Bon Jovi and other Celebrities

Well, it took me three months, but I have finally had my first real celebrity sighting! (Apart from a couple of minor celebrities from Top Chef and Andrew Shue from Melrose Place). "Who was the celebrity I sighted?", you ask. Well, it was none other than Bon Jovi! On my wait out last night as I crossed 5th and Broadway in front of the Flatiron building, I noticed some lights and then some cameras and then Bon Jovi. I was late to meet my friends uptown so I didn't really stop to figure out what was going on. But as I returned after my night out in a cab, My cab was blocked from going past the Flatiron building as Bon Jovi was sitting on a bed with a girl right in the middle of the street! So I got out of the cab at that point and decided to complete my journey home on foot(1 block away). There was a moment there as I headed to get out of the shot, that Bon Jovi looked my way - I think we had eye contact! I asked a cop what was happening & he told me that Bon Jovi was filming a new music video. So the next time you see a Bon Jovi video where he is on a bed in the middle of a New York street - just know that I was there!

On Thursday night this week I caught up with a girl named Sybil. A few weeks ago I ran into her as she accompanied an acquaintance we had in common to a gathering of Australians. I was shocked to see her as it had literally been more than 15 years since we had seen each other last. Sybil and I went to school together until the beginning of Grade 6 when she moved to LA. It seems she has been living in NY for a few years now and is a director of Documentaries. So it was very nice to catch up. I was also impressed to find out that her boyfriend is the manager of one of my favourite bands, the Black Eyed Peas, among others! So I expect to be going to a few good music events in the future! Funnily enough, one of the guys I was working for on my first contract happens to be a friend of Fergie, the lead singer of the Black Eyed Peas.

You may have noticed that I said "my first contract". Well about a month ago, my project finished up, at least the first phase of it, and despite the fact that my boss was keen for me to finish on the project so she could get me working on some other projects of theirs, apparently, there were some hold ups with those other projects. So I wasn't working a whole lot. Luckily something else came along. I am now doing Business Process Re-engineering for the Health & Pension body linked to the Union for Television and Radio Artists. So, once again, I am surrounded my celebrities, actually more like their records. Obviously, I can't divulge names, but typically, if you know of them from TV, film or if you have purchased their Album, then I have access to their records. It's surreal.

I expect to start back working again with the other guys from my first contact, but in the meantime I'm working at the health & pension fund. I may end up working for both of them concurrently which would probably work out well for me and give me some diversity in my work.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie....

Last week I had a bit of an "Australian" week. As you can probably tell from my picture, I went to the baseball. It was my first baseball game and I had a lot of fun. I went with another expat Aussie and two of his friends visiting from Australia. If you've watched any baseball movies, you'll know what a big deal it is to catch a foul ball that ends up in the stadium.

The boys I was there with got very excited every time a ball headed our way. Of course, it's something that happens once in a lifetime so the chances of either of them catching one of them is pretty rare. But guess what - the guy that was visiting from Australia actually caught one! It was pretty impressive.

And of course, as you all know, it was the AFL grand final last weekend. The Aussie contigent in NY doesn't miss a chance to gather for an Australian event and there were a number of venues around the city televising the game live, which started around 12:45am our time. I went to an Australian bar called the Sunburnt Cow down in Alphabet City which was far too small for the crowd that turned up and it's not the greatest setup to watch a football game. But I wasn't that really interested in the game anyway, so it didn't matter too much to me.

On the Saturday night I went to yet another Australian get together for an Aussie guy that had decided to move back to Australia. I took an American friend of mine, Dana, who had never been exposed to so many Australians in one go - I think she had a lot of fun and appreciated the sense of fun that Aussies have. I think I've had my fill of Australian events for a while. But I must admit, it is very nice to hang out with people that know how to relax and joke around, and don't take themselves too seriously!

Shana Tova (Happy New Year)

I've been informed that my next blog post is well overdue, so here goes.

I had a very nice Rosh Hashanna, spending the first night with my Israeli cousins who are living here and the second night with Australian friends.

My cousin Eli and her husband Bris hosted a dinner for about 12 people, 10 of whom were Israeli. It was a lovely night, and I also had the opportunity to see Eli's sister, Michal,(both pictured right) who I had not seen since she was in Australia at my sister's wedding. As I was only one of 2 that were not native Hebrew speakers, I was a little bit out of the conversation,

but I managed to pick things up here and there and even managed to offer the salt when someone requested the "melach".

I managed to contribute to the conversation much more on the second night with my friends Dani and Tom Hersz, but sorry, no photos were taken.

Workwise, things have slowed down a little as I finished my project. I have not worked very much this past week and I am hoping things will pick up again this week as I only get paid for the hours I work!

I took the opportunity of the time off to go shopping and acquire a good portion of my "fall" wardrobe. Despite what it seems like when you first get here, there doesn't seem to be a huge variety of options when it comes to clothing stores here. Either you go for the chain stores of Club Monaco, Zara, Banana Republic etc who have decent to high prices or you go to the various boutiques around the city and pay exorbitant prices, like $350 for a sweater. Another alternative is Macy's, the equivalent of Myer which has some ok stuff, but when I was on my way there I discovered a great store with really cool clothes for very reasonable prices. I bought 4 jackets there! And they get new stock in 3 times a week, so I imagine I will become quite a regular there.

