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January 31, 2006

Breaking news in Harlem

There's some shit going down in Harlem. A police helicopter with a giant spotlight is flying over the house in circles. Last time this happened, it was 3AM and a guy was murdered 10 blocks away as I was coming home from the bars. Thank goodness I called a car service that night!

Posted by adrianjo at 08:36 PM

January 28, 2006

How to save $2.10 through a special TV offer

The infomercial for PetVac claims that "PetVac normally sells for $49.95, but through this special TV offer, you can get your PetVac for just $29.95."

The small print is that shipping costs $17.90. Add it up and your PetVac costs $47.85. That's a really special offer if PetVac normally costs $49.95.

Posted by adrianjo at 11:30 AM

January 26, 2006

Leave your euphamisms at the door

Maintaining gender balance is important for New York's trendy clubs. Ideally, my guess is that the right balance is 60% female/40% male. This way, the women aren't constantly getting hit on by sketchy guys, and the guys don't feel like they're at a "sausage fest." If one wants to hang out with a bunch of slimy dudes (and worry about getting their wallet stolen), they can go to Crobar.

Marquee, for one, was known as one of New York's most exclusive clubs. A while back I turned up with a girl and got right in for a $40 cover, with the camouflague-clad bouncer pretending to find our names on the guestlist. The place was quiet. I was looking forward to seeing Alexander, who turned up a little while later with 8 guys from the firm. He was told they'd have to pay $1000 to get in.

The desire for this magical 60/40 gender balance has given rise to a number of euphamisms. One promoter says, "arrive with a nice crowd." Since the dress code is also specified, "nice crowd" must mean to bring "cute girls." Another promoter is a bit more direct: "arrive with an even balance." Today I got an 'invitation' to a party at Duvet on Friday night with the following:

Groups of Guys not permitted

Score points to Duvet's promoters for being straightforward.

Meanwhile, here is a good blog written by a New York bouncer.

Posted by adrianjo at 12:08 PM

January 24, 2006

How not to get my business

A few years ago, I canceled my United Airlines credit card, issued by First USA. They refused to waive a late fee of $29, so I told them I would cancel my card. I did, and they've since lost at least $150 in annual fees, plus the interchange fees they would have gained.

They still solicit me to take their card again--this time as their successor, Chase Manhattan. After getting two solicitations in three days, I finally called to have my name be taken off their list. And guess what--they send me to an Indian call center. Whenever I get sent to an Indian call center--and it's obvious when it happens--I know that the company really doesn't care about me. Why would they send me to an Indian call center before I even sign-up for the card? At least they're being straightforward about what they think of me.

Posted by adrianjo at 10:56 PM

January 23, 2006

If a boy wears a dress...

It's not easy to go on national TV, especially when the host is pressuring you. At least this was my experience on News Hour with Jim Lehrer last year.

Yet some people desperate for their 15 minutes decide to do stupid things, and then people get upset. If a man sings like a girl or dresses like a girl, he ought to expect to be laughed at. The people doing the laughing are perfectly normal. One can sing in a normal male voice. He also has a choice of what he wears, and if certain clothes cause him ridicule, he can wear "normal" clothes. That's what makes this story so laughable:

[American Idol] elicited a response from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD) after judges Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson made what the gay rights group deemed questionable comments on last week’s premiere episode.

On Tuesday’s show... Cowell told one male contestant to “wear a dress,” and Jackson asked another, “are you a girl?”

“The real offense here was in the producer’s decision to add insult to injury by turning a contestant’s gender expression into the butt of a joke,” said Damon Ramine, a spokesman for GLAAD, in a statement posted on the group’s Web site.

Gender expression? Gays would get more acceptance if they stopped trying to shock mainstream red-blooded America at every turn. What's even worse is that transvestites are not necessarily gay--many are perfectly straight men who get a rise--so why does a gay group feel the need to "defend" them?

