The accent should be a 'piece of cake'
“Love the accent”. As soon as I opened my mouth in New York someone would say how cute my accent is. They didn’t always pick me for an Aussie though. I’ve been accused of being English, Irish, South African or a Kiwi. Of course to me, it was the New Yorkers who were sporting the accent. And although we both spoke English, we couldn’t always understand each other. Many times I had to ask people to repeat themselves (Oh, alright, I do have a deaf ear - that doesn’t help), especially when they’ve been talking fast. And more times than you could poke a stick at I had to repeat what I’d been saying. In fact I had never ever been understood by that computer person who lives inside the telephone and asks: “Name the city and your listing” in that soporific, hypnotic tone of hers when you need to get a phone number you don’t know. She would always give up and plug me through to a real person and I would have to repeat my request for a phone number again and again until they finally understand that I was actually speaking English, not some weird kangaroo dialect. So accents can be a pain in the proverbial and can even get you into serious strife.
Soon after I moved to New York I decided to go all domestic and bake a cake....... a good old “just like Mom makes” chocolate cake.So how could baking a cake get anyone into trouble? Simple, it’s all in the asking. You see I wanted to make real icing for this cake, not the already prepared, tested and tasted stuff. You can buy it ready made in New York in a million different consistencies, colors and flavors. Nobody seems to make it from scratch any more. New Yorkers don’t even call it icing. They call it frosting (I found out later). So I rocked off down to the supermarket to get some real icing sugar. Easy, yes? Definitely not...this turned out to be a pastime fraught with danger.
After checking out all the shelves several times, I finally asked one of the service guys for “icing sugar”. He looked at me strangely, asked me to repeat myself, then again and again. By this time I was well into Marcel Marceau mime mode... doing all the hand movements of making a cake and icing it.
Obviously thinking he was dealing with some dangerously demented creature, he called over two of his mates (service assistants).
By this time I was no longer keen to keep repeating myself, but I gave it one last try.
“I want some icing sugar,” I said. Knowing I would never find it.
He looked at me sadly.
“Madam,” he said. “What is wrong with your husband that you want to buy arsenic sugar?”
I guess I’m lucky he didn’t just call the police.
“Love the accent”. As soon as I opened my mouth in New York someone would say how cute my accent is. They didn’t always pick me for an Aussie though. I’ve been accused of being English, Irish, South African or a Kiwi. Of course to me, it was the New Yorkers who were sporting the accent. And although we both spoke English, we couldn’t always understand each other. Many times I had to ask people to repeat themselves (Oh, alright, I do have a deaf ear - that doesn’t help), especially when they’ve been talking fast. And more times than you could poke a stick at I had to repeat what I’d been saying. In fact I had never ever been understood by that computer person who lives inside the telephone and asks: “Name the city and your listing” in that soporific, hypnotic tone of hers when you need to get a phone number you don’t know. She would always give up and plug me through to a real person and I would have to repeat my request for a phone number again and again until they finally understand that I was actually speaking English, not some weird kangaroo dialect. So accents can be a pain in the proverbial and can even get you into serious strife.
Soon after I moved to New York I decided to go all domestic and bake a cake....... a good old “just like Mom makes” chocolate cake.So how could baking a cake get anyone into trouble? Simple, it’s all in the asking. You see I wanted to make real icing for this cake, not the already prepared, tested and tasted stuff. You can buy it ready made in New York in a million different consistencies, colors and flavors. Nobody seems to make it from scratch any more. New Yorkers don’t even call it icing. They call it frosting (I found out later). So I rocked off down to the supermarket to get some real icing sugar. Easy, yes? Definitely not...this turned out to be a pastime fraught with danger.
After checking out all the shelves several times, I finally asked one of the service guys for “icing sugar”. He looked at me strangely, asked me to repeat myself, then again and again. By this time I was well into Marcel Marceau mime mode... doing all the hand movements of making a cake and icing it.
Obviously thinking he was dealing with some dangerously demented creature, he called over two of his mates (service assistants).
By this time I was no longer keen to keep repeating myself, but I gave it one last try.
“I want some icing sugar,” I said. Knowing I would never find it.
He looked at me sadly.
“Madam,” he said. “What is wrong with your husband that you want to buy arsenic sugar?”
I guess I’m lucky he didn’t just call the police.
Has the Burger Ring targeted me?
There must be something about my face. I must look like I have an intimate relationship with the closest McDonald's hamburger shop. The truth is I’m not into fast food but when I moved to New York every time I would go into Manhattan from Long Island where I was living at the time I would be accosted by a panhandler who wanted me to either “take me to McDonald’s and buy me a cheeseburger” or “give me the money to buy a McDonald’s cheeseburger.” McDonald’s is obviously the flavor of not just the month, but the decade with New York panhandlers. Why did they pick on me?
Back home in Australia, it was the police who picked on me. I was always getting pulled over by them, for anything and everything. Even when I was doing nothing wrong they’d pull me over and breathalyze me - and I’m a non-drinker. It didn’t matter how many times I told them I didn’t drink, it didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was, it didn’t matter that I would be on my way home from work or on my way to work, they’d stop me and I’d have to “blow into the bag.” In the end I got so good at blowing into the bag that I was giving lessons to other drivers but when they first started asking me to “blow into the bag” I used to fluff it and the cop would get angry with me because he/she thought I was doing it wrong on purpose. Blowing down tiny little straws is not my idea of a party trick and I’d been very remiss not to learn at an early age to Do It Right. The police began pulling me over from the time I got my driver’s licence and bought my first car. As it had happened so many times over the years I came to realize that they had this computer in police headquarters. On the top of it there was a sign which said: “Where is Sally Squires?” And then there was a grid system across the screen and they could track me no matter where I was.
All police schedulers would check in on the “Track Sally Squires” computer first thing before they’d schedule the day’s events. Every police patrol, every multi nova camera, every Booze Bus would be scheduled throughout the night and day to be in my vicinity, all guaranteed to create maximum discomfort and frustration to me. I got so used to being pulled over by the police, that I even used to smile at them, wind down the window and say: “What’s up, Sunshine?” I very rarely got a smile back though because Australian police don’t seem to have come equipped with a sense of humor. After all, they are on “serious business”, so no smiles for Sal.
