The Gym

I have always found the gym to be an absolutely fascinating place for people watching - it is unnatural to put human beings of all ages, shapes and sizes in a small space, make them frantically exercise and watch them turn all shades of red while they carefully avoid looking at each other.

As my "February Fitness" burst is still going strong, I have had plenty of opportunities to observe some of the differences between gyms in New York and the ones in London and so far have identified three of them.

1. An unsettling amount of public nudity in the Ladies locker room
I am no prude but I consider it normal that, after having a shower at the gym, one should try to remain covered under towels while discreetly changing back into clothes. It does involve some amount of contortion and dexterity but it is feasible. However, training in the art of not unecessarily exposing one's private parts is not evident here at all.

I have not seen so many naked women since I went to the famous Gellert Baths in Budapest - an experience I found so traumatic at the time that I only lasted 20 minutes in there ... There was only a limited number of times I could deal with rather mature ladies insisting on bending over to pick up seemingly invisible objects from the floor!?!

I am getting slowly used to NYC women's lack of self-consciousness and their general disposition for doing as much as they can completely stark naked - be it leisurely walking around the locker room, chatting to each other for ages or even drying their hair and applying make-up! In fact, I applaud them for that ... but won't be joining them anytime soon!

2. Male bonding
I hate going to the gym when it is packed so I have taken to exercising early Friday evenings, which has lead me to another observation. This particular time slot seems to be the primary setting to the new phenomenon of "man dates". Throngs of men invade the gym at that time and it is endearing, albeit highly amusing, to see them exercising on the weight machines in pairs, coaching and encouraging each other while slyly comparing muscle size. My personal theory though is that they are merely "pumping up" before going out on the pull ...

3. Halfhearted exercising
And finally, I have also been shocked at the number of people who exercise with a Starbucks coffee in one hand and a cell phone in the other. As usual, New Yorkers are uniquely masterful at multi-tasking.

Just Married

Julien, my little baby brother, got married last weekend.

At 27 years old and standing nearly 6 foot tall, there is nothing remotely little or baby-like about him but to me he will always remain the fragile little thing my parents brought home from the hospital when I was 6 years old.

While the vast majority of my coupled-up cousins skipped the wedding step altogether in favour of immediate procreation, my brother was always the more traditional one in our family so it was not a surprise when he announced his engagement to us last year.

I think I have already mentioned that I have a large family as my mother has 10 brothers and sisters, who in turn have up to 3 children each, so the wedding was not a simple affair. Add to that a lot of family friends, as well as Julien and Catherine's own friends, and you are left with an awful lot of people to entertain.

The day started early as my sister & I had our hair done at 8.30am at the local salon. It was quite surreal for me to go back there after a 13 years hiatus but the salon owner (who used to cut my hair when I was a teenager) looked after me and when not lamenting the fact that I don't do anything special with my hair (thanks!), literally bombarded me with questions about my life in London and New York.

We then headed back home and Julien picked us up so we could meet his future wife in a nearby picturesque village for the official wedding pictures with a professional photographer. My sister and I were the "little helpers" during the shoot - our job being to alleviate their pre-wedding nerves, re-arrange Catherine's dress or Julien's tie for the photos and generally carry umbrellas, coats and scarves ...
This was actually the best part of the day for me - Julien, Catherine, Laurie and I are very close and spending that time together as a tight unit, away from the rest of the wedding party, fooling around and laughing was very special for us. It was also when we shed our first tears of the day as Julien welled up when he saw Cath in her wedding dress, prompting us to spontaneously burst into tears at the sight of him crying.

Traditional French weddings follow a long established pattern. They start mid-afternoon with a civil ceremony at the local Townhall, followed by a Church blessing, a "vin d'honneur" (drinks essentially) and finally the wedding dinner and dance - all of which with their own etiquette regarding the guest list.

While only very close friends and family are invited to the civil ceremony (primarily because townhalls tend to be small), a much larger group is welcomed to the Church blessing and the vin d'honneur, in this case just over 200. Catching up with so many people was overwhelming and, I have to admit, rather tiring as I found myself delivering a set of standard answers to the exact same questions that were asked of me: "What is New York like?", "How is the economic crisis affecting you?" and of course the dreaded "Why aren't you married yet?". I had fully expected the latter question (tactfulness is not always a quality the French possess, at least not in my family!) and had already prepared a flippant answer to that one: "One has to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince and I'm having a lot of fun doing just that!". Not entirely true anymore these days as I gave up frogs, princes and anything in between for lent (ha ha!) but seeing their shocked faces provided me with endless amusement.

The dinner and subsequent party are the best part of the whole affair of course and 120 of us attended it in a lovely restaurant that we had hired for the night. The DJ was spinning great tunes after each course and I had almost forgotten how easy it is to get our friends and family on the dance floor. There is no need for ridiculous amounts of alcohol to loosen their inhibitions ... All of us were dancing, widely different age groups happily mixing together, enjoying old-fashioned Waltzes and Tangos as much as the latest pop anthems, until 5 o'clock in the morning! The French are particularly fond of group dancing to well established choreographed moves - it's difficult to describe but there are some songs (like Bonney M's "Rivers of Babylon") that we seem to know the exact dance routines to and can all perform in perfect synchronization. In many ways, it looks just like a flashmob event or this video that a friend helpfully pointed me towards (thank you D!). I also surprised and embarrassed myself by knowing all the lyrics to some 80s French pop songs I hadn't heard since that era - surely ruining any street cred I had left.

But mainly, the lasting memory I will cherish from that day is the overwhelming love I felt for my brother, for his new wife, for my lovely sister, my mum and dad and all our family and friends - very cheesy I know and ever so American of me to be quite so "in touch with my feelings". But I often feel removed from them because my life is so different to theirs, not only geographically but also in its essence, yet the sense of belonging I felt that day reminded me that I am safely part of a group of people all tied together by an unbreakable bound.

Insider

There are few things that make me happier than witnessing newcomers to New York fall in love with it, probably because it re-ignites my own passion for the City every single time.

I was reminded of that fact once again this week as the son of one my parents' friends and his girlfriend stayed with me for a few days. They are both very young (24 and 22 years old respectively) and at first, I was a little nervous about it. I'm not really "au fait" with what kids like these days (especially not french ones) and they are also both countryside lovers rather than city dwellers so I wasn't entirely sure they would actually enjoy their visit.

It certainly didn't look very promising after their first day. I hadn't really given them any advice as they had already planned their itinerary but when they got back to mine that evening, exhausted after doing the tourist sights and complaining about having an atrocious meal near Times Square, I knew that I had to interfere and tell them what to do.

There are some very simple rules to follow when visiting New York to ensure a great visit, which in reverse order are:
5. Spread the obvious tourist sights over several days and don't try to do everything at once - while they are worth seeing and will provide fond memories (the view from the top of the Empire State Building, gazing up at the blinking lights of Times Square, catching a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty for the first time), they are not in any way reflective of what the City is about.
4. Do not ever, ever eat in Times Square or anywhere in its vicinity.An obvious fact for a New Yorker but clearly not for tourists.
3. While I always advocate walking around the City to get a feel for it, there is nothing wrong with hopping in a taxi (or if needs must, the subway) to shorten some of the distances. Manhattan is deceptively large ... on foot.
2. Double the tax to work out the tip in restaurants. And yes, you have to tip when ordering at a bar and when leaving your coat in the cloakroom ($1 per drink/coat).
1. But the number one rule is to ask a New Yorker to draw out an itinerary for you.

I have first hand experience of the importance of this first rule as even though I had visited New York several times before moving here, I never truly discovered it until I became a New Yorker myself.

My favourite places are seldom the ones you find in guide books. I either stumbled upon them by chance, read about them somewhere or, in most cases, my friends here introduced me to them. There is no end to uncovering hidden gems in New York which is why having a New Yorker as a tour guide is so crucial.

