Ex-Pat Thanksgiving
Janet and I and our French guest made a go of New York Thanksgiving. The first tradition to be embraced was the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. C and I went and fought our way to a good vantage - or so it was until the parade started and all the fathers in front of us immediately hoisted their little ones on to their shoulders.
In the evening we divided up kitchen labours, and produced a golden turkey. But with a little French champagne to start.
World Trade Center
Walking by the World Trade Center building site every day, it's impossible not to take an interest in the progress of construction. It's still mostly a big hole in the ground, although that in itself is interesting because one of the reasons they haven't made more progress is that it took longer than expected to carve away the bedrock. That stage is complete now, and shapes of the underground layout have started to appear.
Some of the work can be seen from the PATH train that I take every day. There are cathedral-like concrete structures visible from the station, and the return route provides a good view of the western half from inside the pit. But these views are from the nearby World Financial Center towers, where my company has offices. When I don't need to go all the way to Princeton I can find a quiet desk there, and sometimes get a good look at the hole from above.
There is an
official site that tracks the progress of the new buildings. They plan to have the new building complete in 2013. and everything done by 2014. Who knows if we'll be living here that long or if I'll continue to have access to this vantage, but I will try to post pictures of the developments as a regular feature.
A French Connection
We have a visitor for a few weeks. A cousin of Janet's office mate in Paris has come to stay with us while she finds her feet in New York. Recently graduated from
HEC, she is taking up a post as an intern at a large French bank.
She took care of Emma while we were away diving, and was hostess to some other friends who spent that week in our apartment (originally scheduled as cat-sitters). And when we got back we opened the door to smells of French cooking. "I'm not much of a cook..." so she just whipped up four courses, including fresh baked walnut bread (even shelled the walnuts. She'd never baked bread before but I'd mentioned we hadn't found good bread in New York) and a chocolate cake. Now that's a house guest!
Just as I started this blog when we moved to Paris, she has started her own
letter home.
Curaçao, Above and Below Sea Level
Janet and I took a week off and went to the Caribbean, to
Curaçao. We spent four of the days diving, and the rest exploring the island.
The diving was excellent. The waters are warm, so we were perfectly comfortable in 3mm shorty wet suits. Diving is worth the trouble, even when the water is cold, but being warm makes it so much easier and more enjoyable. The dive shop was very efficient and careful. This also makes a huge difference. When you're doing something that has tremendous potential perils, and where your safety depends on those who are supporting you (as well as your buddy), it's a comfort to be in a country that owes much of its heritage to the no-nonsense Dutch.
Down below were very healthy reefs. There were plenty of soft corals and sponges, and of course an endless variety of fish. We saw one young sea turtle and a few small barracuda, but no really large fauna. The most outsize creatures we came across were
porcupine fish, at least a foot and a half long. They have an "E.T."-like face. Most of the pictures on the web show them spotted and spiny, although ours wasn't greatly either. There were also a few small moray eels (and one big one), and something I definitely hadn't seen before: a
fireworm.
When we weren't diving (or sleeping) we poked around the island. Getting from one end of the island to the other takes about an hour. We rented a car and drove to an ostrich farm one day, and the next day to the west end of the island, Westpunt.
For more pictures,
click here.
Election Day
It’s election day in the US, and my morning trains were much quieter than usual, as were the streets leading to the station. Wall St. itself was still thronged, and in fact there was a line to a polling place winding down our block and past our apartment doorway, before it even opened. Based on the reduced commuter traffic, and the queue I had to fight through to exit the building, many voters opt to get it done before work.
There was no line, but lots of traffic, in the evening
Voting takes a long time in the States, because, while the media tend to focus on the presidential election as if that’s the only contest, there are several positions for which a voter must select a candidate: a senator, a couple of congressmen and one or two others, as well as the president. On top of that there are usually a number of propositions on the ballot, whereby the electorate can bypass their representatives and craft a law directly for referendum approval. And based on anecdotes from my office mate of his experience this morning, the advanced technology voting machines contribute to the delays through alarming erratic behaviour.
