Exciting News!

Well, for me anyway. I'm not sure how exciting you'll find this information, but it's my blog and I'll say what I want to hehe. It's also not so news-y for people who also follow me on twitter since I've already mentioned it there. But oh well. By the way, before I go any further I'd like to state NO I'm not pregnant.

Since I got back from New York earlier this year, I've been thinking it would be cool to go on a longer trip to the US, as New York is the only place I've been there, and Husband hasn't been at all. However it didn't seem like it would happen any time soon. Then yesterday morning I had a dream I was organising going and talking about which places to visit. When I woke up (at 4am mind you) I was very sad to find out it wasn't real. As Husband was getting up for work at the time (poor him) I sleepily asked him if we could go next year and to my surprise he said yes! So of course this meant it was extremely difficult to get back to sleep because I started calculating in my head how much money we'd need and could save, and my list of places we could go. I finally got back to sleep a bit after 7am. When I got up again a bit later, of course I wasn't really able to get much work done. I did however make an excel spreadsheet of the order of places I wanted to go to, and how many days at each place (yes, I know how nerdy this sounds).

"I want to go to there". [map from here]

Poor Husband when he got home from work got bombarded with all my plans. When I'm really excited about something I do seem to go a bit overboard and start organising right away (if only that excitement would return about uni work!). I've very begrudgingly nicely conceded however that he is welcome to think this through for himself and change my plans accordingly, since it's his trip too!

As it stands however we'll probably be going mid September next year, for nearly two months, getting back in time for Husband's brother's wedding in November. There is one potential glitch in this plan however - which is when will I be submitting my PhD thesis? I'm hoping that having a definite deadline of when I'm leaving the country will help me to actually finish up by then. As the time gets closer, I'll have to re-evaluate how likely this is. 

For now though, I should probably stop imagining all the places we might go, and get back to uni work, or maybe I won't be finished in time! I will post later on where we plan to go once Husband agrees with me helps decide our itinerary :P

New York - A Review

Due to popular demand (well, one request from Anide), I'm going to talk about the places I went to in New York, and the things I definitely recommend doing. Like I mentioned, I did not get to fit in everything I wanted to, so my first recommendation is: spend more than a week there! My second is to plan what you're doing in advance, because time gets away from you quickly.

More after the jump (it's long, you've been warned)!

Here's something you don't want the night before your big presentation...

A message from a random, waking you up at 2am:

This was the night before I had to give my talk at the conference last week. 

Some issues:

1) I don't even have a car

2) I say that it's 2am and so they decide that they should message again?

3) I realise this was an Australian number so they weren't to know it was 2am in New York, but still they clearly didn't look at the number they were supposed to message properly.

4) Yes, I also realise my response was a bit mean. But it was 2am people!

5) In case you were wondering, my talk actually went fine considering the lack of sleep!

Sad to be leaving New York!

Flying back to Sydney tomorrow. Have had an awesome time, and the conference was great. I am looking forward to the cooler weather though (and seeing Husband, of course).

Here are a couple of my favourite pictures from today (boat trip on the Hudson River, such a great day):

Hello from New York!

I have arrived safely, you'll be happy to know. Flights were fine (will update another post on fear of flying when I get the chance), though had zero sleep. Also had to rush at LAX to get through customs for my connecting flight - made it just in time!

So I got in to JFK airport yesterday evening and caught a taxi to my hotel on 5th ave (love that the uni is paying for this). The taxi driver was interesting, asked lots of questions about Australia and asked to see Australian money. "This is Queen Elizabeth right?" (looking at $5), "yes that's right", "you guys still follow him?", "err, yes?".

I had a quick look around near my hotel last night, in search of food. Since I was super tired I settled with Wendy's (as far as I know, there aren't any Wendy's in Aus, or at least Sydney). The guy was very confused when I asked for chips, "you want... juice?". Haha I have to remember the American words for things. Also they were shooting a TV show outside as well. I overheard the following conversation between a girl passing by and a guy from the film crew:

Girl: "What you guys filming?"

Guy: "TV show called White Collar"

Girl: "Anyone important in it?"

Guy: "Not really". 

Hehe. So not an overly exciting first night for me, as after that I went back to the hotel and watched NCIS to drown out all the cars beeping until I fell asleep (it was a DiNozzo marathon yay). Today I am catching up with a uni friend who has also come over for the conference. I am supposed to meet her near Times Square, so I guess I should work out where that is!

Feel free to give me some suggestions of where I should go while I'm here :)

P.S. Now I get to cross #11 off my 30 before 30 list. YAY!

Going to New York!

There is a conference at the end of June where I'm going to present some of my research, and it just so happens to be in New York (which I've never been to before). It also just so happens that the university is paying for me to go! Tough life. 

I am very much looking forward to it - however not so much the flying for hours alone. On our recent trip to Europe I was mostly ok, but it was comforting to look to Husband for reassurance when turbulence hit. When I'm by myself there's nobody to calm me but myself (and I'm rubbish at that). I know rationally how safe flying is, but when I'm in the air it's definitely a different story. Anyway enough of thinking about that, I'd much prefer to think about...

Shopping! The conference is on 5th avenue, and I'll also be staying at a hotel on 5th avenue. I think there's a couple of shops around there hey? :P

Now I just need to make sure I have data before then...!

[source]

P.S. Any suggestions on what to look at, where to go etc. would be welcome! :)