Day 107: Ham Day

The little neighbourhood farmers' market at the Borough Hall Plaza, seen from a bench as we nibble on a breakfast of cider doughnuts.

No, I haven't devegetarianised. But today Pseudonyme and I took part in an ancient and storied tradition for the first time - that of New York Pre-Thanksgiving Ham Day.

First of all though, we had a lovely food-centric day in my neighbourhood. On one of my pre-work dowsing-for-farmers'-markets mornings, I had stumbled across one such in the Borough Hall plaza not far from home. I later discovered it ran Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, but had never gone on a weekend. Anyway the weekend affair is somewhat larger and was full of lovely root vegetables and greens, apples and apple products and a number of bread and baking stalls. We perused, nibbled on some cider doughnuts, and finally made our choices, including some lovely leeks, some tiny flavourful grapes, and lashings of hardy roots. And some toothsome rugelach...

After this we headed over to Sahadi, as any right-thinking person would, as early and often as possible. It had been at least a month since I had been in, and it was more crowded than I had ever seen it. A Middle-Eastern food store that seems to carry everything,...we love Sahadi. As does everyone else, because when I went in and took the number 49 in order to order bulk goods, they were only serving number 9. Luckily there is plenty to divert one in the long wait.

When it was at last my turn, I was greeted by the extremely warm and friendly attentions of a man who hailed me as a regular who has been gone for too long. Extremely warm and friendly. But hey, I'm not going to object to being called "my love" and having extra handfuls of chocolate covered whatevers tipped in to my hand to sustain me for the long arduous wait...(note to self, must go back and buy some of those chocolate covered toffee encrusted pistachios, they were fantastic). After promising to come back soon, we made our purchases and departed.

The rest of the day passed in pleasant Brooklyn pursuits. We joined some people from work in brunch at the cuban cafe on Smith St., then wandered around participating in a little tour for the visitors. Then later, on the way home, we dropped into one of the many small wine stores of the area and managed to slip into a tasting of some very fine Italian wines. We loved the Barbera d'Alba and the Barolo, but the Brunello de Montalcino was the best, although alas at $54.99 we will probably never have it again. On the recommendation of the man running the tasting, who appeared to know all the winemakers personally, we got a Dolcetto that was only slightly out of our price range. We'll have to plan a meal around it.

Belatedly, we got home and I started cooking. At last, the preparation for Ham Day! Ham Day is the tradition of one of my coworkers, the Acrobat. He and his friends typically hold a dinner the weekend before American Thanksgiving, at which they cook a ham, since most people have turkey with their families on the Day Itself. I was instructed to make some sort of vegetarian dish, so I made a kind of pilaf, with basmati rice and a bunch of vegetables: leeks, oyster mushrooms, swiss chard and roasted butternut squash, tossed in a balsamic glaze. Unsurprisingly we left later than planned and had a few on-the-weekends-it's-near-impossible-to-cross-from-outerboroughs-to-Manhattan related mishaps (I should have known better) but in the end we made it up to Harlem and found his place with little difficulty.

Ham Day was quite nice, in fact. We were welcomed with enthusiasm, and while we knew no one there besides the host, managed to have a good time and eat way too much food and drink way too much wine. Pseudonyme confirmed the ham was very nice indeed, and there were lots of traditional sides to keep a vegetarian happy. Dessert might have been the highlight though - not only were there apple and pumpkin pies, chocolate chip cookies so hot from the oven we had to toss them up and down to cool them before eating, and little pastries from one of New York's innumerable Sicilian bakeries, but at one point, someone came round with a tray on which were balanced apple slices and little bowls of hot melted chocolate and cool liquid caramel. Fondue brought to one's chair!! This should happen more often.

Besides the red wine there was Prosecco and by the end we were a little overcome, but we made it safely home on the A train and curled up for a well earned rest. Ham Day is voted a success.

Day 79-95: On hiatus.

For these two weeks the blog, which is usually on unofficial hiatus anyway, is on actual hiatus, as I have two weeks off in Montréal. I may well end up posting things here and there, but there's no official New York Message until November 7th.

