/links/Don't Kiss Thai Transvestites
..at least on the first date: Thai Tourists Warned Of Sedative-Spitting Transvestites
New Albums from the Gallery
/travel/Ukraine and Poland
Or, more accurately, Lviv and Warsaw.
Last weekend, I went to Lviv. I flew Friday morning. The flight was
relatively interesting; the airplane from Warsaw to Lviv was a prop plane,
which was the first or second time I've been on one. They're hard to accept
as reliable, I guess because you can see so much more of the mechanism.
Landing in Ukraine, I heeded my dad's suggestions for a quick trip through
customs. Mostly this consisted of "the people will try to cut in front of
you in line; don't let them" and "be near the entrance of the from the
plane to the terminal so you get off early." The first I had experienced in
Russia..I'm not very good at being assertive in line, 'cause I'm usually not
rushed, but I tried to assert myself a bit. They were pretty good
line-scuttlers, though. The second one I tried, and was indeed near the bus
doors, but the two people in front of me were large, slow-moving ladies.
Anyway, customs was no big deal. I accidentally lied..err...misspoked, and said I didn't have family in Ukraine. I guess I do, though I hadn't met the ones that actually live there. The customs agent spoke a basic amount of English, but not much.
Then on my way out the final doors, I was accosted and asked if I had health
insurrance. I bluffed my way through, saying that my Irish coverage through
work was world-wide. I actually thought it was at the time, but upon
further reflection, I've changed my mind. :-) I need to actually find out.
My dad said that normally flashing a credit card is sufficient.
I met up with my dad; we wandered around some markets, and went out for dinner. I was self-conscious about taking photos. I was sorta self-conscious about everything. A decent salary there is 100CAD a month. My camera cost 4 months' gross salary.
I met several distant relatives (4th cousins at varying levels of removal). They were warm and welcoming. They seemed reasonably happy, but it seems very fragile -- not a lot of safety net in their lives. The apartment buildings that we visited all had unlit, bare concrete stairs. Inside, they were simple, small, but seemed warm and fairly well equipped &emdash; fridge, TV, stove, phone, etc.
Most places don't
have water all day, and most Ukrainians don't drink the tap water. Hot
water is used sparingly. My dad's flat (at right) is in a part of the city
that inexplicably has water all day. He's fixed it up to western standards,
and it's indeed quite nice. A bit weird in its surroundings, I guess. He's
done a good job, both to the flat, and some work on the building itself.
Nobody has bought the building since independence, so the city is still
nominally responsible for it. There were vagrants sleeping and defecating
in the halls of the building until my dad installed a lock, and he put up
lights, and a door stopper, etc. He painted the door jam black because he
was worried about the stainless steel being a target for theft.
We went to several touristy places, including a museum, and
opera house, and several markets. Probably the most interesting for me was
the Schevchenko Garden (?), which had about a dozen buildings that had been
moved from various villages. Most were about 100 years old. The picture at
left is a milling stone; there were a couple of different techniques for
setting them up. There were several pretty different styles of homestead,
with different thatchings and things. Very interesting, and very simple
living. There was also a schoolhouse, and a blacksmith's shop.
I left with a definite sense of having visited somewhere that was important for me to see. I wish I had been there longer -- it was basically two nights, plus one full and two half days. One of my cousins, who understood enough English to make it workable, invited me to go hiking with him in the Carpathians. His wife was quite good at English, so I can imagine going there for a bit longer in the summer. It's hard to understand what it's like living like that. It's easy to say that they seem happy enough, and that all the extra wealth we Eurocanucks live with doesn't really make us any happier, and so what's the point. But that's definitely not quite right, and I still don't know what to think about it. There's certainly diminishing returns of happiness for it all, but it's obviously a lot more complex and human than that.
More about Warsaw later. Check out the photos.
More complete photos forthcoming..just fixed a camera problem. That's all for
now.
/travel/usa/Two Bad Flights and a Haircut
Watched Flightplan; it wasn't superb, but it was better than I expected. I wish the preview hadn't given away a major plot turn, but it did. Flight attendants the world over are outraged.
There were lots of silly unnecessary technical errors, like having the lights dimmed during boarding, having flight crew wandering around during take-off, and de-icing a plan in Berlin (which barely goes below zero), and that sort of thing. But it was alright.
In other news, I shaved my head, at long last, after lots of dabbling nearer and nearer. I got it done at the hairavan that comes to work twice a week for 10USD, and then biced (well, gilletted) it when I got home after an evening at the pub. That didn't turn out as badly as you might expect. I have a more angular head than I thought. My favourite part is just above where a fatter person would have a roll...the skin is all woobly.
Time's been flying here..working a lot, and going out a fair bit. Went to SF last weekend with Seth and his wife and Keith-also-from-Dublin. Had disappointing clam chowder...if all these famous foods are that bad, I'd hate to see what normal meatatarian food is like.
I saw Carlos Olmeda at a house concert. He was pretty good, good stories and a sharp wit. Met some fun people and went out karaokeing by accident, since the only fun-looking bar in downtown Sunnyvale ("Making downtown Mountain View look positivily cosmopolitan for 20 years") happened to be having karaoke night. We sang Mr. Jones. Screamed, really.
And, finally, in reverse-chronological order, my flight here was...Murphy-esque. I got dropped off by Ian's parents (thanks much!) after they took me in on short notice for Thanksgiving dinner (thanks more!) and had their bums whupped by yours truly at Scrabble (ended the game with a 7-letter triple-score word..couldn't have planned it better).
I'm always a little nervous before I fly, but that time I was a bit more than usual. I guess I felt ill-prepared. For the first time in my life, the automatic checkin thingies seemed to work. But they flashed up where to take luggage for just a second, and I was putting things away at the time. I started wandering, and eventually asked some random Air Canada employee, and they said to go ahead through customs. I did so, but then it was clear I shouldn't have, so I had to wait in the stupid people line to get luggage stickers. I walked away, and left behind my flight/hotel info. The nice lady quickly caught up to me and handed it to me. So I put my luggage on the conveyor belt and went through to security.
I proceed to break a long, long, long streak of never setting off the metal detectors. I just completely forgot to empty my pockets. I always laugh at the people who have to be reminded. So I walked back through, and started emptying my pockets..money, camera, wallet, swiss army knife, etc. Yes, that's right, swiss army knife. Didn't even notice as I dumped it in there, but the security people did. $15 to have them hold it, or I could check another bag, or I could just leave it. I just got this knife back from my parents, though it wasn't the one that I lost, but rather a different one that my dad had lying around. Not too big of a deal, so I left it.
Then I went through, and grabbed some food, and proceeded to Gate P. Which turned out to be lounge P, serving several gates. Eventually our flight was announced, but I wasn't paying that much attention. There were two doors marked P, but I assumed they wouldn't be so stupid as to board two flights simultaneously through one logical gate. They were. I went through the wrong door. The flight attendants laughed at me as I crossed back in front of them.
Just as I was boarding -- nearly the last passenger, as is my habit, I heard them saying my name. I said "I'm Rob Ewaschuk", and they showed me a little piece of paper. "I think you might want this." It was my visa letter for getting back in to Dublin.
Finally, I sat down on the plane, and started talking to the guy beside me. He was reading a book in Hebrew, which I recognized a such, and asked him about. I proceeded to imply (accidentally) that little was written directly in Hebrew, and that he must be reading something translated from English. He didn't talk to me for the rest of the flight.
