Wishlist #2

i'm mad for badges. One of my (many) shopping quests i will be embarking on in new york is to find a decent badge-maker. I've hunted high and low locally, still coming up emptyhanded. I simply adore badges of all sizes ... band badges, political badges, silly badges, 60's badges, slogan badges, badges with no meaning ... you name it, i like it. I wear them on tees, shirts, jackets, bags; they sit on my corkboard, they have a compartment in my jewelry box. I want to make it my mission for a 21st century badge revival.

Trigger Happiness

I got sucked in. Ordered myself a 1 gig storage space for my trusty canon. Now if i run out of memory space in new york, i promise i'm gonna check myself into Annoying Snapper Anonymous when i get back.

Mapping It Out

What will i do without Google Maps. In the last couple of weeks, i have sporadically been printing out maps of the city and marking out shopping haunts. As you would expect, the Travels Guys laughed when they saw one listing B:Tsubi Store in the lower east side.

"You are going to a Tsubi Store in new york?" Damn girl, what's wrong with you?







This coming from the same guy who told me 15 minutes later "I want to have a Little Creatures beer while we are there." There's two things so wrong about that sentence - one: Little Creatures don't stock in america; two: Damn boy, what's wrong with you?

Call us sad australians but at least we are supporting australian-made!

Plan Of Attack

After hearing about the care package Mandina sent my way, Travel Guys #1 and #2 demanded they get some of that care package luv'in too so we met up for coffee on a wet rainy sunday arvo to run through our plan of attack (aka. Operation How To Tackle NYC).

As expected, Travel Guys #1 and #2 were impressed with the contents of the Mandi-Pak. especially 'the guide to new york' which had personal recommendations from the guru herself. Great tips. Travel Guy #2 already confused and awed at the 'peanut butter frozen hot chocolate' at Serendipity 3 restaurant(yes from that movie). 'How can it be? Frozen, yet hot? All in one?' Ahhh ... there's one more question to be answered in new york.






As i sit there, sharing my new york stash with my travel buddies, drinking coffee and eating a very sinful chocolate brownie (with ice cream), i realised i may need to buy a new memory card for my camera. If Travel Guys #1 and #2 think they may need 1gig worth of digital storage (plus iPod 6gig hard-disk access mind you!), my pitiful 256mb of memories will not make the cut. Seven hundred and seveteen shots may sound alot to you, according to more experienced travellers, i won't last past the 4th day. Oh ... decisions, decisions.

In The Beginning

It all started with krispy kremes, then came sex and the city, and the gap.

my lifelong obsession with travelling to new york didn't start very long ago. Living away from home is kinda like travelling for me. Plus Australia comes with a good handful of mini states to visit for alot less. My last big trip was to sweden , and a convenient stopover in london, was paid for by work and that really made me think, wow free travel is awesome! I'll wait till the next one comes along ... That was 6 years ago and nothing has happened since.

This trip took years in the making ... let's go back to the start.

The year 2003 .... we thought just for fun one day over coffee, we need to do something great this year. Someone said, Hey let's go to new york for new years and watch the ball fall! Awesome! Fantastic! Time came and went, and we were still broke as. We were Dreamers.

Then came 2004 .... we brought it up again, maybe we can try for this year. Some of us found full time work, some haven't post-IT slump. My commitment started to wavier. I had too many wedding trips to fly to, my car needed a whole lot of fixing. The numbers dwindled. This year we were Slackers.

And now the year 2005 .... i was sick of waiting and doing nothing. I needed to get out of perth and see the world. Okay just one city for a start. This was the year i'm gonna use up all my annual leave (and then some). I gathered the troops, planted the seed once more and lo and behold! we all got off our procrastinating arses and booked tickets. This year, we were A Couple Of Thousands Poorer.

3 things i know about new york : donuts, carrie bradshaw and gap sweatshirts. Now i wanna know more ....

My New York Care Package Rawks!

Holy crap. Looked what came in the office today. Can i say this has to be the best care packaged put together for me of all time, in the whole universe and beyond the milky way. All hail Monsieur Internet, if we didn't meet, i wouldn't be who i am today. You (yes, YOU) complete me.

Thanks to the brilliant and sweet Mandina. It is a gazillion light years beyond what i expected and i've never seen something so thoughfully put together. And all this for someone she hasn't even met, beyond a faceless web journal.

Okay, nuff talk, lets get straight down to the goodies :







BlackBook issues - very handy to read about what's cool and what's hot in nyc. i'm leaving this one alone till i can give it my fullest attention (preferably browsing over the weekend)








Tiffanie & Friends' Guide To New York - Compiled by new york guru Mandina herself, this was the one that made my heart flutter. There was soooooo much information in the booklet. Places to go, streets to walk through, restaurants to eat, clubs to crash, tourist hotspots to visit, and of course, most importantly shops to shop in. Phew, heart is starting to flutter again....








