Rob has a new camera. A fancy one. I’m sure he’ll be posting all about it soon enough, with gratuitous photo uploads and a link to his Flickr, but in the interim I’ll steal his thunder with a couple of quick pictures from his first days of using it.

Having treated Americans to my previous creations, I felt it was time to enter into the local spirit and whip up some sweet muffins. These are chocolate and lemon: they contain a real lemon, sliced up with a serrated knife and mixed into the dough, and are topped with grated lemon peel, baked into the surface.

They’re lush.

Xx

I love Chipotle.

Chipotle is a Mexican fast-food joint that’s all over the USA and seems to be loved without exception. It’s relatively healthy and cheap, completely filling, and in a triumph of maths over intuition has over 80,000 possible variations using a mere 6 serving types (such as a burrito or a rice bowl), each of which can have one of 5 meats or a vegetarian option, and a handful of other fillings.

As I stumbled around the Internet in a Herculean (Heraclean?) attempt to stay awake once sated with a carnitas-stuffed fajita burrito, I decided to drop Chipotle the love letter you see above. And, sure enough, they responded within minutes, as they do with all electronic messages they receive. They’re active and friendly on Twitter, on Facebook and if anyone still uses MySpace, they might even have a crevice tucked away down there too.

It’s great to see corporations who really understand social media and how to best use it. My primary means of getting in touch with companies, resolving disputes and finding out about service outages or new offers is through Twitter nowadays, and if I have to pick up a phone I’ll be looking around on the Web for a competitor who lets me watch TV in peace whilst I buy their services.

What’s even better though, is to see corporations who turn rice and pork into nectar from the heavens. I love Chipotle.

Xx

Last night was both my first poetry slam, and also a prime example of why it’s a very bad idea to stay out past midnight in the midst of a snowstorm. I must have walked for an hour in snow that came most of the way up to my knee at some, completely unexpected, points in the walk.

But, let’s focus on the poetry. It was at the Nuyorican Poets’ Café; the name is an amalgamation of New York and Puerto Rican and the clientèle was appropriately diverse. There were only about 30 people there but every single one of them was completely into it.

About 12 of them stepped up as poets and were, without exception, very intense about what they were doing. Interesting rhythms, rhymes and very raw topics were the order of the day, and it was very clearly a competition rather than a simple open mic night. The quality was fantastic too, I’m not normally much of a fan of modern poetry as written, but spoken expressed with emotion and conviction it really impressed.

I’ll definitely be returning. And I’ll almost certainly not be reading any of my poetry.

Xx

The little area of New York where I live and work is generally known as downtown or specifically as the financial district.

On the downside, this means that if you’re after a party at midnight, you better be wearing a tux or an evening dress and be on the guest list. However, because the subway system is wonderfully capitalistically designed to provide easy access for office workers here, it’s never too hard to get to a trendier area if you want to go dancing.

One of the particularly fun things about being down here is the fact that we’re covered by a BID, namely the Downtown Alliance. In return for contributions from local property owners and businesses, the Downtown Alliance employ a veritable plethora of people to…well, to make the place look nice.

The trees are always cut back tastefully, the streets free of litter – except for a couple of hours in the evening when it’s all laid out in neat rows waiting for a truck to take it away – and, best of all, any time it snows there’s an army of folks out there with shovels and cute little trucks bailing it out as quickly as it falls. I haven’t yet worked out if this JCB truck is part of the Downtown Alliance or was just being friendly though.

Compare that to the situation in Queens, where residents have to stare over a very physical border line, one side of which lies in Nassau County and is nicely ploughed, whilst the other side is in New York City and isn’t doing Michael Bloomberg’s reputation any good at all.

I like it here, in this cosseted little area of NYC. Pity I’ll have to move out in a mere three months.

Xx

It would appear, quite improbably, that since arriving in New York, I’ve turned into a girl.

I know, I’m as surprised as you. The chauvinism; the inability to use a washing machine; the complete look of panic and bewilderment if I stumble into the make-up section of a department store— the signs were all against this discovery, but the evidence doesn’t lie. Since I’ve been in New York, I’ve bought three pairs of shoes and been sorely tempted by more. Although however seductively and salaciously these red loafers looked at me, I couldn’t quite bring myself to go that far:

It’s not that I arrived here barefoot – though I wouldn’t put that past me – I’d brought with me a pair of shoes and a pair of trainers, which should have been enough for any occasion, and yet I felt myself irresistibly drawn into places I’ve previously feared, and browsed the racks alone, with no threat of violence or unlikely incentive at my back, driving me to do so.

In my defence, somewhat, I should point out that shoes here are cheap. To prevent any girls getting too excited, and planning their visits to NYC to revolve around shoe-shopping, or endlessly checking their post for shoe-boxes from Manhattan, I should point out that it’s only guys’ shoes that are cheap. Girls’ shoes are made of molten lava and rusty nails and all cost in excess of $18million. Each. So, that’s the end of that. Here’s some of my new shoes:

There is, however, a slight downside to having beautiful, beautiful shoes (and hats) over here though. You see, there’s quite a well-established game in the USA called Gay or [just] European?. Seriously, people play it in bars. With me as the subject.

For the record, I’m statistically European so far.

Xx

James Bond is the archetype of British charm, the epitome of suave and the role model that every Brit abroad should aspire to be if he wishes to impress the locals. But, recently, it’s come to my attention that not every single action of his is lauded and loved by American girls. In fact, some may even be considered negative.

What a crazy country.

Xx