Anyway, I am convinced that just as the police back home had a “Track Sally Squires” computer, the panhandlers in New York also had a “Track Sally Squires” computer.
They’d sit around Panhandlers Headquarters in the city and their computer said exactly the same thing: “Where is Sally Squires?”
And it too had a grid system which could plot me down to the relevant city block.
The word would go round and all the panhandlers within a five mile radius would descend and ask me to buy them a McDonald’s hamburger - make that a cheeseburger.
I had to confess to one who asked me to take her to McDonald's one day that I didn’t know where the nearest McDonald's was.
And then the next day a guy asked me for the money for a McDonald's cheeseburger. I gave him $2 which I had in my coat pocket.
Talk about cheek! He looked at it. Then complained: “Hey, this is only $2. McDonald's cost $3.75.” I kept walking - now, I’d heard everything. Finally he realized how ungrateful he sounded. He called out through the crowd: “Sorry Miss. You’re the only one who stopped to help me. Thanks.”
So what is it about me? Are these cheeseburgering panhandlers part of a larger plot?
Are they in fact part of some cheeseburger loving cult? Is this more fallout from the Hale-Bopp comet?
Are they bothering me in the short term while they wait for some Big Cheeseburger in the Sky to descend from the Hale-Bopp comet and eat them up? Stay tuned.
There must be something about my face. I must look like I have an intimate relationship with the closest McDonald's hamburger shop. The truth is I’m not into fast food but when I moved to New York every time I would go into Manhattan from Long Island where I was living at the time I would be accosted by a panhandler who wanted me to either “take me to McDonald’s and buy me a cheeseburger” or “give me the money to buy a McDonald’s cheeseburger.” McDonald’s is obviously the flavor of not just the month, but the decade with New York panhandlers. Why did they pick on me?
Back home in Australia, it was the police who picked on me. I was always getting pulled over by them, for anything and everything. Even when I was doing nothing wrong they’d pull me over and breathalyze me - and I’m a non-drinker. It didn’t matter how many times I told them I didn’t drink, it didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was, it didn’t matter that I would be on my way home from work or on my way to work, they’d stop me and I’d have to “blow into the bag.” In the end I got so good at blowing into the bag that I was giving lessons to other drivers but when they first started asking me to “blow into the bag” I used to fluff it and the cop would get angry with me because he/she thought I was doing it wrong on purpose. Blowing down tiny little straws is not my idea of a party trick and I’d been very remiss not to learn at an early age to Do It Right. The police began pulling me over from the time I got my driver’s licence and bought my first car. As it had happened so many times over the years I came to realize that they had this computer in police headquarters. On the top of it there was a sign which said: “Where is Sally Squires?” And then there was a grid system across the screen and they could track me no matter where I was.
All police schedulers would check in on the “Track Sally Squires” computer first thing before they’d schedule the day’s events. Every police patrol, every multi nova camera, every Booze Bus would be scheduled throughout the night and day to be in my vicinity, all guaranteed to create maximum discomfort and frustration to me. I got so used to being pulled over by the police, that I even used to smile at them, wind down the window and say: “What’s up, Sunshine?” I very rarely got a smile back though because Australian police don’t seem to have come equipped with a sense of humor. After all, they are on “serious business”, so no smiles for Sal.
Anyway, I am convinced that just as the police back home had a “Track Sally Squires” computer, the panhandlers in New York also had a “Track Sally Squires” computer.
They’d sit around Panhandlers Headquarters in the city and their computer said exactly the same thing: “Where is Sally Squires?”
And it too had a grid system which could plot me down to the relevant city block.
The word would go round and all the panhandlers within a five mile radius would descend and ask me to buy them a McDonald’s hamburger - make that a cheeseburger.
I had to confess to one who asked me to take her to McDonald's one day that I didn’t know where the nearest McDonald's was.
And then the next day a guy asked me for the money for a McDonald's cheeseburger. I gave him $2 which I had in my coat pocket.
Talk about cheek! He looked at it. Then complained: “Hey, this is only $2. McDonald's cost $3.75.” I kept walking - now, I’d heard everything. Finally he realized how ungrateful he sounded. He called out through the crowd: “Sorry Miss. You’re the only one who stopped to help me. Thanks.”
So what is it about me? Are these cheeseburgering panhandlers part of a larger plot?
Are they in fact part of some cheeseburger loving cult? Is this more fallout from the Hale-Bopp comet?
Are they bothering me in the short term while they wait for some Big Cheeseburger in the Sky to descend from the Hale-Bopp comet and eat them up? Stay tuned.
Milking the most out of movie stars' mustaches
If you're looking for the easy life - don't look for it in New York. Nothing is easy there, not even ordering a meal. Especially not ordering a meal - either in a restaurant or to take out. Firstly, there's the choice of restaurant. The choice is astounding - anything from reindeer steaks to emu eggs - and that's just for starters. Every cuisine you've ever heard of and plenty that you haven't, are in New York. So the first headache is to decide which food outlet to choose.Who feels like what, no-one can decide. Finally you give up walking down the street and go in to the first restaurant you see.
Now you've got that big item off the menu (pardon the pun) - ie. choice of restaurant. But just try to put in a simple order. Simple - it's not in a New York food outlet's vocabulary.
Every item in the dish you order has 25 different choices or combinations. It's so time consuming to answer all the extra questions that each response brings.
Why, by the time you've finally made your order, you're so exhausted from the numbers of choices you've had to make, you need a good lie down and you're too tired to eat your meal when it arrives.
It's no wonder psychiatrists do so well here, their patients' brains must be continually suffering from "choice overload".
And you certainly get your money's worth. Order something simple and it comes with pickles, sauerkraut, French fries, 8 different kinds of bread, complementary soup, free coffee etc.
I haven't yet got up the courage to go in and say: "Forget the main meal, just bring me the extras."
