Brolly season in the city

It's about 3 degrees centigrade outside and raining.

I just did my 15 block commute home from work.

I'm somewhat used to it now but the first time in the rain here was interesting.

You see there are plenty of people all commuting and living their lives on foot. Most have an umbrella.

With the rain here usually comes a gusty breeze that the streets, avenues and skyscrapers seem to funnel and make worse.

As a bloke you don't carry a hand bag (or man-bag?) to contain an umbrella. So when the heavens open out of the blue, you scurry inside, or to the nearest street vendor to purchase your $5 Chinese made brolly.

Now these things are utter crap. Probably cost 20c to make. Flimsy like you wouldn't believe possible.

Now the fun begins. You have to control this aerofoil you are holding over your head in the face of constantly changing winds. It's like catching a cricket ball. Soft hands. Anticipate.

A strong gust the wrong way will see your brolly turn inside out, or ripped and useless. And you undoubtedly look like and idiot out of towner who doesn't know how to handle a brolly in a storm.

So you've got the kite sail under control. The next obstacle is the sea of other umbrellas, all seemingly much bigger and more sturdy than your own. The street wars begin. When passing someone, who raises and who ducks? What about those 100cm women (4'11" in stupid units) whose sharp pointy brolly ends are at your eye level and don't seem to care? What about when the breeze is so strong that the you need to point the umbrella into it to stop it turning inside out and you cant see the guy coming the other way?

And when it's all over you see the streets and bins littered with the carcases of brollies that didn't make it. Probably were owned by other idiot foreigners who hadn't yet worked out the art of the brolly in the breeze.

Another important lesson is to watch out of the crazy cabbies who drive to close to the gutter and spray up a puddle when you least expect it.

All things you have to learn in your first storm in the city.

Vices and Virtues

Rambling personal introspective post alert...

So I've just finished work after midnight on a Sunday, having worked all week and all weekend.
The elevator wasn't working so I had to climb down 11 stories of fire stairs on a bad knee.

For some reason I'm thinking about intensity in my life.

I work every weekday with my best friend here. At the same desk. Within arms reach.
Despite working all day together he more often than not he invites me over to his place to eat and spend evenings together, along with his wife and dog.
Likewise weekends are usually spent riding, traveling, shopping, walking the dog, or watching the box together.

To say the relationship is intense is probably an understatement.
Not intense in a difficult way, it is in fact very easy. We don't seem to get sick of each other or bicker. Intense in the sense that we spend so much tome together. We know the details of each others lives. Can read each other very well. Very well aware of each other's character flaws. Not afraid to tell the other to pull his head in or HTFU. Influence each other very much. There is a whole other story to be written about that.

But I can't help but feel the enthusiasm. The inclusiveness. I love it, wouldn't have it any other way. It's like family. Except that you know that these people choose to have you in their life family often has no choice. It's one of the main reasons I'm in New York.

Now he is a pretty intense character too. He doesn't do things half-arsed.
He is completely devoted to his wife. Always in touch. Always looking after her.
He works very hard, and is pretty passionate about things at work.
He will sometimes cycle a couple of hundred kilometers (actually miles) on a single weekend.

I like to think I don't do things half-arsed either. I know I can be pretty extreme and intense about my various hobbies.

I look at some of my other friendships and I see similar patterns.
I have another mate who is so intense & enthusiastic about me that I wont embarrass myself by telling the details. He often tells me that he loves me.

Another good friend back in Aus has so much time for me despite working full time, studying part time, trying to catch a decent wave, trying to break limbs skating, wake boarding, scuba diving, making top beers, building crazy brewing robots, throwing parties, following his cousin on the pro surf tour, and looking after his beautiful girlfriend. I know some day we will live close together again and do great things together.

Mutual enthusiasm in all three cases.

All three of the above friends have seen me go through some of the low points of my life. I'm very open about my life and what I'm feeling and thinking. Privacy and saving face don't really enter into it at all. I like the advice and support.

As I sit here on the opposite side of the world to my home, with one leg straight so as to be comfortable due to my self inflicted knee injury, looking at photos of myself doing 90 MPH across various parts of California on a motorcycle (I'm still working on a post about that trip), I realize that I'm also not very risk adverse.

Sometimes I think you need to take risks, offer yourself up to the alter of rejection to form close & special relationships with people.

