30/1/13 – Day 2 Metropolitan Museum of Art Infusion Week

Read ‘Perth Now’ this morning to catch up on the news from back home and I have a message for the editors – “get your act together”. Are you deliberately trying to scare people off living in Perth – the whole page was filled with horror stories; decapitated heads on Rottnest, murders, abductions, shark sightings, road toll horror stories, tales of partygoers being attacked and … Troy Buswell!  Oh hang on it was like that before we left…..I just hope Tony Mundine doesn’t win – that would truly be a disaster story! But why must the Perth news always be so ugly – are we really interested in this stuff – is this really what we want people to know about our lovely city? From where I’m sitting here in NYC I wouldn’t come all that way to visit a city like the one depicted in the pages of Perth Now. I can get enough stuff like that right here in New York.     

Did a stretch class at the gym today and then had lunch at ‘Nectar of 82’ a fancy ‘diner’ on the corner of 82^nd and Madison – pumpkin soup and Caesar salad hit the spot. BTW would someone please send me some soup spoons...it appears that the US has failed to catch up with the convention that soup is consumed with a soup spoon and not a dessert spoon. And don’t even ask what happened when I asked for one today…..you would think waiters in a restaurant on Madison Avenue would know what I was talking about.

Unfortunately he just looked at me and nodded uncomprehendingly before eventually asking me what language I was speaking. He was genuinely taken aback when I claimed it was English!  As you can imagine Peter was by now in fits of laughter. I wish he had videoed it – we could have won some money on Australia’s (and America’s) Funniest Home Video Show(s). To quote Winston Churchill … a classic example of ‘two people separated by a common language’.

Once I recovered my dignity and the waiter had received his very small tip for failing to find a soup spoon, we went on to the Met for Part 2 of the Director’s Tour Highlights – this time we visited snippets of Ancient China, Pre Columbian Gold, Oceania, Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia and the Impressionists – quite a ‘dolly mixture’ if you’re old enough to know what I mean!

PDS bought some FL Wright’s window design cufflinks from the Met shop to go with his blue pin stripe suit, gold tie and braces – he is now quite the NYC ‘dandy’.