The US: The Good and The Bad

I'm just waiting for my flight back to London for Christmas (delayed due to chronic fog at Heathrow apparently - hurrah), and I think the time has come for me to take stock and figure out just what's good and bad about this behemoth of a country. The last couple of months have been exciting but frustrating, purely because I've been too damn busy at work to really build a proper life out here. I got off to a flying start when I arrived, but things have stagnated somewhat over the last few weeks with all the travelling around I've been doing. I must have spent about 6 days in Boston out of the last 30 - not really the way to settle in. That said, here goes - the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good

The Weather
Typical of an Englishman to hone in on the elements I know, but the weather really is great here. None of your drab London greyness here - in Boston it's been crisp, bright and sunny. In the Carolinas and California it's proper autumn right now, and in the Midwest it's bone-chillingly freezing. There don't seem to be any half-measures - it's either raining/snowing (HARD) or it's bright and chilly. Interesting, if you will. Over the course of the Boston winter I may be forced to revise this opinion - apparently it's been unseasonably mild so far.

The Food
Generally not the stuff you get in restaurants. While I've had the best steaks of my life here (yes, including in France) the portions in restaurants are almost always too big, and overly endowed with some sort of American cheese that's utterly tasteless and superfluous to proceedings. The supermarkets though (particularly in Cambridge) are wonderful. I have two near to me, a Co-op and the Whole Foods Market, and they're like being in your favourite farmer's market in London, all the time, but everything's half price! Gorgeous deli counters abound - the branch of Whole Foods in Union Square in New York is truly a thing to behold. The variety far surpasses anything Europe can offer as well. In the Co-op the other day I counted no less than fifteen different varieties of houmous - that's fifteen different ways to present chickpeas, garlic and oil! My particular favourite is "Garlic-lover's Houmous" - garlic-y dip with extra garlic. Mmmm.

Flights
They know how to make them convenient here - people really do use them like buses. None of this turning up at the airport 3 hours in advance malarkey - you just turn up, check in at the machine, stroll through security (somehow, there's rarely a queue) and board your plane. Simple. Usually.

The Bad

Taxi Drivers
By Jove, taxi drivers in the States are awful. New York is the worst, but anywhere you can guarantee that they will be pretty dodgy drivers, coupled with almost no knowledge of their environs. I've lost count of the times I've been asked how to get somewhere (as if I would know!) and had to get my laptop out and call on Google Maps for assistance. The grumpy London cabbie who would sell his mother before clarifying your destination seems a long-forgotten memory. The best example of American cabbie's cack-handedness was when I was in New York once. In New York destinations should be pretty simple to find - you just say "33rd Street and 5th" or some such, and anyone with a rudimentary grasp of numbers should be able to find their way. Not this guy - I had to guide him at every turn. Admittedly, he'd brought be all the way from Long Island, but still...

Is anyone out there?
It's a cliche I know, but America really doesn't care much about the rest of the world (except when her soldiers are there). It's partly this that gives the country an air of smug middle-class, nuclear-family satisfaction. An alternative ideal never enters into anyone's heads, because that's all that's ever portrayed in the media. The BBC website has been a lifeline to goings on elsewhere, and despite concerted efforts I couldn't find a single place in Boston (the most English city in America) that could show me the cricket. Thank God for www.willow.tv.

Just a little backward
I'm still getting my head around that there are so many live issues out here are signed, sealed and buried back home. Abortion, race, employment law, you name it and the US is probably less progressive than Europe in most people's thinking. The cherry on the cake was an article in the paper today, declaring in a shrill voice that "9 out of 10 20-year-olds have had premarital sex". No shit.

Team America
No matter how "liberal" or well-travelled the individual that you meet over here, there seems to be an underlying current of patriotism, that the US is generally in the right. Perhaps this is what Britons were like back in the imperialistic days, and we'll see a new kind of American guilt/humility in the 22nd century. Right now though it has the air of righteousness and defiance against the rest of the world which is a little disconcerting compared to someone from England, where displays of patriotism almost always come with jingoistic overtones.

West Coast Cricket

I'm sitting in San Francisco airport waiting to get the red-eye (as they perplexingly call an overnight flight here) back to Boston. And I'm watching cricket. I found this great website (www.willow.tv) which streams the British and Aussie cricket coverage, for a mere 70 bucks for the whole Ashes series! My devotion is being tested rather though, with another patented England batting collapse well under way. And I'm getting some odd looks from the other people in the bar who are intent on the football that's going on. I tried to explain how it all works to a chap who was sitting next to me, but he soon lost interest when San Francisco scored a touchdown.

I'm praying that I get upgraded for this flight (I stuck myself on the waiting list, and I'm flying enough with these guys that you'd think they'd pay me some special attention by now...). Five hours to Boston in an economy seat doesn't sound too appealing just now, with a full day of meetings tomorrow. Urgh....

