Sunday 29th June – Tired Again

The last few days have been average. Obviously by average I’m ignoring the fact that I’m in a country where people may as well speak a different language half the time, I’m not surrounded by the people that I spend most of my time with normally, and I’m hungry because I am in possession of no more than one dollar and I’m not working tonight.

Most of Wednesday and Thursday was spent recalling the story of my little trip to Manhattan to everyone, and trying to explain that I wasn’t that bothered about my situation when I woke up. The past two days have been hectic though – yesterday I worked from 8am until 4.30pm (a working day), and then again from 6 ‘til 11.30. Today I had to start at 8am again, and didn’t even notice my alarm was going off until five to eight. (Another weird fact – Americans don’t use phrases like “5 to”, “25 past”, “half past” or “quarter to”; they always say the time in hours and minutes e.g. “10.50”.)

I think that by the end of tomorrow, I will have clocked up over 40 hours for this week, despite having 2 and a half days off. Apparently next week’s going to be even worse though, as next week is Liberty Bell week, a 5 day event that runs at three country clubs in the area to celebrate 4th of July. I’ll probably get 60 hours work out of it, despite having Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday all off.

On the plus side though, this will easily pay for the guitar which I bought off ebay a couple of days ago. I’ve been here for over two weeks now, and I’m getting urges to bang some a funky riffs on one of my Fenders. So I bought a shitty little hollow body Les Paul rip-off, in the hope that this will suffice until I can afford something better.

The plan for tomorrow is to go into Manhattan again, and go to Central Park and the Empire State Building. Hopefully I’ll make it home in one piece this time!

Finally, I saw this on one of the member’s cars and lol’d

Monday 23rd / Tuesday 24th – Trying to liven things up a little

OK, I haven’t written recently because the internets been really shit and no-one’s been able to sort it out. But now that something exciting has happened, I feel it’s worth my time to put it all into print.
A few of the staff were given yesterday and today off, so wanting to make the most of the fact that we wouldn’t have to work on a hangover, we headed into New York in the afternoon to have some drinks and hang out for a bit. Actually, the way I write that makes everything sound like it was all planned perfectly and went exactly how we wanted. The reality was that everyone was so tired that we didn’t even leave Piping Rock until about two in the afternoon – mainly because we couldn’t decide what we wanted to do. Some people wanted to spend the afternoon shopping in the mall (how very American of them), some of us wanted to go sightseeing, and some people didn’t know what they wanted to do. In the end, about five of us piled into Jed’s pickup truck and drove off to the mall to kill some time before getting the train into Manhatten. Obviously sticking four people in the back of a pickup truck (I mean sat in the boot, not on seats or anything) is about as legal as daylight robbery, so the few times when we drove past cop cars, we all had to lie low in the back and hope that we didn’t get seen. I think we could all be pretty successful immigrants if we wanted to, as we didn’t get caught at all, and Jed got away without having to pay a $400 dollar fine.


We looked round the mall for a bit, had some food and did a bit of shopping - missing our train in the process. I don’t think anyone really minded, but the later the day got, the less likely it was becoming that we were going to be able to visit the Statue of Liberty (the one thing that we had been able to decide as a group was that this would be a pretty good sight to see). By the time we actually reached New York, it was well past 4pm, and there was no way we were going to be able to go to Liberty Island – the normal queuing time for the ferry is at least a couple of hours. We decided that going up to the top of the Rockefeller Plaza could be quite a good substitute, but we never got round to doing that for several reasons, the main one being alcohol.
If you’re ever planning to spend an evening in Manhattan and you don’t know what to do, you won’t have a problem finding some way of spending your time. Walking through Times Square and getting harassed by people trying to sell you tickets for comedy shows, musicals, or night-time open-top bus tours goes hand in hand. We settled for half price comedy show tickets at the Manhattan Comedy Club, and decided to pass the time before the show by enjoying happy hour at a bar called Tonic. Drinks there were obviously followed by drinks at the comedy club, during which time I got picked on by all of the comedians that night. I can understand why though – with my lack of tan, my newly bought ‘I ♥ NY’ t-shirt, and my Harry Potter-like features, I was the obvious British tourist. But the jokes were pretty funny and harmless, so I didn’t care.