So yeah, bad flight. And I didn't solve my Sudoku, either.
/travel/usa/Flying
Tonight: Bags. Passport. Immigrant card; visa letter. Flight and hotel details. Clothes, bike stuff, sharp things in checked bags, water, batteries. Cell phone charged, iPod has fresh music. Currencies: EUR, GBP, CAD, USD. Up too late, early alarm.
Tomorrow: Taxi to bus station; bus to Belfast; bus to Belfast Int'l Airport; flight to Toronto (stop in Halifax); bus to subway; subway to Greyhound terminal; Greyhound to Orillia.
See some soon, some later.
/Gas Suckers
Higher! Higher!
/travel/usa/Once More To Mountain View
(Yes, two blog postings in a row. I didn't want to ruin what I hope was a bit of creative writing in the last one. :-) )
So I'm going to Mountain View again, once via Toronto. It doesn't actually save me much money to do it, but it saves time and fuel, and thus assuages my guilt about excessive air travel.
I'm leaving October 5th; I'll be in southern Ontario from the 6th to the 9th inclusive, probably hanging out in Toronto on Sunday the 9th and maybe the day before. I'll be in Mountain View from October 10th to 25th, when I fly back to Dublin.
I doubt I'll come out to Waterloo, but maybe.
/travel/ireland/Disjointed Thoughts On Autumne*
My hands are cold now, when I walk in the door. It's autumn here. Not an autumn I'm familiar with, really. Some days it fools me -- there's a small collection of yellow leaves in pushed up against the curb by wind and traffic. Not red, though.
It occurred to me the other day that I don't know where my winter jacket is. My big, black one. I doubt I'd need it here, but it's a funny thought.
When the dryer runs in my building, the whole stairwell gets that humid, soapy smell. That's a new thing, since it got cooler. And the rains -- formerly misty, light, and bright -- are now much colder and heavier.
My morning run demands that extra bit of cold-fighting willpower -- and doesn't always get it. The darkness comes around when work ends, and barely leaves in time for me to go running before I go back. It's both colder and not as pretty as it was along the canal, though still prettier than it will be. They say we're in for a cold winter -- maybe even some snow. The swans on the canal seem to have begun to cling together in a tight crowd, seemingly bracing for the coming season. Their cygnets have gone from a nest I watched being built day by day, to nearly full grown, and a steadily lightening coat of gray feathers. Geese are notable by their absence -- none are seen in great wedges overhead, nor are there great flocks settled in the evening by streams and ponds.
The little incidental heat sources have regained their winterly preciousness -- an oven, done cooking; a sink full of warm water; morning showers; a fuzzy blanket. The heat isn't on in our flat yet, but soon radiators -- like you might find in an old Canadian house, or on any British television show -- will be soon added to that list.
Autumn has arrived.
/movies/Hotel Rwanda
Everyone should watch this movie. I was 13 when the genocide was going on; I vaguely remember it, but never really understood it. I've heard it talked about, usually in the context of "UN" and "failure," but that never struck home for me until tonight. We, our grand peaceful institutions, our democracy, our humanity, failed utterly. We failed when there was no moral ambiguity. We failed when the cost was trivial. We failed, probably, because they were African. And I don't see any reason that we wouldn't again. Perhaps we have, very recently.
The judgement that everyone should watch this movie is not about it being good, or bad, but necessary.
/travel/cycling/Glasgow to Dunnet Head
At long last, a blog entry. The problem with vacation is that you have so much to catch up on when you get back.
So, our cycling trip was a delightful success. We had mostly tailwinds, it rained frequently but only once in a way that interfered with our day, and we made it to our goal. We too a train from Tarbet (on Loch Lomond) to Fort William on on the second day, thanks to the rain. I saw more rainbows in the last 3 or 4 days than the rest of my life combined, I think. The total distance was just over 500km. My odometer was miscalibrated, so we don't know the exact distance. Photos are posted and captioned.
Here's one quick story:
We were cycling along Loch Ness, finally the roads were quiet and we were making good time -- south of there the roads had been busy and narrow enough that we often had to pull off to let traffic pass. We passed a bagpiper at a campground, but decided to keep going since we were making good time. About a kilometer later, we decided it was actually the last campground we knew about for quite a distance, and it was certainly the lats one on Loch Ness, so we decided to go back. We got the last tent spot on the beach, I think, and it was rather slanted.
Let me tell you about midges. Mosquitoes don't really bother me; I grew used to them at summer camp. I thought, given all the places I've been in Canada that claim to have the worst mosquitoes in the world, that midges would be no problem. Hot damn they're annoying. Much smaller, and clingier. They're like those clouds of bugs you somemtimes see on summer evenings in Canadian cities, except they settle down on you and start feasting. They're much more invasive than bigger bugs, too. They left little flat red spots on me, and small bumps on Clare. Mostly they drive you mad, though. And hard to get out of your tent.
Once we were done braving the midges and setting up, and after a quick wade into a cold cold Loch (they're very deep, being formed in the cleavage of two mountains), we went up to the little campground pub. It was fairly full, so we settled down at a table between two families. One was playing dominoes, the other just chatting. I liked the atmosphere of a pub with families in it; I think that, ironically, it helps to keep the parents in line. Of course, it's rather bad for the kids of that breaks down. Anyway, a fellow in full dress stepped up with bagpipes. The bartended introduced him as a German, who had been in Edinburgh (?) to take part in a fundraiser, whose goal was to set the record for the most musicians in a single gathering. How this raises funds, I don't know. In any case, he told some stories, spoke some poems, and played some songs. For certain pieces, the Scots in the room joined in. He ended with Amazing Grace and Auld Langs Syne.
We chatted with the family beside us, up from southern Scotland, I think. When they talked amongst themselves, they were rather hard to follow, but they changed their dialect to talk to us. Usually, anyway -- I asked them what "Inver" meant, as in "Inverness", "Inverlochy," etc. They didn't know, but ended up finding out that it means "Mouth Of", which is really obvious in retrospect, given Inverness' location. Anyway, one said to the other with a thick accent something about adding something to his "ken", meaning knowledge. I've never heard that word used exceptin Scrabble and Boggle, and even then usually only by my mother.
We finished up a glass of beer and headed out to bed, with warm good nights and good wishes from the folks beside us.
I think that was my overall surprise -- the warmness of most places. We had a short stretch where people didn't seem to want tourists, but most of the time they were friendly. Lots of towns just had a tiny shop with less stuff than the Spar across the street from me, and maybe one or two pubs and a small Inn. One of our favourite places was when we hit the north coast, a little town with a pub full of fairly young people who just sat around and chatted between tables. The lack of music was nice, I think. At one point they cracked out a dictionary, to look up Tomarillo. And they were talking about how HP Sauce (very popular around here) stood for "Houses of Parliament". They included us without asking us our story -- no doubt they'd heard it before -- which was somehow more inclusive.
Unfortunately, we slept badly that night, between a cold wind, a slopy tent, and some midges.
That's all for now.
/travel/cycling/Gone Cycling in Scotland
Back next Monday. Glasgow to John Grote's, with any luck.
/travel/Short Notice Visit
I'll be in Waterloo tonight (Sunday), and leaving either tomorrow night or Tuesday morning. I'll be in Toronto Tuesday afternoon.
If you're reading this, and you'll be in either of those places for either of those times, let me know.
