Back in the summer of 2009, when I was working at the University in a windowless room and dreaming of sunshine, I was invited to be on Sky’s latest reality TV show, Dating In The Dark. I’d failed to win a low-quality TV quiz show a couple of years back, and after that had appeared incidentally on various other programs, and was well and truly in the databases of the people who made such shows. They thought I had just the right level of geek chic to appear — it was apparently very in at the time.

The show was a mixture of Big Brother and Blind Date: three lads and three ladies would live in opposite sides of a custom-built house, and their antics would be televised. At set periods, they would interact one-on-one in the central room of the house which was, of course, pitch black. Various dating scenarios would be played out, eventually leading to the final romantic date between the partners that had chosen one another.

Then came the big reveal, the two would sit on opposite sides of the table, and the lights would be briefly be turned on. Darkness would resume and either party then had the option to silently slink out of the room. When the lights came back on, if one person had chosen to remain in the room, they’d either be confronted with their new true love, or the public humiliation of an empty seat.

I was tempted – I’m normally up for any new adventure – but I turned it down based mostly on how repulsed I was every time I talked to the people organising it, and whilst I don’t regret that decision, I’ve since been fascinated with the idea of how a date like that would work.

So, when a dear friend messaged me last week to say that she knew someone excessively beautiful and smart that I had to meet, I responded by offering to take the superlative young lady out on a date and insisted I learn no more about her than her name. Tomorrow, we’re heading to Dans le Noir, New York’s take on the ‘dining in pitch blackness with blind waiters’ trend which has a branch in most major cities by now.

I’m arriving 15 minutes earlier than her, and the restaurant has agreed to seat us separately (they loved the idea when I rang), which means that tomorrow evening I’m going on a blind, blind date. Wish me luck.

Xx

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever. If you want a picture of Boston, MA, imagine a horde of Red Sox fans walking down every street — continuously.

It was about 20 minutes into last weekend’s trip to Boston that I reached up nervously and felt the brim of my cap, reassuring myself that it was just a plain black cap and not the NY Yankees cap I wear whenever I want to feel like a true American: the kind of person that would wear jeans, a button-down shirt and a ‘sports jacket’ and call themselves smartly dressed. We were staying in a hostel just off Fenway Stadium, which I originally presumed was the reason I was surrounded by Sox fans, but when I ventured elsewhere in the city I learned this was just the local dress-code. Even a passing Hen Party, wearing matching outfits with witty nicknames on the back of their tops, had ‘Red Sox’ written on the front of their gladrags.

Baseball fanaticism aside, Boston was a gorgeous place for a visit in the sunshine, with a picturesque common and some lovely areas to visit. It couldn’t quite compare to London, LA and NY in many of the other respects, but doesn’t pretend to, and by American standards has quite a rich history, a source of pride for the locals and enjoyment for tourists who cared about such things.

I, it seemed, wasn’t one of this latter group: much though I normally love tales of rebellion and bloodshed against the English, I seemed to lack the necessary upbringing to care about the Freedom Trail, which celebrates Boston’s leading rôle in the dissidence against the English, or Paul Revere’s ride. This ride, made famous to Americans by a poem, was one in which Revere warned the folks in Massachusetts that the British army were coming. Omitted from the poem, and therefore less well-known, are the facts that the ride ended with the British confiscating his horse and giving him a slap on the wrist, and that he went on to serve as one of two senior officers in United States’ worst naval defeat other than Pearl Harbour, the latter being a rather one-sided affair and an almost unfair comparison.

To be fair to Revere, he was also partly responsible for the fairly sophisticated signalling system used in New England to warn folks of military manoeuvres being performed by the Old England army. Most Americans also seem familiar with the phrase ‘One if by land, two if by sea’ (the number of candles lit in steeples), and I was also aware of it, and therefore Paul Revere’s ride, given that there’s a fantastic cocktail bar in New York named for the quote.

Combined with LA’s trip, I got to wander along the Pacific and the Atlantic in less than a week, with trips planned to Iowa, Florida, and dreams of a road trip later this year, I’m making good progress in my American adventure.

Xx

According to my US visa, I am a nonresident alien. My New York State ID, however, claims I am a temp. visitor, and when I decide to buy anything from Bloomingdale’s or Macy’s I’m just another wide-eyed tourist, visiting for a week and delighted to discover that they offer an 11% discount, provided I remember to pay with a British credit card and not flash the aforementioned ID. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in NY, however, has welcomed me with open arms and declared me to be a resident.

Indeed, anyone who has lived in New York State for the past 90 days that doesn’t have a permanent home elsewhere (i.e. isn’t a university student) is declared a NYS resident. This magnanimous offering, however, comes with a catch: a NYS resident is required to have a NYS driver’s license.

Section 250 (5) of the Vehicle and Traffic Law defines the term “resident.” The law defines a resident as a person who lives in NYS with the intent to make NYS a “fixed and permanent” place to live. To live in a house, a home, an apartment, a room or other similar place in NYS for 90 days is considered “presumptive evidence” that you are a resident of NYS. A police officer can use this evidence as the reason to issue a traffic ticket if you drive in NYS without a driver license or vehicle registration issued by NYS.

For an American with an out-of-state license, this hurdle is overcome with a brief visit to the DMV offices and a winning smile. I have a much harder time. Despite having driven manual cars in London, for which I believe I deserve some kind of medal, I do not automatically qualify to get a license to drive an automatic car in NY, and instead have to go through their entire testing process.

On my recent jaunt to LA, where I can still legally drive with my UK license, I drove an automatic around winding hills, on the freeway, and in a busy city centre. Parking wasn’t exactly my strong suit, but other than that, things went well, and driving an automatic car requires nearly as much skill as driving in Grand Theft Auto. There’s a big ‘make car go slower pedal’, a smaller ‘make car go faster’ pedal, a nice place to rest your useless left foot and a lever to take one between ‘park’, ‘drive’, ‘reverse’ and the mysteriously labelled ‘m’ mode that I never tried, and do not want to seek or hear the doubtless boring explanation for.

To drive in NY though, I’ll first need to spend the princely sum of $50 to sit through a 4-hour video lecture, doubtless narrated by the same guy who does all the “When Car Crashes Go Extremely Explosive…19!!” shows that dominate late night British TV. Then, I have the privilege of completing a theory test, and finally another road test.

I’m fairly sure I can pass all these. Enduring the entire video will be hard, but with concentrated effort I should be able to resist the urge to shout obscenities at the patronising voice and run out of the room. The theory test has to be easy (Miss Teen South Carolina can drive, after all), and the road tests aren’t even done on the roads over here.

But, with no immediate need to drive in NY, and so many better things to do with my time, I’m not sure I’ll ever get a US license. Especially not given that they, for no apparent reason, require me to surrender my British license when they issue me with one of their own.

When you receive your New York license, you must surrender your foreign license. Your foreign license will be stored at the local DMV office and destroyed after 60 days.

One thing though, if I do take my test in another Camero like the one I drive in LA, I need to remember that, resemblance to Bumblebee aside, my car isn’t a Transformer and I can’t try and put the roof down whilst driving at 30mph. Oops. It got nearly halfway before beeping and panicking at me though…

Xx

This weekend, after more than a year and a half in NYC, I finally travelled somewhere in the US further out of the city than a brief jaunt over the river to LA, with a fantastic friend from the UK who was stuck in San Francisco with little to do. It was a bit of a last-minute trip, we made the plans late on the Thursday afternoon, giving me just enough time to Skype my boss a message, then buy and pack a bag for my Friday morning flight.

Given that these four days may be the only driving I’ll do all year, and that we wanted to make the most of the few days we’ll see eachother this year and the LA sunshine, we hired a quite ridiculous Chevy Camero SS. It was the first time I’ve ever even been in a convertible (not so much call for them in rainy Wales) and now I can’t imagine driving in anything but blazing sun with the roof down and the radio blasting 80′s hair metal: I’ve been well and truly spoiled.

We discovered, and subsequently spent every evening in, Santa Monica, home of beautiful beaches, crazy actresses on rollerskates, endless live music on the streets at all hours and a hundred cute little bars and restaurants. We skipped the usual tourist themes (I didn’t see a single Hollywood Star) and instead spent the days at the beach or running around the hills in Runyon Canyon. I also got to visit and train with the Mestre of my Capoeira group, based in LA, and that was both an honour and an amazing experience.

