Sunday 21st / Monday 22nd – The Final Chapter

So it's all over.
I spent 13 weeks in America, the longest time I’ve ever spent away from home in one go. I met many new faces, and made many new friends. I did things that I would never have done at home, and things that I’m happy to enjoy both in and out of the country. I spent pretty much all of the money I earned whilst I was here, and don’t have that many souvenirs to show for it. But I do have a head full of memories, 566 photos of my experiences, and a 20,805 word blog that documents it all.
On Saturday, I packed away all my stuff and crammed it into two bags (and I taped my guitar into a box!). I had to leave one or two things behind in America, as they purely wouldn’t fit, but I got pretty much everything in that I wanted. So I spent most of the rest of Saturday bumming around and passing time by watching TV and playing guitar. Since I’ve been here, I haven’t played guitar even nearly as much as I used to back at home – mainly due to the fact that the axe I bought out here isn’t that nice to play. It was definitely nice to come home to a guitar that would do what I wanted it to do without me having to think too hard!
Saturday night we all chilled out in Jed’s room, staying up until 2am just chatting, watching a movie and having some buds. On Saturday morning when I woke up at 11 for lunch, it still hadn’t hit me that I was leaving for good. I said goodbye to everyone who was going to be working that day, grabbed a can of South-side mix, and headed back to the dorms to finish packing and start waiting for Tim to turn up. Tim is a taxi driver who, for the past 3 months has been giving us all lifts about in his taxi off the record. We’d get a discount, and he’d get to pocket the whole fare (instead of the 50% the company would give him if we rode with him legitimately).
When Tim turned up at the dorms at 3pm, he was picking me up on his day off – that’s how much he valued our cash!!
Saying goodbye to the five or six friends that were left at the dorms was pretty hard, though I’m glad that I didn’t leave earlier in the Summer when there were more people to say goodbye to – that would have been very difficult. Strangely though, even as I sat in the taxi on the way to JFK airport, my leaving still hadn’t sunk in. In fact, even as I sat in Terminal 4 waiting to be called up for boarding (I got here waaaayyy too early!) I still didn’t feel like I was never going to be coming back.


The flight back home was a fairly uneventful one, but it wasn’t as smooth as I’d been hoping for either. Theresa had told me that her son (a cop at the airport) was going to find me and upgrade me to a better seat home. I wasn’t entirely convinced that that was definitely going to happen, so I wasn’t surprised when I ended up in coach class like had been planned. I was a little surprised though when instead of a fellow bunac-er sitting next to me, a very large jewish gentleman came and parked his 20 stone body in the next seat along. He nicely sprawled over the armrests too, ensuring that there was no way I was going to be able to lean on that side for the following seven hours. More drama was had when it turned out he hadn’t informed anyone in advance that he was going to want a kosher meal to eat, and a poor stewardess had to rumble him up a fruit platter instead. But his piece-de-resistance came when just as I’d nearly dropped off into a well earned sleep, his gut rumbled and his spare gas came pouring out, filling the air that we were both sharing, and waking me instantly.
We departed John F. Kennedy airport as the sun was setting, and reached England’s grey and pleasant lands as it was rising this morning. Getting off the plane, getting through customs, going through baggage collection and finally leaving the terminal wasn’t complicated at all. Things only became difficult when my English debit card refused to work in the underground ticket machines. I exchange the $7 I had in my pockets for a measly £3at the travel exchange place, and paired that up with the little left-over cash I had from June so that I could buy a tube ticket to get me to Euston.


I spent an hour waiting for my train in Euston, which was the perfect amount of time for me to sit in a pub, eating a fry-up and drinking PG Tips (after I cleaned the residue off the chip on my card – probably a result of going swimming with my wallet in my pocket during the summer, and the reason why it hadn’t been working). I then boarded the train that was north-bound, plonking my 2nd class ass in a nice comfy 1st class seat, refused the complimentary tea I was offered (I was all tea’d out by then) and relaxed for the rest of my journey home.As the train crawled further and further North, the weather got greyer, wetter, and just generally more and more miserable. I remembered what the attraction of America had been in the first place. In my time on Long Island, it probably rained on about 15 occasions. I’d been back in the UK for 5 hours, and already everything outside was getting wet. Even though I came back the same colour as when I left, it was so nice being able to walk round everywhere in very few layers, lapping up the warm air and the sun whenever the need took me.

As I finish this final blog entry off, I’m sitting in my room in Macclesfield, waiting for my mum to finish cooking a curry so that I can eat it before passing out with exhaustion in my bed. I haven’t slept at all for over 26 hours now and everything feels like one big dream to me. I’m sure it’ll hit me later, maybe when I wake up to the sound of my family instead of the sound of Artur’s alarm clock. Tomorrow I’m meeting up with Del for lunch in Macclesfield, and later on in the week, who knows who I’ll see first!