Posted by adrianjo at 09:42 PM

January 21, 2006

Throwing half of it away

From time to time, I get random emails from people asking how I find the funding for my various traveling. Thanks to the internet, it's now possible to travel just about anywhere on a tight budget. Somewhere, someone is offering a bargain.

Getting bargains in off-season is like shooting fish in a barrel. For example, the air portion of our Europe trip last week was $278 round trip, New York to London. I'm paying airfare of $340 to go to Paris in March. Neither of these deals is hard to find; just check American Airlines's website. One could do a week in Europe in January for less than $1000 per person without resorting to staying in student accomodation or hostels.

I was watching Jeopardy tonight and saw an ad for Perillo Tours with an "amazing offer." Their constituency is, apparently, wealthy old folks. So I checked the price of their 14-day bus tour through Rome. In the shoulder season, an October departure from Albany, Perillo will charge you $9546 per couple. That doesn't include lunch or dinner.

How overpriced is this? Well, the air portion is $804 per person on travelocity. That leaves $7938 for the land portion. A cheap motorcoach tour with guide costs $40/person/day to run. Even though Italian hotels are notoriously overpriced, with the tour guides' deals, a hotel costs no more than $200/room with breakfast. That leaves $4300 of tour operator profit on a $9546 tour. Add in the kickbacks tour operators get from restaurants and souvenir shop operators, and this tour is half profit for Perillo.

In other words, for the convenience of having someone book your hotels, airport taxi, and busses, you pay $4300 more than you would pay by organizing the trip on your own. Alternatively, a tour that costs you $9546 costs the tour operator perhaps $4800.

Perhaps this is why people think that travel is prohibitively expensive. When you throw away half your money to a tour operator, traveling gets very expensive very quickly. Some "amazing offer."

Posted by adrianjo at 07:33 PM

January 20, 2006

Ideas to live by

I'm feeling philosophical today...

Posted by adrianjo at 09:01 PM

January 19, 2006

In my spambox

An outfit called "Online Educatoin Enrollment" has offered me a master's degree in two weeks. Thanks, but if you can't spell "education" correctly, I don't think I'm interested.

Posted by adrianjo at 01:52 PM

January 17, 2006

Report on Euro 2006

NEW YORK CITY – Tiffany and I returned home from Ireland yesterday. Getting here involved about 20 hours of travel, starting at 9:30AM on Ireland’s west coast. From there, we drove the entire width of Ireland to Dublin, where we caught a flight to Heathrow and connected to New York. At the equivalent of 5:30AM Irish time, a car dropped me off back in Harlem.

It was only my second time in Europe in winter, and January proved an excellent time to visit Europe’s more popular attractions. Amsterdam’s canals had an icy shimmer, while a cold wind blew off the North Sea into the nearly-deserted Gothic city of Brugge, and Kensington Palace was absorbed in all of the formality, dampness, and grayness that must have driven Di crazy.

Ireland was still somehow green, excepting the part near Galway that reminded me of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula. We’ll be the last to argue against the “Emerald Isle” designation. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I hired a car at Dublin airport, gave Tiffany a road atlas, and set a course (on the left-hand-side of the road) to circle the northern half of Ireland in four days. Tiffany didn’t know what she was getting herself into, as on several occasions she came within a few feet of stone walls, hedge rows, and parked lorries as we zipped down winding country roads near the speed limit of 100 kph (62 mph). More on that later.

LONDON was its typical self – chilly, a bit foggy, and bloody expensive. The Tube fare has been hiked to £3, or $5.29 per ride, compared to $2 in New York. We stayed in Notting Hill, a less touristy section of old Victorian houses dating to around 1850. Franklin (Columbia ’06) advised on a hotel near Portobello Road, a major antiques centre. Tiffany even found an old pink sign inscribed with “princess sleeps here,” though prices were so outrageous that only the Japanese were buying anything.


