Had a car pick me up at 5am UK time to get me to Heathrow for my 8.30am flight to NYC. Basically turned into a 24 hour day with spending the afternoon in the NY office followed by dinner with Michael at our hotel the 'Tribeca Grand' on the border of Soho/Tribeca (by far my favourite location in NYC).
I have been coming to NYC regularly since 1994 when as a student I worked the entire summer with underpriveledged kids from the L.E.S (Lower East Side) projects. At the time it was an unbelievable experience and New York City will always be special to me as a result.
I must have been here the best part of 12 times now and equates to roughly 6 months of time and so really does feel like a home away from home. The change to the city since 94 has been immense too. The regentrification in the L.E.S. and everywhere else in Manhatten has made it a totally different place to what it once was. You could say NY has lost its grit but it is still damn special. Usually I bring J with for a welcome break and have had some great nights out with her at the Poussion Rouge and other hang outs. I miss her not being around.
Over the last few weeks I have been having my fair share of mishaps and today was no different. It follows that of me dropping A$500 in Sydney 2 weeks ago to me dropping a cup of coffee over my laptop in the Amsterdam board meetings last week. It gets worse as when I got home later that night I decided I could bring the keyboard back to life by blow drying it with a hairdryer. I initially tasked Tommy with the job and quipped that he needed to increase the heat. It seems my 11 year old is a lot smarter than me as in my haste I managed to melt half of the keys to the extent that the expensive PC is now effectively unusable.
Today in my jet lagged state I managed to pay the cab driver, wonder into the hotel lobby with the porter at close attention only to realise that I had left my wallet and with it all my financial means on the back seat of the cab. I spent 5 minutes panicking scrambling through my belongings and emptying most of it on the hotel lobby floor much to the bemusement of the staff. At that point I was serously freaking out.
The porter then comes back wondering what all the fracas was about. So I scream that I am pretty sure my wallet was on the back seat of the cab which has long since dissaperared into a sea of other yellow cabs. 'Do you have the receipt?' he yells back at me and I say 'yes I do but I paid in cash and there are no numbers on it!'.
By now I was almost hyperventilating. The porter then screams that we need to check all the cabs one by one which were held up in the lunchtime traffic. I gave up after following him for 50ms having checked three cabs on route. With my head hung low I trudged back to the hotel trying to figure out how on earth I have done it again!...when 3 minutes later the porter comes back with my wallet. I immediately hugged him out of pure relief and tipped him $50. It was the lucky 6th taxi. Thank goodness for Manhatten traffic!
Views from the office and the journey in from the airport:
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