How cute is this!!

My friend, Kim, just sent me this photo of her 4month old baby boy, Ben, with his little pals. Ben's the one in the middle sucking his fingers.

Loving the hair of the one on the far left. He's got some serious static going on.

Actually I don’t even like roses

I’m taking Posh Totty up on her challenge to share this banner at the top of my blog until Valentines Day. Yeah, yeah, I know, there’s less than 24hours to go, but I only saw it yesterday.

Anyway, hope you have a lovely Valentines tomorrow whatever you are doing. I’m not the biggest fan of February 14th it has to be said, and not because I’m a bitter, relatively recently dumped singleton. Nope, that’s not it at all. It doesn't particularly bother me - well, except for last year when I was still smarting from the unpleasantness of the break up with Gobshite. Shudder!!!! I actually quite like the sentiment behind it; everyone likes to be made to feel special, however it’s the rampant commercialism I detest and of course in USA they do the rampant commercialism bigger and better than anyone. Okay that’s a sweeping generalisation, I’ve only experienced Valentines in the 2 countries, the UK and the US, but it’s a generalisation I suspect is true. I’m sorry America, I love you, but you and I both know that you have a tendency to go a little over the top when it comes to “The Holidays.”

My memory may well be faulty but I don’t recall Valentines Day being such a huge deal in the UK. Brits, am I wrong? I suspect things may well have changed as diamond retailers, florists and restaurateurs realise what a money spinner it is, but as far as I recall Valentines was less about couples and more about anonymously sending a love note to someone you fancy from afar.

That’s a charming custom don’t you think, to make someone’s day by letting them know they have a secret admirer?

Unfortunately I feel these days that this charming, sweet and low key custom has been taken around the back of the bike sheds by the likes of Hallmark and been given a severe beating, at least in the US. To me there's nothing romantic about sitting side by side by side with other couples and selecting mediocre, over priced food from a pink hued menu, as Miles and I did last year at the Klee Brasserie. Its production line romance, doing what’s expected – going out for dinner and sending her roses - instead of acting on how you feel.

Have I become horribly cynical in my old age?

I’m going to stop moaning on like an ol’ curmudgeon and instead relate to you the story of the most fun Valentines Day I ever had. Don’t worry; this story is not heading in an icky, of the ‘too much information’, kind of direction. No, my best Valentines Day occurred when I was working at a small ad agency in London and the overlords decided to hold an impromptu wooing competition. The first prize being a weekend for two in Paris and a second prize of dinner at some fancy pants restaurant in London, I don’t recall which. Perhaps Titanic which I remember being very in at the time – they did a delicious chilled pea and mint soup – but pretty much went the way of the ship a few years later.

The way it worked was that we all picked names out of one of two hats, women had to pick a guy's name and men had to pick a female name. I remember Miles being quite disgruntled about this and chuntering on and on and on about it being an infringement of his rights as a gay man, not to be able to choose a guy to charm.

Eye-roll!!

Honestly he does get all hot and bothered about this sort of stuff at times and I can understand there are times when it’s important to stand up for your rights, but in a wooing competition? It’s not as if it’s REAL, besides Miles and I both know he’d absolutely compromise his integrity for the sake of a trip to Paris - I jest Miles, I jest. Love you lots. Besides, it wasn't as if you had to take your woo-ee with you to Paris if you won the trip.

Lucky ol’ me got the office sexpot, so it wasn’t exactly a stretch. I spent the afternoon writing saucy poetry and surreptitiously inter-officing him chocolatey treats. (I wonder if you'd get into trouble with HR for that in the US? Probably, they have lots of rules on office fun here.) You had to be anonymous about it y'see, which was tricky as we worked in an open plan office with a big glass atrium running through the centre, so you could pretty much see what was going on. I don’t recall if it was one of the rules that you couldn't be found out, but I remember us going to great lengths to avoid discovery.

Ahh halcyon days, it was great fun, although as you can imagine we didn't get a lot of work done that afternoon, but it had a great impact on office moral.

