New York Minutes, Vol. 1: I’m back and I’m proud

ode to my stepbrothers

This dispatch begins with a tribute to my two stepbrothers. First, a big round of applause for Rupert, who continues his winning streak by naming this series as well as the Anglo Files. Well done, sir.

Second, a hearty congratulations to Nick, who was part of NASA’s Mission STS-116, which sent the space shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station in December to continue the station’s construction and rewire its power system.

We went to Cape Canaveral for the launch and a few days of friends and family activities. Astronauts who had been to space before held Q&A sessions to field enquiries ranging from what it’s like when the engine starts up (“you definitely feel like you’re going somewhere”) to whether you can drink coffee in space (of course, “which is good news for us coffee drinkers”).

We gathered in a designated parking lot three hours before the first scheduled launch attempt to be herded onto buses and taken to the building that houses an actual Saturn V rocket from the late '60s – a massive piece of kit. We bought the requisite NASA paraphernalia at the gift shop (I’m sure the agency’s government funding pales in comparison to retail income) and took our spots in the bleachers with a clear view to the launch pad three miles away.

The audio from Mission Control was broadcast over the loudspeakers, a television monitor was sharing video feeds, and the veteran astronauts were providing commentary and answering questions. Everything seemed to proceed smoothly, with the weather the only questionable element.

I’d never appreciated why shuttles need a clear sky to launch if airplanes could take off in storms, but this was among the many things I learned that week. First of all, there needs to be an unobstructed view to see whether there’s any damage to the shuttle on take-off. Secondly, the shuttle (which I was most familiar with from MTV’s early station id’s) is made up of three elements: the solid rocket boosters, two skinny things that get jettisoned into the Atlantic first; the big orange fuel tank, which falls off next once it’s empty; and finally the orbiter, the small glider that makes the rest of the trip. The orbiter needs decent weather to land, so in case an emergency landing is necessary, weather needs to be ok at Cape Canaveral for a little while after launch and at one of the three emergency landing sites in Europe (in France, Spain, and North Africa), which the orbiter would be over mere minutes later.

The cloud cover that night was just over the maximum acceptable thickness of a few thousand feet, so the mission controller stopped the countdown clock at 05:00 while we all waited with baited breath, watching the weather plane dart in and out of the clouds and listening to the pilot’s reports. (Apparently this is much more stressful for the friends and family than for the astronauts, since the crew are busy and have simulated this many times before.) At the last possible second – each day there’s only a ten-minute window within which they can launch and meet up with the Space Station’s orbit – the mission controller said we’d have to give up for today, so we boarded the buses dejectedly and headed back to our hotel.

We came back two nights later with a less-than-favourable forecast, wondering how many more days we could milk what the town of Cocoa Beach had to offer, but miraculously the clouds cleared and the big red clock raced down to 0:00:00: We saw the exhaust cloud form, then the rumbling sound reached us and turned into a loud crackle, then the cloud expanded as the shuttle slowly rose and started to accelerate. The glow around the shuttle grew and lit up the 9pm sky like it could have been midday.

After about a minute, the shuttle faded into a dot and appeared to descend – luckily we were warned that that visual effect was actually due to the curvature of the earth.

As the overwhelming sights and sounds receded, I remembered why we were there and turned to Rupert: “Dude, your brother’s IN that thing!” (He was busy retrieving his son’s toys from under the bleachers, as four-year-old Charlie had been chattering away but was so stunned by the launch that he dropped everything and froze, eyes up and jaw on the ground.)

In a clever ploy to get us back onto the buses quickly, we were warned that the exhaust cloud was heading our way and could produce a sort of acid rain effect that “might” cause “minor skin irritation”. By the time we arrived back at the parking lot, we were informed that they had already orbited the earth once.

There are some wonderful photos and video clips on nasa.gov, so I’ll add just one here:

The mission was indeed successful, not just because the crew completed their tasks and came home safely in time for Christmas, but because the Swedish astronaut on board, a keen ultimate player, set a new world record for Maximum Time Aloft for a frisbee. Not surprisingly, debate is raging on the disc blogs, as some have posited that the world record actually needs to take place on the world.

back to planet earth…

My first moment of readjusting to New York came very early on, when I took Adrian to an improv show. For one sketch, one of the improvisers left the room while the others asked the audience for a cliché that they would act out for the absent one to guess. There was a moment of silence from the audience, so I shouted out, “Bob’s your uncle!” This provoked a less-than-enthusiastic response from my fellow audience members (“No one’s ever HOID of that,” “Could we, like, VOTE or something?”), but the cast got it, eventually.

Of course, the rudest welcome-back-to-New-York of all is the apartment hunt. Can anyone explain to me why brokers haven’t gone the way of travel agents towards obsolescence? They all use the same central “database”, actually a publicly-accessible website, but also tout their “exclusives”. So you have to work with multiple brokers, who then get grumpy about your working with others – which is almost understandable, since there’s no justice in that the winner is the one who happens to produce the right apartment for you at the right time, regardless of how helpful or unhelpful he or she has been throughout the process. And once you start working with a broker, God forbid should you look at any property on your own, even if it is in the public domain where anyone else could rent it without the hassle, delay, and 15% fee of the middleman.

In spite of this truly unpleasant process, we’ve landed squarely in Tribeca, where Adrian can walk to work and I can work at home overlooking the Hudson River (well, I can see bits of it between the big buildings), with an easy subway ride to my midtown office when necessary. I was never well-acquainted with the bits of Manhattan that have names and crooked streets, and even if I had been, the area’s changed so much since I left the city in 1997 that it’s a whole new town to explore.

…and down south

I went to Colombia with my UN gig in January. I was very excited to finally go there, having gotten to know a number of Colombian colleagues over the years – it’s our largest exporter of labor within the company after the US and UK. Our meetings in Bogotá were sandwiched by visits to my company’s facilities, a human rights training facility for the army, and a bottling plant and sugar cane plantation and mill that supplies one of the world’s largest beverage companies. It was a fantastic week, full of challenging issues but incredible capability, passion, and optimism; wonderfully gracious hospitality; and a night out at one of the most fabulously fun restaurants I’ve ever been to, a maze of a place crowded with bric-a-brac and people celebrating every occasion imaginable.

Now down to the business of building a new life in New York, including re-connecting with friends from every episode of my life so far. In every station abroad, I had a frisbee scene, a work scene, and a few other great friends, but I’d forgotten how rich it is to have so many different circles of people around: classmates from grad school, college, high school, and even elementary school; former colleagues from city government; and friends from other phases who have taken the inevitable path to New York.

Our house has been warmed, and Adrian took me to Per Se for my 35th (partly in response to my treating him to Masa for his most recent birthday). We’re off to a good start.

Here’s to a fun filled 2007.