It has been a busy old week. One of the partners from another part of the business decided he needed an analytical heavyweight to help him do some serious number crunching. I obviously haven’t hidden my data analysis and Access skills deeply enough on my CV, because he approached me as the right man for the job. Even when I pointed out the impact of my day rate for doing a job like this, he remained convinced that I was ‘value for money’.

The job seemed reasonably straight-forward – take an Excel spreadsheet that was relying on loads of clunky lookups and a number of data tables (think ‘actuarial tables’ if you need an idea of size and scale) and create a more elegant solution in Access. I took all the input materials and created the model. So far ,so good.

The devil, of course, is in the detail. Because it’s only once it’s been built and you’ve pushed some data through that you realise that 1) the data quality is poor and 2) the client hasn’t defined their requirements clearly enough. For every business rule they have outlined, they’ve conveniently neglected to mention that there are exceptions to the business rules. No two groups in the company follow the same business rules, and there are 160 groups. And suddenly what seemed like a very straight-forward job assumes a life of its own.

Never mind. All I can think about is my upcoming holiday – my thoughts are squarely on our trip to New Orleans. All of our upgrades have cleared (thank goodness – 16 hours in economy is more than I can bear to think about). After a minor cock-up with dates (hotel booked for one week, flights for another) we have managed to secure hotel reservations for the entire period, even during the busy season of Jazzfest – although we will have to move hotels halfway through unless I can sweet-talk the GM into releasing a room for us. The concierge has a list of my favourite New Orleans restaurants and is busy making reservations. I’ve emailed all my friends and invited them to get together. Short of packing, I think we’re all ready to go!

Weather is predicted to be in the 90s all week – hot, but I can’t imagine New Orleans any other way. It’s my first visit post-Katrina. I just hope that this city for which I have such a fondness hasn’t changed too much.

Aude has been in Paris on a training course for the past four days, so I decided to use this weekend to get some of the errands run. Our stocks of wine are running low, so I decided it was time for a quick run over to Calais to replenish our supplies. Thinking that I had plenty of time, I decided to take the ferry rather than the train to save a few quid – a mistake in the end.

The famous white cliffs of Dover…

I went over with Seafrance, who have much nicer ferries than either of the other companies. But I picked a rough day with a very choppy crossing, and a fair number of the passengers spent most of their time throwing up. I’m fairly immune to sea-sickness, but there’s something inherently unpleasant about being surrounded by people being sick.

The Wine Society’s shop in Montreuil, or ‘Mecca’ as we prefer to call it…

First stop in France was at the Wine Society. I’d preselected my wines on the ferry, and handed over my completed order form. Ten minutes later and a few hundred euros lighter, the friendly lads at the Wine Society had loaded my car and I was on my way back to Calais to do some food shopping. And aggravating quite a few French drivers at each of the tolls, as I had to get out and run around the car to fetch my tickets (as my steering wheel is on the wrong side and I’ve got no passenger to reach out for me.

The car is riding a little lower on its suspension, its boot full of wine!

From Montreuil, it was back to Calais to stock up on all the foods that we can’t get in the UK – veal, good coffee, chicory, cured meats, cheeses, and so on. Several hundred more euros later, and the boot was full to bursting.

Off to Carrefour for a little grocery shopping…

Finally back on the ferry, the rear end of the car scraped over every speed bump I crossed. Next time I’ll rent a van!

The car fully laden, I managed to scrape the rear end going over the speed bumps getting onto the ferry…

The return ferry was much more uneventful than the outbound crossing. I had a nice dinner on the onboard restaurant, surrounded for some reason by loads of Australians. One of whom did her country’s reputation no favours by ordering a steak, well done, and then asking the French waiter if she could have some ketchup to go with it.

And I thought it was only the Americans who were renowned for these sorts of social gaffes.

It’s bloody FREEZING! I think we must have brought the cold weather home with us. After dragging my jet-lagged body out of bed this morning, I was greeted with arctic gales and frosty temperatures, a real change after the very mild winter we’ve had so far. To make matters worse, I was running late and didn’t have time to grab my normal cup of coffee before jumping on the train. It’s a rough way to start the week.

Back to New York. We arrived late on Thursday night, delayed an hour because the pilots had trouble getting to the airport. We had severe winds on Thursday night, downing trees and power lines across the country, and generally making travel of all sorts difficult. The strong headwind also meant that our flight took longer – we eventually arrived in New York around midnight, and got to our hotel around 1am. New York roads are as bad as ever, and I saw my life flash before my eyes several times on the cab journey from the airport.