Actually I do hold February 14th close to my heart for reasons other than Valentines Day, since it’s also the anniversary of the day I was offered a job in New York. Eight years ago I remember Miles getting a call from a former colleague who’d moved to New York the year before. It wasn’t a surprise that he called, they were friends outside of work, but it was a surprise when, after speaking to him for a few minutes, Miles turned to me and said ‘he wants to speak to you’, the rest as they say is history.

Oh and it's true about the roses, I much prefer tulips.

Gallery Hopping

So far I am having an absolutely lovely weekend. I managed to catch up on my sleep on Friday night and felt unusually well rested on Saturday despite being woken around 3am by my new upstairs neighbour arriving home from her night out. She moved in about a week ago and she’s very noisy when she walks around the apartment. She’s one of those heavy walker types – fairy elephants as we call them in England, which means a person who looks as if she should be light on her feet, but is nothing of the sort. She often wears shoes while walking around on uncarpeted wooden floors, so there are times when it sounds as if a family of elephants wearing clogs has moved in above me.

Anyway, despite the noise, the weekend has been smashing. I went on another of Rafael Risemberg’s gallery tours on Saturday which was great as usual. I swear if you are ever in New York and are an art lover you really should take advantage of these tours. Rafael does a best exhibits tour every month and while you won’t necessarily like all the art he’s chosen, it always makes for great conversation. In fact, don’t be shy; come with me while I take you on yesterday’s tour…

First stop on the tour of eight exhibits was Daniella Dooling, showing at the Michael Steinberg gallery, or should I say *was* showing as this exhibit ended yesterday, so apologies if you wanted to see it.

By the way, all the photos of the exhibits are courtesy of the gallery websites. Unfortunately I couldn’t find photos that completely reflected the first exhibit which took up the entire gallery. I have 2 digital cameras and none of them work properly, I need to get them sorted and stop relying on the likes of Flickr, but here you go...

A little freaky right??? It's art that I can appreciate in terms of the work that's gone into it, but I can't say I particularly like it. The artist – Daniella Dooling – apparently uses taxidermy animal forms, wraps them in tin foil, covers them in hot glue and leaves that to dry before sticking pushpins into the forms. What you can't see so well from the photos, except perhaps the one of the baboon on the bottom left, is that the animals are suspended on rods, some rise from the floor, some hang from a grid that's attached to the ceiling. In the back room of the gallery was the piece shown on the bottom right; the entire thing is made up of 16,000 pushpins. I quite liked the effect of this one and it struck me as something that, no disrespect to the artist, could be reasonably easily replicated in my own apartment, although I am sure my landlord would not thank me for putting 16,000 tiny holes in the wall. Overall I thought this exhibit was kind of bizarre, but interesting. One thing I love about Rafael’s tours is that the art is never boring.

Next up…Harun Farocki at the Greene Naftali gallery.

This was probably my least favourite of the eight exhibits on the tour, although as a European I couldn't help but feel a pang of excitement about the World Cup theme. It's a video installation by Harun Farocki, a Czech artist and is a difficult piece to replicate in photos, you really have to see it, except you can't as this also ended yesterday. Sorry kids.

I was divided on this piece as it was a lot of big screens showing the analysis of the game that the likes of the coaches get to see. It was definitely impactful though.

The next 3 pieces were my favourites....

The husband and wife team of Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz were showing at the PPOW gallery. I loved this exhibit. Initially all we saw were the photos, but what this couple actually do is create snow globes and then photograph the scenes within. The snowglobes seem cute on first glance, but when you really look at them they're quite often a bit macabre. If I were able to buy one piece from the exhibits I saw today a snowglobe by Martin and Munoz would have been a front runner. I really liked 'Jumping' on the bottom right of the photos below, even the figures are actually jumping to their deaths, it almost looks as if they're dancing on air, which makes it more uplifting than depressing, well, except for the poor chap mangled on the rocks below. He's not going to be doing any more dancing. Both the globes and the prints were on sale by the gallery. We didn't get to find out the price, but I'm pretty sure I didn't have enough cash on me.