Meanwhile I'll be reestablishing myself in my known haunts, eating eggtarts, drinking microbrewery beer, frequenting the markets, and mostly just spending time with Pseudonyme. I feel a paean to Montréal food coming on, so I might be back here anyhow...

Day 75: Warm mouthfuls against the cool rain.

Pictured: A second course of homemade noodle soup. Not pictured: The takoyaki, which had to be devoured much too quickly to pause for posterity.

Today was a tired day of rain and lethargy. The night was interrupted by a series of bizarre yet disturbing nightmares and the morning was dim and dreary. Work passed by in a series of strange vignettes, such as a coworker coming by to "give me E.coli".

Done the workday I decided to ramble round Manhattan for a bit, as I'll be going home for a bit of a vacation and will miss the city I leave behind. Despite the rain the East Village drew me in as it always does, and despite myself I headed back to Otafuku.

Otafuku is a snack counter offering a small menu of Japanese street food, and is the sister resto to our favourite ramen bar Rai Rai Ken. It's a tiny takeout place that only has a few things on the menu. I usually get okonomiyaki (Japanese egg-pancake thing) or takoyaki, or sometimes the combo of both.

So today, in the rain, I scurried outside the restaurant and found a place on the little bench barely covered by an awning. My knees protruded and developed little cold water spots immediately. I could see my breath.

Meanwhile, the takoyaki. Six plump little balls of fried dough each with a sliver of octopus in them. I don't usually eat octopus anymore, after an unfortunate incident where I overidentified with the poor creature and nearly passed out in a Portuguese restaurant. However, in a wholly morally inconsistent move I make an exception for takoyaki. The outside of each ball is very crisp, baked in a muffin-tin-shaped griddle. The inside is still gooey and soft and molten hot, and the centre is a chewy piece of purple octopus. You can get them plain or with cheese, but it's not the same. Atop is a squirt or two of brown sauce, another of mayo, crumpled nori and liberal chopstickfuls of fluffy bonito flakes.

Everything around me is cold. The takoyaki are steaming. One bite into the scaldingly hot, crisp, soft, chewy, sweet, salty, creamy ball and I'm both intensely present and miles away, even if there's still rain falling on my knees. Mmm. Takoyaki.

Day 74: And apple cores all in a row.

Pictured: A cluster of apple cores. Below, some tasty little turnovers, perfect for clutching in a small wombat paw for eating on the train.

Monday never smelled so sweet as when working from home. Ah. Today was a beautiful day of working and getting errands done and feeling good to be alive. Doing laundry, finding the late-open post office, spending most of the day in pyjamas.

But mostly it was a day of reckoning, where a goodly number of all those yesterday-picked apples met their maker. Me, that is, maker of an apple crisp, two apple pies, six apple turnovers, and a few cinnamon snails for good measure. The pleasures of domesticity cannot be overrated, especially not when they involve as much butter and flour and fruit as this evening did.

Day 73: Apple picking!

A little tiny apple. I think it might be a Jonathan, but we're not sure.

Today we, even we, went apple-picking.

We set out not so bright and early from our burrow, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed were we not, but we got there in the end.

There, being Terhune Orchards near Princeton, NJ. We thought to find a small orchard less overrun with New Yorkers than the nearer-by ones, so at first we were shocked to see a place swarmed with adults and kiddies, picking out pumpkins, petting pack animals, etc other-things-starting-with-P. Once we figured out that this was not the apple picking venue, we stood "on" line for apple cider donuts with the rest before making our escape. (Actually we also took the time for a little trip through the educational funhouse type thing which took us through the earth's crust, and underneath a tuber's eye view of some lovely potatoes, formed of pantyhose).

The orchard, while by no means deserted by Canadian standards, was pretty empty for New York ones. We were a bit late in the season, and the apples we were most interested in tasting were more or less gone, so we had to scavenge. But it was a beautiful day for the scavenging and we were nothing loath.