Tract housing in Notting Hill

We ventured to the City to visit the Tower of London, where my mother fainted on her honeymoon upon hearing how various famous prisoners were executed there. The Tower dates to the Norman Conquest of 1066 and is guarded by Yeoman Warders (“Beefeaters”), and order founded in 1485 as Henry VII’s bodyguards but today are former military officers who give tours of the Tower. The only way to get your £11 worth is to join a Beefeater for a tour as he tells of various executions, body disposals, torture, and other gory details of Britain’s past. (A sign, however, proclaims that “torture was rare in Britain.” Sure.)


Tower Bridge: not falling down

BRUSSEL. From London, we took the train through the 31-mile tunnel under the Straits of Dover to Belgium, where I lived for seven months in 2004. We caught up with Alexander and Jens for some Flemish food and drinks. Brussels is one of the only cities in the world where most of the educated people are trilingual, which leads to situations where one can address someone in French and receive a reply in a different language, such as Flemish (a dialect of Dutch spoken in Flanders). Alexander found us a Flemish restaurant and was very excited to be greeted in Flemish rather than French. The three guys ordered the deer, which led Tiffany to dub us the “Three Musketeers.” (The next night, we found a Spanish tapas place where the waitress seemed content to speak Spanish rather than either French, Flemish, or English.)



Tiffany with the 3 Musketeers



What did I airbrush out here?

I remember having a conversation with a client in Paris in May 2004 where I said how pleased I was to be working in Paris. The client, a young former marketing manager at L’Oreal, pointed to a café across the street. “Paris never changes; there’s nothing new,” he said. “That café looks the same today as it did forty years ago, and it will look the same in 40 years. Is that really where you’d want to live?” Brussels is similar; almost nothing had changed in a year, except for the Senegalese immigrant who set up a handy new PCO (cheap overseas call office) in Brussel Centraal station. Although I could see myself living in Brussels, economic trends are not favoring Old Europe. Trends are my friends.

******

In 1501, the first Portuguese ship laden with pepper and cinnamon docked at Antwerpen, signaling the beginning of the end for Brugge, which had become one of the medieval period’s most important trading centres, boasting a population twice London’s. Brugge’s canal, its lifeline to the sea, began to silt-up. By the mid-1500s, one of Europe’s largest cities was abandoned. Not until the late 1800s did Brugge awaken, this time as a tourist centre. Some two million tourists a year cram into the city. Located in central Flanders, it is one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval cities, with most buildings in Gothic style dating to 1300 to 1550. Fortunately, in winter, Brugge is reclaimed from the tourists by the Flemish, making an ideal time to come and contemplate the reflections in the canals.



Ferdinand Khnopff would be happy

Just as Antwerpen put the kibosh on Brugge, so would Amsterdam put an end to the wealth of Antwerpen. The final straw was the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, when the United Provinces (later the Nederlands) closed the river leading to Antwerpen, leading to a boom in Amsterdam.

AMSTERDAM - We followed the historical trend, traveling from Brugge to Antwerpen to Amsterdam. Tiffany was especially taken by the multitude of canals in Amsterdam, most of which are lined with Dutch Renaissance houses from the 1600s boasting high gables and glassy exteriors. It’s particularly interesting to follow the patterns of medieval and renaissance art and architecture through Brugge (pre-1550) to Antwerpen (roughly 1400 to 1650) to Amsterdam (1600s).

We particularly enjoyed the Dutch versions of Bob Evans, small cafes in canal houses serving well-presented breakfasts all day for around $6/person. I even managed to get Tiffany to check-out the Red Light District, where bored bawds sit in their skivvies waiting for horny guys to come knocking on their red-light-lined windows. Surprisingly, we got no offers of cocaine, though the hotel provided a convenient wallet card with advice on smoking marihuana. Featuring a smiling roll of bud, the card advises, “Using HASH or WEED can make you happy and relaxed, but there are also risks.” Among the risks: “Hash + Magic Mushrooms can lead to very nasty trips.” Just what we were hoping for. [read more] We joined Rune, from the firm’s Amsterdam office, for drinks, where we all sighed when Tiffany remarked that it’s a shame that a beautiful city like Amsterdam is known best for its whores and weed.

