I probably told you before that I do some voluntary work for an organisation named New York Cares. Every Friday I help Arabic women with their English language skills. Sometimes that means I ask them questions which they should know for their citizen ship exam, like what the stars on the flag represent, in which year the constitution was written or if they can name all the states. Some questions are really tough and, like in Holland, the average American citizen would not know the answers. If you want to give it a try, here are a few; questions citizenship.

Sometimes I have to tell them a bit more about a topic and in that case I have to stick to the textbook they work with. There is just one thing I skip all together and that is the story about the exploration of New York and the help they received from the native population, which resulted in a ‘fruitful co-operation’… B-shit patriotic propaganda. Fortunately Gina, the teacher, agrees and is fine with me quickly turning the page to a different subject.

Other times I teach women who just joined the class and don’t speak English at all. Often they don’t know how to read and write in their own language which makes it even harder to learn a foreign language. In that case we just point at pictures an practise words. I wish I knew how to teach them in a better way but there’s just no time for that in this voluntary project.  Next Friday I’ll go for the last time and maybe weird to say but I’m going to miss them. They are all so motivated and happy with every volunteer that comes in to help. I guess I’ll say what they taught me: Masalama!

So Sandra came back from getting the mail in the office yesterday, and she had a thick, heavy enveloppe for me. From Starbucks. Could it be…?

It felt heavy, and I couldn’t  wait to open it. The contents were a letter, welcoming me to the Starbucks Goldcard program as one of the first people in The United States. It talked about what a valued customer I am. Of course. It also had a sort of manual with it, which contained the card and a couple of vouchers, so I can give friends the luxury of ordering a drink with 10% discount.

As you can see in the middle there, the goldcard is not really gold, it is more a classy black. Like the exclusive American Express Centurion Card. Although it was a little easier getting this card (and free!).

So I went to try it out, of course. And it works. People treat me differently now. And they were already friendly. But it seems they are friendlier now. And their service is faster. And somehow, people on the street get out of my way quicker and the traffic lights on my way to the Starbucks seem to make my journey there faster. Awesome!

Tuesday we celebrated Janneke’s birthday in a hotel bar on one of the corners of Washington Square. This bar is one of the many hidden ‘treasures’ of NY. You wouldn’t know that there was a bar unless someone tells you. But at least this one is open to everyone, there are bars where you first have to call an unlisted telephone number…very exclusive. But that’s a completely different story.

So, we sat in the bar with Janneke and Matthias and ordered cocktails (the thing to do we thought in a bar like this). When we were just talking about how nice and quiet this lounge was the bartender told us that any minute now he would turn the TV on for the live debate between Mc Cain and Obama. Oh oh, the one thing worse than shouting to each other during a baseball game (except for in a sport bar) is to try to do the same during a heated talk show. While we were just complaining to each other about this we also wondered where this TV would come from. Suddenly the bartender walked straight to a wall, opened one of the panels and out came a TV. A secret window, cool! Later Jacco found out there was another secret door in that wall, leading to the restroom.

After half an hour or so we were accompanied by Katherina, the owner of the house Janneke and Matthias live in, and Webster her boyfriend. They were friendly, typically hip, successful New Yorkers with a lot of tips and gossip about this city and its people. They told us that the bar housed is home to many professors of The New York University and that he loved this place because of its (usually) quiet ambiance. Two cocktails later Webster (he cal himself Web) talked about yoga and how he can not compete with Katherina on these exercises except for his head stand. Katherina is about 1m 85 (still not uses to the feet and inches) so that makes it more difficult. But of course we challenged Web to show us right there in the bar. Understandably  he didn’t want to embarrass himself or Katherina in this classy west village bar but one cocktail more made a big difference and there he went…on his head, in a yoga stand in the middle of the bar! ‘Very impressive’,…commented a professor who just entered the bar and who turned out to be one of Katherina’s most admired teachers. As Matthias commented, this could have been a perfect film scene…maybe one of Woody Allen.

