Three wolves™

What a mad week. Feel like I’ve had absolutely no sleep at all (I almost haven’t), and I’ve really made good use of my time here. New York is an amazing city: full of style, brashness, warmth, anger, fun, and excitement.

As you’ve all guessed, I’ve had no time to update the blog as i’ve been burning the candle at both ends, but here’s there short version:

So, working backwards: Last night went and saw The Lion King on Broadway. Wasn’t going to go, but decided last minute to grab a ticket. I cannot describe how glad I was to have brought the ticket. From the moment I walked in, it was amazing. The music, the costumes, the songs, the set, the actors…. WOW. Just…. WOW. It blew me away. Anyone who’s been to a Broadway show will know what I mean.

Spent all of friday morning at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). This was another highlight. I got to see a lot of the art works I’d studied at school: Picasso, Cezanne, Braque, Oldenburg, Mondrian, Warhol, Monet and the list goes on. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face of friday. They had a great graphic and industrial/product design exhibition as well which was a nice surprise. I overheard many funny things while in New York, but the funniest was while I was at the MoMA. As I exited the design floor, where I had just seen some amazing furniture pieces by the likes of Le Cobussier and all sorts of Eams chairs: stunning examples of industrial design, this girl walks into the exhibition, and i kid you not she says “Oh wow, IKEA”!!!! Bahahahahaha….

Thursday now, and I actually can’t remember what I did. Something, i’m sure. I think I did some shopping. Oh yeah did - i went to the Apple store again and a bunch of other places, and then thursday night we went to Gotham comedy club. There were three acts on stage, and all were pretty good. Some not so funny moments, some jokes we just didn’t get being from New Zealand and some hilariously funny moments.

Wednesday and Tuesday I had the conference, which was brilliant. After my initial impressions were set pretty low (we didn’t get any special gifts or conference packs, and the whole setup looked a bit cheap) the two days were packed full of really good stuff. Wednesday we had the workshops, and I can’t wait to share all the knowledge I picked up to you people back at DNA. Some really good speakers with a lot of great knowledge to share. Tuesday night was the after party put on by media temple. A completely open bar all night with food as well. Some people obviously took advantage and there were some sore heads on the Thursday. I got to talk with Matt Patterson from Campaign Monitor, a couple of Designers from texas, and a girl from Pennsylvania who I inadvertently chatted up when I noticed she had caught her hair up as she took off her jacket and I helped her untangle it!

We went out for dinner most nights, and I can’t say the food was that great. Never did get to a fancy restaurant though, so I can’t judge it too much. Most of the places we went to were called things like ’such and such diner’ or ‘burgers and cupcakes’! In one of my dining experiences, I was asked how I could like my hamburger cooked. As in, how would you like your mince done? I thought a hamburger here must have steak in it, so I told them medium thanks. And you guessed it, I got a burger with a nicely cooked meat patty on the outside, and pink in the middle. Mmmm.

I did go to one amazing food place though. It was a grocery store called Dean and Deluca. Now this place is insane. It’s like New World and Island Bay butchery and Commonsense organics and Laffarre coffee all combined into one, but on steroids! I wasn’t hungry, but as I’d heard the name Dean and Deluca before I wandered in. Now if you haven’t got an idea of the sort of place I’m in, then this will help. Normally at New World you might get some people giving out food samples/taste tests right? Well, so does this place but for the taste tests they had handmade Basil, garlic and truffle pesto on little baguettes. Talk about extravagant. It was gooood!

And that’s all I can remember as I type this somewhere over the USA on a plane to LAX, plus Transformers in showing and I can’t miss an opportunity to see one of my all time favorite movies!

Thanks to all those who made this trip possible: the crew at DNA, thanks for the support and the time off. The flatmates, thanks for covering my cooking night. Nic, thanks for the ride to the airport. Mum, thanks for your prayers and your texts. And everyone else I’ll see you all real soon.