January 30, 2004 [Friday]......Chris Rock
This evening we went to see Chris Rock at the MSG Theater doing his comedy show. Chris Rock was originally from Saturday Night Live and has done numerous movies over the last 10 years. He is also a native of Brooklyn. While waiting for the show to start, Anh spotted Will Smith walking in and sitting in the audience. This proved to be funny later in the show as Chris Rock made a joke about him without knowing he would be there. Will Smith then stood up and turned to the crowd who were in fits. Overall this show was a million times better than Margaret Cho.

January 28, 2004 [Wednesday]......Snow Day
Today is officially a "Snow Day". That means that most of the schools in New York are all closed. Overnight we had a total of 10 inches of snow so the city started early this morning with the snow ploughs. Reports on TV warned people to stay at home if possible due to the conditions. They also open up various Parks around the city for kids to play in the snow and tobboggan down the slopes. I woke to the crunching sound of the snow ploughs and then spent the day at home and used dial-in access to work.

January 27, 2004 [Tuesday]......Snowstorm Moves In
I can no longer remember the last time the temperature was above the freezing level, it must have been over 10 days ago at least. Today we have an added bonus, a heavy snowfall predicted tonight. On my way home, I stopped in at the Wholefoods grocery store and in the 20 minutes or so that I was inside it had started snowing. I came outside to find a thin blanket of white on the footpaths. The snow was coming down quite strong as I walked home from there.

After a half hour inside, I left again to walk up to MSG for a Knicks v San Antonio ball game. By this time there was truly a thick layer of snow across the streets and in such a short time, the walk up 7 blocks to MSG was literally like hiking though the countryside. The snow "erases" the gutter break between the street and sidewalk, so it all just blends into one big open space. Inside, the Knicks were outplayed late in the game and not good enough for San Antonio.

While walking back home, several hours of snowfalls had left around 3 inches on the ground judging by how much my feet were sinking into the snow. With few cars out, I trekked up 26th in the middle of the street in a blanket of fresh white snow.

January 26, 2004 [Monday]......One Year Later
Several days ago marked the end of the first year for us in New York. One year of subways, high-rise apartment living, sidewalk pounding, starbucks, bagels, krispy kreme, organic food only grocery stores and my favourite, Madison Square Garden. Tonight I was back there for a Rangers v Florida Panthers hockey game, which coincidently was the same teams as the first hockey game I saw a year ago. Tonight had the added excitement that Jaromir Jagr who the Rangers just traded to get, was making his first appearance at MSG for the Rangers. Jagr has a $10m per year contract and is the highest paid player in the NHL. Tonight he didn't disappoint, scoring a goal as the Rangers got back on the winning track.

January 25, 2004 [Sunday]......Superskate 6
Once a year the NY Rangers hold a charity day to support Christopher Reeve's foundation. The Rangers hockey team together with a number of (minor) celebrities play in a charity hockey game. It was actually a fun day and it proved there are very few celebrities that are any good at hockey. Christopher Reeve also came out and said some words about the day so it was interesting to see him.

January 24, 2004 [Saturday]......Going Downtown
We needed to head out to do some shopping today, which is tough to get motivated to do when it was -8 outside. First we went down to Franklin street on the subway as I wanted to take a picture or 2 of a place called Teddys in the Tribeca area. It announced it was closing recently, many businesses in Tribeca have struggled since 9/11 and I had been meaning to get a picture of the unique building. It has a replica of the Statue of Liberty's crown on its roof and is a minor landmark for it.

Nearby, the Tribeca Grand has a nice tall old-style clock built near the entrance, remniscent of the style of the clock in Grand Central. I've now seen a couple of these clock-on-a-pole street features, another was in mid-town. We next walked across Canal Street and over to Broadway for some shopping. The temperature was closer to -12 when we later went back to 34th to the cinema where we saw Along Came Polly. Walking home was brutal, it is closer to -18 with the wind chill factor.

January 18, 2004 [Sunday]......13 Hours in Philly
This evening I was planning on being at the Philadelphia Eagles v Carolina Panthers NFC Championship game in Philadelphia. To make a day of it Anh came along and we did a mini tour of Philly during the day. We caught the chinatown bus at 9am which takes just under 2 hours to arrive in Philadelphia. The chinatown bus is the cheapest way to get there, a roundtrip booked over the net was only $20. At that time of morning there was also only 10 people on the bus. The chinatown bus travels from one chinatown to another and we arrived in Philly around 11am on a truly miserable day. It was raining lightly but for the most part it was an icy-rain, temperatures around the freezing mark (which is not too bad after days of -8) and melting snow everywhere on the ground. The melting snow was more of a slush and it made it very challenging to walk through. Basically our feet were soaked all day long.

With only 5 or 6 hours to sight-see, we hit just a sample of places. Philly is a great historical place with any number of landmarks from the Independence days and was the nation's capital for a period of time. Every second building is named after William Penn or Benjamin Franklin it seemed. We started walking down Benjamin Franklinf Parkway, known as Museum Way through the slush. Stopped briefly at the Franklin Institute Science Museum and looked at the very large statue in the front hall which was impressive. No time to waste, continued on for our destination, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This was good value, a tonne of things to see and a nice collection of paintings (plenty of Monet, Renoir and Duchamp). This site is also famous for a scene in the Rocky 1 movie where he runs up the steps as part of his training scene. It was hard to recreate as the steps were very icy today.

After walking back to the center of the city, also known as Center City, we walked around the City Hall building which has a giant 37 foot bronze sculpture of Penn atop it. By then we had a mixture of icy rain and snow coming down very lightly. We walked through the JFK Plaza area, took some photos where the red "Love" metal sculpture is. Being a Sunday and the weather as it was, made for a very deserted city today.

Next we headed East over to the Old City region where we stopped at the Betsy Ross House (where the first version of the US flag was made) and then Elfreth's Alley (believed to be America's oldest residential street). This brought us close to the Delaware River before we turned south to walk along the Independence National Historic Park and past Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was first read in public. Our last stop was to see the Liberty Bell up close which is now housed in a hall with the historical display of its history.

Time was approaching 5pm so Anh was headed back to the chinatown bus for New York. The crowd waiting was large and turned our to fill 2 buses. Seeing people push to fight for a spot on the bus (no organised seating) was something else, I thought we were back in Vietnam, but even that was far more civilized.

I went back to City Hall to get a subway down to Lincoln Financial Field for the Eagles game. This was my first game in Philly so it was great to be amongst the home crowd for once, previously I only saw them in New York and Miami. I secured a ticket on eBay earlier in the week and the winner of this game was going to the Superbowl. Security was insanely tight to get in, I was lined up for the best part of 45 minutes. The Philly crowd is one of the loudest and quickest to turn on its own team, they love to boo here, one famous story is that back in the 80's before christmas they even booed santa who made an appearance before a game. There was more of that to come as the Eagles had a very average game and were beaten by Carolina. Losing was bad enough, but sitting out in sub-freezing temperatures for 3 hours just made it that much worse! My toes had lost feeling long ago, having had wet shoes all day long and the chilly wind was very cold.

That made it a long trip back to NYC. I had to catch 2 subways back to the Amtrak train station and wait till 12:30am before the next train as the chinatown bus ends at 11pm. Shortly after 2am I was back at Penn Station in New York, very tired and walked back home before getting some sleep.

January 17, 2004 [Saturday]......Keeping Warm
Not much going on today, still sub-freezing temperatures. The warmest place in our building in weather like this turns out to be the gym on level 3, so we spent time down there running on the treadmill in the afternoon.
In the evening I was off to a NJ Nets v Indiana Pacers (featuring the ageing Reggie Miller) ball game.

January 16, 2004 [Friday]......Setting Records
Overnight the temperatures fell to equal the lowest / coldest it has been in New York for 111 years. It went as low as 1 degree fahrenheit which is -18 degrees celcius. The problem was that is was also windy and the effect of the wind chills took the outside temperature to -35 celcius. In that cold, it's just plain stupid to go outside. The snow has also started to turn icy which is quite dangerous and difficult to walk down the sidewalk.

