/travel/ireland/Walking the South Wall
The Dublin port has two great big walls going out to the sea. The South Wall was built in the late 1700s, and the North Wall followed when the South Wall was unsuccessful at the seascaping it was meant to do. Yesterday, Phil and Clare and I walked out and back, and then had went for Italian food in D4, the posh Dublin postal code.
Dublin postal codes are big; there's about 30, I think, for the whole city. All of the low-digit ones have reputations, but the reputation usually comes from a small area. My office building is in D4, and so are lots of places I've been, and I never really grokked the whole "D4 is posh" thing. I get it now. The restaurant wasn't super-fancy or whatever, just very modern, slate-and-glass-and-white-tiles kind of thing. Food was alright. All the chefs in the Italian restaurant were Chinese -- a common enough trait in Canada, but I've never noticed it here.
I just finished ploughing through Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson. It was excellent; entertaining, interesting, well-paced. Sometimes it was a bit cheap in its appeal to geeky folks, and sometimes the explanations of geeky things aimed at non-geeky readers stood out a bit, but that's fine. Very good.
I was reading "In Praise of Slow", but I gave up. It was absolute crap. The guy was flying all over the world to try "slow food". Every once in a while he'd try to backtrack and say that "slow food wasn't about posh food", but it was totally unconvincing. Ugh.
My piano is going well, much better since I bought a keyboard (full size, weighted keys. Expensive beasts, they are.) The trick is to practice things you like. Just in case you were wondering. :-) My "When The Saints" rendition is coming along well. At a grade one sort of definition of "well".
The STUPID BROADBAND PROVIDER BT SUCKS HI GOOGLE that I'm with is taking forever to relocate me. I can't even get a clear answer out of them what actually has to be done. At first it was a week or so. Then another week or so. Now it's two more weeks, definitely done by three, and maybe, if the person I end up talking to is feeling charitable, I might get a refund for this time.
Crikey.
That is all. Back to fishing.
Comments
Kim wrote
How interesting that you are taking piano lessons. I [re-]started playing the piano earlier this year but then I couldn't figure out whether it was worth my time or not. To be honest, I think I just wanted to complete one of the few things that I gave up on in high school. But I don't think I'll have any use for it, now or later. So I quit piano classes for the second time in my life.
Rob wrote
I think it exercises a part of my brain that doesn't otherwise get that much use. :-)
