Barcs in New York Blog

Barcs · Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 2:45 pm Post subject: Barcs in New York Blog

Ahoy hoy. Today is Thursday - unless you live in Australia in which case today is Friday. Friday arvo no less and the thought of cool refreshing well deserved amber beverage(s) after a long weeks work is more or less* crossing the mind of the average Aussie punter at this time.

Yesterday morning (Wednesday) I woke filled with fear. Oh shit I've missed the plane! I thought. I quickly checked the time and it was 6:25am. Oh, phew! 6 hours and 10 minutes to take-off. What should I do? While I was thinking about this I closed my eyes and slept.

Dreams. I dreamed I was sitting next to George Gregan and the little man was curled up snugly in a comfy rug when an attractive lady came up to me and asked if I'd like to hold Mr. Gregans fish. Flatterd, I was about to say yes but suddenly George started making an alarming sound, and I said "what's that alarming sound George?". The attractive lady said: "That's your alarm". "Hmm, I see" I replied, and after thinking about this for some time I woke up.

The flight was at 12:35pm and I didn't want to be late. In fact I wanted to be early so I could take advantage of the Qantas lounge. Yes, the Quantas Lounge. So I got to the airport by half past nine and by 10am I was drinking beer.

RULES OF BEER CONSUPTION (i):
I know there are rules about morning beers, and I don't know if this is one of them. If it isn't then I submit it for inclusion. When travelling between time zones it is ok to order a beer in the morning if the timezone of destination is now afternoon or evening. (Perhaps a list of morning beer reasons should be published somewhere on this site. Paddy?)

To get to New York you need to go via LA. It's a 13 or 14 hour flight. I was one of the first on board and I hoped and I hoped as I sat there at my seat that the person sitting next to me would be a super model. In fact, she didn't even need to be super. Any kind of model would be fine except hand models and male models. I crossed my fingers and held my breath for a very long time hoping it would be so. I was still waiting when suddenly this guy looked at me and said - hey, how ya doin'? Good question, I thought. Eyes bulging, about to explode, I exhaled quickly and panted the reply: Hi-i'm-good.

I arrived in LA at about 6 in the morning. Six and a half hours before I got on board. I had to go through customs. Good fucking god! You have not seen a queueue until you've arrived in America. Finally after getting through I went to the Qantas Lounge (yes, the Qantas Lounge) and orderd a Budweiser.

RULES OF BEER CONSUMTION (ii)
When travelling between time zones it is ok to order a beer in the morning if the timezone of departure is now afternoon or evening.

Unfortunately it was raining when I landed at LAX (what does the X stand for?) so I didn't get to see much. Between LA and New York the impression of America that I got was that it is a very cloudy country. Nice clouds though.

Finally I arrived at JFK - notice the way I'm just throwing around the lingo as if everybody should know exactly what I'm talking about? Cool, hey? There was a driver there to pick me up. I asked him if it was far. He said no, about 12-15 miles. I asked if there would be much traffic at 5:30pm. He said no, probably not. Two and a half hours later I arrived at the hotel. It was dark, rainy and stormy and I saw nothing of the city that was New York on the journey. The only thing I noticed about USA while driving was that Americans havn't really caught on to the phrase "sporty hatch". American cars a shitty hunks of worthless metal without exception (except for a dodge viper and a pontiac).

I watched TV (13 channels) for a while and then finally slept. Nothing amusing or interesting happened.

Thus concludes the longest Wednesday I ever had. I'll update Thursday tomorrow. Anyway, Pigs - good luck tomorrow (Saturday). I'll be working, probably. While writing this I drank 48 fluid ounzes of beer (24 coors, 24 budweiser - each in can form). Like you, I don't know how much that is - but they're pretty bloody big cans, for cans.

Cheers!

