Homocon

Just returned last night from a several day visit to New York City. I tagged along while the boyfriend was on business.

I received my new Nokia 8800 Sirocco edition right before we left for NYC, so I spent a good amount of time in the hotel room, in taxi cabs and in coffee shops figuring out all its little quirks. I ditched slim fashion phones for a Blackberry a couple of years ago, but while I love the Blackberry for its Instant Messaging and email functions, it's waaaaaay too boxy and bulky for me. I need something I can just slip into the pocket of my jeans. So, to compensate myself for the years of putting up with ugly functionality, I splurged on the 8800 Sirocco, and it's just as beautiful up close as it is in all its press photos. The Brian Eno composed ring-tones and alerts are definitely a bonus. It's now a pleasure, instead of an unwelcome intrusion, to hear my phone ring.

This is my first Nokia phone, and now I understand why Nokia has such ardent admirers. The quality and design are top-notch.

I snapped a few photos with its 2 megapixel camera. There's no flash, so the dark photos come out looking pretty bad, but daylight photos look great (and it's so nice to have a phone with a camera in it again, another negative about Blackberry, though I hear they're going to start adding cameras to their newer models).

We stayed at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, located in the Time Warner building. It's a good hotel by New York standards, but it doesn't hold a candle to the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo. Of course, the Tokyo hotel is brand new and their New York hotel is older and the worse for wear. The sheer amount of traffic that goes through its lobby and hallways seems to be beating it down in a type of "Luxury Fatigue" . . . it's difficult to remain perpetually desirable when you're so obviously and thoroughly used. Case in point: standing in the lobby, waiting for the elevators to take us down to the street level, I noticed a crumpled napkin that had been tossed onto the floor. No one had picked it up -- there were staff all around, and yet there it lay, trashily despoiling the marble tiles and hinting at the urban grime and exhaust covered rubbish waiting to greet us on the streets below.

In Tokyo, that napkin would have been caught before it even hit the floor . . . I think that pretty much sums up the difference between a new luxury hotel (Tokyo Mandarin Oriental Hotel) and one that's seen a few trips around the block (New York Mandarin Oriental).

Below are a couple of snaps from the inside of the shopping mall in the Time Warner building. The weather was fairly clear while we were there, but marred by bitingly cold winds that howled through the streets. I have to say that I much prefer the West Coast to the Northeast. The weather is so much less ferocious in the West.