Karl New York City, United States of America.

This Saturday I’m flying to New York City. It’s funny because I’m not as excited as I was the first time. I’m too damn busy to even think about the whole experience. Work has been going crazy, and not just for me, the whole office is on overtime at the moment. At least the days are flying by. I can’t believe it’s Thursday already. I promise to update the blog more when I’m in New York, there’s obviously more to photograph, therefore more to blog!

This last week has been crazy. I got word from my shipping crew that my boxes are in Hamburg awaiting departure to Göteborg. Apparently I need to pay for a courier to get it from Göteborg to Stockholm, even though I’ve paid it all the way. I’ve spoken with my stupid people in Melbourne who seem to not know much about the logistic business at all. Needless to say I’m pretty stressed. In those boxes are some photographic equipment I’ve always dreamed of having in New York, now they’ll probably get to Stockholm the Monday I start work. It was supposed to arrive today.

Argh.

(Clockwise: Hanna, David (my housemate), Thérèse, Bernado, Gustav)

Apart from this nightmare, last night I cooked my biggest meal yet. I had 4 friends over and managed to cook for them, my housemate and myself, 6 in total. Because we don’t have a wok, I was using 2 frying pans at once, pretty happy with the result if you ask me (and my guinea pigs!). Vegetarian green curry! Yummmmmmmmm.

I’ve also been riding my bike all week. I’ve noticed that due to the lack of exercise that I’ve started to gain weight, crap. I used to ride around 20km’s a day, or on average 120km’s per week. Now I don’t ride a single kilometer because of the snow and my diet hasn’t changed. Beer is a killer. It’s been great to get back on the bike again now that the weather has been forgiving, though this morning I woke up to a full blanket of snow and shunned myself back to the depths of T-Bana. Boo. I won’t be taking my ride to NYC as I doubt it’ll be much good given the temperature at the moment (a balmy -11ºc), let alone not having any time.

So, the next update will be from the frosted streets of New York’s downtown district. I’m just off Wall St, where the tourists and businessmen roam by day, and Matteo, Tom, Priscilla and I stumble around drunk by night.
Until then, one love! Don’t forget to write!

So, sorry about the lame updates lately. I’ve been super super busy. I’m working until 9pm each night, getting home, cooking dinner, watching the Wire then passing out, ready to do it all again.

Last Friday we moved offices. Our last place is only 50 meters down the road, but boy what a difference that 50 meters makes. We’re smack bang in the center of town. Stureplan to be exact. There’s so much more action outside our door. It actually feels like I’m working in a city with people in it.

Now I know Stockholm isn’t the biggest city in the world (we’ll get to that, soon), but when you head out to lunch into a ghost town, it can be a little disheartening. Now I’m walking into people as soon as I step outside. The place has a lovely buzz about it.

The office is brand new, custom designed by Fi and built to our demands. It was an old attic, now it has 100mbit internet, a pool table, Rock Band, and 15 ratbags.

The above photo is my new workstation. We came up with the idea to put trees in between our desks. Seeing we are 5 stories above the city, this gives us a little piece of mind when we’re heads down. This is the 4th day since moving in, so when the office is set up again (pool table, XBox, Wii, trees, trees, trees), I’ll provide more flicks, but to give you an idea of the views we get…

This is from our “living area”, the place where we eat, drink and be merry. That circular object below the American flag is called “The Mushroom”. You can’t see from this picture, but the last flag flying high is a New Zealand flag. No love for the Aussies, not even on Australia day.

So, I do have some good news. The project I’ve been working on is taking me over to New York next Saturday. I’m over for a month living on Wall St with Matteo, Priscilla and Tom. I’m very much looking forward to seeing Matteo again, even though the little bugger has already put in his alcohol orders. I can’t wait to get back to the Big Apple. I’ll be teaming up with my mate Justin and coincidently a friend of mine from Stockholm will be in New York for a good part of my trip, look out Manhattan!

Expect lots of juice to be found here when I’m over in NYC. Until then, it’s back to the books.

Stay in touch, one love!