"It's not easy for me, because I'm thoughtful."

Hello chaps

I thought I'd just update you on the work I'm doing here. Sorry, I meant 'work'.

So far, the backbone of the first term has been 'Reporting And Writing 1', by far the best thing about this school. You're sent out to cover a neighborhood - in my case, a shtetl - and each week you have to report and write an article. The theme is picked by the professor and changes every week, from poverty to crime to immigration, but it's up to you to provide the goods. It's an excellent practical introduction to the vagaries of interviewing, reporting, writing and editing. Added to this we are also given a drill every week where we have to produce bulletins and articles on the spot. I also enjoy the one-day spot news assignments.

The rest is a mixed bag. And when I say 'mixed', I mean 'fertiliser'. And when I say 'bag', I mean 'bag'. Apart from my New Media skills class, in which I actually learn useful things, all my other classes are about as helpful as a compass made of cheese. I am five weeks into my Economic & Financial Reporting class, in which I sit for two hours learning how to Google. The classes are TWO HOURS LONG, but the teacher somehow manages to treat these hours as if they were inconsequential blades of grass, to be trodden upon without a care in the world. Who cares that none of us has a clue about economics and finance? Best to just stumble along and see what happens. Every week she comes in, talks in a vague way about nothing in particular, shows us how to use Google and then lets us go after having brought us two hours closer to death.

Last week she was ill, so this week we are going to have a four-hour class to catch up. You see what time means to her? It means nothing. She will sit down and talk in a scattered, haphazard way for four hours. It is hell.

Being conscientious, earnest journalism students, we are also taught ethics and 'Critical Issues'. Basically, every week we are given a long, tedious lecture about some moral dilemma that journalists face when writing about the opening of a local shopping centre or something equally inane. How many free king size Snickers bars at a press junket should one consume before it constitutes 'bribery' (or just utter gluttony)? Should we accept this widescreen, HD-ready television that Rummy has just handed us, upon which is attached a note entitled "staying the course in Iraq"? I just don't know. Anyway, it's pointless.

We are also taught 'New York As A Foreign Country', a patronising mishmash of complicated lessons in government and utterly basic pointers of how to eat with a knife and fork without bursting into tears. The teacher is wonderful, though, a genuinely funny guy with a realistic take on US affairs and history. I just don't understand how he can begin the course by saying that Americans know little about history, but then spend every lesson explaining what baptism means or what the Reformation was.

Anyway, it's all very enjoyable and to be honest I have learned a lot. I still haven't quite become used to bothering people and getting treated like an arse in return, though. The paradox of the journalist is that he loves to meet people and talk to them, yet everybody hates his guts. I don't know whether I'm in a difficult neighbourhood because of the religious and social conservatism, but yesterday I attempted to interview a female teacher outside a Jewish school and it ended very awkwardly. She nervously responded to my basic questions about the number of students at the school with "I don't know if I should tell you this information".

After a while she ran away, and, as I was going over my notes, a bearded man hovered into view.

"What is your name?" he asked. I told him.
"What is the purpose of your visit?" he asked. I told him.

Suddenly the lollipop lady who I'd been talking to before turned to me and said, "Oh, that's the husband of the teacher you just spoke to."

I immediately tensed up and the husband began to elaborate on the reason for his social visit to me. "What are you doing asking all these questions? Why did you ask my wife what hours she comes and goes, why did you want to find that out?"

I politely replied that I hadn't, in fact, asked those questions at all. His tone softened and he said that his wife had told him in the car that a strange man was asking all sorts of questions outside the school. "You can't be too careful," he said to me, and we continued talking about other things.

I fumed inwardly about all the suspicion I've encountered in this neighbourhood, but to be honest I think it's the same everywhere. People absolutely despise journalists, especially smug ones at university called Lionel.

Dramatic Irony

I hate irony. Absolutely loathe it, but especially so when I have no control over it.

Yesterday morning, I woke up with the sun streaming through the windows. The leprous pigeons of New York City, with all their charming deformities, were cooing outside. It was truly a beautiful day, and I felt like I'd slept on a bed of goose down and marshmallows for twenty years.