Useless midwest snow

Sorry, it's been a little while since I posted anything up here. Partly that's been because I was in London last week, and it seemed silly to write a "blog from america" while I was there. Partly it's been because I've been dreadfully busy at work, and what free time I've had has been spent diddling on my new guiter (a cherryburst Gibson... mmm) and sleeping.

I was part of one of those nightmare travel stories earlier this week, flying from Raleigh (in North Carolina - no, I'd never heard of it either...) to Chicago. It's supposed to be a one-and-a-half hour flight, but in the end the trip took us about 11 hours because of some sort of srew-up with Chicago air traffic control. Firstly the flight was delayed for 2 hours in Raleigh, then we had to wait on the tarmac for half an hour while they negotiated whether we could leave or not. Then we tried to take off but bailed out halfway along the runway - apparently some sort of fuel pump wasn't responding properly, or someting equally worrying. So they checked that, and then we got off again.

(Phew. I'm flying back to Boston at the moment, and the turbulence is really quite bad. Makiiing it hrd to typee..)

We got about halfway to Chicago, and the captain came on over the barely-audible intercom to say that there wasn't room for us at Chicago and not enough fuel to fly around to wait for a slot, so back to Raleigh we went. Back at the gate, about half the passengers decided to get off, and about half stayed on in the hope we would get going again soon. The passengers that remained fell into 3 camps - the irate ones who took it out on the gnome-like steward, the ones who took it in their stride with a very British gallows-type humour (much rolling of eyeballs and "dear oh dear what a right royal palaver this is!" type stuff), and those who decided to sleep through it. Anyway, we took off again after an hour and made it to Chicago this time, a mere 6 hours later than planned. Not bad, considering. At least all the nonsense meant I finished by book - On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I'd highly recommend it - it's about a mixed-race, mixed nationality (American and English) family who live in the college town of Wellington, MA.

I spent the last day or so in Milwaukee, which is in Wisconsin a couple of hours north of Chicago. It's desolate up there - bollock-chillingly, eye-wateringly, astoundingly cold. It certinly stopped me smoking though - I could only take 3 or 4 drags before heading back inside, and had to keep passing the fag from hand to hand so I could thaw the other one. There was an awful lot of snow there which was something of a novelty, but I couldn't really see the point of it without mountains and something to slide down them on. Just cold wetness without the fun...

Anyway, I can't discern any reason why someone would possibly want to live in Wisconsin, so don't make a special trip there. Apparently it's famous for its cheese (the nickname on the car number plates is "The Dairy State") but I doubt it's particularly good. The fantastically names Mars Cheese Castle just over the border didn't look particularly appetizing, anyway:


Also for fireworks - apparently their laws about these (whatever they are!) are more lax than most , and the border with Illinois is lined with firework megastores, like the booze-cruise places in Calais. Very odd.

Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania

An old friend kindly invited me down to Pennsylvania to spend Thanksgiving with her family this week, and it was a thoroughly relaxing couple of days. Thanksgiving seems to be basically like Christmas, but without the God, presents or Queen's speech, as far as I could work out. The vast majority of the time was spent cooking and eating enormous quantities of food and imbibing yummy drinks such as mulled cider (no sign of eggnog though, which I'm very curious about - maybe that's more a Christmas thing).

Thanksgiving dinner itself consisted of lots of turkey (or course) roasted to perfection by my friend and her Dad, along with mashed white and sweet potatoes (apparently the white potatoes were for my benefit!), stuffing made out of bread, apple and onion, cranberry relish and assorted steamed veggies. It was yummy, though certainly missing some key elements from an English Christmas turkey dinner (pigs in blankets, parsnips, roast potatoes etc). Apparently for Christmas dinner Americans tend to eat beef or pork rather than turkey. Dessert was pie, pie and more pie. Apple, pumpkin and mincemeat, to be precise - my first experience of pumpkin pie was pretty positive though I soon honed in on the apple.

We also spent a fair bit fo time in the evenings out and about in the local bars and restaurants with my host's old high school friends. A lovely bunch of people, to be sure, and it's always fun to be around a group of friends who have known each other for a very long time - the pool of stories and remeniscences is very deep indeed. One thing I found it slightly tricky to get my head round though was that many of these people still live in the area - some have settled down and had families, but my friend was one of very few who had actually flown the nest and set up shop somewhere else. Some of them had actually never left the country, so they found me to be something of a novelty as a foreigner. I always feel a little bit snobby when saying things like this, but I find it a little hard to comprehend how someone (and interesting, intelligent people at that) can choose to stay in a relative backwater like Doylestown, PA rather than living elsewhere, especially in their 20s. I've always been so drawn to the big cities and the places where "things happen". I can't imagine what my life would be like now if I'd never moved away from the Cambridgeshire backwaters where I grew up.

Ah well, takes all sorts I suppose. I'm waiting in Philly airport now for a flight to London, just for a short trip and mostly a business-focussed one. It'll be great to catch up with people though, and I should imagine a nice change to be somewhere familiar.

