Tuesday 28 June, 2005 at 6:58PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (1)

For the first time in 3¾ years, I met up with some other Kiwis (New Zealanders) in New York! Better yet, I knew them - it was my sister and brother-in-law, which I'll just name as J1 and P for now. They had been on a business cruise up in Alaska (as ya do) and then stopped off in NYC for six days, so we met up until last Friday in Manhattan.

I had no classes on Friday, so while IceQueen was at work, I met up with J1 & P at MoMA in Manhattan, the recently relocated Museum of Modern Art, and wow that place is amazing. Even disregarding the artworks for a moment, the building itself is a work of art - the architecture inside is simply stunning. The artwork in there.. hell, words can't cover it.. it's like, hey look, there's a Picasso, and there's another, and another, and there's a Lichenstein, and look, a couple of Salvador Dali's works, oh, another Picasso, and a Matisse, and over there a Cézanne, René Magritte, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, omg it just keeps going.. we were all kind of numb by the time we left. My favorites were Dali's Illumined Pleasures and The Persistence of Memory (the famous 'soft clocks' artwork) .. of course everything was original. There's nowhere else in the world you could see such an extensive and amazing collection of modern art. If you're in NYC, go see it.

It was a hot day (in the 90's - or the 30's in °C for the Kiwis) so what better to do than go to an Irish pub? A friendly little place right next to MoMA called Connelly's (I think) with an Irish comedian for a bartender sorted out our lunch - after telling us we'd need to be really hammered to want to eat there.. hehe. The food was great by the way, as was the atmosphere.

A quick trip to downtown in the subway spat us out by the World Trade Center site around 6pm, where we met with P's brother D, who lives in upper NY with his Mrs J2, and quickly stopped in to Century 21 so P could grab a few items. I went to university in Otago (NZ) with my D - we were in the same year - so we all knew each other. D looks just the same! D went to flag down a taxi but a nice black Lincoln Towncar picked us up instead (car service as opposed to yellow cab), and the Indian guy driving couldn't stop saying 'incredible' every 20 seconds or so when he realized he had a car full of Kiwis, pretty entertaining. Eventually we got through the traffic and to our next stop, which was the Heartland Brewery in Union Square.

What can I say about Heartlands beer? hmm.. flat piss that encourages the gag reflex? Yup, that would cover it. I guess if you had enough of it, you'd get used to it, but none of us were impressed with their micro-brewed beer.. and we tried a couple of different types too, just to be sure. Apparently the place is pretty famous, but I'd hate to think it was famous for their beer... then again, most American beer.. well, say no more.

J2 (D's Mrs) arrived (I've met J2 before too - she's really nice) and we bailed out of there and found another chic bar not far away - the sort of place you could imagine the 'Sex in the City' crew turning up at. The beer was better (I think I had a Sapporo) and the waitress actually knew basically where NZ was, as she had a friend from there - she was even wearing a small koru made of bone like the pewter one I used to wear (the one that signifies 'new beginnings'), so that was all groovy.

A little after 8pm we headed to the restaurant where J2 had made reservations, where IceQueen met us (coming from work) - the place was on E22nd and Park Ave - an Italian restaurant named 'Novita'. The restaurant and service was pretty impressive and the food was good - certainly a little more in the 'upper' class of Manhattan restaurants. The conversation was good, and a bottle of champagne and a bottle of red went down nicely. A couple at a table near us were finishing at about the same time as we were, and the staff gave them our bill by mistake.. you should have seen the look on their faces when they opened it up and saw the total.. classic! D & J2 kindly paid for the lot, which was very generous of them. Actually, everywhere we went (other than MoMA) I kept trying to pay for stuff and P would get it, and then D & J2 at the end. The other weasel, IceQueen, I think enjoyed meeting everyone - she was nervous about it, and we're waiting to hear J1 & P's feedback (which I'm sure will be positive - I could tell). After dinner we all headed home, then J & P flew out the next morning - they went to Los Angeles in California for a few days before heading back to NZ, although it's a shame we didn't spend more time together, but they had a busy schedule as did I with classes and study. It was great to see everyone after so long - I forgot to bring the camera, so no pics sorry.

milestone

      Saturday 25 June, 2005 at 11:23PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (0)

Just hit quarter of a million visitors to this site (that's visitors, not page hits). 250,000. Who woulda thunk? Groovy.

exam results in

      Tuesday 14 June, 2005 at 7:47PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (6)

Yeah, they're pretty quick getting final grades out here. I'm pretty happy with them:

• English II (honors) : A+
• Speech 32 - Communications (honors) : A+
• Psychology 32 - Behavioral Psychology : A+
• Economics 13 - Microeconomics : A

My english professor, who I believe was teaching at NYU until this year, said I was the first A+ she has given in her 10 year professorship, so I'm stoked about that, particularly since she was previously NYU. An A+ is the same as an A as far as my GPA is concerned, but it just means a bit more personally. As a result, my GPA is over the 3.9 mark again, after the A- I got for calculus back in winter took it under (*ack* calculus sucks).

I start back for the short summer semester on Thursday (yeah already) - I'm only doing accounting 1 since it's a 4 credit course done in half the normal time, and I want to get it down really well, as it will basically be the foundation for much of what I've yet to do in future semesters.

The couple of days I've had since the exams have been spent cleaning up some of the debris of the spring semester's work, both off the computer and on paper, so not much news I'm afraid. The weather has been really hot for the last week or so, hitting above 30°C every day (today was about 35°C and nasty humidity too), although it's meant to 'cool down' to the high 20's from tomorrow. I've just finished giving the apartment a major cleaning, a mission that started yesterday afternoon, and the site redesign I was planning on doing isn't going to happen - there's just not enough time to convert the entire site to pure CSS and Php as I intended (along with another facelift).

Did I mention that I have jury duty coming up straight after the summer semester finishes? Well I do. It was originally set for late June, but since I had exams I was able to postpone it until August, which is between the summer and fall semesters - the only time in the year where I have more than one week off. Should be interesting. Cheers till later.

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