And then I turned to the clock, which proudly told me it was 10:05. Class had started five minutes ago.

While swearing myself into oblivion, my thoughts turned to excuses. If my years in school taught me something, it's that nothing assuages guilt like a good excuse. You begin to believe in it, as though you genuinely were suffering from the dreaded 'Pekinese Twinge' that morning when you woke up 45 minutes late and decided to read the back of the cornflakes packet for another 15.

So my first plan was simply to say I was ill and stay home for the day. As the minutes ticked by, this plan became less and less attractive. Say I was ILL??? The worst excuses are sometimes the most believeable ones, I told myself. (Not sure why.) So I then thought I'd concoct a hilariously fantastical story that would still allow me to burst into class 40 minutes late and sit down without receiving any reproving looks. As I pulled on a pair of jeans and my new jacket (I got it for $70 at Macy's...long live Macy's) I decided I would invent a yarn about getting locked out of my apartment.

Ha ha, I thought, genius! It just might work! I got locked out, had to run to see the superintendent to get back in, it's a great story, people will laugh and I'll get off scot-free!

Of course, upon arriving at the Journalism School building, my brain got a dose of reality. Here I was, a 23-year-old graduate student at a prestigious university, about to pull out the most ridiculously immature made-up excuse since Charles X defended his invasion of Algeria by claiming that the Algerian Bey had given the French Ambassador a "bit of a dirty look."

So I climbed the stairs, opened the door to my stunned class, and sat down as if nothing was wrong. Later, I simply told my professor the truth: I'd overslept. Everything went fine and hunky-dory.

So this morning, imagine my surprise when I actually DID get locked out of my apartment. I'd just got out of bed and waddled out of my apartment in a pair of purple boxers, a Led Zeppelin t-shirt (ask your dad) and an odd pair of argyll socks to grab the New York Times sitting on the landing. I remember holding the door, letting it softly rest against the lock, and then hearing it go 'click' when I bent down to pick up my newspaper.

How bloody ironic.

As in any embarrassing emergency, you spend about five minutes trying to register who could help you. You then swallow your pride and realise that as there are no bells on the apartment doors, you're going to have to go down to the ground floor and ring apartments from there. Knowing your luck with God, everyone will have left the building to go to a nearby Free Jam And Wodges Of Cash festival, leaving you to stand mournfully by the door in your underwear and today's paper.

Thankfully my flatmate WAS in, although obviously it involved standing in the cold at noon in my underwear. I just looked like one of those uncaring guys who regularly walks around in public either naked or barely dressed. And obviously, again because of my luck, the only people who saw me were the Beautiful Nymphomaniac Dancing Divorcees of Belize, who would otherwise of course have invited themselves up to my room for a camomile tea and a spot of bondage.

Anyway, just wanted to complain for a bit. Most New Yorkers just stand on street corners and vent their rage at strangers, so I'm not too far gone yet.

Kablammo

So, you all know that the Democratic Republic of (North) Korea last week detonated a nuclear bomb underground. A few of you probably spent hours arguing over whether it was a 550-ton 'fizzle' or a 15 kiloton megablast, or even whether it was just some Korean chap breaking wind. But how many of you have visited the official website of our favourite Asia-Pacific renegade?

By clicking here, you can find out about the history and leadership of North Korea. The chapters on 'Anti-Japanese Fighting' and 'Motherland's Liberation' are particularly moving, putting the "Yankees" and their South Korean "puppet army" in their place. And please don't tell me you buy all that Western capitalist propaganda about famine in North Korea! This tells you all you need to know:

"Pyongyang and the today's North Korea is a socialist paradise where all the people have a life with dignity, without poverty and more than ever demonstrate the invincibility and union of the masses around the Leader."

WITHOUT poverty! Hear that, Bolton-san? And if that doesn't whet your appetite, there's a special yearly business trip for all you investors out there. Pre-inscription for this year's trip has closed - and not a moment too soon, what with all that brouhaha in the U.N. about sanctions - but 2007 has got to be a shoe-in. It only costs 2,900 Euros for a week of "private meetings" with "state companies" related to your "field of expertise"! And they say socialism dampens the entrepreneurial spirit...