New York, New York...

As part of my role, I am increasingly spending more and more time in New York, indeed one of the reasons for the move to Providence was to prevent having to be away from home for increasingly longer periods of time. A days trip to NY,is far better than a week.  When rising in the ungodly hours of Tuesday morning, I had no real desire to spend six hours on the train traveling to and from New York. 

As we departed, heading south through lower Rhode Island and into Connecticut I realised how silly I was being, train travel really is one of the more relaxing forms of travel, eye opening in that it presents you with the ability view the breathtaking countryside, from the comfort of your seat. I made the journey to New Haven two days later by car, the view on the highway comes a very poor second to that offered by the train. 

I first traveled to Providence by train after a weekend in New York, that journey in October 2007, still remains vivid in my mind. I recall not working on my presentation as I had planned, instead staring out of the window, my eyes attention grabbed by the sheer multitude of colours of foliage and the views of the Atlantic coastline as the train seemed to hug the very edge of the country. Quite simply I was hooked, wishing I could spend longer traveling this vast country, the small matter of a 6 month pregnant wife at home, is one of many reasons why ended not doing so!

Now I have to be honest, New York is not somewhere I would want to live with a young child, the sheer size of the city though is something you can ever comprehend. As the train cuts away from the coast and the city suddenly appears to rise up by your side, its a stunning sight. Living in Providence for the past four months, you quietly forget the hustle and bustle of living in the big city, only upon arriving in Penn Station am I reminded of the life we used to lead.

With a nod to the blog of a colleague, who reminded me of the power of the black and white photo. His blog http://ricardojardin.tumblr.com/ is worth 10 minutes of any one's time, below in a similar vein are two photos, which hopefully convey the size of the city and the awful view I had from the office on Tuesday.

lastly in glorious technicolour the view that greets you as you walk into reception. To the left you can make out the Hudson River, Central Park reaches out in front of you and the ever changing architecture of the Manhattan sky line finishes the view.

I have to confess the picture does not do the view justice, however my wonderful wife, finally caved in and agreed that I should finally buy that SLR. So this Tuesday I take delivery of the new camera (woo hoo!!), fortunately we had planned to spend next weekend in New York, so I should have plenty of opportunity to further capture this intriguing city.


Muswell

in the meantime

Whilst working on a little something over the weekend, I found this from last year, I thought some of you may enjoy it....

EDIT: I need to find a new host for the Video, the quality seen here is not a true reflection.

the art of growing up

One of the advantages of living in Providence so far has been the ability to spend more time of the family, something I have written about before. Neither Laura or myself are particularly artistic, we both though believe in encouraging Aila to try her hand at everything. 


So in an attempt to encourage this leaning, Laura invested in art material. Aila thoroughly enjoyed the finger painting, though her mum is still to this day doubting her wisdom in such a decision..

Muswell

once a month

Ok so I'm blatantly failing to blog once a day, let alone much more than once a week, must do better Paul!!


The good news is that Spring has sprung, though somewhat cooler than in the UK, if recent gloating phone calls are anything to be believed. With the recent visit of friends from Canada, we took the opportunity to view Providence from the terrace on the 14th floor of the apartment building, now Kelly has a strong interest in photography, something that I have found rejuvenated in myself with the improvement of the camera on the iPhone4.


The best of my efforts follow, now if I can just persuade Laura to let me go shopping for the SLR..

The middle of the three buildings is my place of work. If you look between that building and the one to its immediate right, you will see what could be mistaken to be a halo. Its actually the light shining off a local bridge, the bridge is too far away for either Kelly or myself to be able to capture a better photo, one for another day.

For those who suffer from vertigo such as Laura, I had to step a little closer to the edge,than she felt comfortable with for this last shot. 


The more observant will have noticed there appears to be little traffic, these photos were taken at around 7pm on a Saturday night. When we visited Providence last summer, the guide who had been recommended to us by the relocation company, was somewhat shocked that we wished to consider living downtown. Given in her view that its far too busy with traffic and unsafe at night, rush hour tends to last about 15 minutes here, and given where we have lived in the past, our experience to date is that we couldn't feel safer. Mind you I suppose once you have survived Croydon on a Friday night, anywhere including Kabul probably feels safer! 


Muswell