After the gig had finished, we went on to a bar with a couple of guitarists playing in it. I don’t know if it was that that drew us to this place, but it was a good way of passing the time before we headed off to meet some other Piping Rockers in a bar called Off The Wagon, a place which we had real difficulty trying to find. As it was Cam’s birthday by then, he got pinned down onto the bar by the bartender, who then proceeded to feed him straight spirits, as a weird and twisted way of wishing him a Happy Birthday.

To be honest, what happened after we left this club is a little blurry in my memory, but the result of the incidents that followed leaving Off The Wagon was that I woke up at 5am in a subway carriage, with two sleeping hobos for company. I was still a little drunk at this point, so I didn’t panic about my situation (which was a fairly crap one), choosing instead to just carry on as if this was normal practice for a night out in New York. I got the subway back into the city, getting off in Chinatown and decided that the most logical way to exploit my idiotic situation was to skip all of the queues that were bound to appear later for the Statue of Liberty, and see it for myself whilst it was quiet.

I got to the ticket shop at about 7am, sat down behind the four people that had beaten me to the queue, and went back to sleep. When the queue finally started moving, a random Israeli guy was kind enough to wake me up so that I could start the laborious process of going through buying tickets, queuing again, going through security, queuing again, getting the ferry, queuing again, going through more security, and then finally going up the statue. Since 911, visitors haven’t been able to get up into the statue’s crown (in fact until recently, you couldn’t even go up the to viewing platform); but at 9am on Tuesday morning, I was quite happy to be the first tourist of the day to look up that big copper bitch’s skirt, and the first one to stand on the viewing platform and look out across Manhattan as people across the city begun to start their days work. The same Israeli who was kind enough to wake me up was also kind enough to take a couple of photos of me on his camera and email them to me later in the day (the battery died on my phone in the night). All across the harbour there were ships full of oil, just waiting in the harbour until they were offered a bid high enough by some banker on Wall St. to make it worthwhile coming in to dock.

I spent the rest of my day walking round Chinatown, Greenwich village, and Times Square (again), before getting the train back to PRC in the evening; where everyone was happy to know that I’d made it through the night safely without my sleep on the subway being interrupted by anything more than a cleaner sweeping underneath my seat at five in the morning.

Saturday 21st June

Just got back from a 12½ hour shift. I’m absolutely knackered. Today was my 5th double shift (i.e. working at both lunch and dinner – about 9 or 10 hours a day), and after partying last night until 3am, I was ready to sleep today in my break between shifts. The first person to piss on my bonfire was Jen, who pointed out that we were needed at the beach club an hour earlier than normal to set up for dinner as tonight was the night of the member’s art show – thus cutting my break down to about an hour. The second person was Georgia (my supervisor), who told me that actually today I wasn’t going to get a break between shifts today, I was needed at the beach club at 2pm to help move tables and stuff about. The third person to piss on my bonfire (actually, he basically shit on it, and then dismantled it piece by piece) was John, who decided that I was needed tomorrow morning at 8am to serve people for breakfast. I’m only estimating, but I reckon that by the end of tomorrow, I will have worked a 60 hour week. I can’t explain how much I’m looking forwards to having two days off. The newbie who arrived after me (Maria, one of the Scottish girls) is only working 3 double shifts next week, and two single shifts. And yet I’m doing 5 doubles, two of which are starting at 8am! I’m going to take this as a compliment, as it probably means that they want my help and think that I’m a good hard worker – but I’m still pissed off at how hard I’m going to be working here. Oh well, maybe I’ll be able to afford that $3K guitar by the end of the summer (if I stay here) – apparently you earn time and a half for every hour over 40 you do in a week.