By the way, we saw many after discussions about the debate and according to CNN’s poll Obama ‘won’ this one with 54% over 30 %.

Last week my mother visited us and I’m going to try to remember what we did.

She arrived on Friday night (12th) at JFK and after a few good hugs we took a taxi to the city. It is so nice to see people’s faces when they see NY’s skyline for the first time! Although it is still breathtaking I will never forget the first time I saw it.  We arrived at her home for a week and after she left her bags in the room we met Jacco downstairs and went for dinner at a French restaurant in The Lower East Side. Again we had to make our way through film crew shooting one of their many series but it immediately gave her a sense of New York.

The next day we had breakfast at Orchard (one of our two breakfast places) and afterwards we walked towards Mulberry Street where there was a street festival honoring St. Gennaro. Those Italians have a lot of Saints celebrations and it involves mainly one thing: FOOD. And lots of it. We tried our luck at a shooting game and walked some more in this neighborhood. Because we had an evening program planned we went home in the afternoon for an hour rest and met again for dinner at the noodle bar, a nice little restaurant in LES where you can have good noodles and other Asian dishes. After dinner we took the train to Brooklyn to find the location of the Rooftop Film Festival. The first time we went there was with Yvon and that time it wasn’t on a roof but in a large garden. This time it was on a roof, the roof of a can factory. The setting was beautiful but also a bit too ‘clean’. It didn’t have the cosy feeling of the garden but it was nevertheless a special place. Like the first time the evening starts with a music performance. This time the singer was not drunk which was an improvement but all her songs had a dreamy, slow sound that worked as a lullaby for the three of us. Fortunately the crowd shared our opinion and didn’t mind our snoring.Then the films started, the theme was  ‘dark comics’. So no nice sweet films about…well,…for example rabbits but scary, dark and cynical films who where often very funny. The amount of bugs however was not so funny, we were eaten alive. And for the first night in many it got really chilly, but that was a discomfort we embraced because that meant better sleep! After the film there was complimentary wine in the inner court of the building which is not a can factory anymore but houses many little ‘ateliers’. The evening ended with a taxi ride with skyline view.

Then next day we had breakfast at the diner owned by our Greek friend and mum had her first ‘eggs well done’. Then we decided we wanted to go to Governor Island, a little island close to Battery Park which is uninhabited. After the last occupants, the coast guard, left nobody is allowed to live there. New York City doesn’t have money to maintain the facilities on the island and so the whole place is up for sale. In the summer they make an exception and you can take a ferry during the weekend to visit the island. So on the day it would become 90 degrees we escaped the city and took the boat which took only 10 minutes to cross but you had a good view on the Statue of Liberty. Every weekend they have a theme party on the island and this time it was Charleston. On the big lawn was stage with a large band playing music from the twenties and a lot of people had dressed up for the occasion. It really was as if cute Doctor Who had offered as a tour with the Tardis. All around empty houses which tried to look pretty but if you looked close you could see the signs of abandonment. A weird island… But it was a beautiful afternoon and from the west side you again had amazing views of the Statue and Manhattan. Back on Manhattan shore we walked to a cafe, had a drink and took a cab home. Trying really hard to remember where we had dinner. It will come to me…later.

Of course, there is a lot of media coverage of the elections. Especially during the previous two weeks, where we had both the Democratic convention and the Republican convention. I don’t want to get into details of the parties, or their programs (programs? Do they have those? You really do not hear too much about that at all…).

But recently I discovered this cool little gadget called Wordle. It allows you to create a ‘cloud of words’ based on a text or a URL. It will make words that appear often larger than those that appear less often, sort of like the tag clouds you see at nerdy websites a lot. I was wondering what the homepages of the  websites of both parties would look like through Wordle. Here are the results:

The Republican Party (www.gop.com)

I have to say this website is a mess, and the results depicted above are sort of skewed, as it doesn’t take into account the rotating Flash banner promoting alternatively the “BarackBook” website, “Meet Obama” and “Not your Average Joe” (Biden). The website also slows my browser to a grinding halt. But let’s not get technical.

