Thursday, January 24, 2008

Ch-ch-ch-ch changes

I think it's time for a change. This new year has brought several truths to the forefront of my mind:

1. I'm not getting any younger
2. A good night out always precedes a bad day in
3. Women want babies
4. When you get a knot in your stomach on a weekday morning it's time to do something about it
5. I'm not getting any younger

The last one was so important I thought it deserved a curtain call.

It's not that I'm hearing ticking clocks with baby faces on them in my head or anything, it's just that I'm starting to understand the passage of time and how things just inexorably continue until they die and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Someone I've worked with is retiring soon and just speaking to her made me realise that a life can whizz by and suddenly your at the end of your career and you feel like you just got your teeth into it. Unless you're a dentist in which case you're taking their teeth out of it.

Anyway there's only so much I can write on here, so suffice to say that things will be moving in my professional life pretty soon if I get myself organised.

On the plus side, and to move away from naval-gazing, last night I made rabbit in mustard sauce for some friends and we had a very lovely evening laughing and eating and I don't even have a headache today. There's nothing like a nice dinner with good friends to put things in perspective.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Make-over

New Year, new style of blog and I've added one of those lists 'about me' which I enjoy reading when other people write them.

That's about all really.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Still breathing!

It's been a while since I've sat down and put finger to key to update this virtual diary. Not because I've been too busy, but because I've been thinking that what I'm doing is not actually all that interesting. My lovely friend L is having such a blast in Hong Kong, working like a dog, but grabbing life with both hands and squeezing out all it has to offer. Her blog is hilarious, sad, touching and inspiring reading, so go and visit it!



One thing I've done recently that certainly was not dull was visiting Manhattan - the antithesis of boring. It was truly amazing. We didn't stop discovering, walking, exploring for the whole week we were there. The city of New York is one of those intoxicating places where you leave with the feeling that you still have so much more to learn and discover. We went to museums (the Met, the MoMA, the Frick Collection, the Guggenheim), restaurants (One If By Land, Uno, Vinyle, Joe Allen), shops (Century 21, DKNY, Barney's, Bloomingdale's) and countless other places.

New York is a sizzling mix of cultures, so you can not only eat Chinese but you can choose from Szechuan or Catonese; the choice of restaurants alone is dazzling. Chinatown itself is spreading out from its original location around Canal Street and is swallowing up Little Italy, which is now just a street or two of Italian restaurants. The map of the city is dotted with Little Ukraine, Little Korea and is only becoming more and more diversified as time goes on.



One threat to this diversification is the gentrification of most of Manhattan. The West Village is no longer gay and bohemian but rich and bourgeois. Harlem is no longer a no-go zone where drivers jump the red lights to avoid stopping in the area, it has an H+M, a Starbucks and a Body Shop. You can even see on the photo above that a Caviar and Champagne Emporium is opening soon in the middle of Harlem. For New Yorkers, the soul of their gritty city will soon be lost forever and they are seriously against most of the sterilisation of their beloved neighbourhoods.

So now I'm back in Paris, back in my real life routine and back at work. My 31st birthday has just gone by and we marked it in style with a New York cocktail party. Lots of fun and lots of cosmopolitans, but somehow the rainy Paris evening outside didn't quite match up to the brisk, cold NY skies.