Thursday 19th June - Not much to say

I haven’t written anything for a while, party because the internet’s been down, and partly because nothing much has happened. I spilt my first drink over a customer on Wednesday, but he didn’t mind too much. He wasn’t a real member anyway; he was at the club on a company outing. 200+ people from his company came along to play golf for a day, which meant that we go to be their bitches for a day, serving them three meals and drinks. Apparently they were all Jewish, which would explain why such big portions were taken. For the evening meal, I worked as a runner for the kitchen staff, who were manning the buffet outside. My job was to run inside and get more food whenever they were running low. In theory this should have been quite a simple job, except that more food was eaten than the chef had anticipated. So on top of running back and forth to the kitchen, I got the joy of watching the head chef slave away in the kitchen trying to make more food on the spot – a feat which even my mum would be impressed at.
I still haven’t had the chance to go to a shop to buy food or beer yet – hardly any alcohol has passed my lips since I got to Piping Rock, and I’m sure that it can’t be good for my body to go for this long without getting drunk. I really want to buy a kettle too - I’m having to boil water for cups of tea using a saucepan at the moment. Another English person arrived today, taking the total number of Britons up to five. Soon we’ll have enough to be able to put up a decent argument as to how things are meant to be pronounced.

Spent most of my shift this afternoon trying to understand the American frame of mind when it comes to travelling. I was speaking to Ryan (a guy who’s happy to live in the same town for the rest of his house without ever leaving the country to go abroad) and I just couldn’t understand his point of view. Turns out it’s not just him either, apparently most Americans would be happy never to travel abroad, taking the view “it’s nice in America, what’s the point of going anywhere else?”

Hair photos and my 1st day off

Firstly - hair photos:

Right, now down to serious business...

Morning:

Today is my first day off, and it’s very well received, because my feet are killing me. Having spent the last 2 years slumped in a sofa watching Countdown, it surprised me as to how hard standing up for 10 hours a day is. I think I’ve almost caught up with my jet-lag now – my alarm went off at 10 this morning and I had to press snooze 8 times before I woke up. I’m thinking of going back into New York City today, I want to ‘try out’ some guitars. The reality is just closer to the fact that I haven’t played one for a few days and it’s driving me nuts. However, the plan is to buy one once I have enough money saved up from this job. Though that could take a few weeks.

I got a bollocking yesterday lunchtime off Georgia (my supervisor). She’d told me to just follow one of the girls round at lunch time today, to see how to properly take food orders. But I began to get bored so tried to take an order myself. The trouble came when the guy ordering messed up, asking for a salad when it turned out he wanted sandwiches. Though to Georgia, this was my mistake, and proved why I was not yet ready to work.

Evening:
OK, well that New York trip was neither well thought out in any way, or themed as I’d earlier hoped to do. By the time people had finished visiting Social Security and the bank, it was the afternoon. So we didn’t get into Manhattan until about 3. I went in with the two Scottish girls, Anhita and the new girl Maria, who arrived today (such Scottish names!). We spent most of the train journey in telling Maria how bad all the customers are, and just generally trying to scare her. I also found out that apparently the person who owns Colgate comes here, along with the guy who owns Kellogs, and the guy who discovered DNA (Mr Watson I belive).
When we got to Penn Station (which is directly underneath Madison Square Gardens for anyone who cares), the first thing we did was go shopping. As I was on the receiving end of a 2:1 girl to boy ratio, this meant spending an hour looking at makeup and lipstick in Macys, before finding somewhere to eat lunch. I won on this one though, as we ended up in a sports bar with HOT girls as waitresses. The bar was showing the golf that day - I honestly didn’t think a room full of people would ever get that excited about putting.