/Same Sex Marriage
I guess this is what you get for calling it 'same sex marriage' instead of 'gay marriage.'
/travel/cycling/Long Lost Photos
When Steve and I went cycling in BC, he took some photos. On the last day,
we sat down at a nice restaurant, all dirty and scruffy, and scrawled some
notes on a napkin. I guarded the napkin, he guarded the photos.
I lost the napkin.
He lost the digital copies of the photos.
Today, he emailed me to say that he'd found them. They're now posted for your viewing pleasure.
/travel/ireland/Bagpipes and Cereals
I can hear bagpipes outside. I keep looking out the window to see them when they sound like they're getting close, but then they get quieter again. It must be some kids at the school practicing or something.
Which leads me to my next point: Irish people swear up and down that there's no such thing as Irish Bagpipes. They're also not into four-leaf clovers (three is fine, thanks, and they're called shamrocks), leprechauns (from the irish word luprachà meaning half-bodied), emeralds, or even *gasp* lucky charms.
Which leads to my next point. Yesterday, while shopping I had to choose between Kellogg's Honey Nut Nutty ("Our nuttiest cereal ever") and Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Feast (subtitled "Honey and Nut") made primarily of "ludicrously tasty clusters". These were my choices for sweet cereal (which I generally mix with something un-sweet like Weetabix), since I'd grown tired of Kellogg's Crunchy Nut, which is "ludicrously tasty". I think the creative wonks at Kellogg's Europe need to smarten up and create a cereal that doesn't contain the word "nut".
Time to go find those bagpipes and go to work.
/travel/ireland/Kells, Castles, Bikes and the Zoo
Fear not, dear readers, I have not abandoned ye!
There's a few galleries of new photos, and some old ones captioned. But more importantly I've got a good way of posting them now, and also I replaced my charger that I lost when I was in the US, so I have my camera back. Yay!
So a while ago, Clare went off to Mallorca. She had a good time. I worked a lot, I guess. When she got back, my friend Hildur from Iceland (via Finland) came to visit us. We went to the zoo, which was interesting..it was apparently a lot better than it had been, but in the fight between animal comfort and peace vs. human interest, the latter won out too much for my tastes. We went with Clare's friend Alice's uncle Duncan, and some other of Alice's family. Duncan had been involved in some plans for the zoo that never came about, so he had an interesting perspective on it all. I haven't been to a zoo in a long time, and it didn't make me want to go back.
Then a few days later, we went to Dublin Castle. I had been warned that it wasn't very interesting, but we got a pretty good tour, and then got taken underground to the foundations, where they showed various bits of walls from different periods of construction...most amusing was the viking wall, which was all fallen apart, because apparently they didn't know how to build walls, only boats. Aah, if only there had been someone of viking decent around to tease. Oh. There was. hah.
The next weekend we went up to
Kells, a little town famous for a big
book. They seemed very bitter that their book, an incredibly ornate book of
the four gospels from c. 700, had been "stolen" by Dublin. They had a big
round tower, like the one in Glendalough, and some very tall single-stone
celtic crosses. It was a cute little town, and we managed to do the rounds
pretty quickly. Mostly we went there because I insisted on going northwest
since it's the only direction I haven't been, and it was the only reasonable
destination in that direction. The town was reputed to have lots of
medieval tunnels between the church and other places. There was a big old
stone house that apparently had tunnels to somewhere, with a sign saying
where you could get the gate key.
Yesterday I went to a music festival at a castle. That's pretty fancy. The castle also had what was reputed to be a Freemason's cave (which I readily believed) and a 700 year old tree (which I was a bit more sceptical of.) The cave was, unfortunately, recently locked up, due to partying teenagers. It was all built into a mound. There was lots of good music, mostly fairly folk-rock-ish, but some solid Irish folk, with spoken-word-plus-guitar poetry, and all that. It was raining most of the night, so we were pretty wet. And I left a water bottle open in the tent, so it got wet inside too. That sucked.
Today I went cycling with Clare to.. Enniskerry! Yes, I keep going to the same place. This time we went to the Powerscourt waterfalls, which are pretty famous around here. They're actually both bigger and nicer than I expected.
Then we cleaned the flat. And now I'm writing a blog entry.
You're officially caught up. :-)
/travel/ireland/innocent drinks
via email, from Innocent Drinks:
We are trying to make our company a sustainable one, in the true sense of the word, and procuring locally wherever possible is a significant element of that. Currently, the majority of our fruit is sourced from Europe, and the majority of that from within the UK (eg apples, raspberries, blackcurrants, and soon to be rhubarb). But the reality of the way Mother Nature works is that fruits such as bananas and mangoes don't grow round these parts for love nor money and have to be sourced from further afield (India for Mangoes, Costa Rica for bananas).
It's worthwhile mentioning that our fruit always travels by boat or rail , so none of it is being air freighted, which is where the fuel burning get crazy. And as well as aiming to be the toughest enforcer of environmental and social standards where our fruit is grown, we donate 10% of our profits to support NGOs in the countries where our fruit is grown to help people who need it most, which I know has nothing to do with fuel miles but is all part of our aim to try and leave things a tiny bit better than we find them.
/travel/ireland/Beaches and Kumatos
My, it's been a while.
So, since last we spoke, I've been running fairly regularly, trying to get myself ready for some summer cycling -- hopefully a couple of trips around Ireland, and a bigger one to Scotland with Clare, and possibly others once flights get cheaper.
A couple weeks ago I went to a beach with Clare and her friend Suzanne and Suzanne's fellow Barry. It was a great day. It's the first time I've been at a beach in a while. I did a quick swim in the cold sea, and poked around in some caves. We ate a sandy lunch of cheese and bread and carmelized onion relish (yum!), with chicken for those that et it. But mostly I played in the sand, as I have since I could barely walk. I've always been drawn to sand - its flexibility, and the ephemerality of anything you build near the ocean. It's so obvious that no matter what I do with the sand it will be completely unrecognizable after just a few hours. It's like life, only faster.
The day after the beach, I went cycling south of Dublin, in Wicklow. I really like it there. I kinda screwed up getting out of Dublin, and went by the same damn mall four times. I made it out, though, and had a couple of climbs, and one of the most thrilling descents of my life..15 or 20 minutes cruising with traffic at 50km/h, just fast enough that your eyes start to water. I had been really low on energy for most of the ride, having had too small of a breakfast, so the descent was also very relieving. It was basically all downhill to my house. I'm hoping to do a similar route again this weekend with a visitor at work from Mountain View. He had lunch with me on my interview day, and we chatted about cycling, so it should be fun to head out with him.
I've been harassing Tropicana and Innocent Drinks about the source for their fruit, trying to find out how far they're coming from, and if they make any environmental or organic consessions, of if it's purely price-oriented. Tropicana, not surprisingly, appears to be purely price/availability oriented. Suffice to say that I've been thinking about the way I get my food as a place to reduce my environmental impact with little difficulty.
I bought something called a Kumato, which was reduced from 3.49 to 1.75 for a four-pack. They looked suspiciously genetically engineered, but Clare pointed out that the side said "Unique Colour and Flavour; Natural Product; Grown Traditionally." Turns out it's at least heavily bred, if not completely hacked. I think that's pretty deceptive wording, and obviously successful even against a shriveled-hearted sceptic like me. I guess I'm just not cynical enough!
