Finally, here's a photo of our apartment in Williamsburg. I've put a few more photos of the area online at flickr
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Chinatown at New Year
Spent the afternoon wandering around Chinatown today. The atmosphere was amazing. There were a few dragons with musicians going around all the shops, but the main spectacle was the us, the crowds. Everyone bought these hand-held fireworks that launched clouds of confetti and streamers, and some launched a parachute that sailed down on the cold wind, bringing good luck to whoever caught it. More photos on my flickr account at http://flickr.com/photos/thomasturnbull
Friday, February 16, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
American Sales Hell
As there was a branch of Sleepy's a few blocks from work I decided to go and try out a mattress today rather than buy online as the price seemed about the same. Welcome to pushy American sales hell. Every trick in the book - knocking money off tag prices, offering cheaper prices on mattresses not in stock, undermining what little I did know about what to look for in a mattress. One amazing trick is that different companies will use a different name for the same mattress, which makes it almost impossible to compare prices. So a "Sleepeeze" brand mattress will have a model called "snooze max" in one shop, but the same mattress will be called the "Sleepeeze Lazeenight" in another shop.
The one thing you can compare is the construction - the number of springs/coils, and the gauge of the wire in the coils. But the salespeople just pretend not to have these details if you ask.
My salvation from the salesman came in the form of a short Mexican, who arrived bearing the salesman's lunch. This distracted him enough for me to escape with only a piece of paper that promised me 20% less than the cheapest found elsewhere.
So I hopped on my bike and rode West to Chinatown to a place Lauren had found online. It was three floors of bliss. Surrounded by one of my favourite things (designer chairs) I actually had to hunt for a salesperson, rather than being immediatly pounced upon. And the salesperson genuinely knew nothing. So this young Chinese saleswoman and I tried out the beds together, as she was also looking for a mattress for her apartment. Perhaps I was being naive and this was actually a radically different sales technique to Mr Sleepy, but it worked.
Over the years I have learned (from my Dad) that a good purchasing technique is to buy the second cheapest option. For example when choosing a wine in a restaurant. Restaurants make a huge profit on the house wine. It may cost you 25% more to buy the next cheapest, but you'll probably get a wine that's twice as good.
But on this occasion I ignored my own advice and after checking with Lauren we bought the cheapest one for $200. Well actually it wasn't the cheapest, there were others, but they reminded me of the beds on Khao San Road in Bangkok. Firm doesn't even come close. But this one was half the price of the next cheapest, and I couldn't feel any difference. And both Lauren and I are very heavy sleepers and have never been bothered by the bad mattresses we've had over the years.
Recently I've been very glad I'm such a heavy sleeper.
I love the Barrio we're living in. Despite my initial nervousness it's a really friendly area. And there's just so much character. As I walk down the four flights of stairs (the lift's usually broken) every door I pass emits a different smell of cooking and a different blast of Latino music. However last night the local soundscape included my neighbour's fire alarm going off at regular intervals. It's like one of those modern car alarms - it changes between different piercing sirens every ten seconds.
However thanks to my years of training living in Edinburgh in Fountainbridge next to a construction site for four years and on the path home from the Eros and Elite (a now thankfully defunkt but then popular club) I am now a very heavy sleeper.
The one thing that has managed to disturb my sleep has been the devil child, aka Marmo the cat.
He's continued to pursue his trick of pulling out my hair with his teetch, and of sitting on Lauren's head and gently clawing her. One night we tried shutting him out of the room. We could just about sleep through his meowing and scratching at the door, but despite the 20kg weight of my rucksack, he managed to push open th edoor and continue his usual fun. However the last few nights he's calmed down, and last night he didn't wake us once. I awoke at 7.30 to find him curled up at the foot of the bed.
Things are going brilliantly with Lauren. We've not seen much of each other yesterday and today though. She's got a job at a posh steak restaurant on 27th and Park Ave, and this week her shifts are the opposite of my nine to five. She's still asleep when I get up in the morning, and she's at work by the time I'm home. But last night she got in as I was brushing my teeth. One upside is that we really appreciate each other when we are together.
However I'm now enjoying doing things on my own. On Saturday after the stolen wi-fi connection became too unreliable I went back to the Grounded coffee shop in Greenwich to do some web design. I worked away pretty productively until my battery died, and I moved to another table to plug it in. I got chatting to a really interesting opera singer, who was about to star in an opera about Mary Queen of Scots and has sung all over the world. We enthused together about maps and interesting train journeys.
As he left Lauren arrived from work, and we walked down 7th Ave to the cinema. As we arrived we bumped into Lauren's friend and ex-boyfriend Landon, a relatively successful film maker (watch his video on myspace, it's excellent). He'd just seen the film that we were about to watch, the amazing Battle of Algiers. It's from 1966, about colonialism and terrorism, but could have been made in 2007. Extremely relevant, humanising, moving and though provoking.
Afterwards Justin took us to an amazing falafel place near Washington Square where, once we'd wormed our way past the biggest dog in New York, we sat down to $2 falafel and discussed the film with a tall goateed artist who made things with eggshells.
Our search for an affordable beer (non-existent in the West Village) led us to a rather sinister Ukranian (?) bar with blacked out windows, exposed brick walls, and $8 pitchers of beer. It looked liked it had come straight from eastern Europe, brick by brick. However I think the Americans limit that kind of treatment to Scottish Castles and French romanesque villas (in the beautiful Cloisters Park near where we're staying). Fred and Dylan joined us, but weren't too impressed. However Justin & I loved it. Lauren wasn't too impressed, especially after returning from the restroom where two girls had been making out in the neighbouring cubicle while a boyfriend waited in the corridor.
Sunday was relaxing, apart from my attempt at buying anti-persperant. It's a difficult task for a guy who's resisted since the days when a naked flame in the boys changing room at school would cause a small explosion.
A wall of garish colours, all the same price, all with meanless scents, all full of wierd metals and chemicals, all shouting bullshit science, or making alien appeals to my masculinity, "Love corndogs? You're a SportFresh man"; "Don't own an iron? You're a SportFresh man". What's a corndog? Well, yes, I do own an iron. Better not buy this one then.
The other cool thing we did since I last wrote was last Saturday night when Brooklyn Museum was open for free all evening. There was a swing band, so us and some other folk danced between the exhibits, then went upstairs to do a free tango lesson.
The one thing you can compare is the construction - the number of springs/coils, and the gauge of the wire in the coils. But the salespeople just pretend not to have these details if you ask.
My salvation from the salesman came in the form of a short Mexican, who arrived bearing the salesman's lunch. This distracted him enough for me to escape with only a piece of paper that promised me 20% less than the cheapest found elsewhere.
So I hopped on my bike and rode West to Chinatown to a place Lauren had found online. It was three floors of bliss. Surrounded by one of my favourite things (designer chairs) I actually had to hunt for a salesperson, rather than being immediatly pounced upon. And the salesperson genuinely knew nothing. So this young Chinese saleswoman and I tried out the beds together, as she was also looking for a mattress for her apartment. Perhaps I was being naive and this was actually a radically different sales technique to Mr Sleepy, but it worked.
Over the years I have learned (from my Dad) that a good purchasing technique is to buy the second cheapest option. For example when choosing a wine in a restaurant. Restaurants make a huge profit on the house wine. It may cost you 25% more to buy the next cheapest, but you'll probably get a wine that's twice as good.
But on this occasion I ignored my own advice and after checking with Lauren we bought the cheapest one for $200. Well actually it wasn't the cheapest, there were others, but they reminded me of the beds on Khao San Road in Bangkok. Firm doesn't even come close. But this one was half the price of the next cheapest, and I couldn't feel any difference. And both Lauren and I are very heavy sleepers and have never been bothered by the bad mattresses we've had over the years.