The 4th stop on the tour was the Stefan Stux gallery which was showing works by the German artist Kuno Gonschior.

The photo really doesn't do it justice as these pieces were really impressive. You need to see these pieces in person, and if you happen to live in New York then you are in luck as the exhibit doesn't close until the 8th March. Apparently Kuno starts by putting a dawb of paint on a raw canvas, moves back to cast a critical eye over the effect from a distance and then returns to the canvas to add another dab of paint, repeating the process over and over until the work is completed. It must take him forever. The smaller of the pieces - which are about 4ft by 3ft - will set you back a bargain $32,000. The larger ones - like the one shown below - are closer to $70,000.

The next stop on the tour impressed me the most, and - eeek - the artist happened to be visiting the gallery at the time we all piled in, and he very kindly talked to us about his inspiration and we got to ask him a few questions. I have only one word for the work of this artist, and that is PHENOMENAL!!! They're paintings, not photographs. There are a couple that, even when you're only a foot away from them, you'd swear were photographs at first glance; the work is so detailed and precise that if you didn't know it was painted you might assume it's photo-realism. It's at the Mike Weiss gallery and is by an Israeli artist, Yigal Ozeri, and closes on the 23rd February. See it if you can, Yigal's work is absolutely breathtaking in person.

Doesn't it look like a photograph? I promise you, when you get up close you can see it's a painting. The artist takes a photo of the scene using a high quality camera, I don't know anything about photograpy to be honest, but the artist said he used the highest quality camera money can buy, a movie camera I think he said, to photo the scene and then he replicates it in oils. Apparently a big trend among artists these days is to try and make photography look like paintings whereas Yigal tries to make paintings look like photography. The painting above kind of reminds me of the pre-Raphaelite paintings of John William Waterhouse, such as the Lady Of Shalott.

The original photo of the above painting was taken in Central Park in New York. The model, Priscilla, lives in a commune in Maine and is apparently "very at one with nature". She's stunning isn't she? The artist said he didn't direct her, but just let her do her own thing and then he photographed her from a distance, before gradually coming closer and closer. I love the way her dreadlocks blend in to the surrounding trees. She's perfect for these paintings. Even though I've seen these up close I still have a hard time believing they're not photos.

Here's a photo of the artist at work. He works on approximately 15 paintings at any given time, with the help of 6 assistants. He told us that the current series of paintings took him 18-24months to complete.

I love his waistcoat. I have to say Yigal was a hard act to follow.

Sixth on the tour was the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota who is at the Goff & Rosenthal gallery until the 10th March. I appreciated this work, but didn't love it, although I think it would be very impactful if purchased as an entrance way to a restaurant or bar, what you don't see clearly is the way it arches over the doorway to the office next door. The pieces are made from wool.

I kind of like these light bulbs suspended in wool...

The last piece I saw was Christy Rupp at the Frederieke Taylor gallery, which was titled 'Extinct Birds Previously Consumed by Humans' and was "constructed with the assistance of numerous scientists and University Websites, a visit to the American Museum of Natural History's dark lockers, and many friends who have donated the remains of barbecues and holiday dinners."

She created these skeletons of extinct birds using the remains of her friends' Kentucky Fried Chicken dinners. It's certainly an interesting way to recycle.

I had to leave before we visited the eighth piece as I had an appointment to wax my eyebrows and unmentionables, however I didn't leave without exchanging numbers with art lover Bill who I'd been chatting to on the tour and who asked me if I was interested in going for a coffee or a bite to eat after the tour. I couldn't, but he and I have a date today. I also swapped info with Betsy who I got chatting to while peering into the snowglobes and found out she lives in my building. Can you believe that? I go all the way down to Chelsea and meet someone who lives in the same building as me on the Upper East Side. I don't live in a big building either so it's amazing we haven't run into each other in the halls since she's lived there for 3years and I've been there for 7, but now that I have her number I'll be inviting her for brunch.