I want to finish by thanking every single person who’s been there to work illegally long shifts with me, waiting on some of the most fussy and ridiculous rich people ever to walk the planet; every single person who also will never be cured of complete detestation of fried chicken; every person who got drunk with me and made me laugh; every strange or annoying employee that created a topic of conversation for the rest of us; and every person who was there to help me spend every last penny that I earned at Piping Rock.

I wouldn’t have missed any of it for the world

Friday 19th – My Last Shift

I’m going to make this blog entry a short one, as I’m going to wait ‘til I get home before closing this chapter in my life properly.
Last night was PRC’s Rock ‘n’ Roll night, and my final shift. Usually, employees get covered in water, cake, or something worse on their last night, but I got lucky as Cam and Dave had been given the night off. So instead I spent my last shift smuggling drinks out to the back, working quite lightly, and just generally enjoying the band that was playing (despite their shoddy singer). It was a nice way to finish what has been a working summer of ups and downs. On Sunday I’m going to have to say goodbye to all of the people that are still here now, and also have to say bye to Cathy (the old Scottish lady who’s worked here for 40 years, and who I used to work with/for every weekend in the morning). That’s going to be hard, but for the moment I’m just trying to relax and enjoy what little time I have left here by doing sod all.

Thursday 18th – Bloc Party 2

Before leaving for work today, I had 10 minutes spare so decided to check my facebook and email. Not much had happened on facebook, a few people had updated their statuses, a couple of wall posts and photo comments had been written, but generally the world was being quite quiet. So I checked my emails. I had one from Hotmail, one from my Dad, and one from RSVP. I nearly deleted it, assuming it was spam, but ended up opening it anyway to have a look. And I’m so glad I did. The email read as follows:

Hello!

You are on the list for the Bloc Party gig tonight with a +1 (so you can bring a friend).You will need to go to the VIP entrance / line to get your tickets and your VIP area access.

Have a great time

This made my day. I no longer had to fear about not being able to get into the gig, and definitely didn’t have to worry about not being able to see. The day was too long for me. All I could think about at work was going to the gig. After seeing them last month at Webster Hall, I was very very excited.
We planned to get the 4.30 train into NYC, so that we’d get there an hour before doors opened. This was because whilst Cam and I were on the VIP list, Dave was not, and was going to have to queue like everyone else. For the first time since I got to America though, the trains were delayed (due to a fatality apparently) and we got into New York at about half 6. By this time, the line to get in was longer than that for anything else going on in the city. It wrapped right round the building and headed up Broadway. So instead of making Dave queue, we simply glanced at the VIP list and pretended he was someone else. It turned out that not only was I on the list, but I was actually eligible for the extra-VIP treatment. Most people on the list got in before everyone else but except for that, they were normal folk. Me and Cam got access to a special side-stage (and later on, we got to skip the queue into the aftershow party too!).


So we picked up our wristbands, had a few drinks in a nearby bar, and headed into the gig. The support band Amazing Baby were an odd mish-mash of musicians. Most notable was their heavy-metal lead guitarist head-banging at one end of the stage by himself. So whilst they played, we drank. Stupidly, I got really drunk at this gig (as this is the first time I’ve been at a big gig and been able to stand by the stage and the bar at the same time.
But when Bloc Party came on, it was unbelievable. The set was roughly one third new stuff from Intimacy, and strangely they opened with their newest single, Talons (which isn’t even on the album!). By the time the band had closed with Flux and Helicopter, I was covered in sweat and was ready to just go home and collapse.
But on the way out of the show, I was handed a flyer for the band’s aftershow.



Normally speaking I may not have bothered, as it was blatently going to be a VERY expensive night out. However, the flyer said “MOBY DJ SET” on it, and I instantly knew that we had to go. After an argument with a taxi driver who’d tried to charge us $30 for a $10 ride, we got some money out (pretty much all that was left from my earnings this summer) and showed our blue wristbands to the bouncer who let us straight in. Sadly we weren’t there long enough to see Moby DJ, as we had to get the last train home to Locust Valley at 1am – but all in all, the night was pretty damn good.


Bloc Party – Roseland Ballroom – 09/18/08

Talons
Trojan Horse
Hunting For Witches
Positive Tension
Signs
Song For Clay (Disappear Here)
Banquet Better Than Heaven
The Once And Future King
This Modern Love
The Prayer
Like Eating Glass
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Ares
Price Of Gasoline
Flux
Helicopter

Tuesday 16th – One Last Look at Manhattan

Ok, so on writing this I now know that this probably wasn’t going to have been my last trip into Manhattan, but I’ll come to that in a bit.
So for once (possibly the first time since I’ve been here!), we got a morning train into Manhattan, arriving just before midday. We’d already decided on seeing Brooklyn Bridge, so we got the subway south to as near as we could get to the bridge, before getting off and walking through a typical Manhattan-Chinatown-downtown suburb type bit to get to the river that separates Manhattan and Brooklyn. It turned out that we’d actually ended up at Williamsburg Bridge, so we walked down the peninsular towards Manhattan Bridge and Brookyln Bridge. It wasn’t a particularly momentus occasion seeing the bridge, but it was quite cool none-the-less. I would have walked across it, except that I was knakered from walking by this point and had to fit in a couple of extra stops during the day.

