There ARE Biker's Ed Classes In New York

...but they're only for kids. Why?

http://www.bikenewyork.org/education/classes/bike_driver_ed.html

From what I can tell, being over 18 doesn't automatically make you smart enough to ride a bike in the same direction of traffic.

I likeNY in June, How About You? I Smell Jizz Trees In Bloom, How About You?

Successive themes of obsessive focus carve this landscape that is my conscious mind.

Huh? What did I just say? Basically, I fixate on something for days, weeks or months at a time, and I just can't let it go until the next theme of obsession comes along that even more urgently needs my pointless obsessive attention.

Right now I'm obsessing about two things, because I've learned to multi-task. One is about biking in New York, and the other is ... hm, I seem to have forgotten.

Summer has arrived, so I'm bothering to leave the house more often. I got back on my bike a few weeks ago and have been experimenting with commuting in the city. Technically, there are bike lanes in Manhattan. New Yorkers think the bike lane is where you drive when you're looking for street parking. And if you can't find street parking? Just double park in the bike lane. There are neighborhoods where even cops park in the bike lane.

I used to think that people who rode their bikes in NYC were pretty hard core. Now I just think they're stupid. I'm convinced that cycling in the city is dangerous not just because of the low IQ among drivers in this town; it's also because of the low IQ of cyclists. Especially those guys who deliver food on their bikes. Is it a job requirement for those idiots to ride the wrong way on EVERY street, sidewalk and bike lane to get to their destination? Are they forbidden to put a light on their handlebars at night?

City cycling culture is so different here. It's not centered around a sense of community. I think that's what I can't get used to. Bikers really feel no sense of connection to other bikers. I ride safely and defensively mostly because I'm not an idiot, but also in part because I don't want to make things more difficult for other bikers by being that reckless ass-wipe who pisses off drivers for no reason. I don't get why other bikers don't see it this way - oh, classic narcissism! But seriously - a lot of bikers here don't see that any stupid thing they do, drivers will project onto all of us, and it just makes them want to run over anything between two wheels and a helmet.

Uh oh. Here come the inevitable comparisons to San Francisco...

In San Francisco, I always felt this sense of solidarity with other bikes on the road. Bikers, for the most part, cooperate with traffic and don't do stupid things like go the wrong way on a four-lane, 45 mph thoroughfare when it's dark and you're wearing black and have no light on your bike. I felt like we looked out for each other, in the sense that we knew that the way we rode affected the way cars treated all bikers. If we rode safely and didn't antagonize cars, then cars would view us as a normal part of traffic, and stop thinking about how to run us over or, at the very least, how close to get before pegging us with their Big Gulp full of Mountain Dew and ice. This is rather idealized and over-simplified, because there were plenty of bee-tard bikers in SF who gave the rest of us a bad rap...but the ideal was there.

When I'm president of the planet, driver's ed will have a major "biker awareness" component, where drivers learn to respect the rights and safety of bikes on the road. And bikers in New York will have to attend a biker's ed class, because obviously ensuring one's own safety is not an intuitive concept to everyone. And most importantly, I would make New York and San Francisco car-free cities, and tell everyone to get off their fat asses and start pedaling.

YES. There are exceptions. Public transportation vehicles like buses, trains and subways would still run. Casual carpool and other private carpooling would still be allowed. Anything that doesn't burn fossil fuels, like those pedicabs and the horse-drawn carriages in Central Park, are fine. There would be special exceptions or discounts for the elderly, disabled and anyone else who has legitimate reasons for not riding a bike everywhere. Also, commercial delivery vehicles like the ones that deliver food to your grocery store would still be allowed. I haven't decided what to do about cabs. I still have a few years to work on this idea.

There was an article in some local pop culture magazine that basically summed up the road biking culture here: bikers and drivers will never get along. That just isn't good enough for me. I don't care to be resigned to drivers who feel like bikers aren't entitled to be on the road, and bikers who think that their jerkoff riding habits exist in a vacuum instead of eventually trickling down into a giant communal pool of seething driver hatred towards all bikers.

Therefore, I'm going to get myself elected President of the world and make New York a car-free city. As per above.

