Day 1 - Coming To America

OK so it was an early start with the alarm going off at 4.30am but such is life when you are on an early flight from Heathrow and you live nearer to Gatwick! Still journey to the airport went smoothly as did the check in etc. The same couldn't be said of the chap next to me who was being told he couldn't take his birthday present from his mum in his hand luggage. It was a saw. Oddly, rather than put it in his suitcase he told them to bin it!!! No idea why, it wouldn't have taken a couple of seconds and he was there much longer messing around the way he did.

This leads me onto possibly one of the oddest thing I can remember happening on a flight. Two people who had checked in 'were not willing to comply with the security arrangements and had decided not to fly. No other explanation offered so just left wondering what could have caused such a decision.
Rest of flight was uneventful, so that just left the dreaded immigration process. In relation to what everyone else has said I was expecting to be waiting ages to be served and in reality I was done and out of the area ready to go to get the subway within 30mins. I have no idea what others say to these guys but it clearly isn't the right thing.

So I'm now officially in America! I get to the hotel a bit early and have to go for a walk. With Central Park on my doorstep its the obvious choice. The colours are wonderful with so many different trees that the autumn leaf colour change give a wonderful spectrum. Hopefully some of the photos will bring this out.

Time has now passed and I'm ready to check-in. I'm moved to a single bed room, which is fine as it saves a bit of money. Unfortunately the keycard won't work. Actually that's not strictly true. It's not the keycard, it's the actual lock as several keycards won't work. It's a room change but that's fine. The room is small but functional. The view is of roof tops and other skyscrapers, but both of them are fine as I'm only sleeping and leaving my bags there.

I don't now if New Yorkers realise the type of place they live in. It's easy to spot the tourists as (like me) they are all looking up as they walk. New Yorkers don't do that, and I suspect it is because they have seen them all before. I think it's ashame because the sense of awe is great for a first timer and it would be great if that could be kept.

By this time I'm starting to get a little hungry. I don't want to eat much as I've eaten twice on the plane. So there's only one small nibble I can have. It's a Hershey bar. So a bit of a restock on energy and I'm off again.

My original thoughts when looking at the subway maps was that I was never going to be able to follow it. In reality it's fairly easy, esp if you've been on the London tube. The trick to it is knowing if you are heading up and down town, or towards Queens or Manhattan, and then knowing the street/avenue intersection that you need to get off at. The express trains have been very useful for where I am for quickly getting into the hub of town.

Now New York is a city of surprises. As I come out of the subway rather than be greeted by a skyscraper infront of me is a pleasant looking church. It makes a refreshing change. Truth be told New York has loads of them, all with wonderful architecture. They are just a little bit smaller than, well just about every other building, even if some of them are big for a church.

So I'm off on a shopping hunt, or rather a shop hunt. Bloomingdales! I was wondering if I was going to miss it. No fear of that given the season. There in the distance is a building with lights streaming down it's front. Though this won't help me get any freebies, I wasn't very impressed with the shop itself. Just didn't really have anything that appealed to me. Next stop Macys.

What a difference! Both in terms of goods on offer and price. Much more like it and much less strain on the wallet. The other stunning thing is the Christmas windows. Mini rollercoasters, the lot! So its time for a bit of shopping.

Purchases made, it's closing in on 9pm and I've been on the go for about 22 hours after about 6 hours of sleep the night before. Unsurprisingly I'm starting to flag. So it's back to base to get some sleep and hope that by keeping going till a decent time to turn in for the day I won't suffer too much from jetlag. Night.

American Blog

Right, I'm going to publish my New York travel blog over the next few days.

While I know the trip is now over, I'll only post one days worth of blog each day so that it's all in the right order (and to give a little bit of excitement as to what will happen next!).

So here we go with day 1

Holiday Blues

OK, so why is it, just as I'm about to go away on holiday I start to feel ill.

It's not that it's a one off, but something that seems to happen far to regularly.

So now I'm sitting here, due to go away in a few hours and I feel like anything but that. In fact all I feel like doing is sleeping (which I'll do after I've finished this). I'm sure I'll enjoy the trip and have some wonderful memories, it just takes away the positive feelings that I feel I should be having about going somewhere for the first time.

Anyway, sleep ahead.

Blog about the visit as and when I can over there, if not then when I get back.

Maybe I'm Missing Something

OK, maybe it's just me, but I get the feeling that there's something missing from the information that we're being given about the missing 25 million child benefit records.

