Frozen Apple

This week I have mostly been in New York, which proved to be a stark contrast to the tropics with a record 27 inches of snow falling in 24 hours over the weekend. However before I managed to make it into New York I had to put in some penance in New Jersey in the middle of nowhere in a shithole called Warren. Nobody knows where Warren is, I asked my mate in Manhattan if it was far from there. He thought I ment Wayne, which it wasn't, but it begs the question who the bloody hell is naming towns in Jersey? Did the founding fathers of Jersey just name the towns after their first born, (I can imagine Wayne and Warren being popular names in Jersey).
Having seen the locals in action on a Friday night at the Tap Room bar in the charming local hotel I was staying at, I have a sneaking suspicion there is a fair amount of inbreeding going on in the boonies of New Jersey. I am no dancer as Reidy will loudly attest to, but I am John Travolta in comparrison to some of the work going on in the Tap Room as people gyrated to the cover band who were working some classic Hootie and the Blowfish and Reo Speedwagon.
Why was I in Warren you ask, well it is part of some cost cutting exercise at work, where they moved the people I deal with to Warren. It's an impressive campus, but it's in Warren, bloody stinking Warren. So when word got out about the pending snow storm coming on Saturday I legged it to the city faster than a fast thing going really fast.
The snow was meant to arrive at lunchtime, it held off until about 3:00 and then came in horizontally. Bloody hell it was cold. Committed drinkers as we are we were out in it, braving the elements both inside and out of the bars in the Village until 4:00am. The Peculiar Bar in Bleeker St has a toilet that is up there with the one at the Suez Canal bus interchange in Egypt (without doubt the world's worst toilet).
It was still snowing when we emerged from my mate's flat at the crack of noon, and it didn't stop for another 5 hours. Had brunch at Walkers on W Boulevard, right opposite the Ghostbusters fire station which was far more impressive for me than walking past Carie Bradshaw's doorstep. The city is pretty wild when it snows, everything turns white strangely enough, it's really quiet as there's no cars on the road, The whole place becomes giant pedestrian mall with the odd cross country skier whizzing past and Central Park becomes an impromptu ski and board park.
Then a day later the streets are magically clear as the garbage trucks become snow ploughs and the footpaths become ice skating rinks as the melting snow freezes over. It's only a matter of time before all the dog turds and other rubbish that were previously covered in a lovely white blanket start oozing out. Two days later the snow is starting to melt, the innocent looking puddles at the bottom of the footpaths are in fact mini ponds that swallow your whole foot and the snow that is still around is now filthy and slushy. So I headed home with some surprising enthusiasm, even as I faced the prospect of an 18 hour non stop flight, at least I knew my feet were finally going to be dry.

Lunar Dog

This week I have mostly been enjoying the year of the dog, Gong Xi Fa Cai again. The whole Chinese or Lunar New Year celebration is quite an experience over here, undoubtedly the biggest event in the, well... the Lunar Year. Largely dominated by money, the theme is prosperity, and everything is about wishing good fortune with either cash in red envelopes or oranges as a symbol of wealth. On top of that it is about family reunion dinners and eating and giving money and wishing for money and tossing.
I was a little worried about the tossing, we were invited to a reunion dinner with some friends and I was told we would be tossing for prosperity. So I saved up for the big toss, figuring that if I was required to toss I would make it a good one.
Fortunately it didn’t involve some sort of unhygenic toss off, but as it turns out it is about mixing up a special salad and some raw fish and sauces and stuff and then toss it all in the air while shouting out well wishes largely dominated by things related to making money. The higher the toss and the less the spillage the more prosperous you will be. This has been a long held philosophy of mine so I was right on board.
Everything is dominated by the Chinese New Year; Prosperity this, prosperity that. Pizza Hut didn’t let us down with another spectacular creation hot on the heels of their Christmas effort. Triumph undies were even on board with a special range of Prosperity pants called Prosperity Puppies. I would have thought this was a more appropriate name for a bra, rather than these slightly unusual and uncomfortable looking underpants.
We left our plans for the 4 day weekend a little late so with the slim pickings available ended up in Malaysia at a fairly ordinary resort. The golf was made memorable by some excellent golf cart stunt driving, unusual use of a 5 wood and a couple of holes played barefoot following an incident in a swamp.
Reidy came down with a nasty gastro thingy there so we headed home early, which wasn’t greeted with too much disappointment even though we had to cancel our fishing trip. We had booked it that afternoon and when asked what were likely to catch were told puffer fish and sting ray. Sadly we never managed to hook into some giant puffer fish, although if we had maybe I could have secreted the bottles of wine I brought back in there and I could have avoided paying the duty on bringing back wine I had already taken out the country.
The festivities climaxed with a Lion Dance in the office, it wasn’t in fact a whole bunch of sad country music fans, but yet another prosperous event. I am not entirely sure what this was about, but it involved a couple of people running around under a luminous lion costume chucking food stuffs around. All of this was to the relentless and particularly unrhythmic beating of drums and clanging of symbols. Interesting for about 5 minutes, it soon became an annoying cacophony that I was personally pleased to see the back of.