*more

mattw · Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 2:56 pm Post subject:

nice blog

Paddy · Hack Joined: 01 Oct 2005 Posts: 1

Without wanting to sound like the rule maker, I can confirm, that essentially, if you want a beer, you should ordinarily have one. However, if a rule is required, I agree that if you are travelling internationally, and somewhere in the world it is after 12 noon, or, it will be after 12noon, or it was previously after 12noon, then suck a schoo my friend, suck it hard.
God bless your story telling Mr Smith.

mattw · Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 4:12 pm Post subject: Re: Barcs in New York Blog

Damo · Hack Joined: 11 Nov 2005 Posts: 1

That was fucken cool whitaker, i imagined you as will ferrell in old school.

Barcs · Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 9:02 am Post subject: THURSDAY

I wake. I look around and recognise nothing. Something's not right. Something's out of place. Something just doesn't feel right. Hmmm... It's still fairly dark and I turn on the light and suddenly I recognize nothing. That's better. Culture shock = over. (Very subtle).

9am and I'm up and ready for anything except the unexpected. I get a taxi to work and the fare is $18. The whole ride over I'm wondering about tipping. What do I do? How much? I give a $20 note and say nothing, using my developing poker skills I look for any hesitation. If I see any then I'll jump out of the car and leave him the $2 tip. I see no hesitation as they guy gives me my change. I now have (more) doubts over my poker playing ability.

Work. I do the old meet and greet all morning. I'm not going to jabber on about work because it would take hours to set the scene and it would only be very boring anyway. Instead I'll rate my working day out of 10 in various categories. Category suggestions welcomed - I'm struggling.

Work load: 5
Brain strain: 5
Physical challenge: 1
Humour: 1
Other: 9

Back at the hotel I decided to go for a walk, and find some beer less than $4 a bottle and some food less than $20 (not that I'm paying my own food but I didn't really feel like a whole big meal or anything).

As I walked I started wondering about how many people in America carry guns. I started getting perhaps a little overly paranoid. I saw a sign saying "downtown". I decided to follow the sign because when you're alone and life is making you lonely you can always go "downtown", or so I've heard. I was humming an annoying tune that somehow got stuck in my head when somebody shouted from behind me "Hey you!". There must be a lot of you's around, I thought. You, doesn't necessarily equal me. "Hey you!" the voice said again. That you equals me. I gulped. I turned around and I opened my mouth to say: Here take my wallet don't kill me! But I was interrupted when the guy said "Hey, You know where the cinema is?". I smiled, a change in strategy was required "...ahhh, no mate". "Oh, ok, no problem"

I found a bottle shop and I bought 2 super sized cans of beer. They were the 2nd biggest size available. The larger size is about the size of a human head (Buckies human head no less). The shop keeper put my purchases into a brown paper bag. Can I tell you about brown paper bags? Americans make a quality brown paper bag. I don't want to put down the Australian brown paper bag industry but really - you haven't seen a brown paper bag until you've seen an American brown paper bag. Quality. Budweiser is a better beer than Coors.

I figured out that my hotel room has wireless internet capability so thought I could write a blog about my adventures. I did.

Barcs · Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 4:58 am Post subject: internet problem

Unfortunately I'm having internet problems preventing me from logging on at the hotel. This means I can't continue this blog for now. How sad.

mattw · Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 2:51 pm Post subject:

Bugger - I was enjoying that.

Barcs · Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 3:10 pm Post subject: 4 days of stuff

FRIDAY

I’m a frustrated sonfabitch right now. Secondly my internet connection is not working. Everything looks fine but for whatever reason I cannot connect. GRRR! Fucking frustrating. Firstly I met an attractive Scottish girl at the hotel I’m staying. She works for the same company as me. What luck. She’s been here 2 weeks and wouldn’t you fucken know it she’s hooked up with someone already. God damn it! That is so fucking frustrating because I know, I just know that if things had’ve worked out different then things might’ve worked out different. This kind of shit always happens to me and which ever one of you assholes is laying bad karma on me just stop it. Jokes over. Not funny now, I’ve had enough.

Anyway, all because of that, and because I’m stuck here in a hotel room and it’s cold outside and I’ve nothing to do, I’m feeling pretty miserable right now. I wish all my journal entries could be joyous odes to the earth with elements of humour but something is stopping me. Oh yeah, that’s right, it’s my retched life. Sorry about that. While it may have been funny in one sense it was filled with pathetic self loathing and despair in the other and I just don’t want to travel that road.

