I am officially homeless in New York – well until next week when I move into my new apartment in the Financial District. Thanks to the kindness of friends I have a place to stay this evening, then in the morning I am headed up to Provincetown for the interim days prior to moving into the new place. What better way to bridge the stress of moving that resting at the beach for a few days

Am hopping the train from New York to Boston in the morning, followed by a fast ferry from there and I will be in Cape Cod. Not sure exactly what to expect, but with some friends from work also staying over it will be a nice time I am sure.

Apart from that, just trying to get in a few enjoyable days of summer while they last. Headed out to Fire Island last week, which was relaxing as well amidst the drinkies, beach and lots of sleeping in until midday – must have be the salt air

Categories: Apartment, New York
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Strange happening in Financial District today, with the Deutsche Bank building at Ground Zero on fire.

Categories: New York
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Woo hoo for me, it has officially been one year since I arrived in New York (give or take a margin of error +/- 12.5 days). The party to celebrate the event passed unassumingly, with the greatest satisfaction being that I have in part assimilated into the culture that is New York.

What the hell does that mean? Well, lets see, it means finding a balance between neurosis and self-assurance. The neurosis is a preemptive reaction to an innate fear of failure, in effect a defense mechanism to failure. Better to say you are allergic to foie gras than to acknowledge that you are getting old and that your system can no longer cope with the richness, or cope with the social anathema of not conforming to liberal animal welfare concerns. I like foie gras by the way, even though I am a liberal and have a delicate system haha. Self-assurance stems from the need to belong, which even in an impersonal city like this really is the crux of survival. Self-assurance ensures you have and keep friends, as well as ensuring your ego isn’t crushed to distinction if you spend a night in a bar and don’t talk to anyone. Maybe these things are at the center of all western cultures, just a little more pronounced in New York.

So after the first year, I am beginning to get it. The city is a mess in many ways, it is also real in many other ways – a city that has been through so many periods of ups and downs, which if you look closely you can see the scars and silent monuments to. It is a great city.

Categories: New York
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You know, I really do love cake. If I think back over the years there have been so many wonderful cakes in my life. The first cake of memory I was only 5 years old (or there about) It was a Train cake, covered in great icing and colorful Pebbles (M&M’s for those who have no clue what I am talking about). My granny had made it (well I assume she made it – lets not pop that bubble just in case anyone out there knows that in fact she got it from the Chinese Bakery up the road in Grey Lynn). Then there were the years of banana cake at home – it seemed to be the cake of choice in our household – mmm with lemon sugar icing – just the way it should be. This was the staple of my cake diet – maybe it was the only way that my mother could get me to eat fruit. I remember German Plum cake, initially from that little bakery on Akland St in Melbourne, and my own version for years after – which we all agree was far thicker and plummier than any Australian bakery could make (in such a way as to actually make a profit). German Plum cake is guaranteed to make you happy when you are down, as Tim knows.

It’s just that cake really is a happy event thing. It’s simple and has this wonderful capacity to console and bring joy to just about any situation you can think of. It is also an interesting side note that there are very few, if any, cakes that are linked to terrible situations (happy to be proven wrong, but in the end the mass of opinion supports cake as a happy thing).

Eggs, flour, sugar, butter – with plums, bananas, coconut, lemon, orange, rum, candy – an over abundance of icing. What else do you need (well a gym membership probably).

So this needs to be my next endeavor when I finally get out of the corporate life. Cake by the slice to address the inherent nostelgic need many of us have to be comforted. Each time I walk past Magnolia or Billy’s Bakeries, it reminds me how right this would be. So there we are, cake-by-the-slice (sorry no wedding cakes – weddings, whatever else they may be, are a hotbed of dramatic tensions, not a place to sell cakes).

Categories: Dreams
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Okay, a couple of friends have suggested that I might be a little focused on life within a 10 street radius from where I live. I like to consider it an environmentally friendly position to take, with less drain on the social infrastructure by traveling outside my realm.

That all said, I ventured to Times Square for the first time in six months to see the movie “Talk to Me”. I am freshly reminded as to why I don’t travel north of 23rd Street too often – it was maddening chaos, which took nearly half an hour to get 100 yards down the street to the theater. But hey, since I was there I did the tourist thing an took a photo or two of the chaos.

So let’s see, the movie, “Talk to Me” was the history of a Washington DJ, Petey Greene (Don Cheadle) and a radio manager , Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Set across a 30 year span, taking in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a beautiful movie, just about real life, making it, limitations, some great lines and a message that the people we travel through life with offer us the things that we are too often afraid to grasp for ourselves. Oh and I swear to God, if that’s what my parents wore in the 1960’s, I am totally shocked

Besides all that I found Dale and Thomas, gourmet popcorn on the way to the movie (yes I know, New York does have a tendency to call things gourmet when in fact it is actually dingey self-serve hot food that has been sitting in the corner store for too many hours than is healthy – but in this case Dale’s is great!). This meant that I picked up a bag of Spicy BBQ, mixed with Buffalo and Blue Cheese for the movie … mmmm.

Categories: Entertaining, Movies, New York
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