March 26 [Wednesday]......Security
With the Iraq war now at the end of its first week here is an update on what it is like in NYC. The mayor (Mike Bloomberg) introduced Operation Atlas which is a series of rolling roadblocks stopping all traffic and inspecting each vehicle. Most of the stop points are near the bridges and tunnels in and out of Manhattan. There is a heavy NYPD presence across the city, 42nd street and the major subway stops are a focus. At some locations, especially later in the night, the National Guard troopers will be there also in their army-like fatigues and rifles. They still are trying to work out how the city will pay for it all.
Around the JPMorgan complex security is quite heavy. For some reason the tightest secured area is the one building with the bagel shop out the front, can't quite work that out, although I did have a powerbagel there one day which was pretty fine. There is a number of NYPD officers around my building with semi automatic rifles. Visitors have bags screened and have to walk through airport style detectors.

March 23 [Sunday]......World Cup Cricket
The Australia v India 2003 World Cup Final was on this morning. Starting at 3am NY time was a little early for me, although I followed the score on the Net from 8am. The Aussie pub down on Mulberry Street near Chinatown (Eight Mile Creek) played the match in full from 1pm. Anh and I made a quick stop at Chinatown at Canal Street to find the street vendor who sells "Hong Kong cakes" which we are addicted to. You have 20 little pieces for a single dollar but it can be hard to find the vendor. Back at Eight Mile Creek it was time for lunch. I stayed on all afternoon watching the Aussies demolish India in the final which was worth it no matter how uncomfortable it was sitting on a wooden stool for 7-8 hours. After we won, the owner had an Australian flag that we all signed. In the meantime, Anh had gone back to Chinatown for some grocery shopping.

March 22 [Saturday]......IKEA in Jersey
Weather was glorious this morning, so we took a stroll down 9th Avenue between 50th and 34th. With only a week before we move apartments it is time to get busy with furniture shopping. A common thing for people looking for inexpensive but modern furniture is to go over to the mammoth IKEA store over in New Jersey. A shuttle bus runs from 42nd Street Port Authority bus terminal across the Hudson river to Jersey, home of Bon Jovi. The 30 odd minute trip in Jersey to IKEA shows why it is seen as a Industrial area, the only thing we passed the whole trip was powerlines, container loading yards and the airport. IKEA is in the middle of nowhere it seems yet there were more people there than at most stores Christmas sales. If you don't like crowded - then don't bother going there. Despite the decent prices, personally I didn't see anything there I want in our apartment (Cameron raves about the place, and furnished his whole place in it).

Back in Manhattan it was time to see another movie over at Empire25, this time it would be the new Gwenyth Paltrow comedy "View from the Top". Nothing special. Anh had a craving to go back to a cupcake place we saw on 9th Avenue, which we walked to only to find it was closed for the night. Back uptoward 47th was time for a late dinner at Little Saigon a Vietnamese restaurant discovered that morning. It is the first place over here we have found Banh Xiao, a speciality of Anh's mum. Although it was good to have it again, it was no match for the homemade version from Woodville Gardens.

March 19 [Wednesday]......Canadian Visitor
Cameron had worked with us in Adelaide and moved to Canada late last year. He is in New York for 2 days with his new job and we met him tonight while he is in town. As he doesn't know his way around, we went down to his hotel which is right next to the WTC site. I had scoped out a known celebrity restaurant, "66", where Nicole Kidman had been on Saturday night. It has a so called celebrity chef, and is brand new. The place was packed. The dining area was fully booked and I had no status to break that. Yet they do have "communal tables" which don't require a reservation, just a wait. 66 is a fashionable chinese restaurant in the downtown TriBeCa region which has just about the coolest interior that you can have.
We caught up with Cameron over suckling pig (anh), lemon chicken (cameron), pork buns, prawn toast and lobster e-fu noodles (david).

For dessert we had to head to the famous Serendipity 3, another celebrity spot up on 60th street which we have been past before and the line was rolling out the door. Serendipity 3 is reknown for its Frozen Hot Chocolate which I tried. Anh & Cameron ventured for this huge mudcake & icecream creation. The desserts are a struggle to get through and they are also beautifully presented. The other thing Serendipity 3 is known for is that it featured in the recent movie, "Serendipity" staring John Cusak.

March 15 [Saturday]......Famous Cupcakes
Today we took a quick trip down to Union Square again and over to Paragon Sports on Broadway to pick up some hockey supplies. Lunch stop was back to our favourite, the Soup Nazi on 55th St. I had Turkey Chili Bean while Anh had Seafood & Corn Chowder. The soup was fantastic yet again. Next stop was down to the Village to visit the most famous cupcake shop / bakery in NY, Magnolia Bakery. It was featured in a Sex & the City episode and is enormously popular. It is a tiny shop on Bleeker St in the Village and when we went there around 7pm there had to be over 30 people crammed in a tiny space trying to get cupcakes and other cakes. They even have a limit - you are not allowed to buy more than 12 each. You can find some of the recipes here. We took a box of 4 and walked over to The Big Cup to eat some.

Later we walked up to see our new apartment on 26th where all our boxes have now been delivered to. Started to think about what furniture we need to buy. One of the first things will be lamps, as apartments in NY have no ceiling lights in the living areas, only in the hallway and kitchen. On our way back to midtown we had dinner at Howard Johnson's as Anh wanted a burger, and they serve old-fashioned burgers. Decor hadn't been changed in 40 years either, and the staff looked like they hadn't either.....

