Winter ... and Spring ... And Winter Again

The weather here is crazy ... oscillating wildly between bitter cold and the feeling of spring.

Every winter, Columbia decks out the trees along 16th Street (the closed part in the campus) with lights. There are a lot of these kinds of installations around New York at Christmas, but Columbia leaves them on until ... well, they had just turned them off on Friday night, which is a sure sign that Spring is coming.

Climbing Comp

My climbing hasn't really gotten much better, but I have gone to a couple of competitions since the beginning of the year - they are a lot of fun (loads of people. loads of climbing) and not as competitive as it might sound. Here is a picture from today's competition at the Cliffsd of Valhalla in Westchester County, north of New York.

Daily Dose of Liberty

My daily commute is on the F-Train, which trundles between Coney Island and Queens. Close to where I live, it comes out of the ground for two stations as it curves through an industrial part of Brooklyn, across the Gowanus Canal, which is about as beautiful as the name evokes. There, between the buildings and the harbour cranes off in the distance is a smidgen of copper green: the Statue of Liberty. How is that for a boost to an early morning subway trip while slurping coffee out of a paper cup? Yeah, America! Take in my huddled mass!

Um.

To be frank, the coffee is what really does it.

Piece of Paper Behind Me

Today I went with a couple of other students to pick up my Masters diploma. "What's your name?" said the man behind the desk. He looked at my ID, punched it into the computer and zzzzzzt out came a fresh diploma into my hands.

Talk about an anticlimax! After all the work, I would have preferred someone to have hammered it out of stone in front of me.

Here is Sampada, with two her two diplomas (actually one of them is mine, but I think it half belongs to her anyway!)

Post Superbowl Pre Super Tuesday

Yesterday was the Superbowl ... I missed it again, and about the only part of it I heard was when fans of the New York Giants (actually based in New Jersey) went berserk when the team won.

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, when a lot of states across the US hold their primaries, caucuses of party political conventions. It's make or break time for presidential candidates. I haven't seen too much in the way of campaigning in New York - a couple of Obama supporters in front of the museum on Saturday night, or in front of the coop, and that's about it. But the election is a lively one and people are talking a lot about the differences of the candidates. On Thursday I sat with friends listening to the debate between Clinton and Obama; tomorrow I hope to go to a primary party.

S is for Security

Saturday night I used my new location to the fullest: rode across the Park to the Brooklyn Museum where I met up with Julia, a Canadian friend. The museum does monthly first-Saturday parties which are a lot of fun: nicely mixed crowd and nicely mixed high-brow (Rodin statues) and low-brow (Karaoke) - or should that be the other way around?

Afterwards I rode to Williamsburg, arguably the hip heart but definitely the hipster liver of Brooklyn. Takes about 30 minutes to get there on a bicycle, and that's fast by New York standards. Another friend - Hal - was celebrating his birthday there in a bar done up to look like a fake Hofbrauhaus. We had a good time there, sipping litre-pitches of draft beer. I got talking to the ex-girlfriend of a friend, and she had an interesting story to tell. She studied Marxist literature, and some time ago tried to get a guest lecturer from Italy into the US. His visa was refused, and because she had sponsored the request, she is now marked as a security threat. Each time she flies, her ticket is marked with an S which means she has to be there an hour ahead of other people and get searched thoroughly. It's a permanent mark against her name in some government database.

Brooklyn: How Sweet It Is

When you cross one of the bridges leading into Brooklyn, there are road signs in the normal US green and white motorway colours, but with unusual messages:
Brooklyn: How Sweet It Is or Brooklyn: Believe the Hype
on entering. Or on leaving
Leaving Brooklyn: Fuhgeddaboudit! and Leaving Brooklyn: Oi Vey!

Since the beginning of the month, I've joined the very long line of people who have come from all over the world to become a Brooklynite. Brooklyn is the most populous borough in New York, and the second largest (after Queens). Its got a strong identity within New York; when the boroughs merged to become the present city in 1898, Brooklyn was the only one in which there was fierce resistance. Some still lament the occasion as The Great Mistake of 1898.

I haven't seen too much of my new home-borough yet, but what I have seen I really like. I live here on the edge of Prospect Park, Brooklyn's equivalent of Central Park (and created by the same team, Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux). It takes about an hour by train to get to Columbia, but that is about the only negative thing about the move. Brooklyn's suburbs, here and elsewhere, consist of row after row of fine brownstone houses; it has a vibrant music industry and a lot of good cafes. Sometimes it reminds me of San Francisco. The hectic of Manhattan is far reduced here, and where I live, there is a strong neighbourhood feeling.

I am sharing a flat with three others: Jessica is a student teacher, Nathe a neurologist (actually a blogger and photographer who does neurology on the side) and Darla an architect.

Moving to Brooklyn, I got to drive over the Brooklyn Bridge.

I have painted my room and gotten some of the furniture I need; slowly the pile of boxes in the middle of my room is getting smaller and the visible carpet is getting bigger.

Swamp Things

Coming out of the Everglades, without showering for three days, my hands were blistered and felt like claws from the paddling, I was feverish and aching all over.

But man, did we have an amazing time!

