First post!

Hi all, and welcome to my new blog. And yes, I know that I have once again picked up on a piece of technology at a time when that technology is almost outdated, but Firefox and facebook can’t seem to agree on how to let me upload my photos, so I need some other way to show everyone how I’m doing here in New York.

As a matter of fact, I’m not in New York, except I am. I live in Elmsford, which is rougly 35km north of Manhattan, I work in Hawthorne, which is a few km further north, and neither of those cities are part of New York City. Except it’s hard to tell the difference, because there’s nothing but city from here to Manhattan. But anyway, Elmsford (and Hawthorne) is in New York State, so I guess I am in New York. Except not. You pick.

As of today, I have been here for 18 days, and I’m getting the hang of the place. Fortunately, I’m only here for 3 months, so I can still convince myself that I’m just a visitor, and that I therefore do not need to get used to all the things that make USA USA. Hopefully, I will be able to avoid the emotional crisis that happened to me after about a month in England. I doubt it, but I hope.

The first particular American (sorry, Marjory, but no-one understands what USian means) thing I noticed is the traffic. It took less than an hour from my flight landed until I was stuck in New York traffic, and can you name a more particularly American thing than that? Things got even more fun when I arrived at my hotel at 7pm (after having been on the road since 12:30am eastern time). I was starving, I was exhausted, and I just wanted something to eat and then have a nice long nights sleep. So I decided to try out the diner across the street.

This is the diner: This is the street I had to cross to get to the diner: .

In other words, I had to spend about an hour in my hotel room for traffic to settle down a little, before I could get something to eat. The food wasn’t even very nice – imagine a chicken taco where you cannot taste the chicken The best that can be said for that meal was that the rice and beans were nice, and that the meal was huge. Oh yeah, and so was the dessert:

The following day I found a very, very nice sushi place, which I have visited way too often since then.

Fortunately, I have not fallen into the fast food trap. I was really worried about that when I came here, so I have actually made an effort to eat healthy. I have later found out that US fast food is of exceptionally poor quality, so you do not fall into the fast food trap unless you insist on doing so. As a matter of fact, I haven’t drunk soda for a week now, but that’s not so much a conscious choice as it is a consequence of the amount of sugar in American sodas. My stomach simply cannot handle a bottle of Coke, so I make due with water, orange juice and tea. And beer, of which most restaurants have a varied, plentyful, and tempting selection. Sadly, the tap water in this area is full of chloride, and my stomach handles that even worse than the sugar, so I have to buy destilled water. Still, I’d rater pay a few dollars every week than to have constant stomach ache.

As another part of my health trip/living the American experience, I have started playing in the IBM softball league. I completely suck at it, but so do most of the others. And anyway, it’s not like you get lots of exercise by playing softball. Mostly, you just stand around waiting for your turn to bat, or for someone to hit a ball to your area of the field. But hey, with a bit of luck, I can pick up a few tricks that will be useful when I start playing cricket in September.

Anyway, I have 18 days of stories to tell, but only a few more minutes before I want to go to sleep, so I think I will just stop here. I will try to write some more tomorrow, or later this week. Or maybe not. It depends. Or not. You pick.

/J