Anahaita and Dave went off to go shopping so that I could see the next item on my list, Grand Central Station. Like the bridge, I couldn’t explain why I wanted to see it, except that it was one of these places that I’d seen in movies and wanted to experience first hand. It was quite a cool experience too, as I got off the subway I walked down a corridor, that whilst it’s decorated in the same fashion as the Grand Central that I’d seen on TV plenty of times, it was very small and claustrophobic – not at all what I’d expected.
Then, as I rounded a corner wandering if I was ever going to find the place I was looking for, the space I was in opened right out and turned into the familiar sight of Grand Central. That place is perfectly symmetrical, the two photos below are of opposite ends of the terminal.

After the station, I set off in hope of finding the final few presents I wanted to buy for people back home. Sadly though, despite having been smothered by tourist shops every time I’d been into NYC previous to this occasion, it took me the best part of 45 minutes to find one this time to buy my last bits of tat to give to my mates.
The rest of the day involved yet more subway trips (I covered the length of manhattan four times that day!), a meal at Ruby Tuesdays and then one final movie. I was pretty happy at the end of the day that I’d had a pretty good last day out in NYC, and was happy that I’d done pretty much everything I wanted to in the city.

That was until today, when I found out that Bloc Party are going to be playing a free gig on Thursday. It’s on a first come first served basis, and I intend to be both of these. That would be awesome.

Saturday 13th – Goodbye Del

Weirdly, when I first met Del, we didn’t get along in the same way I got along with Maria. About a few weeks into her arrival though, something clicked, and all of a sudden she was the most random ditsy funny person I’d ever met (sorry Tom, you’re not even close mate!).
Since then, we’ve had random encounters on the beach, adventures in the city, perfectly timed signature hand shakes, plenty of ice cream, misinterpretations of each others speech and uncountable mentions of each others names (both in the traditional Del?!! style, and the mew and improved Wall-E style: Del-l?).
So this morning, when she decided to leave at 5am to get to the airport (I better be given an evening flight, this time of flight was not appropriate), I was sad to see her go. I woke up at 4.40 and gave her a hand packing, before watching with some amusement as she woke half of Piping Rock up to say goodbye (guys, you all looked stunning at 5am!). I didn’t go back to sleep after she left, deciding on balance to stay up, chat to some Brits on msn, and go into work half an hour early at half 7. I would have felt mad tired when I woke up anyway, and was awake by this point.
The plan is to meet up in Manchester a day or two after I get back, as she’s at Uni there and I don’t go back to bath ‘til the 25th. It’s going to be a strange experience, but that’s what this summer’s been full of…
Safe safe.

Monday 8th – Goodbye Maria / Skydiving Part 2

This morning everyone awoke in one of two states. The lucky ones among us woke up still drunk from the night before. The unlucky ones woke up sober and hungover. We’d done our best to make Maria’s final night at PRC as enjoyable as possible, and as with everything we do at Piping Rock, this involved copious amounts of alcohol. We stayed up late playing child’s games, drinking, and telling Maria we’d miss her until we eventually all ran out of steam and fell asleep.
I woke up in the morning on the couch in the lounge, so hazily dragged myself downstairs to sober up before leaving for my second jump of the summer. I packed all my stuff and checked that I had everything ready to go before I had to go and do something very difficult.


I got along with Maria the second I met her, and have known that saying goodbye was going to be hard from the start. So having to say goodbye to the wee Scottish girl that I’d adopted as my sister (well, one of two – but Del’s still here at the moment) was one of the worst things I’ve done since I’ve been here.
The first proper blog entry I wrote for this trip included a bit about how I felt I hadn’t said a proper goodbye to my family and friends before leaving. So I tried to make sure that this goodbye was done properly in the hope that it would make me feel in a better mood than I did sat on platform 2 in Macclesfield back in June (almost 3 months ago now). As I climbed into my taxi to take me to the train station, I didn’t feel the same feelings as I’d done in Macc, instead I just felt really sad. Sad to see one of my best friends go, not knowing when we’d meet again.