After all the scavenging and lugging exhausted us, we trekked back to Princeton for lunch near the seat of privilege, and then it was home for some poor tired marsupials. But never fear, the apple saga continues...

Pictured right, one long coil of apple thanks to an ingenious machine; left, a crumpled heap of tired scavengers amidst the endless rows of apple tree.

Day 56: We Intellectual-ise, somewhere Off Broadway.

Pictured: A deconstructed sfogliatella. Less palatable than the evening's intellectualising.

Today my manager told me what I already knew. Sigh. I and others attempted to protest and it was interpreted as acquiescence. But then again, it's not like there's choice involved. Sigh again. Don't worry, I haven't been fired. I just like to be cryptic.

Anyway, on to better things. I had spotted this play that looked pretty interesting and so the other marsupials and I had talked of going. But things as they are, we didn't make any advance plans. Be that as it may, fatigue, colds, and lastminutenessbeingadangerincrowdedmanhattanness notwithstanding, the Atomic Squid and I set out undaunted into that tall, noisy, crowded Midtown.

The play we were to attend was in the Workshop Theatre, a small blackbox theatre on the 4th floor of some downtown building, not far from Madison Square Garden. It's a pretty cool place -- they carry productions through the initial workshop-scripty stages to the final production, with support at all levels, hence the name. Also it was the first indie-ish thing I've seen in Manhattan, in shiny corporate Midtown especially. It reminded me very much of small theatres in Vancouver, except of course the not-having-any-connections part :P

When we got there they weren't sure there would be tickets available, so we put our names on a waiting list and tried our luck. We figured it wouldn't be time wasted anyway since the people watching was quite fun - arty types, society types, grubby student types (we counted ourselves among the latter, at least we looked like them). In the end we did get seated and popped into the theatre just as the show started.

Intellectuals was a highly entertaining screwball comedy type thingo that played with a bunch of stereotypes. The basic premise is that a woman decides to leave her longstanding marriage and "become a lesbian", with hijinks galore following from there. Think Midsummer's Night's Dream after Puck's spell. We did feel that the play lacked a bit of heart - as the A.S. pointed out, it was very mannered, which worked extremely well in the funny bits, but was a bit less convincing in the serious parts. In addition, the supporting characters were extremely well done and the leads perhaps a little less so. However, there were one-liners galore, including some references to Canadian filmmaking that left me especially happy, and we spent most of the 2 hours chortling away. An excellent venture into the wild world of New York theatre.

Then we popped down to the East Village for a quick bowl of ramen and a dissection of the evening before heading back to Brooklyn, home, and bed.

Day 55: Conspiracy theories.

Today was just another day in the office. With the added bonus that all the paranoid rumours we had been hearing lately were finally confirmed. Somehow office gossip always finds itself last to the people it properly concerns....anyway, our team spent most of the afternoon in little huddles exchanging snippets of information and lashings of griping. I still don't know what the changes are going to mean for me, and I may not know for sure for weeks...sigh. All this is very tiring.

So, the Atomic Squid and I decided to turn those frowns upside down, so we took off (relatively) early for the East Village, and ate Japanese street food, and gawked at a beautiful kosher bakery. I had just been craving rye bread, too :-) Then later we met the Grand Pademelon and four Australians and consumed many pots of steaming congee at the eponymous Lower East Side "village". Another day, another dollar, another hoping that I'm not out of a job :P

Day 54: Living the high life in Paramus, NJ.

Today was a grand day. Today I went to IKEA.

Earlier we had gone to the Elizabeth IKEA, which has only 3% tax, but is rather jammed full of people and correspondingly understocked. It's closer, so we were going to go there again this time, except there was some kind of toxic chemical spill right in the parking lot, so er, we changed our plans.

