Act 11 :: Scene 1 | USA :: New York City

The latest breaking news story blaring out of the television sets that lined the que of people waiting to clear immigration was ‘teenage mass murderer’ (of cats)! (Which was exactly the sort of thing I was expecting from the American news media.)

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I had given myself five days to soak in New York City.

My bed for the week was in Harlem - just north of Central Park.

Central Park is sometimes referred to as 'the lungs of the city'.

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Everything seems just a little bit bigger than noraml in the USA …

... like the (marshmellow) cereal packets ...

... and the cans that contain the sweet tea … even the mannequins seemed somehow larger.

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NYC must be 'the capitalist city in the world'.

I chose to worship at the shrine below one afternoon (which seemed to be a favourite of the locals).

Deep inside the cyrstal shrine of the big apple I was able to communicate with G (who had helped me to plan my time in NYC) even though he was a thousand thousand miles away in a very very cold land called New Zealand. (I must confess that on days when travelling seems less spectacular, a quick look at the current temperature in Dunedin, and a glimpse of the weekly weather forecast for the same place, has me feeling a whole heap better about where I am.)

I felt like such an imposter – using a PC in heartland apple territory (at the same time I was telling myself that I was behaving as a peacemaker).

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I spent two (very long & full) days 'urban hiking' my way through the different suburbs of the city mostly just staring at the incredible buildings that scrape the skyline.

(Down below, at the base of the buildings, there seemed to be a pharmacy on every street corner.)

Watching planes fly through the sky that was visible only because the World Trade Centre is no longer standing, and in particular - watching them disappear behind the existing buildings - really stirred my spirit and conjured up the numbness I remember feeling as I watched the horrifying events of 9/11 live on TV all those years ago.

Coincindently, I managed to wandered down the nearby street that is home to a structure I was very keen to see while in NYC (but didn't know how to find); This is the cross that was erected from the debris in the wake of September 11.

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I spent a truly magic night on the roof of 'The Rockefeller Building' staring across at the Empire State Building and watching the lights of the city take their turn after the big light in the sky had set.

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'Times Square' was a gross display of power usage.

People were just sitting out in the middle of the street watching the advertising – which weirded me out.

(My guess is that these are the same people who encourage the scum of the earth - telephone salespeople - by entertaining their pitches and purchasing their products - or maybe they were telephone salespeople? Some of them were using cell phones.)

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Until you draw up a list of things to see in NYC – you just don't realise how many iconic American sites there are to see here; I spent two full days urban hiking my way through the various suburbs in a bid to see it all:

The Brookland Bridge

The Wall Street Stock Exchange

The Green Lady (with the light)

The Empire State Building

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New Yorkers talk loud; so loud that you don’t even have to be trying to overhear the conversations they are having in person or on their mobile phones.

It turns out that New Yorkers like to talk about other people who they don’t like very much most of the time they are talking to one another (and that ‘douchebag’ and ‘son of a bitch’ are not the only terms of abuse they have to degrade one another with.)

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My last full day in NYC was rainy one, which I spent at the Museum Of Modern Art where I was impressed by the number of original pieces I recognised.

Whilest browsing the collection I was spotted by a talent scout looking for part time models – she thought I looked really cool – as a result, there may well be a life sized photograph of me pretending to wait in a long line outside the MOMA all next year (let me know if you see me).