Twenty-five down

Today is my 25th birthday. A quarter of a century since I reluctantly emerged from my mother with the help of some strategically placed foreceps. I'm told that I was peculiar in that I didn't start crying as soon as I was born - I just sucked my thumb instead. Eager to get to the oral stage I guess...

I spend most of the last week in Denver, well, 10 miles outside it. Denver has, I'm told, two things to recommend it - one being the downtown area which is quite lively, and the other being the proximity of the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunately, I wasn't in a position to enjoy either of these, as I was stuck in a hotel in suburban, strip-mall, SUV hell, ferried from meeting to meeting by my colleague who lives in Denver, and deposited back at the hotel till the next meeting. Without a car, one is absolutely screwed in suburban (that's to say, 99% of) America. I did try to go for a walk once to see what I could find, but I ran out of pavement and found myself on a freeway that it didn't seem advisable to walk down. So, after a day or so I admitted myself and resigned myself to containment at Marriott's pleasure, thought I did strike up a rapport with a Romanian barmaid and a fellow inmate who was there for the week as well. On the bright side, I played a lot of pool, and got an awful lot of work done in the absence of anything else to do.

Yesterday, after an energetic game of squash (I was very rusty and got my arse whipped, but it was good to get the blood pumping) I gathered togther a motley collection of people I've met in Boston so far at a club in Cambridge. It's always slightly odd bringing together what are usually mutually exclusive groups of friends at things like birthdays, but I'm always fascinated by how friends from different sources interact though the results aren't always positive! In this case things were extra dicey, as I'd only been out before with most of them a couple of times before. It should have been a recipie for disaster, but in fact the handful that turned up got on famously and we had a great time. No presents though - I'm not complaining or anything, but the only presents I've had so far have been two M&S ties from my Mum (you know you're getting old when your Mum buys you ties!) and a bottle of shampoo from a friend who stayed in my flat last week.

And now I'm on the train down to New York - I have a meeting there tomorrow, so I'm meeting a friend this afternoon, and hopefully plenty of debauchery should follow.

Jack and Bobby

Bit of a change of tack for this post - this last weekend had little to speak of socially as it was pretty much exclusively a musical one. I had a knackering week what with travelling round and trying to deal with a nasty cold as well, so basically all I did of note was to go to two concerts; Bob Dylan supported by The Raconteurs, playing a 2 night stand at the Agganis Arena in Boston.


Jack White is one of my favourite "contemporary" performers, although I'm much less of a fan of The Raconteurs than The White Stripes. They're good fun and all, but the songs generally seem throwaway, and the whole thing just seems like a hobby that got a little out of hand. I didn't see much of their set on Saturday, but I watched the whole hour on Sunday from my 3rd row seat, and it was damn cool stuff. The highlight was probably a tense rendition of Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), the song made famous by Nancy Sinatra and the one that opens Kill Bill. Very brave of Dylan, if you ask me, to get these young whippersnappers to warm up the crowd for him. For starters, for the older half of the crowd it really wasn't their cup of tea - Jack and his boys were much louder and more squawky than Bob's band. The younger half (making up an ever larger proportion of Dylan gigs these days) lapped it up though. Dylan's cred-factor among the young and hip is most definitely at a high point, after the Scorcese documentary last year and his appearance in an iTunes ad to promote his new album, which has been getting pretty heavy rotation over here.

As far as Dylan himself was concerned, it was really a tale of two nights. On Saturday, the only real highlights for me were the 3 selections from his newest record, "Modern Times" - all of the older songs were rather uninspired and drab, not helped by the pub-rock-lite band he's currently employing (what I'd give to see him backed by the Raconteurs - they're a tight little band, they just need some decent songs...). He chose some great songs (Blind Willie McTell, Don't Think Twice, Tangled Up In Blue) but his heart just didn't seem to be into doing them justice, as seems invariably the case these days.

Last night was another matter though. Whether Bobby had just had a good day, or if I was just energised by being only 3 rows away I don't know, but Dylan was committed to pretty much everything. Passionate versions of great songs like Absolutely Sweet Marie, Senor and Every Grain Of Sand, and a killer rendition of the standout track from his new album, "Nettie Moore". Time was when I'd travel enormous distances to see Dylan, but the quality of his live shows has really dipped over the last couple of years. He's still doing very interesting things; writing good and occasionally great new songs, the autobiography and hosting his surreal weekly radio show, but his live shows are so dependent on his mood, and most of the time it seems he really can't be arsed.

I was hoping beyond hope for a Jack and Bob duet - they tried their collective hand at The White Stripes' "Ball and Biscuit" at a gig in Detroit a couple of years ago, which was awesome. Sadly, 'twas not to be...

Here's an mp3 of Sunday's performance of the strange and beautiful "Nettie Moore", for anyone interested.

Skymall

One of the few perks of spending an unseemly proportion of one's life on planes is Skymall, which is an inflight catalogue that all of the domestic airlines seem to have. For me it's a throwback to the old Innovations catalogue that used to come with my parents' Sunday Mail (sob) - full of random, mostly pointless gadgets that someone, somewhere thinks is going to make them their fortune. I picked out a couple of choice entries for your amusement and to inspire any budding inventors.

First up, a laser-guided pool cue. More useful for shining in the eyes of your opponent to distract them than imparting any fierce backspin, I think:


Next, an incredible device that lets you play guitar without having to learn any of those pesky chord shapes, or give yourself unsightly callouses:


I think I may do most of my Christmas shopping through this thing...

Southie, bars and brunch

Time for an update, methinks. It's been a few days since I posted and I need to keep it up or else people will stop coming by (if they even are still).

Last week was pretty much just work, work, work. Lots to do here what with trying to hire new people and stuff, and so I didn't really get round to much socialising. I've made up for it this weekend though. On Friday I met a friend of a friend for a few beers - the first man I have properly interacted with since I've been here, which si hardly surprising given my friend-making methods. We had a great time - he's one of those Americans (people even) that can just talk for hours about anything you throw at them, so the evening passed swimmingly. He took me to a bar in South Boston (or Southie, the rough end of town...) called the L Street, that was used in the film Good Will Hunting. Here's a pic:

We had a great time talking about England (he spent some time in Oxford), sports (he's hopefully going to hook me up with a cricket-loving friend for the Ashes), girls (he has a list of half a dozen he wants to set me up with - who am I to complain?) and politics (getting me up to speed on the ins-and-outs of this week's midterms). All over a good few jars of Bostonian brew. Good way to start the weekend, though I had a pretty nasty hangover the next morning.

Saturday was mostly lost to said hangover. I went guitar shopping for a bit in the afternoon, but didn't find anything I really liked just yet. I am getting itchy fingers though - it's been a good few weeks since I had a good pluck. In the evening I went to meet the girls who hosted the Halloween party last week (let's call them M and J, since I shouldn't put people's names on here, but I equally don't want to have to refer to everyone as "this friend"). We had an Italian meal near their house in the Back Bay, and then went back to their place so they could get ready to go out, though after a couple of glasses of red wine we all ended up having a half hour powernap before we got off our arses. Then we went to a bar downtown called Vox, which was good fun, but crammed with people (I sound like an old fuddy-duddy) and not playing the kind of music that got me going. It was an enjoyable night, but I probably more enjoyed lying around in their living room quaffing red wine and chatting than the bar itself. I met their flatmate too, who was very pretty but clearly a bit of a psycho.

Today was much more cultured. I spent the afternoon with D, another girl from speed-dating who I probably "click" the most with out of the friends I've made here so far - we share a lot of the same interests in music, film, politics etc, and she likes to talk about all of them. We went for brunch to a place called Ryles, a jazz club in Inman Square, which is about a 15 minute walk from my place. It was a gorgeous walk, with the weather on what seems to be the default setting for this time of year, i.e. chilly and fresh but with bright sunshine bringing out the best in the leaves, and it put me in a good mood. For brunch I had pumpkin pancakes with bacon, fruit and syrup (I'm still struggling with the American mix of the sweet and savoury though), while a band played old jazz standards and we talked about what we'd been up to. All highly agreeable. Then this afternoon we went to see Little Children at the local arty cinema. I was expecting an American indie-melodrama type flick, like The Good Girl or You and Me and Everyone We Know. This turned out to be an even more fucked up American Beauty though. There were a lot of interesting characters in it (and Kate Winslet was great, as usual), but I came out a little unsatisfied - I think the film was made from a book, and there were just too many characters in there to properly explore in a 2 hour film. Pretty though-provoking though.

That'll do for now. Someone post some a comment, just so I know someone's stopping by!

All Hallow's Eve and Beer Pong

Yesterday night was my first proper American party, and a Halloween party at that. If there's one main difference between Halloween Stateside and back home, it's that here it's sexier. The raison d'etre of most girls' costumes seems to be as slutty as possible. There was a flight attendant (with "Mile High Captain" badge), a nurse, and a couple of very scantily-clad witches. There were some pretty lame costumes as well, particularly among the menfolk. One chap came as "a member of the russian mafia", just dressed all in black. Another fellow just had a T-shirt on bearing the slogan:

"THIS IS MY COSTUME. NOW GIVE ME THE DAMN CANDY."

It was a proper American party as well, with people drinking "lite", tasteless beer our of cardboard cups, "jello shots" (vodka jelly to you and me) and jock-ish drinking games. The main one was Beer Pong. This involved setting up a "rack" of half full beakers of beer at either end of a long table, arranged in a triangle like a rack of pool balls. The combatants would then take it in turns to try and toss a ping pong ball from one end of the table into one of their opponents' mugs of beer. If you got one, your opponent had to drink that cup, and you got another go. Needless to say, as the cups get fewer and the player gets drunker, the game becomes harder and harder. Lots of fun - I wasn't bad at it either.

