They’ve recently moved into their new place, it was their temporary stay until they found a place to start buying. The location was near to where Rachel worked / studied. It felt like yesterday that we were sitting on some steps in a shopping centre eating greggs bloomer sandwiches for lunch at college (food at college has horrific). Now they’ve found a place to stay and will eventually get into the whole mortgaging business, oh how we’ve grown.

…well for them anyway. I feel like I’m still stuck in a time bubble where I’m still at college, just that work is actually work in a company, and we don’t do games/p.e. (boo I like running). I think I need to begin the plan of moving out and starting a life of my own, though this will inevitably take time and money to execute. I suppose I can live with the salary I make, but it would be ideal if I can save up as well for that move in the property ladder. No point in renting and forever stuck in a “renting” state.

So what’s the goal? What’s the plan? Well I don’t intend on moving out this year, and maybe not the next either. I don’t think I’m in a comfortable position to move, both for financial and personal reasons. I think for the next two years I’m going to first get out of any existing debts I’m in (hopefully random juicy bonuses will help!) and then review whether the situation changes and that I’m comfortable in moving.

I’ve already begun saving up via a savings account. I just need to continue that momentum and build up a momentum of constantly saving up, ignoring expensive gadgets and games and focusing on more long term things. Having this goal down in writing gives me the clarity I need and takes me out of the zone where I feel like I’m simply procrastinating in life. I’ve been moving forward pretty rapidly and I don’t want that to stop.

So where do I see myself in 2 years? Well hopefully I’ll be living in my own place in London, with a more senior role in the company. I will be in a more comfortable position to review my status in getting my own place but at that time, I have a place I’m renting and saving. A place that reminds me of where Jason and Rachel are living right now, where everything is customised to perfection (subjectively) and taste. It would be a place I feel comfortable living in as well a place that’s actually near work (I’m losing 2 hours of my life per weekday just sitting down waiting for transport C to take me to destination B)

The goal is pretty standard for anyone, suppose it’s the milestones and timing that make them my goal. You definitely need to be in a place where you can stop and review on what’s going on in your life, so a lovely reminder from 43things will do just that.

That’s it for now, I’ve recently got a raise from work and hopefully I can prove my worth in the company. Things will only get better, you just need to have clear goals and an ass that won’t quit.

The plane trip was pretty neat, I spoke to a cool couple who was returning to New York from their holiday to Ireland and England. At one point I took my earphones out (playing Final Fantasy Crisis Core) to find the lady saying “we’re moving, I’ve had enough of you”. Her tone was way too serious! So I just replied “ok”. Turns out it was just a joke and it was her exit to the bathroom. Man it’s hard to tell when people are joking in america (or on route to it). Granted it makes me wonder if we’re simply too sensitive about these things.

Once I landed, we had to wait in line for passport control, in which I got sent to a room strangely where all they did was stamp my green card a few times (the thing you should do in the normal passport control route). Then I was search once again after having the stamps. It was tiddly as hell and wasn’t needed when I was too tired from travelling and staying up late watching Lost the other night. The final straw was the hotel bookings, turns out we had to pay for them, and since my credit card didn’t work (probably the limit being too small) I had to turn to my manager in New York who happened to visit me. Anyway, all shall be sorted out tomorrow where my UK manager pays for the room and I’ll just let the searches pass. It would have been fine if everyone was searched too but most people got through without the search. Maybe it was the green scarf?

Anyway, in the hotel room now, had a shower and testing out the trouser press haha. I think I’ll buy some nice trousers at work when I go lunch. The room isn’t as cool as the previous one. The telly is oldskool (the other one was a 32 inch lcd telly) and the desk is lacking in space. But I suppose the good news is the bed looks epic! So yeah, that’s today in a post. I’ll start taking photos in a bit I packed my tripod

• Suitcase
• Some big bucks
• Travel documents: Passport, tickets
• Clothes for travelling (sunny)
• Sunglasses
• Toilet stuff
• Psp and usb cable
• iPod and usb cable
• Phone and usb cable
• Tripod!
  
• Usb to mains adaptor (otherwise we have no use for usb cables)
• Dslr camera (no need for charger)
• Notebook
• Company laptop

I think that’s about it. Keeping it nice and simple. Anymore and it will destroy me. It’s going to be nice and sunny so yay! Was going to get a giant mug that says “I <3 NY” but I’ll wait until someone makes an “I <3 My Tissues” mug haha.

