What a week of turmoil.

Heh, if you have been following the financial markets, everything seems to have gone downhill within the last few weeks. This period will be remembered as the subprime tsunami (or any other pretty name you can coin and i just took this from watchin CNBC news on tele at work) when a break in the link of this giant chain of home owners borrowing money, mortgage lenders, hedge funds etc etc caused an upbeat market to crumble.

It’s interesting how I’ve learnt a few new things sitting in my corner of the office. Slowly piecing together how things work in the financial world and why it’s affecting everyone. It’s when things go wrong that you start analysing the individual blocks and start making sense out of it all.

The current period would make a good finance/economic chapter in any teaching course and while it’s still topsy turvy, we’ll find out how it pans out over the next few months.

* * *

So today is my last day staying in this little studio next to Times Square. This the place I hated when I first arrived as there was no air conditioning, the sound of horns in the middle of the night just made it a terrible experience. I have slowly grown accustomed to it, and find its location perfect as it’s next to a major subway hub that lets you go almost everywhere around Manhattan. It’s also close to cinemas, musicals and shopping etc etc etc. I’d love to continue staying here, but for the amount I needed to cough up, it would have been more advisable to move. Heh, when going to work, I hardly have time to take advantage of the good points above.

* * *

Just need to do some last minute shopping today, and hopefully get onto the plane without incident. Heh, I’m still not a fan of travelling, especially not a 30 hour flight but I guess I will manage to endure it somehow. Going to pick up Final Fantasy III for my DS later and that should last until my battery flattens out at least.

Heh, I’m going home.

Was just down and out this weekend. It’s like a last gasp in a race, but this is how I’m feeling just before heading home.

I find myself thinking of home very often these days. Having spent nearly 3 months now in NYC has not really made the place more endearing to me. My favourite times are when I’m at work, although it’s a love, hate relationship at times. I love it when I can solve problems, hate it when there are too many problems and too little time to solve them all, or sometimes just having to solve problems that should not be occurring to begin with.

* * *

The Premier League started, and I was happily anticipating it. There is former Man United skipper Roy Keane who is currently managing Sunderland, and I was quite happy they carve out a win against Tottenham. Nothing was too surprising this time around, and I’m curious to see how far Sven Goran Eriksson (former England manager and constant target of the tabloids) manages to lead Manchester City to. Arsenal are without their former captain and talisman Thierry Henry, but somehow they managed alright.

So we come to the team I support and I’m not quite happy. They huffed and they puffed but failed to break down a resilient Reading side, and to make matters worth, lost star striker Wayne Rooney in the process. He’s out for 2 months due to a hairline fracture in his foot, not good news at all.

Looking forward to catching the normal Saturday midnight matches with friends in Melbourne. Soccer is not quite the same watching it alone.

* * *

Soccer aside, I’ve been ogling the Type R Honda Civic which is currently on sale in Australia. This is the European version of the car, assembled in Britain if I’m not mistaken. Heh, it’s a hefty price tag of nearly AUD40k for a 2 door race car. Since watching Initial D I’ve always had a fascination with car racing and I know it’s something I’ll never ever do (my hand eye coordination is out of sync) but it’s fascinating to hear an engine hum and know how it’s performing, plus the handling and suspension. Again, I don’t know too much, and if it weren’t so expensive, I’d actually collect cars as a hobby, just to tinker with them. Heh.

* * *

So I am really, really waiting to go home and just really be myself for a bit.

I’ve only been here 3 months, and it seems like a lot has been happening. Only a few weeks ago, an explosion occurred in Midtown Manhattan when a steam pipe exploded due to cold water touching it from the torrential rains that fell that day. Heat and cold, expansion and contraction, something gave way. Some subway lines were messed up that evening due to the massive explosion and plenty of steam came out from the ground. Traffic jams etc etc etc.

This morning I could hear the pitter patter of the rain falling on my window around 5am. I woke up and took a glance outside the window and the rain was really heavy. I didn’t make much of it at the time other than being woken up by a loud thunder clap slightly later on. Was running slightly late when I left for work and I had no idea the mess that 2 hours worth of rain did.

I arrived at the usual subway entrance and it was taped off so I had to find another entrance in. There was water seeping everywhere and I had to tip toe across to my usual platform not to get wet. I arrived at the platform and saw the trains just waiting there not moving. So I crammed like sardines along with all the other people and waited for 10 odd minutes, until I overheard the person next to me saying to a lady that the train could be delayed for up to an hour.

That was incentive enough for me to get out of the train and start walking to work. Heh, called up my boss and apparently I wasn’t the first one to report that they’d be late. So it’s deja vu like my first day going to work as I walk along Broadway all the way Downtown to get to work. This time I didn’t get lost and I knew where I was going so it didn’t take that long.

Basically all the trains stopped moving or were delayed for half a day as they had to drain the water out of the tunnels so that the trains could pass. Everywhere I went, everyone was complaining that the subway was not moving and I was only half an hour late. I heard gossip that the average people were late by for that day was four hours. So a little toil and sweat to get to work wasn’t too bad.

Power lines went down, some trains are still not working as I write this, trees fell. There was even a weather report saying a tornado may have touched down in Brooklyn. This is just insane weather and to top it off, when I came out at midday to get lunch, the sun was blazing and it was really hot.

NYC really isn’t for the faint hearted. Things happen and you have to be of the sort of character to just deal with it.