Oh, Critical Mass. So I've ridden in a few Critical Masses in SF over the years, and although I like the sense of community in participating, it always made me a bit uncomfortable. They always announce at the beginning of the ride that we're supposed to obey all traffic signals and not be aggressive bee-tards towards cars, but inevitably some people start to feel invincible because of our sheer numbers, and bikers start taunting drivers. Arguments ensue, fights break out, everyone else keeps pedaling towards the bar. These pockets of confrontation always bother me because they negate the spirit of Critical Mass. Yeah, it's a protest and a political statement and a social movement, and most of all it's just powerful. But like most things, it doesn't quite live up to its ideals. It's an imperfect phenomenon, created to bring together imperfect people, and maybe in truth, that's why I like it.

Oh, now I remember my other theme of obsession: Disgusting specimens of the male species. So now that summer is here and I'm bothering to leave my house, I've created strategies for minimizing the probability that I cross paths with any of the drooly, grunty, armpit-scratching, mite-picking, mouth-breathing, glassy-eyed organisms that loiter in my neighborhood. Being on my bike helps a lot, because I flit across their field of vision in a fraction of the time it takes an electrical impulse to fire across a synapse in their little drooly brain.

But running is a different story. Mainly because I'm a slow, slow runner. Old hunchback men waddle past me when I run. That's how slow I am. So I had to devise a route that avoided the worst concentrations of drooly organisms in my neighborhood. So far, pretty successful. So successful, in fact, that yesterday I started to wonder if maybe I'd exaggerated the drooly organism population in my head. I ran past a high-rise apartment building overlooking the Hudson, one of those places that I could never afford to live in, but whose building manager is kind enough to allow people like me to pass by on the sidewalk. The security guard for the apartment building was wandering around outside, and when I ran by he surprised me by saying, "Good morning."

"Good morning!!" I said, too enthusiastically. I realized then that at best I had expected him to ignore me, and at worst I had expected him to drool and call me his baby. I definitely did NOT expect him to greet me like a normal person.

Man, no one says good morning anymore. Certainly not the drooly organisms. Not people I see on the elevator everyday. Not the security guard in my building. I feel like even a simple smile upon eye contact is unheard of among New Yorkers. Hell, eye contact is unheard of. More evidence for my theory that there are way too many people on this tiny island, and everyone here hates dealing with everyone else. People actively tune each other out. I was on an elevator in a subway station, and seven of ten people had iPods stuffed in their ears. I could hear what at least three of them were listening to, and I must say that too many people have really bad taste in music.

And Jizz Trees. Admit it, you've smelled them too and thought the same thing. Peeee-yew! They grew all over the Peninsula and South Bay, and I could never figure out what kind of tree it was because I was never sure if it was appropriate to ask, "Where do you think that sperm smell is coming from?"

But a few weeks ago, the jizz trees were at full stinkiness here in New York, and they were EVERYWHERE. I finally went on the internet and discovered that there are several types of trees that could be the culprit. Here in New York, I think it's the Bradford Pear tree, which doesn't even bear edible fruit. It's an ornamental pear tree that was planted all over the island for its ability to survive New York City pollution. It explodes into gorgeous white blossoms in the spring and, apparently, quickly explodes into noxious clouds of jizzy odors in the summer.

I think the jizz blooming has ended because I haven't noticed the smell in a week or so.

I Procrastinate, Therefore I Post

We have this assignment for one of my classes to comb through our hometown paper for mentions of Iraqi and American deaths since the beginning of the war in March 2003. My true hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle, had already been tallied by another student, so I’m scouring my adopted hometown’s paper, the San Francisco Chronicle.

It’s been interesting reliving the war, or rather the media coverage of the war. I felt like I’d reached a point, probably like most Americans, where I just had to stop caring THAT MUCH about news from the war front because it was pointlessly upsetting. It was pointless to get upset that I was right from the beginning, that so many Americans so mindlessly and obtusely embraced all the meaningless words pouring out of Unpresident Idiot and Co’s bungholes – words about how we are being attacked by people who hate freedom, about how we are nobly bringing democracy to a country of helpless victims, UGHHH!! I can’t go on.

But reliving the news, day by day, starting from the first shock and awe campaign, tracing the evolution of anti-American sentiment and deliberate attacks on U.S. troops, the capture of Saddam…Well, at this point I’ve only gotten through the end of 2003. But the point is, I’m left with a lot of old emotions dredged up from a deep, formerly quiet place. Mostly what stands out for me, reading week after week of reports about people dying, is how profoundly yet incomprehensibly pointless all of the dying has been. I’m even more struck by this feeling when I read about Iraqi civilians dying, especially when it’s some kid or woman who is accidentally shot by some 19-year-old American soldier who thinks he’s in a video game.

