Seems it’s a good weekend for farewelling. As you may recall when we moved in to our new apartment, we inherited a whole lot of food. Well, something else that we inherited was a bunch of stuff (belongings) from the previous tenant.

Now in her defence, she did ask us if it would be ok to “leave a box here” when she left, and I said something like, “one box? Well, that should be ok”. Ordinarily I may have been a bit hesitant, but we were getting quite desperate to get an apartment so I didn’t want a box of stuff ruining our chance of getting this place.

Anyway, when we moved in, we found out what “one box” really meant. Firstly, there was two boxes piled in the corner near the window. Then Kristy found another box cleverly hidden under the table. Finally when we opened the closet, we found that half of it was unavailable!

Think I’m exaggerating? Check this out – this is the first pile of her stuff, mainly what was in the closet:

(The garbage bags are full of clothes, linens, etc. – not garbage, thank goodness.) Here’s the second pile – this was what was creatively stacked around the apartment for us to find, and a bit more of the stuff from the closet:

The angle on that pile doesn’t really do it justice – suffice to say it stacks up to about the height of my waist.

I maintain that a single box of stuff wouldn’t have been a big deal for us to store for her, but given that this is only a small studio apartment – well, it’s quite ridiculous, really.

Anyway, the parents of the previous tenant (= our landlords) are coming round in a moment to collect all this stuff for their daughter. I’m not sure if they’re actually aware how much stuff there is, but now that they’re committed to take it, I’m committed to getting rid of it. I must admit, I hadn’t realised how much was there myself until we pulled it all out and stacked it up. Anyway, now that our stuff is stored properly instead of hers – well, it’s like the apartment is twice as big! Rockin!

Update: The stuff is gone, and to her credit, she was very nice about it all and very apologetic.

Tonight we took a leaf out of Team BaM’s book and tapped into some vegetarian Indian action at Vatan with Sibylle and Jurgen. Since Karl believes that the only thing worse than Indian food is vegetarian Indian food, he surprisingly decided against joining us.

I was a bit worried when we got there and we were greeted by a bloke in a dress. If he didn’t look like the Indian entry for the sumo wrestling medal then I perhaps would have asked, “hey buddy, what up with the dress?”, but since he must have had an easy 100 pounds over me, I decided to let it slide.

Of course it then turns out that old mate Dressy McDress was our waiter. He was friendly enough, or at least I think he was, because I honestly couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Not only did he speak in a whisper which was ironically quiet for a man of his stature, but he mumbled worse than a horse with a mouth full of peanut butter.

Anyway, the idea behind Vatan is that it’s all-you-can-eat, but instead of being a buffet, the food is actually served to you, and in three distinct courses no less. So out comes the first course, and Dressy mumbles his way through the description of each of our dishes, and of course for each one I just stare at him blankly and wonder how I’d look in a sumo suit, and how long I would last against him in the ring. I decided by the end of his speech that it would probably be about seven seconds.

The only thing that I quite clearly understood was when Dressy pointed at deep fried lump in the shape of a chili. “That’s a chili” he said, “and it can be hot at times”. At times? What the? Turns out that “hot at times” actually means “we’ve plucked that baby straight from the fires of hell. And drink all the mango lassi you want, the chili will just laugh at you, mockingly! Ha ha!”

By the time the main course was served, the fire in my mouth had somewhat subsided, but I was full from drinking all my mango lassi, so I couldn’t really do the meal justice. I sampled each of the mysterious bowls in front of me, but once again had no idea what I was actually eating thanks to another Oscar-winning mumbling from old Dressy. (Why does vegetarian food not actually look like food?) I know that one of the dishes had potato, and another one had spinach, and one had ginger, and that’s about it. The strange puffy things were delicious though!

I am confident that dessert was mango ice-cream. Hard to go wrong with that one, really.

In all seriousness the food was actually pretty good, but if I went back I’d be hopeful that I got a waiter that I could understand, and I’d also make sure I don’t eat for about three days beforehand. Still, at the very least, it was an experience – and the company was good!

Yesterday after gym (5km run in 25 minutes, woohoo!) I did my usual routine of a steam and a shower before leaving. When I came out of the shower and got back to my locker, I was thrown because there was no lock there. At first I thought I must have been in the wrong locker bay (they all look the same), but I double checked, and sure enough I was in the right spot.

