A little update

Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn.

Just thought I'd kill some time while the girlfriend does some retail therapy. My primary job is to look up from time to time and give the yes or no about a certain piece of clothing/shoe. Most of the time she disagrees with my opinion regarding fashion anyway, so I'm not to sure why she even asks...

I'm not one to self-inflict major financial damage via retail. In fact, I'm actually shocked by the level of consumerism in this city that seems to take hold of normal people and turn them into soulless demons. Demons whom are willing to claw each others' eyes out just to get that last size twelve, purple cashmere cardigan. Lets face it, sales in NZ and sales in the USA are from different dimensions. This leads me to wonder how many people get trodden to death during the Christmas shopping season.. However, I do tend to forget about my apparent disdain towards excessive material consumption when it comes to basketball apparel (Nike and Jordan being the main culprits). I've promised myself to be sensible, but at the same time it's almost a shame if I were not to take advantage of the favorable exchange rate.......hey, at least I'm not into high-end fashion where the packaging alone costs the equivalent of feeding the whole developing world.

In the end, I know my main purpose here was wasn't to shop. The day was balanced with a nice visit over the East River (which isn't really a river at all) where we spent a couple of hours at a Brooklyn food market. I like my bacon butties from the Dunedin farmers' market, but the selection at this place was incredible. Everything from homebrewed beer, asian style hotdogs, to tacos was on offer. This is the kind of thing a 'real' New Yorker would enjoy. Truly in a NY state of mind...assuming stuffing yourself silly with delicious morsels of food qualifies.

Hotdog with spring onions and charsiu...identity crisis, much?

Where's that Footlocker..?

A quick ride back over the East River landed us on 34th street. A little stroll down this road lead us to a little building called the Empire State Building. Not bad. I highly recommend anyone thinking of visiting this place to hire the optional audio tour guide. The experience is made that much better when an old Jewish(he sounds like Woody Allen, although he might be Italian..) NY'er describes the greatness of this building, and the greatness of NY city in general. Nothing much needs to be said about this iconic landmark, but below are a couple of photos to give you an idea about how awesome the visit was.

Random facts: In those days, there weren't many safety regulations so they were essentially constructing this building at a rate of one floor a day(!). Based on past occurences, they were expecting one worker to die for each floor, therefore approximately 100 people should have died. In fact, only FIVE people died during the construction(officially), with only two falling off and one guy getting his head knocked off when he looked up the elevator shaft (you get the idea).

Various views of and from the Empire State Building.

The floor area surrounding me is cluttered with shoes. It really does look a warzone. I've been sitting at this chair typing this blog on my phone for a while now. The people that walk by changes constantly, but they all have the same goal: get as much shit as their credit allows. The girlfriend still isn't back (we're in the shoe section of Macy's, the biggest department store in the world. 'Nuff said), so I'll have a quick nap amidst all this chaos...

D

These buskers in the subway were good. Especially the singer. The guy with the keyboard was singing, not the flute player. Singing while playing the flute at the same time would be crazy shit.

So this is where David Letterman is taped!

Flying domestic in the US is a pretty grim process. Firstly, the 'standard fee' they slapped on for checking in luggage wasn't very pleasant. I know that not everyone checks in luggage, but it seems downright greedy considering the substantial price of the ticket alone. Then, we have customs. Admittedly, all the extra security and eyes make me nervous about small things. "Shit, where are those coins!! I can still hear clinking!!" Being frisked isn't on my list of things to do while on this trip. Also, the whole thing about allocating seats at the boarding gate because a flight is overbooked just doesn't make much sense to me. Why should I be allocated a seat last and grouped with the standby lot when I booked my ticket months prior? In the end I finally got my seat, but the same can't be said about the intoxicated cracker lady who got lead off the plane for a "talk". Lucky day for someone who purchased a standby ticket.

The air hostesses (stewardess?) were friendly, though.  

A few hours consisting of broken sleep and getting my eyes gouged out by a monstrosity of a movie called Arthur later, we arrive in Atlanta for a stopover. Nothing exciting. It was 6am eastern time, after all. The drinks vending machine made purchasing a Powerade entertaining with its robotic suction/ejecting mechanism, though. Two and a half hours later, we hop on to another plane and before I knew it, we landed in New York. 