"'We had a great day,' said Sgt. Eric Schrumpf of the U.S. Marines last Saturday [April 5]. 'We killed a lot of people.' He added, 'We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?'"

…Schrumpf had said "there were women standing near an Iraqi soldier, and one of them fell when he and other Marines opened fire. 'I'm sorry,' said Schrumpf, 'but the chick was in the way.'"

Every other article talks about how Bush declared an end to the war on May 1, 2003. Five years later, that is beyond ironic and insulting.

The sad thing is that not only do extremists now feel more justified in hating anyone who falls into the category “American,” but people like me feel so much hatred and disappointment in human nature. Ideally no one should assume that Shrubbery is an accurate representation of human nature, but how can you not hold a world leader up to some reasonable standard of integrity? I wonder why, knowing how poorly most world leaders score on the human decency scale, I expect more from the monkey on our Hill? But I do.

I was talking to one of my professors yesterday, who served in the Peace Corps in Cameroon in the seventies. She says she still uses the lessons she learned in Peace Corps every single day. And I think she’s right. Combing through these articles about bumbling American soldiers and angry Iraqi insurgents, I impose judgments based on things I learned from living in an African village.

You can’t go into another country and another culture with no clue or intention of being culturally sensitive, and expect people not to resent you.

One article described an American soldier, armed with big scary G.I. Joe weapons, yelling at an Iraqi civilian. “Stop where you are!” the soldier said – in English.

It just amazes me that Americans are so dumbfounded that they are being targeted and killed by people in a country they stormed into without permission.

Our military regularly issues apologies to Iraqi families when they accidentally, or even intentionally, kill one of their members.

Hello? That is just not good enough. I feel the Iraqi who said, “What kind of compensation do we want? We want one of your people to die.”

Well, on a lighter note. ...Let’s return to my favorite pastime – ripping on New York.

What is the deal with people giving kisses on the cheek when they greet each other here? I just confirmed with two friends who are also from San Francisco: we don’t do that on the West Coast.

Why? Because the only people who are allowed to do that and still be taken seriously are people from other countries. Europeans can do it; they are European. Latin and South Americans can do it; they are not North American.

But we are not a touchy-feelie culture. We are the land of the sexual harassment lawsuit. And that means people are - or should be - careful not to lean in so they can make over-exaggerated sucking noises with the side of their face pasted to another person’s after having met them for three seconds. Ew.

About a third of the people in my program are international students. I don’t care if they greet me with a kiss on the cheek - or two, or three, depending on where they're from. It’s just another person's cultural practice, and I accept it.

But when an American greets me that way, I’m like, hey man, that’s not normal or sincere or flattering or comfortable. And I have to make that fake smackie-kissie sound so that it sounds like I’m returning the kiss.

What’s even worse is when people don’t actually make a fake kissing sound, they just fake the fake kissing sound, like this: “Mwah.”

What kind of unattainable level of sophistication are we trying to achieve? Americans are not particularly well-mannered or sophisticated compared to most of the world. We chew gum and talk too loud and smile too much when things aren’t funny or happy. Kissing people on the cheek isn’t going to change that. What’s wrong with a nice, asexual, dispassionate hug?

Actually, New York is the only place in the U.S. that I’ve lived where people greet with kisses. I never saw it in Texas, and I never saw it in Chicago, and I never saw it in San Francisco.

Anyone have a theory about this? I’m perplexed.

Everything I Didn't Need To Know I Learned in Sixth Grade

There's a headline in the New York Times today (which I have become addicted to because it's a less pathetic way to procrastinate than Facebook) that reads:

Protesters Attack U.S. Embassy in Belgrade

And I thought, "Belgrade is the capital of Yugoslavia."

And I was quite satisfied with myself. It's amazing how things you learn in sixth grade geography stick with you, for better or for worse.

Oh Carmen Sandiego! Yugoslavia no longer exists, and hasn't for between five and 17 years, depending on who you ask.

Brussels is the capital of Belgium. Budapest is the capital of Hungary. Belgrade is the capital of Yugoslavia.

No, Belgrade is the capital of Serbia. So what's the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina? Croatia? Macedonia? Montenegro? Slovenia?

Back in my day, we only had to learn one south Slavic country, and we liked it that way.

We Had A Guest Speaker In Class Today. And he was hot. Normally this would not be notable enough to be announced to my roommate as soon as I get home, much less be mentioned on my blog. But the sad truth is that I don't see enough attractive men on a regular basis. My program in school is perhaps 90 percent women. I rarely leave campus, especially in the last two weeks after a virus knocked me flat on my back.

