Our Foreign Correspondents

Notes from 7/13

New York is presumptuous. The tea comes already sweetened to a syrupy degree, the coffee with cream. At breakfast I ordered turkey bacon and got, not 2 or 3 slices as I'm accustomed to receiving back home, but five slices. It's as though they were afraid that nobody else would order bacon that day and wanted to get rid of it all.

We walked over to the United Nations and took the guided tour, which was lovely. The Pirate and I made a good showing for the the Americans by knowing how many member states there are (192), the name of the current Secretary General (Ban Ki Mun of South Korea) and the five permanent members of the Security Council (US, France, Russia, China, UK). We're such pedantic gits.

For some reason, when I leave home, I expect either to totally familiar (which I've found everywhere west of Nebraska) or the utterly alien. NY is really just a big collection of neighborhoods in San Francisco that I've never seen. The buildings have the feeling of the San Francisco terrain spread out flat and everyone is dressed like they're in the Financial District. I've been here less than 24 hours, and I already know the neighborhoods I've been to better than the ones in San Francisco. What does that say?

The Pirate writes: The terrain is flatter than San Francisco and everything seems like SF only BIGGER: the sidewalks are wide, the streets are wide, the buildings are tall, and the knishes are huge. Only in the arena of clothing disasters can California compare, although even that is a close contest.

The Chrysler Building is gorgeous inside. I love the papyrus pattern inlaid in the elevator doors. Oh, and the gift of a mosaic that Morocco gave to the U.N. is beautiful; I want to have a room like that at home: the Moroccan room.

Nobody here dresses like programmers in San Jose.