I haven't tried one yet. I get some kind of satisfaction out of them being reduced and nobody apparently wanting them.
I recently finished Catcher in the Rye. It's interesting. It seemed simple in its observations at first, but subtly gained depth. I liked it. I liked the ending. I'm now back to reading Guns, Germs and Steal. Glad I took a break from it.
Had a family-ish picnic with Clare's friend Alice on Alice's family house, which reminded me of Patty's and Cathy's former places with a farmhouse and open land owned by others. I had severe horse allergies while I was there. I thought maybe I was over those.
My camera is borken, in that I lost the charger. I've ordered a new one, and it should be here soon. So no pictures from this period. Hah. So for going so long without blogging, I have given you the double-punishment of a very long post. :-)
/travel/cycling/Fuel Efficiency of a Bicycle
A back-of-the-internet calculation: ((18 miles per hour) / (1 224 (kilocalories per hour))) * 29.01 (megajoules per liter) = 385.975974 miles per gallon.
/travel/ireland/Pizza, Donuts and Iced Tea
So this past weekend, I went to Kilkenny for a comedy festival with Clare and two of her friends. Our bus broke down on the way there, doubling our two-hour ride to four hours, much to the distress of all the Irish people who would normally drive off the edge of their island in that time. We set up camp, and walked back into town.
We went and saw some all-female standup which was mediocre, and then onto a pub/bar. The bar "wasn't my scene," and it was quite crowded and low-ceilinged, so I stepped outside. I went for a little walk up and down the street we were on looking for some food. In the end, I settled on a take-away-only place which had veggie burgers on the menu. They were out, though, so I got a personal plain pizza. There was nowhere to sit, so I stepped outside to eat it. I was vaguely aware that eating pizza on the street was a good way to attract attention, but I didn't have much choice. After about a slice, a rather large, friendly, drunk Irish bloke asked me for a slice. I was bantering with him to avoid giving him any, and his friends showed up. I pointed out that if I gave them each a slice, that'd be nearly half my pizza. Things then turned friendly when they realized I was a "tourist", and there were introductions all around. Now that we were friends, I decided to tear off a slice and give it to them to share. Not a great outcome, but whatever.
Anyway, I finished my pizza, wandered around a bit more, then decided to head back to the bar and see what was going on. I tried to walk into the bar (which was now quite full indeed), and the damn bouncer said runners weren't allowed, so I couldn't go in. I thought this was a bit assinine, especially since I had been in recently, but I hate trying to argue my way into places where I'm apparently unwelcome. So I stepped off to the side and started writing a text message to Clare to let her know what had happened.
Up walked my three new Irish friends, who had seen the whole scene, and started giving the bouncer a hard time, making fun of such a normal bar having silly dresscodes, etc. The bouncer tapped my shoulder, and motioned me in. Karma.
The next day, we went and saw a bunch of shorts. They were truly excellent. One, done in Flash, was about the transit systems in Dublin, and was incredibly sharp and funny. A good weekend, to be sure.
In other news, as Clare and I were walking down the street near city center, there was -- wait for it -- a Tim Horton's!! Now, you know I'm not a frequent user of double exclamation marks, so you can infer how exciting this is. They had a sign on it saying "So fresh it must be Canadian" and a little counter inside serving donuts. No coffee, though, which is kinda funny.
Dublin seems to be a test market for many things, and I'd guess this is another one. I'm going to have to go give them lots of business, so an unfettered supply of donuts can be assured. It's pretty bizarre, though, having a Timmy's here. (Sadly, I had just eaten a giant meal, and so wasn't hungry for a donut. They were out of Crullers and Fritters anyway.)
Finally, in other things-Canada-has-and-Dublin-doesn't news, apparently Nestle is launching Nestea here this summer. This is delightful news, since my beer consumption is...err...rising.
In closing, I'll tell y'all a joke that was delivered by the host as the comedy thing we went to. "How many men does it take to change a lightbulb," she asked, then paused for effect. "One...they're good at that sort of thing."
/travel/usa/Cycling to San Francisco
I biked to San Francisco this weekend. I went on Saturday with my friend Paul. We went to a hostel to find me a room, then for Italian food and to the Apple store, then he caught the CalTrain back to Mountain View. The ride was just over 50 miles.
The people
at the hostel were great. There were probably 10 or 12 people that I met.
Two of them were there for a while, looking for a flat in SF. They just
hung around the common room a lot and played card, which people gravitated
towards. We played a bunch of Cheat/Bullshit and Shithead (not to be
confused with Asshole. One gets the impression 16 year olds name these
games. ;-) ). As I was leaving, they were being hearts, so I asked to be
dealt in for one last round, and proceeded to Shoot the Moon/Take Control,
which was an amusing exit.
Phil (Montreal, in the sunglasses) and I ended up challenged to name all the states. I'm not quite sure how that happened. I think we got 46...not bad.
I also went
to the Conservatory of Flowers, in the Golden Gate park. The world's
biggest flower (Actually many flowers, according to the pamphlet) was about
to bloom, causing big lineups. Apparently it's quite stinky when it blooms.
The Conservatory was neat, and certainly better than the one in Edmonton,
but it had nothing on the Eden
Project.
The whole weekend was really 'positive' or something. I couldn't believe the support for cycling here, in terms of signage and shoulders and lanes, nor could I believe the number of cyclists out on Saturday and today. It was more than anywhere I've ever seen, which was a nice counterbalance against the raging car culture here. I had good food, good games, beautiful cycling, and met some great people. San Francisco really grew on me, too. It's such a wacky place, with so many things that don't make sense, and some aspects which are nearly chaotic, but it's all pretty cool. It bucks some sort of homogeneity trend. They had these cool "zero emission" buses that used the electricity wires like trams, but were on tires like busses, so they could weave in traffic. I got caught behind one and not blasted with hot diesel exhaust...delightful.
Put up a bunch of photos. I still have a backlog, but I may just give up on that for a while and keep things up to date with a gap.
Heading back to Dublin on Thursday, which is exciting. I'll be back just in time for Friday night outings. yay!
/travel/usa/Nine Powerbars™ and a Camelback™
It's a long weekend here ("Memorial day"), so I'm heading out cycling. I'm going with my friend Paul from Waterloo.
I've had a littlel flurry of spending here -- clipless (SPD) pedals (no platforms, unlike my other ones), a 3L Camelback backpack/bladder deal (with a hose that comes over your shoulder so you can drink without much effort, an iPod Shuffle (1GB), and a 60GB external Firewire harddrive (which turns out to be a bad drive, apparently.) The iPod replaces my iRiver, since iRiver failed twice to answer my warranty emails. Bastards.
So Monday's a holiday, then I work Tuesday and Wednesday, and fly out Thursday, arriving Friday back in Dublin. It's gone pretty quickly this time, what with having a more proper place to stay, and an imported social life -- I've been hanging out a lot with the others from the Dublin office, plus Seth who came to visit Dublin.
Looking forward to the cycling...Weather looks okay. I have no particular plans -- to San Francisco today, but then no idea. No accomodations books; hopefully I'll be able to find a hostel. We'll see if my experience arriving randomly in European cities transfers well to SF. I have in my head to go north along the coast from there, but beyond that I don't really know.
