June 2002 Archives

I don't do journals real well, especially not while traveling. I want to write so much so fast that it comes out as an illegible scrawl (even to me). I also forget a lot of stuff so if I ever put it in everything is out of order. Consiquently I've started just jotting down little notes about interesting or odd things I see as soon as I get time too. Kind of like haiku without the structure I suppose. A small sampling:

Tony's burger - Turkish, Brazillian, Mexican and Yugoslav employees. Black man at the counter says it's great to see everyone work together, hispanic woman chuckles. I think tony's a bookie. He owes to people it would be best not to owe to. The world cup has been tough. I love New york.

Sign that reads "Danger: rodentcide" could probably just read "Dumbass: don't eat cheese you find on the floor".

An old russian woman wheezes tunelessly on her harmonica, cup in outstretched hand. no one cares. maybe the city does make you hard.

I fly home tomorrow - at a fairly inconvenient time given the amount of time it takes to get to the airport and through the lines. leaves me with about 4 hours tomorrow, not really sure what I wan't to do with them. I'm not really sure what I want to do with today. I've seen everything I really wanted to see except the statue of liberty. Unfortunately only the grounds around the statue are open, and only to those people with no briefcases, coolers or backpacks. Yeah, because tourists never carry backpacks. I'll have to visit again when terrorism at prominent locations isn't still fresh on everyone's mind. The Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art were both closed for differing reasons, but I care less about seeing them. Looking on my little subway map about the only thing left to stop and check out might be the zoo or the Intrepid Air & Sea Museum. 6 Days is probably plenty of time to see Manhatten. Well, if you don't want to shop.

Travelling solo does have some advantages (just go and do whatever, whenever) and I probably could have handled it for the full 3 months, but I doubt it would have been as fun as I wanted it to be - and it does get lonely at times. And it would be a lot more fun going out to eat and whatnot with friends. I met plenty of nice people, but they're all still aquaintances rather than friends. It's harder for me to go and do things with just aquaintances. And given that I never planned on staying in any one area longer than I've stayed here I would have only known aquaintances for the whole trip. So good lessons all around. Yes, I can travel on my own and it's just fine, good in some ways, but in general I would prefer to travel with someone.

Time to go find lunch. Should probably hit the Hard Rock again, check out shirt sizes. Either I'm shrinking or they're cutting sizes larger. Given that I held the shirts up to similar sized shirts I already own and they were still monstrously huge, I'm going to guess that it's the cut.

On the way to the internet cafe a nice old woman wished me Merry Christmas. She also had lipstick applied down to her chin, but she was quite polite. Other observations:

• Jaywalking is mandatory. You WILL walk when the light says walk, and you WILL dodge between cars when traffic is only mildly slower. You'll do this or you'll be run over by the people behind you trying to do the same.
• While there is no higher percentage of really thin women here as compared to seattle, they all smoke. I'm guessing they figure traffic will kill them before smoking does, but it's still odd. Smoking isn't nearly as shunned here as on the west coast.
• Every other dog apparently must be a pug. I swear! In the park, a lab, a collie, a retriever and 4 pugs. It's probably a size of dog vs size of apartment thing.
• While the subways are clean and all, the express lines on long stretches can easily rival Space Mountain. Rumbling through darkness with trusses wizzing by; I have no idea how people can manage to read when you're thrown about like that.

And now a few pictures from the road. I had to drop them on my laptop and then bring them down here by floppy. $1.50 a floppy from the "Computers We Is" shop around the corner from my hotel. It was only $4 for a big box of them at CompUSA, but I didn't need a big box. Ah well.

A view from the empire state building towards downtown Manhatten. If you look (obviously at the larger version of the photo) you can just make out a stubby black building with an american flag on it's side. It's about 1/3 of the way from the right hand side of the edge of the picture. That building is standing next to the hole where the World Trade Center towers used to be. It's actually a brown building, just covered in black canvas while it's face is rebuilt. Also, if you look at the general skyline, the twin towers were easily twice as tall as any building visible in the picture, and those are some tall buildings.

