4 day weekend… over. Damn. Kinda sucks, but kinda good. Now that Thanksgiving’s over, there’s only 3 solid weeks left of our internships before we all go our separate ways (I mean, I’m going to Canada and then comin’ back to do a coast-to-coast road trip across the USA, and most of the others are also stayin’ on and doin’ all sorts of other stuff in the States, but you know what I mean…)

Both my internships are cruising along nicely… There’s always something happening at VICE and the people I work with all have their own crazy stories. My Boss Shane Smith (one of the 3 founders of VICE), did a story for VBS (VICE’s online tv network) on the nuclear arms trade and actually managed to buy a dirty bomb (kind of a mix between a nuclear warhead and a conventional explosive) in Bulgaria. Scary how easy it was. Another one of the founders (Suroosh Alvi) travelled to Pakistan to do a story on the largest illegal arms market in the world, and they also travelled to Beirut to uncover a boy scout group which doubles as a breeding ground for the PLO and Hezbollah. My supervisor recently did a story about war resistors from the US military, men and women soldiers who have sought asylum in Canada after refusing to fight in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And on a more random note, he also recently wrote a blog on the VICEland site about spending three days homeless in New York City. This came about after VICE bet him he couldn’t go three days without spending even a single penny. He won the bet.

My internship at First30Days is also goin’ along pretty sweet. We’re getting closer to launching and everyone’s kind of getting a bit more nervous and anxious by the week. Last week, my boss and company CEO invited one of her friends to come talk to us about creating a better work environment and just generally living better. He travels the world giving talks and lectures to organizations, universities and different groups. He talks about how there’s no such thing as a white lie; that every lie told has a consequence and restricts us from truly opening up to others… Everyone’s been working pretty hard recently so we’re having a late thanksgiving dinner thrown for us at a New York restaurant tomorrow night. Sweet.

It was my first Thanksgiving ever over the weekend and it absolutely owned. I spent Thanksgiving night out on Long Island with a friend who I met at SUNY New Paltz and her family. Sensational. Turkey, good times and heaps of Apple and Blueberry pie. That stuff’ll save the world. Then last night, I got invited out to another friend’s joint from New Paltz. She went home to her family in Yorktown, NY for the weekend and invited a few people out there for a party. It was kickin’, we partied like it was 2009.

In the last couple weeks I saw Aussie singer/songwriter/clown, Ben Lee, in Manhattan, I voted in the Aussie election (And we’re no longer under the thumb of a right wing regime! Rock!) and also went with another dude from the IIB program to see my team, the N’Orleans Hornets, play New Jersey in an NBA game out in dirty Jersey. The Hornets fought back from being down 8 with 2 minutes to go and then won it with 2.4 ticks left. Awesomeness.

Well I’m gonna get back to it. My fridge in my room is making mad crazy noises. I overloaded the motor last night after I tried cramming way too much into it, so now I’m gonna try and fix it with my heaps mad refrigeration repair skills… Next time you hear from me it’ll most likely be completely f****d.

Peace.

Dave

This week is a short week. Only two days of work. It’s Thanksgiving- turkey time. On Thursday there will be the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. But I will only be able to see a part of it since I have to get on the plane to Florida.

Yes, I will go to the Sunshine State and escape the cold New York City for four days. Together with two fellow IIB’ers.

Last weekend I went to Boston with them. That was fun. Boston seemed so small and relaxed in comparison to New York. We took a Chinatown bus, which is very cheap, and after four hours we arrived in the “Harvard city”. We walked on the famous Freedom Trail, and of course went to Harvard University, where we met three crazy squirrels. And we celebrated our own Boston tea party.

Coming back to Thanksgiving. It’s the best shopping time in the year. All shops have special offers and discounts. The Friday after Thanksgiving is called “Black Friday”. I always thought “Black Friday” stood for the stock exchange crash in 1929- but it is THE shopping day in the US.

Time is running fast. Half of our time in New York City is already over. Christmas is approaching. The more things you do, the faster time goes by. Last week I went to two concerts- to the “Young Wild Things Tour” (with Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes, Cute is what we aim for and the Plain White T’s) in Madison Square Garden, and to “The Bird and the Bee”, a band that is also on the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack. It was awesome. 

My things-to-do-list in New York is still very long…

Hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving!

See ya.

A typical day in the city looks like this for me: I wake up because of my friend, the elevator. After finally getting up, I rush down to the dining room to grab some breakfast, which is only served till 8.45 am-not much longer at the weekend. Then I  get ready for my internship.

On the street I have to face a lot of obstacles which could prevent me from arriving at work:  tourists, slowly walking people in general, traffic lights that say “Don’t walk”, cars, and of course Macy’s and other “fellow” stores. After a ten-minute-walk towards the Empire State Building, I enter the subway station. I take the subway to the Flat Iron Building. Having arrived at the Flat Iron Building, it only takes me some minutes to get to EMI Music on 5th Avenue.

At EMI I am welcomed friendly every morning: “Good mornin’, Sylvie. How are you doin’?”. A short ride with the EMI elevator- and I finally arrive at Blue Note, where I am interning.

Music is everywhere: everybody who works for Blue Note listens to music. On the walls are posters and frames of artists, discs, CDs, awards etc.  

After having said “hi” to my bosses and a little chat I arrive at my desk. Now my day at work can start.

I love my internship. The people are really friendly. It’s a cosy working atmosphere. Every day it feels a little bit like coming home.

During work I always keep in touch with my two best IIB friends. So I am well informed about what is happening at their internships and in other offices in New York. And I inform them (in Sylvie’s news hour) about the latest news of The New York Times, The Wallstreet Journal, LA Times, Daily News…, that I have to look through at work.

After work I go to the gym. And I’m not the only one. When I arrive at the sports club (next to the Empire State Building), it’s rush hour at the cross trainers. Having finished my workout, sauna and shower, I can make my way home. And still there are tons of people, although it’s already night.

To be continued…

I’ve realized it’s absolutely impossible to have an early night in this crazy city.

I’ve been trying to have early nights for the past week (mainly cos I’ve had this killer toothache that’s felt like there’s a party in my mouth and everyone’s trashin’ the **** outta the place…) but any time you want to chill out and do nothing, you can’t. There’s literally like, 40 million things happening in this town every second– you feel like you should be doing at least one of them. I went to see this Aussie band, John Butler Trio last night and feeling the way I was (plus I just lost my ATM card so I now officially have no cash until a new one gets here. If it gets here. Awesome!), I thought to myself, ‘I really should go home as soon as the show finishes’…. 7 hours, 8 bars and heaps of cab rides up-and-down town later, I was just getting on the subway home.

My internships are goin’ really well and last Thursday, through work, I got to go to an MTV awards show. MTV needed seatfillers for the MTVu Awards in Manhattan and I managed to score a ticket. The deal was, MTV don’t want any empty seats to be seen on camera, so anytime celebrities down the front got up to do ‘number ones’, we were supposed to fill their seats. It kind of didn’t work out that way because my friend and I immediately strayed from where we were supposed to be and went into the moshpit (and/or the bar). We didn’t really care either way about seeing celebrities, we were just there for somethin’ to do, and the MTV awards aren’t such a bad thing to go to on the way home from work.

I’ve been getting to do some pretty interesting work at both my internships. I interviewed a couple bands for VICE’s blogsite last week and also got to profile a few others. At my other internship (First30Days.com) I’m getting to do a lot of editorial work as well as spearheading the Facebook strategy the company wants to use, to help create the biggest worldwide community possible. It’s a great place to work. And the boss I work for is really interesting. The other day she had lunch with Evander Holyfield and through her contacts, she’s going on Oprah and the Today Show soon to promote the relaunch of the website. We got a new staff member the other day and she took us all out for lunch at this amazing restaurant downtown to welcome her.

The people are great and they’re all really passionate about it. It’s really exciting to be part of a start-up; an organization that isn’t established yet and could go either way. I can’t wait till we launch.

On a completely unrelated matter, it was halloween a couple weeks ago and that was another night that kind of got out-of-hand, heaps huge and real weird, real quick. Check out the photos.

That’s it for now.

Peace.

Dave

The first few weeks in the city are over. It feels like it is months ago that I moved from tiny little New Paltz to big New York City. So much happened: Halloween and the Greenwich Village Parade, the New York City Marathon, a random meeting with Brad Pitt, Gwen Stefani, Alicia Keys etc., extensive shopping tours, a helicopter flight, a concert, going out… only to mention a few things that I have experienced in city that never sleeps, (which is totally true, by the way), in the last time.

I met so many new people. I made a new friend. The elevator. The room in which I am staying is really nice, the only bad thing about it is that you could also call it the “elevator shaft”. It is really loud. I wake up a few times every night.

And I caught a new disease. It is called the “shopping disease”. Living next door to Macy’s is very dangerous. Every day on my way to my internship I am confronted with stores that seem to scream at me: come in and buy something. A day without shopping is almost impossible. The “land of opportunity” or better the “city of opportunity” offers the nicest clothes, shoes, cosmetics, fragrances, you could ever imagine.

It really feels good not to be a “typical” tourist in New York City. Dressed up for work as a business lady, nobody expects you to be a visitor and annoys you with stupid flyers for sightseeing tours.

Strategic walking is very important in order to survive in the Big Apple. You have to walk a lot in Manhattan. Millions of people are everywhere. Tourists walk all over. You really have to concentrate on your steps, if you don’t want to bump into a person that stops abruptly. Everything moves fast in the city- except the tourists. My advice: if you want to be fast on foot, put your head up high in the sky and ignore everyone around you. And just walk. I also noticed very soon that it is not cool to stop at traffic lights- check whether a car is coming, if not, just walk. But be careful if a cab is approaching- taxis are the most aggressive cars.

There is so much stuff to do in the city. There are still many things and places I want to see. But time is running. At the moment I can’t imagine being back at home and having my “old” everyday life again. But I don’t want to think about that now. I still have seven weeks left in New York. Exciting events are waiting for me: a New York Knicks game, concerts, trips to Florida, Boston, Washington D.C etc.

More about that soon……

OK, here’s what’s up. So, I (along with all the IIB class) just moved out of my dorm on campus at SUNY New Paltz and into the I House on the upper west side of Manhattan. The last two months on campus were, in one word: hell-sick-dope-mad-righteous-sick-nasty-unbelievable and incredibly-extremely-extraordinary.

I loved New Paltz. So much so I’ve already been back. I went back last weekend. I’ll probably be going back a few more times before my time’s up in the States. New Paltz is this one horse hippie town, only an hour-and-a-half from NYC (and like 30mins from Woodstock!) where anything goes. There’s a main street with like, 4 or 5 pubs, and where what seems like 90-110% of the town are college students. US college is just like every good, bad, awesome, crazy, college movie you’ve ever seen. And then some. It’s kind of surreal at times. I can’t recommend it enough.

The IIB class is great. In the group we have 6 Mexicans, 8 Swedes, 5 Germans and me– the only Aussie. We all got along, some better with others obviously, but I made some great friends. And after making friends with the amazing Mexican girls in the class, if I accidently outstay my VISA here, Mexico is definitely where I’ll choose to get deported.

Here’s some of the stuff that happened in the last 2 months on campus:
• We had a welcoming pool party at the house of one of our professors, Dr. Miraldi. It was good to sit back and have a few beers with him as well as Jeff (The coordinator– A top bloke).
• A few of us from the class went up to Lake Minnewaska for a day, which is this picturesque lake up in the mountains, about 30mins drive from New Paltz. You’re not supposed to swim up there, but I’ll be damned if I’m catchin’ a $20 taxi in like 40˚C heat and not being able to go into the water. Afterwards, it started raining like it was the Rapture or something, we had noone to pick us up, our phones had no reception and we had to hitchhike back to campus.
• I trained with the College Basketball team, and in the end the coach cut all the dudes who tried out (He just stuck with last year’s entire team). Drag.
• I was either known as Australia or ‘Dife’ (apparently that’s what Dave sounds like with an Aussie accent). I met so many people (in the end you can’t walk through town without half the people recognise you) and I also made some really close friends too.
• There’s like 30 or something frats and sororities on campus and each weekend they throw these crazy house parties. These parties are nuts, mainly because they invite about 60 times the amount of people that their house can fit.
• The cheerleaders, soccer players and rugby players are like celebrities in College. I never got this. A few weeks ago, one of the soccer players tried picking up a friend of mine. He came up to her and goes “I’m the captain of the soccer team.” And she goes “So? I dont care…” He was speechless. He had no idea what just happened.
• You get heaps of spare time so students either pass their time at the gym, goin’ up to the mountains and lakes, or just on campus chillin’ out, listening or playing music, playing beerpong (or more conventional sports like basketball or football), or chasing the skunks at night. They really stink. At night when they come out, the whole campus stinks. The challenge is how close you can get to them without gettin’ sprayed. That sucks. Because then you have to bathe in tomato juice.
• I had the best time in my last week in New Paltz. Every night there was a different going away party with different groups of friends. It took me about 8 days to recover.

I started my internship last week. I’m actually doing two. I’m spending half the time with a new online magazine called First30days.com in lower Manhattan– which aims to help people through major life changes– and the other half with VICE magazine in Brooklyn. I really believe in what First30days want to do, and ever since I started working in magazines years ago it’s been my dream to work for VICE, so I’m way over the moon. I’ve gotten opportunities here that I would never have dreamed of back home.

Well I gotta go, this’ll be my first weekend in NYC. I’ll try to enjoy it. It ain’t no New Paltz, but still…

Big love.
Dave