There's a void in my life and it's in the shape of eye candy.

New Year's Resolution Monitoring and Evaluation. As many people know, my New Year's resolution was to have a life outside of school. So, I gathered a couple friends and got student tickets to a show at Carnegie Hall. Student tickets, let me just say, are God's gift to grad school students. He likes when your seats are so high in the upper balcony that you can almost touch his face.

Carnegie Hall is everything you've heard. We saw the National Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin conducting Ravel's orchestration of Pictures At An Exhibition. Most classical pieces are not that interesting to see performed live, unless you have a special appreciation for the hypnotic redundancy of sawing strings. But Pictures requires a pretty elaborate collection of instruments, and combined with the dynamic, dramatic musical score, becomes a riveting performance for people like me who claim to love the symphony but usually find themselves wondering why they didn't just stay home and listen to the CD.

So, the subtext to this story is that I am also beginning to hate New York less. There's certainly a lot of stuff to do, and some of it is even affordable. The legendary Carnegie Deli (not affordable) has a lot to be legendary about, including the two pounds of corned beef and pastrami they put in each $20 sandwich.

But this town still feels like a sprawling asphalt prison that purposefully separates me from everything that's natural and green and sky and sunflowers.

I said as much to Jesse today, and he replied in his deliberate, thoughtful, deadpan way, "So, if, I'm, hearing, you, correctly. Your, feelings, about, New, York, are. About, the, same, as, mine."

These are the things that keep me sane. People who understand why I will never find New York as great as everyone says it's supposed to be. People who itch to get off the island because it feels confining. People who are counting down the days until it gets warm enough to go climbing and camping. And people who at the same time dread the planning and car renting that will have to take place to make that happen, because no one successfully escapes from prison without a good plan.

Her Neighbor Is a Homo Genius

I'm staying at a friend's apartment in the Castro, the heart of San Francisco's gay community. The first thing I did when I arrived at her place was search for wifi.



I miss this town so much!!

Video from Kisumu and Eldoret

I don't even recognize Kisumu in this footage. It looks like a ghost town except for looters going crazy and everything on fire. If the whole country is falling to pieces, who do they think is going to buy those microwaves they're stealing?

Is it ironic that Kisumu's main drag, shown in the video, is named after Raila Odinga's father, Oginga Odinga?

Oh my God, why have I never watched You Tube before? This one is heartbreaking.

The guy in the green shirt is in tears as he walks past gutted storefronts in Kisumu. The reporter greets him, "Habari ya mzee?" How's everything, sir?

The guy says, between sobs, "Salama." Peaceful.

As 2007 Becomes 2008...

New Year's Day 2008, Santa Cruz, CA. I'm visiting the Bay Area on my school break, while Kenya is going to hell in a matatu-shaped handbasket. I called my friend Joseph in Eldoret this morning. Last night a bunch of people hid in a church outside town, trying to avoid getting caught in the mayhem. Then some kid decided to throw kerosene on it and light it on fire, killing 40 people.

Joseph is fine, also hiding somewhere trying avoid run-ins with angry mobs, only worried for his family and friends and wondering if he'll run out of food. Public transport is barely running; the matatus that are operating are hiking fares 150%.

I've also heard sporadically from a few volunteers who are hunkered down all around the country, under lockdown by decree from Peace Corps. Everyone is safe so far, staying indoors except for the occasional excursion to get supplies from the nearest town.

I've been following the news from Kenya since the elections on the 27th. That itself was an amusing adventure, with the Xinhua News Agency in China scooping all the other news services including the BBC and New York Times for a short while. Not surprisingly, the Kenyan paper, the Daily Nation, couldn't seem to keep its web server functioning properly during the elections, and now it sounds like domestic press have been restricted from live broadcasts.

Different news sources were reporting conflicting election results until Sunday, but now the truth seems to be filtering through. The incumbent Kibaki camp is still lying about the results in hopes of retaining power, blatantly defying the will of the people. But Kenyans know better. As one guy said, "We live in Kenya. We are Kenyans. We know what is happening." At the same time, opposition candidate Raila Odinga plans to have a Million-Man March on Thursday in Nairobi's Uhuru Park to declare himself the true president of the people. Kibaki's government has already said the demonstration will be considered illegal, and most people think it will further propel the country into chaos.

