+1 month

Hard to believe it’s only been a month since it all happened. Everything seems pretty much the same as usual – apart from everyone saying “well, I’m sure it’s not anthrax” every time someone says they don’t feel well. The towers still aren’t there, although people are talking about putting up temporary replacements in the form of large beams of light. That would be cool – like the gel light I saw down at Tribe last night (St Marks and 1st), which, for a mere $1,500, produces an effect not unlike flames licking over the wall (or water if it’s projected blue) – incredibly hypnotic and beautiful.

On a more random observation note, more in keeping with how New York life really is… How come in New York bars you can, in fact you must specify the brand of vodka for your drink, but you can’t ask for Pepsi or Coca Cola rather than crappy post-mix no-brand coke?

Ho, ho, ho, bang

I got this joke sent to me today: New York – Year 2032

A father and his son are walking the Manhattan streets when the father
stops at a vacant lot takes a deep breath and tells his son: “To think
that at one time here on this very lot stood the Twin Towers.” The son
looks
at his father and asked: “Dad, what are the Twin Towers?”

Father says: “My dear son, the Twin Towers were two tremendously tall
buildings with lots of offices that was the heart of the United States,
but approx. 31 years ago, several Arabs destroyed the buildings.” The
boy then thought for a minute and then asked his father: “Daddy what are
Arabs?”

Now it may just be be, but the attitude that thinks wiping out an entire race due to a few people is just a little bit fucked up in itself. While you’re at it, why not kill all caucasians for Timothy McVeigh’s actions? That would stop random psychotic behviour. Argh! This all just makes me so pissed off. Plus I pulled my back stretching in the gym this morning so I’m in pain and hence in a bad mood already. Hmph!

Top ‘o the Morning to Ya

More hate crimes… The American government is stressing the importance of not over-reacting with ‘Arab Americans’ on the one hand, and on the other it releases the list of “Most Wanted Terrorists” who are… yep, all Arabs. So does that mean the IRA people who plant bombs in London to kill innocent people must be Arabs too? I never realised that the Arab people were so evil..

Sigh. I keep alienating all my American friends by my comparisons of IRA terrorism to WTC terrorism (I don’t say ‘Arab’ terrorism as at least with the IRA they claim responsibility whereas noone has for the WTC attack). Not really surprising – most Americans don’t like to be reminded how many of them fund IRA terrorist activities due to Irish roots. Everyone in America claims Irish roots… say, maybe that’s a simple solution for all Arab Americans… they can say they’re Irish-Arab Americans, then everyone would love them again and the world would be a less violent place.

All is full of light

Went to the most wonderful Bjork concert last night. It was at the Radio City Music hall, which I’ve never been to before, but is a huge, shell like space that is totally overwhelming. Thanks to the wonderful Paula and Ann I managed to get tickets very close to the front for myself and Alexa. Alexa had never seen Bjork live before so she was especially excited. I was a bit more ‘whatever’ having seen her a couple of times at festivals, but by the end of the show I was completely in awe. Bjork’s voice has developed even further than before and soared against orchestral, electronic and harp backgrounds. Beautiful.

This marks the end of my first week back in New York for a while. I’m now not doing the AccuWx project anymore so won’t be making my now regular trips to State College ever Monday and Friday. Part of me already misses the guys up there as they were always amusing and often challenging, which is fun, but another part of me is just glad to be back with everyone in NYC again. Now all I need to do is find out what the future holds… Simple really. First step is major pre-sales work which I’m looking forward to having not done any for a loooooooooong time. Fingers crossed.

Still not there

The question keeps arising of which photo from September 11th makes you most upset. I find that quite hard to answer, and if it’s anything then it’s the pictures of the building’s warped structure sticking out from the ground like some rapidly erected memorial. It’s the stories that are really getting to me though. I bought a pile of magazines prior to my trip back to the UK and Cyprus – almost every other story made me cry. For some reason I find the pictures are easier to distance your emotions from.

I just stood on my roof last night and stared at the slightly glowing dust cloud that hangs over lower Manhattan. It’s still so hard to believe that there are still 6000 or so bodies in that rubble. Every newspaper in New York seems to have articles about gas masks. Is it time to get out of here? Or is everywhere soon going to be the same? Who knows. It’s nice to be with friends though.

A Maze of Twisty Turny Passages, All Alike

I’m now back in the US of A, New York City to be exact. My usual weekly jaunt up to State College, PA has been postponed. Indefinately. This was a bit of a surprise as I thought I would still be going up there for another month or two. The reality of it is that I get to stay in New York which I do love infinitely more than State College, although part of me is already missing the guys up there who were often a laugh. Plus of course all the cute student girls! Yay.

On the ‘yay’ note.. the new season of Buffy kicked off last night on UPN. A two hour Buffy-thon that I sat through the first half of before heading into town and letting my re-play take the strain. Watched the rest of it this morning. No great shakes. Guess what.. (spoiler coming)… they resurrect Buffy. D’oh! Didn’t see that one coming a frikkin’ mile off. After the extreme emotional tourment of last season (I cried in at least 3 episodes – especially when Buffy’s mum died) I’m apprehensive about this new series. I don’t believe they can better some of those episodes. So anyway, set my expectations low (one of life’s key rules) and carry on watching… Mmmm, stakey.

Junky

Back in the UK at my old house. Fly back later today on United – hopefully it will be as empty as on the way out so I’ll be able to get some sleep in, something I was sorely lacking until last night. I decided on Saturday to try and move my flight back to London earlier so I could see my family for longer. This turned out to be hideously easy, although the only flight available was 4.35am and was completely full – so no sleep for Matt and apologies to Stephen for constantly banging him as I tried to get slightly comfortable.

Having left Agia Napa we taxi’d over to Lemesos (aka, Lemesol) where we stayed at the Hawaii Grand hotel. This is another large hotel complex with every ammenity on tap, although the pool was smaller than London this time! I’ve now come to realize that I’m not really into ‘posh’ hotels – I’d rather be hanging out with a large group of friends or be somewhere interesting – like Mamacita’s in Culebra. Perhaps it’s just that I spend all my time in hotels anyway, so it just seemed like being at work!!

The last few days in Lemesos continued to be very lazy. We were fairly clubbed out and Lemesos clubs do not compare in quality to Agia Napa’s. Finally beat Stephen in our squash tournament and then in the snooker competition. So the overall score was well in my favour – it was just the ‘guess how many times Starlight is played’ contest that Stephen was best at.

Put your hands in the air

Two flights later (and many free shots at bars) I’m about to have my last night in Agia Napa, Cyprus. Flew in on a very empty flight from Newark to Heathrow, hung out in London for a night, then got up WAY too early to fly on to Larnaca, Cyprus. And now I’m in Agia Napa.

Agia Napa is a mad, clubbing, pubbing place. A strange mix of Brits, Europeans and Russians as far as I can tell. The bars stay open until 1.30, the weather’s gorgeous if a little sweaty, and clubs are free if you ask Keith, the barman at Club Titanic, nicely. Me and Stephen have made club Titantic our main home for the week, with the Castle Club the late night venue. Much cheap drinking, betting on how many times ‘Starlight’ is played (never as many as you think) watching the world go by.Kiris and Keith at club Titanic have been a laff, both having been here for 7/10 years respectively. Keith does a very impressive line in flipping out of the outside bar area into the street when he’s not busy chucking straws or ice cubes at passers by. A good laff – and excellent music.

The music has been much more important to me than the cheap an plentiful booze and people watching. I’ve been catching up on a lack of Glastonbury fuelled Brit-dance out here, plus the residuals of 3.5 years out in the dance drought that is New York. Old classics, new toonz. Lots of dancing, and I’ve even been drunk enough to have a couple of goes at ‘Dance, Dance Revolution’ (apparently, I’m a great dancer…) Now I’m aching and tired after 4 days of self-exhaustion and multiple time zones. We’re about to move on to Limasol which is calmer – let’s see how that goes. May even start taking some pictures.

Oh, and big thanks to everyone in London for a great Friday night catching up. I had a wonderful time in all three venues – Chiswick, Soho and Brixton. Seeing everyone again made me remember, yet again, what I really love about England – friends and family. Oh, and the great Trance Techno that is Sands of Sansara at the Fridge in Brizxton! See you all again soon, but it won’t be soon enough.

Now the bars beckon me back… I must do my patriotic duty as a Brit out no the piss in a foreign country and drink more than is wise and dance more flailingly than most by-standers like. Nice one.

Up, up and away!

Well, pretty soon I do my first flight since the unpleasentness of last week. A transatlantic trip on United… I’m already a big ball of stress, but then that’s pretty usual with me and planes. I have to go and check in three hours ahead of time instead of two which sucks.

So anyway – hopefully you’ll get more entries from me post-flight…

I can see you…

A while ago talks of automated face recognition systems in London would have caused a lot of heated debate. Now the debate has changed to “why haven’t these been in place at airports?”. The comment about the stocks of companies that produce biometrics software, software that can recognise people based on physical characteristics, was interesting – another article yesterday was commenting that they are trying to track down people affiliated with the terrorists through some irregular stock movements prior to the bombing. There was some speculation that this might have even been the chief suspect himself using the terror attack as a way to generate more funds. Sounds like Die Hard to me – maybe we should levy the blame on Hollywood for giving terrorists all these ideas?