New York….

Lots to report on today’s happenings, what a great day!

The day after Thanksgiving Day, the stores go on sale here. They call it “Black Friday”. I’m sure there’s a really good reason for it, but I haven’t a clue and can’t be bothered looking it up right now. Some stores open up at 5am for eager beavers to get in and snap up the early bargains. There is another group of people who go, that’s Australians who don’t like crowds! So, me being an Australian who doesn’t like crowds and Kylie being an eager beaver shopper, we were all at Macy’s shortly after 5am…. I have the best wife, she accompanied me and kept Jackson entertained while I had my turn at Macy’s! I found some great stuff and once done shopping, I volunteered to bring it back to the apartment and drop it all off and let Kylie have some peace and quiet from us boys. Kylie spent two hours in the shoe department! Unfortunately it was so busy she only got to try on two pairs of shoes! Lucky she bought both pairs!

Nanny was doing a hop-on-hop-off tour today. I saw her for a couple of minutes after I got back from my outing with Jacko and before Kylie and her headed out. She had a long day touring and I’m thinking tomorrow might be a sleep in day.

While Kylie was in Macy’s and on my return walk from the apartment, Jackson and I went into a big electronics store and a golf shop! The electronics store was very cool, I recommend a visit there if you’re into this type of stuff. BH Electronics Superstore (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/) has two floors, but no working lifts or escalators, so I had to carry the stroller up to the second floor. It was worth it. When you order something, the attendant helping you enters something into their computer system, which advises someone somewhere of an order, that someone then puts the item you order into a container which then gets moved from the storage area to the shopfront along conveyor belts. Nifty! Unfortunately for them, I then decided I didn’t want what I’d got them to send out and I left without buying it, but I’m thinking of going back tomorrow to do the whole thing again, just to see the conveyor belts in action. (Big Al – I picked up their catalogue, which is bigger than the SONY catalogue and full of great stuff.)

After the excitement of that I went to a golf store looking for some new golf shoes. My last pair finally gave up and croaked about a month or so ago after 10 years of solid service. Those shoes saw some great golf courses and they’ll be missed… The sole just came unstuck on one of the shoes and there was no saving them. Anyways, back to the story. I found a great pair of Adidas shoes, but for the amount of golf I get to play I couldn’t justify the cost, so ended up with a sparkling new pair of Calloway shoes. Why do most pairs of golf shoes look like clown shoes? The economy can’t be so bad here, the guy serving me flat-out refused to give me a discount on some golf balls I also wanted to buy to lose later on the trip. Merry Christmas?! Ba humbug….

After this I had to go into Macy’s to find Kylie. We’d agreed to meet at a certain point at a certain time. It was now coming up on 1030am or so and the store was chockers! I had Jackson in the stroller but aborted that plan shortly after getting into the store as I was running into far too many ankles and getting too many hairy-eyeball looks from cranky shoppers trying to get to their discounted items… shouldn’t have slept in, should they!? Kicked Jacko out of the stroller and fought my way to the meeting point. I haven’t ever seen a shop so crowded! It took me 4 minutes (I timed it after I thought I was going to be late and left behind on the battle field by Commandant Kylie) to walk about 40 metres! Once I met Kylie she told me how she’d spent two hours waiting to try on shoes. (booring!) So we decided to come back to Macy’s another day.

Left the Macy’s area and walked up Madison Avenue. Along the way we saw a bunch of tweens camped out to see some guys called the Jonas Brothers. Good for them, I can’t come to trust / like bands with Brothers in their name, Bros ruined it for me…. (remember them?) I went into Best Buy and Circuit City for a look and see and walked out pretty quickly, far too many people….

We ended up at Rockerfeller Centre for lunch at a restaurant which is right by the ice skating rink. Nice spot and a beautiful lunch. Poor Jacko dropped his glass and it smashed his glass and pink lemonade everywhere. That makes the video as the bit he didn’t like about today – the waiter was very nice about it and helped to calm Jackson down by telling him a story about how he once dropped a tray full of glasses.

We then headed up to my favourite shirt shop in Thomas Pink and despite the terrible AUD to USD rate, still bought a couple of shirts. That can be what my first weeks wage back to work goes towards when I get back. We also stopped in at the Sony store where Jackson got out of the stroller and showed the good people in-store how to play Guitar Hero (or not) on the big screen. We also bought Jackson & I the Crash Bandicoot game for the PSP.

Here’s where the real fun begins!

We’re all knackered, we’ve been up for ages and walking around the city in all kinds of crowds and we decide to take a less travelled path back to the apartment. We cut along 52nd (or something like that) from Madison Ave heading to 9th Ave. On the way I see a sign saying that there is some movie being shot on the road we’re walking along and I think that’s pretty nifty and take a photo of the sign and then we keep walking. We get another couple of blocks along and these cars and scooters (mopeds) come screaming along the road. Horns honking, people yelling for us and other people to get out of the way, so we stop and move towards the building. This SUV pulls up in front of the theatre we’re passing and the guys from the cars and scooters all run to the front of the theatre. I’ve thought this is something to do with the movie which is being shot, so we now stop to actually watch events unfold. The guys running past us all have cameras around their necks. We were still stopped where we were and then I am not sure where the idea came from but I moved towards where the SUV is stopped and get my camera out too. Before you know it I’m in the middle (ok, on the fringe) of this crowd and these guys around me are all snapping shots, so I did too. A woman got out of the SUV with a boy, everyone else was still taking photos, so I did too. Guy beside me says something like “you look gorgeous today Victoria”, I’m still trying to get a photo… Woman walks past me and into the theatre, so I turn around to walk back to Kylie and Jackson. Kylie recognised her as Posh Spice! Victoria Beckham. Then, Kylie says there’s David Beckham, and I turn around and sure enough, there he is. I didn’t even get close to getting a photo of him. So…. Without further adieu, I present to you, my portfolio of shots for my application to be a paparazzi photographer:

You can JUST make out Posh’s head in the last shot, to the right of the nearly blinding flash of someone taking a photo of me from the opposite side of the scrum. Really, you can. It’s partly obscured by the head there. Ok, almost fully obscured… Trust me, she’s there!

I can’t tell you how freaky and bizarre the whole situation was. At first scared we were going to be mown down on the footpath by a moped (and seeing the headline on the Brisbane Times flash into my mind), then seeing a swarm of cars and mopeds come to a screaming holt, everyone running past us and then being in my first real life paparazzi scrum. I feel for Britney Spears… it must be hard living in the middle of that ALL the time.

We stuck around for a few minutes and someone mentioned that the Cruise’s had gone in a little bit before the Beckham’s arrived.

(this is a long update… sorry)

From here we went back to the apartment for a little rest before Jackson and I went to the circus. Kylie went for some retail therapy. Kylie is with Mum at Momma Mia right now, so I don’t know what she bought – but I don’t see too many bags laying around, so I don’t think she bought too much. Although, she is skilled at smuggling in new purchases under the cover of darkness, so there could be lots of new purchases I just can’t see yet. Apparently Dayle Grant is quite good at that too.

Jackson and I went to the circus tonight. It’s the Big Apple Circus, which is an old fashioned circus put together to raise money to fund activities to lift the spirits of sick kids. It was a one-ring circus and a great afternoon out. If you are in New York when this is on – go see it! Jackson giggled uncontrollably at the clowns in some parts, it was great to see and will be one of my most memorable parts of this trip. He also liked the horses and dog acts. The horse act had one Clydesdale in the ring with a Miniature Pony, with the Pony chasing the Clydesdale around the ring and eventually running in and out of the Clydesdales legs. Quite funny (funnier than I have explained it anyway) Jackson did get freaked out at the trapeze acts, but after I told him that they had safety harnesses on and practised a LOT, he was a bit less edgy.

We arrived home just as Nanny and Kylie were walking out, so I don’t have anything else to report from them yet. Their adventures might need to be in tomorrow’s update.

Here’s Jackson’s view of the day:

That’s about it for the excitement of the day, over and out (snap, snap)