TRAVEL DIARIES: NYC

This cannot end well. I thought to myself, staring at the near-vertical stretch of stairs awaiting me and my 30 kilo suitcase. The awfulness of my impending task was such that I could do little but laugh aloud. This was New York, after all, and with the odd maniacal cackle I was simply joining the ranks of the rest of the city's colourful characters. My laughter continued to echo through the SoHo stairwell as I lugged that thing up flight by painful flight; somehow breaking into hysterics seemed to provide ample distraction from my rapidly forming left bicep. With Miley Cyrus' "It's the Climb" resounding faintly in the recesses of my mind, I reached my apartment. It's embarrassing how long it took for my breathing patterns to resume normalcy. NYC - apparently not so big on elevators.

"Everything in this city is hard!" I had whined - saturated and lost - to a friend the day before from under our umbrella as we played hopscotch over puddles in torrential rain. For the record, I had swiftly slapped myself about the face straight after that childish episode, guiltily remembering all of the times I had daydreamed from my desk of trawling just one such Manhattan street for an afternoon. I went to see Newsies on Broadway this week, (EPIC!) and a line from the first scene summed it up for me: "New York life is great; as long as you've got a big door at the end of the day to shut it out." Introverts; unite.

This city is insane. It's dizzying. I absorb more sounds and experiences in a single day here than I would in a week elsewhere. To get from A to B can be a logistical nightmare reminiscent of Catherine Zeta Jones' bodysuit mission in that scene from Entrapment. Just when you think you're a hotshot local who can discern her L train from her F train, "THE F TRAIN IS UNDERGOING CONSTRUCTION ON WEEKENDS", rendering you disorientated all over again and seriously late for brunch. (twitter.com/firstworldpains.) Thus, I blew my whole data cap in my first six days with various attempts at clocking the subway. (See previous parentheses.)

Sadistically, all of this only adds to the fact that NYC is like crack to me. It renders each day comparable to a diluted game of Survivor. (Or The Hunger Games, depending on whether the wait for your table is going to be 60 minutes or 90 today.) The adrenalin from being so overstimulated is addictive. Adding further weight to the crack comparison, on my first week here I averaged four hours' sleep a night and wasn't even tired, so I'm going to assume this simile is valid. Who has time for tired when there are 70 blocks to be trekked, leather skirts for $17 to be purchased, "socially diverse" locals to be encountered and old haunts of 1960s beat poets to, like, totes nonchalantly journal in? 

It's a joke how much I love this town. I'm vacillating over whether to admit that on my first night back here, a brief stroll around the West Village even had had me tearing up a little bit. A smidgen, if you will. Whatever, it was probably just my eyeballs adjusting to the air. Or relief at surviving my stopover in Texas.

I'm off to San Francisco soon, to fulfill my childhood dreams of riding trams around town with the cast of Full House. But I'll probably accidentally leave a piece of myself behind here all over again. Which, I suppose, just creates a great excuse to come back and claim it.

TRAVEL DIARIES: SYDNEY // LOS ANGELES

"You're a happy little vegemite, aren't ya?" twanged my customs officer, verbatim, like something straight out of a "Discover Australia" travel brochure. Hark! After a glorious three weeks rediscovering Sydney's leafy streets, pastel-coloured terraces and myriad cafés overflowing with sartorially-gifted patrons, (in 26 degree heat, thank youuup) I was LA-bound and stoked.

The penalty paid for dual citizenship, that said, is that I always leave Sydney with a dull ache in my gut, like I forgot something... and I sort of hope I always do. Good friends, good thai, family dinners, salted caramel everything and the realisation that you really can have two homes, even when you haven't lived there in years.

Back to see old mate, Kingsford Smith. Remedying my booklessness with the purchase of a Jonathan Safran Foer novel en route to my gate, I anticipated 13 hours of feeling super virtuous about reading the whole thing in one sitting. This idea was swiftly shelved, however, in favour of the impressive line-up of movies available, including - but not limited to - a trip down memory lane to my first serious crush with 10 Things I Hate About You.

I can't sleep on planes. It's therefore the most bizarre experience to be awake for 32 hours straight and to find yourself roaming Whole Foods in Pasadena at what feels like 4am with a beloved old friend. I bought ("HIGH-PULP") orange juice that said "Kosher for Passover" on the label. It was roughly around this time that I started to believe I was back in America. The next four days comprised the obligatory tourist missions to Hollywood and Santa Monica Pier, unexpected reunions with an NZ colleague mid-Urban Outfitters-raid (classic), and slow attempts at kicking my plane-acquired headcold to the kerb.

Here is something about Los Angeles that is not a cliché: everything is bigger, shinier, and smilier than you thought. It also has much whiter teeth. Here is something that IS a cliché: it is always hot. I beg to differ, good sir, for both times I've been there it has rained and I've resorted to wearing enough jumpers (sweaters!) as to appear caricaturely rotund. The movies; they lie.

Next stop: dawn alarm, New York City, surviving a stopover via Dallas, Texas. This time, ol' Safran Foer got a look in. Luckily for his sake, he didn't have to compete with Heath Ledger again.