tigertail in new york

Pisces
You may begin the day feeling a bit hazy about what to do, where to go and possibly even how to go about it. So what you should do is simply slow down, write some lists and then just go down your list. Focussing on practical things helps dispel this sort of confusion. Try not to go down old roads of thought about things as that may make you quite sad. Start the new year with hope for the future. Have a happy and safe new years eve.

For me, and Kim and Jen and Siobhan..

Posted by Ness at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments

Even before I came to NYC, I loved reading the Overheard In New York website.

Recently, one of my submissions was published. I felt so proud. You can read it here.

But today I read another one that made me laugh - makes me proud to be a (newly arrived) New Yorker.

Posted by Ness at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments

Well, this year I finally made it to the event I've been hearing about for years - Santacon. Basically a large and boisterous pub crawl, it involves all the participants dressing up as Santa or other holiday related people, like Rudolph or elves or Mrs Claus, or in my brother's case, Hannukah Harry. On this day every year, my bro is like a minor celebrity, with almost all of the 800+ participants greeting him by name and wanting to have their photos taken with him.

We all travel via subway and walking to lots of different pubs and public places. Imagine being somewhere and suddenly being invaded by a massive crowd of santas, and you'll get the picture.

It was a hell of a lot of fun :^)

So here are a few pics, but there's a full album online too.



Currently in Florida for Xmas - really enjoying the warmer weather and the great hospitality, but will write more about that later..

Wishing everyone a very Happy Holiday Season!!

xxx

Posted by Ness at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today is my 3 month anniversary of arriving in New York.

Anniversaries are usually a time for reflection, celebration and present giving.. I'm going to do the reflection and, depending on how I'm feeling, some of the celebration, so feel free to do the present giving, either in electronic form, or if you prefer, by mail.. Just wait till I have a couple of hours to go to the post office to collect it..

I'm not feeling the best today - came down with a sore throat yesterday evening, and by this morning I was really under the weather. Had to call in sick to my internship, which I felt really bad about. Still better to try and get better today, then have to cancel a paid gig tomorrow or Friday. Except that tomorrow was cancelled today, and so I'll have tomorrow to get better too.

Steady work is still eluding me, although I know that some of this is due to the season. I did manage to get some freelance research work, which I can do from home, so I'm very lucky, but so far it's only a couple of days work and we'll see where it goes from there. It was the quickest interview I've ever had. She had asked me to come in after seeing my "fantastic resume", we chatted for about half an hour and then she offered me the work.

I've managed to cut my resume down to the regulation 1 page required here. That's right folks - one page. Forget putting all the things in there that show how diverse you are, forget a detailed work history, forget grandiose statements about what amazing skills and training you have - one page. And then in most cases you have to include it in the body of your email, so forget fancy formatting too.

But enough of (lack of) work, this was about my anniversary. I'm doing ok - have a nice place to live, great flatmates, some new friends, somewhere to spend Xmas with my wonderful brother and sister-in-law (or sister-in-fact.. whatever Dave) but I don't have the solid, real friendships I had back home. I know that this takes time, and that meeting as many wonderful friends as you guys back home isn't necessarily going to be easy. And I think about fabulous people I know who upped and moved cities, states and countries and who I still have strong bonds with - whether I met them before or after their big moves (I see you - Jen, Kim, Kate & Dave, Sherrie, Gabina)

But it can be lonely, and you can feel like you're way to eager to make plans with people and then you get frightened you'll scare them off. Or they seem really keen to hang out and then somehow never call, or always have something else on. So you start wondering if it's this town, or whether it's you or whether you should fake being more blasé. But I'm a very straight up person - I can't be fake and pretend to be your friend if I really don't like you. So conversely, if we get on really well and I'd like to hang out with you, then I say so. And if we make tentative plans to do something on a particular day, then I'm thinking that we'll be talking about it closer to the day to organise it.

Maybe I expect to much of people - hey I know people are busy - I've been really busy too. And maybe I'm a bit of a hypocrite as I still have many unanswered emails to respond to. I just can't help but feel disappointed sometimes. And I don't like being disappointed in people. I like to think the best of people and when they don't come through I can get hurt. Too much time waiting for phone calls that don't come through, or doing things on my own, which I actually don't mind - just not all the time.

So that's the downside of the reflection. On the more positive upbeat side, there are some new friends who make an effort - and I'll be hanging out with one of them on Saturday. There are also some networking people I've made contact with, and that's going ok too. Work, when it doesn't fall through, is really good - reminds me why I moved here and didn't stay at home where film / tv work was very thin on the ground. I do miss the people I used to work with back home, and of course the salary...