Lobby of the Sheraton New York. I was upgraded to a nice suite, but Anne Laure and Neil were “upgraded” to a handicapped room, where everything was designed for someone 3ft tall.

We were up early on Friday morning and decided to hit the city. I wanted to hit B&H Photo – closed on Friday afternoons and Saturdays because it’s run by Orthodox Jews – so that was the first order of business. I ended up with a 50mm lens for my camera and a new camera bag. And I talked Neil into buying one as well (…and so starts the addiction!).

Matthew tries to decide which lens he wants.

Neil was giving me a hard time about buying a lot of stuff — until we saw this guy. He must have bought every accessory in the store! He dumped everything out on the floor and packed it into his new camera bag.

We stopped off for a Mexican lunch, then headed to the International Photography Center, where we saw the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition I had wanted to see in Paris. I thought it was fitting to see his photos, a sort of “tribute” to a 50mm lens, in light of my new purchase.

Friday evening we met up with my friend Peter and his girlfriend for a few drinks at the W Hotel at Times Square, then headed out to dinner at Les Halles, Anthony Bourdin’s original NY restaurant, where Aude and I split a piece of steak just slightly larger than my head.

At the Whiskey Bar, beneath the W Hotel in Times Square. (Photo courtesy of Peter)

MG rode up from her home-away-from-home in New Jersey on Saturday – her first trip to New York. We picked her up at Penn Station and went straight into Macy’s – start as you meant to continue. On a tip from Peter’s girlfriend, we all met for lunch at Golden Bridge in Chinatown for dim sum – and were pretty much the only white people there.

Dim sum with everyone at the Golden Bridge restaurant in Chinatown. (Photo courtesy of Peter)

After gorging ourselves, we spent the afternoon exploring the city – Times Square, Fifth Avenue, the World Trade Centre site – then onto the real New York landmark – Century 21! Famished after hours of shopping, we headed to Little Italy for dinner. We had some fantastic veal, then went around the corner to Ferrara’s bakery for some dessert. After trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab, I managed to blag a ride home in a passing limo.

We were up like clockwork on Sunday morning, Neil’s stomach calling out for food. There was no avoiding it – we needed breakfast at a Jewish deli. We went into Carnegie Deli on 7th Ave and had a traditional deli breakfast with all the trimmings – including a waitress who looked like she’d been working there since the turn of the century. The nineteenth century.

The gang at the Carnegie Deli, shortly before being abused by the pre-historic waitress.

Clearly unimpressed with our unfamiliarity with deli procedure, she served us cheerlessly with her patented “service without a smile.” Still, it could be worse. She yelled at the retired travellers behind us for ordering a side-order of cream cheese, complaining that she had to walk all the way back to the kitchen. Funny, that’s what I thought her job was.

She added a 20% gratuity to our bill.

I got to thinking – if she keeps her tips ($14 on our $70 bill) and serves ten tables an hour, she’s clearing $140 an hour in tips. Assuming she works a 4-hour shift, five days a week, that’s $140K a year – a significant portion of which, I assume, does not get reported to the tax man. It’s easy to look at a 70+ year old woman and feel sorry that she has to work as a waitress. But then I did the arithmetic and my sympathy was tempered somewhat. She’s laughing all the way to the bank.

Some completely mad people running a half-marathon in Central Park in the middle of winter.

Laden with food, we headed up to Central Park, where we caught the tail end of the half-marathon that Peter was running in. We didn’t manage to catch him (he was too quick for us) but we did get a chance to see some of his slower competitors bringing up the rear.

Skaters in Rockefeller Center.

Neil finds heaven on Fifth Avenue.

Heaven, like God himself, takes many forms. For MG, it comes in the form of Prada.

After discovering that all the shops on Fifth don’t open until 11am on a Saturday, we headed town to the Staten Island Ferry.

Neil is, frankly, a little skeptical of my subway navigation skills.

Aude, on the other hand, is totally unimpressed and threatens to leave me for one of the rats that run down the tracks!

The New York subway.

In their wisdom, someone put me in charge of navigating the Metro. I learned a number of embarrassing lessons about riding the New York subway.

1. You can only swipe four people through on a Metro card. Which means that, if you’re the fifth guy, you look like jackass when you then try to swipe yourself through, instead getting impaled on the barrier.
2. Colours and lines do not correspond 1-to-1. Which helps explain why it took four separate trains to get from 50th to the South Ferry.
3. If ever your swipe card doesn’t work, wrapping it with a dollar bill to clean the sensors is a surprising effective trick.
4. Trains are infuriatingly infrequent on a Sunday. Particularly if you need to change four times because your map-reader doesn’t quite understand the subway system.
5. If you’re going less than 20 blocks, take a cab. It’s just as cheap, and a damn sight quicker and more convenient.