It's kind of odd to hear all the news. The last time I was in Uhuru Park was a year ago. I rented a splintery wooden boat with Brady and Melanie, and we paddled around the lagoon. At one point we thought it would be funny to spin our boat with short paddlestrokes in the middle of the lagoon. It was funny only to us, three mzungus twirling in a creaking paddleboat, but I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face.

The park was full of families and kids. There was even a boat like ours filled with at least 20 people (capacity: 5) and four kids screaming CHING CHONG CHING CHING CHONG at me while their parents laughed as if it were perfectly acceptable to raise ill-mannered brats. A year ago, even a month ago, Kenya was just another country with a bustling economy, a large rich-poor gap, and a government machine that flowed as smoothly as molasses on a winter morning. Tribal tensions were a way of life, always lurking beneath the surface of social interactions, but rarely erupting into conflict.

Kenyans have always prided themselves on being one of the most politically stable countries in sub-Saharan Africa. To me, all of Africa has the same fertile valleys, savannahs teeming with wild animals and quiet, idyllic village communities that I knew in Kenya. Occasionally, after I returned to the U.S., people would ask how it was to deal with all the political instability in Kenya. After all, Africa is nothing but war and disease.

It was always strange to try to explain that Kenya has always been peaceful. I was always met with skeptical gazes, like people were waiting for me to pause and then say, "Just kidding!" They couldn't seem to comprehend that I lived in an African country and there was no conflict to speak of.

It never occurred to me to use qualifiers like "peaceful" and "politically stable" when I told people I lived in Africa. I've extrapolated my experience in Kenya to all of Africa, so peaceful was always assumed when I talked about any African country, except certain parts of Sudan, or Rwanda in 1994.

Now I see photos and footage from Kenya and wonder how this can be the same country I lived in for two years. Places I once knew are now smoldering embers. I see pictures of people dressed in the familiar clothes ubiquitous in every market, people with Kenyan features and expressions, but they've got a big stick raised over their heads while someone else with Kenyan features and expressions lies on the ground covering their face with bloody hands. This is not familiar.

I'm sad and worried for my Kenyan friends, and in a vague sort of way I feel like I should be sad for this abstract concept of Kenya itself. It's a place I once called home. It's a place that will always be a part of me. It's also a place that made me bitter and cynical about humanity, a place that I've vowed never to return to.

But with all the reports of violence and conflict has also come this sense of loss. I don't recognize the country I once knew anymore. The Kenya I knew wasn't on fire. More specifically, it wasn't on fire because people were trying to kill each other. The Kenya I once knew didn't resemble the tales of chaos and strife that dominate Western portrayals of Africa. Now, I fear that it might. When I see pictures from Kenya, I think of pictures from Rwanda 14 years ago. Of course the comparison is a bit inappropriate; nothing that has happened so far is on the scale of genocide.

Maybe this will blow over in a few days. Maybe it will get worse. I'm going to keep hitting F5 on the New York Times' website.

Summoning the Lamest Most Useful Excuse

So I made a lot of promises on my old blog that I didn't exactly, uh, keep. Stuff like I'd finish posting entries through the end of my service last July. Well, six months later, it doesn't look like that will ever happen. If it does, maybe I'll invite everyone over for a party.

Then, in August, I decided to start a new blog - this one. Except the lamest, most useful excuse for not having to keep any promises happened: grad school. Since then I've spent every minute studying studying studying, except for those times when I didn't, which was a lot of the time. Now, three unwritten papers and two finals are staring me in the face from next week. How many ways can I procrastinate?

Way number one: Revive that blog.

Just ignore the large gaps in posting dates and we'll still be friends.

Freeze Tag

I was walking home from campus tonight, Paul Simon style. You know, slip sliding away, because the city doesn't throw salt on icy sidewalks in working-class neighborhoods.

It's just begun to snow this year. Tonight I made the observation that snow is not only a great way to cover up all the street bum piss and dog crap and rat drool coating the sidewalks, but it's also a beacon for half-hearted graffiti artists: People in my neighborhood tag the layer of new snow on cars.

In general I don't really appreciate the artistic value that graffiti may have. I don't see it as somehow beautiful yet edgy, as an insightful expression of a thriving urban youth culture. It may be all those things. But I'm just a grumpy old lady. In my day, we inhaled paint; we didn't spray things with it.

Either way, I feel like tagging isn't even graffiti. It's just cliche. Everyone does it. How is that a form of self-expression? And tagging in a thin layer of snow? Even lamer.