Recently I've been very glad I'm such a heavy sleeper.
I love the Barrio we're living in. Despite my initial nervousness it's a really friendly area. And there's just so much character. As I walk down the four flights of stairs (the lift's usually broken) every door I pass emits a different smell of cooking and a different blast of Latino music. However last night the local soundscape included my neighbour's fire alarm going off at regular intervals. It's like one of those modern car alarms - it changes between different piercing sirens every ten seconds.
However thanks to my years of training living in Edinburgh in Fountainbridge next to a construction site for four years and on the path home from the Eros and Elite (a now thankfully defunkt but then popular club) I am now a very heavy sleeper.
The one thing that has managed to disturb my sleep has been the devil child, aka Marmo the cat.
He's continued to pursue his trick of pulling out my hair with his teetch, and of sitting on Lauren's head and gently clawing her. One night we tried shutting him out of the room. We could just about sleep through his meowing and scratching at the door, but despite the 20kg weight of my rucksack, he managed to push open th edoor and continue his usual fun. However the last few nights he's calmed down, and last night he didn't wake us once. I awoke at 7.30 to find him curled up at the foot of the bed.
Things are going brilliantly with Lauren. We've not seen much of each other yesterday and today though. She's got a job at a posh steak restaurant on 27th and Park Ave, and this week her shifts are the opposite of my nine to five. She's still asleep when I get up in the morning, and she's at work by the time I'm home. But last night she got in as I was brushing my teeth. One upside is that we really appreciate each other when we are together.
However I'm now enjoying doing things on my own. On Saturday after the stolen wi-fi connection became too unreliable I went back to the Grounded coffee shop in Greenwich to do some web design. I worked away pretty productively until my battery died, and I moved to another table to plug it in. I got chatting to a really interesting opera singer, who was about to star in an opera about Mary Queen of Scots and has sung all over the world. We enthused together about maps and interesting train journeys.
As he left Lauren arrived from work, and we walked down 7th Ave to the cinema. As we arrived we bumped into Lauren's friend and ex-boyfriend Landon, a relatively successful film maker (watch his video on myspace, it's excellent). He'd just seen the film that we were about to watch, the amazing Battle of Algiers. It's from 1966, about colonialism and terrorism, but could have been made in 2007. Extremely relevant, humanising, moving and though provoking.
Afterwards Justin took us to an amazing falafel place near Washington Square where, once we'd wormed our way past the biggest dog in New York, we sat down to $2 falafel and discussed the film with a tall goateed artist who made things with eggshells.
Our search for an affordable beer (non-existent in the West Village) led us to a rather sinister Ukranian (?) bar with blacked out windows, exposed brick walls, and $8 pitchers of beer. It looked liked it had come straight from eastern Europe, brick by brick. However I think the Americans limit that kind of treatment to Scottish Castles and French romanesque villas (in the beautiful Cloisters Park near where we're staying). Fred and Dylan joined us, but weren't too impressed. However Justin & I loved it. Lauren wasn't too impressed, especially after returning from the restroom where two girls had been making out in the neighbouring cubicle while a boyfriend waited in the corridor.
Sunday was relaxing, apart from my attempt at buying anti-persperant. It's a difficult task for a guy who's resisted since the days when a naked flame in the boys changing room at school would cause a small explosion.
A wall of garish colours, all the same price, all with meanless scents, all full of wierd metals and chemicals, all shouting bullshit science, or making alien appeals to my masculinity, "Love corndogs? You're a SportFresh man"; "Don't own an iron? You're a SportFresh man". What's a corndog? Well, yes, I do own an iron. Better not buy this one then.
The other cool thing we did since I last wrote was last Saturday night when Brooklyn Museum was open for free all evening. There was a swing band, so us and some other folk danced between the exhibits, then went upstairs to do a free tango lesson.
Monday, February 05, 2007
The staff at Green Map System
This is my new office. And after all those years of protesting that my geography degree wasn't about maps...
