piles of snow at the kerbside were a little tough to negotiate, too, as no-one had the foresight to leave gaps for the pedestrians to cross the road.

The snow made New York look really pretty for a short while, but the pollution and dirt soon turned the scene into a dull grey-brown mess.

I'll tell you one thing: New York in the snow is no place for an Englishman's leather shoe.

Ch-ch-check it Out

American retail banks remain in the Dark Ages.

To move money from one institution to another requires you either to pay a ridiculous "wire transfer" fee both to send and receive the funds; or you can write a cheque.

To pay a utility bill, you have to write a cheque.

To pay your rent, you have to write a cheque.

To pay a cheque into your account requires you to endorse it on the back - because you can trivially sign over your cheque to someone else.

It amazes me that the concept of electronic transfer of funds is nearly non-existent over here. In fact, when you use your online bank account to pay a bill, quite often all they do is mail the recipient a cheque! Instead of investing in technology to provide this simple (and very useful) facility, they've invested in technology that allows them to scan every single cheque that is written and deposited, so that it can be displayed "electronically" via your online bank account - an almost entirely useless feature.

Oh, and they insist of calling them "checks".

America doesn't run on Dunkin', it runs on bureaucracy.

Red, Red Wine

We went to a wine tasting tonight. This was no ordinary wine tasting, mind you. This was a pinot noir special held in the upstairs room of a fancy TriBeCa restaurant called the Tribeca Grill.

We walked in to a room full of New Yorkers wandering around sniffing and slurping enthusiastically, there was a mountain of cheese in the middle, and 25 wines to taste.

Two regions of California, Oregon, Burgundy and "The Rest of the World" were represented by separate tables, and behind each was a designated pourer. We sidled in at the end of one of the tables and set to work.

25 wines in under an hour is a reasonable task, but we did our best. There wasn't much of a system to each table, and we had to muscle in with the rest of the throng to make sure we were represented, but we did well and sampled all of the wines on offer.

Not surprisingly the Burgundies came out on top, closely followed by the Oregonians. The rest came stumbling quite far behind in a bit of a rabble. Oddly, the Burgundy table was by far the least densely populated with slurpers.

I guess the New World, New World rules.

Land of Confusion

"Bus stop. No standing."

Less Than Zero

New York radio breakfast shows are obsessed with traffic and weather. From the moment the alarm trips it's a constant deluge of information about the various bridges and tunnels, and the current temperature in Central Park.

I grew up with Celsius. My parents were fond of Fahrenheit, but we principally conversed in the sensible 0 to 100 scale that the rest of the modern world has adopted.

Water freezes at zero and boils at 100C. That's straightforward at any time of day. 20C is comfortable. 30C is hot. Fahrenheit is an altogether different proposition. The numbers are all out of whack, and are hard to translate into a nice, round, metric scale. 32 and 212 anyone?

So, when the man in the radio tells me it's going to crawl up to 36F today, it takes a little while to realise what that means. Sure, there's a little more granularity with Fahrenheit, but that all gets swept under the carpet with terms such as "low" 40s and "high" 70s.

I'm having trouble adjusting to a scale based on the temperature of a bucket of ice water, and the body temperature of a cow.

Spice Up Your Life

Last night we went to the Brick Lane Curry House; a restaurant promising a full "East London" Indian food experience.

The restaurant is situated on E6th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue, a block in the East Village densely packed with Indian restaurants featuring facades and interiors of feeble-looking quality. The Brick Lane Curry House clearly stands out in terms of visual appeal. It looks clean and well presented, there isn't a hawker outside trying to pressgang you into a pakora, and you can also reserve online via OpenTable.

Not much like Brick Lane so far, then.

Once inside we were able to order traditional sounding curries from a laminated menu, drink draught Kingfisher and munch on popadoms until the food arrived. The service was friendly if a little inept, and the music definitely involved sitars. Ah! That's more like it.

The food was pretty good. Not amazing, but definitely worth knowing about.

One peculiarity of the place was the preponderance of London Underground posters and pictures of Big Ben. Another was the wicked strength phall sauce they challenge you to eat with the measly reward of a free beer.

But despite that, I think we'll be back at some point.

Pet Sounds

New Yorkers love their dogs.

This morning on the way to work I noticed a "doggie taxi". Being a curious person, I performed a quick Google and found that this taxi takes your pet to and from a "doggie daycare" centre. The day care centre sounds quite nice; they'll look after your hound all day, in the lap of luxury, all in exchange for a small wedge of cash. I'm not joking.

I also noticed a "doggie gym" a couple of weeks ago whilst poking around the West Village. This place allows your pooch to work out on treadmills, chew rubber rings and hang out in the sauna with other doggies; again all for the simple exchange of some greenbacks. And in true New York gym style, the most glamourous exercise equipment is proudly displayed in the window for all to see.