I went down to see the hole (it basically just looks like a construction site now) and helped some people take some pictures. I instinctively said "smile" before snapping their pictures. I felt pretty bad about that for a while.

On a lighter note, within the observation deck of the empire state building there is no shortage of crappy merchandise. I so wanted one of these little guys, but at $16 a pop I figured I could find them cheaper on the street somewhere - or at least be able to haggle them to cheaper on the street. I've yet to see another one of them but I keep looking.

The Flatiron building. Yeah, that's about all there is to it, but it's still kind of cool. Subject of probably 1/3 of all of the street art I've seen (not counting post 9/11 tribute stuff).

Japanese Tourists! Actually the first I'd seen on the trip, many this particular group could not get enough of the brass bull (later they were taking pictures of themselves under the back end of the bull). I love the look on the guy's face holding the bulls horns. They were all really nice people though, a heck of a lot nicer than the smaller group from Generic Midwest State which came through a little later.

Woohoo, the set of the daily show. This is post show filming, which took all of the 30 minutes the show actually runs. I was in the audience for the Wednesday June 19th 2002 show, though you won't be able to hear me or anything. Sorry Moni, I know you wanted me to shout monkey, but given that they told us on no fewer then 6 seperate times not to shout anything that was more recognizable then general laughter or applause I didn't think I could get away with it. Center are the stage manager and her assistant. The guy playing the music for during the breaks was apparently quite stoned, but still spun a good mix.

Yay, I'm on the stage. I tried to get on the couch, they would have none of that though. More on the show; the warmup commedian was quite funny and Jon Stewart was great. A woman gave him cookies which he promised to eat ("of course I'll eat unwrapped food from people I don't know, hand them on over") but wer're pretty sure the interns finished them off before the show was over. Jon also prefers the Klondike bar to the Chipwich.

Stupid Gugenheim museum, closed while I'm here. I got a couple of nice shots of the outside though, kept picturing Will Smith chacing aliens up the side of the building though, maybe I'm wanting to see Men In Black II a little too much :)

Central Park, this is Turtle Pond, a little to the left of this picture is a stage for Shakespeare in the Park. All I can say is Seattle needs one of these. Huge buildings and lots of traffic just end and people can play and lay on the grass. It was really nice. I stopped for an hour on the way to the Natural History Museum and then another hour on the way back. My legs are still killing me from yesterday but it was nice to rest regardless.

I've got about 70 pictures so far. A few too many from some places and a few I wish I'd managed to get (none of the people I met in line at the daily show). Given the rate for internet access in my hotel ($0.30 per minute) vs the rate down at the empire state building ($5 an hour) I find it well worth the 5 minute subway ride.

Monday

When I landed in new york I kept looking around out the plane windows to see if I could spot the empire state building.  It took me about 10 minutes as we taxied and waited but I found it.  My first thought was "hmm, that's not so big" followed by "oh, wait, it's like 20 miles away, damn the WTC buildings must have been huge".  While waiting for a free bus out to the subway station from JFK I met a woman who had flown in from Hawaii directly and was on her way home to Croatia with a 5 hour layover in JFK.  She said it totaled about 37 hours on the road/in the air.  My 5 hours suddenly didn't seem so bad.

Other first impressions were that the subways aren't nearly as dirty as they're made out to be on TV (no drunks pissing themselves as they cling with all of their might to one of the hand poles).  Also the people aren't nearly as rude as they're supposed to be.  In fact I've yet to meet a surley or even ill tempered New Yorker.  Any time a woman came on the subway and there were no seats available at least one person would get up to offer their seat.  The very large weight lifter with scars all over his head and arms was more than happy to help me find the right connecting train.  And finally, there are germans EVERYWHERE here now.  Maybe they're not all german but they sure like to speak it.

Later that night...