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Last time we skydived, the Americans were all still here, and so we drove to Calverton to experience free-falling at 120mph. This time though, it was only me and John jumping, and I was meeting John out there. So I had to get a taxi to Syosset and then the train to Port Jefferson to get there. This took well over an hour and by the time I arrive in Port Jeff, my hangover was beginning to subside (helped by a brew and a donut from Dunkin Donuts!). However, when John turned up, it appeared that I was not the one with the hangover. He’d been out to a famous (on Long Island) place the night before called the Boardy Barn – a tent filled with $2 beers that opens 4 hours a week during the summer. It didn’t take long for him to decide that it was only going to be me jumping today.
The previous jump was a bit of a blur to be honest. The first time you do something as intense as free-falling through the sky at terminal velocity, you’re so pumped on adrenaline that you don’t really take in everything that happens. So it made sense for me to do a second jump. It also made sense to get a video of the whole event this time so that the feelings I felt would be cemented in my head for the rest of my life.

This time, I only waited half an hour before being called up to be strapped into my harness. This time I ditched my glasses, deciding that they only made the journey more uncomfortable last time without really adding much. Most of the thrill of the jump is feeling like you’re flying, not being able to see the ground rise up towards you. My jump buddy soon cottoned onto the fact that I wasn’t back to experience the same thing as last time, and was hoping for something a bit more this time. So instead of sitting in the doorway and dropping out the plane, we dived this time.
The journey up to 13,500ft was pretty much the same as last time, only interspersed by the odd comment by my cameraman. But the jump itself was completely different.
When it was our turn to go, we stood up and walked towards the door. Facing backwards, we then dived out of the door, backflipping down towards the earth. As we flipped, I could see the plane move away from me faster than you can imagine. As we turned over to become belly down, my jump partner told me to move my hands out, and the cameraman flew over. We spun around, cracked knuckles and whooped and screamed with excitement. And this time I was calm enough to realise what was happening, which made the whole journey even more enjoyable. When the cord was finally pulled and we had slowed down to a snail’s pace, I was handed the straps to the ‘chute and I was allowed to steer us. If you pull one strap down far enough (from right above your head to down below your waist), you immediately dive downwards in a spiral. He let me change things about and soar through the air as we headed towards the runway which we’d left only 10 minutes ago.

Once on the ground, I was left shaking with excitement. This jump had been a hundred times better than the first one. I think I might have found a new addiction…

Sunday 7th – The Breakdown of Team GB

About a week into being here in the US, it was apparent that as well as everyone got along, for some unknown reason the Brits were going to be constantly closer together. For this reason, Maria, Del and I named ourselves Team GB. When I mention Team GB now, it also includes Cam (I know he’s American, ignore that!), Anahita, Dave, Kirsty, Gill, Natasha and Kate.
In two weeks, I fly home.
The day before that, Anahita leaves.
In a weeks time, Del leaves.
And tomorrow, Maria goes.
We’ve talked about meeting up over Christmas, and obviously everyone’s going to keep in touch over facebook and msn; but after being in such close contact with such a good group of friends for three months, it’s going to be weird to see these people leave. It was sad saying goodbye to all of the American folk who left a few weeks ago, but this is going to be harder. These were the people that would discuss with me the weirdness of the snack jars, saying things wrong and cheese flavoured popcorn. We convinced the Americans that we call beers smooths, that we refer to napping as ‘going for a dream’, and that the beach is called ‘water on the rocks’. We’d get lost in New York together and complain about work together. These were the people that went through times square with me, went up the empire state building and left me on a subway train overnight.
This is a sad blog entry.

Tuesday 2nd September – The Open

Firstly, I feel I should congratulate my brother Ben on making it to his 19th birthday without being killed by being run over by a car or anything. Pretty much.
Gill and I had been planning a trip to the US Open since she added me on MSN back in May. I’d always wanted to go to Wimbledon back home, but the tickets are ridiculously expensive back home and going to the US Open seemed like a sensible way of getting some tennis action into my life without having to sell a kidney. So on Thursday, Gill won a couple of day tickets to today’s match. The seats were high enough to make our ears pop and noses bleed, but we didn’t care because we’d only paid $30 each for a day of professional tennis.


We turned up at the National Tennis Centre at about lunch time (Hayley - that’s what the Americans call dinner time), having bought muffins to eat on the way there (we didn’t eat any proper food all day now I think about it. We survived on burgers, chips and ice-cream) and immediately bought a cup of tea to drink whilst we pasted ourselves in sun-block. How very English of us.

We entered Arthur Ashe Stadium (the US version of Centre Court) just after Djokovic had started playing his 4th round game against a Spaniard called Robredo. Having never heard of Robredo, I assumed straight away that this was going to be a three set game. We weren’t let down though, as both players played damn well and gave us a three hour, five set match that ended in the favourite winning.
By the time the Djokovic match was over, we’d moved seats four times, ending up in $180 seats that weren’t taken yet. We had been moved a few times by this point, both by security and by people wanting their seats back, but by this point we’d managed to settle in some seats that weren’t to be taken for the rest of the day.