But in a true show of love for their animals, New York pet owners almost always carry a supply of small plastic bags around with them. This enables them to pick up the objects that appear from the blunt end of their furry companions on a daily basis. Whilst I whole-heartedly approve of the practice, I don't think there's any way I could bring myself to do it. Plastic bags aren't that thick, in most cases they seem to be transparent, and I'm a sensitive sort.

I guess it gets easier in the winter.

Cold As Ice

I'd always been told that New York got cold in the winter, but this year has been unseasonably warm and I thought I'd got away with it. For example it reached a heady 22C (72F for you Fahrenheit-philes) on January 5th and people were skipping round Manhattan in shorts. It's also been warm enough that the cherry trees in Brooklyn have already come out in bloom.

But that's all changed now. It's perishingly cold, and set to get colder.

Now I know it's not a patch on the crazy ice storms that have wreaked havoc across the rest of the country, and certainly not as serious as the weather system that has been ravaging Europe recently, but it is damned cold.

It was -7C (19F) on the way to work the other morning, and it snowed a little over the last few days.

What's more worrying is that people don't seem at all phased by it and are just take it in their stride. I'm guessing that means that it has the potential to get a lot colder.

I'm glad I've got a scarf.

Georgous George

I bought a quick dinner snack in a hole-in-the-wall Indian called The Pakistani Tea House this evening. New York isn't famous for its curry, but this place wasn't too bad. The naan was cooked in the tandoor in front of my eyes, and they had the decency to put the food from the big tray in the microwave before they gave it to me.

And for $6 it was damned tasty.

Amongst my change, I noticed one of the bills had a message stamped on it: "Track this bill at www.WheresGeorge.com". This jogged my memory about the website it mentioned - I'd read about it a couple of years ago. It allows users to track where US currency "travels" by relying on curious citizens going to the website and entering the relevant details.

So I did: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?key=0fd955b752c8d131f4eaee10a0253e16bf442c8f10e1ea82

It'll be interesting to see where it ends up.

It's Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)

There are a lot of radio stations in New York, and they cover the full gamut of tastes and styles. We've got NPR (which is much like Radio 4), jazz, classical, shock jock, dance and so on. You name it, we've probably got it.

But there's only one "Classic Rock" station.

Now, I like my classic rock, so I've spent a bit of time listening to Q104.3 as I trundle round the apartment.

It's generally good, and plays pretty much what you'd expect. The only downside is the rather narrow playlist. I realise that "classic" is a subjective term, but this station seems to want to redefine it.

It's got so predictable now, that we can often guess which artists they will play in the next hour; and sometimes even the song.

Where's XFM when I need it?

Polly Put The Kettle On

A kettle is a pretty important piece of equipment for an Englishman. For example it's integral to the tea ceremony; and can make cooking pasta just that little but quicker.

Americans have kettles, but they are most commonly the stove-top variety that take an age to boil and whistle ferociously when they're ready. The convenient electric variety aren't impossible to come by, but seem to represent about 10% of the available market.

I brought a kettle with me from the United Kingdom in the hopes that my meagre power transformer would be able to take the strain. After attempting to boil for about two seconds, the transformer packed up. So much for my physics degree, then.

So we bought a new one from Macy's today (the John Lewis of New York). It's shiney. It looks just like the last one. And above all, it's electric.

I'm celebrating with a nice cup of tea.

Electric Avenue

Having moved house in New York recently (which will be reported in all its gory details in another post) I needed to sign up for some utilities for the new property.

Cable, telephone and Internet had too many complicated permutations, so I opted to start with good old electricity.

After listening to some rather dull hold music for about 20 minutes, I was put through to a very helpful gentleman who set me up with my account. All pretty straightforward, but in true American style I was asked one particularly odd question: "Will anyone at the property be on critical life support systems that require electricity?".

I wonder what happened to all those poor souls wired up to machines during the great Northeast blackouts of 2003?

Selling England by the Pound

There are small pockets of England hidden away in New York City.

I came across a newsagent shop in Grand Central Station today that had a whole section under a proudly displayed "British" heading. Maxim, Loaded, Horse and Hound, The Telegraph; they were all there.

We passed a shop in Brooklyn yesterday that successfully marries two of Albion's finest culinary delights: curry and fish and chips. One half of the shop was decorated in classic chip shop style (chrome, newspaper, black and white tiling), the other half in flock wall-paper and tapestry curry house splendour. And to get one up on the Brits, they have a fish and chip delivery service. How civilised.