In the last few of weeks alone, I have discovered three new spots that I know I will keep going back to over and over again:
- Chelsea Market, housed in an old biscuit factory and home of the TV studios of the Food Network (as well as Google), packs in picturesque little delis and boutiques in an industrial and exposed bricks setting. It is the perfect place to stroll around in with a tall coffee before hitting the Meat Packing district for some serious shopping or as a stop over before walking to the West Village for brunch (or both!).
- N Bar on Crosby street, a tiny bar serving tapas. I have been there three times in as many weeks and during my last visit, my friend Isabelle and I were treated to a live spanish band that miraculously managed to cram a guitarist, a singer and 2 flamenco dancers (whose frantic, rhythmic tap dancing made the floor shake) in a small nook. While it was impossible to hold a conversation during their performance, I loved every minute of it if only because it was so completely unexpected.
- Fat Baby in the Lower East Side. Not a new find as I had been there once shortly after moving here but a completely different experience to my first visit. This time I went with a group of friends on a Friday night, the place was packed and a DJ was spinning brilliant music - the kind that you can not only dance to but also sing along to, as we proceeded to do until the early hours of the morning. So good, that in between dancing my heart out, I could be found hitting the Shazam app on my Iphone to instantly recognize and buy the songs they played on Itunes.

I know that many, many travel guides have been written about New York - but most of them in my experience focus on the obvious sights rather than the City New Yorkers live and breathe in every day.

But without fail, it is my version of the City, the "insider one", that my visitors fall in love with every single time ...

Single

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and marked my third year as a bona fide "Bridget Jones Singleton" - complete with reluctant scrutiny over my Body Mass Index, cigarettes and alcohol consumption monitoring and occasional parental disapproval.

I have always despised Valentine's day, even when I was one half of a happy couple for 10 years - the crowded restaurants, heart shaped balloons and corny cards were never my thing. But negotiating the rose-tinted cliches of Valentine's day as a single girl is another matter all together and it is an art that I seem to have finally perfected with a little help from my friends.

After grabbing a bite to eat early in order to avoid the pre-set menus and hordes of couples, my girlfriends and I went to see "He's not that into you" at the Loews cinema on 11th and 3rd. The film was as mediocre as I expected it to be (I hate chick flicks) but at least was not as one-sided as I feared it might be in the fact that there were instances of "she's" not that into you as well, which Libs, Marie & I identified with as much as the other way around. What I did like however was the atmosphere in the movie theater. It was clearly filled with disillusioned New York single girls and the unrealistic Hollywood romantic moments were received with loud caustic comments - much to my delight. For example, when Ben Affleck's character produced an engagement ring after swearing he would never get married, someone shouted "yeah ... right!?" and the audience burst into hysterical laughter. We finished the evening in "winebar", a cosy, brick-walled, candle lit bar in the East Village, sharing more laughs over a great cheese platter and an excellent bottle of Malbec.

I sometimes feel that your love life is like a scorecard and you actually need to go through a number of experiences in order to appreciate or even just recognize true love when it finally comes along. Like many of my girlfriends, I seem to have exhausted all the scenarios over the years - the "he's not into you", the "she's not into you" and the horribly confusing "it's complicated", as well as every other shades of grey in between.

Of course, being single is not always easy and it certainly was a shock to me as I have never been single before in my entire adult life. But I am actually grateful for this experience and I know it is something that I have to live through and enjoy, if only because I would have never otherwise experienced all of the above scenarios and therefore missed out on some invaluable life lessons.

There are things I miss from being in a stable, meaningful relationship (although topping the list is having someone helping me change the bed covers - my most hated household chore!) but joke aside, being in a committed relationship is fantastic. I hope I will have that again some day. But in the mean time, I see no point in pining for it and putting my life on hold while waiting for my "knight in shining armor" to magically appear ... there are far too many things I want to do and achieve by myself before that and I'm only getting started.

So here is to another year of filling up my scorecard!

Uncertainty

When an impending global economic crisis started to be discussed last Summer, I was firmly in denial about its potential magnitude and impact on my life.

My state of oblivion rapidly changed by the Autumn, when the company I work for announced a 10% reduction of its workforce and I had the horrendous experience of having to let one of my team members go and watch some of my friends lose their jobs. Since then, there is hardly a week passing by at work without yet another alarmist communication from our executive team about new cost cutting measures, salary cuts or how incredibly challenging the current economic environment is.

Adverts on TV have noticeably changed in their tone and nature too in the past few months - from an increasing deluge of commercials about financial security, credit control and retail sales, to even more overt references to our precarious situation like the new ad from Hundai where consumers are encouraged to buy a new model with the guarantee that Hundai will take the car back if they lose their income within a year of purchase.

The bleakness has also spread to the streets of Manhattan. I realized a couple of weeks ago while walking around my neighbourhood that a few restaurants are now either closed or closing and that "For Rent" signs seem to adorn every other shop windows. On Tuesday this week, when Marie & I had planned to grab a couple of drinks at a local wine bar after our gym workout, we were surprised to see that it had closed early. It seems that a lot of establishments throughout the City are doing the same these days. The NY mag even wrote an article about it here.

In these circumstances, it can sometimes be hard to keep a positive outlook on the future. I like to think that I have dealt with a high amount of uncertainty, doubt and risk in the last two years of my personal life but I don't think that anything has prepared me enough for the road ahead and the challenges of 2009. This year will be a test of strength, resilience and adaptability for me and many people.

Will I lose my job? If I do, or decide to leave of my own accord, the chances of getting a visa are now null and I will be forced to move back to London jobless and with a sense of unfinished "New York business" ... The thing is that I love taking risks and yet I hate uncertainty. I crave and actively seek out adventure but secretly yearn for safety. I love surprises but I hate not being in control of my destiny. A constant state of dichotomy shared by many I am sure.

At least even if my New York adventure is cut short, it will be with the knowledge that I lived it to its fullest. It hasn't always been as easy, fun or even as glamourous as it may have appeared on this blog, but it has been incredibly intense and life-forming. I never do anything by half and this has been no exception.

The thing about not being in control however is that you have no choice but surrender yourself to fate - for better or for worse. So for now, I am enjoying each day as it comes and relishing every new memory that this fantastic City is helping me create.

Miami

Sometimes a photo can speak a thousand words ... But in short, Miami in the winter = sun, sea, fun, friends and even snakes!

The kindness of strangers

New Yorkers are known for being some of the rudest people on Earth.

While it is true in some cases, I have to say that my experiences point to the contrary. I have met some of the loveliest, most helpful and open-minded strangers in my time here and feel compelled to share some of these encounters.

I once ordered Thai food from a local restaurant to be delivered to my flat. When the delivery man arrived, I was very embarrassed to find out that they only took cash as I had none on me. I apologized profusely but he apologized even more than I did and graciously followed me outside to the nearest ATM. He detected that my accent was not entirely British and upon telling him that I was French, he got really excited. He was originally from Laos and had a passion for France, which is surprising considering our appaling track record in that part of the world. He told me how happy he was to meet a real French person, insisted that we speak French to each other and kissed my hand to say goodbye, which was so embarrassingly endearing.

I can not describe accurately enough the genuine neighbourhood culture of New York but one of its manifestations is that you get to know your "local service providers" very quickly and they always ask how I am with a warm handshake or a hug. Zafar, my concierge, always makes me promise to come back when I leave to go on a trip and when I recently came back from France, tired and crumpled from traveling for almost 20 hours (via an extended stop over in London), Mohammed the street stall owner told me that I had been away for exactly 13 days ... although he probably only counted because my cigarette habit alone pays for his mortgage!

In my building, everyone in the lifts makes small talk and strokes any dogs that happen to be in tow. I may not know their name and they don't know mine but there is at least acknowledgment that we live in the same place. I remember one of my friends telling me a story about 2 people who lived in the same building in London for 40 years and only talked to each other for the first time when a fire got them out of bed at 3am one night. I'm sure this happens in New York too of course.

If I ever look remotely lost or confused on the subway, usually when I am going to the Lower East Side as the subway maze to get there is mind-boggling, there is always someone who will ask me if I'm OK and need help to get to my destination. Every single time.

Sometimes, the kindness does go a little too far. I have been asked out on dates by various taxi drivers, the most notable one being an older gentleman who openly told me about having 2 daughters and a wife back in India. Mostly, my taxi drivers have been from all corners of the world and speak many more languages than I could ever hope to master.

I think that New Yorkers are only rude if you have the wrong attitude. If you are open and willing to accept that you don't know everything, New Yorkers will be the most helpful and friendliest people you could ever hope to meet.