Ask for a pastrami sandwich and they bring you a mountain of meat, stretched dangerously between two slices of bread.
How many weeks would you need to actually eat the whole sandwich? About two, I reckon. And you really need a ladder to get your mouth up high enough to take a bite.
It's the same in the supermarkets. How long does it take you to work out the difference between 27 different varieties of milk?
Does this one suit my dog, or my cat better, is it safe for my children, will it dissolve my granny's teeth, has it been in a cow at all or was it manufactured in some serious laboratory under super hygienic conditions? Does it matter, after all?
Will it change the course of world history if I don't choose the right milk? And will I be damaged for life?
Who cares anyway? Apart from the 27 different milk manufacturers - I'm sure the cows don't lose any sleep. They just keep chewing away and pumping it out.
All those milk ads with the stars sporting milk-stained mustaches - which type of milk did they choose? Is there one kind of milk that has better staying power for mustaches. I'm sure there's a healthy number of choices for that too.
Perhaps the ad company could do a billboard with the same mustache sporting the 27 different varieties of milk - and then we'd know which one to choose. If it slides off the mustache, it'll slide down our throats easier and not set up a war with our stomach acids. How about it, people? Is there a different kind of milk for people who smoke cigars as opposed to people who smoke cigarettes or for non-smokers? Is there a milk that tastes milkier than other milks? See what I mean? My brain hurts!
And tipping in restaurants! Now that's something else again.
Australians are not used to tipping. To an Australian a tip is the good oil on a horse race. So the headaches start with the problem of how much to tip and who? New York restaurants seem to have an amazing array of different people doing different jobs. From the busboy clearing the dishes to the head waitress/waiter.
In Australia the one waitress/waiter does everything from giving out the menus to pouring the water, taking the orders, bringing the food and clearing the dishes.
Because there are so many more people in New York, they have a whole raft of restaurant workers in each restaurant.
Do they all share in the tip? Do I leave some on the table for the busboy as well as putting the 10 per cent in the check (bill) folder? Who actually gets the money? Is there a legal code to work out how the tips are divided up?
Why is there no bible of behavior on the subject of tipping handed out to bewildered Aussies when they first set foot on New York territory?
And then there's terminology and different customs. Here the “entree” is the main meal, rather than the starter dish. They eat their salad first, not with the main meal like Aussies.
Yes, I'll give you the tip. It's enough to make Crocodile Dundee take up wrestling rattlesnakes.
If you're looking for the easy life - don't look for it in New York. Nothing is easy there, not even ordering a meal. Especially not ordering a meal - either in a restaurant or to take out. Firstly, there's the choice of restaurant. The choice is astounding - anything from reindeer steaks to emu eggs - and that's just for starters. Every cuisine you've ever heard of and plenty that you haven't, are in New York. So the first headache is to decide which food outlet to choose.Who feels like what, no-one can decide. Finally you give up walking down the street and go in to the first restaurant you see.
Now you've got that big item off the menu (pardon the pun) - ie. choice of restaurant. But just try to put in a simple order. Simple - it's not in a New York food outlet's vocabulary.
Every item in the dish you order has 25 different choices or combinations. It's so time consuming to answer all the extra questions that each response brings.
Why, by the time you've finally made your order, you're so exhausted from the numbers of choices you've had to make, you need a good lie down and you're too tired to eat your meal when it arrives.
It's no wonder psychiatrists do so well here, their patients' brains must be continually suffering from "choice overload".
And you certainly get your money's worth. Order something simple and it comes with pickles, sauerkraut, French fries, 8 different kinds of bread, complementary soup, free coffee etc.
I haven't yet got up the courage to go in and say: "Forget the main meal, just bring me the extras."
Ask for a pastrami sandwich and they bring you a mountain of meat, stretched dangerously between two slices of bread.
How many weeks would you need to actually eat the whole sandwich? About two, I reckon. And you really need a ladder to get your mouth up high enough to take a bite.
It's the same in the supermarkets. How long does it take you to work out the difference between 27 different varieties of milk?
Does this one suit my dog, or my cat better, is it safe for my children, will it dissolve my granny's teeth, has it been in a cow at all or was it manufactured in some serious laboratory under super hygienic conditions? Does it matter, after all?
Will it change the course of world history if I don't choose the right milk? And will I be damaged for life?
Who cares anyway? Apart from the 27 different milk manufacturers - I'm sure the cows don't lose any sleep. They just keep chewing away and pumping it out.
All those milk ads with the stars sporting milk-stained mustaches - which type of milk did they choose? Is there one kind of milk that has better staying power for mustaches. I'm sure there's a healthy number of choices for that too.
Perhaps the ad company could do a billboard with the same mustache sporting the 27 different varieties of milk - and then we'd know which one to choose. If it slides off the mustache, it'll slide down our throats easier and not set up a war with our stomach acids. How about it, people? Is there a different kind of milk for people who smoke cigars as opposed to people who smoke cigarettes or for non-smokers? Is there a milk that tastes milkier than other milks? See what I mean? My brain hurts!
And tipping in restaurants! Now that's something else again.
Australians are not used to tipping. To an Australian a tip is the good oil on a horse race. So the headaches start with the problem of how much to tip and who? New York restaurants seem to have an amazing array of different people doing different jobs. From the busboy clearing the dishes to the head waitress/waiter.
In Australia the one waitress/waiter does everything from giving out the menus to pouring the water, taking the orders, bringing the food and clearing the dishes.
Because there are so many more people in New York, they have a whole raft of restaurant workers in each restaurant.
Do they all share in the tip? Do I leave some on the table for the busboy as well as putting the 10 per cent in the check (bill) folder? Who actually gets the money? Is there a legal code to work out how the tips are divided up?
Why is there no bible of behavior on the subject of tipping handed out to bewildered Aussies when they first set foot on New York territory?
And then there's terminology and different customs. Here the “entree” is the main meal, rather than the starter dish. They eat their salad first, not with the main meal like Aussies.
Yes, I'll give you the tip. It's enough to make Crocodile Dundee take up wrestling rattlesnakes.