I had to make a mad dash to be on time for my appointment with Alicja. I've been going to her for a years now and about 18months ago she set up her own spa on 31st street with her friend Christina. Unfortunately after a year of being there the building was purchased and she and Christina had to look for new premises. These will be ready in March but for the time being she's seeing her regulars out of a client's apartment on Sullivan St. It was interesting to see someone else's apartment, the place was tiny, a long, skinny railroad studio, but it was decorated beautifully. I loved the way she used a fire surround, which she'd hung white pillows across, as a headboard for her bed. It was inventive and really effective. Alicja was telling me that she works in advertising and is looking for a job, having just recently been let go from her last position, so I left her my email address so she could send me her resume to pass on to my account teams. I wasn't sure if any of them are looking, but it's worth a try.

It had been several hours since I'd eaten, so I made a quick pit stop at the Hampton Chutney Co. on Prince St in SoHo for a delicious dosa and a revitalising cardamom coffee before heading home. I love that place, but so it seems does everyone else as it's permanently packed and you can rarely get a seat, but for once I was lucky and a couple of people were leaving as I ordered, so I got to sit down and enjoy my food instead of getting it to go, before heading home to run errands.

As I was heading back from the laundry a few hours later I ran into Allison, a colleague who's lived 2 blocks from me for a few years now, but who I never see. I suppose if I don't even run into people like Betsy who lives in the same building I can hardly expect to run into people 2blocks over. Allison told me how she's been working 80+hour weeks and if they don't hire someone to help her soon she's offski. I told her about Alicja's client and she sounded very interested in seeing her resume, so with any luck it could work out well for the both of them.

All in all it felt like a serendipitous sort of day, what with meeting Bill and Betsy on the gallery tour, getting a rare seat in Hampton Chutney Co; Alicja telling me her client is looking for a job and then running into Allison who needs someone. It was fab!!

After cleaning my apartment I cracked open a nice bottle of burgundy and enjoyed a glass of wine whilst IMing with my sister in Australia. It was great to catch up with her, it's been a couple of weeks since we've had a proper catch up. She was telling me that my nephew started school a week or two ago and has been fitting in really well due to being a bit of a star on the cricket team, well that of course and the devastating good looks he so clearly gets from his aunt hee hee. His father's a semi-professional cricket player, so my nephew's been playing since he was big enough to hold a bat.

Yes, Saturday was a great day. The only low point to my weekend was hearing the news that a massive fire has swept Camden town in North London, devastating the Hawley Arms and much of the market. There were a 100 firefighers tackling the blaze. I haven't heard any news of fatalities though so fingers crossed no-one was hurt.

Photo courtesy of the BBC.

Floating alphabets and the Death Star canteen

Phewwwwwww!!! TGIF!!! I am sooooooo looking forward to this weekend. Other than drinks with friends tonight I’ve purposely planned very little. I usually spend my weekends running here, there and everywhere trying to fit in errands, trips to the gym and catch ups with friends and I’m usually frazzled by the end of it, so it’s time for some rest and relaxation I think as I've been struggling even more than usual to get out of bed for work this past week and doing very little appeals immensely.

I also didn’t have the best of times at a client meeting yesterday morning. The more junior of the clients was very sweet, but her boss….shudder. What a witch. She was so unnecessarily nasty. When she blew into the conference room so did the artic wind. I've never experienced such a frosty reception from someone who’s never met me before; she was an absolute snot who clearly thought that meeting with us was a waste of her time. I found her incredibly argumentative, questioning every word out of my mouth. I was sat there thinking calm down woman we're only on the agenda. I don’t know how she can go through life like that; it must be exhausting to be so unpleasant. She was like the Wicked Witch of the West without the warmth.

It really pissed me off how rude she was to barely give us the time of day when we’d spent an intense few days working on the project. I’d worked a good part of last weekend and was in work late on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I was even dreaming about the damn thing. My part of the project required me to analyze a few customer segments which were identified by 3 letter acronyms: SMS, CMS, TAS etc and on Tuesday I had a restless night dreaming the alphabet was floating above my head just out of my reach and I was struggling to jump and reach for the letters to make up the names of the segments. I really hate it when work infiltrates my dreams.