I spent three nights in the mango swamps there with friends from New York, Stacey and Jason. We were in a canoe and a kayak, and did a round trip of about 50 miles, the first part of which was on the ocean and the second in the 'backwaters', the complex waterways inland. The first night was on the beach, alone, where we built a huge bonfire. On the second day, we were paddling towards Shark River to get into the backwaters when suddenly behind us, a huge dark fin rose out of the water. Yeah! I thought. A shark. I'd wanted to see one. It went under. Then it came back up again, a lot closer.
"Stace!" I yelled. "Maybe we should hug the shore more!"
As it turned out later, they were not sharks but dolphins. And we saw a lot: playing around us in groups, or fishing in pairs.

After the night on the beach, we had booked space on 'chickees', simple wooden platforms on posts in the water which provide a campsite (its impossible to get out in the dense mangrove swamps). The second day, after the 'shark' sighting, we misjudged our speed and were a way away from the chickee as the sun was setting. It was a tense but beautiful experience to be paddling as the sun was setting: crazy colours in the sky and suddenly flocks of pelicans and other birds filling the skies. We ended up in the almost complete dark (no moon, and cloudy skys) navigating our ways by the stars. Luck was on our side: the group already in the chickee had tiki torches we could see through the mangroves, and we found it from their light. It was about 8pm when we arrived.



Most of the expected swamp things stayed away: we saw only one real shark, one alligator (and he was the show alligator to the side of the park's main camp) and were attacked by mosquitoes and gnats but not eaten alive by them as we'd feared, so the 10 dollars I'd spent on th bee-keeping hat were wasted, apart from this great fashion shot by Stacey.

Beach Life, Miami Style

South Beach, Miami at 8pm on a Sunday night in a stylish townhouse and I'm surrounded by snoring people who have made it through 36 hours before succumbing to sleep. Today is my friend Jason's birthday; we began the celebration at midnight, went out dancing until about 5am and then went skinny dipping in the tepid Atlantic, at which point I came back to sleep but the others stayed to watch the sunrise with a bottle of champagne and ended up spending the day on the beach. The weather was difficult to ignore: although it is the middle of winter, it was a gorgeous day - just warm enough for swimming, but further pleasantly mild.

Before I arrived, almost all of my knowledge of Miami came from the 80's TV series Miami Vice. I haven't seen much of the city itself, but South Beach could have come straight out of the series: a mixture of pretty beaches with clear blue water, white and pastel art deco architecture, elegant cafes, endless tattoo parlors, houses straight out of the pages of architecture magazines and porn parlours - and that all on one city block. The streets are populated by an amicable mix of tourists, bikers, skateboarders, cubanos and muscle men. South Beach itself is on an elongated island reachable from the mainland by a series of bridges; like Manhattan, it feels like the distance from the mainland USA is much further than the lengths of those bridges.

Tomorrow, Jason and I are meeting Stacey and heading into the Everglades for a three day kayak tour

Two Thousand Grate

My resolution for 2008: do more blogging.

It has been a while since I had the chance to do a posting. My last academic semester was unbelievably hectic - and as it turns out - was not the last. I am staying on at Columbia, at least for another semester, to do research into database processes on modern multi-core architecture. This is a combination of an opportunity and me just being a sucker for punishment!

Christmas in Ireland: Mist, Rain, Showers, Wind and Dampness

Spent Christmas in Ireland with family and friends. My sister Val had rented a small cottage in county Kerry, in the south west of the country. My brother Peter flew over to join us, so there was a high concentration of family and lots of accompanying noise and chaos.

The countryside where we were staying was beautiful, but most of the time it was obscured by thick curtains of rain - it rained and rained and rained. Good for catching up on sleep, recovering from jet lag, talking, eating, drinking strong beer in pubs and watching television to all hours of the morning. We got out one day and made it part of the way around the Ring of Kerry to the island of Valencia, the rain intensified in the course of the day and on our return, new waterfalls and streams were thundering down the sides of the hills.

One of the stranger moments of the holiday was a drink in the small town of Killorglin, near to where we were staying. That the drink was not in a pub but in a tapas bar was a sign of how Ireland is becoming more cosmopolitan, even in small towns. But stranger still was the fact that the bar was in a converted church. When I asked about it, I was told that it didn't really matter, because it had been part of the (Protestant) Church of Ireland!

The picture is in Doneraile Park close to Mallow, where we spent the last day before my departure.

Tour de Bronx

Most people, when they hear the words "The Bronx" think of things like high-rise housing projects, crime and urban decay. I know that was something of the image that I had of it. It is the poorest buroughs in New York and one of the poorest areas in the US.

I'd only been to the Bronx twice before today; now, having cycled through it for a 40 mile 'Tour de Bronx' ride, I have a better idea of what it is like. And that is: high-rise housing projects, crime and urban decay *and* a lot of other things: sumptuous mansions overlooking the Hudson and the Jersey Pallisades, Lobster Restaurants and yacht life around City Island, stunning views and an old stone fort at the New York State University Maritime College, suburban living (with picket fences) in the neighbourhoods along Long Island Sound.