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.

Actually I’ll just post that on another post, this will be my goodbye post hehe. Anyway, I think the thing that will drive me mad most is when I’m up in New York is company (or a lack of). Hopefully I can phone up Kiernan when everyone else is asleep hehe (she doesnt mind :p). But otherwise it will be around 7.30 where I’ll have a sneaky skype with people before I head off to work (mmm 10 minute trip).

It is going to be weird travelling by air for the first time. Luckily I’m going with a manager so I’m not on my own cocking up or something. The films on board are pretty cool too, I can watch either Atonement, Control or Rush Hour 3 (might do all 3) but chances are I’ll be sleeping most of the flight due to the fact that I’m still up typing this and getting ready.

So yeah, farewell London. Will be back Sunday morning feeling perhaps slightly jetlagged and maybe hungry for some sushi (though there’s a sushi bar in my hotel which I’m very keen in visiting hehe). No idea why I’m even posting this because I will clearly get wireless in my hotel room and surf the internet when I’m back home from doing whatever hehe. So yeah, goodbye folks.

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

I’ll be staying at the tudor hotel, it looks pretty fancy I must say, raddison at lexington. Hope they have free wifi there for the early morning or evening browsings but i suppose I should be going sightseeing on evenings just to make the most of my visit.

there’s nowt places i really want to go to tbh, I suppose it will be fun to visit the museum of modern art and hopefully check out art tatooed onto fat guys hehe. Central park sounds fun too, the only time I can go however is on Monday which is Martin Luther King day (lucky). pretty excited about checking out the head office too, my manager works there so it would be nice to meet him and all.

Graduation is up on friday, can’t wait. Though only because alice is visiting, not really keen on meeting other students and all to be honest, my uni housed a lot of lazy retards.

I’ve got the thing almost down to a science, from standing in the right part of the platform to timing myself to leave and arrive to work when it’s least busy and crammed. I think commuting is by far the most annoying thing when i started work, you just sit there waiting for the train to take you from point A to point B. I know there’s nowt i can do about it but it’s well worth a rant (especially when the damn place is packed silly and you’re forced to just stand there doing nothing but make sure you don’t fall on your arse like a mofo).

So yeah, i guess i’ll just have to make the most out of it.

I’m glad i’ve added blogging to the list of things to do when i’m on the tube because it was starting to get boring, here’s my lovely list of things i can get up to:

• Write a blog entry
• Access my server via putty, maddox style
• Play ds or psp
• Listen to music (usually accompanied by something else)
• Read the free papers
• Watch futurama

Sadly out of those things i could do, blogging seems to be the only one that’s actually productive..

I’m writing this using the notepad on my phone and syncing it up when I’m back home. The process is slightly tiddly but all in all a smooth process. I might look out for blogging clients on my phone to speed up the process further but I prefer the good old fashioned text editing and copying/pasting it onto here.

Anyway, yeah, expect future blog entries painfully written on my mobile hehe.

After a hard and gruelling interview day I felt pretty happy with the results and went to see Inn, Stuart and Karis at Brent Cross since they were heading off to Stockholm the day after. I went to a KFC prior to meeting them outside hendon central station. Karis and Inn were picking me up whilst Stu was slightly late and all. We had some food (at Burger King and Yo sushi) and eventually met up with Stu and basically did a bit of shopping, checked out the new ipod touch and went to Luton airport to exchange some money.

Now the last line was a bit hectic since I’ve never been to an airport before, the worse bit was that I wasn’t travelling the day after so I was just going for company and all and BOY was it a horrible journey! I suppose it was horrible since we went there and found out that they dont exchange Swedish monday there since there’s not departures to Sweden in the airport! Grr! I kept telling them about how I’ll eventually start looking for cufflinks if I get my job so I had a quick gander at the cufflinks store haha. Once all of that was done we eventually went back to Kazzie’s place and headed off to pick up kev. It was a quick swop of people but meh! I wanted to go home, I was far too tired from all the interviews, I had my phone interview inside Karis’ car when we were driving to Brent Cross which was funny (especially when moments before the interview I told them two that at any minute I was going to get a phone interview haha). So yeah, a tiring day with interviews (and random trips to airports) but hopefully I get a job offer and all (which I do haha, damn me writing this AFTER getting the job)