The other records we are into these days are that of the vinyl kind. A week ago I took delivery of a new turntable I bought from amazon. We have been buying up vinyl records on eBay and I had 2 records while Anh bought a set of 5 Madonna discs. We already have been buying frames made specially for vinyl record album covers from Urban Outfitters, one of our stores we frequent around here. Over the next few weeks I'll start putting the frames up on the wall. This is called Album Art and we continue to search eBay for records to add to our collection.

January 15, 2004 [Thursday]......Here Comes Jack
Heard the good news today that Lisa & Ross had their second child, Jack Henry today. Ross was quick off the mark to email some photos to us which was great to see.
Overnight here we had some snowfalls of 5 or so inches so there is a decent blanket over the city. It is also mighty mighty cold out there. A few minutes is all it takes for your hands to go so numb they lose feeling. Tonight I went to see the Rangers play the NJ Devils at MSG.

January 13, 2004 [Tuesday]......Moving to Arctic Cold
After some light overnight snow on Sunday and a warmer day today, tonight we are heading back to cold temperatures. In fact in the weather report tonight they said tomorrow we are due for "arctic cold". I still don't know what that exactly means but it should be brutal. Snowfalls will also be coming through by Thursday.

January 11, 2004 [Sunday]......Eating What Killed Elvis
It was time to venture out this afternoon for some fresh chilly air. We went down to Greenwich Village to have some lunch at the Peanut Butter & Co. This small gourmet sandwich shop serves a menu almost completely based on peanut butter as the main ingredient. Anh tried a spicy grilled chicken & pb concoction, while I had the "Elvis" which is a grilled sandwich with pb, banana & honey which is what made Elvis so fat as he had them daily.

January 10, 2004 [Saturday]......How Cold is Cold?
So yesterday was quite chilly, we only reached a high of -6. By last night it was a cool -16 degrees outside when Anh decided I should walk down to the grocery store to buy some dessert. After some reluctance I went out, all bundled up. The few crazy people that were outside were typically covered head to toe, scarves wrapped around faces and huge furry hoods. The fashion rule in this climate is that you can wear anything you want on your head, no matter how silly it would look in any normal environment. At this time I would usually see dogs out for a walk, tonight I saw only one who went 3 metres from the building entrance to the subway grill, did his thing and trotted straight back inside, no walk tonight.

Woke up this morning to -17 degree weather. The colder it is outside, the colder it is inside as the apartment buildings have heating that you can't set to a temperature, it's on or off. There are rules that they have to keep it a certain temperature, for this weather they only need to keep the heating at a temperature of 12 degrees but it has been so cold in our place and we have a lot of windows so I thing our place is not close to that. Today won't get much warmer as the top will only be -9 degrees. Any puddles of water outside have all turned to ice and overnight they were predicting a 6 inch thick layer of ice will have formed over the lakes at Central Park.

January 8, 2004 [Thursday]......Yao Ming is 7"6 tall
Tonight we went to see Yao Ming and his Houston Rockets team play the Knicks. Earlier in the week, the Knicks traded 3 players away in order to bring some other big names in so the city was excited at a renewed hope that this could benefit the playoff chances, as the team was average up to this point. That and the fact that Yao Ming was in town made this a pretty exciting game to be at. The Knicks showed you can't play in the NBA without the players having practiced more than once together and they were blown out of the water by the Rockets who led by over 20 points most of the game. Yao Ming was superb and he had a huge number of fans at the Garden. We again saw Jay-Z and Beyonce at the game as we had seen them last at the US Open.

January 6, 2004 [Tuesday]......Flurries Move In
This week the temperatures are dropping! Currently it is -2 degrees out. I was outside before and some light snow flurries started coming down. Tonight we are dropping down to -8 and the cold is here for the next week.

January 2, 2004 [Friday]......LeBron James
Out of the NBA games I am seeing this year, there are 4 big ones in particular I was looking forward to. One of those was on tonight, NJ Nets v Cleveland Cavaliers. Cleveland's big star is LeBron James, who just turned 19 and was out of high school just last year. This year he has $100m in sponsorship and is one of the big stars.
Tonight LeBron wasn't good enough for the inform Nets and Jason Kidd. In the second half he even shot some airballs and had no luck in lifting the Cavs.

January 1, 2004 [Thursday]......56 Buttons
Started the new year by working on the room divider. Today was devoted to attaching the 56 buttons across the front of the 4 panels. This was possibly the most pain staking aspect. It took the best part of 5 hours to get this done. Anh had previously helped me when we made the buttons a month ago. I had bought a 1950's Dritz kit off eBay awhile ago to do it properly, old school style. Then I bought the "blanks" from the fabric district which is not far from our apartment. Today we then attached the fabric covered buttons to the front panels and secured them tightly to the backs which will then be hidden by the backing panels. Later in the night I gave the backing panels another coat of paint. It's getting close now...

December 31, 2003 [Wednesday]......Times Square, sort of
Ask any New Yorker the one thing they wouldn't do for New Years Eve and they tend to all say "go to Times Square". I wasn't about to listen to that as even if just once you would be mad not to see it when in the city. We had heard that security was going to be very tight in the area and we set off around 8:30pm to walk there. They never seem to give good instructions in NYC about how you get to these public events as they block off most areas. Barricades and cops were at every street between 34th and all the way up to 59th. So we had walked from our apartment all the way up to Central Park where supposedly an entrance / security checkpoint was down via 7th Avenue.

Now if you don't like crowds or have claustrophobia, this was your worst nightmare, in a million years. Along 59th, we literally moved between 5th Ave & 7th Ave at a crawl surrounded by thousands of people. It was so packed that there was no turning back, it would be impossible to push through the crowd in the opposite direction. We must have been in that madness for an hour, time seemed to stand still. We ended up at the corner of 7th Ave and 59th street and could step back to a somewhat open area. They had alsoblocked off anyone else getting through down to Times Square. We did however have a direct view down 7th to Times Square and could see the giant glass ball on One Times Square that drops at midnight to mark the new year.

We stayed there until midnight when the ball dropped and fireworks began in Times Square and behind us in Central Park. We were too far to see all the ticketape that gets strewn through Times Square. The crowds all around us were so thick you looked back toward Central Park and just saw people crammed on the walkways everywhere. The fireworks are very basic, nothing impressive, there must be a rule that you can only put on entertaining fireworks on the 4th of July. After it was done we started the trek home, subway stations were mostly closed so we walked anyway. That was probably an hour or so, the crowds were still very thick in some areas so it was slow going.

Not sure what we will do next year, but it won't be Times Square - leave that to the tourists and people from Jersey or wherever.

December 30, 2003 [Tuesday]......Gage & Tollner
This week one of our consultants is finishing up so we took him out to a local restaurant in Brooklyn, Gage & Tollner. I had not heard of Gage & Tollner before but they are quite a landmark, having been at their current Fulton street location for 111 years and in existence for over 124 years.

G&T has renovated its interior to try and remain as it was a century ago and still has the original gas lit lamps on the ceiling. The walls are all wood-panelled and it has an old-world style about it along with very good service. I had the lobster bisque followed by a grilled salmon & chicken combo, topped off by new york style cheesecake. One of the best meals in a long time it is highly recommended.

December 29, 2003 [Monday]......Brooklyn Navy Yard Fieldtrip
Still on vacation today, and I had a call from Marc from the painting class I did earlier in the year who was taking a trip to the working studio of our former teacher Joel Longenecker.
Joel moved into studio space in this big renovated warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard area during the Fall, after being previously in the Williamsburg area where rents had just risen too much. As Joel says, it is really kind of a very industrial area and one of the unique things about New York as it is literally just over the East River from Manhattan but has a very different feel to it. The area is huge, Robert De Niro is involved in building a huge film studio on part of the property and we saw the construction was well underway at this point. As there is no close public transport, Joel picked us up from the subway station where we had caught the L train from Manhattan.