The event was free, chaotic and fun; it drew a mixed crowd which included me, Julia Henderson and Yinbel, the IHouse team. It was organized in part by Transportation Alternatives, an organization which pushes for fewer cars in New York. They have a long way to push.

New York (Still) Cares

Last year I painted hopscotch squares on a school yard in Queens; today I pasted category labels onto Harry Potter and Charlotte's Web books with other engineering students at a school with the great name of MS 394 K in the heart of Brooklyn. It was all part of the New York Cares day, was a lot of fun and had me itching to read some of those books.

This is our book-categorizing team, and the school librarian who had a sweet, lilting west-indian accent.

Newtown Creek

Another History of the City of New York tour took us to Newtown Creek, which is the heavily polluted stretch of water between the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, east of Manhattan. The tour was lead by Jack Eichenbaum, a retired Geologist who does tours of Queens. Here is a New York Times article on him.

The section of the walk in Brooklyn was in the Greenpoint neighbourhood, the polish enclave I have blogged about before. The entire waterfront here is fenced off, decaying industry which is really frustrating because of the beautiful views of Manhattan which the it hides. This is what the Empire State Building looks like from there:

Hiking Upstate, Driving Downtown

Long day in which the official driver of the hiking club's trip out to the High Point State Park in New Jersey (me) missed his alarm and awoke half an hour before the group was supposed to be picked up. A hectic taxi ride to midtown Manhattan and even more hectic drive back up to Columbia later, and I picked them up only 15 minutes late. Whew! I enjoyed the driving, and the hiking, through trees all turning red and gold on a beautiful autumn day, was great. This was the first hike on which we didn't see the Manhattan skyline off in the distance. This site of the hike was the highest point in New Jersey, which is about as exciting as the highest point in the Netherlands.

When returning the car in the evening, I had the experience of driving through downtown Manhattan in the middle of the day. The operative word here is pushy: everyone is, and if you aren't, you're lost.

The Gunks

It may sound like a disease, but the Gunks is not, in fact, something you have (and scratch like crazy) but a place you go to. Preferably with with plenty of climbing gear in beautiful autumn weather and some of the fine climbers from the Columbia Rock Climbing Club, which is the experience I had today.

The Gunks are in Minnewaska State Park in upstate New York, about two hours north of the city.
View Larger Map

They are are series of sheer, 20-30 meter high basalt cliffs which provide excellent, varied climbing. I have a lot of indoor experience, but this was only my third time to climb outside. It was a great experience, but at the end of the day, my hands were stiff and sore - they really had the Gunks.

Kayaking on the Hudson

Finally, finally, finally! On the Hudson today in a sea kayak at the invitation of Adelene, from my kayaking group at Columbia. We went up the Hudson in windy conditions with a group of others to the Mitsuwa Marketplace on the Jersey shore, pretty much opposite IHouse.

Misuwa is a fabulous Japenese complex which has a supermarket (cheap sushi, cheap saki and many other good things) and a food court, complete with the charming plastic example food they use to advertise menus all over Japan.

Stuffed, we returned down the Hudson by holding onto each other's canoes and just letting the current and wind take us back to the boathouse on 59th Street.

All-Night Bike Ride across New York

The History of the City of New York course is showing me things I would never otherwise see in the city. One of these is Times Square, at midnight ... on a bicycle with 200 others. All this was part of the famous All-Night Bike Ride, which sets of from Columbia's campus just before midnight, and goes across the length of Manhattan to Brooklyn and back. I was a volunteer mechanic, which had me pumping a lot of flat tires and adjusting seat heights throughout the night. I got back at about 5am in the morning. One of the more hair-raising parts of the trip was not Times Square, but 5th Avenue which was hectically busy even at 1am in the morning. The photo is of Washington Square, at the tail end of 5th Avenue.

Marek and Maike in New York

Marek and Maike (or M&M), two of my closest friends from Germany, came to visit me on a trip which was way too short for all of us. Here we are in the Rockerfeller Plaza (that is all the gray bits on the edge of the picture)

Back at Columbia: The Beginning of The End

After the warmth and friendliness of San Francisco, it felt strange to be back in New York. Big, loud, noisy and rude were all words which went through my head shortly after I arrived at JFK, late at night, and it took about a week for them to fade.

It was, however, great to come back to International House (tiny cell and all) and have a lot of people enthusiastic about seeing me again. I did try to move out of here this semester, but I couldn't find anything in the time that I was looking, so I am staying put in the tiny cell, and just enjoying the friendly atmosphere.

This is my last Semester at Columbia. It is a special semester because I only have to do 6 credits in it (unlike previous semesters in which I have had to do 12), so I have a lower workload and hopefully a bit more time to enjoy myself. After some difficulty in figuring out what I want to do, I have ended up taking Biometrics (automatically determining categories or identifying people or things) and Programming and Problem Solving, which is a fun course involving a lot of programming groupwork in a creative atmosphere. In addition, I am auditing (i.e. sitting in on) a course on (Environmental) Ethics Values and Justice given by Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, which looks at the ethical issues around environmentalism. I am also taking an amazing undergraduate course on the History of the City of New York which involves a lot of trips to interesting parts of the city. This will be the stuff of many blog posts to come.