After neglecting this blog for the last eight months I felt it time to conclude with a final reflective post.

When I first arrived in New York it seemed a little overwhelming – a plethora of noise, an abundance of lights and people everywhere. My immediate concern was of the potential struggle to adapt to this change of pace, this new lifestyle. However, once I adjusted to this urban jungle I came to love it. The thrill of the city got into my blood and I felt connected to the voltage flowing through the life of New York.

The city life certainly changed me and will undoubtedly affect my decisions in the months and years to come. The experience of being on the NY subway late at night and still having to stand due to lack of seats, really struck home. In my hometown the streets are almost silent at night but in the city that never sleeps the streets and subways are still very much alive.

Whilst I do miss the city I’m grateful for the time I had – seeing Al Pacino do Shakespeare in Central Park, experiencing the thrill of Broadway, the uniqueness of Coney Island, the pleasure of living in Brooklyn, the escape of Prospect Park, the tour of the Lower East Side in the insane cold, the experience of testifying and facing cross-examination as a witness in criminal court, the great friendships, the amazing bars, the fantastic restaurants, the vast amount of things to do, the effervescent music scene, the renowned museums and art galleries and the excitement and joy of being part of a church telling the truth of the gospel of Christ crucified for mankind – all in all it was a phenomenal experience.

New York is an extraordinary place and the same can be said of the people. Never before have I seen such a mix of variety and diversity. One of the weirdest moments that will stick in my mind for years to come was the sight of some men pushing a rabbit in a pushchair/stroller through Central Park…

But they were not alone – I also recall the man performing a magic trick on the subway with a live dove in a saucepan, the man on the Q train exploring his own unique style of exceptionally peculiar dance, the extraordinary singer performing at Union Square, the man who managed to drag an upright piano onto the subway platform, the friendly people, the unfriendly people, the arrogant, the un-noticed, the charming, the potentially violent, the caring, the indifferent and the fantastically entertaining – this assortment of people all brought together into the delightful melting pot of New York City. And I am exceptionally appreciative that within this vast melting pot I found so many fantastic friends.

‘Leaving New York never easy’ – a lyric by REM and a lyric that rings true. Leaving behind a city with so many memories, so many great friends and so much vibrancy and excitement was not easy. New York gave me one of the best years of my life and although I’m sad to have left behind a place of such unique calibre I’m grateful for the year I had; a year that will remain with me forever.

Au revoir mon ami.

Following in the vein of my last couple of posts I will once again try and catch up with this blog. This may not work as well in practice as theory but then again stranger things have happened…

For the Christmas period I was in fact back in the homeland – enjoying the joyous cuisine of mince pies, Cornish pasties and all things British.
As I had booked a fairly early flight out from Newark airport I was slightly concerned that I was going to sleep through my chorus of alarms and miss my flight in spectacular fashion but in fact all was fine – admittedly on the plane I somehow managed to spill milk in my face and choke on my coffee but apart from these near-catastrophic instances all was well.
Being back in a medium sized British town was reassuring in some ways but after being in NYC for six months it was quite hard to adjust to the quiet nature of it all – in the past I’d always seen myself as someone who wanted to settle down for the longer term in a smaller town or city but when comparing the small town to the buzzing city it seems, at least for the time being, that the city is where I’d prefer to be. That said it was great to see the family again and to catch up with old friends.

Once back in New York after some rather intense airport security it was back to work for a few days before the New Years holiday.
New Years in New York was certainly a pretty sweet affair. I had originally been tempted to frequent Times Square with the famous ball but on consideration of how cold it would be and how many people would be there I changed my mind fairly rapidly. Instead I went to a far warmer and far more enjoyable party up in the Bronx. It was a great shindig with plenty of snow-chilled beverage action and conversational fun. It certainly made me feel privileged to be able to spend New Years with such a great crowd.

Since I arrived I’d been looking for opportunities for some hiking but until a couple of weeks ago this opportunity hadn’t arisen. Thus, on MLK day three of us set out upstate to a ‘city’ called Beacon to climb some nearby hills in the name of fun…
Although I love the buzz of the city it was entirely pleasant to be able to get some fresh air for a day. In addition there was still a large amount of snow and ice around which made the surroundings pretty spectacular and because of the low temperature, perfectly produced ice crystals had formed themselves around much of the foliage making it seem like we’d accidently stumbled upon Narnia.
However despite the spectacular beauty that this ice and snow had created it did cause problems, especially for me, as the slippery surfaces meant that I lost my footing more times than I choose to remember. The most concerning times were those when I fell on an incline and started to slide, not being completely sure of when (or if) I was going to stop…
It was a fantastic experience nonetheless, complimented by the views from the hilltops overlooking the Hudson river which were nothing short of breathtaking.
We also found the ruins of a casino on one of the hilltops which struck me as a little weird.