IT'S A TEST DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD
There's one thing you notice right away when you move to New York from Australia. They drive on the wrong side of the road. In New York "Keep to the Left" is out the window, it's all "Keep to the Right". Now, as the cars are set up to accommodate this phenomenon you would think that the switch would be a snap. But, not so. When you've spent half a lifetime merrily rockin' on down the left hand side of the freeway, it's not so easy to feel confident on the right hand side. Even getting out onto the street takes a bit of courage.
For a start you tend to be looking in the wrong direction for the traffic. But once you've sussed that out, it's time to get out there and mix it. At first you just concentrate hard on following the car in front. But then the Big Test comes. Turning left! AAARRGH! For Australians in America, turning left can be an exercise in danger. Because we drive down the left hand side of the road when we turn left, it's very easy to continue to drive down the left hand side of the road when you've turned left in New York.
Not a good plan. Not when 80,000 other cars are coming toward you at full speed with their hands glued to their horns. You learn pretty quick to: "Back Off, Sunshine!"
Lights are another problem. Traffic lights in Australia stand at the top of poles in the corners of the intersection. They don't hang down from overhead wires at intersections like they do in New York.
For the first couple of days you tend to go blithely through intersections because you don't see any lights sitting on top of poles and you don't look up to see them hanging down from the overhead wires. (Hanging down from the overhead wires, they somehow don't look like they really mean business anyway.)
This is all fine and dandy if there's no traffic coming from the opposite direction but not too healthy if there is.
So gradually you get the hang of the lights and turning left on major roads, but when you drive along side streets, it is well nigh impossible not to revert to driving on the left hand side of the road.
And then there's those mysterious Stop! signs. There is a whole 'nother philosophy about stop signs in New York.
In Australia, stop signs generally are on minor roads to allow freeflowing traffic on major roads. In New York, it's the opposite, it seems. The stop signs lurk out regularly when you're motoring along on a major road to allow people to come out of side streets. You have to be careful to watch out for them because it's not something an Australian driver would look for.
And road signs! They're another mystery to an Australian in New York. After all, we're used to signs that say: "Kangaroos for the next 5 miles" or "Go Slow, Koalas Crossing", "Emus After Dark", or "Next Petrol 250 kilometers"...... well, something similar anyway.
Here the signs say things like "HOV". Does this mean Higher Order Vehicles so this is the lane Santa Claus travels in?
And "Snow Route" - Does this mean drivers should keep an eye out for slow moving skiers in case they hit them?Fire hydrants along the roads are also a constant fascination to me - I'd never seen them out in the bush like they have them in New York. We don’t even have fire hydrants in Australia as the fire trucks carry their own water so that as soon as they get to a fire they can spray water on it immediately.
In New York you'll be driving on a deserted stretch of road with nothing around for miles but you can bet your boots there'll be a fire hydrant every few yards. Is this to protect the local squirrels in case they accidentally set fire to their winter stock of nuts?
I wonder.
There's one thing you notice right away when you move to New York from Australia. They drive on the wrong side of the road. In New York "Keep to the Left" is out the window, it's all "Keep to the Right". Now, as the cars are set up to accommodate this phenomenon you would think that the switch would be a snap. But, not so. When you've spent half a lifetime merrily rockin' on down the left hand side of the freeway, it's not so easy to feel confident on the right hand side. Even getting out onto the street takes a bit of courage.
For a start you tend to be looking in the wrong direction for the traffic. But once you've sussed that out, it's time to get out there and mix it. At first you just concentrate hard on following the car in front. But then the Big Test comes. Turning left! AAARRGH! For Australians in America, turning left can be an exercise in danger. Because we drive down the left hand side of the road when we turn left, it's very easy to continue to drive down the left hand side of the road when you've turned left in New York.
Not a good plan. Not when 80,000 other cars are coming toward you at full speed with their hands glued to their horns. You learn pretty quick to: "Back Off, Sunshine!"
Lights are another problem. Traffic lights in Australia stand at the top of poles in the corners of the intersection. They don't hang down from overhead wires at intersections like they do in New York.
For the first couple of days you tend to go blithely through intersections because you don't see any lights sitting on top of poles and you don't look up to see them hanging down from the overhead wires. (Hanging down from the overhead wires, they somehow don't look like they really mean business anyway.)
This is all fine and dandy if there's no traffic coming from the opposite direction but not too healthy if there is.
So gradually you get the hang of the lights and turning left on major roads, but when you drive along side streets, it is well nigh impossible not to revert to driving on the left hand side of the road.
And then there's those mysterious Stop! signs. There is a whole 'nother philosophy about stop signs in New York.
In Australia, stop signs generally are on minor roads to allow freeflowing traffic on major roads. In New York, it's the opposite, it seems. The stop signs lurk out regularly when you're motoring along on a major road to allow people to come out of side streets. You have to be careful to watch out for them because it's not something an Australian driver would look for.
And road signs! They're another mystery to an Australian in New York. After all, we're used to signs that say: "Kangaroos for the next 5 miles" or "Go Slow, Koalas Crossing", "Emus After Dark", or "Next Petrol 250 kilometers"...... well, something similar anyway.
Here the signs say things like "HOV". Does this mean Higher Order Vehicles so this is the lane Santa Claus travels in?
And "Snow Route" - Does this mean drivers should keep an eye out for slow moving skiers in case they hit them?Fire hydrants along the roads are also a constant fascination to me - I'd never seen them out in the bush like they have them in New York. We don’t even have fire hydrants in Australia as the fire trucks carry their own water so that as soon as they get to a fire they can spray water on it immediately.
In New York you'll be driving on a deserted stretch of road with nothing around for miles but you can bet your boots there'll be a fire hydrant every few yards. Is this to protect the local squirrels in case they accidentally set fire to their winter stock of nuts?
I wonder.
Don’t tax your brain - catch a cab
If you need to know something in New York, you don’t need to break open the encyclopedia, you don’t even need to bother going to a library, all you need to do is to get into a taxi. New York Taxi drivers know everything there is to know about everything. I’m sure some clever person will soon work out a way to harness all that wonderful knowledge and send it out on the internet so we too can have the answers to all the problems of the world.