I have 2 cats - well, they're my flatmates, but they're here, and so for the first time in a long time I get to have pets. And they're very cute, except when they run up and down the hallway at 4am mewing. And except for one day, the weather has been ok - not too cold. Never thought I'd be saying that 14 degrees c was ok, but there you go. Also never thought I'd be working a job where I had to be there at 5am, and had to leave my house at 4 am to get there on time.

I had a wonderful thanksgiving, and I'm looking forward to Xmas, so there are many things to celebrate - and of course there is the city itself. New York is an amazing place - there's lots of things going on and lots of places you never knew existed. I'm sure that as I have more work, and therefore more money, I'll be able to enjoy some of the more costly things here, but until then I'm just enjoying getting to know my neighbourhood a bit better, and how to get to places on the subway.

Posted by Ness at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments

Your Birthdate: March 6

You tend to be a the rock in relationships - people depend on you. Thoughtful and caring, you often put others needs first. You aren't content to help those you know... you want to give to the world. An idealist, you strive for positive change and dream about how much better things could be. Your strength: Your intuition Your weakness: You put yourself last Your power color: Rose Your power symbol: Cloud Your power month: June

Posted by Ness at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments

gaffer fingernails - yes - very bored...


telephone booths....


So i'm currently on a job.. But how are u blogging, i hear u ask. Well i recently discovered that u can email yr blog, so i'm giving it a go.

But how have u got time to blog - surely you're working really hard?

Well, usually - yes. But this is a gig for a corp client, and most of the work is done, so we're sitting around waiting till 5pm so we can go, but still get paid for a full day. I just found out that monday is going to be more of the same. If only i could bring my laptop & respond to email i'd be fine...

I'm seriously sitting here while The Beatles' Yellow Submarine and some wacky dude who trials dirty jobs play on the conference room screens, and some bizarre xmas carol plays on the pa..

Posted by Ness at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

Last night i went to an hiv/aids & refugee benefit @ columbia. There were a bunch of def poetry jam poets there, donating their time, as well as a young colombia student poet. It was amazing - some of the best spoken word i've ever heard.

The best poet was this guy called Ainsley Burrows. He's Jamaican, and his poetry was mind-splitting. At one point he was joking around, and someone yelled out "spit that fire!" He was so good that i bought a cd. It was called 'climax', so i should have perhaps guessed when i listened to it on the subway this morning that it wasn't going to be the political stuff of the evening before. Instead my 7am listening on the way to a job was some of the sexiest stuff i have ever heard - spoken word, music and a jamaican accent to boot.. Mmm...

Unfortunately it wasn't helping with my early morning commute, so had to change it..

The event was only 14 blocks from my house, so i walked there, and was so mind-blown that i also walked on the way back, even tho parts of those 14 blocks are perhaps a little dark. But i was feeling like nothing could touch me after what i'd heard. If you hear anything about the def jam poets, make sure u pay attention...

Posted by Ness at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

Well - I've lost one of my favourite earrings.. Not the most earth shattering news I know, but I'm annoyed...

For those of you who read my travel blog last year, you'll remember how my stuff was stolen in Vietnam. Amongst those things was a pair of Bolivian earrings I'd bought in La Paz several years earlier. Last year at the Newtown Festival, I bought three pairs of Peruvian earrings to replace them.

And now one of them is being trampled somewhere on a new york street...

It probably got caught on my scarf, or on my new hat, which I've been wearing because it's been so cold here. Yesterday the weather was "feels like" 29 degrees F. Yes - 32 degrees F is 0 C. Yes - it's damn cold, yes, I'm missing the beach and the warm weather. But on the positive side, I now have cashmere lined leather gloves and a beautiful wool hat.

Posted by Ness at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today was another day of not-working when I thought I was going to be.. but today was going to be different! I was going to get outside before the sunset and do things! I did have an appointment downtown, but it was such a nice day I didn't feel like spending more time indoors, so I postponed it till tomorrow and took off up north...

The furthest north I've been in Manhattan is Fort Tyron Park - waaay at the top end of the island near the Cloisters. But the furthest I'd walked, until today, was 148th st - when I was looking at apartments. Today I walked up to 155th street. I walked along Riverside Drive, which runs along the Hudson, but elevated and before the west side highway, until I came to Trinity Church's cemetery and mausoleum. Since Trinity is way downtown, I wasn't sure if it was the same, but apparently it's one of 3 of their graveyards.

