Admittedly I planned to catch up on this blog over Christmas but it seems that this didn’t happen…so here goes.

Spending the run-up to Christmas in New York was certainly quite an experience – there were lights, decorations and displays aplenty, including the apparently famous Rockefeller Christmas tree. For weeks beforehand I had heard people raving about this tree so was clearly expecting a tree two million feet high with flashing lights, sound effects and dancers. All things considered this was probably a little too expectant, as when I saw the tree it was alright, but wasn’t quite as spectacular as I had hoped…

Before Christmas I also had the privilege of having two good friends from the homeland staying with me. After being away from home for a while it was properly good to be able to chill out with a couple of old chums and reminisce on times past.
Admittedly being exposed to the British sense of humour again led to a barrage of (apparently funny) ginger jokes and humour involving mothers but in fairness, in a strange kind of way, this was quite reassuring as although time seems to be flying by at a spectacular pace there are some things that simply don’t change.
Talking of time, it felt bizarre that only a year and a half ago we were all finishing university together and that now we were touring the streets of New York City…

A while back I somehow found myself visiting the opera. Normally I wouldn’t frequent the opera due to the incredibly long run times, but when my attention was drawn to an opera called ‘From the House of the Dead’ with a run time of only an hour and a half I felt that this was the best opportunity to witness the Metropolitan Opera in all its glory. And certainly in retrospect I’m glad I went, but it was certainly one of the more surreal experiences of my life…the basic setup of the opera in question is a group of prisoners in a bleak Russian prison singing about how they ended up in prison, e.g. ‘I’m in prison because I murdered this bloke’ etc. This is certainly quite interesting but because the opera is sung in Czech it was quite hard to keep an eye on the subtitles in relation to the action – often I would read the subtitles (on the side of the stage) only to find that by the time my eye had returned to the action the scene had changed, meaning that I was constantly slightly behind what was going on…it was worthwhile though and good to experience something different from the norm. The Met Opera House is something else as well – just a little on the spectacular side.

Of note also was the bizarre experience of an impromptu comedy night whilst chilling out in a random bar on second avenue. We were peacefully drinking and chatting when suddenly some bloke stands up with a tiny amp and starts boasting about the fact that he is the host for the comedy night. Clearly nobody in the bar was expecting this change in events as most people either looked confused or angry that this man had interrupted their conversation. The guy must surely have realised that this evidently wasn’t the best time to host a comedy night, but he continued nonetheless and welcomed up the first ‘comedian’ who ended up leaving before he had finished because nobody was really paying attention…it was a little awkward to say the least. After this awkward exit the following comedians got a little more attention, perhaps because they were slightly better, or perhaps because people were feeling bad about the first guy…in the end, when the comedy night actually became a comedy night rather than an uncomfortable interruption it really wasn’t that bad – I may even have laughed.

The subway weirdoes are out in force again. These include the man giving a monotonous commentary to the whole subway car about the state of his two drunk girlfriends, the woman who was trying to sell the worst pirated DVDs in the history of time, the man who seemed to be sleep-eating, the fool who was cycling his bike along the edge of the platform as the train was coming in and the man doing a jig whilst over-engaging in his music. The variety of life is quite something.