After lunch, I decided I wanted to go off guitar shopping, so I left the girls with the plan of meeting them later. This never happened because I was given the wrong phone number for one of them, but I did get the chance to look round come awesome guitar shops. There’s a road leading of Times Square (48th street) that has about 4 or 5 guitar shops in a row. And they all specialise mainly in old school mega-expensive ones. I tried out a Gibson hollow-body that cost over $3000, but there’s no way I’ll be buying something that nice. Sounded schu-weeet though.
I also had a proper look round Times Square, which is bigger than just the image you always see in magazines of the Coca Cola advert. The whole place is covered in adverts trying to stand out from the rest by being the biggest and brightest around (even the subway is covered in light-bulbs), and people hurry everywhere they go. I had a look round Virgin Megastores there, and it’s so big, they don’t just have a ‘world music’ section, they have sections for each country. Though I couldn’t find a separate section for England…

I found a blues club on 42nd street called the B. B. King Blues Club, and wanted to venture in to see if there was any live music on in there. Apparently a couple of weeks ago Chuck Berry played there. I tried to ask one of the huge black bouncers surrounding the doorway, but they kept moving away from me, so I just walked inside. It wasn’t ‘til I tried to order a beer from the bar that it was pointed out that there was a private function on and I was the only person there dressed like a scruff. So I was politely asked to leave.
The weather finally gave in today, with storms hitting Manhattan on and off whilst I was there. I heard one guy shouting “the end of the world is nigh” to passers-by, but I don’t know if he was being serious or not. I hope not, or we’re all screwed. By the time I got back to the club, the rain had subsided, but the weather was significantly cooler this evening, and the air felt fresher. Hopefully tomorrow will be less muggy.

It occurred to me by the end of my day off today that I hadn’t really taken advantage of the fact I had a free day. The next free day I get, I’m going to try and get into Manhattan as early as possible, and check of a big list of sights. Otherwise I will be doing all work and no play, and I’ve heard that that will make me a dull boy.

Saturday 14th June – First day of work

Morning
I woke up at about 6 this morning, having got a decent 9 hours sleep. I’m surprisingly un-hungry, I was expecting to be starving as I haven’t really eaten anything since yesterday lunch time. Made myself a cup of tea for breakfast, but they don’t even have a kettle in the staff kitchen! Turns out that by ‘staff will be provided with all meals’ actually means ‘a lot of the time, staff will be given lunch at 11am and tea at 5.30pm. The rest of the time you can fend for yourselves’. I wouldn’t mind, except that we don’t seem to be that close to anywhere serving food. The nearest place with shops is Glen Cove, and that’s about 3 miles away. If I get some time off today I may have to rob a bike and ride over there to buy some stuff.
When I woke up, I initially felt pretty apprehensive about my situation. I lay in bed for a couple of hours just thinking over and over about maybe I could have landed a more relaxed job in Manhatten, working in a café or restaurant there instead. The fact that I need to go and get a crew cut is bugging me too. I like the way I have my hair at the moment.
However, after getting up, showering and having a brew, I did begin to feel a bit more positive. I’m putting the initial down that occurred this morning down to the fact that I’ve been thrown into an environment where I’m going to have to comply to a few rules – something which I haven’t really had to worry about for the past couple of years. I’m at least going to try and get a couple of weeks work under my belt before deciding. I don’t know when Rob wants this (beautiful) head of hair gone by, but unless he gives me a break today to ride into town and get it done, it’s staying as it is.
I need to remember to ask him about getting the internet sorted too, otherwise I’m going to posting a weeks worth of blog entries at a time.