/travel/usa/The Dark Side
So work rented out a bunch of screenings of Star Wars. I ended up with 9pm tickets, no one to go with and no ride. Seth was going to the 8:30 show, and had to come into work, so I figured I'd catch a ride with him and sort it out from there. He and his girlfriend and I went out for dinner, then went to the cinema. Just as we were going in, I must admit, I turned to the dark side...I decided to try to sneak in to the wrong showing. Daring, I know. Shocked, you must be. We stacked our tickets in a pile, and handed them to the ticket ripper. She didn't notice, and we were in! Easy, this dark side stuff is.
But then, an unexpected problem! There was another ticket checker, just for that cinema. His job was to block people who were doing exactly what I was doing. I considered waving my hands and saying "These are not the tickets you are checking for," but instead I just held my ticket from afar and didn't give him a hook to stop me. Plus Seth had to fumble around for his ticket. It was genius.
The movie was quite good. I found it intellectually and ethically engaging. I had read some of Lucas's discussion about how he had studied the failure of democracies in making the film, and I think that showed. The political storyline seemed authentic, and only incidentally topical. The prescient (presumable) coincidence with assassination attempts leaving people deformed was striking. The plot holes weren't gaping, and the writing was only occasionally weak.
The problem with the dark side is that it fails to account for a wide swath of externalities. It's pretty clear that under true cost accounting, embracing the Dark Side just doesn't make economic sense.
/travel/usa/Lost Phone
Grr. I lost my phone. Which sucks. A lot. And the SIM in it was a work SIM, which also sucks. I have a month-old backup of the data, but I won't be able to put that on 'til I get home and get a new phone.
My Irish phone number won't change, since I still have that SIM (AFAIK), but my number while I'm in MV will probably change.
It was clipped to the top of my shorts in its holster, and fell off while I was cycling.
/travel/usa/California Summer
Owie! So I needed my
computer this weekend to a bit of work, but when I got home I realized I
didn't have the power adaptor. I called Seth, a co-worker who was in Dublin
a while ago and lives near here, and asked if he had a spare one I could
borrow. Indeed he did, so I threw on some sandals, my helmet, and some
lights, and hopped on my bike. I got through the little busy bit near where
I'm staying, and then on a quiet street, started fiddling with my lights to
try to make them visible -- they're just little clip-on lights that I
borrowed from my boss.
Then, suddenly, there was a car right in front of me, parked against the curb. I noticed it rather too late, and we had a little run-in. I don't think I did any damage to the car, but I skinned my hand and shin a little, and twisted the handle bars of the bike. They were fixed easily, and off I went.
Conclusion: safety lights are dangerous! :-)
I've been busy working and going out occasionally. There's only two pubs in Mountain View, and they're about 10 minutes from here on foot. People seem to head there on Thursdays, and this week I had a rousing political debate with a couple of co-workers, one of whom was more like my brother-in-law than anyone I've met before.
I've got a nice running route here -- it's not far to a lovely path that twins the highway -- but I've only done it once, which is pretty weak.
Not too much going on. Going to San Francisco tonight to sample a crêum;pe restaurant. Next weekend I'm not sure what I'm doing, but the one after that is a 3-day weekend, and I'll be going cycling, with any luck. Not in the dark, though.
/travel/ireland/Flight
LHR to YYZ, seat 38G on an Airbus 340, VGML. DUB to LHR this morning. Heathrow announced gates only just before they were to start boarding, and apparently this flight is carrying two flights worth of people, so we got off a little late. Windspeeds are in our favour, the cap says.
Air Canada seems to be better-run than the last time I flew with them -- perhaps last Christmas? The very first time I flew, it was to move to Saskatoon, paid for by Rio Algom. It was first class, and they handed us hot towels with tongs. This seems to have moved back to economy class, though they're more J-cloths now than proper towels. A nice touch. The desert is served separately -- two Quaker chocolate chip cookies -- one imagines this may be due to low desert-consummption rates. Now, with those cost-savings, they can afford those hot J-cloths.
It's about the half-way mark. The movie is over, people have returned to their magazines, books, and blog postings. Well, okay, I don't see anybody else writing a blog entry. They showed Finding Neverland. It was good..the kind of film both myself and my parents would enjoy.
I'm headed to Toronto, for my mom's 60th birthday party weekend. She doesn't know I'm coming, which is why I haven't mentioned this trip much. Then on Sunday I fly to San Francisco, for five more weeks of training.
I've caught a few taxis lately, trying to squeeze things in here and there. I stlil don't have a "low-end" bike that I'm comfortable leaving locked outside banks and grocery stores, so it's foot or taxi. One was of the species Imigratus Integratus Maximus, a rare find in Dublin. Another remarked that the reason for Dublin's bad urban design is that it didn't get bombed recently, and what they needed was another war. It was amusing, if a bit absurd. The problem with Dublin's urban design is that too many people want cars, houses in the country, and jobs in the city.
Yesterday I went and visited Clare's college. The taxi driver (Species: Incomprehensibilus Accentus) dropped me at the wrong end of campus, so I also got to walk through the campus. It felt like a University, which feels a bit like going back to visit one's High School.
They seem to be showing the movie again. Weird.
The couple in front of me are sleeping on each other's shoulders. It's cute.
It's nice to hear Canadian accents. My accent-detector is definitely getting better with travel, though I still have a hard time with the Irish ones.
At Heathrow, as far as I could tell, everyone picking up a connecting flight gets re-security-checked. I'll have to pay more attention when I go back through -- it could have been just because I switched terminals. They didn't like my carry-on bag, and suspected something of being a throwing-star. It got a good swabbing, but the security guard was friendly. It bugs me when they think they have to be surly to do their job.
I bought a copy of The Economist. The lazy beside me (with a British accent, but from the Canadian version of Hastings) has The National Enquirer. Little bumps now. I predict the seatbelt sign will go on any second.
My veggie meal was couscous and a sort of over-cooked ratatouille. Relatively tasty, though it seemed smaller than usual.
I'm looking forward to seeing my family...sounds like it's going to be a pretty good gathering.
Oooh! They're playing another movie..apparently re-showing Finding Neverland was a mistake. That's all from me, then.
(No more turbulence, and no seatbelt sign. Guess my atmospheric-spidey-senses are miscalibrated.)
/travel/ireland/Power Down
One of the cool things in my flat, and in normal construction in Dublin is that I can reduce the electricity usage in my flat to zero. Not "almost" zero or "probably" zero, but zero.
Every outlet has a little switch by it. The oven has a big switch to turn the whole thing off. The immersion (water) heater can be switched off, and so can the lights. If you do this, everything is off, except the heat, which I don't control.
But there's more. TVs here have three states: on, standby, and off. In the off state, the power-draw is zero whereas in the standby state it's enough to listen for the remote. My amp, two, has three similar states.
That's not all! The microwave has no LED clock, nor a digital power-drawing panel. Every appliance has a clear efficiency rating. Lightbulbs are on a one to nine scale, I think, whereas fridges are one to five.
These savings are small, but if you're otherwise careful with power, they're significant. And mostly I think they're interesting because they represent a smooth transition: from a relatively impoverished past where these things were driven by necessity, to a progressive future where these things are (I presume) driven by EU-based standards. There was no gap between these, as far as I can tell, and indeed there seems to have been overlap.
Time to suspend my laptop, turn off the lights, and go to bed.
/travel/ireland/Some Dirt On Dublin
So it's been a while since I've posted. I was trying to get my photos caught up (there're some new galleries up, and some old ones captioned, but still a lot of work to do) before I made another post, but since that doesn't seem to be happening, it's time to post. Especially since I'm being outdone by a certain sister of mine.