At this point in the story the propensity for intensity, enthusiasm, disregard for risk all seem like virtues.

My epiphany was that they may make me a bit of a monster when it comes to meeting new people.
I'm used to intense people, intense relationships, being very open and honest, and taking risks.

Traits that are vices or virtues?

If I meet someone and like them, the intensity that I may bring to bear could be very disconcerting.

If they don't reciprocate or need some time to warm to someone new, trust and open up, then how do I tend to perceive that given what I am used to?

Yes I have run into this issue recently. Apologies to the person involved.

The question is how to proceed? Accept our differences and move on to find someone who is enthusiastic and unguarded? Or try to curb my intensity and see what grows?

Aussie BBQ New York style

Last night was an impromptu BBQ on the roof of the apartment of our new Aussie friends, Mark and Jen.

Well Mark isn't Aussie, he is a pom who has spent 10 yeas in Oz, so we will give him a pass.

And they have only been in the city for about 6 months like me.

I guess we notice a difference between them and most of our native New York friends. They are relaxed and flexible enough that a last minute decision to have a BBQ at their place is fine. No need to plan 3 weeks in advance, get RSVPs, plan it all out to be "perfect". They are quick to see the humour in a lot of things and take the piss when they see the opportunity. Political correctness be damned.

They have a little dog called Fergus. And having Big Bad Bailey dog invade his living space was quite a big deal for him. There was lots of little power struggles and gnashing of teeth all night.

Anyway, the view both from the apartment and the roof was pretty amazing.
I didn't have a camera, so I'm stealing someone else's likeness.



It's interesting to sit on the couch and stare at the top of the Empire State and see the constant stream of flashes from cameras on the observation deck.

Mark did a top steak on the BBQ and nice leafy salad.

He works from home telecommuting to Oz, so I think we might start having Friday lunch at his place just to keep him company :)

Beer blogging: Magic Hat Roxy Rolles

Another Aus-US difference: the supermarkets carry decent beer in the US.

And all the breweries do seasonal beers. Nearly all for under $10 a six pack. I don't think they pay excise based on alcohol content like in Aus so even the heavy beers are the same price.

Tonight I went food shopping and spotted these:



Magic Hat "Roxy Rolles" Winter Hoppy Amber Ale. A bit early I guess, I was still in a T-shirt (16 degrees celcius outside). The shelves are still full of Octoberfest beers.

So the amber ale is pretty good, very rich, and good bit of complexity. Nice dark amber colour, almost red if I hold it up the light. A little malty on the nose, some caramel notes, some piney hops. Medium body, good hoppy bitter kick at first, but overall malty finish which balances it nicely.

Wouldn't hesitate to get this again.

LBI people

Mike sent around some pics of the LBI weekend. This one made me laugh.... queen bee "Bossy Aussie" in her element with her favourite boys all around...

California Trip

Morgan and Mikey are in town and I'm finally able to collect some photos...

So many great shots.
Here is a teaser:

Long Beach Island

Last weekend Robyn has organised a celebration for her team down in Long Beach Island at the house of another M5er.

As hangers on Tom, Andrew and I went down on the Saturday afternoon in a Zipcar. Andrew took his bike.

It's a couple of hours down through New Jersey, a mostly pretty ugly drive. Lots of industry and smog and 10 lane motorways.


View Larger Map

Once there the geography is pretty interesting. A very very long narrow island.


View Larger Map

The culture seemed a bit different to Aussie beach culture.

It was all very family holiday. But cashed up. No little beach shacks, but monstrous McMansions. Lots of jetskis and another big toys. Lots of quirkily named boutique shops.

But good to see lots of bikes (bicycles that is). Kids on big old beach cruisers.

Indeed we did a bar cruise on some beach cruisers after dark.

So a few beers at the local bars was interesting. Apparently the place pretty much shuts down over winter, and this was one of the last weekends of the "season", so most of the house owners were in town to pack up for the coming cold. So an older crowd.

There was Chowda Fest on that weekend, I have no idea why they don't just call it soup.



Cute overload... Robyn had fun with her dog and I quote "i dont have any photos from the weekend other than Bailey, Conor and landscapes - i need an intervention."