Afternoon
Just got back from my first ever lunch-time shift. It was pretty easy work to be honest. I was serving three tables, but as it was my first shift, I was paired up with a girl called Leah who had been here about 3 weeks. So for the first few customers, I just watched what she did, and then I got left to fend for myself. Fucked up taking an order of some arrogant git who wanted the tuna salad with fresh fruit and extra crackers, but except for that it everything went well. The staff lunch was chicken and rice, which I thought was tasty, but everyone else seemed to be sick of. Apparently that’s what is served for most meals.
Don’t know yet whether or not I’m working tonight. To be honest I think I’d rather work. Pretty much everyone else is working, and there’s not much to do here. Also, I think that everyone’s working at the beach club tonight (less glamourous than it sounds!), and I think that that will be where tea will be served for the staff too. So I’ll miss out if I’m stuck here.
Internets still not working, apparently it’s up and down all the time. Apparently I have Monday off, so if it’s still not up by then, I’m going to find an internet place and upload everything from a flash stick.
Hair’s still not been cut :P

Evening
Hair’s been cut. After a long discussion, it was decided that it would be best (and the most fun) for one of the girls, Natalie, to cut my hair. Instead of someone who knows what they’re doing. Cameron is the sort of guy who shaves his chest, so naturally he provided a set of clippers and scissors. I probably lost about a stone in weight from this ordeal (partly hair, partly because I was shitting myself), but to be honest, she did a pretty decent job. I think it hair looks ridiculous, but it does atleast look smart, and smart is what Rob wanted.
I worked in the evening too today, bringing my total hours to about 10. It looks like I’m going to be working a lot more than my contracted 40 hours a week, but that doesn’t matter as I’m getting paid hourly, and if I’m not working when everyone else is, I’ll probably just get bored anyway.

I'll post hair photos as soon as I find who has them!

Friday 13th June – Piping Rock Club

Had a fairly crap nights sleep due to some idiot deciding that we’d all sleep better with the air conditioning turned off. This, plus the fact that people kept leaving during the night to go to their various summer camps meant that I didn’t really get much sleep at all.
This morning I woke up at about 5am. I wasn’t surprised that my plan of fuelling my sleep with alcohol didn’t work, but it didn’t matter as it was still a good excuse to go out and get a bit drunk. I finally dragged myself out of bed at about 8am, showered, dried myself on a hand towel provided by the hostel (the towel shops hadn’t opened yet) and had my free breakfast. Then it was time to go and explore again. The original idea had been to drop my bag at a luggage storage room at the train station and spend the morning looking round Central Square and the surrounding area. But this perfect plan dissipated when I found out that they don’t actually have anywhere at Penn train station to leave bags. So instead I left my bag in the youth hostel, and decided to conquer Upper West Side instead.

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.
I made the stupid mistake of sitting down in a quiet area of the park, dressed like a Brit on holiday (it’s quite hard not to when that’s exactly what you are) and laying a massive map on the floor in front of me to complete the look of stupid tourist. Within minutes a homeless guy managed to hone in on me, before proceeding to tell me how today is his 54th birthday, and how he used to be a professional American football player in the early 90s who had finished his career by getting too rich, and doing too many drugs and women. I gave him some loose change out of my pocket to help buy him a ‘birthday’ meal, but it can’t have been more than a dollar. Maybe his story was true - I guess I’ll never know, but after he left I was very quick to get up and move to somewhere more populated by girls in bikinis catching the sun and men in suits catching a break from their hectic urban lives in this weird tranquil retreat.

I had lunch in a small French café (just to point out that I’m not hooked on French cuisine all of a sudden, it’s just that their sandwiches looked really tasty). I tried to eat in the American style, using just a fork to eat all my food with. I just ended up pushing salad round my plate. I don’t know how the yanks manage to clear their plates using this technique, but judging by the size of the woman sat in the corner of the café, they obviously manage.
I’ve now finally reached Piping Rock Club, and to be honest I’m starting to worry a little about whether or not I picked the right job for me. I’ve had to fill in a hundred pieces of paper work, signing to say that I wont give under-21s alcohol, I wont accept tips, I wont turn up for a shift more than 5 minutes before it starts, and (worst of all) I’ll get a haircut. Speaking to my roommate (I’d write his name down, but I have no idea how you spell it. Infact, it’s so obscure and Russian that I can’t even remember it now), it sounds like I’m about to get worked to death.
Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to see how it goes…

Thursday 12th June – Goodbye/Hello

I didn’t have my laptop handy for most of the day (and definitely didn’t have the internet handy) so the following is made up of notes I tried to write down during the day.