If you're interested, I have started to build my own Google Map of my favourite places in NY. I will keep adding to it as I find more cool places to shop, eat, drink etc.

View Larger Map

New Apartment, New Job, New Life

I know it has been a long time since my last post (except for the one that I just posted) and my only excuse (but it's a good one) is that I have been flat out arranging and starting my new life. So just to backtrack from my blog post a month a go, I returned to the consulate the next day to collect my passport that contained my visa inside. Yay! I am now officially a resident of the US. It's a relief that you may never really grasp the magnitude of, unless you yourself had packed up your entire life to move overseas on the possibility that you might get a job and a visa to live in a foreign country. But I did it. Phew.

So now I was all set for my new life, with a new job and a new apartment. I spent the weekend arranging the furniture for my new apartment. I found this company that allows me to buy everything at real wholesale prices but the catch is that I have to wait for the furniture to come directly from the manufacturer, which can take anywhere between 2 and 12 weeks, depending on the manufacturer. So I decided that my two mandatory items - a mattress and a TV would have to be purchased at a retailer. At this point, my apartment consists of a mattress, a TV and a few other items I purchase online such as an accent chair (right).

Once my apartment is fully furnished, I'll take some snaps and post them up - it's going to be beautiful.

Now on to the new job. It's funny, I've spent more time with my client than I have my employers. They are waiting on moving in to a new office so until then, I spend my time working from home or at the client's office. Did I mention I have next to no furniture in my apartment? So, when working, I sit on the chair (above) and put my laptop either on my lap or on a makeshift table I have made out of the many cardboard boxes I have accumulated.

Anyway, the job is good and has potential to be great with lots of opportunity to do some creative and entrepeneurial things. And my bosses are cool 30-somethings of the tribe and we all went out a couple weeks ago and had a really great time.

The last few weekends I have spent out in the Hamptons. I was meant to go this last long weekend, but I had some issues getting out there and then decided it was probably a good thing that I stay in the city and chill out. The last 6 weeks have been quite a whirlwind and I really need to slow down and rest so that I could focus on work when I needed to. I think I was suffering a bit from exhaustion the last couple of weeks. Despite what you may think -the Hamptons is by no means relaxing. So I was going from working and playing hard during the week as well as organising my apartment and putting together furniture to just playing hard on the weekend and I really needed a break.

I ended up sleeping most of the day yesterday! I think I am almost recharged now!

Australian Connections

It amazes me that in a city as large as New York City that I have managed to run into sooo many people that I have a connection with in one way or another, whether I know them personally or we know people in common. Here are a few scenarios:

1. One night, while I was still in my Gramercy (Curry Hill) apartment, I decided to walk down to the store and get a snack. As I was crossing the street in front of my apartment, I see a familiar face. It was the face of a guy I went to primary school with (Bialik) and I had seen him around the traps in a social setting after high school but had not really had much to do with him apartment from watching him sing in a band at Chevron night club way back when. You may know him - Jeremy Meltzer. Anyway, if it had been on a street in Melbourne I most likely would not have bothered to stop to chat to him because of the tenuous link we had, but on a New York street, it's not that often (at least I thought so at the time) that you run into a face from the past, so I stopped him and said his name. He looked at me like I was familiar but as I expected could not place me. After some chit chat "What are you doing here", "how long have you been here" on either side another person walks up that I also recognize. He is here to meet Jeremy. This face I recognize from my time at another school - Mount Scopus, and I had actually heard that he was here but, again, my association with Gavin Kolt at school was rather tenuous, not enough for me to make the effort out of the blue to contact him. Again, he recognized my face but struggled to place me. After the same old introductions and pleasantries that go along with seeing someone from your past in a foreign city, they invited me to dinner and I joined them. If you know me at all, or at least from this blog, you will know that I am really not a fan of Indian food, and they were going to eat Indian. Well, I figured it was worth suffering through it considering the amazing coincidence! It was a fun night.
2. Almost a week after I moved into my new apartment in Chelsea/Flatiron, I still had no internet or tv so I went down to the common lounge area to connect to the internet and watch some tv. There was a group of guys in there playing some poker and after a while I started chatting to them. One guy said that he had family in Melbourne, and as he looked distinctly Jewish, I figured there might be a good chance that I knew them. He told me there names - "Harry & Gloria Lew". I said, "Yeah, they lived in the street next to me" - and they did, when I was still at home with my parents in Hawthorn. Small world.
3. Last week, as I walked out of a club in the MeatPacking District (I was hanging out there with my new employers), I heard someone say "Oi!" It was David Harris, a friend from Australia. He was visiting from Australia with two other friends and in the bar next door (which I had been at earlier in the night). Then, that weekend, entirely by coincidence, I run into him again on the Saturday night at a bar out there. Freaky.
4. This morning: I decided to take advantage of the slow pace of NYC on a long weekend and went for breakfast in my favourite street in Gramercy Park - Irving Place. Not long after I sat down a group of 4 people sat near me with an accent that I recognized - Australian of course. Now, this is not the first time I have heard random Australian accents around the city, but then I overheard from their conversation that they were Jewish and from Sydney, and I was a bit bored on my own so I spoke up and started talking to them. It turns out one of the guys is a good friend of some people I know from Sydney, so we name swapped for a few minutes and then I discovered that the guy and his girlfriend were visiting from LA and he works for Westfield. They plan on returning to the city once a month so his girlfriend and I swapped numbers and we agreed to stay in contact - who knows?

