The island of Manhattan is big. It takes at least a full hour on the 1 train to get from one end to the other. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the amount of walking one has to do. Obviously I’ve never done cadets or Duke of Edinburgh or anything like that, but carrying around a bunch of camera equipment plus a full-sized laptop is a challenge, when you’re on the go for 14-15 hours a day. Probably only 10 kilometres per day, though, thanks to mass transit.

I could go on about mass transit forever, and in fact I will in a subsequent post, but the point I’m getting at is that I’m using up a ridiculous amount of energy every day. Standard 2500 calorie diet (I don’t know how that translates into kilojoules, I’m used to calories for some reason), gone. I’m usually not terribly concerned about gaining weight, but doing some actual calculations on what I’m eating is beginning to frighten me. I’m beginning to understand why this country has gained the reputation it has for obesity.

Strangely enough, I’m not convinced that McDonald’s is as big a factor these days as it might have been in the past. Yes, I went to a Macca’s in the country that gave us cancer sticks and the meme of “super-sizing”. Yes, a large meal is large. But no, the burgers here are no larger than the ones back home. It’s kind of pitiful.

Big Mac is the same size. Drink and chips are big. Scale: drink cup is about 25cm high.

Anyway, that works out to be about around 1600 calories for the meal. I didn’t finish the chips though, they were just wrong.

Another New Yorker thing seems to be the proliferation of bagel stores. I’m not entirely sure where this originates, but suffice it to say that these stores are everywhere. What would you like in your bagel? Cream cheese, you say? What flavor (because I know Americans are pedantic about their fail spelling)? Bacon? Salmon? Olive? Blueberry? Cranberry? Strawberry? Yeah, it gets crazy. One of these is good enough for lunch for me normally, and this is breakfast. Thankfully, my level of physical activity here means that the bagel is okay for breakfast. I shudder to think of people eating these and not partaking in adequate physical activity.

Depending on the size and contents of the bagel, anywhere between 400 (plain, no filling) to maybe 1000 calories (cream cheese & salmon).

While I’m here, I thought it would be a good idea to go and revisit the work of Satan:

Yes, I caved, but only because there’s no San Churro here. (A note for next time?) Not going to mention much, because you guys already know about Max Brenner’s, so just one more pic:

The reason I titled this post with an XOR is because I didn’t have the chocolate pizza. You see what I did there? Seriously, though, if you’ve had it, tell me what it’s like.

The pizza I did have here is cheap. Seriously cheap. Like, I got two slices for USD$5.50 and it’s more than the equivalent of a fricking whole large pizza at Domino’s or Pizza Hut. Incidentally, the way one orders pizza here is just saying, “a slice, please”. (Pizza is implied. ) The default is margherita, with additional toppings. So it was two slices with anchovies, and that’s dinner right there.

Look at the grease.

So that’s probably another 1200 or so calories there, judging by the amount of oil on top…

While on the subject of pizza, the place next door to the Kumon in the previous post is called Patsy’s Pizzeria, and serves smaller, nicer stuff.

Pizza. Well, this place was practically built by the Italians, so why would you be surprised?

So yeah, a right 4000+ calories there. Terrible.