The second match to play was Federer – Andreev, a match that should again have been a walk-over. This also turned out to be a five-setter though, this time due to the favourite’s suprising lack of form, rather than the underdog’s suprising new skill-set.
We’d already decided that we should stick around for the evening matches at the stadium too, which was a women’s quarter-final, as well as Andy Roddick’s 4th round match against Gonzalez. By ‘we’, I mainly mean ‘Gill’, who has a near psychotic obsession with America’s golden boy of tennis. So Dave (who hadn’t been able to come during the day due to work) bought three tickets for the match online for $65 a head and met us at the stadium. He actually managed to con his way into the last set of the Federer match too which was a surprise as the crowds waiting to get in were fairly huge by this point.

This was due to the two men’s games totalling nearly 8 hours in length. The Roddick match was over far quicker than these two with the American winning all three sets (and losing only seven games out of the 25 played), and before I knew it we were back on the last train home to Locust Valley having sat through over 10 hours of tennis for about £50 each.

For the record, despite being in the sun for most of that time, I didn’t tan at all, coming back the same colour as when I left, with only a red triangle on my chest where I’d forgotten to put sunblock.

Sunday 31st August – I want to do something!

It dawned on me today that I only have three weeks left in America - which seems strange, as it feels like I have been here for no time at all. Though somehow, at the same time it feels like I’ve been here for my entire life. Everything seems normal here now, and even New York doesn’t have the same ‘wow’ factor that it did when I first arrived here (though don’t get me wrong – I still think it’s the most amazing city in the world and I’m definitely going to be coming back). As I got onto a train into Manhattan on Monday afternoon, the pale, cold, industrial feel of the train felt more real and homely than that of the warm comfortable Virgin trains that run all round the UK. I’ve grown accustomed to chopping up my food like a baby and eating it with my right hand, as well as drinking lemon and lime flavoured sprite and Gatorades instead of Lucozades.
Having said all of this, I now have very little time left in New York, and I want to make the most of it. On Tuesday, Gillian and I are going to the US Open, to catch the women’s quarter finals and the men’s fourth round. Next Monday, the plan is to go skydiving one last time, and this time get a video of the experience so I don’t forget how it felt. Hopefully before I leave I will also have enough time off to get a little bit of a tan (save explaining to everyone why I’ve come back home the same colour as when I left) and do some shopping for everyone back home.
Tonight is Piping Rock’s Clam Bake, a large event where we’ll host a buffet and drinks for about 300 people. I’ve already worked since 8am, and am now on a short break in the middle of the day. I’ll probably finish at around midnight. Roll on Thursday’s pay check!

Monday 18th – A Quiet Night Out in Manhattan

In Bath you can go out on a Monday night and have a good time. There are clubs and bars that are packed with people drinking, dancing, and generally having a good time. Obviously this is helped by Monday being the student night in Bath, but the same is true for most other major cities in the UK. However, the same does not appear to be true in Manhattan. On Monday night, Gill, Kirsty, Dave and I all wandered into the city, holding high expectations of what to expect from another night out in the city. We’d been out in the city on a Sunday night and had a good time, so a Monday should have been no problem. We were wrong.
We got off the train at Penn Station and immediately jumped into a yellow cab. We asked the taxi driver to take us to somewhere that would be lively on a Monday night, and to be honest we thought we’d end up somewhere good. Instead, the taxi driver drove us around the same block four times, and then dropped us at a lap-dancing club. If it had just been me and Dave, then we may have considered going in. But with two girls in tow, there was no way we were going to be spending the night looking at boobs.
So we got out and walked through Times Square, eventually settling on one of about a thousand Irish bars that are littered all over New York. The bartender in there was all too happy to point us in the direction of the good part of New York (once we’d bought a drink of course), so we quickly drunk up and headed downtown into Greenwich Village, the party centre of the city. A couple of hours later, having spent ages walking, following directions and turning down various bars littered around the village, we ended up in a club that had come highly recommended by some people in a beer and wine bar that we’d stopped in previously. They’d promised us that ‘Big Fat Black Pussy Cat’ would be pumping on a Monday night and that we’d have an awesome time. It turned out to be an underground bar with a soul band playing. We had fun there, but it wasn’t really what we’d been expecting.

I’ve been waiting for a while before posting this entry because Gill and Kirsty went back out into the city on Saturday night, and I wanted to have something to compare our night out too. However, on getting back on Sunday morning, they said that they didn’t have much of a wild time either. We’ve decided since then that the main reason why going out in New York isn’t living up to expectations is because we don’t know where we’re going, and when all of the good bars and clubs are as spread out as they are in Manhattan, this makes things tricky.