The second impression I had was that NYC is more like star wars than star trek.  Bear with me on this one.  In Star Trek there is the universal translator (or whatever they call it) so everyone essentially just speaks english and it's easy for the viewer to understand.  In star wars Han Solo speaks english to Chewbacca and chewy grunts back at him.  Luke and Jabba each converse in their native tongue which the other (of course) speaks fluently.  Not counting the actual different languages spoken here (russian, chinese and spanish so far) there are tons of different accents which of course everyone else is able to understand without any effort.  I went to a little hole in the wall chinese place for dinner last night and had a hard enough time working through the waitresses accent just ordering dinner.  These two guys come in fresh from their central park fishing trip (catch and release, natch) conversing in a thick puerto rican accent and have a nice little chat with the waitress.  I can't tell what the hell is going on but they're all three having a grand old chat.  I'm not sure if this speaks more for them or less for me, though I imagine if you grow up with it it becomes second nature.

I also met the second of my three non-talkative roommates.  A korean fellow (no name) who also has a laptop with him.  woohoo - I'm not the only geek on the road.

Tuesday

I saw time square - which really isn't much to see - who's central attraction was a giant billboard with two phones sending instant messages back to eachother.  They were smart alleck phones who seemed to like to make fun of tourists mostly.  Stupid phones.  After about 20 minutes of trying to get to the observation deck of the Chrystler building (I swear it looked like the empire state building) I managed to find the real ESB and shot me a panorama.  I'd toss in a photo or two here but of course the net cafe doesn't have any smart media readers and I left the cable back at the hotel.

After lunch it's off to find the Flatiron building (that odd triangluar shaped one in lots of movies) and maybe head down to wall street to see if I can find the big brass bull.  Damn my feat are already burning.

Woohoo, scored me some tickets to The Daily Show (wednesday's taping). Well, they're "sort-of" tickets. My name is on "the list" and if I show up about an hour before the doors open I'm good to go, but if I wait until too late they'll probably just give my tickets away to someone who is waiting. So I'm going to be there an hour and half before :)

I just hope they have a Lewis Black segment on that day - or another month long presidential election coverage - either is good.

I came home today and the crows were screaming yet again. Man they hate Addie, they hate me more though. Any time we're outside, especially in the front yard they scream constantly at us. And today I found out why.

Cleaning up some fallen limbs from the mild wind storm today I grabbed one over by the base of a tall solitary pine and notice a wee black feathered lump huddled down by the base of the tree. It doesn't look hurt, and it's pretty small so I'm assuming it's a chick that doesn't yet know how to fly. Regardless I'm going to try and keep addie away from that area until it manages to get back home or whatever.

Much less inclined to grab the old air rifle to deal with the crows now though.

I'm thinking of taking a week or so trip to new york in a couple of weeks here. Meet me some nice mobsters, visit the site of a few horrible events, in general have a good ol time. Unfortunately, in my price range all of the hotels are shared bathroom accomodations - which isn't really so bad - and one of the hotels listed "kitchenets available upon request, though they are quite grimey" as a feature. *sigh* it was easier when I actually had paychecks comming in :)

Also been planning out the trip to vegas in august (first visit to defcon, woohoo). Shouldn't be too expensive (about $450 all total it looks like) and bringing the Baldridge boys with me should help bump up the winning potential at the craps tables - hey we may even pay for the whole trip :) Trying not to get too cocky about it, but they always win and I always win so it's kind of hard not to. 3 nights in the MGM grand, 3 days of conference and gambling, then return home to start work right away - a nice way to cap off a 3 month vacation :)

Got my Xbox conversion all done except for the video output. Waiting on a scan converter from ebay - it turns out that's much easier than trying to cram a different video card in there. Since I went this route it means my tiny motherboard didn't end up needing a pci slot - which means I could have gotten a smaller one which means I would have had a lot easier time cramming it all inside an Xbox case. But oh well. I've got pictures, will put them up in a little project area eventually here.