taking fire

Right. I’m getting a handle on it now. I’d completely forgotten how stressful moving can be.

The trip over was fine. Leaving the ground at Heathrow did feel like a kind of goodbye; one-way trips generally I suppose. The take-off tilt of the runway felt itself a milestone, a minor life marker.

Then whiled away the 7.5 hours watching the Simpsons Movie and just enjoying that great limbo of travel. Near landing, the dense starfield, the blazing multiplicity of city lights; the Empire State with a green band and red crest.

First few days were patchy getting the basics sorted. Lots of time spent in physical and telephone queues. My apartment is looking potentially good, apart from occasional cucarachas. I say “potentially” as it’s totally bereft of furniture or even a bed. So uninhabitable until I get transport to Ikea – crashing at Caitlin & Regine’s for now.

The area definitely seems cool. Picking up the apartment keys for the first time, I bumped into my new neighbour Ethan Hawke strolling along in a tasteful bunnet, walking his dog.

List of New York Things

1. Your apartment building fell from a portal into the past

Your building was thrown up somewhere between 1910-1920, and it shows.

You have literally no control over room heating or hot water. The radiator will come on and off at the whim of the building owner.

Washing machines are prohibited – hence why the Friends muppets did their laundry in the basement.

2. Everything will kill you

No one drinks directly from cans or bottles. You must at least use a straw. The horror-stricken explanation is that rats frequent the storage places and infect the outward surfaces of everything in their scheme to overthrow us.

Medicine is completely commercialised and consumerised. Hence advertising will try to convince you that you’re very ill and in need of products. THAT SPOT ON YOUR TONGUE COULD BE ORAL CANCER.

3. Especially the food

Every morning I’ve been getting a cawfee and croissant from a street vendor on Park Avenue. The croissant is as big as your heid.

Then in Brooklyn I experienced the heart-stopping black-american tradition of chicken and waffles. With your sane plate of chicken and dough, you are handed a squeezy bottle of warm, melted butter. You incredulously scoosh the pale yellow stuff all over your waffles and try not to gag. Tastes: extremely calorific. Genuinely nauseating afterwards. I’m totally going back.

4. But some tech is ahead of Europe

If you can find a fancy Chase bank machine it will remember your preferences. WOW BOB WOW

5. Talking to people

You cannot fail to notice the constant, verbose, distinctly American politeness.

Every greeting has a how-are-you, every act has a thank-you, every thank you has a you’re-welcome, every goodbye has a my-name-is, great-talking-to-you and have-a-nice-day.

From an engineering point of view the ratio of conversational data to protocol overhead is appalling, but you get a superficial glow from everyone being so damn nice to you. On the other hand it’s very difficult to go around in a dream with your chat module switched off – you need to communicate with people for the simplest transaction.