Taxi drivers in New York are a lot smarter than the government. How do I know? Because they all tell me how stupid the government is. And then they proceed to detail how they would deal with any problem you can name. Not only do they seem to be absolute experts on all the official questions which tax our brains, but they are also a great source of gossip and general information about what’s happening in New York.
Why, the Taxi Network probably knows the answers to all the unsolved murders in New York.
You can meet the world and his dog in a New York cab. Almost every nationality is represented. There are now more than 40,000 taxi drivers in New York and they come from 85 different countries. They speak 60 languages. Some of them even speak English. And some of them even know their way around Manhattan so that you don’t have to tell them where to go (provided they can understand you, of course).
In the first few weeks I was in New York, I had drivers from Senegal (a music buff he discussed the recent visit of Youssou N’Dour); Bangladesh (an immigration expert), Slovenia (a politician in disguise), Pakistan (a cricket buff - all I could do was drop a few famous Australian cricket names), India (another cricket fan), Turkey (an expert on all the best Mediterranean restaurants in town), Greece (very strong opinions about the President), Mali (halfway through his first novel), Haiti (working on his PhD), China (very concerned about the future of Hong Kong), an African American (expecting a $million plus settlement on a lawsuit after a car accident) and a Russian concert pianist.
And thereby hangs a tale.............A chilly wind is blowing. It’s 5pm on a Friday in Greenwich Village and I’m trying to get a taxi to Times Square. Not much hope. One taxi pulls up but refuses when he finds out where I want to go. Twice this happens. Again. And again. It’s getting colder. So am I.
Finally another taxi pulls up. The driver is eating a polish sausage sandwich. As we drive off I am surrounded by loud classical music. The taxi driver is talkative. He’s a concert pianist from Russia, he says. He’s just bought a half share in the taxi with a friend of his. How’s it going? In five years they should own their taxi outright. Not bad. A new capitalist from the capital of communism.
I’m interested in live music and especially in supporting musicians I know. Where’s he playing?
This is New York, he says. Plenty of classical pianists in this town. They’re a dime a dozen. That’s why he’s driving a taxi.
Yes, he’s playing somewhere. He’s a volunteer for a YMCA.
I express surprise.
At least they let me use their piano, he says with a shrug.
So there I am, in a taxi being driven by a Russian concert pianist, fighting the 5pm Friday Manhattan traffic encased in an envelope of classical music. ....... it’s a great town, New York.
If you need to know something in New York, you don’t need to break open the encyclopedia, you don’t even need to bother going to a library, all you need to do is to get into a taxi. New York Taxi drivers know everything there is to know about everything. I’m sure some clever person will soon work out a way to harness all that wonderful knowledge and send it out on the internet so we too can have the answers to all the problems of the world.
Taxi drivers in New York are a lot smarter than the government. How do I know? Because they all tell me how stupid the government is. And then they proceed to detail how they would deal with any problem you can name. Not only do they seem to be absolute experts on all the official questions which tax our brains, but they are also a great source of gossip and general information about what’s happening in New York.
Why, the Taxi Network probably knows the answers to all the unsolved murders in New York.
You can meet the world and his dog in a New York cab. Almost every nationality is represented. There are now more than 40,000 taxi drivers in New York and they come from 85 different countries. They speak 60 languages. Some of them even speak English. And some of them even know their way around Manhattan so that you don’t have to tell them where to go (provided they can understand you, of course).
In the first few weeks I was in New York, I had drivers from Senegal (a music buff he discussed the recent visit of Youssou N’Dour); Bangladesh (an immigration expert), Slovenia (a politician in disguise), Pakistan (a cricket buff - all I could do was drop a few famous Australian cricket names), India (another cricket fan), Turkey (an expert on all the best Mediterranean restaurants in town), Greece (very strong opinions about the President), Mali (halfway through his first novel), Haiti (working on his PhD), China (very concerned about the future of Hong Kong), an African American (expecting a $million plus settlement on a lawsuit after a car accident) and a Russian concert pianist.
And thereby hangs a tale.............A chilly wind is blowing. It’s 5pm on a Friday in Greenwich Village and I’m trying to get a taxi to Times Square. Not much hope. One taxi pulls up but refuses when he finds out where I want to go. Twice this happens. Again. And again. It’s getting colder. So am I.
Finally another taxi pulls up. The driver is eating a polish sausage sandwich. As we drive off I am surrounded by loud classical music. The taxi driver is talkative. He’s a concert pianist from Russia, he says. He’s just bought a half share in the taxi with a friend of his. How’s it going? In five years they should own their taxi outright. Not bad. A new capitalist from the capital of communism.
I’m interested in live music and especially in supporting musicians I know. Where’s he playing?
This is New York, he says. Plenty of classical pianists in this town. They’re a dime a dozen. That’s why he’s driving a taxi.
Yes, he’s playing somewhere. He’s a volunteer for a YMCA.
I express surprise.
At least they let me use their piano, he says with a shrug.
So there I am, in a taxi being driven by a Russian concert pianist, fighting the 5pm Friday Manhattan traffic encased in an envelope of classical music. ....... it’s a great town, New York.
Sofa Another Typhoon Escapade
Though I’d been driving in Australia since I was 17 years old – a loooong time ago – that was not good enough for New York. I had to get my New York driver’s licence. I’d been driving around for a while before I went to do my test and the minute I got into the car with the examiner he screamed at me. I guess that was just to settle my nerves.
So finally I got my New York driver’s licence – screaming examiner and all and a friend gave me his second car to drive around in. Boy did I love that car. It was a 1972 Chevy Chevelle station wagon. It had a motor so big it had its own zipcode (postcode if you’re reading this in Australia). And fast – it was so fast I could burn off all the trucks, cars, motorbikes, SUVs etc on the L.I.E. I used to drive home from Manhattan in….. minutes and I got so good at it that I knew exactly where the speed cops would hang out so I never got pulled up for speeding. It was so fast that I named it in memory of Australia’s fastest racehorse – Phar Lap. (which by the way was poisoned by Americans when it went to the USA to race!)