Joel had an exhibition show on a month or so ago and now in his studio area he was working on new pieces. His canvases are up to say 3 x 2 metres in size and he has a huge storage area and something crazy like 30 feet tall ceilings. We talked to Joel for a couple of hours and got a full rundown of how he works and he brought out many of his paintings to show. It was truly a fascinating day.

Later that night I was over at the Continental Arena in Jersey to see the New Jersey Nets play Portland Trail Blazers. It's more a chore to get to Nets games, having to take a 25 minute bus trip from Port Authority at 42nd street, but always worth it for the view you get of the Manhattan skyline at night when you are over on the Jersey shore after coming out of the tunnel underneath the Hudson River - there's no easy way to get this view without a car.

December 27, 2003 [Saturday]......Garage Days
Full steam ahead on the room divider project this weekend. Started painting the 4 backing panels today. Not the easiest thing to do in a studio apartment. The paint fumes were getting intoxicating at one point while sanding between coats is fraught with danger. I have about a 4 x 2 metre area to work in while trying to keep dust out of the living area and kitchen, not to mention paint off the hardwood floor. As Anh tried to tell me, the apartment is not a garage, but right now the evidence proves otherwise.

Now I understand why Kramer never went ahead with building "levels" in his apartment.

December 25, 2003 [Thursday]......Christmas Day
Just a quiet day over here for us. The city was very quiet also, the only thing open were chinese restaurants as plenty of jewish people flock to them traditonally on christmas day.
Heaven help us, I think we even sat and watched the aweful world idol show on tv that night.

December 24, 2003 [Wednesday]......Christmas Eve
As usual before a holiday we knocked off early as many others did also. I'm not crazy enough to attempt christmas shopping at this late stage, plenty did though. I was home to work on the room divider yet again.

Strange thing about this christmas eve is that we were able to talk to mum, dad & the Whitman crew back in Australia as they celebrated christmas morning on the other side of the world. Later in the night we then did a webcam hookup as the parents were readying for christmas lunch back at their place with the Jamieson's.

December 23, 2003 [Tuesday]......MSG v Snow Shoveling
Last night I was over at The Garden for a Rangers v Boston Bruins hockey game. Anytime you beat Boston is a good day, the biggest rivalry here is New York v Boston, whether it be baseball or any other sport. Just think SA v VIC. Rangers whipped the Bruins 4 - 2 so people left happy.

Tonight I was back at MSG but this time with a workmate, Renard, to see a basketball game. Knicks were playing Minnesota Timberwolves who is Renards favourite team. Tonight was also the first time that Latrell Sprewell returned to MSG after the Knicks traded him, their best player, after last season. I saw him play for the Knicks once at the start of this year and tonight he had a big game - 31 points as the T-wolves won. He also started abusing the Knicks general manager who was sideline, and was fined $25,000 the next day by the NBA. For him, probably worth every penny.

After the game, Renard headed back to Brooklyn to pick up some of his family who went down to his house in Pennsylvania for Christmas. He is a good 90 minutes drive out of New York and there was snow where he lives as it is much colder than NYC. So he was shoveling snow off his driveway till 3 in the morning after they arrived there. I am 7 mins walk away from MSG so I think I was on the couch drinking hot chocolate by 11pm.

December 21, 2003 [Sunday]......Home Improvement
Over the last coupe of days I have been making big progress on completing the room divider for our apartment. True that this project started 6 months ago, but I finally borrowed a drill recently so I can move forward. Spent many hours over the weekend assembling each of the 4 individual panels, stapling the batting and barkcloth to the mdf boards. Had to keep running down to the hardware store 3 blocks down to get more staples. I'm using a heavy duty stapler and have been through over 1500 staples assembling everything. Actually had minor bruising on my hand where I have repetitively been pushing the staple gun all those times. Hoping to have this thing finished around the end of the year.