So "ACE" tagged the hood of a blue Oldsmobile. And when I rounded the corner, someone had tagged a minivan window with the words "death note." I mean, if you're trying to be bad ass, don't sound like you're in your kitchen labeling jars with Post-Its.

"Couscous."
"Wheat germ."
"Walnuts."

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This is one of those posts that's going to reveal me as idiotically middle class.

From the Roach Motel

Well, orientation is over and classes start tomorrow. Overall assessment so far: I chose the right program. I chose the wrong neighborhood.

I'm cranky. So far nearly everything has failed to happen in any remotely simple or straightforward way. My stuff still hasn't arrived from San Francisco, so I'm wearing the same jeans every day. I don't have any clothes to workout in, or shoes to run in, and my beloved bike may or may not be intact once it arrives. Renovations on my new apartment were supposed to be finished three weeks ago, but the hallway and corners are still lined with large buckets of various adhesives and paints, floorboards, siding, shelves, toolboxes, and stacks of tiles, all waiting to be pasted or nailed into their proper resting place.

Also, we have a roach problem. This is nothing new in New York, of course, but I didn't expect "having a roach problem" to mean:

Roaches crawl into the fridge for us to discover after they've died of frostbite.

Roaches crawl out of my laptop keyboard.

Roaches crawl out of my garbage can where there wasn't even any food.

Roaches crawl out of the drain.

Roaches crawl across my arm while I'm lying in bed at night.

New Yorkers always say the same thing when I say I think I have a roach problem: "Are you sure it's not a water bug?"

Why make a distinction? I'm told water bugs look exactly like giant cockroaches and make rude appearances in places where they're not supposed to.

"Oh, you're right, they're water bugs. I guess I don't have a problem after all."

I Left Kenya To Come To Kenya. I'm not the only person who's had this reaction to the male attention we get in the neighborhood. A friend who lived in southern Africa for four years said, "I feel like I'm back in southern Africa." Another friend who lived in the Mission in San Francisco said, "I thought I escaped the Mission when I moved to New York, but I moved to this neighborhood." Yet another friend said, in a dreamy voice, "I feel like I'm somewhere in Latin America."

Everywhere I go, unemployed men stare and emit a broad spectrum of caveman noises. People beg me for money. Men sneer "Chinita" when they pass me. I was so eager to leave Kenya and the infantile taunting perpetrated by grown adults, only to return to the States and experience the exact same harrassment, but in a new language. The up side: I recently discovered that I do understand one Spanish word: pendejo.

And Yet, It's So Unlike Kenya. Friday and Saturday nights in my neighborhood are for pulling your sagging couch onto the sidewalk, blasting the car stereo, and drinking 40s with the neighbors while watching the kids fight with each other. Every other night of the week is for kids in their 20s to inexplicably choose to gather right in front of my building at 3am, scream at volume ten, fight at at volume ten, scream abusive monologues at boyfriends or children at volume ten, or throw cardboard boxes at passing cars while laughing at volume ten.

Anyway, all of this means one thing: readjustment is going to take awhile. I haven't even had a chance to process the last two years in Kenya, and I'm already building a hefty collection of disorders after two weeks in New York.

More On The Expensive Thing. I'm discovering that New Yorkers have quite a talent for finding cheap or free stuff, which I suppose you'd have to develop to survive here. My student ID gets me into tons of museums for free, including the Met and Cloisters. I can also get $12 rush tickets to the symphony and $25 tickets to Broadway shows.

I've had a few moments when New York has started to strike me as an amazing place - when I was wandering through the maze of galleries at the Met the other day, when I stepped out of the Columbus Circle subway station one evening not expecting to see the lights of the buildings and Trump Tower reflecting off the Lincoln Center globe, when I walked across Bryant Park at night, when I sat in the spectacular cavernous reading rooms at the New York Public Library.

I've also learned some valuable lessons in my fortnight here. Most importantly, I'm never going to pay for drinks at a bar or restaurant again. The average poorly-made drink at a bar is $8-$10, but it's not unusual to pay $15, and when you reach the bottom of the glass, you're still sober. Only a moron would fall for that for more than two weeks. From now on this clever one is investing in a flask and an overcoat with an inside breast pocket for nights on the town.

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If you buy a 7-day unlimited Metro Card, you have to ride at least 15 times ($1.60 per ride) to make it cheaper than buying a 6-ride card for $10 ($1.66 per ride).