Okay, so here I am again, back after a lengthy absence. In which nothing too exciting happened, to be honest; it was perhaps laziness, more than anything else... Anyway, Day 5 was not hugely exciting. It was, in effect, my last full day in New York, since Ryan and Sam were officially moving to the new place on Day 6, and on account of them having put me up so niecly at no cost, I wanted to assist as much as I could with the process. I knew that Day 6 was going to be fairly frenetic - in addition to the move, I had to be at La Guardia Airport by 6am on Day 7 for the 8am flight to the conference, so I couldn't catch a train from the new place, so I Was going to be crashing in town for the night on Day 6, and that would entail lugging large amounts of luggage all over the place on Day 6 to my designated hotel, a bitr of a dive called the Malibu Studios hotel up the top end of Broadway on the upper West Side near 103rd St. For those of you who don't know - and I counted myself amongst you at that time - that is right on the doorstep of Harlem; a fact I discovered late on Day 5 when I went to confirm my booking. Early on Day 5, though, was the much vaunted interview at AECOM, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. That was initially planned for Tuesday, but had to get shunted to Wednesday, and threw my schedule out oa bit, because instead of being early or late, it was smack bang in the middle of the day, and since AECOM is in the North Bronx, it is kinda in the middle of nowhere and quite far from the subway which I was now a veteran of. Taxis were also not really an option, although suggested by the guy I was seeing there, since I had no idea how to find one. Couldn't find a phonebook in Ryan's flat, and Google eventually pointed me to a nearby one, which had no cars available. Also, my Lonely Planet guide did not have a listing for AECOM - no surprise, really - and I couldn't find the street on the map. I was going to have to leg it for the train to Grand Central and hop out at the nearest train stop to AECOM and pray for a passing bus or cab. So that's what I did. And had a remarkable amount of luck in finding one, right there at the station, although it set me back a few bucks. In fact, doing the maths on my spending over there, the transport is what killed me - getting to and from the airports at 100 bucks a pop in .za money is not fun; it's probably a steal at $15 in American money, though; but perhaps not when you are hitting 6 different airports. Nevertheless, got to AECOM, did my thang, and eventually - 2pm - got back to the city and headed up to the Malibu. The Malibu is a budget hotel. Probably primarily serviced by backpackers and the like. It was a far cry from the larney Lombardy in DC, but it hit the spot and was clean and comfortable, if somewhat of a dive. Anyway, got booked in for the next night and decided to bite the bullet and head off to Central Park. Central Park was very much a bane of the entire trip, particularly on Day 16 at the end of the tour. Perhaps you guys love it; personally, I had not yet drank my fill of the urban rat-race to want to swan about in there for hours at a stretch and waste a lot of time looking at patches of mudded out grass and trees with no leaves. It did allow for some trendy arty shots of skyscrapers with the BW film, though, so I'll leave it at that. Anyway, moseyed about there for a bit, then pissed off back to midtown, to Saks and Bloomingdales and Barneys and all the other 5th and Madison Avenue staples. Got sprayed with shitloads of new fragrances - a new Bulgari, an Esmeraldo Zegna and some others - and stuff like that in Saks, which was fine; was asked about my accent and told I sound English, as in from England, and got horrified "you can't be!" when I alluded to being Zimbabwean via South Africa. A word, at this point, on my accent. A sore point, if you will, since I am sounding more and more Sowth Effricun every day, and that is not good. Particularly when I get pissed off or sarcastic, which is frequently. When I was floating about in Zanzibar in 2002 and a touring party of Antipodean (that's Ozzie and Kiwi and English and .za) backpackers pulled up and we were exchanging pleasantries, I nailed all their accents, and then one English guy said to me that I must live in Cape Town. I said true, a good guess; he countered that my accent gave it away. I said, apalled, that I don't have an accent, and he replied "Trust me, bru, you have an accent." At this point it is probably worth mentioning that I speak extremely rapidly. So does my sister, but less so. When outsiders hear us talking to one another, it has been likened to an exchange of machine-gun fire in terms of speed. I am well aware of this, ini addition to my accent, and so made a point while I was over there of speaking much more slowly. Still not slow enough, I was told; nevertheless, I di what I could. And, I did listen to myself speaking slowly and clearly and enunciating everything carefully, and indeed, I do sound British. And, I feel, somewhat patronising. Anyway, the pretty girl at the Armani counter in Saks thinks that I am a Brit. Fine by me. Saks was followed by a visit to the legendary FAO Schwarz toy-store. That's that place where Tom Hanks and that other guy dance on the gigantic piano in Big; and they do it at FAO all the time. There are 2 guys in there doing a continual show where they play duets, leaping about and jumping and cartwheeling to hit the notes in sequence - a marvel to behold. And FAO has a vintage toys area - toys I haven't seen since I broke my own versions of them growing up in the late 70s and early 80s. It's a really impressive store. I picked up some UglyDoll keyrings for my folks there. As my mom said, bring us something that we'll like. You know the sort of things which we'd enjoy. And as soon as I saw the cute UglyDolls, I knew I had a winner. Well done, me. But apart from that, the toys are aimed at little kids, so I couldn't find anything hugely cool there to take home. Better is the Puzzle Factory at Century City in LA and also the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills in LA, because they have awesome toys in all their shops. More on that on day 15, though. Anyway, that was about it for Day 5. Headed home to take the last bit of stuff through to the new place and got a meatball and parmesan cheese sandwich from Rocky's 24-hour deli out in Millwood for supper. Absolutely awesome and huge. A must-eat, people. -d-