I went as a giant. I can't claim this idea for my own - I copied it off something a London friend did a couple of years ago. I bought an old shirt from a charity shop, and sewed little toy knights onto it as if they were climbing all over it. I then blotched it with red paint to make it a bit more halloween-y, as if the little bastards were trying to stab me. People generally didn't get it at first, but once I'd explained in detail it was generally appreciated. I must have been the only one who did anything home-made, I think - everyone else had bought their costume wholesale from one of the numerous Halloween shops around here, which will presumably morph into Christmas shops in a couple of weeks.

Here's a farily poo photo taken with my phone of my work of art:


And here's a "detail shot" of one of the little blighters climbing on my shoulder:


There wasn't a great deal in the way of potential romantic action (the reader can probably detect a thread running through my various posts!). There were two really very attractive Jewish sisters, one of whom I chatted to for a while and (another theme) was digging the accent. No joy though - she passed out soon after talking to me, which thinking about it may not be a particularly good sign... A journalist from New Hampshire seemed very interested, but she would be touching my leg one minute, and talking about her boyfriend the next. Talk about confusing...

So I've now followed up with 3 of the girls I met speed dating, and I can see potential friendships evolving - they all seem to still be friendly after a few hours in my company anyway. I didn't post about the "date" I had with one of them on Thursday, but there's not an awful lot to tell. I use quotes because although we put each other down as friends on the speed dating site, it was just the two of us having drinks and chatting for a few hours, and it had something of a date atmosphere around it. Really pleasant evening though, and hopefully I'll see her again.

It's been cold, windy and rainy today. Proper New England weather settling in, I fear. Combine that with a hangover (I only got home from the party at 4 this morning) and I've only left the house to get the bare essentials - fruit juice, takeout pizza and cigarettes. Tomorrow I shall do something more constructive.

Poker Night

So, tonight I went to a poker night with 6 female teachers. Sounds good? Well, it was in many respects. Certainly interesting.

It was at the house of a girl that I met at speed dating last week, out in East Bumfuck, MA (well, Malden, MA, but it was right at the end of the T - what they call the subway - and seemed like the middle of nowhere to me). To begin with, it seemed like I was rather gatecrashing a girly, Sex and The City-type night - apparently this is a regular Tuesday night thing - but as expected they showed due interest in the fact that I was English. "Say English stuff!" "What's the deal with pants?" "Why can't Tony Blair think for himself?" etc etc

They were a fairly eclectic bunch - 3 from Massachusetts, 1 from New York, 1 from Arizona and 1 from Virginia. To be quite accurate, 5 were teachers at a local high school, and 1 is a web developer at a local bank. As far as romantic interest goes, it was pretty much a non-starter :-(...

3 were gay - I think two of them were a couple
1 was a little too old for my taste (over 30 methinks)
1 was the girl from speed-dating, who is a really nice girl but I don't really fancy her
1 was really very attractive, but turned out to be engaged to a Harvard Law student

So there ya go. But hey, romance isn't everything and I had a very fun evening. We started off with some french onion soup and grilled "american" (i.e. tasteless) cheese on toast, before moving on to poker. Predictably, given my meagre experience with the game I was pretty diabolical, but we only played 5 or 6 hands. Then it was out to the garden (or "yard") to smoke some cigars - not something I was expecting, but very welcome nonetheless. During this one of the girls decided to imitate my accent, which came out extremely posh - like the Queen would sound if she were trying to make a good impression.

Rather hilariously, during the course of the game I somehow managed to break the chair I was sitting on. Due to the unexpected number of people a reserve chair had been brought forth from some backquarters, and it was this unfortunate soul I chose to sit on. I felt a slow sinking feeling, and then before I knew it I was on the floor in a sea of splintered wood. And I wasn't even drunk, or particularly fat. It provided plenty of amusement though and my blushes didn't last too long.

After cigars it was time for brownies (mmm), followed by listening to bits of a musical that was written by one of the girls (she's a drama teacher). It was the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, and I dare say her songs were pretty good (in the broadway musical tradition) but to be honest it's not really my thing, so I just nodded appreciatively. Then, since we were in the arse-end of nowhere and the trains had stopped running, I got a ride back with one of the girls (the engaged pretty one) who lives in Harvard Square, just round the corner from me.

All very entertaining. They were a fun lot, and I'm sure I'll see them again. As Tommy said in a comment to an earlier post, I'll be buggered if any of the people I meet actually stumble across in this blog, but I'll just have to risk it or this will be incredibly boring.

Now, I need to get a Halloween costume sorted...

Hockey, beaches etc.

I'm on the train back to Boston after a tiring but fun couple of days in New York. For a change, as well, my friend and I didn't just crawl around the bars of Greenwich Village - we actually got out and about and did (vaguely) constructive things.

I came in on the overnight flight - they call it the "red-eye" here - from my meeting in San Jose on Friday. The flight was via Los Angeles, which is another city I can add to my list of those that I've flown through but not actually visited when I really should do (think the others are Chicago, Denver and Las Vegas). LA viewed from the air is utterly vast - even as we were beginning our descent all you could see was a carpet of grid-pattern streetlights stetching into the distance in all directions (apart from the ocean of course).