When I opened the locker that I was sure was mine, all my clothes were hanging there, so then I was really confused. What happened to my padlock? There was another guy there – Bart (may not be his real name) – who noticed my hesitation and asked if everything was ok. After I explained to him that my lock seemed to be missing, he told me that a little earlier, there was another guy in the bay who had found a lock on the floor. Bart said that the other guy also complained that someone had mistakenly put a lock onto his locker.

It all seemed a bit strange, so I checked through my stuff and my heart-rate monitor, ipod, and wallet were all there. So I was happy that there must have been a mix up, and perhaps the guy that found my lock had handed it in.

Unfortunately though, about 15 minutes after I had left the gym I tried to call Kristy and realised that my phone was missing.

I’m not sure what really happened now. I’m certain that it wasn’t Bart – he was a gentle old soul. Kristy’s theory is that the guy who “found the lock on the floor” had actually cut my lock off the locker, and started going through my stuff. Perhaps when Bart walked into the bay, he interrupted the thief who then made up a story and walked out with my phone (which was in the pocket of my trackies).

The lucky thing for me is that all the stuff that’s actually worth stealing was kind-of buried under my sweaty gym gear, at the back of the locker. And also, the phone is on its last legs – it gets maybe 2 days of battery life, and the screen is practically unreadable. So of all the things to have stolen, I guess the phone is probably the least valuable – seriously, my Snow Patrol tour shirt would have been a better option. But still, it’s disconcerting.

I’ll head to work today via the gym and ask if it’s been handed in – I guess there’s a slim chance that I simply dropped it, but that doesn’t explain what happened to my lock. Either way, I’m pretty confident it won’t be there.

Update: Yep, as suspected, the phone is gone, and the gym staff were no help. In fact, they simply said, “you probably just left it somewhere”. I don’t think so.

Who’d have thought there’d be a Little Italy in the Bronx? Not me, that’s for sure! But Jurgen has these “explore New York” type of cards (different to the ones we have) which told us otherwise, so yesterday we headed out with him and Sibylle to see if it was true.

Turns out that it is true! Actually the tour turned out to only be about two streets long, which was lucky for me because unlike our Austrian friends, I wasn’t dressed entirely well for the bitter cold. (Though in my defense, stupid weather.com told me it was only -4C, but it was way colder than that!) Note for next time: wear thermals.

Anyway, it was a very quiet day in Little Italy, either because people wiser than I stayed out of the cold, or because it’s kind-of in the middle of nowhere. Still, Sibylle managed to make herself a friend by asking for directions to a particular restaurant from a guy on the street. Of course, he turned out to somehow be related to the family that ran the restaurant, and then he insisted on actually walking us inside and telling the maitre d’ to “take care of us”. I guess it could have gone two ways – either he was going to top us or feed us; thankfully it was the latter, and we enjoyed a killer (no pun intended) lunch of pasta, calamari, and antipasto.

Being an Italy of some calibre, there was a bundle of pasty shops which we felt we should browse through simply to support the locals. We even made some pity purchases to keep them in business – despite the fact it would be sending us to the gym afterwards to work off the calories! How selfless we all are…

Overall, we were a bit disappointed that the shop which sells the fresh rabbit wasn’t trading yesterday, and that the place with the home-made pasta closes early on a Sunday. So we may have to head back if we ever want to cook that fresh rabbit pasta that we’ve been craving, but otherwise I think we can successfully cross “Little Italy in the Bronx” off the list (after first adding it to the list, that is).

In case you think New York is all glam all the time, I’m here to prove you wrong. Like I said yesterday, when a big dump of snow falls, it’s nice for a few minutes, but after it stops and cars start driving through it…

This is on the corner just near work. As you can see, that snow ain’t so white anymore, and you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s slippery too. And given how cold it is, you don’t want to be slipping over in that. Crossing the road and walking through that mess on both sides is not the most enjoyable thing about living here!

Oh, and you’ll also notice the big pile of rubbish in the front-right of the frame. New York’s rubbish collection cycle involves tossing all your garbage out in bags on the side of the road, and then blokes come along and chuck it into the back of massive vans while you’re at work. It ain’t pretty, but it works. Still, I don’t understand why the recyclables get put into plastic bags, to me that seems to defeat the purpose!

And suffice to say, when it snows you really don’t want to be the owner of a car! Karl and I were remarking today that all the snow and salt (which is used to melt the snow) can’t be good for your paintwork. Then again, I guess people in the city just don’t care!

For the last few days, the weather people have been threatening all kinds of unsightly conditions. Well, sure enough it snowed last night, and outside of the city, it was pretty heavy!

But unfortunately for those of us that were hoping for a snow day, the emergency staff info site had nothing but bad news “There are currently no emergency bulletins”. So off to work I had to trolley, which through the snow is actually quite awful. Sure, snow is lovely when it’s all white and fluffy and falling peacefully from the sky, and it’s even better when you’re at a mountain somewhere and skiing on it. But when it’s piled up along the footpath and melting in the gutter (usually where you’re trying to cross the street) – well, it ain’t so pretty then. Plus, everything becomes uber-slippery, so walking anywhere takes forever.

Anyway, it turns out I’m not the only one whose commute was so badly affected by the weather. We got a message sent round at work saying we could all go home at 3PM in order to try and beat the “worsening conditions”. Sadly for me, I don’t check my messages very often, but my boss was nice enough to come round and tell me at 3:30PM, so I finished fixing the page I was working on and left at 4. (No such luck for Kristy; she’s on night shift this week, so as I was finishing at 4PM, her day was only starting!)

Rather than waste our afternoon away, Karl and I headed back to Sibylle and Jurgen’s place for a round of Settlers, which Jurgen won quite convincingly (by at least 2 points, and 4 more than me). For dinner, we bravely hiked over to the other side of town to eat at Karl’s local Thai restaurant – Tiny Thai. I had the red curry, which was good but not as nice as the green.

Yep, we’re livin’ on the edge. You gotta love a bitter cold winter!

Some days are harder to get out of bed than others, but when it’s a Monday, you’ve got to keep reminding yourself that you don’t have a choice – it’s a work day. So you get up, jump online for the daily blog run, and check the weather while you’re there…

And that’s when you decide that you would have been better off just staying in bed!

We have almost finished moving all our stuff into our new apartment. Who’d have thought there’d be so much of it?! The things that are left at the old apartment now are mainly things to throw away or donate.

Continue reading →

Well, not really, but that’s certainly what you’d think if you walked into our old apartment now.

Then again, I guess it’s strange that the only things that the would-be thief left include the Xbox 360, a laptop, and the TV! (Then again, the TV is so freakin’ heavy, it wouldn’t surprise me if they just gave up!)

Of course, the real reason for our empty apartment is that we sold all our furniture on Tuesday (since we’ve moved into a furnished place). It was a very sad day to be honest; that furniture had served us well for two years. I can barely count the number of guests that we had sleep on our couch (actually that’s not true, it was thirty).

All that’s left now is the desk, which nobody wanted (what do people have against desks?). To be honest, I have no idea what we’re going to do with it.

*sigh*. Moving bites. Oh well – onwards and upwards, right?

It seems as though the number 51 will become more significant to us in the next few weeks. Why? Well, that’s (pretty much) the street corner that our new apartment is on! Yes folks, we’ve found a new place to call home!

The apartment is actually studio which is a bit of a bummer, but it’s very cosy and has a real vibe to it, so that’s a plus. And even though it’s small, it has everything that we need – bathroom, kitchen (bigger than our current one, and with a microwave!), desk, and dining table. Even better, not only is the rent cheaper by $150/mo, but it includes all bills (electricity, cable tv, and internet) so that’s another $200 or that we save. And best of all – there is a washer/dryer IN the unit, so no more paying $2.50 for a load of washing or drying!

Anyway, on the downside – as mentioned above, it’s somewhat smaller than our current place. And, being a studio, having guests stay over would be like hosting a big pyjama party, so perhaps we’ll be avoiding that for now (sorry!). It’s also a little shy on storage space, but I guess that will encourage us to downsize. Really, the only major problem is that there’s no doorman, which means there’s no-one to sign for the plethora of packages that we like to get in the mail! Don’t tell me I have to actually go to the shops to buy stuff?!

But anyway, overall I think it will be a really fun little place to live in. And worse comes to worst, it’s only a two month lease (then month by month after that) – so we could always just move again.

Oh – and the second reason 51 will become more significant to us in the next few weeks? That’s the number of stairs that we have to walk up to get to the front door! Yowsers!