There was nothing much to do at work today. The real action starts on Monday. Joy.

I haven’t really explained very well where I am and what the hotel is like so I’ll do that now. I’m in New Jersey which is about 45 minutes (so I’m told) outside New York. The hotel I’m at is called the Grand Summit and it’s a pretty old style hotel. You know, old furnishings and stuff. It’s pretty nice really. The room itself is decorated with, would you believe, lawyer type books. I hold in my hand right now West’s Federal Supplement Volume 761. It’s 1700 pages long. None of them interesting. Kind of like a Stephen King novel - I didn’t read the whole thing but I’m pretty sure at the end of the book God comes down from heaven and kills all the bad people.

If I can find the time to stop feeling sorry for myself tomorrow I’m going to drag myself out of bed and into New York. I say drag myself out of bed because I’ve had about 3 and half hours sleep in the past 48 hours and even though it’s 1:30 am now I don’t see myself sleeping for another couple of hours at least. When in New York maybe I’ll do a bus tour, or go to the Village and see what’s what.

SATURDAY

I woke in the morning with a start. An alarm went off at 6am and I continued to drift in and out of sleep after that. At 9am I heard activity outside my room. It was the cleaning ladies. I was still very tired and wanted none of that so I put the “do not disturb” sign out on the door handle. And I slept.

And I slept.

I woke and was surprised to find that it was already 1:30 in the afternoon. I flicked channels for a while and watched Jumanji. Still feeling pretty wretched to be honest after yesterday I felt as though I needed some self time. The internet problem continues and I fear that none of these entries will be available until I get back to Australia. It’s a real shame because I really enjoy writing and posting them.

Anyway, I didn’t go into New York today. As I said, I felt as though I needed some time to myself which is easy to do twelve thousand miles from anyone you know. I got out of bed at half past five and had a shower and all the things most people do eight hours earlier. Basically I spent my working day in bed. I unpacked all my luggage into drawers and ironed a couple of shirts for next week and that made me feel a little more human.

At around 7 I decided to go to the restaurant downstairs. Did you know that an iceberg salad is nothing more than a lettuce cut in half? I didn’t. Extraordinary, I can’t believe it even costs money to eat. It didn’t even have any dressing. I also had a steak and it was fairly huge. I felt a little awkward asking for the “queen” sized steak (the other option was the “king” size) but I’m glad I did. I asked for medium rare and it was cooked perfectly, but the service was pretty ordinary especially considering they had seemingly hundreds of staff looking after 6 tables.

I was the only person dining alone. Really I was hoping to see somebody else in my general age range alone so I could say g’day. There wasn’t but the food was good and I drank Becks. An accent problem had a waiter confirming with me that I wanted a bottle of “beaks”. I’m sure if I said yes he wouldn’t have battered an eyelid and gone off looking for one.

All in all a disappointing Saturday but at least I now feel normal, I look forward to another day tomorrow of feeling normal too.

SUNDAY
I was determined to go into New York today. I woke and went downstairs for breakfast. It was very crowded with people who were here for wedding receptions and who knows what else, all checking out and piling their plates high with the complementary scrambled eggs, sausages and bacon they put on every morning.

Around about midday I was in Summit - the town I’m in - at the train station. I arrived at Penn Station (Pennsylvania) on 32nd West and 7th (the location of Madison Square Garden) and began a wandering.

New York is just so big. It’s huge. Seemingly endless. The masses of people massed. I walked up and down, also across. Saw a street called Broadway and thought I heard of that so I walked down it. I don’t know, but I don’t think this was the Broadway I heard of. The blend of people started looking very err, black. Suddenly I was aware that I don’t know where I was and I didn’t know where I was going and I was (I mean I’z) particularly conspicuous. Ai’ight. If I wanted to buy 3 gold watches for $10 I was in the right place. I didn’t. U-turn.