"Wow, look at that!" Seeing the Manhattan skyline of the city was pretty impressive ("Yeah that's awesome"). That was until I realised that it wasn't Manhattan at all and I was looking in the wrong direction (probably New Jersey). I kept quiet to spare me the loss of dignity. 

To say this city is busy is an understatement. It's like saying Sanjay, my Aborigine friend, is brown (he's more of a 'burnt to a crisp' tone). Despite all the excitement, all I wanted to do was have a quick nap before doing anything. Turns out the place we are staying at is on the 4th floor and has no lift. I'm not a complete leaf, but carrying full, overweight suitcases up flights of stairs is a bitch no matter how you look at it.  

Ended up skipping the nap and decided to walk a few blocks to Times Square. Yes, blocks. We managed to find a really decent sublet right in the middle of the city on Craigslist for a very fair price. For people who are thinking of hitting New York, or any foreign place for that matter and want to stay at accommodation other than hotels/hostels etc., be careful about who you deal with on Craigslist. LOL the first listing i clicked and dealt with turned out to be a scam from Nigeria "PLEASE SEND THE MONEY ASAP" *lol*. Luckily no money was exchanged. As long as they only ask for a couple of nights deposit and do it through Paypal, it usually means it's genuine.

"Hey hombre, could you spare some change? It's really hot in here."

As for my visit to Times Square..it was what I expeted it to be; ridiculously commercialised, and BUSY. It was daytime when we first went but when we returned later that night, we couldn't tell the difference at times because the lights and billboards were so intensely bright. I really do wonder how much P.Diddy paid to have himself look so BOSS on that massive billboard on the side of the building. He can't rap to save his life and his producing is questionable, but he sure knows how to make coin and "mindfuck"*LOL*.
 
Half the day had already passed by the time we arrived, so we decided to settle for a Broadway show. Settle probably isn't the best word, because these shows are, from what I heard, pretty amazing. Since we were seeking tickets for a show for the same evening, we could get discounted tickets from Ticket(ing?) Kiosk Times Square (TKTS) which is essentially a ticket booth selling heavily discounted tickets for most shows showing that day. As you can guess, the line was pretty nuts. An hour and a half wait to get our tickets to Cirque du Soleil: Zarkana (it was tempting to give in to the scalpers, even though they probably would have ripped us off).

140 down to 70 each. Probably worth the hot, long wait....

Before the show started, we decided to get a slice of pizza for dinner. As we were making our way to sit down and wait for our food to get prepared, we were told we were only allowed to sit on the stools in the corner, away from the main dining area. I'm sure I had my "WTF, bitch" face on for a second and I had temptations of busting out the race card, but it turns out they have some rule about no pizza being consumed on the tables. They were reserved for pasta consumption. Note to self: people who eat pizza are considered savages in New York.             

If you read my last post, you'll probably remember me mention that I got "hustled" by some black dudes. Well, as I said, I bought a Cal. Golden Bears shirt from Berkeley and decided to wear it. One of the guys gets drawn to it (probably from Cali) and introduces himself as Timboking and proceeds to give me his mixtape. Before I get to say much, he has already signed it and asks for a donation. Ok, fine, no biggy, he seems like a cool enough guy. However, more guys come over and try to get a piece of the action. They all seemed OK and weren't asking for much, except this one particular guy who asked for 20 bux. I didn't have any small notes on me at that particular time and I wasn't really curious about what would happen if i declined, considering I was surrounded by several buff and black G's. The guy gave me change alright. A change in the amount I was meant to get back. Lets just say it wasn't what I was expecting back. Lesson learned. I did a quick search of Timboking and apparently he's an associate of the Wutang Clan. If that's legit, then that's pretty cool. I feel less fob.    

Probably infringing on copyrights so I better make it clear that
I DO NOT OWN THIS PHOTO

The first of a several Broadway shows that we plan to see turned out to be pretty awesome. It's a blend of singing, dancing, circus tricks, etc. reinvented with a fantasy theme and design. In a nutshell, it's a story about a wizard who loses his romantic interest, loses his magic as a result and then gets stuck in a pretty messed up realm full of f-ed up entities. To be honest, I didn't know what the hell they were going on about, but it sure was orgasmic for the eyes. Highlights included the tightrope walkers on the highwire. They didn't just walk along the wire(rope?). They ran, they danced, did flips and stood on each other among other things while maitaning balance. Another mention is the wheel of death act where two acrobats did various maneuvers on this continuously rotating contraception. It is pretty hard to describe so google it and you'll see what i mean. The clowns were entertaining between acts, albeit a tiny bit cheesy. One scene involved a clown being held high over the audience to depict him travelling through time and space (or something) and he proceeds to flash the Boston Red Sox logo, to the chagrin of the crowd. He redeemed himself by correcting it to the New York Yankees logo which resulted in a loud cheer from everyone.

