Visitor Rosario - 6 days full of fun!

The last 6 days were devoted to my latest visitor here in NYC. Coming over from Amsterdam to celebrate her birthday here, Rosario was looking for having fun combined with some serious exercising...
This meant having diner in great restaurants like Asia de Cuba, Rosa Mexicano, having brunch at Balthazar and discovering Ninth Avenue with its diverse cuisines along both sides between 42nd and 55th Streets. The diners made Rosario go running in Central Park every morning, I made it to join her on two of the 40 - 50 minute morning runs that she committed herself to. Great work out!!
And of course, Soho and Fifth were waiting to give Rosario a warm welcome in their seductive shops like Anthropology, Victoria's Secret and Juicy Couture...ooh what a temptation!

We celebrated Rosario's birthday by having a highly appreciated diner in Asia de Cuba on Madison Avenue, starting with some colorful cocktails. The concept of blending the warm Latin style with Asian food is still very popular and gives you the best of both worlds. Afterwards we danced the Salsa and more on the tunes of a live band in a typical Mexican place, hard work and big fun I must admit!

Together we discovered a lot of places in Manhattan, from the quite streets and small shops in the West Village to Alphabet city (East Village) and the more Bohemian Lower East side. We sat at Pier 17 watching the ferries go by, we bumped our way through the crowd at Canal Street, Chinatown, and we danced in a Meatpacking club on the latest dance and R&B hits. On our lazy Sunday afternoon, we went to the movies: we saw Duplicity and it wasn't that good...

We had a fun and fantastic time together!

St Patrick's Day - green is the color!

Yesterday the national holiday of Ireland was celebrated, not only in Ireland but also here in New York.
St. Paddy's Day is celebrated worldwide by the those of Irish descent and increasingly by non-Irish people who just call themselves "Irish for a day" for the sake of it. Celebrations are generally themed around all things Irish, the colour green and attending parades.
Probably thanks to the huge Irish population in the Big Apple, the St. Patrick's Day Parade along 5th Avenue is the largest in the US, probably in the world...
Unfortunately, this day didn't provide me with a public holiday, but during lunch some colleagues and I walked to 5th Avenue and watched the Parade go by. Standing in the sun, we were surrounded by green wearing revelers enjoying the thousands of Irish participants march by. The atmosphere reminded me of the Dutch phenomena "Koninginnedag" or Queen's Day! People being happy and celebrating in the street and in the end getting extremely wasted in one of the many packed Irish pubs...

Dutchies upset Dominicans!

Tonight, in the World Baseball Classic, a big international baseball tournament the Dutch national team did what nobody expected: winning from the Dominican Republic, one of the favourite teams with some big Major League celebrities (like Pedro Martinez) in it!

For 10 innings, there was no score, every now and then it was close. In the 11th (!) inning we made it 2-1! The Dutchies are now going to the second round (quarter finals) in the tournament. The Dominicans are out.

Nobody in the US knew we play baseball in the Netherlands, now they do! To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of baseball, but the Major League (NY Yankees) is getting ready to start and I'm becoming a big fan already with these great results from our national team.

To be continued...

Working in the US - Bonus or no bonus?

In the last couple of months, I have learned more and more that this country has a transaction based way-of-working. Everything goes for a price, everything is a transaction. If you are negotiating about your salary for a new job or asking your handyman to hang your blinds in the living room. And that's how it works for the bonus, too, it's part of the deal.

This is the time for most bankers to have received their bonuses paid out by their banks, currently heavily under pressure and often bailed out one way or the other.
In the Netherlands, a bonus paid and working for a bank means you are being scutinized by the public opinion. At least, that's what I understand from reading articles about, for example, Dutch Finance Minister Bos who had to explain to the parliament why Dutch banks are paying bonuses while they are receiving tax payers money.
In the US, getting a bonus and working for a bank means you are seen as sucessfull, because (1) you are still working for a bank in these difficult times and (2) your performance was good enough to receive the recognition for it!
As the Netherlands and the US have different working cultures and compensation systems, don't forget in the US you can get laid off every day without getting paid anything and you don't receive a legal holiday allowance or 13th month payment, I think that you can't just say in general that bonuses should or should not be paid.

And trust me, in most banks bonus amounts have been slashed according to reality. Here in NY that's becoming crystal clear as the 'real economy' like cab drivers, retailers, restaurants and even hair dressers, suffer from those measures. Let's see when we start spending again...

A small disclaimer from my side: I state the above, apart from the excessive multimillion dollar bonuses that were paid in the recent past, which have completely lost touch with reality to my opinion.

CJ visiting his former 'home town'

This weekend, an old friend of mine came over to visit me ánd to come back to the town where he lived for a couple of months back in 2003. One of the good things is that he's not a stranger in this city, so there is no hard core tourguiding involved. The weekend, however, wasn't less intense!
CJ was going to be my first visitor in my 'new' apartment, so I was curious if my 'new' directions would work out. I was very happy to hear he smoothly made it from JFK to Manhattan, even with some strangers who he kindly helped getting there because they did not have a clue where to go!

Friday we went down town to see Battery Park, Pier 17, Financial District and Ground Zero and do some shopping in between. Lucky as we were, my employer's corporate tickets for the NY Knicks would not be used that day, so we could go and see the game from one of the best spots in Madison Square Garden, sitting right next to the field, where we almost could feel the sweat of the players coming at us. John McEnroe was there as well! A great, once in a lifetime, experience with traditional ingredients like the Knicks City Dancers, Budweiser and Hotdogs. The Knicks just lost, after an exciting, spectacular last quarter where they did everything in their power to walk away as the winning team, we cheered our ass of but it didn't help in the end. After the game, we continued the evening in style, some cocktails did the rest...
On Saturday, Soho was the place to be with a brunch in Félix, art hunting on West Broadway with China Town and Little Italy around the corner. We enjoyed walking around on this nice, sunny afternoon.

Of course, a visit to NY is pretty worthless if you haven't been in hip Meatpacking, so after a refreshing power nap at home, we were ready to go down Ninth Avenue and have diner in a favourite place for many: Spice Market. The food was delicious and our neightbours, a very entertaining couple from the Hamptons, dragged us into a very interesting conversation, we ended up having diner and a good chat about life, love and politics with the four of us. And this is exactly one of the reasons that I love this city!

CJ, it was great having you, thanks for the good times, the Starbucks Tall Capucinos and coming over all the way from Amsterdam, hope to see you soon in NYC!