I would advise you all to do the same since it does do a little good for the planet, plus people can see what epic films you are getting :p. I’ll think of some more environmental friendly projects to do since I do get a nicer feeling everytime I say no to shopping bags.

See more progress on: say “no” to bags when shopping

Anyhow, here’s a list of things I need to bring/pack/buy:

• Tickets
• Passport
• Wallet
• Phone (emergancies and pre/post paris)
• Euro adaptors (got 2 woo)
• Euros
• Tripod and remote/ext (want to take some scenary shots with me and Alice in them)
• dslr with all memory cards (raw baby)
• Clothes
• Toothbrush etc
• ipod
• ipod charger adaptor (phone and ipod uses usb!)

Here are places to go and things to do, feel free to suggest anything, Alice won’t read this hehe:

• Eiffel fucking tower
• Take stereotypical photo of it and perhaps lash kev’s photo of it
• Go cafe’ing inside Eiffel
• Buy a small eiffel tower for Alice
• The lourve
• That arc thingy
• Buy a beret! Need to look like a native french person :p
• Make fists with feet on carpet, die hard style (not plane trip but meh, it’s a tradition)
• Try a snail nigiri
• Some candlelit action, either small restaurant or picnic
• french bread, nom nom
• check out opera house del phantom

Update

Well, I actually did everything I put on the list so that’s pretty epic

But yeah, already I’ve managed to preorder final fantasy 7 crisis core via play.com with quidco so woo!

• Stuart’s birthday
• My new ipod
• My phone which everyone seems to hate haha
• Christmas with Alice
• New Years Eve at Stu’s
• Murder in monochrome gig
• Graduation Weekend
• New york new york!
• Comparing new york and england
• Super jetlag meetup
• Okkervil River
• Polysics
• Weekend up with Alice

Yes, that is a killer list haha, doubt you can read all of it!

Accents and wearing monocules
People dig the British accent, it’s quite like that dude in the BT ads in the film Love Actually. Everyone finds the accent awesome so I try my best to flaunt it (wish I brought my monocule :/), occasionally I ham it up a bit more but only for snobbish occasions haha. i sometimes try and talk like an american for comedy purposes (ordering as cup of cworrfeee at Hungry Johns) But yeah, I have someone who loves my voice so it’s all good

Taps
Taps make so much more sense in New York. Why have separate taps for hot and cold, usually you want a mixture of blistering hot and freezing cold water to make a “just right” temperature and there’s none of that in the uk I suppose one of the cons of having a single tap is that if you’re drinking tap water, you might be drinking from the hot water tap too which is obviously yuck.

Phones
People love their phones; almost everyone has a blackberry whilst kids have crazy sidekicks for hardcore im action! I’m sitting next to two girls playing tetris right now and though they think they’re awesome, boy do they suck at it. I’m guessing they cost a lot less than it is here.

Tipping and pricing
By far the most obvious difference. Usually in London you would tip, but only when the service is awesome or when it’s a fancy place. The tips are usually around 10% of the bill and all.
Totally different story in New York, first thing I did in New York was tip the cab driver $1. The trip cost $49 so I thought paying $50 would be alright… Boy was I wrong, the cab man was pissed as I was told that was uncool haha.
Now where’s the measurement of how awesome a service was if you tip for EVERYTHING. The guy didn’t talk or do much so meh. We were also given lots of “mandatory” gratuity charges during the week. When you think heavily hinting for tips was alright, you get people actually whacking it on a bill, what if the waiter or waitress swore at you and gave you trouser food? Bet the tip only fuels them for more trouser action. The system is built into a painful tradition of forcing people to pay for things that they should have a choice in.

Now it doesnt end here, the next tedious thing is the pricing, why adding VAT afterwards? I went into a resturant with just enough change to buy something and bam, vat. Makes the though process confusing, it’s mandatory so why not just shove it on all the items to avoid the confusion, guess it would be hard to change.

Food
Now this is what I loved most, yummy food hehe. One of the things I kept hearing most is how monsterous of a proportion the food is. I must say I didn’t really get huge portions. They were larger than food in London, but not by a lot. The food is slightly cheaper than London and in most cases, a lot nicer (sometimes at the expense of it being a really unhealthy meal hehe)
There’s definitly more specialities in America than London too, pizza in New York is generally a lot nicer than London, not to mention their breakfasts. If you go to places that aren’t the hotel cafe, you can get a proper fry up at a reasonable price. (just don’t forget to tip hehe)

Roads
One way streets are fun, you hardly get that in the uk. As well as that, walking across the road is a new experience altogether too, damn white traffic lights, I prefer the green and red man, associating yourself with colours adds another layer of instant recognition, the white lights just confuse me and when you do cross the road you’ll find that some cars from the left or right will actually continue to drive through. You’d think you’re free to go but you get cars moving still which means you can still risk getting running over even when you’re walking on a go sign, granted they do stop for you, but what if you popped out of nowhere. Bam!

Grid like city
I quite enjoyed the fact that the entire city was grid based, if you wanted to find a place all you had to do is find out the street number (eg 56th Street) and then find the numbers, the bad thing was that one street or avenue can be super long! Otherwise it really helps for those poor tourists who have no idea where they are.

Disturbingly tall buildings
Probably the first thing you’ll notice, the buildings are disturbingly tall. And since it’s laid out like a grid this means that winds can be pretty harsh. Lifts didn’t have a 1st floor, the ground floor is usually that which makes more sense than G, 1, 2 etc.

Plugs and sockets
Now we all know North America has a different plug compared to the UK 3 pin plug. I got myself 2 adaptors and lent one to my colleague. Boring? Yeah I know, the main thing I would like to point out is that when you buy cheap 2 pin adaptors instead of the more modern 3 pin us plug, be prepared for a shocker! Literally! Man the amount of times I got shocked haha. I was too scared of turning on / off my lamp switch in my hotel room without protecting my fingers, I even got zapped when using my finger print reader on my laptop.

that’s all I’ve got for now, will write some more when they come up!

Airplaning
The one bit I was looking forward to, so excited that I got to sit by window for both journey to and from. The airport part was fun since I was able to do the whole metal detector thingy, was tempted to joke about bombs but I gave that a miss, I simply did a “YES” just when I got out, made sure I took my studded belt off too hehe. Take off was fun, I was quite the happy bunny when we started flying. I took some pretty nice shots outside the window but then kept all the gadgets off so it wouldn’t interfere with the airplane.

Hotelling

This was fun because I made sure I juiced the hotel by taking/using everything…newspapers, toiletries, the lot!* I also ensured that I left bang on time too at checkout, when we checked in we found out that we had to pay for the rooms since the company card wasn’t approved yet, luckily a few days later we got that sorted with a few emails here and there. The view from my window was pretty nice, nothing epic but it was nonetheless fun. The cable tv was pretty boring, I got bored instantly and just left it playing in the background, I did check out “Rock of Love 2″ with Bret Michaels, it was ridiculous haha.

* = some of that is true haha

Museum of Modern art and Radio City

We tried going here but it was closed was still worth mentioning it since we did pass it haha.

Grand Central Terminal

That was pretty epic, I took one shot of the place and was done however, we did take the subway a few times too but thats for another section hehe

Chrysler Building

This was quite funny since you can almost see it everywhere. I wasn’t keen on seeing the empire state building because this building was cooler looking. My manager was talking about how someone asked him where it was and he told her to simply look up hehe. It was just, always there.

Subway

That was cool, some of the signs were funny, the announcer guy is a lot more enthusiastic than the ones in London, he goes “STAND CLEAR BEHIND THE CLOSING DOORS”. I took a few shots at the station, not too much because people will think I’m weird, got a metro card to travel. You pay when you enter and just walk through some turnstiles when you leave, made more sense than touching in and out.

Times Square

Epic! Simply epic, ten times better than Picadilly Circus, it makes it look like a … circus really haha. Granted I didn’t do much there, was only there for some tourist shopping as well as some BBQ action. This was by far the most epic place for photo taking! Not to mention being scammed silly haha. I managed to buy myself a lovely New York statue of liberty that to go with my “I love New York” t shirt haha. I really wanted to get some ninja stars (asked people at work haha) and take a photo of a hooker but I didn’t get to

Ground ZeroJust a building site, by far the most boring place to go to, however it was quite interesting seeing a lot of stalls placed around the area selling World Trade Centre memorabilia. Got to love the money making opportunists.