Thursday 14th & Saturday 16th – Black and White

Thursday was a fairly straightforward day, with me working the main club during the day, and then originally having the evening off. However, for fear of only making 25 hours this week, I asked to swap shifts with Anahita in the evening so that she could be a lazy-arse and I could earn some more cash. Thursday nights are usually quiet ones to work anyway, as they’re Bistro nights which aren’t overly formal, and don’t attract big tables of people. What did make it interesting however, was the fact that there was a massive thunderstorm on that evening, and at some point, a power line must have been struck by lightning because we lost power for half an hour. All of the extractor fans died in the kitchen (along with the lights), making it completely illegal for the kitchen staff to cook hot food in there. However, they didn’t have much choice as they were in the middle of cooking a bunch of steaks and chickens for a birthday party for one of the important members. Him and his 17 friends.


Saturday was the opposite of this dark disaster of a short, quiet shift. On Saturday, a couple of the members got married. This meant that I worked from 8am ‘til 11 as a breakfast waiter, from 11.30am ‘til 6pm bartending at the terrace bar, and then from 6pm ‘til after midnight bartending at the wedding. And with it being a wedding, there were people there who didn’t know that the staff weren’t allowed to receive tips. To be honest, the evening was actually the most fun I’ve had at work in a while, as there was an awesome covers band playing all night and I could get away with drinking on the job.
I came away from Saturday evening with $20 in my pocket, 16 hours of wages in the bank, and a massive need for some sleep.

Monday 11th June – The Staff Party

So this was it, the most eagerly anticipated date in the whole calendar (well, for the PRC staff anyway). We’d been promised a four course meal, a free bar, a stunning location and the next day off work. And we were ready to receive!
During the day, Leah drove a few of us into Glen Cove, a nearby village (with far more to offer than Locust Valley!). There Kirsty and Leah got their hair cut, and Dave, Ben and I went to pick up alcohol from the liquor store and sandwiches from the Mexican take-away. We arrived back at Piping Rock and hour before the buses were scheduled to leave for the aquarium that had been booked for the evening’s entertainment. An hour turned out to be exactly long enough to shower, shave, cut my own hair (well, a combined effort between me and Dave), have a few drinks, get dressed and cover myself in Hugo Boss (the aftershave, not Mr Boss himself!). So at 4.30 we all piled outside to get into the buses that had been booked for us (which turned out to be school buses!).

Obviously, it was then a good 45 minutes before the buses actually left to take us to wherever it was we ended up, and this meant that the bus had to stop at a gas station on the way so that we could all visit the bathroom.
Piping Rock had gone all out this year, booking us in at a ‘Top 10 aquarium for kids’, and the inside of the aquarium had been really nicely done up for us all. It was quite strange being on the receiving end of the passed hors d'oeuvres and free drinks, but obviously we all did our best not to let that bother us as we partied away all night.
When we all got called into the dining area for the meal, everyone sat down and waited to be served the first course (of four). Strangely though, once everyone had finished eating the first course of pasta, the general consensus was that it was time to get up and dance again. This meant that everyone missed the salad that was coming for the second course, and then turned up late to the entrée. We spent the rest of the night wandering through shark tanks and smoking cigars (has to be done, sorry dad!), before being rounded up to leave at about 11pm.

Saturday 9th – Parties All Around

On Saturday, I worked a 13½ hour day. To be honest, this seems like madness, but the cash will be well appreciated. I think that by the end of the week I will have worked a 45+ hour week, which when you consider that business is starting to die down (and that all the Americans are still here) is an impressive amount of hours.
I started at 8am yesterday (as ever), and didn’t leave until 11pm. I had an hour and a half break in the middle, but except for that I was on my feet all day.
At lunch time, I bartended for a bridal shower party, which involved making vodka-laced cocktails for pretty ladies who were all dressed up in the hope of out-doing each other. In the evening I bartended for a birthday party for one of the members (who must have been about 80 or 90, judging by the amount of grandchildren that were with him) which involved making rum-laced cocktails for fat Americans who were all dressed in matching blazers and slacks.
In the evening, I had to miss a party that most of the staff were going to because I was too tired to go out, and because I had another 8am start coming up the next day. It didn’t sound that good anyway.
Despite all my whinging though (which is pretty much entirely what this entry is made up of), I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of the staff party which is on Monday night. It’s an all-expenses paid meal and drinkathon at a fancy aquariam type place on Long Island. I’ve bought clothes especially for it, I’m taking a model with me as my date, and I’m starving hungry. So it should be a good night!

Wednesday 6th – We Were Hoping For Some Romance

I’d bought my Bloc Party tickets back in May on a whim, hoping that I could find three other bloc lovers to join me at the gig. They’d cost me $130 in total, and if I ended up going by myself, there’d be a chance I couldn’t sell the spares outside the gig, and I’d be left in debt. But within weeks of coming to America, it was apparent that I wasn’t the only Bloc Party fan at the club. In fact, both nights that Bloc Party were due to play at Webster Hall had sold out completely.
So I convinced Dan the manager to give me, Anahita, Dave and Del both Wednesday night and Thursday morning off work, and we headed into the city on Wednesday afternoon to what turned out to be the best gig of my life.