And boy did Phar Lap have personality. When I’d drive it to work my workmates would look out the window and say: “Here comes Sal in her boat”. It was so big and so long you’d think it was ungainly but it actually seemed to float along the road. Great power steering I guess. What was ungainly were the bits and pieces of metal that would fall off as I was driving down the LIE. That car must have been dropped in the ocean some time because it was rusted right through and bits would fall off as I drove down the road. It got so that after a few weeks of wondering what the noise was, I didn’t used to hear it at all.
It was so rusty that there was no dashboard between me and the motor which was great in the winter time – I was nice and toasty warm – but too hot in the summer time when heat was what I didn’t need. Of course it didn’t have airconditioning but it did have its own specially designed (designed by Mother Nature) ventilation system. The windows were all jammed – either half open or half shut so you’d get breeze on one side and no breeze on the other side. But the most creative part of the ventilation system was the pinhole rust spots all over the roof. This meant that when it rained I had an umbrella up over my head inside the car. Even with the umbrella I still used to get shoes full of water and one wet pants leg.
But what used to amaze me most was that it always passed inspection – every year. And it had the heart of the real racehorse Phar Lap whose heart was twice the size of a normal horse.
One night I went to a music show at a hot joint on Long Island and during the three hours I was there we had one of those Long Island downpours so at the end of the night when I walked out into the carpark it was under three feet of water. Well I got into Phar Lap and cranked him up and he started straight away. I was most impressed and so were all those snooty SUV owners watching who couldn’t get their machines to start.
Phar Lap and I slid out onto the Southern State Parkway which was very flooded by this time. Hmm, I thought. Wonder how I’m going to get us home. Well, in case you don’t know there’s lovely green grass all along the side of the Southern State Parkway (which I always called the Sally Squires Parkway anyway) so I figured if I could get one wheel on the grass and one wheel on the road I might just be able to coax Phar Lap through the flood. Well, out we went with a whole truckload of SUVs lined up not daring to move but as soon as they saw us sliding out there so smooth and moving off down the parkway they all started to follow us.
Maybe Phar Lap really was a boat because it did not miss a beat the whole 30 miles back home!
And strong! Boy was Phar Lap strong! One night I was out on Long Island again visiting one of my friends. It must have been tax return time in New York – probably April. Because in New York when everyone gets their tax returns they always go and buy a new sofa, whether they need one or not. And from the sights on the streets – down every street it seems – they never really need a new sofa. You could look down any street in New York in April and see half a dozen perfectly good sofas just sitting on the footpath waiting to be collected by the rubbish trucks.
Well this night when I came out of my friend’s place sitting on the footpath next door was not just any old sofa but a perfectly good sofa bed. And I had plenty of room up in the loft I was renting.
When you grow up in Australia you learn not to waste things and it always used to kill me to see all the sofas and fridges and TVs sitting out on all the footpaths in New York. So I decided that Phar Lap and I were going to become the proud owners of a new sofa bed. I’m pretty strong but there was no way I was going to get that bed up on Phar Lap’s roof without some help. So I knocked on the someone’s door and told the person what I wanted and bugger me in about half an hour of stressing and straining Phar Lap was wearing a new sofa bed hat. The helper and I tied it on the front and tied it on the back and off we went – Phar Lap and I, not the helper.
We were sliding quite nicely down the Sally Squires Parkway when I happened to look in the rear vision mirror and I could see bits of the sofa that I hadn’t been able to see before. I couldn’t stop because when you get onto one of those parkways everyone is going like a bat out of hell and there’s no way you can stop. Pretty soon something started flapping and I began to see that the sofa was sliding backwards along the roof – you’d think the rust spots would have set up a decent amount of friction, at least enough to keep it still – but they weren’t that helpful.
And just as I realized what was happening I happened to look at the fuel gauge and notice that we were fast running out of gas. So I started to wonder which would happen first. Would the sofa stay on and I’d run out of gas and be stranded on the Sally Squires Parkway or would the sofa take a dive and slide right off the back end and Phar Lap and I would just continue on our merry way pretending that we had no idea who belonged to the sofa bed now parked on the side of the parkway (is that why they call them parkways?).
I was trying to keep my eyes on the road ahead while watching the drama on the back of the roof and keeping one eye out for gas stations visible from the parkway.
Well I thought all my Christmases had come at once when I spied a gas station a little way ahead but just as I was getting ready to steer Phar Lap into that driveway I happened to notice there were about 15 cops standing around having a burger break. I’m done for now I thought. If they see me, I’m done for, if I don’t get that gas, I’m done for and if this bloody sofa bed takes a dive right in front of them, then I’m doubly done for. (I should have told you the fuel gauge had been on empty for the whole of the trip).
So I went invisible. Yes, you heard me, invisible. It’s easy. You can do it too. I just said to myself. I’m invisible and those cops are not going to see me and I just kept driving down that parkway.
Well bugger me, it worked. To those cops I was invisible, not just me but Phar Lap and that sofa bed as well. We were all invisible. So then I thought well if I can be invisible and miss those cops, then I definitely can have enough gas to get home with this damn sofa bed on the roof and if I can be invisible then this damn sofa bed is not going to fall off no matter how much it slides.
And do you know what – we got home on that empty tank, didn’t see any more cops and the sofa stayed on the roof till I got home.
But that wasn’t the end of that little escapade.
As you can imagine I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself pulling such a larrikin ride together and getting home in one piece. So I went in and asked the landlord to give me a hand getting the sofa off the roof. No, I definitely wasn’t invisible to him, he thought I was crazy but he came out to have a look.
He took one look and started to walk back inside. “Where are you going?” I called after him. He didn’t even look back. “It’s too big, it’ll never get inside the front door!”
I couldn’t believe it after all I’d been through but bugger me, he was right. We finally got that big old sofa bed down off Phar Lap, turned it sideways and there was no way it was going through that door so we just put it out on the front verge right alongside all the other sofas sitting there waiting to be collected after tax time!
