TV and Radio Museum, UN, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island

It's been an interesting couple of days. I've been hanging round with various people at the hostel, went out to a couple of bars with them last night, and doing touristy stuff during the day.

Yesterday I was in shock in the morning, when I posted yesterday I thought only two or three people had been killed, and I had no idea how serious it actually was. Once it sunk in, I really felt the shock and, although it had been, I suppose, inevitable, it really had an effect on me. After panicking about my dad (he works near Liverpool Street) I finally calmed down, but by then it was too late to visit the Statue of Liberty so I visited the TV and Radio Museum, which is the best thing ever: a huge archive of loads of American TV and radio shows, with screenings in small theatres, and a library section where you can select four programmes (the selection room is full of these ancient apple macs which are as old as I am) from a reasonably large list (it had about a quarter of the Simpsons episodes, but barely any for some shows), then you go off to the watching rooms and sit in a booth with a small screen and some headphones (again pretty ancient stuff, its all on tapes and the equipment was pretty temperamental) and watch the shows. If I lived in New York I'd definitely get a membership ($35 for students) and hang round there loads.If only the BBC would do something similar, preferably digital. It would be a mammoth job, but definitely worth it.

I then went to visit the UN building, which was pretty cool, the tour actually takes you into the Security Council voting chamber, and the big Secretariat hall with all the names of the countries on the desks. The tour guide was a stunning Ukranian brunette with a stereotype Russian accent, particularly amusing when she was talking about Peacekeeping, so that kept it interesting when viewing some of the more boring stuff, such as gifts presented by various governments to the UN.

After that I walked around some, intending to walk to Ground Zero. I took a wrong turning though, and ended up on the opposite side of the island, so I walked all the way round the bottom of Manhattan to Battery Park, then along to Ground Zero. This was pretty powerful, what with the London bombing in the morning, it got me thinking a lot about how the USA has been defined in recent years by 9/11, and wondering whether the London bombing will be similar for us. I may write a short piece on this later, if I can a) organise my thoughts sufficiently and b) be bothered. Don't wait up kids.

Yesterday evening as I mentioned earlier I went to a couple of bars with some people from the hostel, got talking to a guy from Reading who had been driving across the States in a van with some friends, so they found out yesterday afternoon about the Olympics and the bombings within an hour of each other, he told me about how some American woman had been extremely rude to him- the conversation went something like
"You're from London huh? It got blew up today"
-cue looks of amazement
"Four bombs bang bang bang bang. Get with the picture", she says, before getting into her car. He was pretty pissed off about this, and it showed when he was telling the story, and we agreed what an effect it had being out of the country when it happened.

Today I went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, but it's been a miserable day, absolutely chucking it down, so I've not really done much but get soaked. The Ellis Island Museum has some interesting stuff, but I was just tired and wet and fed up, and so I didn't bother with some of it. I did however look at all the stuff about controlling immigration, a lot of political cartoons on keeping immigrants out, and stuff such as the law they had banning Chinese people from entering the country which was only repealed in the 1950s. Again, I might be putting my thoughts on these into the aforementioned short essay which I probably will never do.

I have Saturday and Sunday left now, I still intend to go up the Empire State Building, visit the Museum of Modern Art, and check out a few record shops. I'm holding up pretty well, I like this place, but I think I might get fed up with it after a while. Perhaps living here would be different, there are some pretty nice places to live. And as I said before, if I did live here I could spend lots of time in the TV and Radio museum.

Thats it for now, I'm going to do some catching up on BBC News.

This was going to be a lot longer but...

..then I found out about London being hit by a series of terrorist attacks today. I'm pretty shocked, I didn't expect this at all, especially when I was away. Fortunately they haven't been too serious, but fucking hell, what with the Olympics and all, they're going to have to be very careful. I suppose it will also help the government push the ID cards, as well as fucking up the agenda for the G8. I'm reminded by this situation of the chaplain from Catch-22, who after a particularly brutal mission somewhere, on hearing a certain number of people are dead, hopes his friends will not be among the number and make it back safely. He then feels guilty for wishing death on some people he's never met.