The Paramus IKEA is new and shiny and big and not as many people go to it, so we had a grand, rampagey, relaxed time. Mostly we were relaxed since we just bought everything in sight, but hey. I spent rather a lot of time diving into tall barrels of as-is stuff and came out victorious with some sheets and a pillow and a picnic cloth and such things. And I discovered the joy of the IKEA kids' meal, pictured above. A tiny bowl of overcooked mac'n'cheese and a little drink for 99c! And there's not even a height requirement like the one that keeps me out of the ballroom. Life doesn't get any classier than this, let me tell you.

Day 53: Yet Another Sad Farewell

Pictured: aval or poha, flattened rice flakes revivified in a porridge with yogourt, banana, and a bit of honey.

Today Pseudonyme left. But first, we ate this nice Indian breakfast, a first for both of us. I'd rather dwell on food than partings.

Day 15: I strike out alone again, only this time to somewhere fun!

Hayou les ami(e)s,

Today was another work day, but comme quand le patron est parti, les souris prendront vacances aussi, and because I had been so tired the day before, I worked from home. It was very nice to sleep in and to work leisurely from a reclining position - something that it's advisable to do as I can't seem to raise the seat of the desk chair AND the floor is at a considerable slope. So to sit at the desk I need to reach up like a child for a cookie jar, and clench numerous muscle groups in order to not go sliding right into the closet. Good exercise perhaps, but not exactly correct in the matter of ergonomics.

Anyhow, I benefitted from the working from home thing to go for a stroll and meet the Atomic Squid on a peaceful courtyard for a bit, but once the workday was done I determined to do something a bit more ambitious, to use up that energy that the commute hadn't devoured. So I headed out into that good evening.

In the end I decanted myself in Greenwich Village and ambled about pleasantly without really knowing where I was going, but eventually more or less orienting myself. It was rather nice I must say to be wandering around somewhere where everyone was gay - doesn't happen too often. At first it made me quite happy and then later sad, thinking how rare it is to feel safe being out and unselfconscious. But better a few places than none. And hey, not getting hit on while walking in a public place wearing summer clothes! What a treat!

My undirected ramblings ended up taking me to the hitherto unknown to me Hudson River Park, a series of little jetties protruding into the well, Hudson River. There was a beautiful sunset sinking into the less-than-beautiful Jersey skyline, it was a pleasant temperature with a cool breeze, there was some informal acoustic guitar show going on singing at that point, Mrs. Robinson. Life was good.

Back into the urbanity, I got turned around a few times (all these triangulated streets!) but ended up successfully heading into the Lower East Side and the small triangle of Japantown: destination Sunrise Market, where I could marvel at all the fancy little food packets, and buy myself a cup I would actually enjoy drinking my morning coffee from. Success: a little lime-green handleless one. Then, even though I had been going to be good and actually cook at home, I had been rambling for hours and was rather hungry, so I stopped at Otafuku for some okonomiyaki. Ah, the wonder that is Japanese street food. Mm. And so home, to the computer, and to bed. The weekend!

Day 14: Oh, you live here too?

(Pictured: a night view from the roof of my building.)

Wherein my roommates and I not only all meet in the hallway at once, but actually go to dinner together! A pleasant time is had by all.

Well perhaps I could elaborate on this. For the first few days that I lived here, I never even saw my second roommate. In the first week, we were only all home and awake at the same time once, for about ten minutes. So you see, to manage to gather all in one place to properly meet each other was an achievement.

We dithered for a bit, but eventually went to a nice Thai place a few blocks down. It was crowded, noisy, in a posh big city glam kind of way, but we sat at the bar with a bottle of Australian shiraz and the wait was not unpleasant. And lo and behold, the recommendation of roommate1 to wait for a table at the back was well, well worth it. We were ushered into a lovely, quiet courtyard with tall trees and glimpses of dark blue sky between the buildings. The food was delicious and we're no longer quite strangers together - a good accomplishment for an evening.

Today was the day that the full exhaustion of the workweek hit me. The commute can vary between 1h20 and 2 hours, depending on connection timing, but add that on each way to a full workday and well...I was very, very tired. Somehow I didn't manage to get to sleep early though. I'm just good like that.

Day 13: Once more into the picnic dear friends once more.

