Stirring it up

As I walked home from class today, the NYPD were out in force outside Lerner Hall on Broadway. The reason? Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has been invited to speak by the Columbia Conservatives Association, and as I write this is probably making his speech right now. Needless to say, in a city as liberal as New York, and moreover at a university like Columbia, this has gone down like a lead balloon, and the otherwise desperately parochial college newspaper, the daily Columbia Spectator, has been covering it in some detail, obviously glad of something actually worthwhile to write about. No doubt the CCA have been patting themselves on the back over a job well done in a calculated attempt to create controversy. It'll be amusing, no doubt, to watch both sides whip themselves into a lather.

He's not the first bigshot; we've had Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan and the Iraqi Prime Minister here to speak at Low Memorial Library in recent months. Like I said, in NYC there's always something going on.

American blu-tak is f*cking useless.

I have a poster from the Met in my room of New York City as seen from Brooklyn. It's a very arty sort of 1930's black and white poster which I think is a rather attractive and evocative shot. My mum bought it for me when she was here visiting a month or so ago.

Now, here's the problem. I can't get it to stay on the wall. It's fallen off three times since I've had it. It's not THAT heavy. The other posters I have up of the Guggenheim and the MTA transport network are doing fine. So I have to conclude it must be the American blu-tak, which, I am reluctantly forced to say, is f*cking useless. It's got one job - to keep things on the wall - and it's not doing that. I wouldn't mind, but the poster is directly above my bed and keeps falling on me when I'm asleep, or trying to be. I'm going to bring some British blu-tak back when I go home at Christmas, it's the only solution.

Thank you for your attention. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Thanksgiving

And so on to Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays. Not one I can really claim to have a deep and meaningful understanding of, it has to be said, but still, gluttony is a cause I'm always prepared to throw my weight behind. I went for a couple of beers with my good friend Jonathan on Wednesday evening, and found the bars near Columbia almost completely empty - I guess New York, and particularly the Columbia area, really is a place where everyone is from somewhere else.

Jonathan's parents live in New Jersey, so it wasn't particularly difficult for him to get home for Thanksgiving. Rather harder for me, though, given that my parents are on the other side of the Atlantic and wouldn't be celebrating Thanksgiving even if I did turn up.

So it turned out that a group of seven of us celebrated Thanksgiving, after a fashion, at Reto's apartment over on Morningside Drive. Reto is a 3rd year Japanese History PhD with whom we play poker regularly, and he has a wonderful apartment overlooking Morningside Park. A fine venue for a celebration. It wasn't traditional Thanksgiving fare by any means - no turkey, yams, mashed potato or pumpkin pie to be seen. Instead we had seafood and couscous salad (prepared by yours truly), pork chops with pesto, and way too much icecream and fruit salad. Accompanied by six bottles of wine between the seven of us. Enough for a relaxed, happy and, dare I say it, festive occasion. It was great...chances to just kick back are few and far between at the moment.

It had started to snow shortly before I left, and I walked home as the flakes turned the sidewalk into powder ahead of me. A White Thanksgiving - a truly American moment.

Brookyln Dodger

So I went down to Brooklyn for the first proper time this evening. I had been there before, back in August to walk back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn bridge, but this was the first time that I'd actually been out in the urban areas and really looked around. It seems pleasant enough, it's certainly roomier than Manhattan and much less high-rise - you can actually see the sky, which a lot of the time the corporate canyon in Manhattan makes rather difficult. I'd like the chance to take a look around in daylight some time, though I don't know what reason I'd have to go there any time soon. We stopped for dinner at a Peruvian place near Pacific Avenue, where I had (for want of a better appellation) Peruvian fried chicken and a dish of fried plantains, not something I've ever had before. They were kind of like a cross between potatoes and bananas; or at least my friends' were. They ordered sweet plantains, I tried the salty ones - and found them stodgy and not particularly wonderful, though they certainly filled me up.

The occasion was our semi-regular game of poker, which has been in Brookyln the last few weeks owing to our Taiwanese friend, the lovely Pei-Ting, winning a few weeks ago and none of us being particularly willing to make the trek to Brooklyn. This time, however, we were able to make a party of eight people, and with our usual $15 buy-in that was a pot of $120.

Which I won.