IRELAND – Tiffany wasn’t thrilled to be climbing into the passenger’s seat of our Seat Cordoba (basically a Spanish version of the Volkswagen Golf). It turned out that driving on the left was the least of our concerns, as most Irish highways are unmarked, narrow horse-and-buggy routes loaded with S-curves and lined with tall hedge rows or stone walls. The speed limit is 62 mph, though the general rule seems to be to go as fast as you can, which is rarely 62 mph. As we set-off up the M3 to get dinner in Kells, County Meath, I was tired and thirsty, and about ready to throw in the towel when we stopped in Kells at a service station to ask directions to the restaurant, which we then noticed was across the street. A bit of Irish mash, mushroom soup, and chicken got us to Cabra Castle, County Cavan, where Tiffany fulfilled a lifelong dream of spending the night in a castle.

The next morning, we proceeded up to Belfast, Northern Ireland, which was the center of Protestant-Catholic fighting until the 1994 ceasefire. Nowadays, one would hardly know that Belfast was a terrorist center, save a few billboards and murals. There’s no border control between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland; the only way to know is that the Gaelic street signs give way to English-only signs, and one passes a military installation.

Belfast is a pretty but expensive town that look straight out of the late 1800s, the city’s Golden Age. Two giant yellow shipbuilding arms loom over the Harland & Wolff shipyard, which built a Royal Mail Steamer named Titanic in 1910. It must have been stunning to see such a large ship rise over the city of Belfast, and a drive by the shipyard today confirms just how large the project was. [more on H&W and the RMS Titanic]

We couldn’t stay long, though, as we were racing the sun to get to the northern tip of Ireland to see Giant’s Causeway. We spent a few minutes, however, at Ballycastle to take this picture of the cliffs:


Ballycastle, Ireland: windy


At Ireland’s far northern tip, Giant’s Causeway is a unique series of hexagonal basalt columns. Although they formed as a result of a volcanic process, the Irish have a more interesting explanation:

In one legend, [Finn McCool] is the creator of the Giant's Causeway, a peculiar series of volcanic rock formations on the coast of Ireland. One day, Finn grows angry when he hears that a Scottish giant is mocking his fighting ability. He throws a rock across the Irish Sea to Scotland; the rock includes a challenge to the giant.

The Scottish giant quickly throws a message in a rock back to Finn, stating he can't take up the challenge because he can't swim to reach Ireland.

Finn doesn't let the Scottish giant off so easily. He tears down great pieces of volcanic rock that lay near the coast and stands the pieces upright, making them into pillars that form a causeway that stretches from Ireland to Scotland. The giant now has to accept the challenge. He comes to Finn's house. Finn, masquerading as a 18-foot baby, bites the Scottish giant's hand and then chases him back to Scotland, flinging huge lumps of earth after him. One of the large holes he creates fills with water and becomes Lough Neagh, the largest lake in Ireland. One large lump of earth misses the giant and falls into the Irish Sea; this lump is now known as the Isle of Man. [source]


Giant's Causeway: windy

From Giant’s Causeway, we took dinner in a pub in Derry, one of Ireland’s larger cities. Like every town in Ireland, it claims to be a “historic town,” complete with a series of city walls. We found the city boring and overrated and quickly moved on to our overnight lodgings, a country house in County Donegal that dates to 1695. We walked in without our bags and were asked if we had a reservation. We said we did and were promptly seated in the dining room and presented dinner menus. Eventually I explained that our reservation was for the hotel and not the restaurant, though they let me keep the glass of wine.