And there are a few more organised Australian connections happening:

1. I have joined the Manhattan International Netball Club. It's made up of Aussies, New Zealanders, British and a few others. Of course when I mention to Americans that I'm going to play netball, all they hear is "nipple". For this reason, when I say netball now, I am forced to elongate my vowels to avoid the confusion. Anyway, I train with them for an hour and a half every Monday night and this Saturday I'm playing in a tournament in Brooklyn, no doubt against some Jamaicans and Trinidad and Tobegans that can jump much higher than I can.
2. Next Friday night, Bryfy (David Bryfman) has organised a Jewish Australian gathering at an Australian establishment in Nolita, "Eight Mile Creek". I'm sure I'll run into countless people there that I didn't even know lived here.

Time out from New York

"Unsolved murders mounting" read this morning's newspaper headline, with the first paragraph as follows:

"Calgary cops are working endless hours after a spate of violence and carnage in
the city has left six people dead in less than a week. With four fresh
murder cases since Friday, police now have six unsolved killings on the
books since August 1 in the wake of last week's shootings, beatings and
hit-and-runs."

It reminds of an alert that might pop up in my favourite game, SimCity, requiring more police stations to be placed. (I know, I'm a geek!)

For a city about one quarter the size of Melbourne, this is somewhat disconcerting and explains the feeling of unease I felt as I walked around the deserted downtown area yesterday passing mainly vagrants and youths hanging out in the city on the public holiday.

Of course, if I lived in Calgary, I'm not sure I also wouldn't have violent tendencies at times. It is somewhat of a non-entity with very little to differentiate itself from any other Canadian city except perhaps the absence of landmarks and attractions. The nine years that have passed since my last visit have not done much to enhance it's appeal. In fact, I don't recall the downtown area being so seedy.

But tourism is not my purpose for this visit. I am here for one and one purpose only - to get my US visa. You may ask why Calgary of all places to obtain a visa? Well, it was the soonest appointment I could get.

So, I went to the consulate and after an arduous 2 hours I think I got my visa. They didn't tell me anything, but apparently when then send you away and tell you to return the following day to collect your passport - your in! I must say though, that for an American consulate, there didn't seem to be too many people working there that were born in in the US, judging by the thick accents I heard.

A week is a long time in New York!

In the last week, I have got a job and signed a lease on a new apartment! Things can happen very quickly here if the stars are aligned and such was the case for me this week. I had been starting to despair as the recruiting arm of my visa sponsor had failed to produce even 1 interview for me to attend in the 2 weeks I had been here.
When I arrived in New York I contacted a former Australian I had found through LinkedIn ( a business networking website) who said he could recommend me to his contacts but would need to meet me first. He finally returned my call and we made an appointment to meet last Monday.
We spoke for half an hour and he explained that he was a CTO (Chief Technical Officer) and had established a CTO club with about 70 members CTOs. He was happy to forward my resume to those CTOs but had a few other avenues he wished to try. The first was a role with his company. He sent me immediately downtown to a colleague to speak with him. However, it was not a role that I was too keen about so we both decided that it was not the best fit.
I then emailed the CTO and asked him to send my resume to others. He sent it to 2 people, one who contacted me that evening and the other contacted me the following day. The first to contact me was Amy, who loved my resume and had the most perfect role for me. She described it, I agreed and we arranged to meet the following day (Tuesday).
On Tuesday I met with Amy and her two partners. Together, they comprise the entire company. Small, yes, but ideally suited to me as there were about 5 different projects they reeled off the top of their heads that I could get involved in. They all come from a marketing background but the company has a distinct online focus which is ideal for someone with my background. I can provide the technical complement to their expertise. At the end of the interview it was clear that we were all keen to proceed. Yay!
I half expected I would need to take a job that I was really not excited about, but this job has the potential to be better than anything that I could have gotten in Melbourne so I'm ecstatic!
On the housing front, I decided now that I had a job, I would spend the remainder of my week looking at places just to get a feel for the housing market. But after being shown a sequence of overpriced crap and then seeing an amazing apartment in a fantastic building for less than the overpriced crap, I figured it was an opportunity too god to waste. In New York, you need to take a place as soon as you see it or tomorrow it will be gone, so I took it! Only later I found out the reason it was so well priced was it was in a rent-controlled building, Brilliant! I had to make an arrangement with my existing (subletting) landlord to end early, but as I said, when you find a good place, you don't mess around!
My apartment is in this building www.thecarolineny.com and I move in in 2 weeks!