Physio

So a major part of my life at the moment is Physiotherapy or Physical Therapy as it is called here. 3 times a week, for about an hour and a half each time.

For those not aware of the back story, I had what seemed at the time like a minor spill off Robyn's mountain bike. It turns out that stepping of that bike at speed I did a good job on my left knee. Tore the meniscus and busted an ACL. I have since had surgery to correct the meniscus which is when the ACL deficiency was discovered.



Anyway back to the physio.
Anticipating it brings a mixture of dread and expectation.

Dread at the pain. My knee still doesn't straighten. There are chunks of busted cartilage in the joint it seems. So my lovely Polish therapist believes that the best approach is some deep tissue massage (ouch) followed by using all of his weight to try to brute force my knee straight.

It's funny because I kinda look forward to it. It does help it feel better afterwards.

But during, I just try to not make too may funny noises, not make any fingernail holes in the table and not break any teeth.

Sometimes I take a couple of Vicodin about half an hour before I go. It seems to go straight to my head and I feel like I float in on a bubble. But I'm not sure it actually makes any difference to that sort of pain.

At times while it is being brute forced it feels like there will be a massive pop and either my knee will free up or something else will break and I will be exploring a new sort of pain.

The people there assure me this is all normal, but I haven't seen anyone else cop any similar treatment or making funny noise due to pain... maybe I'm a wuss I don't know.

After the "fun" part it's just some simple stretches, 10 mins on the cycle, leg kicks, and ice.

My knee usually feels much more free at that point and I'm optimistic.

But then I need to try to sleep with it which is hard. The lack of regular exercise doesn't help. And in the morning it will be stiff and sore again.

Walking around on it means my ankle needs to bend a little more than usual, so that begins to give trouble too.

I'm learning what affect sleep deprivation and long term pain has on a bloke's psyche and physical health. Physically there has been cold sores, and a head & chest cold, just from a run down immune system I guess, and the foggy slow brain.

Then there is the, how shall we put it, less than stellar attitude & outlook on life at times.

Luckily I have a few positive influences here whose corrective forces range from "HTFU there Chopper" to "I understand what you are going through, relax, you'll be better soon, look at all this neat stuff we can go and do when you are better".

There is a quote on a plaque at a nearby church around here:
"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost"

Too true.

So what is it about?

If you are here you probably already know who I am. You are my target audience, not so much the internet random.

So here I am living in New York City with most of my family and friends living on the other side of the earth, or at the very least in another time zone.

Those here in the city understand that the lifestyle can be pretty hectic.

So the inevitable "Are you still alive?" emails arrive wanting to know where I am what I'm doing and why I haven't written.

A few hours writing emails to different people of the same stories, or worse, the less personal group emails... make you think there has to be a better way.

Brad suggested I start a blog of my travels and beers before I even arrived in New York.

Well finally it is happening, inspired by Jill's blog and a post that petty much has me obliged.

Having spent a bit of time with Jill I know her blog posts are well considered and she doesn't blog about every significant event that goes in her life. I can understand the reasons: to not clog up the intertubes with noise... you know small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds discuss ideas... that sort of thing, and also I think she considers her audience and self censors a little.

Well I have decided to take the opposite approach. I will be blogging about the simple things in life. The beers I sample, the food, the things I buy, the details of my existence here, the differences from my home country, the progress on my knee's recovery. Occasionally I may write something profound but don't expect it.

I know I should have stared this blog long ago. I have acclimatised quite a lot in the last 6 months and the US-Australian differences aren't as apparent anymore. Although I still do notice when I have to step over the puddle of piss from the homeless guy passed out in the street unlike most New Yorkers.

I also have to get myself a better camera. I think the answer is a decent phone with built in camera.

Which brings me to what is I guess is my first comment on Aus-US difference. Credit history matters much more here. I don't know how hard it is for an alien to get a phone in Aus, but here since I have no credit history in the US it is very difficult. I can't even get a credit card. Which means I have a crappy pre-paid phone.

Fall is arriving and I'm assured that there will be some awesome sights to see, so keeping some snaps for posterity would be good.

So what next? Well I still haven't sent out any photos or stories from the MMM (Morgan-Mikey-Matty) trip to Californina. Morgan and Mikey are in town this week which should mean I finally get a copy of all the photos. So I anticipate a big blog post about that soon. Stay tuned.