Though I’d been driving in Australia since I was 17 years old – a loooong time ago – that was not good enough for New York. I had to get my New York driver’s licence. I’d been driving around for a while before I went to do my test and the minute I got into the car with the examiner he screamed at me. I guess that was just to settle my nerves.
So finally I got my New York driver’s licence – screaming examiner and all and a friend gave me his second car to drive around in. Boy did I love that car. It was a 1972 Chevy Chevelle station wagon. It had a motor so big it had its own zipcode (postcode if you’re reading this in Australia). And fast – it was so fast I could burn off all the trucks, cars, motorbikes, SUVs etc on the L.I.E. I used to drive home from Manhattan in….. minutes and I got so good at it that I knew exactly where the speed cops would hang out so I never got pulled up for speeding. It was so fast that I named it in memory of Australia’s fastest racehorse – Phar Lap. (which by the way was poisoned by Americans when it went to the USA to race!)
And boy did Phar Lap have personality. When I’d drive it to work my workmates would look out the window and say: “Here comes Sal in her boat”. It was so big and so long you’d think it was ungainly but it actually seemed to float along the road. Great power steering I guess. What was ungainly were the bits and pieces of metal that would fall off as I was driving down the LIE. That car must have been dropped in the ocean some time because it was rusted right through and bits would fall off as I drove down the road. It got so that after a few weeks of wondering what the noise was, I didn’t used to hear it at all.
It was so rusty that there was no dashboard between me and the motor which was great in the winter time – I was nice and toasty warm – but too hot in the summer time when heat was what I didn’t need. Of course it didn’t have airconditioning but it did have its own specially designed (designed by Mother Nature) ventilation system. The windows were all jammed – either half open or half shut so you’d get breeze on one side and no breeze on the other side. But the most creative part of the ventilation system was the pinhole rust spots all over the roof. This meant that when it rained I had an umbrella up over my head inside the car. Even with the umbrella I still used to get shoes full of water and one wet pants leg.
But what used to amaze me most was that it always passed inspection – every year. And it had the heart of the real racehorse Phar Lap whose heart was twice the size of a normal horse.
One night I went to a music show at a hot joint on Long Island and during the three hours I was there we had one of those Long Island downpours so at the end of the night when I walked out into the carpark it was under three feet of water. Well I got into Phar Lap and cranked him up and he started straight away. I was most impressed and so were all those snooty SUV owners watching who couldn’t get their machines to start.
Phar Lap and I slid out onto the Southern State Parkway which was very flooded by this time. Hmm, I thought. Wonder how I’m going to get us home. Well, in case you don’t know there’s lovely green grass all along the side of the Southern State Parkway (which I always called the Sally Squires Parkway anyway) so I figured if I could get one wheel on the grass and one wheel on the road I might just be able to coax Phar Lap through the flood. Well, out we went with a whole truckload of SUVs lined up not daring to move but as soon as they saw us sliding out there so smooth and moving off down the parkway they all started to follow us.
Maybe Phar Lap really was a boat because it did not miss a beat the whole 30 miles back home!
And strong! Boy was Phar Lap strong! One night I was out on Long Island again visiting one of my friends. It must have been tax return time in New York – probably April. Because in New York when everyone gets their tax returns they always go and buy a new sofa, whether they need one or not. And from the sights on the streets – down every street it seems – they never really need a new sofa. You could look down any street in New York in April and see half a dozen perfectly good sofas just sitting on the footpath waiting to be collected by the rubbish trucks.
Well this night when I came out of my friend’s place sitting on the footpath next door was not just any old sofa but a perfectly good sofa bed. And I had plenty of room up in the loft I was renting.
When you grow up in Australia you learn not to waste things and it always used to kill me to see all the sofas and fridges and TVs sitting out on all the footpaths in New York. So I decided that Phar Lap and I were going to become the proud owners of a new sofa bed. I’m pretty strong but there was no way I was going to get that bed up on Phar Lap’s roof without some help. So I knocked on the someone’s door and told the person what I wanted and bugger me in about half an hour of stressing and straining Phar Lap was wearing a new sofa bed hat. The helper and I tied it on the front and tied it on the back and off we went – Phar Lap and I, not the helper.
We were sliding quite nicely down the Sally Squires Parkway when I happened to look in the rear vision mirror and I could see bits of the sofa that I hadn’t been able to see before. I couldn’t stop because when you get onto one of those parkways everyone is going like a bat out of hell and there’s no way you can stop. Pretty soon something started flapping and I began to see that the sofa was sliding backwards along the roof – you’d think the rust spots would have set up a decent amount of friction, at least enough to keep it still – but they weren’t that helpful.
And just as I realized what was happening I happened to look at the fuel gauge and notice that we were fast running out of gas. So I started to wonder which would happen first. Would the sofa stay on and I’d run out of gas and be stranded on the Sally Squires Parkway or would the sofa take a dive and slide right off the back end and Phar Lap and I would just continue on our merry way pretending that we had no idea who belonged to the sofa bed now parked on the side of the parkway (is that why they call them parkways?).
I was trying to keep my eyes on the road ahead while watching the drama on the back of the roof and keeping one eye out for gas stations visible from the parkway.
Well I thought all my Christmases had come at once when I spied a gas station a little way ahead but just as I was getting ready to steer Phar Lap into that driveway I happened to notice there were about 15 cops standing around having a burger break. I’m done for now I thought. If they see me, I’m done for, if I don’t get that gas, I’m done for and if this bloody sofa bed takes a dive right in front of them, then I’m doubly done for. (I should have told you the fuel gauge had been on empty for the whole of the trip).
So I went invisible. Yes, you heard me, invisible. It’s easy. You can do it too. I just said to myself. I’m invisible and those cops are not going to see me and I just kept driving down that parkway.
Well bugger me, it worked. To those cops I was invisible, not just me but Phar Lap and that sofa bed as well. We were all invisible. So then I thought well if I can be invisible and miss those cops, then I definitely can have enough gas to get home with this damn sofa bed on the roof and if I can be invisible then this damn sofa bed is not going to fall off no matter how much it slides.