I’ve used color coding (blue = Democrat-specific term, red = Republican-specific). As you can see, GOP (the Grand Old Party, another term for the Republican party) features prominently, just a little more than the words Obama and Barack. Notice how McCain does not show up at all. 

The Democratic Party (www.democrats.org)

I was really disappointed to find that the Democratic Party’s website is even worse than the Republican one. the name “McCain” is way ahead of anything else here. Good thing that both Barack Obama and Joe Biden are mentioned here, but their prominence on the homepage is way below that of their opponent. I find it interesting that there is no mention of Sarah Palin on their homepage, which seems like an easy target right now. They seem to be ignoring her completely.

Of course, this is just a snapshot, taken from just the homepage of the repective sites. I’ll see if I can do a more in-depth analysis of the content on the websites themselves. Or on the speeches! Did I mention work had really started again for me? Hmmm…

And I think I saw about 3 hours of live sports while it was one. Part of that was over dinner in New Jersey, seeing Michael Phelps win his so manyeth gold medal, no doubt helped by the cheering crowd at the restaurant where we had dinner.  I regret missing the opening and closing ceremonies, they seem to have been very special indeed.

Of course, I did notice that it was going on, and felt slightly proud when the Dutch had scored a medal again. Especially the water polo, where the Dutch women beat the Americans in the finals, brought a little patriotism to my normally unpatriotic self. And medals is what it’s all about in the games, isn’t it?

So, in the end, who won? I mean, overall. Let’s not go into deep political discussions into this blog, but have a quick unbiased look at the medal scoreboard. According to most news sources (NOS, De Telegraaf, BBC) and the official Olympic website, these are the results:

Olympic medal standings - NOS

Olympic medal standings - De Telegraaf

Olympic medal standings - BBC.co.uk

Olympic medal standings - results.beijing2008.cn

Now look at how the US news sources are reporting on these same standings. Remember, they’re all reporting on the same olympics, and they seem to have access to the same data.
Olympic medal standings - New York Times

Olympic medal standings - CNN.com


Olympic medal standings - ESPN.com

Olympic medal standings - NBC.com

Interesting, isn’t it? It is clear that the Americans count medals, rather than attach value to the color of the medal. I’m just very very curious if they would do that the same way if things would have been the other way around. It looks like the rest of the world agrees on adding value to the medals.

Thanks Alex, for pointing this one out!

I had to rush for lunch today, so instead of buying bread and some cheese or meat like I have gotten used to doing, I went for a ready-made sandwich from Jubilee Marketplace on Broadway. I thought the sandwich felt quite heavy when I got it, but didn’t pay any further attention to it, until I started eating it.

This sandwich was heavy. And full. And after eating the first half of it (!), I decided to tell you all about it. And I know that if I would just tell you about it, you wouldn’t believe me, so I took some pictures (with the crappy Blackberry camera, apologies for that).  I have probably grossed out Sandra by deconstructing this sandwich right next to her, and for that I apologize too.

So, what you see here is half (!) a sandwich, for which I paid $7.25. As you can see it is nicely wrapped and sliced in half. The other half, as mentioned before, was already devoured by me. Be aware that it was actually wrapped pretty tight. You can still see the bread, but you can also see it’s been compacted quite a bit.

OK, let’s start deconstructing this sandwich. It’s about three inches long, which means the full sandwich must have been close to 6 inches. On top, we find four slices of tomato and some lettuce, plus some sort of yoghurty dressing.

The next two layers consist of cheese (Provolone, if I’m not mistaken - two slices) and a boiled ham. I think these call it Danish or Virginia ham over here. About three slices of that.