Oh and I also found my first grey hair. I’m not at all happy about that I can tell you, but fortunately it’s only one, so it’s easily missed and yeah, I know, I’m a lucky bitch to have made it to almost 37 without having to resort to a trip to the colourist to hide the grey, but my father only just started turning grey a couple of years ago and he’s 57 so I was kind of hoping to have scored some of those genetics given all the years I’ve had to put up with the masses of baby fine hair I’ve inherited from him. I can’t do a thing with it without drenching it in half a can of volumising hair mousse.

Fortunately my spirits were significantly lifted when I got back to the office after the meeting and found that Emma had snagged us tickets for the upcoming Eddie Izzard shows at the Union Square Theatre on February 22nd.

Eeek, I’m so happy, I lurve Eddie Izzard!!

Disgruntled of Manhattan

So far I’m not so impressed with 2008:

* I’ve been dumped!!

* 60 people were laid off in early January, including some very good friends of mine.

* My boss resigned, as did 2 people I also really like working with (is it me?)

...And now, while perusing the Eater blog today, I’ve learned that one of my favourite places in New York, Palacinka, closed its doors on Sunday due to yet another greedy bloody New York landlord hiking up the rent.

I realise there are people in the world with real problems, but I’m thoroughly peeved.

First DT:UT and now Palacinka.

Harumph!!

I loved Palacinka. I didn’t quite make my mark on Palacinka in the same way I literally did with DT:UT – it was the first time I’d had S’mores and I wasn’t very adept at it and while talking and gesturing I managed to fling a flaming marshmallow across the room where it landed on a table and scorched it. Fortunately there weren't many witnesses – but I did very much enjoy hanging out there with friends and enjoying a café con leche and a delicious mushroom, mozzarella, potato and pesto crepe.

Sniffle!!

I’m so not impressed with the way things are heading in New York. If Barrio Chino turns out to be next I may seriously consider making the most of my European passport and my French A level and skedaddle off to Paris!!

RIP Palacinka :-(

Photo courtesy of NY Magazine

Post Superbowl Babblings!!

Whoo hoo, we won the Superbowl. I say ‘we’ because of course *I* contributed MASSIVELY as I lounged on my sofa and scoffed low fat barbeque flavoured soy chips and quaffed diet Sprite while watching the game. Party on!!

I have to say though it was quite an achievement for me to sit and watch 4 hours of football because, shocking though this announcement may be to some, I’m not what you’d call much of a sports fan. No really I’m not. I’m even less of a fan of American sports where the games seem to go on for, let’s be honest here, an ETERNITY – what’s with all the stopping? - but I do rather like to champion the underdog, especially when the underdog is from my adopted home city and the favourites include all round golden boy and scumbag love rat Tom Brady.

Boo hisssssssss!!!

It’s team Moynihan all the way in my corner of town. I’m not at all a fan of Tom.

I realise of course that I am making sweeping generalisations about Tom Brady’s character based solely on what I’ve read in the gossip columns. It’s more than a little judgmental of me perhaps, but I just don’t care. Dumping your girlfriend when she is pregnant with your child…well, it’s just not good form is it. I feel similarly about Billy Crudup. I’ll give you that he’s a very talented actor and I used to find him rather attractive, but after the whole shenanigans of him dumping of Mary Louise Parker when she was pregnant he just makes my skin crawl. Repulsive!!

Anyway as I’ve said I’m not much of a sports fan, in fact the only time I ever go to games in the US is when my friend Nick visits me in New York. He usually coerces me into something or other. The first time it was a Yankees match and I considered it was a true sign of the value of our friendship that I was willing to forgo a precious Saturday afternoon to watch a pile of sweaty men spit and scratch their bollocks for a few hours, but that wasn’t enough for him. Oh no, he insisted I actually watch the game and was utterly appalled that I brought a magazine with me. Hey, I needed something to do in case I got bored. To my credit I didn’t open it once in the FOUR AND A HALF HOURS we were sat there – see, I’m a true friend and by God was my arse was numb from those hard plastic seats – and I did have quite a nice afternoon – a couple of beers helped - but I have to admit that my favourite part of the whole thing was at half time when the grounds men tidied up the pitch while doing a routine to YMCA. The rest of it, I could take or leave.