So, I'm properly settled here. In some ways more than I've ever been -- the other day I remarked on how one of our two potted plants had several blooms coming. This is the sort of remark I expect to hear from my parents, or perhaps one of my house-owning sisters. But not me, no sir.
But then, the kitchen is still missing proper mixing bowls, and I don't have packs for my bike yet, so I can't be that settled.
Here's some things about Dublin, Ireland, and the Irish, that I'm now reasonably sure about: it's not very cycling friendly. There's lots of litter. The canal is filthy. Fill-thy. They're touchy on a couple of sore spots -- if you're bored and have too many friends, try suggesting that they're not a leading voice in literature over the last century. Things are changing fast here. Three years ago, they were ten years behind Canada in recycling. Next year, they'll be ahead of most Canadian cities. Dublin is eight years behind Saskatoon for broadband, but they'll only take a year or two to catch up. Country-wide smoking ban came in a year ago.
They drink a fair bit, but it doesn't bother me as much as England -- though I can keep up alright now, so it's hard to say. I think it's still bad here, though. After Paddy's day (a Thursday), I decided to see how long I could go without drinking or feeling really out of place. It didn't last through the weekend, although it was my own fault since I sorta forgot about it and invited someone out for a pint.
They're quick to anger. Someone was talking about how, in some far-eastern country that they had been to, people maintained a level of decency unheard of in Dublin, even if they were drunk to the point of passing out. It's like the alcohol let them go a little beyond social boundaries, but not too far.
There's some dirt. (aka "observations".)
My German friend Peter (the same one that drove me to the beginning of my cycling trip) came to visit me here. It was pretty fun. One of my coworkers from Mountain View also came, and we did some nice touristy stuff. The highlight of that was probably our trip to Newgrange, a ~5000yo tomb on top of a hill that was found about three hundred years ago. It's a giant mound, but apparently it was covered in forest, and the locals sorta knew something creepy was there, but that's about it. There's a thin, long passageway, and in true pagan style, the light runs through the passage into a little nook at the end of the passage on the winter solstice. Except it doesn't anymore, because the angle of the earth has changed since they made it.
We also went to Glendaloch, which I've been to before, but it's very nice. And we went to a beach with Peter and Clare and Clare's friend Nuala (pronounced Noo'lah). The beach had great big sand dunes, which Peter and I climbed up. It was fun. I said perhaps the most tactless thing I've ever said, but we'll not revisit that. Suffice to say it was very bad.
Today I went for my first proper bikeride. I just sort of left with no particular plan and low expectations, and had a delightful time. I even made it onto some fairly quiet roads, and up the side of the same mountain I climbed on my Wicklow Walk. Coming down that was scary, since the road was bumpy and narrow and I'm used to having lots of gear hold my rear wheel down. And I'm a wimp.
So that about catches you up.
/travel/ireland/Wireless Access
So I'm writing this from my flat, connected to some wireless access point called Eircom147. I called Eircom (the Irish former-telco-monopoly), talked to a reasonably responsive machine, sat on hold, and talked to a person. I asked about the WAPs I could find from my flat. She said it was some kind of system where I had to purchase cards, and forwarded me to their internet division.
The friendly bloke in the internet division didn't seem to understand what a wireless access point was gave me a 33c/min tech support number.
Anyway, I now have free internet access that runs at >80kb/s, so that's pleasing. Faster than what I'm (read: google is) going to be paying for the ADSL.
/travel/usa/Leaving California
I'm sipping a glass of spicy V8 juice, gently procrastinating packing up my stuff. I have to check in tomorrow at 09:00 for my flight to Dublin, starting in San Francisco and going via Atlanta. I arrive at about 09:00 Friday, Dublin time. (16 hours travel + 8 hours time difference.)
Packing makes me nostalgic, though I'm surprised my brief stay in Cali and minimal luggage has induced that.
After an unpleasant first few days, and besides certain obvious factors, I've enjoyed myself here. It's not a place I'd want to stay in long, but it has notable benefits.
For the first few days, I was taxiing to and from work. My co-worker leant me a bicycle to ride, and showed me a path to work. I twinned a highway most of the way, but given that it was remarkably pleasant. It reminded me a lot of the Meewasin trail in Saskatoon. It had the same growthy green smell that the Meewasin trail had at the best time of year. I was generally working late, and the ride home at night was very reminiscent of biking home from here or there when I was young.
Despite the fact that I'm headed back here sometime soon for more training, I feel like finally, finally, I'm going back to Dublin to be settled. My stuff has apparently arrived, including my speakers, and I have a laptop and a phoneline, and maybe sometime soon even some broadband.
It took me a couple weeks to get a place. Then it took a week before I took "possession". Then I called to have a phoneline installed, which took a week. Then it's taken nearly two weeks for them to test the (new!) phone line to make sure it's good enough for broadband. Now I have to wait another week or three to get broadband actually installed. And even then, it's high-contention, low-bandwidth, asymmetric, and has bandwidth caps. Ugh. On the other hand, it's also needed for my job, and thus a perk. So I should stop complaining.
Much of this talk of settling is targeted at a particular issue: I've been rather remiss in keeping touch with people. Hopefully phonecalls, emails and IM conversations will all become more frequent.
On an unrelated note, steve has started putting some notes from this summer's cycling trip on my wiki. They probably mean little or nothing to anyone else, but they might be entertaining anyway -- it's hard for me to guess.
So that's where stuff's at.
/travel/usa/In Case Of ...
I just noticed that the sign on my hotel-room door about fires and such has an "In Case Of Earthquake" clause.
I've never seen that before. I've never been in an earthquake, either. I must admit, it sounds interesting.
/travel/usa/Oops..I'm in California
Hey.
I should have blogged this a few days ago. I'm currently in California, until March 10th or thereabouts. I'm staying in Sunnyvale. This is part of the urban glob (formerly?) known as Silicon Valley. It's south of San Francisco.
It's urban and globular, though it appears to have a sharp edge after which it's fairly empty with windy roads through the mountains.
I flew DUBlin to ShaNnoN to ATLanta to San FranciscO. Eight hours of timezone change, but since I had to get up the next day to go to work, I kicked it pretty quick-like.
My customs/immigration man had been stationed in Calgary, and was out-and-out friendly. As I was leaving he said, quite sincerely, "It was nice chatting with you."
On the other hand, the Irish security woman got very upset when she asked if I had any electronics on me, and I started laughing halfway through the list. "Do you think going through security is funny?" she asked, like a fourth grade sex-ed teacher.
My flat in Dublin is fan-dancy. I've even got plates now, and a little place to keep my toothpaste. I need broadband and a laptop, and it'll almost be like I have a home!
Being 8 timezones away from someone you want to have proper phonecalls with is sucktastic.
So anyway, if you're reading this, you're standing to close. And if you're reading this and you're in California, you should email me.
/travel/ireland/Walking and Settling
Last Wednesday (or was it Thursday?) I went for a walk through the Wicklow mountains. I caught a bus to southern Dublin, with tent and full gear on my back, and started walking.
The terrain was varied -- narrow Irish roads, logging roads, cultivated pine forests, rocky uphill climbs, rugged hilltops covered in gorse. There were two major climbs, one about 400m or so, and the other of unknown (but lesser) height. It was misty, sometimes rainy, and often windy. Reaching the top of a mountain, albeit small, to face a bracing sea wind is rather exhilirating.
I think I walked about 20km, to end up in Enniskerry. Sadly, the two B&Bs I found were closed for the low season. There was a Dublin Bus sitting there headed back to town, so I decided to leave the trip at one day, rather than the two I'd planned. My walking muscles were intensely sore for two days, so that was probably for the best. I ate a lot when I got home.
I'm slowly settling in. My flat is in a nice area called Rathmines just south of downtown, and everyone speaks well of the location. It's got a decent size kitchen/living room, and a nice bedroom. It's on the top (4th in Canadian terms, 3rd in European terms) floor of a redone Georgian house, set back from a major street. Fourteen steps to the nearest pub entrance from the front gate, and about six steps to a domino's pizza. The nearest convenience store is literally across the street, and there's a Tesco grocery store about seven minutes away by foot.
I've started working at Google. They take their secrecy very seriously, and I'm not very interested in blogging about work anyway, so I won't be writing anything about it, really. Suffice to say I'm enjoying myself.
It'll still be quite a while before I have a proper bank account and internet access here, so life still seems somewhat tentative, but it's coming along now. Work provides some nice structure after four weeks of randomness.
/travel/ireland/Shiny Cards
I got my shiny card from the Garda (police) National Immigration Burea. It's got a smart chip on it.
My travel here was the smoothest I can remember. So smooth, I had a bit of a shock the first time I had to deal with being on the "wrong" side of the road, since I mentally hadn't traveled far enough to be somewhere so thoroughly backwards and confused.
It's going to be cold this weekend, the locals have warned me, dipping down near 4 or 5 degrees. Yes, Celcius. There are flowers out, and everything is green. I think I could get used to that.
The sidewalks and roads here have the same haphazard patches-over-patches feel that Oxford had. I'm not sure if it's just a different style or attitude, or if the lack of freeze-thaw-freeze cycles means that's the right way to do things.
I've been running errands and relaxing -- Clare's got a big presentation on Friday, so I've been trying to stay out of her way. Hopefully tomorrow I'll start looking in earnest for places to live.
It'll be at least a week or two before I have broadband and a laptop.
(I've tucked this in the "travel" section, which doesn't seem quite right since I'm here for a good while. But whatever.)
/life/Goodbye Canada!
My bags are packed, I'm ready to go.
My bike is in a box, my garlic press, cheese slicer and favourite bowl are nestled amongst clothes and other things. I've copied my important documents, and double checked my flights. My swiss army knife is tucked into my checked baggage, and many boxes have been shipped.
I had a great time bumping gently across Ontario. I saw many people in Waterloo, and missed a few. (Sorry Simon, Leanne, JP, and probably others.) I was surprised how many people I saw that I knew, and I invited many people to come visit me in Dublin.
I went to a Q&A forum with David Suzuki, which was neat. I liked him; I didn't find him intellectually satisfying, but rather intuitively satisfying. He refered to hydrogen as an "energy source" rather than a transmission mechanism, which was frustrating. He also conflated "peak oil" (when we can no longer keep up with oil production) and air pollution, which is also frustrating. (It is common to see this as related, but they aren't. It could be that we run out of oil well before the atmosphere is unrecoverably polluted with carbon dioxide, or it could be that we destructively pollute the earth well before we run out of oil. Many environmentalists imply that these two things will transpire at around the same time, but while that might be elegant and tidy, there's no reason to believe it will be the case. These arguments should not be mixed; one is directly environmental, the other is economic.)
I said I'd write about New York, and I never really did. I never really figured out what to say, except that I was astounded how much I liked the city. In fact, it gave me a sense of what a city should be: good transportation, lots of arts, friendly people, strange little stories and histories visible everywhere. The stereotypical grumpy New Yorker was nowhere to be found; people were helpful, even if you were just looking slightly lost. It felt safe.
I had a great time with Clare's relatives — her cousins each had their chance to show us their favourite bits, it seemed. The Gugenheim was a neat building, though the Aztec art exhibit lacked practical connection for me; art disconnected from the tools and techniques didn't hold my interest well.
I'd like to go back some day, and maybe even work there.
In two weeks, I start at Google. I'm very excited about it; I hope it lives up to its reputation.
I've decided to put the entries for Ireland in the travel category, even though that belies the nature of this journey. I'll be settling there, with a longer horizon than I've had since I was 15.
As always, my thanks for all the little favours that have made the preparation and visits successful, especially to my parents, Josh, Andrew and Ian & Joy, who each gave me a place to rest my head.
Goodbye Canada, I'll be back soon enough. I hope many of you have a chance to come visit me in Ireland, or meet me anywhere nearby in Europe.
/life/Visiting Waterloo
I'll be in Waterloo either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning until sometime on Friday.
The driving reason is that I have to get grad photos taken or my mother will have me summarily guillotined.
I hope to see you KWers soon. If you're in KW, please drop me an email or a comment or something.
/life/Wrapping Up and Random Encounters
I'm packing and leaving Ottawa tomorrow, to bump around southern Ontario and then fly to Dublin via New York.
Last night was my last piano lesson. I've had about a dozen this term, fairly randomly distributed, since both my teacher and I were flexible (read: unreliable) about dates.
My piano teacher arranged a keyboard for me to borrow, a Yamaha DX-11. Last night I went in early, keyboard under my arm, to run some errands.
In the end, I had some time to spare, and it was a brisk -31 with the windchill, so I headed towards the mall. I sat down on a bench, keyboard on my lap.
As though he had been waiting for me, a friendly looking guy in a long, army-green trenchcoat walked up, and asked if I played music. I explained that I was just starting to learn piano, since I had been too stubborn to let my mother force me into piano lessons when I was young.
He had long, thin braids, and a somewhat thinned, dark-skinned face. He carried a guitar in a case held together by duct tape. For a moment I was eager to get rid of him to make the cell phone call that I had sat down to make, but then I tucked my phone in my pocket.
He was from Vancouver, recently moved here with his wife and kids. They came in a van, but despite an agreement he insisted was clear, it had been towed from wherever he had parked it, and he couldn't afford the fines.
He was living at the Salvation Army. "On the third floor," he said, as though I should know. It was the better floor; people had respect, and nobody took your stuff. It was clean, and mostly older people lived there.
He earned his living primarily from busking, apparently, and didn't ever ask for money from people except by playing his music. Hadn't had a drink in 28 years, he said. We were sitting accross from an Orange Julius. "I was thinking about offering you a drink before you said that, but now it looks fake. But that's fine, do you want a drink?" He said he'd really like a sandwich or something, but didn't know the mall.
There's a little place nearby that was selling sandwiches, so we went there. He asked if any of them had meat; I asked if he was vegetarian. "No," he said. I started reading off the labels; it became clear to me that he couldn't read.
It was near closing time, so they were two for one. "Well, I don't want one," I said, missing the obvious. "I'll take it!" he piped up eagerly, and went to grab another sandwich.
I talked about how I was glad to buy him a sandwich, and how I often hesitated about giving money to people that I thought would just spend it on alcohol.
He insisted that we should stay in touch. I told him I was going to Dublin, Ireland. He asked where it was: "So where is that, exactly? I'm not messin' around." I waved out a map of Canada, and then hopped over the ocean. And anyway, how were we to do that? Should I give him my cell phone number? My email address? Maybe he could start reading my blog, or I could beam my contact information from my phone to his PDA.