There is also a fantastic little shop in the West Village called Myers of Keswick. They specialise in importing British products. So I can pop along there to get my Walker's crisps, Weetabix, Oxo cubes and Robinson's Barley Water.

It's comforting to find these boltholes. I know that I can get my occasional fix of "home" when required.

Now all I need is somewhere where I can queue for ages to talk about the weather.

Going Underground

The New York subway is a remarkable piece of engineering. It was built about 100 years ago and seems to have benefitted from lessons learned during the construction of systems in other parts of the world. Most notably London.

Price. New York wins hands down with a paltry $2 to ride anywhere in the system. And it's a big system. London prices for Zone 1 are heading up to £4 in the New Year. Ouch. Although London does have the advantage of the Oyster Card which can be conveniently tied to your credit card for auto-top-ups, and caps the fare at one-day travelcard prices if you travel enough that day. New York definitely needs one of those.

Speed. Contrary to popular belief, London trains do occasionally hare around the network. Early in the morning and towards the extremes of the system, trains can get up to an impressive 60 m.p.h (allegedly). New York trains don't travel quite so fast between stations, but they do have the remarkably neat Express Line concept - tracks that run parallel to the Local lines, but skipping all the useless stations that you don't want to visit. This makes it a breeze to travel the length of the New York Island, you just have to remember to get off at the right place, or you'll end up a long way from your desintation.

Buskers. London Underground just recently made busking legal, and even then only in designated places, and according to a strict rosta and licencing requirement. The New York Subway swarms with buskers - and they seem particularly fond of 14th St Union Square station. We've seen midget Michael Jackson impersonators, tap dancers, 14 piece swing bands in black tie at 7am and the ever present Ubiquitous Peruvian Band. It all makes for an enternaining (if noisy) experience when you're trying to get from A to B.

Claustrophobia. New York Subway trains are pretty wide, they're very long, and don't run very far underground. London Underground trains are the complete opposite. New York does benefit from being sited on some pretty tough bedrock which means the tunnels don't have to be quite so deep, and it makes a tangible difference.

Cleanliness. Travelling in London recently reminded me how much I appreciated a system that didn't smell of wee, didn't have so much litter flapping around, and wasn't so generally run down.

Other observations.
The New York system runs 24 hours a day. That's pretty convenient.
London station turnstyles are cleverly set up to allow traffic in or out of that particular gate in one direction only. This seems to lead to a lot fewer fights and delays.
Rush hour in both locations is a deeply unpleasant experience.

Strange Fruit

Following years of procrastination I have finally hauled myself into 2004 and am now in possession of a corporate Blackberry.

It's a neat little device that allows me to remain smothered by the email asphyxia that grips my company, even when I'm not actually at my desk.

But, contrary to popular belief, it does appear to have its uses. I find it very helpful to be able to see my Outlook calendar as I hurry from meeting to meeting, floor to floor, and building to building.

It has a pokey little web browser that can come in handy when I absolutely must find out "who was in that movie", "where that little restaurant was", or other such trivia.

It's also pretty useful on the subway where I spend the mornings deleting the chaff that has arrived in my electronic post bag overnight. (The downside is that this has disrupted the age old routine of deleting them when I get to work, and now I find myself staring blankly at my screen wondering what to do for the first half hour of the day.)

And there's that crappy little Arkanoid-style game that is strangely addictive.

Addiction! That's the overall problem with the pesky little things. Previously I've enjoyed scoffing as I've sat in meetings with 75% of the attendees fiddling with their fruits - "that will never happen to me!" I secretly thought.

But now I find myself teetering on the brink of that precipice. It takes a great deal of willpower to keep the thing in my pocket and not give my thumbs a workout.

I can't really explain the phenomenon. It's either my prolifically short attention span, my low boredom threshold, or my love of gadgets.

Either way, it would be interesting to hear of the watershed lawsuit involving Blackberry induced RSI. It can't be very far away.

Give it Away

People have always assured me that food in Manhattan was much cheaper than the equivalent in London. Up until now I'd never really been able to verify this fact; but maybe that's more due to the sort of establishments I'd eaten in on typical weeks and weekends away to New York, than any lack of truth in the story.

Of course there are some ridiculously priced establishments. Take Masa for example. This is a very exclusive Japanese restaurant that charges upwards of $500 a skull for an omakase meal that will blow your mind (as well as your wallet), that is prepared in front of your by none other than Masa Takayama himself.

It's the most expensive restaurant in New York.

But the good news is that on the other end of the spectrum things do seem to be much more in the "pound for dollar" realm.

Dinner for two in a buzzy, interesting, local restaurant will normally involve a good bottle of wine and exciting food for around $100. What's not to love?