The brave picnic tradition continues with a misplaced.com migration to the park. There is even a babbling brook. And trees! Trees! Trees! (Pictured: Noodle Soup, not on the picnic.)

The Japanese contingent got up an hour early to roll rice balls. Hey, I spent SEVERAL MINUTES chatting with the nice guy who runs the Lebanese bakery, while I bought pita. That's very nearly the same thing.

Much later, the denizens of the Figtree are to be found with me, slurping ramen at a ramen bar in the Lower East Side. There is an unfortunate incident with a total prick who needs to justify his queue-jumping activities with instant attitude. Martial action is debated but eventually tabled with regret. The ramen must always take priority.

Noodle soup, where have you been all my life?!?

Day 12: More adventures in the Outer Limits.

Work. We go to the AFC and return to Target. Which, as all good shoppers now, is properly pronounced tar-ZHAY. Now I have a laundry rack!

Pictured: the feral rabbits that guard the secrecy of our office. Beware! Beware the bunnies!

Note: Yes, that is an actual plastic fork. Bunny to scale. Beware!

Day 11: I strike out alone...

Pictured: My daily uniform.

My first solo commute. Just another day in the office.

Also, I move cubicles. Again. Hey, why not?

Wherein I learn that having a cube with a view of a cube with a windowview is prestigious -- now that I don't have one anymore ;-)

Day 10: We make a fig tart! And other domestic adventures.

We pick many figs, resulting in the above-pictured Mandorlata con fichi.

Later: It is a good day for food. Well generally it's just a good day. There is much lazing about at Figtree, with many exciting to-dos in the kitchen. These are very necessary for in the great storminess of earlier this week, a small waterfall decided to open in the wall of the Figtree's basement. And create a small indoor lake. A small, foul-smelling, stored-stuff-invading lake. And when the waters finally receded, it was depressing. Therefore there was much need of pretty little foodstuffs to keep up morale. Hence, pikelets (left), parks (right), pikelets shaped like marsupials (below).

Also of course chao, figtarts, a stroll through Prospect Park, a trip to the Fairway (like no other market!), and a beautifully assembled meal in front of some fine British comedy (grilled fish and vegetables, Spanish rice, salad). A fine relaxing day under the Brooklyn sun, in preparation for...

Day 9: Dim sum & A Shrubbery.

(Pictured: It's Dr. Toothy's Dental World! It's enough to give a susceptible child nightmares. For years! Notice how the toothbrush extends off the wall.)

A day spent in Chinatown & Union Square.

Vegetarian dimsum!

Union Square farmers' market! 3 kinds of basil! A rosemary bush to satisfy even the Knights Who Formerly Said Ni!

Plus, The Philadelphia Story! Ah, Katharine Hepburn.

I might fill in the blanks later.

Day 8: No, you need Form A77609...

(Pictured: Lower Manhattan with Staten Island Ferry. Note: this has nothing to do with the events of the day, which are far too important, national, and secret, to be pictured. This has been an Official Blogular Non Sequitur Warning.)

A day at the Social Security Office. Bureaucracia!!

There's also a workday, some Brooklyn rambling, a lovely dinner, and my first viewing of the excellent piece of cinema, The Court Jester. Recommended to all and sundry.

Day 5-Day 7: A week in the office.

(Pictured: kanji, okayu, chao, juk, zhuo, lugaw...tasty.)

Where a week is Tuesday to Thursday. Which it is for many of my office mates ;-)

I begin to get settled in. Meetings are held. There is much running around between cubicles, many cups of tea taken. We go out for lunch. We stay in for lunch. On Wednesday, there is the first in what seems to be a tradition of potluck picnics, with a select 20 people. We sit on the patch of grass between the building and its neighbouring parking lots; we have picnic mats and insects and even ice cream bars. Life is good.

Well, we do some work too. But it doesn't make such good copy.