The Drawing Room at Castle Grove, where one puts on his drawers

The next day, we drove all day, including several diversions. A half-hour south of Sligo, we found some Stone Age burial mounds. Getting there involves taking a series of roads, each narrower than the last, until finally one is on a gravel road leading up to a gate saying, “Please Close the Gate Behind You.” Suddenly the nearby “Rest Home for Donkeys” looks like an appealing place to visit. One enters the gate and drives in first gear about a mile up a muddy, rock-strewn, one-lane path that would challenge even a Land Cruiser. It was nearly impossible for our mini-sedan (and violated the car-hire agreement), but thanks to Tiffany’s surprising skills in off-road navigation, we made it to the top, where the wind was fierce, but there were 270-degree views for miles around. There were also several Stone Age burial mounds, which contained large chambers, presumably for burying the dead. You can judge the size of the mound by comparing them to Tiffany's height; she is standing at the left.


We did't spy any Stone Age bones in these tombs; the Bone Age was yet to come

Late in the evening, we reached the former ancestral home of the Guinness family, perhaps the most famous family in Ireland (see: Guinness Beer; World Records, Book of). Ashford Castle, first built in 1228 and later added to several times, was converted to a hotel in 1939 and has hosted such visitors as Pierce Brosnan (married there), Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, and even Jerry Springer. It was really one of the most amazing hotels, including several public rooms that, were this a museum, would be guarded with sensors and velvet ropes.


Tiffany's princess complex got quite a workout here

This has become a really long post, so that’s it for now. Here’s a final picture that I quite enjoyed, taken at a harbor near Galway.


Who opened the drain?

Posted by adrianjo at 04:33 PM

January 15, 2006

Yes, I'm still alive

ASHFORD, IRELAND - I know I should have been better about live-blogging my visit in Ireland and the rest of Europe, but frankly Tiffany and I have been having too much fun. I'll be posting pictures a few days after we get back, which is (sadly) tomorrow night. I managed to sneak away tonight to come down and use the wireless in the Castle's ballroom, a magnificent room with a giant chandelier, 30 foot cielings, a fire, gothic oak carvings, and baroque oil portraits. It's quite a wonderful setting, and we have been lucky to get low-season prices and high-season weather--two clear days in a row in Ireland! And, knock on wood, I have so far been incident-free while driving on the left. We have circumnavigated Ireland from Dublin north to Belfast, east to Letterkenny, and south to Galway, and tomorrow we finish by driving straight across Ireland to Dublin. The pics are sweet, I promise, and I look forward to seeing everyone back in New York!

Posted by adrianjo at 03:26 PM

January 12, 2006

Update from Europe

AMSTERDAM, NEDERLANDS - I am in Amsterdam watching the BBC this morning, a house-hunting show. Tiffany is beating me in the old game of "get your bags packed, we're going to Ireland." Internet access here has been surprisingly expensive--as much as $60 per day for wireless at the hotel we stayed in Brussels. That means fewer blog entries, because no way am I paying 60 bananas to use my laptop on the hotel's wireless when the Senegalese guy with an internet cafe across the street costs $2.40/hr on his computers.

We've had a jolly time, and here's a shout-out to Alex, Jens, and Rune, whom we've met up with along the way. I'll post pics when we return.

Posted by adrianjo at 04:34 AM

January 05, 2006

Need weed, need weed

A City Councilwoman in Baltimore is proposting to close bodegas that are havens for illegal drug activity, reports Convenience Store News:

In an effort to reduce drug dealing around corner convenience stores in residential neighborhoods, a city councilwoman is pushing for legislation that would give police the authority to temporarily close such businesses.

Illegal drugs? At bodegas? It couldn't possibly be! If they did this in New York City, I would immediately suggest they close the 123rd & Malcolm X bodega, where weed is smoked openly and a guy sometimes walks in circles muttering "need weed, need weed."

Posted by adrianjo at 03:33 PM

January 04, 2006

Leaving on a jet plane (back 17 Jan)

Tiffany and I leave on Jan 5 for London, Amsterdam, Bruxelles, and Ireland. I'll try to live-blog as much as possible and will post pics when we return. We're looking forward to seeing Alexander, Jens, Francois, the rest of my colleagues in the Bruxelles office, maybe even a few former clients, Rune, and whomever else we encounter.