Next up are two layers of salami. The first is a sopressata-type salami. there are two large slices of this, plus some additional bits. Then there is a chorizo-like salami, with an interesting flavor, that includes a hint of aniseed. About 8 slices of this.

The last layer consists of a dry-cured prosciutto. There is a lot of this on there. This is actually the best-tasting bit of the sandwich. With the chorizo and the sopressata as close runners-up. The cooked ham and cheese are not that impressive, and neither are the watery lettuce and tomato.

Again, I’d like to stress that what you see in these pictures is HALF A SANDWICH! I already ate the other half.

Now, I like meat. And I like sandwiches. But I believe it is actually possible to have too much meat on your sandwich. I also believe that I could easily do a whole week with the cold cuts on this sandwich. I would probably just use one type of cold cut a day. It would be more than enough for a six-inch baguette or hero. And I would enjoy the individual flavors more. I am not complaining! I am just noticing these facts and telling you about it.

By the way, I have placed most of what you see in these pictures in the fridge, and will use that to create two sandwiches tomorrow

As you may or may not know, Bruce Springsteen is from New Jersey. So when I found out that he would be playing in New Jersey while we were in New York, it seemed only logical that we would try and get tickets to see him play. We found our tickets through Craigslist, and hoped that they would turn out to be valid!

Bruce and the E Street Band would actually be playing three concerts at the Giants Stadium (Sun, Mon & Thu). So in the morning, before went to work, we checked the reviews of the first show on Sunday. They were ravingly positive, so even more excited I went to my meeting in Midtown. Luckily, this meeting didn’t take too long, so I got home in time to change and get ready.

After checking about four times whether I really had the tickets in my pocket, we left for the 42nd Street bus terminal, from where buses would have a regular service to the Stadium. We bought some lunch and some water, found the ticket booth (scary people behind the ticket booth!) and then found our way to the busses. It was still very early, and therefor very quiet. I’m pretty sure things would have been completely different in Holland!

We got on the bus and after a short ride (15/20 minutes?) we arrived at Giants Stadium. It was amazingly quiet there. Hardly any people were at the stadium. Most people that were there were still on the parking lot, barbecuing and listening to their radios. Lots of Springsteen, of course. So this is what the Americans do on a concert or game night. They go to the stadium, and have a party in the parking lot. Sounds like a lot of fun!

We walked around for a bit, and then sat down in the shade, waiting for the gates to open around 18:00. A couple of dutchies sat down next to us and we kept quiet. Didn’t feel like mingling. Amazingly, a little later, two other dutch guys sat down between the other Dutchies and us. We still kept quiet while they chatted. How on earth does this happen in New Jersey?

When the gates opened, we got up and very easily made our way into the stadium. Turns out our tickets were valid! We had to leave behind our umbrella, but were allowed to bring a bottle of water in. Except for the cap, that had to be tossed in the bin. Interesting concept.

In Holland, by now everybody would be pushing to get in and run to find their spot. Of course, i have only been to the General Admission area in concerts, never had an assigned seat before. But everything went so incredibly smooth here, I was amazed. We both were.Very nice though. I guess this did show our non-nativeness off a bit, as for the next hour-and-a-half, we basically were some of the very few that actually entered the stadium, except for the people in the GA pit. This GA pit (General Admission) is the only place in the stadium where people do not have an assigned seat. It is a very small area in front of the stage. I think it will not hold more than a thousand people. Everybody else is seated. This is so strange. In Holland, the whole floor area would be General Admission, which means a lot more people would be able to fit into the stadium, I think.

We waited in the sun for it to go down, and towards 20:00 saw the stadium finally fill up. Around 20:30, The lights went out, the stadium started roaring and the band came out. Goosebumps from the noise of the crowd, and the realization that we were going to see The Boss play in his hometown!