At night there are activities. We go to Target to buy house supplies, and to an Indian grocery for staples like spices, dal, and a big sack of atta flour. Oddly, many of the items are Canadian - maple leaves everywhere! We have yummy South Indian food - rasam, dosa, idli, sambhar, coconut chutney, payasam. Mmmmm. (Pictured: Onion rava(wheat) dosa, Kanchipuram idli, sambhar, coconut chutney.)

Another night we go to (Manhattan) Chinatown. Because it is us and it is Chinatown, we get lost. And then the place we want to try is closing. Eventually we end up at Congee Village, which is a good place to end up. We have to wait for a table and end up getting seated with a number of others, two of whom turn out to be rude, nasty people. We pity the waitstaff. We leave a big tip, which is easy since we eat two congees (crab; fish and preserved egg, especially delicious), a steamed yam cake, an eggplant dish, rice, all for less than $8 each. Mm, Congee Village.

The next day in the office we are having a teabreak and end up in a discussion of the etymology of congee. We have Tamil kanji eaters and Vietnamese chao eaters, Chinese juk/zhuo eaters, Japanese kayu eaters, Tagalog lugaw eaters. I am the only one in the room whose ancestors didn't eat rice porridge (buckwheat porridge doesn't count, I guess) so we decide I am the adopted cousin in the family. Since we are now a family, we all begin to bicker. Mo-om, clearly the Tagalog word is some kind of compound with the word rice (gaw) in it, make her believe me!

Being in the office is good for work. I can run around and ask people questions right away instead of waiting and waiting for an email. It's easier to explain things and understand explanations. I learn that people can also run around and ask me things. I learn that I know useful things. I also learn that it is nearly impossible to finish writing a report when there is always someone wanting to know something. Clearly I will have to adopt camouflage gear and hide out in my cubicle in order to get things done.

Days are long. I get home late. I am very tired. But it's good to be here.

Day 4: First day of school!!

Today was the first day of school. Well, work. But somehow it would have felt right to have the nice shiny box of crayons to carry.

The Atomic Squid accompanied me and we discovered that I had to pay my New York City transit dues, i.e. that it took me inexplicably longer to go everywhere than it should have. This has lasted a week, alas, though it may be fixed now *hopefully*. Anyhow, walk, subway, walk, light rail, walk, train, walk, office.

Work.

And reverse it all...

It makes a long day, but is still slightly surreal. I've been here before, on business trips, enough times that it all feels strangely normal. Is this a dream? Am I really here? Where do I belong?

We go to lunch with the old gang. I have a cubicle. The cubicle has my name on it. I have my own set of whiteboard markers! Phew, the crayon equivalent at last. I wish there were chartreuse whiteboard markers.

Day 3: A sad farewell.

(Sunset Park soccer game. A well-timed shot. That's Manhattan in the background.)

This was a quiet day of getting a little more settled in the new place, of roaming around Brooklyn, but mostly of saying goodbye to Pseudonyme, who had come down with me to help with the move but who, alas, needed to return home.

We joined our Brooklyn hosts for a Cuban brunch (artichokes and scrambled eggs, how could you go wrong?) and then wandered down to the famous (among Brooklyn food bloggers at least) Red Hook soccer fields, where many Latin American food stalls have been set up. We were too full to taste the huaraches, quesadillas, pupusas, etc, but I did have a very tasty watermelon juice. We'll have to return with appetites next time.

Since there's never enough rambling or food, we went next to Sunset Park (in the eponymous neighbourhood), which has the highest point in Brooklyn, and thus lovely views of the borough, the City (Manhattan), Staten Island, and Jersey. It was quite the neighbourhood scene. From there to Brooklyn Chinatown, also in Sunset Park, smaller than the Manhattan version but still quite spread out and enticing.

The parting was hard. As they tend to be. But six months is not so long, and there are many adventures to have in that time. The Atomic Squid took me back to the Figtree and plied me with soothing tofu soup and inspired tv comedy before sending me off to bed.

Next up, the first day at work!

Day 2: The Piquenique.

(Faux Jazz Agers on Governors' Island.)

