“Welcome to America: We cannot take your customs card from your hand if you have it in your mouth”

In the week before the week Australia wooed a new Prime Minister and we whiled away week one on Skopelos, we were not whiling away time in New York.

We think it took about 31 hours travel to get there. It was Darwin to Singapore to London to New York.

The Singapore to London highlight was getting an aisle and a middle seat after we’d clearly booked two aisle seats months ago. Bas stoically took the middle seat all the way in a sandwich between me on the aisle and a guy on the window ultimately heading home to Manchester.

The London to New York highlight was the crew that John West had definitely rejected. We were pretty much thrown our food from a great height. Bas used the experience to devise a new international measure for customer service (it can be used in restaurants too) called the HAT index (Height Above Table). Basically the theory behind the measure is that the rating for customer service can be measured in inverse proportion to the height from which your food is thrown at you, that is, the higher the height, the lower the customer service score and the lower the height, the higher the customer service score. Try it out- it can work in all sorts of customer service situations.

A woman sitting in front of us asked for the special dietary meal she’d ordered. She was told loudly and clearly that she had not ordered a special meal; that the only special meal on the plane was a kosher meal for someone down the back and that she should take any complaints to the head flight attendant. She did raise it with the head flight attendant who had obviously missed out on the training session about dealing with passengers’ needs in flight, as she told the woman that she could not have possibly have ordered a special meal because it was not on board. The passenger eventually procured a cup of tea and what looked like some dry biscuits to sustain her for the seven hour flight.

We landed at JFK airport and heard the announcement “Welcome to America: We cannot take your customs card from your hand if you have it in your mouth”. Seems obvious really.

We were met in that busy, bustling terminal by Allan Kasof (and his neighbour Guy) who drove our somewhat tired selves on the freeway to Long Island where Denise Kasof also welcomed us to their beautiful home with stunning garden backing on to woodland. Denise is an etcher and art collector. We snoozed a bit then woke to the sounds of dinner starting downstairs with about 12 members of the New York Society of Etchers. It was a great evening and Bas put on an energetic (and enthusiastically received) ‘slide’ show about his work in Australia. The company was warm and we dined on fantastically fresh food, French wine and grappa. We must have stayed awake on adrenalin.

From my perspective it was like sitting courtside at a professional tennis match with passionate international words and conversations being hit back and forth around intaglio, dry point, soft ground, aquatints, woodcuts, engraving, flat beds, rollers, mezzotints, monotypes, plate marks, and registers.

Next morning saw an early dawn on another warm day and us at 11am sitting around the square table in the kitchen for a “classic New York” brunch of bagels, salmon, eggs, and leftovers from the previous evening. We were joined by neighbours Guy and Brian. Our fellow brunchees had all travelled to Australia and were very enthusiastic about its landscape and energy. It was just one of those lovely travel experiences where we engaged in a 3 hour conversation covering all taboo topics spiced with lots of laughter. We wandered next door to Guy and Brian’s home where not only was there the best bathroom and walk in wardrobe I’ve ever seen, but where the art on the walls represented a serious investment in Australia practitioners.

It was warm enough that evening to eat outside in the garden featured in the photos and it was just about time to conclude our time in New York where we were looked after by others. Next day we were to be minnows in Manhattan.