Those of you who've walked along the coast from Bondi to Coogee know how beautiful Waverly Cemetery is. Well, this was smaller, but divided by a road, and didn't have the amazing ocean views, but it did have views of the Hudson, and it was like something out of a movie. A small delicately designed cemetery, with some mausoleums looking like no-one had even tried to open the doors for over 100 years. Huge trees with massive trunks and spindly dried branches. All the leaves have fallen off and lay in huge swaths across paths and steps like some kind of patchwork blanket. The cemetery is built on a hill, so as you walk through, you ascend until you can see all the lower graves spread out below looking like they run down to the river.

So here are some pictures so you can see how beautiful it was..

From the cemetery I walked (a) through a dodgy tunnel (b) across a caged-in bridge over the train tracks (c) under the west-side highway to get to Riverside Park.

Riverside Park runs along the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan.It goes all the way up to Fort Tyron Park in the north. Until recently I hadn't been that much further north than my brother's place - maybe as far as 119th st. But when I moved uptown, we have a section that is the Riverside State Park extension - it has soccer fields, basketball courts, a running track and as I discovered very recently, an ice-skating rink, and... drum roll please.. an INDOOR SWIMMING POOL. That's right kids - no, it's not an ocean, but just to be able to swim is fantastic.

So I checked it out yesterday and then today I went for my first swim! It only costs $2, and you need to bring your own padlock for the lockers. The water is heated, but not overly so like some indoor pools back home, and although it's not salt water, it's also not chlorine - it's this new oxygenated system, so it doesn't get in your eyes, and make your skin smell terrible. There are free hot showers, and lap lanes and it's open 7 days a week - I'm so happy.. I did 12 laps!

So in the end I did achieve a whole lot of stuff - and had two phone calls tonight from people I wanted to speak to, so hopefully things are picking up!


* - the title of a favourite 90's song of mine by Sisters Underground for those of you who may remember...

Posted by Ness at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments

some new photos..

Posted by Ness at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments

I've been very lucky - have had fantastic amounts of work, worked on great stuff, and worked with good people. But as things go when you're freelancing, it's the week after Thanksgiving, and its been a very slow one.

I've had no paid work for over a week, but the worst is I thought I had work fri, sat and sun and only found out on thurs that I didn't. I still worked at my intership on tues and wed, but the rest of the week has been v slow. I've tried to be productive - catch up on all the things around the house that needed doing - like food shopping and cleaning and getting a new bathmat cos the old one was really bad. But with downtime, I get totally unmotivated.. it's like swimming through treacle and it takes me back to the first month I was here when things were quite difficult and there was no work on the horizon.

Some things have been achieved - I called all my relatives for Thanksgiving, and so made contact with all of them, which was nice. I got a bookshelf and some curtains from the offices where I'm doing the internship, so my room is a little more furnished. These go along nicely with my bed - purchased from a guy upstairs who was moving back home - so no more air mattress for me!!

I've also managed to beat the bureaucracy and open a bank account. Opening an account here since Sept 11 has been very difficult. America relies only on the banking records within this country, and yet to prove I lived where I did, I needed to get a bank statement sent from Australia with my address here on it. I can't get a credit card, because I have no credit history in the states - doesn't matter how good my credit is back home. So the best I can do is to pay my cell phone bill on time every time and eventually take out a small loan with my bank against my own money and pay it back. Then, and only then will they think about giving me a credit card.

So I went to open my account three times before they'd let me - you'd think I wanted to convert religions or something. Finally on Thanksgiving eve I went to my local branch in Harlem to open my account. It took 2 hours... because everyone was in there trying to get money the day before the holiday, or trying to get credit - bad day to go to a bank, especially when the banking system here relies almost entirely on cheques.

That's right - cheques. You can't transfer money to other people's accounts easily - and don't even think about it if they aren't with your bank. In fact even if they are, but in another state, forget about it. You write a cheque for everything, and because credit cards aren't easy to get either, you pay a lot of your bills with cheques.

So I set up my account, and deposit a cheque. I should be able to write my room mates a cheque for the rent, right? Wrong - because it's a new account and I may still be some kind of evil doer (despite the fact I'm depositing money) they're holding most of my cheque for 6 days..

Luckily I have understanding roommates..

Posted by Ness at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments

Hmmm.. well looks like my template wasn't stuffed up after all - just some down time of bloggers...

On another note, have managed to work out how to post to my blog from email - thus from my cell phone, thus hopefully i may be a little more frequent, but posts may be a little less well-laid out..

Posted by Ness at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments