The Chambers

Kylie and I have both had a head cold while here in New York – Kylie has powered through it and mine is just starting to “warm up”, but not even a cold will slow us down. It’s now 420am and I can’t sleep so I figured I’d round out our New York stay….

Tuesday the 6th of November

I think we wore Kim and Ian out a little….. Our itinerary has had lots of things to do in it, so Kim and Ian had a sleep in and a peaceful breakfast on their own this morning. Jackson LOVES kimmy, he wants to be near here all the time and wouldnt leave her alone. Thankfully he is only 3, otherwise I think Ian might have gotten a bit jealous.

This morning I had a meeting with AMEX publishing, which went very well. The guys I met were interesting and we had a good conversation about some of the content initiatives we’re working on and some of the opportunities they see for us to work together in the future. Afterwards I went up to the ad:tech conference, which kicked off at 12:00. The conference is pretty amazing, with (depending on who you listened to) anywhere from 10,000 to 17,000 people registered. There was a large exhibition hall, with many companies there to flog their wares. Most of them were either promoting affiliates programs or were SEO companies, there were also quite a few web analytics companies – I managed to find a few interesting people to talk to about their products.

Kylie started getting ready to leave New York today, by doing some packing and washing and some quite time watching some tv and movies with jackson.

Kylie and Kim back to macy’s. I think I must have become a bit complacent about the lack of shoe purchases and thought that shoes weren’t on the radar…. wrong! At one point in this stay I remember Kylie not having any shoes, then she bought a couple and then I asked her how many pairs of shoes she’d bought and she said she’d bought SEVEN! I dont know when or how that happened – thankfully, none of them are black slip-ons, of which she already has about 20 pairs at home.

We had a final visit to toys r us. This shop is massive! Three floors packed full of toys, including transformers, teenage mutant ninja turtles (try typing that three times quickly), board games, dora, diego… etc etc etc They also have a very tall (at least 4, maybe 5 meter tall) tyranasaurus rex, a real working ferris wheel, which is nearly as tall as the store and you can have your photo taken and they will place it on a scene with a nick jr character and make it into a jigsaw – we got out of there cheaply, buying jackson a diego cb radio thing (not tooooo noisy) and some spongebob stickers.

We had dinner at a thai restaurant on 9th ave, the food was great! Jue, we had the usual chicken masaman, which was very nice – but branched out to try some other dishes. The restaurant had a projector and plasma tv’s showing australian nature documentaries on the gbr and other aussie flora / fauna. A little bizare….

Wednesday the 7th of November

More ad:tech’ing for me. Today was very interesting day, with quite a few really good ideas, industry challenges and examples of campaigns being discussed. The team I work with know I like “shiny” things for our website and other marketing activities, today the expression “shiny things” was superseeded by someone on one of the panels I went too, by the phrase “shiny, blinky things” – I’m not yet sure what the difference is, as there wasnt enough question time at the end of the panel – but to the digital team, I now have some great ideas for “shiny, blinky things”!

While I was working, Kylie and Jackson caught the subway all the way downtown to the South Street station to catch the Staten Island ferry. The Staten Island ferry is a great way to see Manhattan from the water, it’s free and goes over to Staten Island – right past the Statue of Liberty. They rode the ferry over to Staten Island and then back to Manhattan.

After the ferry ride they come back to the playground across the road from our apartment and played there until jackson tried to go down the slippery slide on his tummy and backwards and bumped his chin on the slide…. ouch.

Kylie and Jacko then came back to the apt for the pram, as jackson wanted to go in a horse carriage ride through central park. They came back, got the pram and then walked the 17 blocks up to the park, but in the meantime jackson decided he was too tired and fell asleep along the way. Despite kylie trying to wake him he would not be stirred from the comfort of his pram…. walk 17 blocks back to the apt with no horse and carriage ride…

We had a quiet nite in the apartment packing and getting ready to leave today. We had one of Jackson’s favourite meals – New York style cheese pizza!

That’s it for New York. In a couple of hours we’ll go out to the airport and fly to orlando. Thanks for the emails and comments which have come through, it’s good to hear everything is going well back home.

chris, kylie and jackson