He showed me his guitar. He was incredibly proud of it. "Your instrument becomes a part of you," he had said near the beginning. The guitar in perfect condition. "You have to take care of it like it's a piece of yourself." He played blues and jazz music , but was not interested in locking himself into anything.
We were from different worlds in the same country. He didn't put up any barrier because of the fact that I had been blessed with a good lot. He was honest, open, direct, and seemed quite happy with his life.
It was the best $6.74 I've spent in a long time.
/life/Google Success!
I've been offered a position as a Site Reliability Engineer in Google's Dublin office, and they've made accomodations for all of my requests with respect to timelines.
The outcome is far better than I was expecting, mostly in that there was very little tension to arrive at a conclusion suitable to all.
I'm delighted.
/life/Moving Sale and Plans
I have a whole bunch of stuff for sale/free. Preferential prices for people I know. Highlights: shelves, chair, mattress, camera, CDs. If you're in Kingston/KW/Toronto/GGTA, I can bring small stuff. Tell your friends.
I'm leaving Ottawa this Saturday or Sunday I hope. I'll be in KW sometime next week, for some drop-offs and stuff. On January 31st I fly to JFK, then to Dublin, arriving in the wee hours of the morning.
I find out whether Google offers me a job today.
I'll write about New York real soon now.
/travel/usa/Going South
I'm going to break up my travel summaries into two entries.
On December 29th, Clare and I caught a bus from my parents' place into Toronto. We wandered around, through the Kensington Market and Chinatown. I haggled $1 off some $5 faux-Thinsulate gloves. The haggling went like this: "How much?" "Five dollars." "Four?" "Okay."
We then met Chris and his friend Cory and hung out some more. We went to a faux-Italian restaurant, and the food had a distinctive Chinese style and flavour to it. None of us were impressed..it was actually some of the worst restaurant food I've ever had.
Chris then drove us all to Niagara Falls,
which Clare was happy to see. It was dark, so the falls were lit up. The
lights are simultaneously pretty and incredibly tacky. The mist causes a big
thick layer of ice on everything, in some places three or four inches. It was
constantly cracked off certain things, so there were funny ice-molds
everywhere. One of them ended up as a helmet, which we tried on in turn.
We then took off, and crossed the border. This was my first time in the US since my family went to Florida when I was 17. With two Americans, an Irish and a Canadian in the car, we expected something interesting with the border guards, but the fellow just seemed happy to have a car that wasn't completely mundane, and only asked a few basic questions. We hit Buffalo, and crashed at Chris' place.
Buffalo is a strange place. There's still
lots of people there, but it has a sense of abandonment. We met Elizabeth at
a local mall, which had a sign (at left) indicating that minors had to be
accompanied by someone over 21 after 4pm on weekends. It lent a sense of
inner-city troubles to this outer-city mall.
We were driven around town, then we walked around the harbour, and then Elizabeth, who studies anthropology, brought us to her campus, where some of her peers were practicing making stone tools. One of the guys was very skilled, and it was fascinating to see how much trouble these people had making "simple" stone tools, sitting in a modern college room, with a big sheet of plastic under them to catch the chippings.
Chris, Clare and I then went to Dana's place in Geneva. Her family are fun to hang out with. They have very different political views from me. They play lots of board games. One was a DVD-based game, which was fun, but felt sort of strange to bring TV and technology into something (playing boardgames) that I like in part for its simplicity and lack of screens.
We (plus Dana's sister) went on a winery tour. I think I've started liking wine. The experience was neat. The first place was very generous with the servings, and didn't charge anyone anything since a few of us bought bottles. The second place was stingier and less friendly, but still nice.
One of Dana's friends has a nice party-basement, with air hockey, fussball, etc. That's where we spent New Year's eve. We were actually in the hot-tub for the roll-over, which was fun.
The next day Clare and I caught a bus to New York City.
/life/Google Interview Day
Yesterday morning I got up at about 8:15. I had slept fitfully, as I do before an early flight or exam.
After breakfast, I caught a tax. The receptionist said it would take 15 minutes to get there, so I gave 30 minutes. He was about 8 minutes late, and then there was a traffic jam. Everything cleared up in time, and I made it with a few minutes to spare.
I met my recruiter, Sue, in the lobby of one of the four buildings in the main "Googleplex". We found my interview room, talked about the day, and then the interviews began. I hadn't really brought anything -- a clipboard and a pen would have been nice.
I had two 45-minute interviews, lunch, then four more interview. The algorithms-related ones went very well. Only one, which focused on IP-layer network stuff, went quite badly. If the "veto-system" rumours are true, that may have killed my chances. It wasn't just that I didn't know things, but that I didn't figure them out well, and made some bad, unstated assumptions.
The lunch was phenomenal. All organic, tons of veggie and vegan choices, very healthy, dozens (hundreds?) of bottled drink choices. It was extravagant, but not in a foie-gras and filet-mignon way.
I'm happy with the day in general. I don't think I messed up too many things that I feel like I should have done better.
Last night I caught a bus into "downtown Mountainview", a single strip of restaurants and bad Irish pubs. I ate at a cheap Thai place, despite my per diem allowance from Google. I was considering cancelling my last night at the hotel here and going to San Fran and staying in a hostel, but I'm not very motivated to do that kind of travel right now, and I lack the equipment for it.
Tonight, I'm meeting my friend Paul, and we're either going to hang out here, or perhaps head to San Francisco, about an hour away.
/life/My Mom Oughta Be Proud
So I'm in Mountain View, California. I'm wearing a suit, and my taxi is arriving shortly to take me to the big day. I even ironed my shirt. (My family had a lively discussion about what I should wear at Chrismtas. In the end, I think there's something less formal that I'd rather wear, but I don't own it, so I went up rather than down. I grudgingly admit their possible influence over my attire.)
I'm in this crazy corporate land of credit cards and free internet and breakfast -- only slightly better than the StayOkay Hostels in Amsterdam, but those were very good breakfasts -- and networking with the people on my plane. One guy was a Monsanto guy that I chatted to in line, and my seatmate was a Motorola guy steeped in cellphone industry jargon that wasn't used in Finland.
The flight from Chicago to San Jose was very clear. I could see all these cities dotting the landscape. They looked very organic, and reminded me of some discussion of cities as being alive in Lila by Robert Pirsig. I started jotting down a cellular-automata-like system for trying to model it and produce pretty, organic-ish pictures. I'm such a geek.
Gotta run -- taxi's on its way. Very much enjoying myself. I don't know how this is going to go, and I don't know how many people they will be flying down for a spot. Somehow this lack of knowledge makes me less nervous -- I'll be who I am, and let the chips fall where they may.
/life/Thirty Three Hours In Ottawa
Last night at 22:45, I caught a bus from New York to Ottawa, via Syracuse. I
arrived at 07:40, to minor cultural and climactic shocks.
Since last we spoke, I've been to Orillia, Toronto, Buffalo, Geneva (NY), and the Big Apple. It's been busy, fun, and intense. In 14 hours, weather permitting, I'm flying to LA via Chicago. My interview is Friday morning.
I hope to write a bunch about New York and other stuff, but for now I've thrown up a bunch of photos. The new ones have bolded dates in the gallery list. I'll get that list sorted by date sometime soon.
