Broccoli Surprise

The office in New York City is bigger but not better than in London. The fish tanks are not so prominent, there are only 2 computer screens per desk. There is more of the battery hen or goldfish about each employee, it being quite so big. On the other hand the atmosphere is more lively, you get to stroll past company celebrities (its pioneers), and the view from the 23rd floor (of 30 floors) where I have landed, goes a long way. I realized the view especially when talking to one colleague who lives on the 'upper west side'.
We'll call him Jonah. Jonah asked me where I was looking to live. And he indicated with his finger the direction in which he lived. Now I guess it is natural to know which direction things lie but with the monstrosity of the city and the newness and bigness of the office itself, I had no clue. So I was quite impressed that he had such a clean handle on where his flat was - which admittedly turned out to be not that far away.
He pointed out of the window - of which there are very many and huge too, so that if you are sat by the window, to your side is a shear drop to the streets below of toy yellow cabs and scurrying ants. It is quite something. You feel in the sky. We have a neighbouring cylindrical building which rises up like a giant magic wand. It pokes up next to us, so near yet so far, with its tapering summit yielding just a few topmost very lonely windows which are strange to observe.
And then the city stretches on with its straight rows and orderly higgle of bright grey legoland sky-rises for ever and ever. It's stunning, especially through the everso clean glass, sometimes with mist around the tops, sometimes soaring aeroplane-ride blue skies, always a concrete jungle.
So Jonah indicated over to the left. And then I saw it. Sure enough there is a clean edge to the grey jungle yielding to a neat rectangle of ....broccoli! Central Park! All present and correct. And knowing that the park stretches off to the north of us, you don't have to be Scott of the Antarctic to get that on the right of the broccoli is the upper east side. And on the left, you got it, the upper west.
And the other near-to skyscrapers have gaps between them that swing and sway with your mind. They are spiderman. They are 911.
I dialled 911 on my second day. Trying to reach a UK mortgage company, I knew that 0044 was the UK code. But I also knew that 91 gets me an outside line and that 011 got me outside of the US. Plus I knew that zeros are sometimes meant to be chopped. So you do the math...you can guess what happened. I felt like a prize dick saying to the alert, services voice on the line "heh, er, no everything is fine...heh."
Thankfully little else has gone wrong at work, only the same things as everyone else. Namely mistiming entry or exit to the building so that using the lifts is the same as catching the metro: you have to wait as they come and go full of bodies, sometimes as long as 10 minutes if you are not assertive! The elevator becomes part of the commute and makes you think twice about going to get snacks intraday. And the snacks are like the London office in the main with Graham crackers instead of McVities digestives and the addition of blue corn chips. And I dig that unlike in Larndin, the mix of chopped raw veg put out twice a day (in a huge jolly goldfish bowl - meant to be ironic?) includes cherry tomatoes, peppers, carrots, cukes, celery but never cauliflower and never ...broccoli.
I'll post some pictures once camera is part of my daily paraphernalia. Love to all.