Upside down, boy you turn me, inside out and ’round and ’round

“If you can’t think of something nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Thus spoke my mother when I was a child. I think she was speaking to my sisters. Maybe me too.

She also said “keep to the left” and “if you get lost, ask a policeman.” More on that later.

Everything here is back to front, round about and upside down.

Light switches are switched up for on, and down for off. Cars have a steering wheel on the wrong side, and they drive on the wrong side of the street.

I’ve looked at a carton of milk and seen a “use by” date of 09/02/2018 and wondered why they are still selling it 7 months past it’s due date.

It’s all very confusing.

Today, the plan was a mini sleep-in and start the day at the Brooklyn Tabernacle for the 9.00am service. So we got up early, showered, had breakfast, cleaned up, made ourselves beautiful and at 8.40 checked with our BFF (Google Maps) for the best way to get to the BT. Unfortunately we found that we should have left home by about 8.15 to be on time for the 9.00 service 🙁 So our revised plan was to attend the 11.00am service

So instead we headed in to Dumbo (yes peeps, they have a suburb called Dumbo) to check out the park, look at the Brooklyn Bridge, and do the flea market.

We had a very pleasant and relaxing morning looking around, being tourists, taking photographs … and then found that we’d left it too late to get to the BT for the 11.00am service, so plan #3 was to take the final option of the 1.00pm service.

So that gave us some more spare time, and we decided to hop onto the subway and head back to Manhattan and check out the Chelsea Markets. I mentioned yesterday that you need to ensure you use the right subway entrance in order to get the right train going in the right direction.

So we were standing outside the York Street Subway station trying to figure out what direction we were heading, and a kindly and elderly New York gentleman asked us if we needed help. Our experience so far with NYers is that they are not particularly friendly, and often border on obnoxious. 

Unfortunately we didn’t really know what station we were looking for, but as he was basically heading in the same direction as us, he offered for us to tag along with him.

We spent a lovely 20 minutes or so discussing Donald Trump (nobody likes him apparently), the interesting things happening in Australian politics (BTW, who is the Prime Minister this week?), Australian weather conditions, and more.

While we finally found our way to the markets, we walked probably three times further than we needed to. Some of the blocks are very long, and you know that you are at East 16th Street and need to get to East 23rd Street, but inevitably you walk a long block only to discover that you are at East 15th Street and going the wrong way.

“Keep to the left,” my mother used to say.

Here in the USA, they keep to the right. One of us seems to be having trouble grasping that concept, so we get a few angry looks from the obnoxious NYers because we are on the wrong side of the footpath.

I figure that if TOTIL can’t get it right walking on the footpath, there is no way I’m going to let her drive when we get to San Francisco!

Sadly, despite tracking all over the West Side, we were underwhelmed with the Chelsea Markets … and then we realised that we were on the verge of missing the 1.00pm service at the BT.

Good news though, we made it to the Tabernacle in plenty of time.

Sadly, the choir was in Florida for the weekend along with the Senior Pastor, but it was still well worth the visit. Third service for the day and it was packed with >1000 people in the service.

We only had time to stay for the first hour of singing before we needed to leave and get to our next walking tour in the other side of Brooklyn.

I mentioned yesterday that I am reading a Jack Reacher book, where he was travelling on the NY subway.

In the same chapter, Reacher is also thinking about how on the NY subway the automated messaging system gives instructions in a male voice, and information in a female voice.

Well, here is fun fact: The NY automated messaging system on the NY subway does indeed use a female voice for information and a male voice for instructions.

So you get this molten chocolate female NY voice saying “This is the L line, the next stop will be Bedford Av-en-oo. Please change trains for the C and R lines at Bedford Av-en-oo”. Then you get this male voice barking “Stand clear of the closing doors, please”. Unfortunately, the male voice sound a bit like Bulwinkle to me, so it lacks the authority that it probably deserves.

Google Maps directions are pretty specific: “Travel 6 stops and get off at Bedford Ave. Head towards the N 7th Street and Bedford Ave exit at the NE corner of the station.”

My sense of direction isn’t great here in NY when I’m above ground. Put me in the subway and I’m totally lost.

“If you get lost,” my mother used to say, “ask a policeman.” And there, inside the station was one of NYPD’s finest.

Me: “Excuse me. Could you please tell me which is the NE corner of the station?”

NYPD: “How the hell would I know? I have no sense of direction down here.”

Sigh 🙁

We had a lovely afternoon wandering around the Williamsburg District of Brooklyn, looking at all sorts of eclectic, chilled and hip people doing … eclectic, chilled and hip stuff, and taking lots of photos.

Got home early tonight – about 6.00pm – and had a nice dinner at Zaca Cafe just around the corner. We just blended in with the hip crowd and watched the world go by.

That’s it for tonight peeps – I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have so far.

I’m finishing up with a community service weather report. I’m glad to report that while the forecast was for heavy rain and storms, NY weather people are as equally unreliable as Australian ones. Weather was partly cloudy, mid- to high-20s and medium humidity. Absolutely beautiful, and certainly better than being at work 🙂

I’m sure that many of you have been worried sick about my little toe. Goodness knows I’m not getting any sympathy from anyone in this hemisphere. Still sore, not as red as yesterday, and still attached. I think it will survive.

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA