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…
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