So getting ito NY at half 6 on Saturday morning, having got as usual very little sleep on the four-and-a-half-hour flight, was not perhaps the best way to begin a fun weekend away. I went straight to my friend's flat on the upper west side, and collapsed in his bed (he spent the night at his girlfriend's) for a couple of hours. Breakfast at midday was a slice of pepperoni pizza sitting on the swings in Central Park, which was eminently pleasant while we ruminated on what do with ourselves till it was a decent time to start drinking. It was a gorgeous autumn day, so we wanted to do something outdoors-y rather than go to a gallery or similar, so we decided to go to the beach. We got on a train at Penn station and rode out on the Long Island Railroad to the nearest beach that looked promising, which was Long Beach. Long Beach wasn't a particularly exciting town, but the beach was very nice indeed - acres of fine (clean!) white sand, deserted but for the occasional jogger or dog-walker. The sea front wasn't much to look at (and was pretty shut down), but if this is anything to go by, then places like the Hamptons further up the coast must be beautiful places to spent the summer.

After that it was back to Long Beach town for yet more slices of pizza. Next stop was an ice hockey match. We had wanted to go to a baseball game, but the season was over. Failing that, a basketball game, but the Knicks were playing away, so ice hockey it was - the New York Islanders v the Carolina Hurricanes. The arena was absolutely in the middle of nowhere - we had to get a 10 minute taxi ride from the closest train station, and we mis-judged the timing so that we arrived mid-way through the second period. I'd never really paid much attention to ice hocky before, but it was a really fun game to watch, and the basic rules obvious enough to begin enjoying it straight away (get the puck in the back of the opponent's net). While the scoring rate is low, the game is very fast and end-to-end, like basketball, and the skill of the skaters is really very impressive. It's a very odd and compelling combination of grace and violence - players will glide beautifully around the rink, dribbling the puck and fluidly passing to their teammates, before being uncerimoniously shoulder barged into oblivion by an opposing player. We only saw one actual fight though.

Unfortunately our grasp of the rules did not extend to the playing time - I was under the impression there were 4 quarters, so at the end of the 3rd "period" we slipped out for a cheeky cigarette. A couple of minutes later, everyone came streaming out and we realized we'd missed the final passage of play, which was a little silly. Lots of fun though - I think I could get into hockey.

Getting back to Manhattan proved a trial - there were no taxi ranks or bus stops at the stadium, and every offical looking person we asked about same looked at us blankly, clearly not comprehending why anyone would contemplate going there unaided by a car. The lights of a Marriott hotel were not far away though, so we trudged across the car park and were able to order a taxi there, which took us back to Manhattan after we decided we really couldn't be arsed waiting an hour for a train. The Long Island cabbie really didn't know his way around Manhattan unforunately, so it was left to us to navigate him from the Brooklyn bridge up to the upper west side. You'd think with the numbered grid system it'd be fairly easy to pick up, but no. He really didn't get it, and ended up getting a pretty meagre tip by American standards.

From there, given that it was a Saturday night and we'd been such good chaps so far, we went to a couple of bars to finish with. The second had one of those very exuberant and flirty (and drunk) barmaids that you get over here. She ID'd me, and looked at my passport;

She: "What happened?"

Me: "What do you mean?"

She: "Your passport photo is really good looking - what happened?"

Me: (Chastened) "I was only 16 - it's been a couple of years"

She then made me retrieve the passport from her bra, which was a little embarassing. We did get some free shots for it though.

Today was rather less eventful - we went to see an American Football game in a bar with some American friends. It was the first time I'd ever enjoyed watching the sport - probably because I was with people who cared about the result, and so I cared by proxy.

It looks like this week I won't need to venture from Boston, which will be a nice change. I need to sort out a Halloween costume for Friday, though it doesn't necessarily need to be scary here. The girl who invited me suggested I go as James Bond, which is easy but boring. Others have suggested Austin Powers or David Beckham, clearly going for the British thing. Any ideaas welcome...

Friday evening in San Jose airport

So I'm in San Jose at the moment. Strange place - it's like a technology theme park. Northern California has a pretty good reputation overall. It has a gorgeous climate, one of the great US cities in San Francisco, and one of the largest economies in the world. San Jose (and the rest of Silicon Valley, spreading all the way up to San Francisco) is like a gigantic technology theme park. You can't move for the offices of some of the biggest tech companies in the world - driving down the highway you'll pass Yahoo!, Google, eBay, Cisco, McAfee and Sun, to name a few. Stanford University's just down the road, as well.

What that means is that people are so well paid here that the property prices are some of the highest in the country outside Manhattan, despite it being really rather a dull place to live. Over the last few weeks I've spent quite a few days in downtown San Jose, and it has less charm and things to do than Milton Keynes. And there aren't even any roundabouts to keep you amused.

[That reminds me - a bit of an aside this, but I'll mention it anyway. One of the few European flavours to be kept at Ikea in Massachusetts was that the (presumably purpose built) complex had lots of roundabouts in, which are unheard of here. It was increadibly amusing to see Americans drive up to them and just sit there in confusion. "Consarn it! What in Sam Hill am I supposed to do here?" They might have said...]