Anyway, no-one's here to listen to my comments on this sort of thing, you want to hear about my trip. Yesterday I went to see the Guggenheim, which was pretty cool, lots of cool 20th century art, which is the only century I'm particularly interested in when it comes to art. I also went to see the Natural History museum, which was pretty cool (The great big blue whale hanging from the ceiling is very impressive).

The reason this is going up this morning as opposed to yesterday evening (although I'm sure it makes no difference to you) is that last night I got talking to some British people from all over the place, and had a few cans of beer from the offie. Over here they sell 24Oz cans, that's a pint and a half, for $1, thats about 60p. Yes, that is insanely cheap. Its 5% beer too, tastes of piss, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. I've met a girl who's on her way back(most of the people here are on that, having been on big gap year trips, and are all quite surprised when they hear I've only just done A-levels. Damn Oratory telling me not to take a gap year) anyway, this girl has done roughly what I'm planning to do, so that was nice.

This has turned out a lot longer than I expected, but what the hell, it's kept my mind off the London stuff. Until now, anyway.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Two Bridges

After waking up way too early thanks to jetlag I eventually got back to sleep and got up at a reasonable time, after which I went down to the Natural History Museum, which was closed, so I went to the Met. I spent several hours in here, looking at the Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Asian, Pacific and South American exhibits, diappointingly there was bugger all in terms of Native American stuff. Photos will follow eventually.

After that I took the subway down to Brooklyn Bridge and walked across, again, pictures to follow. I walked back across Manhattan Bridge, then into Chinatown where I had a nice meal of rice with pork and duck at the hilariously named New Big Wang chinese restaurant. After a couple of refreshing peaches from a chinese market stall, I headed off home, I think I've finally recovered from jetlag now, I feel pretty normal.

I think I've worked out the subway system now, the reason it's confusing is that instead of naming branches like we do in London after where the train is going (such as Upminster or Edgware Road), in New York they call the line a whole different letter. The colour is the same, but when some of the letters are express trains that don't stop at every stop, it's easy to make a mistake.

As for other miscellaneous observations, there are a heck of a lot of 4x4s around, I saw an advert for a reality TV show on this week called "I want to be a Hilton". I knew they were way ahead of Channels 4,5 and ITV over here it terms of crap on TV, but this made me shudder...

Another thing, those Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so loved by Homer Simpson aren't actually peanut butter and jelly. "Jelly" over here is another word for jam, albeit the rubbishy gelatinous stuff you get in hotels, but I think they use that name for most kinds.

That's it for now, I'm off to bed, I may have recovered from jetlag, but I'm still knackered as I spent most of today walking, whether around the Met, through streets or across the Bridges. Photos soon, I promise.

New York, Old cliches

Well, I've arrived in New York, no problems with Immigration which was a relief, I was pretty paranoid about that, made my way after a long subway journey (I had to "take the A-train") to the youth hostel, where I had to wait for almost an hour while the staff tried to work out whether they'd lost some money, which involved adding up large piles of cash and credit receipts.

Eventually I made it to my room, had one of the best showers of my life, the flight was very hot and sticky as was the subway, its pretty hot here. I went for a wander round Central Park which is a really nice place, ate some fried chicken, got accosted by my first New York homeless person (much more agressive than the average London one) watched everyone enjoying their Fourth of July barbeques in the park, and am now about to fall asleep from jetlag despite the fact it's only 8pm here and I'm probably going to miss some spectacular fireworks...

As for the city itself, I really like it, the regularity of the streets make it a little confusing at first but I think I'll get the hang of it in a couple of days. I think I'm going to go up the Empire State Building tomorrow, hope fully I'll find somewhere I can update photos, as the internet in the hostel is relatively limited. The buildings *all* have those fire escapes down the side exactly like every Woody Allen movie, Friends etc. The subway system is a little confusing; wheras the London tube map is easy to look at but pretty low on accuracy, the New York subway map shows the lines directly under the roads which can be a little overly heavy on information.

That's enough for now, I'm off to bed...