Meet New York's wildlife...

Pigeons

Besides rats and cockroaches (the latter I unfortunately already met in person in our bathroom), Manhattan's wildlife mainly exists out of pigeons. Of course there are other birds in New York, but these "rats with wings" as some New Yorkers call them are everywhere - as is normal in a big city. I'm sure you just pass them by and do not pay any further attention to them, but just imagine what a hard life these grey feathered friends must have! Fortunately there exist people who help them out: on New York City Pigeon Rental Rescue Central, you can read just a few examples.


(picture taken at Trinity Church)

Health and the City

Playing Dr. House...

New York has a gym on almost every corner, and it's hard to walk a block without passing a jogger heading to Central Park. So - this may come as a shock for the people who know me - I decided that New York was the best place and time to start doing some sports...

I didn't want to enroll with a gym. You always end up with one of those expensive one-year subscriptions and I figured that it's better not to invest too much in something I probably will not keep up for a whole year... ("Gnotis se auton" or "Know thyself") Instead, I opted for jogging at Central Park: nice surrounding, close-by (only three blocks from our apartment), and best of all - it's free! So I started to run... and now every muscle in my body is aching. But I'm not giving up yet - my goal is to run more than 30 minutes without reanimation. Healthy lifestyle (*), here I come!

(*) For the record, this does not mean that I will no longer eat burgers, fries, chips, or any similar food types.

Speaking of health... in the US, health is big business. In one of the rare moments we watch TV commercials (see the post below), there will always be one discussing the new miracle product which is the cure for all your health problems. Of course, in Belgium, you have the yoghurts with "active bifidus", food "enriched with vitamins X, Y and Z" or other hocus pocus, which in the end only helps you go to the toilet better. But here in the US, they go one step further. Drug commercials in the US are an interesting phenomenon: about one minute is used to praise the drug's effectiveness and in the other two minutes somebody reads out loud the leaflet (you know, the white paper inside a medicine box which you throw away before even folding it open?) with every possible side effect of the drug concerned. Just some examples of commercials:

Birth-control pill
Anti-cholesterol pill
Medication against "restless legs" (?)

I have no clue how a drug company justifies the cost of a TV commercial as these ads cannot possibly make people want to buy these drugs? But if you still decide that this is the medicine for you, the threshold is very low: there is a drugstore (a glorified supermarket) on almost every corner. Over the counter drugs can even be found in a separate aisle in the supermarket and are put on display like candy - just grab your pain killers, together with some frozen pizza, beer and chips (never mind that that's why you need the pain killers in the first place).

So, if medicine is big business, you would think that doctor practices are blooming? I actually don't have a clue - but what made me suspect otherwise was (of course) another commercial I once saw about "www.webmd.com", a virtual doctor. The concept? Just type in your symptoms and the computer will tell you which medical condition, disease or disorder you have, it even tells you what the treatment is. I can already hear the doctors among us sighing... But doctors do not fear: somewhere albeit in very small print and somewhat hidden beneath the sponsor's messages, there is the following warning: "This tool does not provide medical advice. It is intended for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Never ignore professional medical advice in seeking treatment because of something you have read on the WebMD Site. If you think you may have a medical emergency, immediately call your doctor or dial 911." Hmm, I've heard that before... could it be that a lawyer wrote that?

Pfff, gotta run to the supermarket now... that website gave me a headache!

We'll be right back... after the break!

The one with all the commercials...

As part of the integration-process, we simply had to install cable television... if not to keep up to date with the many TV shows then at least to make sure that our super-sized television (courtesy of Ward) shipped all the way from Belgium feels at home here in the US. So we did, and now we have full access to more than 300 channels (I tried to get less channels for less money but that was simply not possible - here in the US, everything is more, bigger, better and extra... so why would you want less channels??).

However, there's a catch - and I'm not talking about the endless reruns of old shows (after all, we have those in Belgium too... probably every teenager growing up in the 90's knows each Friends-episode by heart by now!). No, I'm talking about commercials, commercials, some more commercials and oh yes, commercials! Let's say you want to watch a new "Dr. House" episode. The show starts at 9 pm - 9.05 pm: the first commercial block - 9.15 pm: some more commercials - 9.24 pm: ah great! commercials - ... you get the point. By the end of the episode, you've seen so many commercials that you can't remember what the show was about - but you do know which brand of cereals or washing powder to buy (at least, subconsciously)! Luckily, there's a solution to the commercial-problem: a digital tv-recorder... record all your shows and just fast forward through the commercials. We hardly watch any shows "in real time" anymore.

But last Sunday, recording the show was not an option - apparently, watching the grand finale of American football is something you have to do in real time in front of a huge television (hence, the Super Bowl TV sales) and preferably surrounded by your friends and really greasy food. So that's what we did! We watched the Super Bowl in a bar downtown while eating nachos and burgers. Although American football doesn't seem very complicated (just a bunch of big guys fighting over a weird-shaped ball), Ward hasn't been able to make me fully understand the rules. So it was hard to follow... each time I thought I was getting the hang of it, I was interrupted by... you guessed it, commercials! Approximately 95 million people tuned in to see the game... you can imagine that a 30 second ad during Super Bowl is every marketeer's dream come true! That's why companies are willing to pay up to USD 2 to 3 million for a 30 second time slot. The result: a lot of commercials... so much so that the actual one hour game was entirely scheduled around the commercials and lasted more than three hours, making it unbearable for people like me to keep watching (I only made it through the first half).

However, for some people, the ads during the game are as important as the game itself - allegedly, some people watch just for the ads. Most of the time, television ads in the US - unlike in Belgium - at least try to be funny (the "two washing powders of brand Z for your brand X" ads are very rare) but during the Super Bowl, a special effort is made and many of the commercials actually made me laugh. According to the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter, Dorito's was voted as the best ad during Super Bowl 2009 - Budweiser came in second and third.

Oh, I almost forgot, if anyone would still be interested, the Steelers won...