Thursday, February 01, 2007
First Day at Work
I'm sitting in a gorgeous cafe on a high from their excellent coffee and ridiculously luxurious peanut butter cup at the end of my first day at Green Map System. The music is a mix of Now That's What I call Trendy American Music From a Bygone Era - Simon & Garfunkel, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground, Neil Young, Dylan, Woody Guthrie, etc.
They've got a bunch of projects lined up for me at Green Map, but right now I'm taking over a half-finished project putting together a website for community mapmakers around the world to add their maps to, share info through blogs & forums, and download tools and information on how to make maps. It's based on a pretty impressive looking open source Framework/Content Management System called Drupal. The deadline for that is May, then I'll probably be re-doing their whole website, before moving onto what looks to be a really interesting project developing a Google Maps API to open up online green mapping to any internet user worldwide! Hey I know it's geeky, but I'm excited. At the moment it's just Wendy, Carlos and I there, so it's quiet, but very relaxed and friendly. It's a great part of town - loads of cafes - cheap falafel joints, Thai, Dominican delis selling 75 cent coffees, groovy comic and record shops, nail salons, bars. Two blocks north is Tompkins Square. It's a big hangout for homeless folk and was the site of a fascinating riot and protest that I studied in Geography a few years ago.
We're staying in Eran's place in Inwood now. Had a horrible journey up there on the subway late last night hauling most of our stuff. Heavy even after we left half of it at Fred & Dylan's. The flat is great, despite the insane cat. He likes to drink from the tap in the bathroom sink, which he did after sprinting around the flat when we arrived, eventually resorting to sticking his whole head under the tap. I woke up last night to find him pulling out chunks of my hair with his teeth. Thankfully Eran had warned me of this, and after I pushed him away a couple of times he stopped.
The area felt a little sketchy when I went out to get milk late last night, but that was just me being a small-town white boy.
Lauren's doing well. She got an interview at the restaurant where Eran's friend works, and immediately got a second interview. And last night she had her first audition, for Superman the Musical, and got a callback for that, which she's doing as I type...
I'm off to join her after that for a bit of swing dancing near Madison Square Gardens.
They've got a bunch of projects lined up for me at Green Map, but right now I'm taking over a half-finished project putting together a website for community mapmakers around the world to add their maps to, share info through blogs & forums, and download tools and information on how to make maps. It's based on a pretty impressive looking open source Framework/Content Management System called Drupal. The deadline for that is May, then I'll probably be re-doing their whole website, before moving onto what looks to be a really interesting project developing a Google Maps API to open up online green mapping to any internet user worldwide! Hey I know it's geeky, but I'm excited. At the moment it's just Wendy, Carlos and I there, so it's quiet, but very relaxed and friendly. It's a great part of town - loads of cafes - cheap falafel joints, Thai, Dominican delis selling 75 cent coffees, groovy comic and record shops, nail salons, bars. Two blocks north is Tompkins Square. It's a big hangout for homeless folk and was the site of a fascinating riot and protest that I studied in Geography a few years ago.
We're staying in Eran's place in Inwood now. Had a horrible journey up there on the subway late last night hauling most of our stuff. Heavy even after we left half of it at Fred & Dylan's. The flat is great, despite the insane cat. He likes to drink from the tap in the bathroom sink, which he did after sprinting around the flat when we arrived, eventually resorting to sticking his whole head under the tap. I woke up last night to find him pulling out chunks of my hair with his teeth. Thankfully Eran had warned me of this, and after I pushed him away a couple of times he stopped.
The area felt a little sketchy when I went out to get milk late last night, but that was just me being a small-town white boy.
Lauren's doing well. She got an interview at the restaurant where Eran's friend works, and immediately got a second interview. And last night she had her first audition, for Superman the Musical, and got a callback for that, which she's doing as I type...
I'm off to join her after that for a bit of swing dancing near Madison Square Gardens.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
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