The Bridge of the Brooklyn Variety

It was simply a bridge but nonetheless it was still an epic place to goto, it was fun walking it especially when we were at mid point and there was nothing but the road bridge and some sea. It was also a nice place to take photos of the New York from afar. I kept mooing at the tourists :p

Statue of Liberty

Now in order to see this in full we would need to take a ferry there but since we were leaving that day we simply saw it afar, I tried asking some random person to borrow their telezoom lens but they blanked me I tried taking photos of the painted fake statue of liberties too but they insisted that I paid them $5 to take it, the ones at covent garden did it for free

Food

This will most likely be an epic section on it’s own. Food seemed to be quite an adventure since I tried visiting different places for food each day. Apart from Breakfast where we either went to Hungry Johns or the Hotel Cafe (Raffles) for full english breakfasts, everywhere else was different each time. For breakfast I managed to get a lot of pancake, waffle, french toast, bacon and eggs action. My first visit I got to order a cup of “CWOORRFEE” hehe. Everything was extra fluffy and nice hehe.

For evenings we went to an array of dinners, restaurants and food places:

• We went to some random local pizza place for some pizza (double pizza!), everything is bigger and nicer, I also got to go to s’barros which was apparently a big pizza chain
• Went to some random thai place and had thai duck, was quite nice but they asked for a 15% tip! Evil!
• Goodburger, nice place for lunch, had a yummy milkshake with that too!
• Some french cafe place, had satay chicken and a fruit salad, weird combination I must say.
• For a work night out we went to some mexican place, there was some club night going on where we got a few promiscuous girls dancing about and the odd shot girl asking us to buy jelly vodka (they can fuck right off!) I had an AWESOME medium rare steak, man it was juicy! Quite an epic bill at the end though!
• One of the lunches I walked 18 blocks to find a Wendys, I also went to the back of a Wendys… for a wee
• At the same day for lunch (yes I had two lunches to make sure I got the most of the food) I went to a dunkin donuts for donuts and a pizza haha.
• Last night we had some epic BBQ food. The wings were monster like! That was for starters too, luckily my pork ribs and pork thingy was alright to finish, but nonetheless an epic win for eating it all haha, we were given TOWELS instead of napkins for the meal, I understood why when the food came, man it was bbq sauce city! The guy next to us was a right bastard, he kept taking the piss out of the waiters and had an annoying laugh.
• Starbucks, exactly the same as UK, disturbing.

Here are the photos of food..

That’s about it, the entire trip was epic and working at the US offices was cool too. Hope you enjoy the photos, I took far too many hehe.

Things to do:

• Arrive at the hotel room and make fists with my feet on the carpet, John McClain style!

Things to buy:

• Over the top new york merchandise (statue of liberty hat)

Places to go:

• Any old pizza place
• Grand Central Terminal
• Radio City Music Hall
  
• In and out burger
• Hello Deli
• Empire State Building
• Times Squire
• 5th Avenue
• Broklyn Bridge
• MoMA

Things to eat

• Pizza! (WE LIKE PIZZA! DAMNIT CARL!)
• Pancakes
• Waffles
• BUFFALO wings
• KFC wing bucket!
• Sbarro?
• Burger
• Hot dogs

The ones crossed out were done

Anyway, here’s the list, sadly I honestly don’t need much, only clothes and other bits and bobs:
Things to bring:

• Plane tickets
• Passport
• Wallet with some $$
• Travel insurance documents
• Laptop from work
• Clothes
• Toilet stuff :p
• Suitcase
• Dslr Camera and extra CF cards / charger
• Travel guide for New York
• 3 odd travel adaptors
• Phone
• iPod and cable (laptop needs itunes)

Things to do

• Check if theres a suitcase available, if not buy

That’s the list for now, will add more whenever needed

Anyway, here’s a lovely list of things I want, I won’t promise that I wont buy it myself but I’ll try my best haha, you never know though, i might actually get all of it.

• Mario Galaxy
• Metroid Prime
• Guitar Hero for Ps3 or Wii (having a tough time thinking of which one to get)
• iPod classic silver
• Kung Fu hustle on Bluray
• Harry Potter on Bluray (any of them)
• Die Hard on bluray
• Singster on PS3
• A decent tripod
• Filters 58mm
• Mac keyboard
• Harry Potter books
• Game vouchers :p

Make note how I didn’t put Mac Pro there haha, would be silly.
I think everyone should write their own list just to save people the hasslehoff, and who knows maybe they’ll get what they want

Update: See! I already bought guitar hero!

1. No more heavy purchasing for at least when I’ve finished uni
2. Do really well at uni *tries to do some work*
3. Make some music of my own
4. Take lots of photos with amazing camera
5. Be happy

Think that’s all for me, anymore and it’s simply something I cannot achieve. doubt I’d achieve them anyway.