Eventually my wandering took me to a place called The Empire State Building. Ahh, tourist site. I’m going. I went. 45 minutes later I was in a queue, significantly nearer the lifts than I was 44 minutes ago. I took what they call “the audio tour”. They give you a miniature boom box and you put it to your ear and listen to recordings of some guy telling you what you’re looking at from various vantage points. When I got back down it was starting to get dark so I headed back.

MONDAY
US urinals are much more V shaped than Australian urinals. You can’t just lob it out and point it in any direction and be confident of getting it at least close. Here you’ve got to be aware. You’ve got to aim. There have been daily improvements.

Today I met a girl at work who I know from Sydney. She gave me a lift back to the hotel. Nothing further. The answer to most questions probably now is yes.

mel b · Hack Joined: 15 Nov 2005 Posts: 3

barcs

you are a funny bastard. keep writing! and you know what, maybe you should take up writing when you return home...

are you going to check out the Chrysler Tower? or are you just gonna drink beer? Razz

mattw · Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 12:46 pm Post subject: Re: 4 days of stuff

Barcs · Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 2:34 pm Post subject: Re: 4 days of stuff

Barcs · Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 2:42 pm Post subject: More Monday, less Tuesday.

MONDAY CONTINUED:
Firstly can I just say thanks to all for the feedback I've received! It's been really positive and it makes the top of my head feel all warm, kind of like I'm wearing a hat even though I'm not. Peculiar I admit, maybe I'm having a stroke.

Mel b (if that is your real name), I did check out the Chrysler building. I checked it out from the Empire State Building. It's very nice.

I haven't been smoking a great deal since I've been over here. I've still got the same pack of 20's I had when I left Australia. It's a non-smoking room and my addiction to laziness is stronger than my addiction to nicotine. Nevertheless I thought I'd enjoy one last night and I went downstairs to have one. Afterwards I had a cigarette*. There in the lobby I saw a guy I knew from the UK when I was over there a few months ago. Standing next to him was a guy who I didn't know.

Introductions included me calling the guy by his shortened name improperly. I'll explain this later although I feel as though I fear I've dug myself a story telling hole. Expecially considering this story doesn’t have any suitable conclusion. I don't want to name names because this guy has a BO problem and I may want to discourse vehemently about his acute mephitic propinquity at some later date (thank you thesaurus). I don't want to name names but I do want to talk about them. Ok, so I greeted this guy using improper name shortening. You know how you shorten peoples names when addressing them for ease and general mateyness; Edward to Ed, Gregorious to Greg, Robert to Rob, Matty to Matt... and you know how some people call themselves by their long name? Well this guy does but I called him by his shortend equivalent. He didn't appreciate it… And - that the - end of - that - story ---,,, Confused

Dammit - I knew I shouldn’t have started writing about that. Umm…

Err…

Did I mention he stinks?

The guy standing next to stinky was a co-worker to be and after a little while we all went into town for a few drinks. To drink you sit at a table and wait to be waited on, in November it's cold, toilets drain backwards, crooks chase cops, cats have puppies, hot snow falls up: it's opposite world! After 4 or 5 Buds (courtesy of the project) we left, hotel bound. It was good.

TUESDAY
Wow, it's getting busy at work now. Food is plentiful. You should see my tummy. Too many deep fried mozzarella sticks I think.

*worst joke ever.

Adam Buck · Hack Joined: 29 Sep 2005 Posts: 10

Barcs - Seriously - This is extremely funny.

You have a way with words. Clearly not with women.

Waiting for the Atlantic City blog, isn't Atlantic City in the same state as New Jersey? Oooh - It is... But I shan't encourage you.

Google Earth brings up Grand Summit Hotel and gives a pretty close up view!!

Have fun Barcs. Good luck with the ladies. Just stop trying, that's what I did.

Adam

mel b · Hack Joined: 15 Nov 2005 Posts: 3

barcs
- sounds like you are drinking lozzabeer...
the weather is shit in syd-er-ney, its probably much better in NYC. yesterday it was almost like sydney had been sucked into a swirling vortex that transplanted it in Wellington - the wind was crazy! today wasn't much better either - so you ain't missing much.

keep writing its tops.

and yes mel b is my real name... Smile