March 14 [Friday]......Picasso @ MoMA
Tonight we had bought tickets to the Picasso and Matisse exhibition at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). MoMA used to be on 53rd Street but is being redone and has temporarily relocated out to Queens. The Picasso and Matisse exhibition has recently opened and is incredibly popular. We bought Friday night tickets as it is supposedly crazy on the weekends, however there was a huge amount of people there tonight also. I transferred between 4 different subways to get from work (Brooklyn) over to Queens. We looked around at the paintings for around 2 hours which was a good amount of time, and MoMa was then closing anyway.

After making our way back to Manhattan, we walked into a Thai restaurant, Seeda Thai II, just around the corner from us on 49th Street. After there we stopped in at Cosi for hot chocolate and the worlds most deliciously sweet desert, s'mores where you roast marshmallows then melt them over hersheys chocolate and grahams crackers.

March 13 [Thursday]......eBay items
This week the 2 items that I had bought on eBay arrived. The first was a Paul Frank light in the shape of a light bulb which sits on a table. The second was a vintage Pan Am carry on bag. Pan Am items are quite sought after, the previous weekend we saw a guy with an original ground crew vintage jacket. We had almost gone up to him offering to buy it, but I don't think he would have sold anyway.

March 10 [Monday]......NY Rangers / Vince Neil
Tonight was the first Ice Hockey match we went to at MSG. NY Rangers v Florida Panthers. The game was great, crowd went crazy after the Rangers scored and seeing it live was awesome. Tonight wasn't the night for the Rangers as they went down 2-1. The strange thing about living in Manhattan is that we travelled from home to the MSG arena and the whole time we only went outside for about 100m, the rest was underground.

Going home via 42nd Street, Anh heard during the day that Vince Neil (lead singer from Motley Crue) was performing there that night. We walked up to the club (the BB King club) and saw the show had just started. So we decided to get some tickets and go in. The show was fantastic, his band did all the Motley Crue classics, sound was perfect and we were only 5m from the stage.
The trip home (one subway stop - but it saves being outside in sub-zero weather) was then via Starbucks and the local pizza place for a slice of late night pizza pie.

March 9 [Sunday]......Chelsea Pier, not Jordan
Had hoped to buy a ticket to Michael Jordan's last appearance at MSG against the Knicks. I watched tickets sell for $300 -$400 for a pair on eBay during the week and after about 5 calls to my scalper he couldn't get tickets for under $US250 each at the venue. That and the fact that even he was warning that a lot of those selling today would be fakes made us leave it.
Instead we jumped the subway a few stops to Chelsea Pier to look at the sports centre (annual memberships around $US1800) which is just awesome and also the golf centre which is a driving range on a pier at the Hudson River.
Feeling hungry we stopped back at 8th Avenue which is flush with food venues. Anh then wanted to go to a funky coffee shop across the road called "The Big Cup". We walked in and it was packed, plenty of same-sex couples there, as Chelsea is a popular gay area.

March 8 [Saturday]......Union Square
Today we took a trip to Union Square down at 14th Street. The Square is packed with people on the weekend, it has a food market that we wandered around and settled on some Hot Apple Cider which is pretty good here. We sat on the benches and watched some of the squirrels, and the collection of dog owners parade around. There are a huge variety of dogs here, one we saw today I swear was no bigger than my hand and was fully grown.

We checked out a number of the electronics stores in the area for our next TV purchase and some furniture stores for couches etc. Late afternoon we jumped on the subway to go further downtown to visit J&R Electronics where I bought my new CLIE.
Dinner was uptown around 56th Street and later we walked over to 60th Street around 2nd Avenue and passed some interesting places, Serendipity 3 and Dylan's Candy Store.
Meanwhile, down at a club on 42 Street there were 8 people shot during a fight.

March 2 [Sunday]......Movie Set
Walked around the corner this morning, and even though it was raining, there was a movie set at a big hotel entrance on 8th Street. Couldn't tell if it was setting up or taking it down so I waited a few minutes in the rain before giving up. Next street over had 8 or so trucks with all the equipment. We headed down to Chinatown and saw plenty of people selling new release dvd's on the footpath. Got one for "Old School" which we had seen the previous week at AMC Empire 25 on 42nd Street.

March 1 [Saturday]......Central Park Ice Skating
Anh's day: 12noon - 12midnight - sat on couch watching TV.
David's day: Went down to Chelsea Tower to organise the lease on our new apartment which we will now move into around April 1. I got an extension of our pad in Midtown from JPMorgan until then. From there I grabbed the subway down to Lafayette Street and walked around some of the shops down there. Next stop was Chinatown to get some chinese cakes. Headed uptown next on the subway to Grand Central where there were 2 interesting buskers. One was a Michael Jackson imitator and the other was a guy playing guitar and singing plus playing the drums with footpedals all at the same time which looked very tricky. From there I decided to go ice skating at Wollman Rink in Central Park. It is an open air ice skating rink only open during the winter and has been in plenty of movies so you would have probably seen it before. While I was skating, one girl took a nasty fall and broke her arm, we all had to get off the ice while they attended to her and eventually carted her off on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. After a late night bagel stop on the way home it was on to see the Slamball final on tv tonight.

February 26 [Wednesday]......Rollerdisco in NY
Tonight I headed off to the Roxy with Collin who I have been working with. The Roxy is in Chelsea and is New York City's only indoor Roller Disco which runs every Wednesday night. See the Roxy here. The Roller Disco is truly something out of the Seventies, a total flashback and something like the scene out of Austin Powers in Goldmember if you saw that.