Not everyday that you see clowns fly. Or get hustled by big black people...

D

All you can eat Hotpot, UC Berkeley

I've been keeping up with the news back home New Zealand and apparently the country has had a white out. Can't say that I'm going green over it. I choose warm, predictable weather over sleet and snow (debatable whether it's actually snow) any day of the week. Hope you people back home are keeping warm.

Our stay in San Francisco was fairly brief. It provided us with a much needed breather after our long flight. Having already been to most of the attractions in the area the last time I was here, there wasn't much need to do anything else but sleep and eat.
I must say, though, the extra rest was negated somewhat. Some people see declining food as being rude, therefore, the act of eating was quite an exhaustive process as I was essentially forced to eat way beyond my usual limit. Things were further complicated due to the fact I don't tolerate spicy food....details of that don't need to be shared...

Easily the biggest dish we had at a Hunan/Guangdong cuisine resturant in Fremont. That's a fish HEAD.

Despite having said that we pretty much accomplished nothing but eat and sleep, we did make one special trip to visit the University of California, Berkeley. The scale and atmosphere of this place simply trumps  the University of Otago.

*gasp!*Traitor! Blasphemy! Stupid asian!

Zoology and Botany. One of many impressive buildings.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my days in Dunedin dearly. What other students are known for utilizing their higher education to destroy public/private property, while also doing a passable Haka* as a challenge to the local riot squad? All the more amazing when you take into account how many were under the influence! Joking aside, it is what it is, though. Berkeley has much greater facilities. You just can't beat larger enrollment numbers and better funding. Furthermore, unlike at Otago, people actually buy stuff from the university merchandise store! Myself included. Unfortunately the UC Bears shirt I purchased lead to me getting hustled by several big, black guys. I'll get to that later.

D

so, how do i start this thing....?

Hey peeps. For those of you who actually bother to read this, the little blurb on the right-hand will give you the gist/purpose of this blog. However, I’m going to expand on it slightly, mainly because I can’t think of a more creative introduction. Bear with me as this is my first blog post ever.

So yeah....going to Beijing in early September with my mate (we’ll call him Steve Rogers for now) for a semester of Mandarin Chinese language study. We will be attending Beijing Language and Culture University, because of its focus on the language, as well as from listening to a number of recommendations. In addition to improving our language skills (in Steve’s case, a LACK of), hopefully we’ll meet people from all over the world and have a good time in general. I pride in the fact that I’ve explored Beijing and many other parts of China quite extensively already so I will be able to be a tour guide of sorts for Steve.

Jokes aside, my mate's body proportions are just like the CGI altered Steve Rogers. They would be twins, if it weren't for the fact that he has squintier eyes, yellower skin, blacker hair, and eats more rice (probably).

This blog won’t be a traditional “guide” to BLCU. I’ve been guilty of taking many of my past overseas experiences for granted. Therefore, as a result, I don’t have much to look back on, with only a few photos and videos here and there, with whatever I remember in my head to supplement them. This blog will be a way for me to document my experiences for future reference/laughs. With that said, however, if anyone happens to read these entries, I do hope they find something helpful. At the very least, I hope it’s marginally interesting.

Before my adventure in Beijing starts, however, I’ll be visiting San Francisco, New York and Vancouver for a few weeks. This will be my first time in New York so I’m quite excited to experience the New York State of Mind that Jay-Z, Nas and Billy Joel seem so chuffed about. Pity no Knicks games will be on. Yes, i know the Yankees are playing this week, but I just have trouble liking baseball. Chances are I will go to the game, but I won’t be crying if we happen to overlook it. Vancouver is where many of my relatives live so it will be a nice visit, regardless of whether there is much to do over there.

In all honesty, I’m writing most of this retrospectively, as I’m already in New York. I have been too lazy busy. I’ll try and make it a goal to update this blog regularly, preferably in the evening about events that occurred during that day. I’ll cut short of promising, though, as my track record isn’t very good when it comes to that kind of thing.

I'll fill you guys in tomorrow. The flights really took it out of me.

D