And do you know what – we got home on that empty tank, didn’t see any more cops and the sofa stayed on the roof till I got home.
But that wasn’t the end of that little escapade.
As you can imagine I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself pulling such a larrikin ride together and getting home in one piece. So I went in and asked the landlord to give me a hand getting the sofa off the roof. No, I definitely wasn’t invisible to him, he thought I was crazy but he came out to have a look.
He took one look and started to walk back inside. “Where are you going?” I called after him. He didn’t even look back. “It’s too big, it’ll never get inside the front door!”
I couldn’t believe it after all I’d been through but bugger me, he was right. We finally got that big old sofa bed down off Phar Lap, turned it sideways and there was no way it was going through that door so we just put it out on the front verge right alongside all the other sofas sitting there waiting to be collected after tax time!
Wear something leopardskin so I’ll know it’s you
When I was due to fly from New Orleans to Miami one year the police were warning tourists to be careful at Miami airport because six tourists had been picked up at the airport and shot – not all at the same time, you understand. So I made sure to book my ticket so that I would arrive in Miami during the day. No way was I going to arrive at night and make myself a target for tourist nappers. A friend of mine who now lived in Miami and who I hadn’t seen for 21 years was going to pick me up at the front of the airport. When I had last seen him he had been in full scale hippie mode with very long hair and a full beard and I was worried that I would not recognize him.
“No problem,” he said. “Just wear something leopardskin and I’ll know it’s you.” I hadn’t realized I was famous for my leopardskin clothes though I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t worn leopardskin. But I was amazed that he had remembered that small detail after 21 years. So I made sure to pack my favourite leopardskin dress when I left Australia so I would “stick out like dog’s balls” (Aussie slang for being conspicious) at the front of Miami’s airport.
Well wouldn’t you just know something would ruin my plan. The night before I was supposed to fly to Miami and arrive in daylight, a barge hit a bridge just outside of New Orleans and for some reason that affected all the flights to Miami so my flight was re-scheduled to arrive at midnight!
‘Don’t worry,” said my friend. “I’ll be there to pick you up.”
I dressed in my leopardskin dress and duly arrived at Miami Airport which, by the way, is the most convoluted airport terminal I have ever been in. How easy is it to find the front door when you get off a plane?
So it was half past midnight when I finally found my way to the front door expecting my friend to have been waiting around for half an hour at least but there was no sign of him.
I stood there outside the front of Miami Airport in my leopardskin dress looking like a target for tourist nappers. Then I started to notice cars circling around and coming back around in front of the airport. Then I noticed one particular car and sometimes there was one man in it and sometimes there were two.
The clock was ticking – 1 am – no sign of my friend, 1.45am – still no sign of him but plenty of sightings of the car going round and round.
2 am. I kept standing there expecting any minute to hear a gun shoved into the back of my head so by 2.15am I’d had enough. I went back inside to find a phone and the first four people I asked for directions had no idea about English – they all spoke Spanish.
Luckily I had the phone number of a hotel on South Beach so I rang them and booked a room and just managed to catch the last shuttle out of the airport thus cheating the tourist nappers out of a possible target.
And what had happened to my friend?
Well I found out the next day that he had taken his kids to a baseball game and they had parked their car in one of the giant lots that American baseball stadiums have. But when the game ended – just in time to pick me up at the airport – they couldn’t find their car.
So while I was cooling my leopardskin heels (yes I have the shoes to match) he was wandering around the carpark looking for his car!
When I was due to fly from New Orleans to Miami one year the police were warning tourists to be careful at Miami airport because six tourists had been picked up at the airport and shot – not all at the same time, you understand. So I made sure to book my ticket so that I would arrive in Miami during the day. No way was I going to arrive at night and make myself a target for tourist nappers. A friend of mine who now lived in Miami and who I hadn’t seen for 21 years was going to pick me up at the front of the airport. When I had last seen him he had been in full scale hippie mode with very long hair and a full beard and I was worried that I would not recognize him.
“No problem,” he said. “Just wear something leopardskin and I’ll know it’s you.” I hadn’t realized I was famous for my leopardskin clothes though I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t worn leopardskin. But I was amazed that he had remembered that small detail after 21 years. So I made sure to pack my favourite leopardskin dress when I left Australia so I would “stick out like dog’s balls” (Aussie slang for being conspicious) at the front of Miami’s airport.
Well wouldn’t you just know something would ruin my plan. The night before I was supposed to fly to Miami and arrive in daylight, a barge hit a bridge just outside of New Orleans and for some reason that affected all the flights to Miami so my flight was re-scheduled to arrive at midnight!
‘Don’t worry,” said my friend. “I’ll be there to pick you up.”
I dressed in my leopardskin dress and duly arrived at Miami Airport which, by the way, is the most convoluted airport terminal I have ever been in. How easy is it to find the front door when you get off a plane?
So it was half past midnight when I finally found my way to the front door expecting my friend to have been waiting around for half an hour at least but there was no sign of him.
I stood there outside the front of Miami Airport in my leopardskin dress looking like a target for tourist nappers. Then I started to notice cars circling around and coming back around in front of the airport. Then I noticed one particular car and sometimes there was one man in it and sometimes there were two.
The clock was ticking – 1 am – no sign of my friend, 1.45am – still no sign of him but plenty of sightings of the car going round and round.
2 am. I kept standing there expecting any minute to hear a gun shoved into the back of my head so by 2.15am I’d had enough. I went back inside to find a phone and the first four people I asked for directions had no idea about English – they all spoke Spanish.
Luckily I had the phone number of a hotel on South Beach so I rang them and booked a room and just managed to catch the last shuttle out of the airport thus cheating the tourist nappers out of a possible target.
And what had happened to my friend?
Well I found out the next day that he had taken his kids to a baseball game and they had parked their car in one of the giant lots that American baseball stadiums have. But when the game ended – just in time to pick me up at the airport – they couldn’t find their car.
So while I was cooling my leopardskin heels (yes I have the shoes to match) he was wandering around the carpark looking for his car!