Blog of Sam Fox

(Not page 3, popstar, politician, pornstar, or phoenix professional)

Category

North America

London, New York, USA

A Year in the States: Learning a New Language

Post-it note of the list of words that don't work in USA

Words that do not work in the USA

It has now been over a year, 14 months infact,  since I moved to New York. During that time there have been plenty of parades, bags of bagels, several trips to Seattlewinters to freeze fountains, a collection of key incidents and various visitors (Simon, Jo, Parents,Axelle and Rich). One of the things I haven’t touched on in this blog, but will be especially familiar to those who know me over here, the language barrier. Those who have traveled or lived abroad will be familiar with the importance of learning a new language and how it can be a barrier at first.

Continue reading
New York, USA

New York in 75.5 hours, Part I

Sister Fox and I

Sister Fox and I

It’s been a while since I updated this, things have been very busy with work,also  now the winter has at long last dissipated most of my free time has been spent outside. I’ve started running, which ironically is why I was sat here writing this, nursing a calf strain. Every cloud though…so I now have time to get back to writing. Though it seems to have taken a couple of weeks to finish the post.

Last week was spent searching for a suit in Soho, my sister, Jo, gets married in June. I will obviously be flying back to attend, it’ll be the second time I’ve seen her and the family since I moved. The first time was back in September and therein lies my segue.

Continue reading
New York, USA

The waiting game

Boxes with all my shipment

Boxes with all my shipment

Just over a week ago I was unpacking over half a dozen boxes, it felt as I was just moving into my apartment for the first time. Obviously this was not true,  not least because I had no problems with keys and opening locks on this occasion. What I was unpacking was in fact all my stuff which didn’t make over with me when I first moved (considering I had two suitcases, a laptop and a badminton racket – this was a not an insignificant cubic feet worth of belongings). For those unfamiliar with this story and are currently double checking when I started this blog, yes it did indeed take a rather long time to arrive.

I will explain more about this here, although this wasn’t the only occasion where a little patience was required..

Continue reading
New York, USA

Weather warning issued for “monstrous storm”

Weather warning for blizzard junoIn true British style I’m interrupting this blog to talk about the weather. On January 26th, the New York mayor announced  this: “New York City could see up to 20 inches of snow Monday into Tuesday. This could be the biggest snowstorm in the history of this city. My message for New Yorkers is prepare for something worse than we have ever seen before.”

 

Continue reading
New York, USA

Summer and Simon in the city

Sam and Simon on rooftop

My first visitor, Simon. Chilling in Brooklyn on a rooftop near Prospect Park

After an extended time in the UK to allow for a trip to Dublin for Justin’s wedding I’m back in New York. While I was back in England I made the most of the time there by visiting as many people as I could. Given the visitors I’ve had in New York there was an element of feeling like the host turned guest. However I’m going to focus back on being the host and the visitors I’ve had.

While I was in the London office several people mentioned they read the blog (thank you!) but I also received some feedback. My posts are too long apparently. This is understandable feedback though, I’m not great at being succinct and my posts are generally a lot longer than 140 characters. The analytics for the blog also shows less than 50% of people are viewing over 50% of the page. To address this I’m going to write a mini series of posts for each visitor. This post will feature my first visitor..

Continue reading
New York, USA

Doing holidays America style

Fourth of July fireworks over Brooklyn BridgeAfter a brief pause, to talk Seattle in my last post, I’m pressing play again on New York. Given it is the holiday season it seems a relevant moment to write about the various holidays I’ve experienced to date in New York. Given the fewer holiday, or is that vacation(?) time Americans receive compared to their UK compatriots it seems fair that America goes BIG on the holiday front. So far I have experienced a few: Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and, of course, Christmas.

Continue reading
USA

36 hours-ish in Seattle

Seattle Art Museum

Seattle Art Museum, though I never went in I liked the fact it had my name on the outside

 

I’m hitting the pause button on New York for one post to cover off my 3 trips to Seattle. The New York Times recently did a feature ‘36 hours in Seattle‘ (I’m still not sure how literal they take the 36 hours but the premise being a weekend trip). Luckily I’ve managed to have more than 36 hours but in keeping with the New York style, I will scribe my own set of alternative recommendations for anyone planning to spend “36 hours in Seattle” (in the summer)…

Continue reading
New York, USA

Moving into Manhattan, the long way round

apartment keysIt’s Thanksgiving in America so I’m going to make the most of a couple of days off and cold weather outside (it’s been snowing) to update the blog. In the last post I detailed the process of finding and securing an apartment. You would usually think that is the hardest part of moving in, especially when all you have to move are a couple of suitcases and a badminton racket. Not entirely true..

Continue reading