It's emerged today that one of the problems was that it was going to cost too much to provide the NAO with just the information from the database they wanted, so the whole lot was sent (and lost) instead.

Now, in my simple, Pooh Bear like brain, I'm thinking like this. Now as an ICT teacher, I've got loads of students who have to create databases (in MS Access for their and my sins). Now occasionally they will make a mistake and will need to import data from other database tables into their ones. It takes 'not a lot of time', though I will concede they are not dealing with 25m records. However, are we expect to believe that the database that the HMRC are using doesn't have this ability and is therefore inferior to MS Access (try not to laugh at this point). Alternatively how long would it have taken to make a copy of this database (they clearly had time to do this twice!) and delete the unnecessary fields in one go (seconds in MS Access regardless of how many records), so that they only had the ones that the NAO needed.

So, am I missing something, or is government so caught up in it's own methods to see the obvious.

Please, anyone, feel free to enlighten me!

Getting back on-track (or is that on-line?)

OK, it's been over 6 months, but I'm determined not to have a blog that never gets used as the vast majority seem not to once set up.

I'm heading to New York for the first time in a few days time, so I figure that it's as good an opportunity to start kick this thing off again and to recount my time there as a newbie.

I've been the the states twice before. Both trips with family and both to recognised tourist traps (Florida and Vegas). This time will be slightly different as I'm on my own. Should be a laugh and be nice to run to my own timetable. Have loads of things planned and will be taking the camera with me, so plan to have a load of photos as well.

The previous trips I've never felt like I've got to 'know' America. I don't know if I will this time, but at least, while NY is a tourist destination, it's also a working destination as well, in ways that are very different to the Disney belt of Florida and the extremeness of Vegas. There, everyone you meet is really a tourist, whereas I have a feeling (I could be wrong) that in NY there will be more 'real' people if you get my drift.

Right, I've got to go and get ready, but hopefully there will be a lot more appearing here in the near future.

Long Time - No Blog!

OK, so it's been absolutely ages since I've bogged recently.

Several reasons.

1) Been quite ill recently. Not the sort that keeps you off work, but enough to stop me doing a load of other stuff. Bloging, understandably, not at the top of the list of things that need to be done got pushed to the sideline.

2) Quite a lot of work stuff to do. Easter is always busy with school work coz the year 11 stuff has to be preped for being sent off to the examiners. That means getting it all marked etc. Having my work colleague off on maternity leave also means I've an extra group to do. (That's not a winge, just a fact).

3) The weather has been rather good over the hols. Given that we've had two weeks of lovely weather I've been determined not to spend the whole time indoors. I've done school work in the evening when the sun has gone down, but during the day I've been a right Alan Titchmarsh. Stuff I have done in the garden over 2 weeks (minus 2 weekends as I've spent them both away).

Sprayed both inside and outside of a new garden shed.
Constructed garden shed (on my own!)
Built a 'mini' greenhouse.
Cut the grass a couple of times.
Done some edging round the lawn.
Weeded the garden
Prepared a vegtable patch
Done a load of planting/replanting
Serious plant maintance
Planted a pair tree
Put up two hanging baskets
Painted two outside doors
Built a new garden gate
Sprayed said garden gate
Put up garden gate
Built a freestanding hammock
Started to 'create' some new lawn

So as you can see, I've been busy. Hence no blog.

Things might get back to normal shortly. Year 11 leave in 4 weeks time so that should give me some more free time as well.

Up for Sale

Mum's been selling the house for a while, nearly a year now, 3 people have agreed to buy it, but have pulled out for various reasons (some reasonable some not) having gone quite a way down the process.

However today (just coz I was talking about houses being for sale with a friend of mine who had her home valued) I looked for it on-line.

In many respects it didn't seem odd looking at it on-line for the first time. Looking back an hour later (have closed that window) and it feels slightly odd.

Am not sure whether it's odd coz its something I've known for 30 plus years being on the internet or whether it's coz I'm not sure some of the photo's do it justice.

When I sold my own place a couple of years ago it didn't seem so odd (possibly because I saw it for real every day). I'd spent nearly as much time in that place as I had at the family home, so I can't see it as being a time thing.

In many respects I will be sorry when it sells (no way I could ever afford it), but at the same time I know that these things happen, it's only property and there will be the stuff inside that will be passed onto my sister and myself, which are more of the emotional connections.