There are a number of statements that I was pretty certain I'd never hear in the corporate world. These have ranged from the fairly banal ("hell, we're not that busy. Let's take the rest of the month off...") to the delightfully random ("he did? With a BADGER??"). I'd like to think though, that I'm always prepared for the unexpected and can cater to even the most unforeseen of comments. "What's the going rate for midgets these days?" had me utterly stumped. Picture it. Your boss walks in on a Monday morning, you meet with him to discuss the upcoming fundraiser and [View Full Entry]

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Well, it's 7.20am in New York and I've been up since 5am. Emma's somehow managing to sleep but I think my body has already switched back onto GMT. Today is the last day of our world tour and the end of 10 months on the road. We've completed thousands of miles journeying and had more experiences than it's humanly possible to take in. We've visited 8 countries (China, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and the United States) whilst travelling across (in some cases literally) 3 continents. We've seen the most amazing natural wonders and met some incredible wildlif [View Full Entry]

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I've got to admit, I wasn't a huge fan of Alanis back in her ranty man-hating days. It was all just a little pessimistic for me. My heart was pretty much intact at the age of 14, I'd never really had any parental issues and I was pretty clear on the meaning of the word "ironic", and it had nothing to do with an old dude winning the lottery before promptly dying (didn't they make a film about that, something about Ted or Ned?). But then there was a little road trip with Ali, when it suddenly all became clear. By [View Full Entry]

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On Wednesday, we took the train to Greenwich Village, found the Friends building (the exterior shot used at the start of the show) and walked to Washington Square and through NYU. Afterwards, in the strangely warm weather (21 degrees celsius), we did a little shopping on Broadway before taking in a movie (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr.) and heading back to the hostel (in some amazingly heavy rain). We grabbed a giant New York pizza on the way home. The next morning, winter arrived in the form of the cold, crisp temperatures that we we [View Full Entry]

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On Monday, we took the Subway with Craig, Eleri and Nadine to the site of the World Trade Centre and looked at "Ground Zero" from the observation areas. There are some signboards which tell part of the story and provide quite a moving experience. Across the street we visited St. Paul's Chapel which miraculously escaped unscathed. The chapel is beautiful and houses a pew once used by George Washington. It was used as a base for rescue workers during the WTC clean-up operation and there are displayboards in place to tell part of their harrowing story. Afterwards, we (sombrely) [View Full Entry]

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By my second "i'm-going-to-see-everything-this-darn-town-has-to-offer-just-you-try-and-stop-me" day, I'd managed to figure out the ferries and the piers and the times and the locations of the whole thing. So I gave the cruise another shot. With the Circle Line ferry leaving from its pier at 12:30, I had my arrival timed to perfection. The Law of the Sod, however, decrees that when a good idea has been had by one person, millions of others will also have been blessed with said good idea, and so all shall descend upon this same little pier at the same little time in order to bombard the humbl [View Full Entry]

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Monday morning I woke up, after sleeping in past my intended wake up time, quite sore from the miles we walked the previous day, but refused to let that hinder me from walking the same amount or more for the second day in a row. My Swiss friends were off to work and so I was solo today. I arrived at the same central bus station as the day before and felt I had good bearings right away. I headed the opposite direction from my walking tour the day before, planning a walk in the general direction of MOMA, which was [View Full Entry]

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Leaving DC, for our last drive of the trip, we headed into Maryland (where we ate an amazing last breakfast in a really old diner in Jessup). After driving through Baltimore we crossed the northern tip of Delaware and into Pennsylvania where we skirted Philadelphia and crossed into New Jersey at Trenton (where we said goodbye to two of our group). We arrived in New York in time to grab an early curry with the rest of the group and say our goodbyes...sob! Yesterday evening (Sunday), after taking a cab to our hostel, the se [View Full Entry]

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I was traveling to New Jersey for work, so I decided to take a couple of extra days to tour Manhattan while so close by. Conveniently my hotel in Secaucus was near a bus route that was a 30 minute ride into Manhattan’s Port Authority bus station. While waiting for the bus Sunday mid-morning I met up with three Swiss men there on a marketing business trip, which were staying at my same hotel in N.J. and also took an extra ‘free’ day to tour Manhattan. They had no specific plan however for seeing the city, and since I had some [View Full Entry]

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After a bout of freezing-get-your-coats-out-folks-we're-snowed-in-til-March weather, it's suddenly turned really warm again. I can wander freely around the city wearing a jumper and still be warm (note: yes, this is in addition to other clothes. No silly comments please!). This was of course remarkably handy when it was decided that Saturday was going to be a night out on the town, venturing out to 40-40, the favourite haunt of my flatmate Lydia. I'd heard rumours of ghetto-like suuroundings and that I would be the whitest person there, but after having survived the Kings Pharmacy Ball earl [View Full Entry]

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