Jono and the Giant Apple: Prohibition and the first week of classes

The last few days have flown by. The weekend came and went, and the first two days of class have gone by extremely quickly. A quick recap of the last little while:

Friday was the last day of orientation, and concluded the programme. We then were supposed to have a huge party at a club downtown, but I decided to give it a skip and head to dinner with Uzayr and his dad instead. It ended up being the three of us, Uzayr's friends Nick and Sarah, Sarah's mother from Sydney and Nisha. We had delicious Italian food in Harlem (and it only cost $35 - this city is ridiculously expensive).

We got home around 1am, so I headed to bed. (Please note that at this stage I was still sleeping on the mattress of the sleeper couch).

On Saturday morning I headed to the Lower East Side to sort out a bed. Joule (pronounced Jor) from my class was looking to sell his, so we met for brunch. Brunch in the US has two major differentiators from South African brunch:
1) It appears to refer to the nature of the meal, rather than the time. In SA, brunch is a meal eaten chronologically between a usual breakfast and lunch, thereby combining the two. In the US, if you skip breakfast, lunch becomes brunch.

2) It is liberally dosed with booze- bottomless brunch doesn't refer to endless food, but endless mimosas and screwdrivers.

After brunch, I went to his incredible apartment on E 31st St. His place is on the 30th floor, so the views are amazing. He was moving out, so he was selling his furniture. The rent there was $4600 for a small two-bedroom apartment. I spent an hour on his couch trying to organise movers, all of whom had hidden costs and sudden changes to quotes. We finally got it organised, for transport on Sunday morning. By late afternoon I headed back to the Upper West Side. I hung out at home before heading back east to Alphabet City where Thomas and I had a drink at an awesome Middle Eastern place called Kazuza. I headed back home, and fell into bed.

Sunday morning dawned, and I slept in. I wandered around in the morning, sorting out admin issues with banking and school documents. At 2pm I walked up to W 109th St, from where Uzayr had ordered a coffee table (He's out of town, so I went to pay and collect). I ended up carrying it several blocks before getting a cab the rest of the way. It is supposedly some designed table they bought for $2 000 (that we picked up for $75). The agony of carrying a heavy table 10 blocks and up 5 flights of stairs has yet to wear off. Even worse, after the coffee table debacle Nisha and I carried some things from her current apartment to the new one. I think my arms nearly fell off doing so. After the movement of furniture, we headed to Jacob's Pickle (a really hipster restaurant opposite our apartment) to meet Nisha's friends, and then went to Prohibition (84th and Columbus). I think Prohibition is going to be my favourite bar in NY - reasonably priced beer, good atmosphere and great live music. I met Nisha's friends, and got home at about 2am.

Monday was Martin Luther King Jnr day, so we had the day off. I woke up late to a message from Joule saying that his move had become complicated, and he needed his furniture. Ah, this was the beginning of Act 3 of the classic Shakespearean tragedy "The Wrangling of the Bed" (Perhaps The Taming of the Bed? MacBed?). After much headache, I bought a bed from Sleepys down the road. I initially planned to carry it, but changed my mind and got delivery instead (after the coffee table incident). I went home, did some stats studying, and then had dinner with Nisha at Celeste, a little Italian place on our block. As I explained to Jo, it was super weird to have dinner with someone who was not her. I am supremely unaccustomed to having dinner with anyone else. (I'd far rather you were here to have dinner with me, Jo). Anyhow, pizza was good, and I did some stats studying before the first day of lectures on Tuesday.

Tuesday dawned, and I did not dawn with it. I was running a few minutes late, so I rushed to class. I then discovered that instead of 9am Accounting, we had an excel review from 9-10h30. Given that I am relatively proficient with Excel, I wasted a precious hour of sleep! Accounts was next (I am going to have to work hard at this), and then Stats. I enjoy the lecturers for both, and think that I'll be fine as long as I stay on top of the material. Tuesday afternoon was bed delivery, and I popped to KMart just beforehand to buy some linen. The delivered my bed at 7pm, and I headed out for a beer with Rutger (from my learning team) at Prohibition. I learned a lot about him, like his two years in Barcelona, or the fact that he played hockey for the Dutch junior national team. I was a little intimidated at that tidbit. While there, the couple at the table to my right were repeatedly fighting and breaking up. It was progressively more sad and hilarious as they were doing so while getting more and more drunk, so the cursing and admonishments got more and more inventive. After heading home, I finished up some prep for Wednesday's class, and fell asleep.

(Side note: the past few days have been colder than I could believe. It physically hurts to travel further than one block because the exposure chills me that much. This is despite the fact that it is sunny and quite pleasant-seeming until you step outside)

Wednesday (today) was round two of Accounts and Stats. Both are going well, and I feel that I'm progressing adequately. After Stats our group worked for two hours on some prep for the weeks ahead. I'm now typing this, about to go off to a soiree where we meet the Executives-in-Residence (famous business people who keep office hours at the school so students can go chat to them and discuss ideas and problems). After that is cluster elections, where we choose the Treasurer, Academic Rep and Cluster Chair for our cluster. I've decided not to run for any of those three - I think I would rather look for leadership opportunities in clubs I care about than in bureaucracy and administration for our cluster. I'll keep you posted on who get's what role. Early bets: Chris T Poon for Chair, Fabien for Academic Rep, Melissa Foo for Treasurer. Let's see how accurate I am.

After that will be some work on a Stats assignment, and then some sleep in my marvelous new bed.

I'm enjoying it here, by the way, despite missing Jo and folks back home. I suppose it is now fair to say that despite the frustrations and busyness, I <3 NY.

Random thoughts:

- My current NY soundtrack:
Reverend and the Makers, The Temper Trap, The Black Keys, Fleet Foxes, M83, Hot Chip

- Things still to do:
Brooklyn, Trips out of state, Running in the park, Staten Island, Spend more time downtown, Travel to limits of the 1 Train

Deceptively sunny day