Printed Maps and Directions - These are rare and precious. There's highlighted streets and notes on the side to show you where to go, and how to get there. Suburb by suburb. Gorgeous!








Flying A Bag - I know i wanna shop there just by the look of the bag. It's Mandina's fave retail spot and i already know something there has my name on it. I call this my 'tease bag'. I so wanna start shopping right now!








Chinese Slippers from NYC Chinatown - and they were my size too! What are the odds??? My feet are huge, no one ever guess it correctly at first go. (A guy i dated once noted i had big feet ... yup, it goes with the big shoes to fill)








Stash At A Glance - So this is the how everything looked to me at first sight. Pretty cool eh? Oh i forgot there were chocolates too but that went pretty quickly into stomachs at work. And a nice 'thank you' card and instructions sheet for descriptions of content.

All these thoughtfully put together by someone who i chanced on her website awhile ago and have yet to meet, makes me really really REALLY love the internet.

And Then There's Me

Meet Travel Girl. Yes that will be me. I have TWO main concerns travelling with myself ...

Concern #1
I will spend too much time behind the camera and not remember to live the experience. You know how it is like, you fuss over capturing the exact moment that you turn it into an out-of-body experience. I worry that at the end of the 14 day trip, i won't remember alot of what happened (Unless of course it was due to excessive drinking, that i can live with).

Concern #2
I will run out of money. I'm careful not to expand my credit limit too much (okay maybe by just a little bit more) hence wondering maybe i should have done more once the credit runs out. By that time, i could be kneeling over, hyperventilating and taking back all of purchases to the store for a refund. I hear they do that alot in america. 'Cause i may be a shopaholic, but i cannot deal with living in debt. Thank god for good parenting.

And it's only fair that i envision the problems that Travel Guys #1 and #2 might encounter on the road with me. Afterall, i will be the only one capable of pms-ing between the 3 of us.

1. Travel Girl demands more shopping time
2. Travel Girl needs another coffee fix
3. Travel Guys made to sleep in same bedroom (Travel Girl takes the sofabed)
4. Travel Girl falls asleep in Central Park
5. Travel Girl gets lost in big city (more than once)
6. Travel Girl yawns at Intrepid Museum
7. Travel Girl meets Jake Gyllenhaal and runs away with him
8. Travel Guys waits outside another Starbucks
9. Travel Girl cries when she runs out of money

Okay, this trip is looking pretty good .... erhm, yup.

Meet Travel Guy #1 and Travel Guy #2

Let me tell you about the 2 guys i'm spending my time in new york with :

Travel Guy #1
I worry about him. I call him "spacecadet" for all the legit reasons in the world. I often tell him all the drugs he did at uni fried his brain so much, he lives in perpetual space. .. i mean Space with a capital S. Yes that place very far away. You see Travel Guy #1 has a long history of getting into trouble while travelling. I've never met a person who gets detained/searched/questioned at immigration as much as he does. His passport photo is like a gleaming mugshot on show, no one will let him thru the barriers based on that photo. Travel Guy #2 and I have this on-going bet that when we get to new york (12 hours later than Travel Guy #1), we won't find him there. He'll be either holed up somewhere at JFK and getting detained or he would have missed his gawdamn connecting flight in thailand. God help us.


Travel Guy #2
I worry less about this one. He is so far rather responsible. However his flight route to New York is rather, how shall i say this ... long-winded. Smartarse Travel Guy #2 have accumulated gazillion frequent flyer miles he can travel the globe on points while the rest of us fork up the zeros for a plane ticket. However the catch with going that route is the Red Kangaroo won't fly you direct. Travel Guy #2 has a long trip ahead of him to new york city. I fear that he might suffer horrendous timezone confusion and miss his join-the-dots connecting flights. That or my second guess, he met his Harajuka Girl under a cherry blossom tree and forgot about us.

If we all make it there in one piece, we'll be rock'in the free world. Can't wait.

Wishlist #1

Hmm, do you think i will have trouble finding a metallic bag in new york?

Being Prepared

The countdown has begun officially .... i have now made myself a 'new york' blog. Gawd damn! How prepared am i? Frankly, i'm not too sure whether this is a good thing, i would rather be having too much fun in new york city to be sitting in front of a computer writing about my day. I would very much rather find myself sitting in a bar, happily pissed and knocking back tequilas with mary-kate and ashley. Oh yeah, i heard they are big party animals ya'all.

But i guess this is a kinda cool way to document my trip. Saves me the trouble of bringing a journal, hell it's 0.0545kg less in the luggage. More room for clothes ... YAY.

The pre-New York checklist:

Airline ticket - checked
US Dollars - checked (that one was heart wrenching)
Passport validity - erhm, checked
Place to stay - checked (am prepared to be utterly shocked at the teeny size of the apartment)

erhm, that's about it. As you can see, i work alot faster under pressure. 35 days to go .. plenty of time for checking other lists.