Well, one might think that we'd have spent our first day in Brooklyn moving things in and generally getting settled. However, one would be wrong, as we had bigger fish to fry: the long-awaited, anxiously anticipated, &tc &tc, Governors' Island picnic!

Governors' Island is a strange anomaly in the New York City area: it doesn't have that many people on it. Indeed it is possible to find yourself, on a sunny weekend afternoon, ENTIRELY ALONE IN A PUBLIC PLACE. Believe you me, this is noteworthy. The island is also notable for being a former army garrison/fort/stronghold type place, for looking rather like it's somewhere in South Carolina, and best of all, for being only a free ferry ride away from Lower Manhattan. (You board the ferry from a green building beside the Staten Island ferry on the bottom tip of Manhattan.)

The day of our picnic was also, unbeknownst to us, a "Jazz Age" Day. This meant not only that there was a jazz band serenading us for the length of our picnic, and that there were free Charleston lessons, but also that we were inexplicably surrounded by large clumps of people dressed in period costume. Frocks. Striped suits. And oh, the hats. See above.

As for the picnic, we ate, we chattered, we frisbeed and strolled and giggled and snoozed. It was a lovely time. Then we went back to Brooklyn and packed things into cars and carried heavy things up narrow flights of stairs. But, picnic!

Day 1: The Move.

(Pictured: Lower Manhattan & Brooklyn. The two bridges you can see are Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. The two big green Brooklyn blobs are Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetary. The small tip of an island is Governors' Island of which more later. As the flight circled Manhattan to come in for its landing we had many lovely views of the City.)

After many frantic weeks of preparation, self-doubt, and repeated checking off of lists, we set off from fair Montréal en vers New York City. We expected some kind of last minute hitch at Customs, yet all went according to plan and we were met at the airport by The Atomic Squid,* our kind host and fixer-of-all-problems in Brooklyn. She kindly ferried us to her home, The Figtree, where she plied us with noodle soup and fixed us up a cozy nook. We trotted up to fetch the keys, cast a brief glance over the new place, and wearily wended our way back to Figtree, where we greeted our second host, The Grand Pademelon, and tumbled into a sleepy heap in the cozy nook. There endeth the First Day.

*Disclaimer: Pseudonyms subject to change over time as I get better ideas or merely get tired of typing the long ones.

Day 0: What's past is prologue...

...so I may as well write about it, even though it's not likely to be news to any of my hypothetical Dear Readers.

This blog has as its purpose the recording of my temporary sojourn in New York City, mainly as a mnemonic device but perhaps also for the edification and entertainment of any who might stop and read. And look at the pretty pictures. So, enjoy! A word of warning: most names have been changed to protect identities, yatta, yatta. Please to preserve this light fictionalisation when commenting.

The Backstory: I am a Canadian relocating to New York City to work in the glittering, glamourous world of the Internet. Ok, the arduous, t-shirt-clad, and sometimes pungent world of the Internet, at the imaginary company misplaced.com. Work takes place in the distant realm of Outer Limits, but I newly call home the lovely neighbourhood of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

This blog will mostly concern itself with repetitious expressions of wonder and homesickness in the face of The City, living in a foreign country, and there'll be lots about food. The pseudonymous cast of characters will be introduced all in good time. If need be, there might eventually evolve an FAQ and possibly a Cast of Characters. In the mean time, I foresee one question that will need to be answered:

Q: Why wombats, cousin?
A: It's a long story; wombats are the new hippo; why not wombats? Why not?

I'm sure that clears everything up.

The Rules: So far, not many. The idea is that every day of my sojourn gets an entry of its own, no matter how terse or after-the-fact-posted. In addition, noteworthy events will probably get their own special sections, and I may evolve thematic series as time goes on, because who doesn't like thematic series? No, don't answer that.

The main rule is, please preserve pseudonymity. The blog will display in reverse chronological order but can be skimmed, grazed, tasted and discarded at will. One of the fun things about blogs is how people can comment, so please go ahead.

Onward Ho!

Welcome to the Wombats' World Tour!

...of course, there's no blog yet. We can't have everything.