I like to ride my bicycle

Spent a happy day yesterday cycling round lower Manhattan checking out galleries and reminding my arse what it feels like to cycle. It’s still remembering now. It was a beautiful day – I was cycling in a t-shirt even though it was the start of December and didn’t ever really feel cold. Manhattan is such a great cycling city. Everything moves in one direction so you can be more sure where things are and the roads are wonderfully wide. Compare this to London where everything is small, curvey and it’s normally pissing down.

Saw some great photos – Elger Esser’s ethereal landscapes, Todd Hido and Tim Davis with extremely similar approaches to hyper-real shots of houses, and Collier Schorr with ‘modelled’ pictures of people in German army costumes. All this on one street next to the Dia Center. Then I dropped down the west side cycle path down to where they were loading the remains of the WTC onto barges to be ferried away. It is slightly disconcerting how you can be cycling down the path as if nothing has happened and then suddenly it transforms into a major excavation site. Sometimes I still feel like I haven’t really taken it all in yet.

Monday

Went to see Amelie last night. This is a truly wonderful movie and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s done by the same guy who did Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, so it’s visually stunning and very much a modern fable. So wonderful indeed that I didn’t hold the fact that Pam had not bought cup cakes for Ann and myself against her for very long… honest, Pam. Anyway, the colours were amazing, the shots beautiful and the story was captivating – go see it now.

Do you feel real?

Had a splendid night out last night with Andy. Our first visit to the Limelight club, a converted church on 6th Avenue. Lots of platforms to wander around and smallish dance rooms. The reason for our trip was to see Jesus Jones – Andy had managed to score some guest passes. Excellent show! They played all the old classics. Only strange part was Mike, the lead singer, now has a sensible haircut… After the show I convinced Andy to wander backstage with me so we got to meet Mike briefly which Andy loved as he’s been a huge fan for ages. One of those things I still love about New York, that you can do things like that a lot more easily.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning

Back in New York again. Stupidly long flight (8.5 hours) due to head winds. Managed to get one of the few empty seats next to me through a bit of effort convincing the large hassidic lad next to me to swap with his much smaller mate, only then to find that his screen didn’t work. Nice one. I suspect all Atlantic flights are going to be pretty rammed from now on, with the decreased volume of flights. It’s nice to be back though.

Started watching Armageddon Now: Redux last night. Excellent stuff. It’s been a long time since I last watched Armageddon Now so I can’t really recognise the new bits. Great sound.. Bugger all special features though – it’s all movie. Speaking of extra features, the people in the apartment opposite mine have moved out so I got to wander in there last night while Adelpho was cleaning it out. It’s huge! They have a small photo studio and lots of old photo equipment they’ve ‘abandoned’ – well, Adelpho was throwing it out anyway. I grabbed a tripod thing in classic hoarder stylee. The apartment’s about 30-40% bigger than mine but only $300 per month more! Suspect my landlord might find it hard to argue with me for a rent increase. Although that’s pretty much a moot point at the moment as I make me decisions whether to stay in New York or head elsewhere. Global travel is sounding increasingly interesting after chatting to lots of people in the UK. Watch this space!

Britlandia

Well, as you can guess from the fact I’m typing the plane landed safely… No sleep though, apart from the 20 minutes I caught during Hedwig and the Angry Inch (which I had just been starting to enjoy when I dozed off).

So I’ve been staying in a little hotel near to Oxford town center with most of my family – eight of us have descended to break the peace and celebrate my nan’s 84th birthday. We just had a wonderful (and extremely large) dinner at the Boot pub, just outside of Oxford. The walls have many different shoes from different celebrities such as Gary Linneker and the Bee Gees scattered around. Nice place.

Up, up and away

After a brief delay.. Currently I’m at JFK airport, enjoying the services of a get2net free console (which has many dodgy keys, of which ‘r’ is the wost). Just used my Silver Card with Virgin to check in, saving 20-30 minutes of waiting, only to find my flight is currently delayed over an hour. Of course, being Thanksgiving everything is closed. Damn glad I bought a book with me!

Also wish I’d checked the flight delays prior to rushing out early from Tim’s dinner. Good soup though and I have some pie to eat later. Mmm… Also got to play with a cute Sony Vario-Sonnar digital camera (5MP) courtesy of Jon. Smashing.

The life of Riley

As I sit here in my dressing gown at 12.30 in the afternoon, I realize that I’m already fully settled into the unemployed lifestyle. Strange how quickly one adjusts.. So I’m tweaking my web site, playing with my new Epson Stylus Photo 820 – a cute little ink jet printer that also does photos. It’s amazing the level of quality you can get for only $100 these days. I remember when I got my dot matrix printer for my Atari ST.. sigh.

quid-nunc?

I am deeply indebted to my uncle who reminded me that quidnunc is literally Latin for “what now”. Indeed, that is the question I now face after five years of at least vaguely having a direction at work. The hardest game to play is often the one in which you have to make your own rules and then follow them or break them as is appropriate, I believe it’s called life. Having someone else’s rules to follow for a bit can be a lot less tiring, but they’re always someone else’s rules, even if you agree with them to a large degree.

So many things I could do – travel, change career direction, go back to school, live a bohemian lifestyle, or, even more scary, actually learn to roller blade properly. At the moment I’m contenting myself with tidying up my affairs and getting everything in order. February 15th 2002 seems to be a crunch date at the moment, as my apartment lease runs out on that day and NYC leases are notoriously difficult/expensive to break. Prior to that though I need to get my visa situation tied down which is top priority. Even if I decide not to stay in America it’s going to be an easier decision if they’re not busy pushing me out. At this point of course, I’m damn glad I’m not an Afghanistani as I’m sure that would just make things infinitely more complicated with the INS!!

Now if only I could learn to stop waking up stupidly early and enjoy my extended Thanksgiving holiday…

Leisure

Ah, my first day of ‘freedom’ in five years or so. So many things to enjoy in New York and so much time to relax and get my life in order. First step remembering that I don’t need to wake up at 7.30 to get to work… D’oh! Still, this meant I had a good couple of hours down the gym this morning and my bathroom is a LOT cleaner already. Thanks to everyone for the outpouring of support. A great side effect of being laid off is the excuse of getting back in touch with everyone. Luverley.

Bollox

Hmm… I appear to have been laid off. Oops.

So if you want to get in touch with me I’ll be down a bar somewhere in Manhattan for the next few days enjoying the fall and living the kind of lifestyle only models and filmstars generally get to enjoy (except with less casting couch antics). My Q mail ain’t working so more – so ultrahi[@]gmail[.]com is the way to go, or AOL Instant Messenger – user multrahi. Yep, some bugger had beaten me to ultrahi. Here’s to plenty of ‘Withnail and I’ style antics!! Cheers.