I could get used to this far too easily: I had to check myself tonight as I cursed that the sushi bento box I picked up cost a whopping $14. Four-teen dollars! Daylight robbery!

Oh, hang on... that's about £7... and I had picked up two trays...

I suppose this might go some way towards explaining the epidemic obesity problem on these shores.

Money, money, money

American money has always baffled me.

I never flattered myself to think that I was the only person to notice that all the bank notes look and feel the same, and this suspicion was confirmed when I spied the following article: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1207/p17s02-lign.html

Sometimes living in a litigious, politically correct, paranoid society has its benefits (apart from being generally humourous, that is).

I also have trouble with the coinage. For example, the 10c piece (or dime to those of us who are on the inside track) doesn't declare that it's worth 10c, you're just supposed to know. And I seem to accumulate much more schrapnel in my pocket than I did in Blighty. However, this might be a function of the sales tax which gets added to the price of the item in question only when you get to the till, generally leading to a distinctly un-round price. Gets me every time. Guaranteed.

And the gentleman on the $20 definitely needs a haircut.

Social Insecurity

One of the most important pieces of paper you can have in the United States is a Social Security number. Without a number, you practically don't exist: it's more difficult to get paid, you can't rent an apartment, you have some trouble opening a bank account.

Being issued with a number should be a simple matter of turning up at the local Social Security Office, taking a number and waiting in line, proving you have a right to work in the US and then waiting the standard two weeks for the documentation to be issued.

It should be that simple, but of course it's not.

I was advised to wait ten days after arriving in the country before applying, so that my visa entry details would have been sent from the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Social Security. Even in this electronic age it takes a while for the data to go down the pipe, it would seem. Apparently if you get the Social Security office before your details do, the two bodies talk to each other on paper instead, and the whole process can take up to three months!

So I waited the recommended amount of time before wandering along to the relevant building. I skillfully negotiated the airport style security, and found myself waiting in a room full of New York's finest misfits for an appointment at a window.

My number was duly called, I presented my form and passport details, and the lady wrote down all my information as the computer system was offline. She informed me that the process should take two weeks to complete.

I waited by the mail slot for the magic number to arrive.

After almost precisely two weeks, a rather dishevelled letter arrived informing me that my application couldn't be processed as the Agent had failed to take copies of my documents (or more likely hadn't entered them into the computer once it came back online).

Back to the Social Security office, then.

This time round I had a little more time to observe the scene, as my number was considerably higher that the one currently indicated on the Laser Display Screen.

I noticed:

• a sign banning firearms from the premises
• a sign banning the use of cell phones
• the security guard who had just told someone to turn off their cell phone looking around furtively and then covertly texting under his desk
• another sign indicating that it was an offense to kill, kidnap, injure, or abuse an Agent whilst they were attending to your enquiry

They processed my application. Again. And I guess I'll have to wait two weeks to see whether I will eventually exist on American soil.

Ashes to Ashes

I'm not sure what's more depressing: watching Shane Warne route England on the morning of the 5th day of the 2nd test, or the fact that I was watching it in the only bar in the whole of Manhattan that is showing the Ashes series.

And it's an Australian bar.

Still, it was a friendly place and people were happy to chat. The beer and bar menu were good, and I'm probably heading back to try and catch some more cricket later in the series.

C'mon England!

Our House

As part of my relocation package I am afforded a month's accommodation in a corporate apartment. This makes the transition a little easier as it means you have somewhere civilised to stay whilst you hunt for a real place to live.

It's a little like staying in a hotel, only without the mini-bar.

The apartment itself is actually surprisingly nice. It's located right on Union Square which is very well connected for the subway. This makes the commute pretty straightforward, and trips out to see apartments or to have a martini a breeze.

We're up on the 17th floor (although Brits should note that the equivalent would be the 16th floor back in Blighty - Americans like to have taller buildings and having the first floor actually on the ground floor seems to help in this regard). The view isn't that inspiring, but it's perfectly pleasant. We have a 24 hour doorman. We can do the laundry. What else could you ask for?

Well.

An apartment that isn't so damned hot. With the heating turned off the place is rather on the warm side, and even if you could open the window properly you'd be greeted by the continuous grind of the City instead.

The other mildly amusing part is that as it's a corporate apartment there are certain corporate aspects that I wasn't quite prepared for. Two corporate-logo emblazoned mugs in the kitchen? That's just fine, after all I need something to drink my crappy Lipton tea from.

But two bath-robes with the corporate logo on the breast? That takes it a little too far. I know I'm supposed to live and breathe the Wall Street thing - but pressing the company next to my flesh first thing in the morning and last thing at night? Hmmmmm...

Whatever next? Branded bedsheets?

Maybe I'll suggest that in my feedback questionnaire.