There just isn’t anything in it for me. I don’t even like it for eye candy purposes, although admittedly big swarthy men just don’t really do it for me, in general I prefer a leaner man, like a football player for instance – and when I say football I do of course mean ‘the beautiful game’. However if my friends are any barometer I’m a bit of an exception as a fair few I know are quite turned on by these baseball/American football types. They tell me it’s because the guys are so huge they would make them feel tiny, but then I’m 5ft 1 and a 114lbs (8stone 2 Brits), so i'd be hard pressed to find a man that wouldn’t make me feel tiny, although your average jockey would probably make me feel like a right heifer, but I’d be worried about an American football player slipping on a banana skin or some such and squashing me flat as a pancake.

Times Square celebrations courtesy of Lordofnerur via Flickr

The end of an era

Today is the last day in the office for our current head of department before he heads off to pastures new. It’s hard to believe today is his last day, I’ve only just got used to the idea that he’s leaving and here he is clearing out his office to leave. I’ve never really got used to the fact that everyone in the US, regardless of seniority, seems to be on a 2week notice period, it’s so short compared to the six months notice required for many of my friends who hold senior positions in the UK.

It's quite a sad day really. I’ve worked for him so long it'll be weird not to have him around anymore. He hired me to work here just a month shy of 7years ago and although I’ve had my moments where I haven’t exactly agreed with his way of doing things - he can be terrible for having favourites and he’s always been very reluctant to expense a few drinks on those rare occasions he’s called upon to reward his underpaid, hard working staff. Seriously you’d think he was being asked to spend his own money - but for the most part I've appreciated working for him and I’ve learned a lot so seeing him leave is like the end of an era.

I'm not the only one that feels that way. His resignation stunned a lot of people as everyone just seemed to assume he'd be around forever. He made no secret of the fact that he loved working here and he did very well for himself. Understandably news of his resignation led to a lot of whispering in corridors with people speculating as to whether he’d decided to leave of his own accord or whether he'd been pushed out due to the recent deterioration of his working relationship with certain senior someone, especially given the company he’s leaving us for hasn’t exactly had rosy financial prospects of late. It feels like a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire to me and so in a wine fuelled bravado at his leaving do on Wednesday night, I decided to ask him what the story was on his resignation.

You would have been proud of me, I fearlessly got down to the nitty gritty and did not once shirk from asking the hard hitting questions. Seriously I’m like Jeremy Paxman after a couple of glasses of wine; except unlike Jeremy I have absolutely no problems whatsoever with the quality of my M&S underwear, you’ll find no quibbles here about the supportiveness of their underpinnings, oh no, in fact their lingerie appears to be of a far superior quality to the shite sold in Victoria’s Secret, but I digress…..

He’s usually a very diplomatic person, so I was surprised when he responded to my questions very frankly and pretty much told me flat out that he’d decided to leave because of his rapidly souring relationship with the CSS who, putting it mildly, has a reputation for being difficult.

“I really just couldn’t deal with it any more” he told me. ”It wasn’t worth it to stay.”

I can’t say I blame him. He’s lasted longer than most, but I saw first hand back in September how the CSS treated him and it wasn’t pretty. A few of us later learned from our manager – the one who's been promoted into his position – that things got so bad between them that they both used him as a conduit to communicate with each other. You know the way you do when you're about 12 and you’re mad at someone, so you refuse to speak to that person things directly even when they are standing right next to you? Instead you talk to them through a third party and say things like 'Miles, could you ask Kimberley if she’d like a cup of tea please?'

It's hard to believe that I work for grown ups sometimes.

Anyway I’m very sorry to see him leave us, but I wish him all the best. It’s a small industry so I'm sure our paths will cross again in future.

Photo of Jeremy Paxman courtesy of the BBC