Yeah, I'm still not sure how I did it - it wasn't the whole amount, we divide up by place so 2nd gets their money back and third only loses $5 - but even so, I walked away with $90. It worked out as a very quick game, really - I had wiped everyone else out by 10:30, and we started at 8:45. I guess the cards were just lucky for me, really...I finally won on the heads-up on a pair of 8s, which is a crappy hand normally but good enough if the guy opposite you only has King High. I guess the thing is that with eight people playing, you know that by the time it comes down to the final rounds the people who are still there are bound to have something good - and luck favoured me, I got 3's, straights and full houses on a regular basis. I won't pretend it was skill - just dumb luck. No less welcome all the same.

So all in all, with that, and with the most welcome news that I got my pension refund (all $4,000 of it) this week, plus payday from my job, I've suddenly gone from dire financial straits to being reasonably comfortable again. Funny how things change. I'm celebrating with a beer tonight.

Indian Summer

Well, it's been glorious weather in New York for the most part over the last week or so...it's almost been approaching what we laughingly call summer in England, at least today anyway. Unfortunately I'm too busy to really enjoy it, as I rarely seem to venture outside of the Starr East Asia Library at the moment. I'm trying to get my two term papers done as soon as possible, basically, as I have to use one of them as a writing sample for my PhD applications this autumn, and they will also be key in deciding whether or not I am able to stay at Columbia, so I want to make them as good as possible.

Still, needs must. In other news, I booked a flight home last week, so I will be popping off back to Blighty over Xmas to enjoy a few of the home comforts, and also the Ashes DVD as well no doubt. England seem to be carrying on where they left off in Pakistan, but I imagine that's all Greek to the majority of you, so I'll leave that one by the wayside.

We (a bunch of Japanese-oriented grad students) did go out for karaoke and izakaya on the East side on Friday night, though, come to think of it. It was a pretty good night all things considered, the izakaya fare was authentic enough and the prices surprisingly reasonable, though I still ended up spending a packet. Karaoke wasn't bad either, although the machine was a piece of shit and took forever to load. Still, you can't expect perfect J-karaoke every time I suppose.

Apart from that, I didn't emerge from the library until late Sunday night. My skin's turning pale - well, paler than it was before, anyway - you have to remember where I'm from. There are some parts of the UK that don't even know we have a sun, after all.

Autumn in New York

...is a terrible film. One of the worst I've ever seen, inflicted on me on a flight back from Japan a few years ago. If you haven't seen it, don't, and if you have seen it, you better have a good excuse.

Still, the reality - by which I mean an actual autumn in New York - is rather more palatable. We've had some glorious weather this week, a real Indian summer in complete contrast to the yukky rainy stuff we had when my Mum was here (as one would expect). Today was perfect, really, although probably a mite too hot for the runners of the New York Marathon.

Two very good friends of mine, Matt Davis (aka Pocket Rocket) and his fiancee, the beguiling Naomi, had decided to come over to NYC to see a friend of theirs who was running the marathon (in a rhino suit, natch) and to catch up with me. It was great to hang out with them - we go back a long way, to those heady days back as 1st years at Wadham all those millenia ago in 1997. We've all moved on a bit since then, I think it's fair to say.

It was a fine day out - the weather and the general atmosphere of the event were most congenial. I didn't know this, but it's apparently standard practice for the runners to put their names on their running suits so the crowd can yell out encouragement. It all leads to a very lively and convivial kind of event, which would probably be all the more so if you were allowed to drink in public here.

Anyway, we have tomorrow and Tuesday off, although I will likely be spending most of it in the library. Term papers and all sorts of nonsense beckon again. But today's photos are reproduced below for your delectation.

So I took a walk across Central Park this Sunday morning to meet Matt and Naomi to watch the marathon. The autumn foliage was out and it was a glorious day... 

First vantage point was on the Upper East side, around 81st street. We would later move over to Central Park.  

I was generally quite disappointed by the lack of fancy dress amongst the runners, a notably exception being the Blues Brothers right here. 

Matt's friend Phil, running in a rhino suit, naturally. Personally I think anyone that runs 26.2 miles voluntarily is mad anyway, but to do it in a rhino suit which must have been hot as hell and chafed like nothing on earth...I take my hat off to the guy. 

Phil and Tom, still in their rhino suits as they near the 25 mile mark. 

A wonderful shot in Central Park in the late afternoon as the runners near the finish. Shows the autumn colours off beautifully. 

The runners head on home, wrapped in their souvenir foil blankets. It had begun to get rather chilly by this point, so they no doubt needed them.