Anyway, back to San Jose. Despite the soporific nature of the town, everyone here (who works hee, anyway) is fantastically intelligent. Most of them seem to have PhDs from Stanford, and that makes business meetings here rather more interesting than they might generally be. Not more productive, as having a room full of bright sparks is no guarantee to getting something useful out of a meeting, but certainly more entertaining.

Finally, did you know Chicago is so-pronounced because it was mostly populated by the French? I didn't. Mental note: find out how significant the French influence was in the early US and proceed to annoy Americans with tales of how the "cheese eating surrender monkeys" helped to build their treasured nation.

Right, I may be in San Jose airport on a Friday evening, but I'm on my way to New York for the weekend, which should be fun. Hopefully there'll be some Tales To Tell.

The Windy City

Crikey, Chicago is cold. I'm here on the way to San Jose for a meeting tomorrow, and just stepped outside for a cheeky smoke. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, as my Dad would say. Boston's postively Mediterrenean by comparison.

Quick update on the speed-dating: I didn't put anyone down for a second date in the end - just friendships, from which I have already secured a Halloween party invitation for next week. She wants me to come as James Bond...

Speed Dating

OK, so just to prove that I'm not just sitting in building furniture and writing on this blog, tonight I went speed dating in downtown Boston. The motives weren't primarily romantic, you understand, more just to get out there and meet people in a more efficient and less creepy way than randomly approaching people in bars.

It was moderately successful too. I had eight eight minute "dates". One was an absolute psycho - she didn't want to be there (was dragged along by a friend), wasn't very forthcoming with the conversation, and seemed to be a teensy bit racist. Ah well.

Most of the other seven were reasonable fun though, at least to talk to for eight minutes. I was fortunate in that the English accent and the fact that I've just moved over gives me an immediate head start, and can fill the conversation for at least 6 of the available minutes. Unexpectedly, pretty much everyone seemed to have lived in Massachussetts all their lives - I was expecting Boston to be a little more cosmopolitan than that, though I shouldn't base my judgement on a sample of eight presumably rather desperate ladies. The other thing in my favour seems to be that American men are all idiots. I went for dinner afterwards with two of the girls, and listening to their accounts of their other dates I wonder how men in this country ever manage to find mates.

So I think there are 3 or 4 that I'll try and meet up with again as friends, and one that I'll go for putting down as a second date. She was the one person in the room who wasn't from the area - she was a "military kid" and spent time in Germany, England and all over the US, and she was the only one that I vaguely fancied. In fact, maybe "vaguely" isn't quite enough...

My bed

I've made my bed (from an Ikea flatpack that is):


Now I'm going to lie in it. Mmm, cosy...

Harsh words at the social security office

I had to go to the social security office today to register myself for whatever meagre benefits I may one day be entitled to, and there was a large, particularly draconian notice there that rather caught my eye. It went something like:

WARNING!
IT IS A FEDERAL OFFICE TO KILL, KIDNAP, ASSAULT, THREATEN OR
OTHERWISE INTERFERE WITH A MEMBER OF THE STAFF OF THIS OFFICE.

You'd think most of that would go without saying...

Noisy hotel

The hotel currently in in San Jose is so directly under the local airport's flightpath that they see fit to put earplugs on your bed... Priceless.

Cinammon and leaves

Phew, that was quite a day. I didn't manage to get quite as much done as I wanted, but pretty good nontheless.

The first challenge (and a significant one) was finding a car. "No need to book, it'll be fine", I thought, like a nonce. Turned out that every single rental car in central Boston was booked out for the weekend, and I ended up having to go out to the bloody airport to find one. Even then, it was on the 3rd go that I actually found one. The whole thing was made rather more annoying by the fact that I did my stupid thing of wandering around assuming I'll find something rather than being organised about it. First thing, I looked up the 4 closest rental places on Google, and then walked around each of them, with no result. The thinking was that (it being Sunday) I would be best off getting out there knocking on doors early, but it would have been SO much easier to wait an hour or so and phone round. Doofus.

So, I finally got me a car (and with one of those whizzy satellite navigation things, natch) and headed off to Ikea about an hour outside Boston. My mood soon improved with the beautiful drive. For a start, it was pretty exhilarating just to be driving (it's been a few years) and in another country as well (it was a first time for driving on the right, as well). It was an utterly gorgeous day as well, and my first glimpse of what they call "The Colour" (or "The Color", I suppose...). One hears all kinds of things about the New England fall, but based on today it's incredible. It's not just the colours of teh Massachussetts countryside - vibrant reds, browns, even purples and every shade of green available. There's something especially different about the light though. Granted, today was an absolutely clear day, but everything seemed to be incredibly sharp - it felt like I could see individual leaves as I was flying past the foliage on the freeway. It's just a shame they don't have Guy Fawkes' night, or their autumn would be perfect.