Their opening song was “Out in the Street”. While I’m typing this, I realize that many or our readers are not big Springsteen fans, and many of these songs might nolt mean anything. But I’m going to write my whole review anyway, maybe I can convert some of you. I’ll be setting up a playlist in YouTube with all of these songs, so you can have a look ‘n listen…

One of the cool things of a BS&TESB concert is that you don’t know what you’re gonna get. In fact, the band doesn’t know it either. As Nils Lofgren, one of the guitarists, recently put it:

“I know that I’ll get a setlist that will surprise me the first night. And I know that Bruce won’t follow it. I know that the entire night will be one big audible (= leader changing things while playing [JN]), and I’ll be freaking out, and having a ball, and being extremely challenged. But as someone who is very comfortable in front of an audience, with an instrument, that’s a very exciting challenge.”

To illustrate this a bit more, from the 28 songs Bruce would play over the course of this concert, only 13 were played on Sunday! This keeps things interesting for the band, as well as for the people that come to see all shows. And there seem to be quite a few of those. As you can see from the written setlist here on the left, and the actual setlist, changes are being made while playing.

Anyway, on with the concert. It was great to hear the sound quality. Being this far away from the stage, and in such a stadium, I wasn’t expecting too much. But it was actually quite good, and most of the little talks between the songs could actually be understood.

The band regularly plays a cover or two, and ‘Summertime Blues’ has become a regular on the tour. This brings Clarence Clemons, the sax-player into the spotlight, doing the low-voiced lines in the song. It seems that nowadays, Clarence is not as lively as he used to be. He moves slower and just doesn’t go out into the big sax solo’s as much as he used to.

“Held up without a gun” is a very rare song to hear in a concert. In fact, they’ve only played it once or twice. It is an old song (1980), not on any of the regular albums, and deals with the price of gasoline. So it is very topical, as there is a lot of fuss about gasoline prices here (imagine, $4 per gallon, that is almost 70 Eurocents per litre. Tough times!). Sort of a punk-like, very short thing. Fun for it’s rarity-value rather than for the actual song.

After this they played ‘Hard to be a Saint in the City’. Another indication of the ad-hoc-ness of the concerts, as Bruce wasn;t sure in what key to play, trying some chords, and statign “We’re playing this in C tonight”. After some feedback from his band: “Yes, I know it’s in A. We’re playing it in C tonight. Let’s see if I can sing it that way. And If not, we’re gonna go back to A!”. Some might consider this unprofessional, but I just really like the whole feeling of this. It sort of creates an intimate atmosphere in a stadium with 40.000 people. It actually sounded a bit messy, but when Steve Van Zandt and Bruce start battling it out on their guitars, everything is cool again!

‘Sherry Darling’ was another one of those songs that hardly ever gets played, cool to hear that live. In ‘Because the Night’, Nils Lofgren got his two minutes of fame, going completely wild during his guitar solo. He even pulled of a summersault while playing (see the youtube video). Saskia’s neighbour actually asked her “Who wrote this song?”. I knew it was Bruce, and Patti Smith used the song and made it famous. But after some investigation back home, it turns out they co-wrote it. You learn something new every day!

WIth ‘Drive all Night’, another rarity from ‘The River’ was played. An emotional song, that had me covered in goosebumps again. After about two-and-a-half hours, the band went back to their dressing rooms, only to come back out again after 30 seconds or so. This is when the encores begin. It actually started with Bruce announcing that his wife Patti (also in the band as singer/guitarist) would be celebrating her birthday tomorrow, and let the audience sing for her. It turned out a lot of the family was present, as in the next song (’Girls in their summer clothes’), he came down to sing and dance with his daughter.

Then the band played ‘Thunder Road’, possibly my all-time favourite Springsteen song. Goosebumps again. When the band got ready to do ‘Born to Run’, a sure hit with any crowd, he brought out a guest drummer. This was actually Max Weinberg’s son, and he played a very energetic set on his fathers drums. After that they played ‘American Land’, and that seemed to be the real end to it. After three hours, that wasn’t bad at all.