I'm very much looking forward to the Irish leg, since I haven't spent much time there. (The first time I went to Ireland, I decided to go to Ireland two hours before getting on a plane and leaving... long story.) We're doing a tour across the northern half of the island, including two nights in the Guiness family castle, where Pierce Brosnan was married.

Posted by adrianjo at 11:56 PM

January 03, 2006

Who you callin' average?

Nelly says in the lyrics of "Drive" that he prefers "36-25-34" women. Why such a small bust, Nelly? A scan of 6300 women in September 2003 found that the average measurements are as follows:

Bust 40.7”
Waist 34.3”
Hips 43”
Weight 155.6 lb.
Height 5’ 3.9”

I don't know about Nelly's reaction, but my reaction to the survey is that I need to apologize to all the 5'4" and 5'5" women I've made fun of for being "short," including Tiffany. (That said, I still classify anyone under 5'10" as short, and Yao Ming probably thinks I'm short.)

[via]

Posted by adrianjo at 11:43 AM

January 02, 2006

You know you're from New York City when...

Posted by adrianjo at 01:06 PM

January 01, 2006

The Joy of 06

At about 3PM on New Year's Eve, one million people start arriving at Times Square, where they stand in pens until midnight as they are pelted with snow, rain, and sleet. Meanwhile they can't so much as take a leak without losing their place in the pen.

Faced with the choices of standing in the cold for 9 hours, a $150/person party at a club, or going to the office to watch and drink BYOB, I went to the office. About 100 others did the same. The office is across the street from the ball at the same height, so the ball falls right in front of the windows.

The ball is actually a lot smaller in real life than it seems on TV. Frankly I don't think that the people standing back at 55th St could see it at all. The TV also doesn't pick-up the effect of ball's crystal festoons, which give the ball the shimmer of a giant Faberge egg.

(Click pictures to enlarge.)

This photo shows how small the ball really is.

We had a hard time seeing how far the crowd stretched up 7th Ave, but it appeared from the flashbulbs that they may well have gone all the way to Central Park South, which would provide a great view of the Central Park Fireworks. The cops--perhaps 15 of them at every intersection--were surprisingly friendly, and we had very little trouble getting into the office. We didn't even see any checkpoints for weapons or alcohol.

In the picture below, the main stage (with Mariah Carey) is very bottom/center. The ABC studios, where 20/20 is filmed, are very bottom/right. The MTV studios, where TRL is filmed, are a block up 7th on the left (not visible).

If Tiff ever gets an audition to be a newscaster, I suggest she include this in her portfolio:

More than one ton of confetti was thrown off the rooftops at 11PM and midnight.

The confetti was big enough to show up in the camera:

When we noticed the ball was on its way down, starting 60 seconds before midnight, you can guess what happened. As the ball reached its base and the big "2006" was lit, fireworks from the rooftop across the street went off, with some shells hitting the Conde Nast Building around the 35th floor. Fireworks are best seen up-close!

Our first picture of the new year:

Building occupants are instructed to stay in the building until the crowd thins out, but that wasn't long. It's amazing how fast a million cold, shivering, tired people can disperse after the New Year's kiss.

As you might notice in the background, there was a lot of staring when we took this picture. Maybe it was because Tiffany was in a white half-length dress and me in a suit. Maybe it was because I appeared to be taking a picture of a random girl; maybe they confused her for a more-famous actress. Maybe it was because I was happy-warm-tipsy and the crowd cold-sober. Maybe it was just because Tiffany had put on her walking shoes rather than the stilettos. But I think that the most likely reason of all, is that... OK, I don't know why. I just wanted to quote the narrator of the Grinch.

May 2006 be the best year yet.

Posted by adrianjo at 02:46 PM