New York City, 2 April 2005, daytime. And later. So here I am, lonely, lost little African boy, out and about for the first time in such a vast and capacious metropolis. I can say that without fear of contradiction – Cape Town’s 4 million-plus population sprawls over a massive distance; up to a good 50 kilometers out of town; New York’s seems that much more dense and everything vastly concentrated into the smaller boroughs. Even hardened South Africans, fresh from the Johannesburg rat-race, tend to be scared off by the sheer multitudes packing every available crevice of New York City, and the pace at which they live their lives; and Joburg is no small place. And it’s not slow, either. I had been warned by my mate Ryan, a Capetonian born ’n’ bred who has been in New York for about 3 years, that it all may come as a bit of a shock to me. It didn’t really. I think I fared rather well. I think my conference to Tanzania some years ago helped, because there was a trip where comparatively little initial research could be done via the almighty Internet. Very few reviews of hotels and tourist sports and general services exist for the African continent as a whole, .za included, and so that was a trip to a strange place with no vague ideas of what to expect (except having been told by a Ugandan doctor working in our unit that my initial destination is a “typical African city.” I mentioned Harare, in Zimbabwe, which is where I spent my formative years, and Pretoria in South Africa, and he just laughed and shook his head). The Tanzania trip also involved me not being ferried straight to the conference via Nairobi, Kenya, on a luxury shuttle bus like eeveryone else going to the conference; I opted instead to spend 2 days on my lonesome in Dar es Salaam before making my own way by bus (9 hours of it) to Arusha which is just a bit away from the Kenya-Tanzania border, where the conference was being held. And I managed okay. No www.daressalaammetroauthority.com website to look up bus or train schedules and download .pdf files of the route or anything like that, let me tell you; just the name of a hotel and a look of grim determination aimed at a nearby taxi driver. The same applied to the tail-end of the trip, which involved 3 days in idyllic Zanzibar, tropical paradise. And I did okay with all that. So I was determined not to let the Big Apple lodge itself in my throat as a lethal, bite-sized chunk, or anything anticlimactic like that. 19 hours on that sodding plane, 3 hours in Immigration and a stint on a public bus later, I was here, dammit, and ready to go. I exited the bus in the pissing rain and thanked the driver. He seemed surprised that I would thank him, and mumbled his farewell. Poster in one hand, gigantic carry-on nailed to gigantic wheeled suitcase in the other, Canon camera bag over my shoulder, I headed into Grand Central to track down a phone. The idea was I was to phone Ryan and make for the Starbucks and he would meet me there. As luck would have it, when I failed to phone him some time earlier, he phoned SAA to find out whether we had landed or not, and thus had already come through to the city from home – Mamaroneck, the suburbs, about 30 minutes north of Grand Central – to save on time. He was conveniently just leaving his office at the time, and basically pointed me to the necessary exit out of the cavern of the terminal and picked me up on the street corner. Did I mention that it was pissing down outside? By the time we’d got loaded and whatever – that and the time it took to get me unloaded from the bus – my stuff was all a little damp. Nevertheless, we packed it all into a silver RAV-4 – Sam’s car – and made north. Got a bit of the scenic tour as we traveled; did some of the 857 bridges scattered throughout, and eventually hit the I-95 and got to his place. Got settled, got shaved, showered and shit like that, got fed and met the girlfriend. Then the Pope died. I don’t have too much else to say about that; I make no apologies. He was old, and sick, and these things happen all the time to other people. We’re only mere mortals, after all. We watched in a kind of stunned silence, really, since there’s not much else to do. I was surprised by the amount of hoo-hah people were making about it at the time – while I was waiting to leave Cape Town and they’d basically said “look, you know, this is the end” and in Immigration at JFK and there were millions around the world praying for the Pope’s recovery and all that and I’m thinking, the man is old and very ill. He’s done his work and he is ready to go. Why want him to survive to suffer further? But perhaps that’s the scientist in me. Anyway, Ryan and Sam were in the middle of upping and moving, to a spot about 15 miles further west of Mamaroneck, and so I helped out where I could to pack up some stuff and shunt it into the car. This was what I’d tacitly agreed to – they were putting me up for a week, after all, in the midst of the move, and taking me to and from various airports and stuff like that, so I was more than happy to lend a hand here and there. Also, I’d done a chunk of shopping for snow clothes and other sundry items – CDs and DVDs and a new zoom lens for my camera – from Amazon and other online places which had been delivered to the new address and so packing up a load of stuff to drop off at the new place seemed a useful diversion for getting over there to claim my loot. It seemed easier to shop for the essentials – snow jacket, snowboarding pants – before arriving to avoid paying 3 times the price in .za money, because we get fleeced here for anything imported. I bough a snow jacket which was $100 here for $39 there, including getting it shipped, because it is the tail-end of winter up north and so it was on sale. So it made sense. The lens, well, with me heading out to DC like 23 hours after arriving, and not knowing whether I would get into the city to purchase it beforehand, I opted again for the online route. It does kinda take the fun factor out of shopping, but hey, what can you do? Also, again, I managed to shave a few hundred bucks in .za money off the price by shopping online for it, so… can’t argue, I guess. Anyway, retrieved my bag o’ swag and we headed back to my erstwhile home. There were plans afoot to head back to town and mosey about Freakshow Central, as the Colonel puts it in Scent of a Woman, but when the bluer-than-earlier skies again greyed over and buckets of rain proceeded to plummet over all and sundry, we canned that idea. Instead, we moseyed off to White Plains to do a spot of shopping. For those who have not been to New York, they don’t have malls in the city. You have to do a fair amount of walking about in the open air to get stuff. I’m down with that, but not that down when the rain is falling like it was on Noah back in the day. But White Plains has a good couple of malls, so we headed up there and spent some dosh and then proceeded to an awesome, genuine Italian pizzeria just across from the house in Mamaroneck to get some supper. We also proceeded to have a good couple of drinks there, so were looking and feeling our best when we got home. About that time, the ol’ eyelids started to get a little on the droopy side. Knowing that I had a 4.30am wake-up call planned for Sunday and the planned sortie to DC, I proceeded to hit the proverbial hay, the first day completed. -d-