We eat lunch at a Mexican grill place that was like the Mexican version of subway, where you get to choose between burritos and fajitas, and then choose all your fillings (plus a corona, obviously!) before walking straight to Webster Hall to sort out picking up the tickets that had been booked on my dad’s credit card. Thankfully, there were no problems picking these up, and after sitting in a bar round the corner for a bit, we headed into the venue wondering what to expect.


Last time I saw Bloc Party, it was at Alexandra Palace, a huge venue in London. This time was very different though. From where we were standing, there was about five rows of people in front of us, and less than 20 behind. We waited whilst the second support band, ‘Does It Offend You, Yea?’ finished their set, and then waited more whilst the roadies changed the stage. We met a bunch of British Camp America kids whilst we were waiting but I was so excited about the band (as well as needing a wee really badly) that I didn’t really join in.


When the band finally took to the stage, the floor began to shake with excitement. As they broke into Hunting for Witches, the whole crowd started jumping up and down in unison, the floor quite literally bouncing with us underneath our feet. I danced constantly throughout the gig, jumping about like a madman to familiar music that I felt had travelled with me all the way from home. At the end of their main set, they ran straight from Song for Clay into Banquet, a pair of songs which got the crowds moving even more than normal. At one point, Kele even stage dived into the crowd, being carried to the back of the room where he got up on a table with some girls in the crowd and danced away to his own song.


Obviously the band’s first encore was filled with a bunch of crowd pleasers, playing the most popular songs from the last few albums, plus a cover of Prince’s ‘I Would Die 4 U’ which ran perfectly into Bloc Party’s epic disco song Flux.
After finishing with Helicopter, the crowds begun to leave the packed little room that we had been watching in. But we hung about where we were, and a couple of minutes later, the band re-appeared to finish in pure style with The Pioneers.
Last time I saw them play, I decided that Bloc Party were my favourite live band ever. The same is still true, except that I’ll be impressed if I ever see them play a gig as intimate and awesome as the one I just saw in New York City.

Bloc Party - Webster Hall - 08/06/08

Hunting for Witches
Positive Tension
Waiting for The 7.18
Price of Gasoline
So Here We Are
The Prayer
Once a Future King
Mercury
This Modern Love
Song for Clay (Disappear Here)
Banquet
----------------
Like Eating Glass
I Would Die 4 U
Flux
She’s Hearing Voices
Helicopter
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The Pioneers

Sunday 3rd – Packing Meat

This weekend was yet another 8am starter weekend, and whilst I was given Saturday night off, on Sunday I worked a full 13 hour day. However, having vowed not to drink the night before work again (for a while) on Thursday, and knowing that I had the day off on Monday, it was important to make the most of Sunday night and go out and have fun.
The advantage of going out in Manhattan is that everyone usually waits quite late in the evening before going out. So even though I didn’t finish work til 11pm, I still had time to have a couple of beers, get a lift to Mineola train station, and get a train then a taxi to the meatpacking district in Manhattan, arriving there at about half past twelve.
I got the train into the city with Julia (one of the Russian girls – awkward!) and once we arrived in the meatpacking district, we were planning to head towards whichever club Gill and Kirsty had decided on going to. But the problem was Julia’s age. She’s only 20 (not a problem at home, but a massive one here!). Thankfully though, we’d met a couple of locals on the train called Mark and Britney who were up for a night out with us, so we just did some ID swapping, and smuggled the illegal foreigner into the club.

The place we chose reminded me of Revs back at home, but with far more atmosphere. And the drinks were twice the price (the cheapest drinks were $11). We danced, drunk, chatted and laughed until about 3am, when we started to get hungry. So Gill, Kirsty and I headed off in search of a takeaway. We walked for what seemed like miles until we found a street vendor that sold us some disgusting burgers and chicken pitas. Looking for somewhere warm to sit and eat them was easy, as there was a bank just around the corner from us. And at most American banks, there’s a separate room at the front of the building that houses the ATMs. The one we found had a partly carpeted floor, and nice warm air-con on. We only decided that it was time to leave when we all started falling asleep. Whilst I’m fine sleeping on a subway through Manhattan, I felt that a glass walled bank room where we were on view to all of Manhattan (and probably the bank’s security) would not be an ideal place to sleep. So we trundled back to Club 1 to pick up Julia and say goodbye to Mark and Britney (passing a takeaway on the way I’ll point out). This was at about 4am. Two taxis and two trains later and I got to bed. At 6am.
Thank God I had Monday off.

Oh speaking of which, on Monday I played golf for the first time since I’ve been here. Me and Cam went to the range for half an hour, before playing two holes and giving up.

Friday 1st August – Good Karma

I can’t believe that it’s August already. I’ve now been at Piping Rock for 7 weeks and the time has flied by. This month is going to be the month when all of the American students leave, I see Bloc Party, and (hopefully) a few of us will go on a casino trip to Atlantic City.
Today was a really short day of work, starting at 10.30 and finishing at 1.45 when the management decided that there were way too many people working to make it worth our while. So we spent the afternoon on the beach in Oyster Bay, where I managed to get all of my freckles to come out on my face.
In the evening, everyone was planning to go to a houseparty at the house of sum guy whose name I have no idea how to spell. But as Saturday commanded a getting up time of half 7 (like most weeks) I decided that I would be an idiot to go. So instead of partying and drinking all night, I went into Manhattan by myself to watch a Radiohead tribute band called Karma Police play.
I’ll be honest – they were good, but the actual band would have been far far better.

Wednesday 30th – A Multicultural Day

Wednesday was originally going to be beach day, but on being told that Del and Cam were going into the city, plans quickly changed. I feel like I’m only going to be in this country for a split-second of my life, so the thought of missing out on anything at all just doesn’t enter into my mind. And having to choose between sunning my pasty white chest on the beach and having some fun in Manhattan was an easy one.
So we got the train into the city around mid-day, and worked our way down to Little Italy straight away. We’d decided that we were going to go to a posh Italian restaurant and having a nice meal on a terrace with a nice glass of vino. But as usual, the plans went out the window and we just went to the first place with a good deal on lunch food. So we ended up having lunch in a tiny Italian diner that insisted on giving us a bottle of wine for the price of a couple of glasses of it. So post lunch, we strolled (slightly drunk) into Chinatown, which is quite literally next door to Little Italy. It’s really strange, like you’ve walked straight out of one country and into another one. On walking through Chinatown, I suddenly felt like I’d been down the same road before (literally), but somehow it was different. Then I realised that I was walking down the same street I’d walked down at about 6am following the subway ordeal. Only then the streets were completely deserted, and this time they were absolutely packed with Chinese people. This made asking for directions to the nearest subway station really difficult though, so we walked back and forth along the familiar street until we eventually found the J line to take us up-town.


We spent the rest of the day at the cinema (when step-brothers comes out in the UK, it’s worth a look!), and in bars. In the evening we went uptown to the upper-west side and sat outside a Greek bar eating appetizers and drinking Sangria until the time came for us to miss our 11.16 train home. So we finished the night off in a nice roof-top bar that’s right outside Penn station, where we had a couple more beers and sang away a couple of hours to Michael Jackson.
I guess it was kind of a bad omen wearing my I♥NY t-shirt into the city (the same one I wore the time I fell asleep on the subway), but when people pointed out that I was wearing it again, I just ignored that. Bad move. Me and Cam fell asleep on the train on the way back to Locust Valley and missed our stop, eventually waking up at Oyster Bay (the end of the line). So we phoned Tim the taxi driver, who was happy to come and pick us up. But when he turned up, he wasn’t the only person in the taxi and we had to sit in on a half an hour round trip to some guy’s girlfriend’s house (which ‘guy’ didn’t really know the way to) before getting home.


I topped the night off by waking up Gillian on the way in with the words “Del, why the hell did you get off the train without us?!”. She was grouchy in the morning. Mind you, so was I – having to drag myself into work at 10.30am. It’ll be a while before I drink properly the night before working again. Probably.

Monday 28th – Central Park (properly this time!)

One of the first things I did when I got to New York was visit Central Park. When I wrote that day’s blog entry, I wrote:
‘Walking into Central Park was definitely the strangest experience of the trip so far (though I’ve only been here 15 hours, so the competition’s pretty weak). Within seconds of being in the park, I could no longer see any of the surrounding buildings and skyscrapers that filled the rest of Manhatten. If it wasn’t for the sound of a police siren in the distance, and some black dude walking past me shouting “Daiyam!” into his phone (sorry, cell), I would never have known I was in NYC.’
Since that time, I have had plenty of strange experiences. I’ve slept on the subway, jumped out of an aeroplane and worked a 16 hour day on about 5 hours sleep. I also realised after going to Central Park the first time that I hadn’t even scratched the surface of the park. So today I went back into Central Park to finish what I’d begun. My New York guide book had a three hour walk round the park that I was planning to do, but I soon discovered that the best thing about the park is getting lost in it.

The whole place is a mish-mash of overlapping paths that weave inbetween giant fields, trees and rocks. There’s a section called the Ramble that’s kept in the style of an overgrown woodland that I got lost in for about half an hour as I tried to find my way out and back to the carefully tended lawns that make up half the park. I saw a guy rollerblading about whilst trying to balance cups on his head. The weirdest bit of the park though happened when I was at the John Lennon memorial. This tiny spot was easily the most packed place in the whole of Central Park, and it didn’t go down very well when one guy asked his friend who the f*** John Lennon was.

After Central Park, I met up with Cameron and Maria and we went out for a couple of drinks before getting the train and a taxi home.

More Skydiving Photos

Here's a few more pix from the jump that I've got from other people