I’ve been wearing my culture hat over the last few weeks as I’ve managed to get round to seeing the Met Museum, the Cloisters (basically a museum built around medieval cloisters that some bloke imported from Europe into the US) and the Museum of Modern Art. All were good, highlights being the Egyptian temple at the Met and, in my immature way, a piece at MoMA consisting of a couple of linked films by a Dutch artist where he had someone film him (1) falling off a roof and (2) cycling into a river.
In addition a few weeks ago I saw a guy called Dave Brubeck in concert at the Lincoln Center. Dave Brubeck is a jazz legend and he was playing with a Brazilian Orchestra under a guy called João Carlos Martins. It was amazing stuff. Talking of good music there was a man playing music with a saw at Atlantic Avenue subway station last week – he was actually quite good!

I’m also really appreciating the food out here. It’d be all too easy to go mad and eat my way into a ball of flab but so far I’m holding out…
Diner’s are almost everywhere and are an entity that the UK doesn’t really have. Firstly the sizes of the menus are just bizarre – they seem to be longer than Lord of the Rings and War and Peace combined…probably the best one I’ve been to so far is on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and has a meal called the lumberjack which happily consists of pancakes or French toast (different to French toast you buy in Britain), sausage, egg, potatoes, toast, ham, bacon and probably some other stuff as well – it is immense.
There’s also a great cake shop near work called Crumbs which does the best cup-cakes known to man – there’s about six million variations, each with enough icing and toppings to fill an Olympic swimming pool and enough calories to kill a family of elephants. However one afternoon at work someone had bought some in and as there were a number going spare I naturally did the decent thing and had two in order to prevent wastage – I’m pretty sure that by the end of this culinary adventure I was on the verge of a heart attack…

Last Saturday a few of us went to a great housewarming out in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We were in Manhattan at the time and were debating how to get there as the subway was on death’s door that same weekend due to an infinite amount of maintenance going on. It was then suggested that we get a Zip car, which, I found out, is a car hire system allowing very quick and easy access to cars on demand, paid for by the hour – so relatively cheap for small use. So thus began our road trip across New York City. It could have been a fairly sensible, uneventful journey across two Boroughs but for some reason we seemed to pass by a whole host of the weird and wonderful. This included a whole community of people seemingly united by the huge, furry hats they wore, a man dancing around the cars at a set of traffic lights and a few slightly dubious areas where we felt that if we were to get out the car we may have regretted it…

As much as I enjoy the lifestyle out here I do admittedly miss some things about the British culture…for example I’m starting to crave a good Cornish pasty or a tasty pork pie and I wouldn’t mind finding a pub that is actually a pub. There are a large number of bars in New York that claim to be ‘pubs’ but miss the mark every time. I’ve satisfied some of my British longings by watching repeats of Top Gear on BBC America but still wouldn’t mind getting my hands on a decent steak pie.
There is apparently a shop in Greenwich Village in Manhattan that sells British delicacies so I’m thinking that before too long I may have to root it out so that I can finally feast on the joys of British pastry!

To finish, I’ve been encouraged this evening by the following quote from Proverbs in the Bible:
‘Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight’.
If I’m honest I’ve often read through passages like this and not really fully appreciated them. It is undoubtedly a great soundbite but is also much more than this. Trusting in God with all my heart and not relying on my own strength and ability is undoubtedly a challenge but by being in this city over the last three months and having to find my way through the ups and downs of city life, I’ve come to appreciate how essential it is not to trust in my own understanding. I freely admit that time and time again I’ve turned my back on God and attempted to find my own way but ultimately I’ve come to realise that the ability to gauge the ever-changing landscape of life is a task that I simply cannot achieve on my own. When things are rosy and good I’m all too happy to dance around in self-satisfaction but when life starts throwing unexpected curveballs in my direction I need God to be at the centre of my life. Without him I am alone, fighting the challenges of the world single-handedly, but with him I am far from alone – I have the creator of the world on my side.