However, Bruce escaped from the rest of the band doing their bows and waving to the crowd to pick up yet another sign with a request for a song. The crowd started going crazy, but Bruce said that he thought we couldn’t take it anymore. More crazyness. “But I don’t wanna hurt anyone” - “Are you sure” - Etc… But in the end, I think the whole stadium convinced him that there was enough energy left for one more song. Jesse Malin and Marah’s Dave Bielanko (whom I’d never heard of) joined them on stage (to make for a total of six guitars!) to play ‘Twist and Shout’. And his daughter joined her mother on stage, with some friends, to make for a strange, homely-feeling ending of the show.

All in all, they played for more than three hours. At the risk of sounding old, I would say that there are hardly any bands touring nowadays that could (and would want to) do the same thing. And then change the setlist dramatically every night, to keep it interesting for all. Every Bruce Springsteen concert that I’ve seen so far has been great, but this was by far the greatest! Check out the YouTube playlist for more impressions!

Our fourth guest arrived last Wednesday, my sister! Despite the fact that she is not too fond of flying (understatement) she got on the plain, crossed the ocean and arrived safe and sound at JFK airport. It was very good seeing her come through customs and to be able to hug her again! We took a cab to the Lower East Side where Yvon got to see her apartment for the next week. She was able to rent a room in a apartment of a Swedish girl. This girl has two bedrooms but because she was going on a holiday to Sweden she rented out both of her rooms, one to Yvon, the other to two Austrian girls. The latter departed on Sunday so for the rest of her stay Yvon had the apartment all for herself. After she left her bags in the apartment we walked one block (!) to our home where Jacco was. By that time it was already 22:00 so after a small half hour I took Yvon back to her apartment where she could finally go to sleep.

The next day was the first of a NY heatwave but Yvon seemed to deal with it quite well. She had a good night rest and looked very energetic. I took her to my favorite breakfast cafe and afterwards she had a haircut at my very weird hairdresser. She was already warned through my stories about him so when we entered and he, without saying hello, asked her if she was married, she loudly said ‘Yes I am!’. I stood behind her, wandering if he really said that when I heard him, a little of guard now, asking her again; ‘No,…are you Mary? Hahaha! This seemed more logical but when he told Yvon that Mary was a colleague we lost him again. I think he’s one of the the weirdest men I have ever met but a very good hairdresser. Yvon looked good and much more suited to the hot weather for the next couple of days. We then went walking through Soho, had some lunch on the sidewalk, went to The Strand, a book store that resembles De Slegte and took a subway back. In the evening we met Jacco and went to Lombardi’s, supposedly the oldest pizza place in town, where we shared a mega pizza. We ended the evening with a 23:30 coffee at Think Coffee at Bleecker Street and a stroll home.

Friday started with a subway ride to Brooklyn where Yvon came with me to the Arabic American Family Center where I help women with their understanding of the English language. We were assigned to two girls who were studying for their immigration exams. Amazing to hear how good their English was considering the fact that one of them had arrived 8 months ago (Iman) and the other just 5 months ago (Marocco)! You could tell they were educated girls and they were (again) very motivated to learn. It was nice having Yvon next to me in this class and she had some good teaching tips. Especially about asking if they know certain words they read. This gets you in the difficult situation where you have to explain words like ‘politics’ and the difference between ‘President’, ‘represent’ and ‘House of representatives’. By the time I get back I will know the whole political system in the USA.