6.51am BST
I’m sat on platform 2 in Macc train station with Viva la Vida blaring out my headphones, surrounded by people in grey suits. Despite the weather in England having been really good for the past week or so, the country’s determined to leave me with stereotypical views of its climate. It’s dull, overcast, and drizzling with rain that just helps the people in grey suits blend into the grey background of the town I live in. It’s fair to say that I probably look fairly stupid sat here in green Bermudas.
It occurred as I said goodbye to my dad that I’m not going to see a single familiar face for over 3 months now. This will be the longest I have ever gone without seing my family, and as I walked onto the train platform, I suddenly got overrun with emotions. I feel sad that I am going to be leaving behind so many good things and angry because I feel like I haven’t said goodbye properly to my family. But the weirdest feeling is that of complete and utter loneliness. Despite having sat on this platform countless times before, and despite the fact that I am surrounded by people, I feel totally alone.

8.23am BST
Bored on the train. I’ve been listening to my music all morning (a mistake I was going to later regret), and am now listening to Kool & The Gang. To relive my boredom, I bought 4 tubes of smarties from the shop and eat all the blue ones, to see if Nestle have finally taken notice of my allergy and done something about it.
I’ve started writing a list of things I want to see and do in New York City before my time is up. 3 months sounds like a long time, but if I only get a chance to go into the city one day a week then my time in the city is going to be a lot shorter than 3 months. I think I’m going to try and ‘theme’ each trip in, in the hope of covering as many things as possible. So far I’ve got:
Parks (central park, battery park, brighton beach)
Music (jazz quarter, Harlem, see a musical on Broadway, electric ladyland studios, Lincoln centre) – possibly on the same say I come to see Bloc Party
Buildings (Statue Of Liberty, Empire State Building, Guggenheim Museum, Federal Hall, Grand Central Station, Times Square, Top Of The Rock)
Foreign stuff (Little Korea, Chinatown, Tibet House, Belmont (better than Little Italy apparently)

11.12am BST
Having had no problems getting to the airport or through security (ha! In your face Dad – ye of little faith!), I’m now sat in Terminal 3’s lounge, next to a bunch of Jamaican (maybe) girls who are very loudly checking their MySpaces. What the fuck’s so funny about a MySpace?!

5.26pm EDT (10.26 BST)
We’ve landed in JFK, but have now been waiting to taxi to the terminal for about half an hour. Probably some fat American can’t climb the stairs to the plane. Realised what I’d forgotten aswell – my Bloc Party t-shirt, and a towel. So I’m going to stink until the shops open tomorrow morning. The plane was meant to have hundreds of films to choose from, but it all broke, so we were forced to watch Golden Compass and then some film with The Rock in. The blue smarties haven’t affected me yet, so I eat all the other ones too in the hope that the sugar will keep me going for a bit.

7.30 EDT (12.30am BST) ish
Finally arrived at the hostel – everyone else in my room is doing Camp America instead of work, and everyone seems to be having to get up early tomorrow morning to catch connection trains, planes and buses to their camps. One guy’s got to get up at 2am. So in the hope of sleeping through everyone’s mayhem tomorrow morning, the plan is to get a bit drunk tonight. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep properly then. The hostel’s having a BBQ tonight, but I didn’t come all the way to NYC to spend my time in a hostel. Because of my earlier over-use of the music player on my phone, my battery ran out so I didn’t get a chance to take many pictures on the way into the city, which is a shame, because it would have been nice to show the way that the buildings just get bigger and bigger the closer you get to Manhatten, before rocketing up once you reach the island.

The Rest Of The Evening
On the advice of the stereotypically friendly American front of desk hostel guy, I went for tea in a French restaurant last night called Mattise. They served me asparagus soup (shockingly tasty actually) and Coq au Vin (I lol’d), along with a pint (or whatever it is you get out here) of 7% beer. My accent soon attracted the attention of the women on the next table, and we got chatting about New York. One of them is a doctor at one of the hospitals in the city, and gave me her phone number in case things go tits-up for me. Kinda like the NHS.
They then directed me to a Jazz club on Broadway which does live bands all night, so I spent the rest of the evening sat in there with a few beers, watching some of the most awesome guitar and saxophone playing I’ve ever seen. Also, the drummer looked like Carlton off the Fresh Prince.
I got back in at 11ish, and sat down on my bed to find that some ginger scot was now sleeping in it, so I robbed a different bed and nodded off to the most disturbed nights sleep I’ve ever had.


I feel like a small fish in a very very big pond (or an ocean) in this city, but already I love everything about New York.

T-2 Days

Finally started packing. Well I say packing, I decided in my head which t-shirts I do and don't want to take. Went in to town to buy some holiday type things - sun cream, anti-persperant, slash's autobiography, a New York travel guide. The normal stuff you buy when going on holiday anywhere.

Spent the day listening to Oasis, Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zep, along with figuring out how to pronounce Bath. I read about great british heroes such as Shakespeare, Churchill, Nelson and Jimmy Carr. I had a pint of actual beer, and followed it by a roast beef sandwich. I think I'll go and watch a film with Hugh Grant in later. The Arnold clan is going out for a family meal later to the newly redecorated indian in town. Naturally I intend to order a Tikka Masala. Jokes aside though, I even got my mum to try and get rid of the stains in my England rugby top so I can take it with me.

Actually, in true Brit form, I've been looking at the weather for NYC, and can't help but complain. Apparently today the predicted high is 37 degrees (celcius). At the moment (it's midday over there now) it's a mere 35 degrees. Whilst I'm glad it's not raining out there, I'm not overjoyed by the prospect of figuring out my way round New York in those kind of temperatures. Thankfully, it's meant to get a lot cooler by Thursday, topping only 29 degrees. Bring on the heat exhaustion and sunstroke!

Last night I was pointed in the direction of some photos of the country club where I'm going to be working. http://www.pbase.com/jhyiii_bermuda/croquet&page=all These appear to be photos from a croquet tournament that took place two years ago. Theres photos up of the main club house, and a couple of the dining room, which I'm guessing is where I'm going to be spending most of my time. To quote Adam: "it looks like a quintessential british gentleman such as yourself will fit in nicely".

Speaking of which, I need to remember to go out and buy tea bags. I've heard that the tea over there is shite, and have figured out that I'll probably need about 200 tea bags to make it through the summer. I hope I don't come back home liking coffee...

T-5 days

Ok, why have I done this? Why use up more space on my facebook page, making it harder to get down to my wall? My big idea of today is that by keeping a blog like this, not only will I have some kind of record of what's happened, but it means everyone at home can see what I'm getting up to over the pond, and can all be extremely jealous. This is kinda like a diary, but without anything embarrassing.

I leave for New York on Thursday, and have been told to get down to Heathrow Airport by 11am. This is going to mean catching a train from Macc at 7am. As if my body clock isn't going to take enough of a battering anyway, getting up in the morning is really going to screw me over. I was planning on staying with someone the night before leaving, but everyone's going on holiday.

I've been trying to figure out what to take with me, and I think I've narrowed down the list of things that i NEED to take to just clothes, my laptop, and the odd holiday extra. Might be an idea to get some dollars out before I go too, but that can wait. Still can't decide whether or not to take one of my guitars - I still want to use this trip as an excuse to buy a new guitar, but I don't want to be without one for too long. I remember coming back from Mongolia to discover I could barely play Smells Like Teen Spirit anymore. Also I promised the band I'd write some more songs over summer, so need something to write them on.

Not much else to write here, mainly as nothing's happened really. I'll try and write my next entry soon after arriving in America.