Well, dinner last night...

...was *supposed* to be a salad, I stayed in the Black Duck (as planned) to eat, but opted for rosemary and garlic bread, and an onion and poppy "round roll" served with various olives (I ate the olives, then poured balsamic vinegar into the olive oil and dipped the bread, very nice) -

- followed by Beef Carpaccio with baby greens and potato gaufrettes, served with a lemon vinaigrette -

- now this dish was absolutely exquisite, roughly speaking it's razor thin steak tartare, but that description just doesn't do it justice...I thanked the chef personally (he was very pleased)...

I met lots of interesting people in the resturant, a couple of IT contractors (who I had a lot in common with), one of them opened the conversation with me by saying "Are you a blogger? Only I saw you taking a shot of your food...", a guy who travelled round selling copies of Adobe Photoshop (and was of the opinion that NY was a ticking timebomb just waiting for the next terrorist attack, which would be "the big one, buddy!"), and the very kind barman called "Matt" who actually bought me a drink (on him)...When he came off shift he took me and "ticking timebomb" out to a sports bar nearby for a few beers where I had the intricacies of Baseball explained to me (in loud, enthusiastic voices by the entire male population of the venue)...fun evening... ;)

The news today is dominated by a several million dollar plan to start installing CCTV into the railroad and subway systems here in the city, one New Yorker was quoted as saying "Well, it works okay in London, don't it? They caught the bombers that way, right?"...interestingly the cameras are accompanied by large signs warning people that they may be captured on film...funny, being so used to it in the UK, you can't move without being filmed... ;)