Anyway, back down to earth, and on to Ikea. The Americans don't seem to have taken flat-packed Swedish furniture to their bosoms quite as much as the British have - the store was tucked away with no signposting and wasn't particularly busy given that it's a Sunday of a bank holiday weekend (tomorrow is Columbus Day). In England, you would have taken along some sort or sword to be sure of fighting your way through the crowds. The place had also been Americanised to some extent - the cafe area had the same overwhelming stench of cinammon that airports tend to. Before I came here, my only significant exposure to the stuff was when my Mum put it in an apple pie (which was always a brilliant move - her apple pies were to die for), but Americans go pretty overboard with the stuff.

Anyway, I came away from Ikea with a full car, and my apartment is now fitted out with kitchen stuff, a matress, a bedside table and one of those bendy Ikea chairs. Table, sofa etc will be delivered in due course...

New dawn...

The sun rises on my first day in Boston - the rather groovy view from my hotel:

On the way

OK, here goes. It would be a little remiss of me to not post from the flight over, so here I am. I'm currently pretty much mid-way over the Atlantic, in the lull between films when they show Creature Comforts. I'm hungover, excited, nervous, knackered and daunted all at the same time - it turns out moving to another continent is quite stressful business.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty hard going - I seem to have had endless leaving parties and drinks, and said goodbye to so many friends. What with all the logistics as well, and the fact that I couldn't really organise anything American (as without a social security number and bank account Im' effectively a non-person), it's been very frustrating. Over the next couple of weeks I have to sort out all sorts of things and it all feels a little overwhelming, particularly since I have an enourmous amount going on at work at the moment. For example, this week I'm going to be spending 3 days in Sanf Francisco and one in Charlotte - not exactly ideal for getting settled in and sorting out my life!

But I should stop grumbling - it's probably just the headache talking. This is a very exciting time for me, a fantastic opportunity I've been angilng for for the last year or so and I can't wait to get started. How will I fare trying to start a whole new life in a new country? Will I like America or end up coming back in a year gagging for pint of proper beer and a cricket match? Will I find all my time swallowed up by work, flying around the country in and out of hotels like I'm auditioning for Fight Club? How much am I going to miss London and my friends there?

On the last question, I think quite a bit (London that is). The monosyllabic driver of the cab I took to Heathrow this afternoon unwittingly took me on a tour of some of my favourite places in London. It was an utterly gorgeous autumn day, and we meandered through north London - past the places I've lived in Highbury and through to Camden, round Regents Park (looking absolutely gorgeous), down Marylebone High Street with the yummy retaurants and poncy shops. London is still, I think, the greatest city I know - I only really know western cities, but Paris is too one-dimensional and New York just doesn't quite do it for me (yet). Maybe Barcelona is in the running, I don't know. I feel ready for a change though - I've lived there for 6 years now, and while I should think I'll go back I don't mind a change at all.

So here goes. Watch this space...

Big Ben in San Jose

It’s a bizarre noise to wake up to when you’re in Silicon Valley – the distinctive chimes of Big Ben coming across the palm trees. Very disorientating indeed; I couldn’t locate the source but I can only assume it’s some copy cat bell. Either that or someone was playing the Radio 4 news really loudly.

San Jose is a fairly dull place from what I’ve seen, and is apparently one of the richest areas in the world in terms of average salary. Perhaps the two are connected? The area is home to most of the world’s biggest technology companies – eBay, Cisco, Yahoo!, Google and once upon a time Microsoft. The office buildings (or “campuses” as they seem to insist on calling them) that line the highways are a roll-call of all that is best in IT and technology.

And it’s bloody hot, but not too humid… San Francisco’s better though.

Confusing tennis

Andre Agassi is playing in his final first round match in the US Open at the moment, against a chap called Andrei Pavel. I wonder if the people in the crowd shouting "Come on Andre!" find it as amusing as I do...

Foreword

Welcome to "Blogs from America". I'm currently in the process of moving to Boston with the company that I've been working for in London for the past two years, and this is intended to be a commentary on my experiences here over the next year or so (or however long I end up staying here for...). The title, as the more astute among you may have guessed, is a bastardisation of that of Alistair Cooke's legendary radio show, which for 58 years gave BBC Radio listeners an insight into American life from the ex-pat's point of view.

With American culture being so all-pervasive these days, it may seem bizarre to even think about considering it as a "foreign" experience - surely nothing there can surprise me? I've seen enough films and listened to enough music from the US that I must know it inside and out? That's probably part of the fascination - America today is a strange, confusing place - both almost autistically cut off from the rest of the world and at the same time at the centre of everything. My job (implementing internet software solutions - that's all I'm going to say about that!) should take me to many corners of the States, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the real thing squares with my preconceptions.

It's hard to say what form this blog will take; personal memoir (not the plan... I'm not sure I'm a fan of bleeding heart blogs...), travelogue (depends just how much time I spend on the road), or astute and amusing social commentary (probably the aim, but not sure if I can manage it...). Whatever, this is a pretty exciting time for me, and I'm hoping it's going to be worth writing about.