Following on from my previous attempts to seem a little on the cultured side I went to see a production of As You Like It recently. Being directed by Sam Mendes I was expecting big things and fortunately I wasn’t disappointed – not being an expert on the aforementioned play (I’d read a couple of summaries the day before…) I couldn’t give any kind of authoritative opinion but the simple fact that I was kept entertained throughout was a good enough result for me.
I also found myself attending the Romeo and Juliet ballet recently. I was a little concerned that in doing so I would irrevocably be damaging my masculinity and almost felt it necessary to grow my beard, put on a deeper voice and carry a crate of beer around with me just to assert to the world that my masculinity was still intact. However it turned out that there were plenty of other men in attendance and in fact because of the fantastic Tchaikovsky score it was actually pretty good.

I’ve also been recently excited by the fact that my church is, as of tomorrow, starting a new church plant downtown. The boldness and determination of such a gospel-centred move really encouraged me. It can be very easy for me to be content with being settled in church and not wanting to be outward in my faith for fear of disrupting the status quo so the opportunity to be a part of this plant is a real blessing.

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.

My blog seems to have been a little inactive of late…to avoid an epically long post that would give War & Peace a run for its money I won’t try and fit in the last month and a half now, but will try and catch up over the next week…

A few weekends ago a group of us road-tripped (is this a word?) down to Philadelphia for the day. I’d heard mixed things about Philadelphia, basically coming down to the fact that the central historic part is entirely pleasant, but that if you head too far in certain directions you wouldn’t be coming back again…my experience was that the first part of this was true, and the second part…well, I don’t know because I didn’t have the balls to insist that we divert our tour into these ‘other parts’.
The parts of Philly I did see, however, were pretty sweet. The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall were pretty historic and thus enabled me to put my history nerd hat on for a bit. The city is also known for ‘Philadelphia cheese steak’ sandwiches which are pretty much explained in the title…I didn’t quite go for the true experience of having the preferred choice of ‘cheese’ as this ‘cheese’, called ‘cheese wizz’, came from a huge tin, and, I don’t think, had ever seen a cow in its life…
We also went to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art where, apparently, some parts of the Rocky films were filmed (being an uncultured baboon I have never seen any of the Rocky films). From what I’m told Rocky runs up and down these steps, so inevitably we did the same…I think I may have run a little too fast as near the top I tripped and nearly planted my face into prime Philadelphia concrete.
The most noticeable thing was that despite Philadelphia being the sixth most populous city in the US, it felt almost quiet and subdued compared to the raging metropolis of New York – this was in part due to the layout of the city, but even so it certainly made an impact.

I’ve also now celebrated my first American thanksgiving. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but truth be told it was genuinely a great experience. About fifteen of us got together at an apartment on the upper east side and basically talked, ate, drank, played games and watched the ageless and glorious ‘This is Spinal Tap’. It was, to quote the language of America, ‘awesome’. The fare was excellent – one of my friends served up a massively impressive turkey and this was accompanied by all sorts of joy – the most unique thing to thanksgiving was pureed sweet potato with marshmallows on top! It tasted good, but in my reserved British way it was quite a peculiar experience!
Thanksgiving also gave me an opportunity to reflect how fortunate I’ve been to find such a great group of people to socialise with – God is truly great!

One thing I’ve heard about New Yorkers is that they are the only people who get frustrated, rather than excited, when a film crew arrives in their city. I struggled to really believe this until a couple of Sundays ago when I was almost prevented from reaching the restaurant I was trying to get to by a (very bossy) film crew. Apparently they were filming something with Robert de Niro and Brad Pitt, although I didn’t see either of these two men. But anyway, I was walking along Union Square West, continually trying to cross the street when, at every opportunity, some gimpish crew member told me to stop. In the end I found a slightly less secure spot and politely ignored these said people, because otherwise I would never have had my lunch – which would have been a true travesty! Certainly this film crew were immensely irritating, but even so I did feel the sense of excitement of walking through a major film set. This was especially the case when, after lunch, I hung around a bit to see if I could see anything exciting, and saw the filming of a scene where a stuntman was deliberately hit by a taxi cab…

Talking of films, I received a forwarded email relatively recently asking if any British people would be interested in being an extra in the film ‘Wall Street 2’. It asked any interested individuals to send an email with basic info and a recent photo. After some thought I replied to the given address in this email, thinking that I might as well try, considering I had nothing to lose. Later, whilst at work, I noticed I had a voicemail on my phone and low and behold it was a casting agent from the above film asking if I would still be interested in said opportunity. I rang him back, and said I was; however I had to be available all day Wednesday of that week, which I couldn’t do – it was a little gutting, but I was still chuffed to have received an offer. The casting bloke offered me the consolation of ‘maybe next time’ when I told him I couldn’t make the day, so perhaps…

I’ll finish now, but before I do, I’ll highlight the article below which is defo worth a read: http://nymag.com/news/features/62374/

New York has its fair share of weirdoes and crazies and over the last few weeks I’ve somehow witnessed their activities more than normal…

Firstly I experienced the ranting and raving of a woman in one of the lifts/elevators in my office building when she became immensely agitated at another woman’s use of her mobile phone – although I’m not a particular fan of people having their phone conversations in enclosed public spaces it’s not something that I’d start shouting at someone about – clearly this woman didn’t share my opinions as she certainly made her views clear in rather dramatic fashion…

Secondly, on the subway, coming back from work this week, I very nearly witnessed a fight between two people struggling to fit into the same space in the subway carriage. I didn’t hear the beginning of the encounter but I gathered that the first man had made some comment about the second guy pushing into his space. Clearly this infuriated the second man as he flew into an absolute rage, shouting at the top of his voice about how he would knock his adversary to the floor if he dared to touch him. From looking around most of the other people in the carriage were bracing themselves to either quickly move away from, or attempt to intercept, the seemingly inevitable clash. Fortunately the first man seemingly became rather intimated and the encounter never became the battle it seemed to be heading toward. It was one of those slightly intimidating, yet rather exciting moments!

Another bizarre encounter also occurred on the subway whilst I was travelling downtown on an errand for work. I’d taken a seat next to a seemingly ordinary guy, but after a few seconds I realised that this man was having his own dramatically personal rave. This wasn’t just the subtle rave that some people have when they forget their public surroundings, but instead this was a head banging, thigh slapping, foot stomping, body rocking rave. I was slightly concerned that he might jump up at any moment and start dancing across the carriage, but he fortunately retained his seat, and instead gave me a few minutes of bizarre entertainment before I disembarked and left him to his own spectacular devices.

Finally, when I was walking around during my lunch break today I was waiting at a pedestrian crossing when, out of nowhere, and without any explanation, a man appeared, riding a unicycle, clothed in a head to foot pink lycra suit. He rode across and proceeded to grab onto the pole of a road-sign which he then started twirling around. Perhaps he was part of some stunt; although I couldn’t see any evidence that this could be the case...maybe then he was just doing it for the thrill of it…either way it made a fairly average lunch break a little more intriguing.

Moving away from crazy people I went to a particularly good bar last night. It was a fairly standard bar in terms of drinks etc, but what made it hit the high notes was the fact that with every pint you bought you got a free personal pizza…no joke. The pints weren’t that expensive either; $5, which is good/average for New York. Normally I’m happy to eat my way into oblivion but when, with every drink, you got given a decent size pizza, it became a bit of a battle, especially when I finished off a couple of my friends’ pizzas as well…I was slightly concerned that I wouldn’t fit back through the door. Admittedly they weren’t the best pizzas I’d ever had, but the fact that they were free instantly made them taste a thousand times better. I also heard from a friend that there’s a bar in Times Square that operates a similar system, but with hot dogs rather than pizza…a visit is inevitable.

Last Sunday I found myself watching some of the NYC marathon. Bizarrely enough the race went past my apartment building so it was fairly easy so watch the action progress. What wasn’t so great was the block of porta-loos that were dumped outside our building to aide the passing runners and spectators! But that aside it was good fun watching the race progress. Seeing the professionals go past was exciting but what was probably more enjoyable was watching the main race and seeing the random assortment of people try their best to keep going. A couple of highlights included a man juggling whilst running (whether he kept this going for the whole race is open to debate) and a man wearing what appeared to be a female swimming costume who was running whilst smoking a cigar – certainly an interesting combination…
I should also mention a concert I went to a while back with a band I’d only just heard of – the Avett Brothers. One of my friends mentioned how good they were, so after listening to their youtube offerings I decided to go head along and see whether the hype was justified. Basically they were spectacular. Their music was top quality, but what really made it was the absolute energy they dedicated to their performance – you couldn’t help but be taken in by the awesomeness of it all. For a band that I’d only known for a few days they really impressed.

The experience of life here is certainly good, but it is made so much greater through living it with Christ. The absolute and true satisfaction that comes through knowing Christ is far, far greater than anything man-made. There are times when the world attempts to deceive me and makes me think that in fact true joy and fulfilment can be found through the temptations of the world and, for a small time, I can be successfully taken in by these deceptions. However, every single time I am brought back to the overwhelming realisation that true life can only be found through knowing Christ. He gives me everything I need, and although I can sometimes struggle to remember this, the truth of this statement is in no doubt. In a city like New York there are so many things that promote enjoyment, and many of these are perfectly fine, but none can compare to the absolute and unbridled joy of knowing Christ.

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.