Maybe it was just that I was on holiday, or maybe it was just the areas that I visited, but I fell completely in love with LA. The pace of life there seemed so much more relaxed; the people so much happier and healthier; and the hills and countryside so accessible right within the city. And, although talking about the weather is terribly British, and the last resort of small talk, after shared interests in sports and the present locale have been exhausted, I have to talk about the weather. When I arrived there were blue skies and bright, 25 degree sunshine. When I left, it was the same, and the only gap in the middle of this was when the Sunday night provided some light clouding to better backlight the photos of Malibu beach.

Best of all though? All this novelty gave me an all-time high-score on Foursquare. Competitive travelling: it’s the future.

Xx

My daily commute is somewhere in the order of 30 minutes. When I move house next week, it’ll be slightly less, but I’m constantly travelling around New York on the subway, and I’ve long since become desensitised to the Mariachi bands, ranting political orators and break-dancing crews that entertain the tourists. There’s the odd experience that can still impress: the classical pianist sitting on the floor of the N train playing Mozart on a Casio keyboard; or the strung-out and clearly high girl giving an amazing performance of the Adele song blasting out of her headphones, but mostly I need some new entertainment.

So, I learn things. I’ve enjoyed physics lectures, learned Braille and brushed up on my music theory. My latest set of commuter classes is around learning Portuguese, which brings us to the weird and wonderful world of language learning iPhone applications.

Want to meet a Portuguese speaker but don’t know what to say? Sexy Portuguese teaches you the vocabulary and phrases you need to hook up, or at least avoid awkward silences when trying.

There’s an amazing number of apps available to learn a new language in the iPhone app store. I count at least 100 for Portuguese alone. Some of them, like Italian Verbs are little more than wordlists, many offer simple flashcards and a few have various ‘games’ for the learner: Hangman, multiple-choice, nothing fancy.

It’s important to note that these are toys, little more. Learning words from flashcards will simply provide one with a temporary memory of that word within the context of the iPhone screen, with exponentially-decreasing memory decay based on repeated use of the app. The assumption is that language is highly structured and formalised, and that the learner already understands the fundamentals of forming sentences within the language. For brushing up on vocabulary, the flashcards and games can be useful, but the idea of learning a language through one of these apps is, unfortunately, ridiculous.

Nearly every app comes with a scoring function, which appeals to the desire for instant gratification. Users shy away from the quiz at first sitting, knowing they’d end up with a paltry handful of percentage points. After going through the flashcards once, they hit a score of ~80%. Coming back to the quiz a week later, it’s closer to 50%. By the third or fourth sitting, however, they’re at 100% and likely never practise the module again, and within a few months have lost any trivial benefits they might have gained.

Despite this negativity, there is one app I have found particularly useful for Portuguese Busuu, like the rest, offers rote flashcard learning to improve vocabulary, but also puts each word in a useful context. The most interesting part, however, is the natural conversation that accompanies each section, often introducing slang and new turns-of-phrase, followed by questions about the conversation in Portuguese. Whilst this is not particularly innovative, it does make Busuu quite distinct from its competitors, and comprehension of these forced exercises is exactly the step I need between my beginner-level lessons and being able to learn by watching TV & movies, and listening to podcasts or radio shows.

The only downside I’ve found to Busuu, however, is that the author was apparently going through a pretty rough time when he wrote the example sentences and flashcards. Arguing with/lying to your girlfriend, being depressed, and slandering others are topics that find a home in a disproportionately large number of the modules, and some of the associated pictures are rather off-putting too.

So, when it comes to learning apps, or any quick-fix solutions, don’t believe the hype. Instant rewards and gratification are meaningless, and it takes prolonged active thought on a subject to instil even the basics into your consciousness. But, used in conjunction with other tools, it’s just possible there are a couple of mobile apps out there that can help to make a difference.

And, even if not, at least you found something to distract you from the homeless guy in the corner with the bagful of needles.

Xx