After a ride on nearly every subway line, we finally reached the Staten Island Ferry.

Anne Laure and Neil on the Staten Island Ferry.

Matt and Neil enjoy a New York delicacy – a hot pretzel with mustard.

After the Staten Island Ferry and the Statue of Liberty, it was back to 5th Ave for some more shopping. We worked our way down until we eventually ended up at Macy’s again – MG was jealous of the cheap cashmere sweaters I had found and wasn’t going to leave Manhattan until she had some of her own.

We reconvened with Anne Laure and Neil on Sunday night – a low key dinner at Sushiden (fantastic sushi and very accommodating waitresses, endlessly entertained by Neil’s “sake bombs” but not terribly fluent in English. When asked what something was, our waitress helpfully informed us that she “knew the name in Japanese”.) Early to bed, we were up at 5am for our trip back to JFK.

So there you have it – three days in New York. It actually felt much longer. We hit all the big sights, did our bit for the US economy, grabbed a few bargains, and ate enough to feed an army. Best £200 I’ve spent in a long time.

Celebrity sightings while in NY:

1. Richard Wilkins – Australian TV presenter and recent winner of “Australia’s Worst Show Biz TV Reporter” in the 2006 Fugly Awards.” Staying at our hotel.
2. Jean-Baptiste Requien, Gordon Ramsay’s right-hand man, at Ramsay’s restaurant in New York. Anne-Laure tried to sweet-talk her way into a table, but no dice.
3. Crazy “I Surrender” Guy – clearly a man who has spent quite a while in incarceration. Spotted walking off the Staten Island Ferry, hands in the air, trying to surrender to anyone in a uniform – Transit Police, dock operators, and the hotdog vendor. Could have been a relative of Henry Earl.
4. “Dances With Cats” – spotted on the Staten Island Ferry with a curiously noisy shopping bag.
5. Fat “Shouts at Passers-By” Guy, spotted shouting at passers-by at the corner of 44th and 5th.
6. Mr Rhetorical Questions, spotted countless examples of these fellows (and ladies) who speak endlessly to themselves.

Another one of New York’s colourful characters!

Seems like the perfect character to set off the one above!

Still, it wouldn’t be New York without characters like these.

We’re just back from our long weekend in New York, propping up the US economy and taking advantage of the weak dollar for a long weekend of shopping, sight-seeing, and eating! We managed to miss the weeks and weeks of warm, pleasant weather and hit the city right in the middle of a seriously cold spell — high temperatures most days were below freezing, with gusty winds making the problem even worse.

Still, we had a great time, snagged some really good bargains, and caught up with some old friends. More pictures coming soon, but here are a few to start!

Aude and Anne Laure with a very small Statue of Liberty. Neil refused to pose for this photo on principle. Spoilsport.

Aude and Anne Laure in front of Radio City Music Hall.

Anne Laure and Neil in front of the ice rink at Rockefeller Center.

Even when he’s on vacation, Matthew never takes his eye off his work. Here he is in front of the offices in New York checking his Blackberry. Ironically, the office was the first thing we spotted from our hotel window. You can’t miss it — the neon sign is 200 feet tall!

Matthew relaxes in the hotel room after a long day of shopping.

The three amigos – Aude, Maria Grazia, and Anne Laure, all pose for a group shot.

It was great to see Peter again after so long. It looks like he feels the same way.

Anne Laure and Neil waiting for the subway.

All of Maria Grazia’s wishes come true at once. Looking peaceful and calm, she has clearly attained nirvana.

The following morning we woke up to a beautiful, clear day and decided to walk around St Andrews. It was Raisin Weekend, but the town was surprisingly quiet – students in my day were made of sterner stuff. We hit all the big sights – the cathedral ruins, the castle, the pier, the harbour, and the quad. It didn’t take long – St Andrews is a small place.

St Andrews Cathedral ruins

St Andrews castle

St Andrews harbour

The main Quad at the University of St Andrews

Looking into the Quad from North Street

St Andrews Cathedral ruins

Matthew standing at the top of the pier

After careful consideration, Matthew decides not to complete the pier walk on the top of the pier (which is very narrow and about 15m above the sea). It seemed like a less-clever idea then in his student days…

Aude standing in front of St Andrews Cathedral

Looking into the cathedral