From jungle to jungle

Last month I left Angola to spend a couple of weeks on a training session in New York City. Land of the free, east coast. In addition to learning more about my work, and meeting new and interesting people with common objectives, I surely made the time to visit sites of great interest like... well, the shops. The obvious question is then, does Angola turn men into girls? Hardly. What happens is that, even if you don't realize it in advance, you are prone to be overwhelmed with the ease with which you can go and do stuff when you find yourself in a country where places are easy to go and things are easy to do. It is then relatively straightforward to rejoice at the idea of doing exactly that – be it collecting t-shirts, buying the jeans you didn't need, getting the gadgets your friends asked you to bring for them, or even more eclectic things, such as choosing your favourite pterodactyl at the Museum of Natural History, spotting the portuguese painting at the Guggenheim, or deciding whether it was in that corner or the other where you saw Spiderman fighting the evil Doctor Octopus –. Yes, I even went jogging in central park in my first night in town, got lost while at it, ran some extra 5km, and still enjoyed my way back. The plan was sort of to do that everyday while in NYC, but somehow it didn't happen. This, I gather now, is probably related to the equally large set of options you have when the city ´doesn't go´ to sleep.