Goodbye New York

This is my last weekend living in New York, probably forever. While I'm really happy about the direction my life is taking, I am feeling a little nostalgic. I will definitely miss the following:

* My friends! The best in the world.....
* Lupa (Mario Batali restaurant two blocks from my house).
* How you can order anything for delivery....including dog food.
* The first snowfall (before any traffic drives in it, yuck).
* My little apartment, above a bar, in Soho.
* The plethora of taxis!
* Ben's Pizzeria.
* Going out to dinner at 10 pm, and still needing a reservation.
* Having "locals". (I.e., a local bar, a local bodega, a local restaurant...where people know me.)
* The homeless man who begs for change outside my local market....we always have an....interesting...interaction.

But mostly I'll just miss the place that's been my home for almost 8 years. The first place I lived alone. The place I found Lucy. The place I started my career!

New York is difficult, and that's why you have to love it. When I first moved here a friend of mine said, if you can make it here you can make it anywhere. I'm not sure that's factually true, but it FEELS true! I've been lost, verbally abused, threatened on the street with a lamp and lived in the ghetto. I've also chased a cab down the street shoeless, slipped and fallen more times than I can count on icy streets and struggled to sleep through the thumping bass from the bar downstairs. But....I made it! I even made it onto the jumbo screens in Times Square (see below)!




So goodbye to the place of my adult emancipation. I'll always love you!

XOXO

The Lilliputian Palace

I have lived in some small apartments in my time. I guess its the old joke about New York, but those of you who are not actually New Yorkers have no idea how bad of a joke it really is.

First, there was the apartment in Clinton Hills, Brooklyn (and with no intentions of offending anyone I do have to add, that it was in the ghetto -- and really, shouldn't you at least get a decent size apartment when you're living in the ghetto??). My bedroom in this apartment was tiny. Really, almost nonexistent. Let's put it this way, I had a futon, and when I folded it out, it took up the entire room. And the TV was in the closet!

Then there was the second Brooklyn apartment, this one in Brooklyn Heights which is, ostensibly, the "nice" part of town. This one was so small it only had a mini-size fridge in it! I'm talking the mini-bar variety like you see in some of the better hotels. If you put some OJ and yogurt in there it was a tight squeeze.

Finally, there is my current New York apartment. It's definitely a step up from the earlier two (and is in Soho which I adore) but to make my point, my pup Lucy doesn't even have to lift her head to watch me walk from one end to the other.* Yes, its that small.

But all of that pales in comparison to the apartment I'm living in in Sydney. It is the smallest apartment I've ever lived in......tiny....miniscule. Yesterday there was a moth on the chair across the room and I felt crowded.** It is so small that the kitchen sink (and accompanying dishdrying area) IS IN THE LIVING ROOM. Yep, just sticking right out of the wall. The kitchen, on the other hand, is in the small hall you walk through as you come in the door. To tell you the truth, I'm not actually sure why they bothered with the kitchen sink....after all, you can reach the bathroom sink, turn on the taps, and fill a saucepan with water all while stirring the pasta sauce on the stove. It is THAT small. To illuminate my point, here is a picture from the website that pushes this Lilliputian palace:

Does this look spacious to you? Please note the kitchen sink to the far left of the picture. Oh, and this had to have been taken with someone standing ON the couch, back pressed against the windows. Basically, this is the whole apartment. For more pics see here.

Now what I don't understand is WHY? Australia is the 6th largest country in the world (by pure land mass territory) but it only has the 53rd largest population. Seriously, it's not for a lack of space! Spread out people. The rest of the world is waiting for you.

Oh and HERE IS THE BEST PART....ITS $800 A WEEK! No joke. Someone should be sued. Thank goodness I'm a lawyer!***

* She does though. In fact, she will follow me from the living room, to the bedroom, to the kitchen, to the bathroom and back to the living room. All of which amounts to about 10 steps.

** For some reason there has been a moth infestation the last couple of days. Trust me, its worth its own blog so you'll see it sometime soon.

*** My company pays for it so I really shouldn't complain. It's the principle of the thing though....I mean really!