Week 3/4: This post should have been out about a week ago.. week ago.
Have you ever seen someone use a fork and knife to eat a burger?
It’s like a slice of heaven. It screams of class and sophistication. It’s the kind of thing I’d expect from a chap who takes the L and R on their earphones seriously. Or the kind of guy that calls a watch a timepiece or owns a wine decanter and uses words like Austere or bold.
If I saw you chow down a burger with a fork and knife, I’d say hi to you with the assumption that you are on a first name basis with the who’s who in wherever you are from. Now have you seen me (or at least any of my close friends) eat a burger? Especially the double sized burgers? If you have not then I’d gladly like to keep it that way. I am a nice person and you should get to know me.
Moving on.
For all the fans that lined out every building I walked into waiting to get a handshake or catch a whiff of my awesomeness, I apologize for not making a post last week. It’s not an excuse, I actually do have a job with things to do, meetings to attend and snacks to finish off from the food corner in the office kitchen.
So here is what I have been up to the last two weeks.
Rockwood Music Hall Concert
Kirk, colleague of mine from the NYC office invited Japheth and I for a concert on the Lower East Side at Rockwood Music Hall. Japheth, an Andela developer who is part of my engineering team at First Access, had just flown in the same day and had forgotten to check in the bags under his eyes but he was pumped to get around New York.
If you follow me on Instagram, you already know how amazing the performer, Maddy Ruff, was. It was a 10 year celebration since she survived bone cancer and I am glad I got to be part of it.
Digital Ocean office! Pizza, beer, people and beer
I attended Startup Grind NYC at the NYC Digital Ocean office a while back and it was fantastic! The pizza was out of this world and the beer was okay. Just okay. Joseph Lubin, the founder of Ethereum had an insightful discussion on the decentralized blockchain platform.
Last week I went back for Built in Brews, a monthly shindig to just meet people and have fun. Again, the pizza was heavenly and the beer here hadn’t gotten any better. The crowd was lively and the DJ was decent (no fancy DJ names and shoutouts here). Throw in a ping pong table, free Digital Ocean swag and same bean bag game I’d love to talk about for hours on end and you have yourself a good night out!
I got a short tour of the Digital ocean office and I must say their snacks corner was much bigger than some of the stores in my neighborhood. It was around 8PM and a couple of guys in the engineering team were still working.
NYC Meetups
New Yorkers are a very friendly and sociable people. They like to talk about themselves(well everyone does) and better yet, they like to listen to what you are all about and what your experience in the city has been. It is so easy to start a conversation and get lost in it.
I’ve almost missed my stop on the subway when talking to a public defender I asked for some help at the train station to work(see, I told you! Office desk and everything) and we went on to talk through the entire ride. The only thing he could could mention about Nairobi was the fire at the airport a few years back, sad really. I got to learn a thing or two about public defenders and a few interesting facts on why it is a career choice for quite a number of lawyers.
I’ve talked to a bunch of law makers, a professional clown, CEOs and CFOs and founders looking for funds or engineers which is quite interesting for me that the meetups here have such a diverse audience.
Princeton University!
Oh yea, did you hear that I spoke in a Princeton class? No? Okay now you know at least one Princeton lecturer. You made it!
Princeton is unlike any institution I have been to before. There is a story behind every building, most of them about a hundred or so years old. One of the oldest buildings served as the US congress at some point during the revolutionary war.
Game Night at Madison Square Garden
I may have mentioned New Yorkers are nice. And they still are, until a sport is involved. At that point they morph into something else. Let me explain.
Steve Friedman(remember him, I’ll just call him coach like everyone in Andela does) and I went to an Ice Hockey game at Madison Square Garden. The New York Rangers were playing the Washington capitals and by association, I was a Rangers fan.
The indoor arena was dominated by the Rangers jerseys and every last one of them was shouting, cursing, baying for blood and yelling for a fight. It was like being in a set of Spartacus or Game of Thrones, but with athletes earning 20 million dollars a year and not gladiators. But the same guy spitting out four curse words per second at the players will be so polite and respectful when they need to pass. Weird!
All I know about Kenyan sports is that football is like the Wild West and rugby is more about the beer and the music and not the gentlemen roughing up each other.
Wednesday Comedy Night
If you fancy stand up comedy, then you are probably okay with the cursing. So I went to one of the comedy shows (Thanks Paul!) and I must say the cursing is just as intense without cameras around.
You do not want to sit on the front row though. Comedians will make you the butt of most of the jokes. I got there late so I had an unofficial reservation on the front row. The last act found out I was Kenyan and it became an interview.
I’ll probably want to free up my Wednesday nights for comedy shows.
My two cents on a couple of things
TV
I rarely watch TV in Nairobi, but when I do, I avoid watching the news. It’s always sad news (it’s election season…). But it’s the same case here, there are no politicians saying inappropriate things on tv though, and that’s saying a lot right now.
Eating Out
I have tried out about a million or two restaurants here and the people behind me in line hate it when I keep asking the different kinds of food on the menu. Heck, the lady serving me at Chipotle was not exactly happy either to answer my ten questions on the type of burrito I wanted.
In all fairness, there is no way i am supposed to understand the food and drinks menu in a Korean restaurant. I ended up ordering Bibimbap, a mixed rice dish which looked like ingredients for a recipe and not a ready meal.
I however feel that people in New York don’t know half the items on the menu. They order random things in all the restaurants until they find their happy place. I’ll let you know when I get mine.
Service store attendants
The Jamaican and Puerto Rican or Mexican attendants in convenience stores and malls are so friendly! They always want to know where my accent is from and how long I have been here.
Pictures
So I haven’t lost anything the past two weeks. In case you scrolled all the way down here to check what I lost, then you have lost your mind.
Oh I started jogging too in case you have been saying I’m going to grow fat. There is a really nice path along the East River and if I am feeling adventurous, I’ll jog from the East side through Central Park to the Museum of Natural History on the West side.
