A Man With A Van

It's a beautiful day here in New York City. The sun is shining, birds a twittering, the computers are humming slowly. This is not the calm before the storm, it's the calm after the storm.

Yesterday was crazy. But I'll start with my internship. I'm at Firstborn Multimedia together with Brolin and Enstrom. The days are always filled with work, from when we get in at ten am 'til we go off at seven pm we're overwhelmed with tasks and deadlines. I like it. At the moment I'm working on this very secret project which I can't tell you anything about, more than that.... Hm, well I don't know. Anyway, I get to work a lot in 3d, which I also like.

People at the office are nice, now that I've gotten to know them better. It's inspiring to be in an environment with so many people that are better than you, at least it gives me the boost I need to feel motivated. A lot of my tasks so far have involved a lot of actual production, which has brought me the feeling of that in this short time I might even have learnt a lot. Didn't think internshipping would be this giving.

So. Last night after getting off work we (Petter, Pickan, Non-Hyper Robin and me) went to Ikea to buy stuff for our new apartment. I think that Pickan already told you about the apartment so I'm not gonna bother you with being repetitive. It's a good place. On our shopping list we had crammed together everything you can imagine needing when moving in to a new apartment - kitchen cooking starting set, plates, towels, toilet brush, cutlery, sheets, pillows etc etc... and last but not least, four queen size beds. And ladies and gentlemen, this is America, and in America you sleep on biig beds.

We thought that we had it all prepared. A friend of ours had given us this number to a "Man With A Van" (we had seen the ad earlier, 'I am a man, and I have a van'), who we had settled an appointment with outside Ikea Brooklyn at 9.30. At 9.45 we get through to him on the phone, and he says he has a broken tire and that it will take an hour for him to fix it. Ok. So that's bad news, but I guess we're fine anyway. 15 minutes later he calls up and suggests that maybe it's a good idea if we cancel it all. That's really bad news. By this time Ikea is closing and the guards are throwing inconvenient vibes at us. We start calling our friends to see if anyone knows any other men with vans. Nothing there. Pickan walks out on the street to see if there are any friendly New Yorkers who are willing to help us out. He sees a line of taxi cabs, and a guy with a large vehicle at the end of it. He walks up to him to see what he would charge. As it would show later, you apparently always walk up to the cab first in line, otherwise cabdrivers get mad. As did these ones, and a dispute turned into a argument which turned into a kicking fight through the window of a car. Daniel went inside again.

By this time Petter had lost it and was walking around in circles, swearing and cursing (I've never seen him do that before). 30 minutes later we got kicked out of the warm facilities of Ikea and out on the street. We piled our stuff together on the sidewalk. Now the cabdrivers were circling us like hungry hyenas, asking us where we come from, what are we doing here, where are we going, who are we waiting for... Various proposals started showing up. "90 dollars". "80 dollars". "75". "three cars for all your stuff, 65 dollars". Petter didn't like this. We still didn't know what to do.

Just as the flock of predators were going down on us, Pickans phone rang and The Man With A Van with a fainting breath shouted "I'm on Brooklyn Bridge now! I'm coming!!". For 15 minutes we dodged the rapid fire of suspicious questions coming from the hungry cabdrivers. A white big van suddenly bursted into the scene. Out of it stepped The Man With A Van and his companion. "Hey guys, so sorry we're late. Let's get this started". They wore their pants hanging from their knees. Under the harch staring of our previous duelers we started loading the van to the bursting limit. Suddenly a guard appeared, looking suspecting. The Man With A Van quietly nudged us, saying "come on, hurry up guys". Quickly we finnished the loading and threw ourselves into the back of the car, on top of all of the beds. The car gave away a screeing sound as it swooshed out of the parking lot.

So there we where, lying on a queen size bed in a van which belongs to a man. The street lights continuously passing by. The Manhattan skyline vigorously decorating our sideview.

I like New York. And I know it's a cliche, but ever heard someone say, being here feels like being in a movie?

Felix