After class we bought some lunch and went to Prospect Park, a beautiful big park with large trees that give you plenty of shade. By then it was 95 degrees Fahrenheit so we had to take it slow. At about 16:00 we went home, changed clothes and the three of us went to Brooklyn again. This time to see a film which was part of a festival. Althought they call it the Roof Top Film Festival they arrange spaces out side on whatever level so this Friday it was on a lawn next to a Automotive School. We sat on one of the folding chairs but there were also people picknicking on blankets. The evening started with a band who will probably sound a lot better when they are not drunk. Then the films started. There were about 6 short films about the country side of the US, some of which the writer or director was present. I will take too long to explain them all but they were very entertaining although the last film was mostly gross. It was sort of a documentary about an elderly lady that had a lavatory outside the house and for 10 minutes she only talked about…shitting. The term she used several times was ‘deliver the ashole baby’ while gleeming over her last toilet visit. Very ‘ehw’ but funny. Having seen that we could use a good drink and luckily for us the evening was sponsered by a liqour company called ‘Cabana Cachacha’ so Yvon had her first cocktail at Bar Matchless. A very nice and local evening that ended with a cab ride home over the Willamsburg Bridge.

Saturday started with laundry and breakfast at Olympia, our Greek diner. At midday we went to the Meatpacking District where we showed Yvon the Apple Store, Chelsea Market, some Meatpacking streets and the building of our first NY home. At the beginning of the evening we went to 42 Street where we saw a performance of Studio 52, the project that makes theater with children. The evening was called ‘Act your own age’ and plays were written specifically for each child by a professional actor. Then the performances were rehearsed one on one during a week outside NY and tonight we could see the result. There were eight very funny and crafted plays. Some children were too shy to really act but most of them did a very good job. It certainly served it’s purpose of placing the children in the spotlight. Again a very local evening which we all enjoyed very much. At the end of the plays we took a cab (death ride this time) to the East Village where we had Italian cuisine at Frank’s. Jacco and I had been there the week before and the food was as good as the first time. Another late night stroll home. This is so nice about NY, you walk home at 2:00 and it’s as busy as the same time during the day.

Rest of the week will follow…

Last week, the elevator in our office building started to have some issues. I went up to the fifth floor with a coffee in my hand, when somehwere between 2 and 3 it stopped, fell down a little bit (a foot or so) and then started again. I held on to the bar after that, and it did it again between 4 & 5. It did go up to the fifth floor, and opened, so I got out quickly, but was slightly shaken.

It then started behaving normally again, until yesterday. I heard from Sandra, who wlaked up the stairs, that she had met a FedEx guy who claimed he had been stuck in the elevator for some time. That led to her using the stairs. I sort of forgot about that story when I went out to grab some lunch. I got in at our floor (5th), and two people joined me on the third floor.

However, when we arrived at the first floor (1st floor is the ground floor in America), the door wouldn’t open. We tried to push it a bit, but it wouldn’t budge. We tried going back up to three, where it had opened op just fine, but no luck there either. We tried 2nd and 5th, but no luck. My fellow passengers were the building’s door man, a elderly chinese man that doesn’t speak a word of English, and the son of the building’s owner. The latter started calling the elevator mechanic, who apparently was in the neighboorhood. He left him two messages, and then called his boss.

In the mean time we tried every floor. Every time the elevator started going up, we got a little breeze in the otherwise unairconditioned and fanless box. You can imagine we all got a little hot. I called Sandra in the office, to see whether calling the elevator would help to open the door, but it didn’t. The only thing we got out of that was loud laughs from the 5th floor

In the end, just as the elevator mechanic had returned the calls, the elevator door opened on the second floor. We all got out, and it was great feeling some fresh air in your lungs again! I called Sandra we had finally escaped, and would return with lunch as soon as possible. Of course, when I got back with the lunch, the elevator guy was doing his thing, so had to climb the stairs, as if I hadn’t been sweating enough already!

In the afternoon, I went for another cup of coffee, of course using the stairs. When I got back, my two fellow elevator passengers and the elevator guy smiled at me. The elevator was open on the ground floor. I was going to take the stairs anyway. But the the mechanic said, that it was probably safe to take the elevator, and that he needed a guineapig to see if everything worked (his exact words!). I agreed, feeling that if it got stuck again, at least someone with proper tools was around to free me. I got in, and the leveator took me safely to the fifth floor, where the door opened without problems.

This morning, it was stuck at the basement again…