Search

jandreart
  -  Diary of an Adventure   -  New York City Adventure

t has a particular smell. Dazzling strobe lights. Head splitting sirens. Everything feels larger. I’m moving a few seconds behind everything. Leaves, a hundred shades of green, with the odd maroon maple. Scarlet tulips in street side planters. Fountains and parks for weary feet. Already feeling the effect of hours walking on hard pavements.

I stood clueless gazing at the lift panel keyboard. No simple Up or Down button. Was there a security code required? I held the barcode of my temporary pass to the strip of green above the keypad. No reaction. Back to the security desk. Enter the floor number the helpful response. Correct number pushed, and a lift door opens. Lift whizzes past my floor. Back down and try again. Slow to understand that when entering the number, the display shows a letter which indicates which lift. Pushing the 0 to return to the ground floor doesn’t work here, as the ground floor is 1!

Salad lunch from the Armenian. Part of the city that hasn’t changed. Disappointingly the chicken was dry and the lettuce reduced to a semi-compost state. They also seem to have forgotten that lettuce isn’t the only salad ingredient available.

Rainy morning. Grand Central Station for the shoe shine and to visit the Tiffany clock. As per the script, a women runs across the concourse in her red dress, suitcase obediently trailing. An ancient couple arguing on the staircase as to which platform, and shouldn’t they be at Penn Station?

The ability of New Yorkers to balance their day long caffeine fix, umbrella, bag, mobile phone and open doors, with only two hands, impressive.

Something surreal about standing in the Security Council chamber that has been part of so much history. The focus, to prevent the 40million deaths of the two World Wars from happening again.

On the streets this early, only homeless, policemen, joggers and jet-lag insomniacs. Mist playing between the spires. The smell of coffee and superheated air from Starbucks. Gentle Jazz and country music, perfect.

In his time Jan has been an electronics, nuclear and power system engineer, a strategist, a humanitarian and an artist. A career path linked by creativity and innovative thinking. Initially trained at the Johannesburg College of Art, Jan has won numerous international awards and has exhibited nationally and internationally. He can be found in his studio ‘Jandreart’ located at Thesen Harbour Town, Knysna.

Comments

  • terryellen21

    Beautiful! Thank you xxx

    Sent from my iPad

    >

    May 9, 2014
  • Katie

    If you want the best Russian food without having to travel to Russia, go to the Russian Tea Room. A bit pricey but well worth it!!!

    May 9, 2014

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: