Category: Miscellaneous

I spent the first two weeks of August in Dublin, Ireland on a trip for work. What follows are some observations of the little things I noticed as an American without much international travel experience.

My pictures

Stuff I liked

Irish accents are cool. I wouldn’t mind having one (or one of the southern English accents). I was almost too embarrassed to speak at times because an American accent must sound horrible to them. And I know it may sound silly, but many times when I heard an Irish woman talking on the street, I turned around to see if it was Ríona, even though her accent is sadly waning.

Another thing that I enjoyed hearing was the ringback tone— the ringing sound that you hear when you’re calling someone. It’s a lot smoother than what you hear when calling a North American number.

I liked how technology enabled me to feel a little less like a tourist and a little more like a local. When it came to food, I was able to use Yelp to look for reviews, and then with my phone was able to confidently get walking directions to the restaurant’s location. I wasn’t limited to using tourist maps or judging a restaurant by what it looked like on the outside. And, since I checked in everywhere on Foursquare, I had a record of every place I visited which ended up being helpful when I did my expense report. I also have location history enabled on Google Latitude, which allowed me to look back and see things like the route our bus took from Dublin to Doolin. So, the two gadgety things that I’d recommend as an international traveler (besides a voltage converter) are a local prepaid SIM card with a data plan (likely much cheaper than roaming), as well as an extended or extra battery. If you’re in the US, you’re probably used to unlimited data, but you’re unlikely to find that when traveling. I found 3G Watchdog on my Android phone to be a helpful app for monitoring my data usage.

I like sandwiches (everybody does), and the sandwiches in Ireland were generally good. I especially liked that it was easier to find a sandwich with sundried tomatoes than it was to find one with avocados. My favorite meals came from Listons Food Store, which was highly rated on Yelp and navigated to using Google Maps on my phone. During both of my visits to Listons, I had a delicious ham and cheese panini. The first one I ate inside the store, but for the second one I took a short walk to St. Stephen’s Green and had a pleasant lunch on a park bench. One thing I have to say about Irish food though is that Dublin’s definition of “crispy” in the context of “crispy bacon” is not the same as it is in the US.

I really enjoyed my one-day trip to the west coast, particularly because I traveled through the countryside and saw the Cliffs of Moher. Those of you who know me personally know that I would never want to live in a city (though I don’t mind working or visiting one), so when I travel I enjoy getting outside of the cities. While they all have significant differences, in a way visiting a major city anywhere in the world is kind of like visiting a major airport anywhere in the world: many things are the same. Traveling outside of Dublin, I was able to experience the green of Ireland that I heard so much about. It really is a beautiful country, and the abundance of green reminded me of home. On my next trip, I’d like to spend more time on the west coast and in the countryside.

My self-confidence was constantly being boosted by their overuse of the word “brilliant,” which seems to be a UK thing as well. As an example, when I turned in my SIM card that I was borrowing during my stay, my Irish coworker responded with, “Excellent brilliant stuff, mate. Cheers.” And when I was in Heathrow, a woman who was handing out flyers for some survey asked if I would be using the Internet in New York (I was flying into JFK). When I indicated that I would in fact be using the Internet, her response was simply, “Brilliant.” Yes, I am. Thank you.

Of course I liked seeing my coworkers. The funny thing is though, due to the multilingual nature of our work, most of the people I work with (and therefore hung out with) in Dublin actually aren’t Irish at all. It was interesting to hear them proudly speak of their homelands (I think a trip to Berlin or Munich is in my future), and I think they were surprised at my ability to sympathize with them when they learned that a trip from California to Pennsylvania is actually longer than a trip from Dublin to most of their hometowns.

I only took three taxis during my stay, but they were a refreshing change from what we have to deal with in the US. Besides the “just round up to the nearest Euro” tipping custom (don’t get me started on how horribly awkward and confusing the tipping culture is in the US), I was relieved to find that the drivers were both courteous and knowledgeable. In the US, it’s such a crapshoot. You can take a cab in the morning and have a friendly driver who can give you helpful suggestions about the area, and then later that afternoon have a driver who seems to hate the idea that someone else got in his car, has no idea where your destination is, and has no map or GPS to help him out.

Even though I had to go through security multiple times on the way home (once in Dublin, twice in Heathrow), I liked that I didn’t have to take my shoes off. They still have the strange liquid restriction though, which didn’t affect me but I felt bad for the non-English-speaking family I saw trying to get medication though the screening process.

Stuff that was kind of weird

It was nearly impossible to find non-American television content, let alone Irish programs. Even when I settled on the BBC one night to catch some European material, they were showing Insomnia, an American film. Not a bad movie, though.

Everything closes early… even earlier than in the Bay Area. I tend to get in late and work late, so it was a challenge for me to rush out every night after work to get food. I thought I had found a solution when I discovered an “American diner,” but it closed at 10:00! That kind of defeats the whole purpose of a diner. When I tried to load up on some food at a convenience store instead, I discovered that they had closed at 9.

By the way, if you want to see more of Ireland, Google just launched Street View in that country, so start exploring.

As part of my Saturday ritual, I go to Quiznos, pick up an Italian hoagie, bag of Cheetos, and a bottle of lemonade and bring it back to my apartment, and eat it while I watch one of those cooking shows which features Gordon Ramsay yelling at people. I eat the hoagie first, so by the time I’m into the bag of Cheetos, my TV is usually showing a segment where there’s some competitive cooking going on. And so every Saturday, I have these two simultaneous thoughts:

1. I can’t believe he’s using frozen pasta! (or similar)
2. These Cheetos are delicious.

Oh, and after a long hiatus, I have two new cooking shows in post-production. I’ll be releasing them as soon as I get around to doing that.

On Saturday, Brandon and I went on a last-minute trip to Vegas to check out the new Aria hotel (part of the enormous CityCenter project) and its new Elvis-themed show.

Aria

The hotel is definitely one of the nicer Vegas offerings, and it certainly helps that everything is brand-new. They even pump a special scent into the building, so it smells more like spring than a smoky casino. As far as I can tell there’s no real theme to the hotel unlike some of the other major hotels on the strip, which I think works in their favor since themes can quickly look dated. It just feels like an upscale modern hotel with lots of glass and wood. The front desk service was a little slow but not terrible.

The standard room (it’s called a “deluxe” room, but there’s nothing cheaper than deluxe) is very comfortable. Here’s a shot that Brandon took:

Everything in the room, including the lights, curtains, temperature, and do not disturb sign, could be controlled from a touchscreen display next to the beds or via the TV remote.

We ate dinner at Jean Philippe Patisserie (I had a ham & cheese panini; it was good) before the show. At the end of the night, we ate at Café Vettro, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner 24 hours a day. The menu looks very promising for a full meal, but we only had dessert. Here’s what the lava cake looks like:

I’d definitely eat there again.

CityCenter

CityCenter is massive, and one of its hotels is still under construction. We only checked out two of its buildings: Aria and Crystals. I think the only casino area is in Aria, so if you’re not into the whole gambling thing, CityCenter could be a nice escape if you wanted to stay on the strip but avoid the sounds of slot machines. We walked around Crystals a bit, which has some restaurants and high-end stores. One nice thing about CityCenter is that outside of most of the restaurants they had a touchscreen display with the restaurant’s menu.

These are some ice poles in the Crystals building.

This sculpture, also inside Crystals, contains a restaurant.

Viva Elvis

Overall, not a bad show, but certainly not the best Vegas production I’ve seen.

The theater was comfortable and had a classic look. I was seated in section 103 (row K, seat 7), which actually had benches instead of individual chairs for seating, with cup holders in front. The live musicians during the show were excellent, and seemed to be having fun throughout the performance. I think they also mixed in actual Elvis recordings for his vocals, since you never actually saw him sing on stage and there was just a slight hiss in the audio during his parts, but it was really well done. Like all of their productions (but especially Love), the show would still have been enjoyable if I sat through it with my eyes closed. But of course I kept my eyes open, as the talented circus performers that Cirque du Soleil is known for had some pretty good acts, mo”st notably the “Got A Lot of Livin’ To Do” super hero scene using trampolines. That was really fun to watch, and it looked like it would be fun to do.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to experience the full show. At one point, it became clear that they were about to do “Jailhouse Rock.” It seemed like they were leading up to something big for the well-known song; a couple of people walked across the stage behind bars of light, and there was a video projection of a jail’s hallway. But that was it. 30-45 seconds would go by with nothing but the video projection, and there would be a few seconds of performers dancing across the stage in chains. This went on for the entire song, and about a minute into it, you could tell by the audience looking around that we were all thinking the same thing: “Something’s missing.” When the song ended, they moved on to the next act as if nothing had happened. The show must go on. The rest of the show seemed to go smoothly aside from a minor glitch where the mic cut out for two words (“Las Vegas!”) while the character of Elvis’s manager was speaking. I don’t think there’s any English-speaking character in the other Cirque shows aside from “no cameras” announcements, so maybe they should just stick to that tradition.

As we were walking out, I considered asking one of the ushers if something went wrong during the “Jailhouse Rock” scene, but didn’t say anything, afraid that I would sound like a jerk if there was nothing missing. Later that night, I did some searching for [viva elvis jailhouse rock] to see if others had similar thoughts. The first snippet was of a review saying that the “the ‘Jailhouse Rock’ set has potential.” There was no set… maybe the review was being sarcastic? I couldn’t tell because all Yelp wanted to do was plug their app once they discovered that I was on a mobile phone. I checked another result, and saw descriptions of the scene as “the show’s signature piece” and “walking upside down” and “has to be seen to be believed.” Obviously, we had not seen what they were talking about.

By the time I was able to confirm that there had indeed been a big error, the box office was closed and we had a 6:50 AM flight the next day, so the chance of a refund or explanation was pretty much non-existant. I can understand that there can be technical glitches for such a complex production, but considering the scene’s importance and the price of admission, it was pretty disappointing that the staff didn’t acknowledge the problem after the show. It wasn’t a horrible experience, and it would certainly be worth watching if you really like Elvis, but if you’re looking to be wowed, Vegas has many better alternatives to offer.

Update on 7/6/2010: After contacting customer service, I’ve been offered discounted tickets to another show. Sounds reasonable to me. They confirmed that the set was immobilized which is why we experienced the “minimized number.”

Fountains!

But let’s not end on a sad note… Vegas is fun! Check out these shots Brandon got of the Bellagio fountain, my favorite Las Vegas attraction:

It’s potentially embarrassing if I can’t remember your name, yet you remember mine. And the name of my plant.

I hope you don’t read my blog.

Pretty soon after starting work at Google, I began using the onsite dry cleaning service. Okay, it’s not really onsite, you drop it in a bin and they take it somewhere, but as far as I need to know, everything happens at work. I just put anything that I don’t know how to wash or that would involve ironing in a bag, and dump it in the lobby. A few days later, my clothes return on hangers. It’s pretty convenient.

At one point, I decided that I would start using a local dry cleaner instead of taking my clothes to work. I can’t remember why I did this. I think I figured out that it would be slightly less expensive. For a few months, this worked out perfectly. I would take a pile of clothes to the counter, say, “I’d like these to be cleaned,”* and come back at the end of the week, when my clothes are available on hangers. One day, I went in and was helped by the husband of the husband/wife owners instead of the wife who usually helped me. I handed him my pile of clothes, and he asked if I would like them dry cleaned. I didn’t know what else one would want at a dry cleaner’s, so I said yes. I never know what to say at one-service places like this. Whenever I go to get my hair cut, they ask, “How can I help you?” I say, “I’d like a haircut.” I always feel like an idiot when I say that though, because it’s so obvious. But what else could I say?

When I returned to pick up my clothes, my bill was a few times higher than it usually is, and I learned that this was because dry cleaning is more expensive than laundering. I did some research online that day, and read that for many articles of clothing, laundering is just fine, but dry cleaning is actually better, but not totally necessary, but it can make your clothes last longer, but it’s more expensive… and I didn’t feel like having the responsibility of making that decision. Is it worth it to spend more on dry cleaning, or is it easier to buy new clothes? I don’t want to have that problem.

Now I drop my clothes off at work again. No questions asked.

I had to buy a dress shirt on my own last week. It was confusing.

Before going out to the store, I let some people at work know about my mission, and told them that I didn’t know what size I was. They suggested that I first go back to my apartment and look at the tag of a dress shirt that I already own. I looked at a few, and they all just had an M on the tag, probably for Michael or medium. I knew that there should have been numbers, but I couldn’t see any. At this point, though, I was pretty confident that I would be able to find at least one line of shirts that would have a letter as its only indication of size.

I headed to Macy’s, which was promised to be “safe.” I didn’t feel immediately threatened when I walked in, but I quickly realized that there are a ton of different white dress shirts in that store, with little differentiation beyond the name on the tag. This was somewhat promising though, because I was convinced I could find an M amongst them. The first pile of shirts I looked at gave me hope: I found a tag with an M! Unfortunately, it was an M along with three different numbers. No worries, I thought, just as long as I can confirm that all of the Ms have the same numbers. They didn’t. Onto the next pile.

I went through every stack of white dress shirts in the store, and all of them had those crazy three numbers. At some point in the process, a salesperson called out to the room asking if anyone needed help, but I ignored her offer at the time, hopeful that I would be able to find an unenumerated M and not have to interact with a human being beyond handing over a credit card. When I realized that I would not find this exclusively letter-based sizing, I did what any single man would do in my situation. I went outside and called my mom.

Me: I’m trying to buy a shirt and I don’t know my size. Do you know what my measurements are?
Mom: No, just ask them to measure you.
Me: Can’t I just get a medium? The shirts in my closet are medium, but in the store they have three numbers. What do they mean? There’s one at the top, and then two below it.
Mom: It’s the neck and sleeve size.
Me: But there are three numbers. One at the top…
Mom: That’s the neck.
Me: And then two at the bottom.
Mom: The sleeves.
Me: But there are two numbers.
Mom: That’s the sleeve length.
Me: The sleeves are different sizes?
Mom: No.
Me: But there are two numbers on the bottom.
Mom: It’s a range.
Me: They have to estimate the length of the sleeves? They can’t measure that within an inch? Don’t we have the technology?
Mom: Ask someone to measure you.
Me: I don’t like to be poked.
Mom: [sends an eye-roll from 3,000 miles away]
Me: I’ll also need a tie.
Mom: Just tell them that you have a dark suit and you need a white shirt and a tie.

At this point, I was resigned to the fact that I would have to be measured. I headed back inside to look for help. One employee was there folding shirts. I don’t shop often enough to know what the proper procedure is in these types of situations, so I didn’t know if I should interrupt her. She was obviously already busy doing something else. I went over to where the counter was and figured I’d just wait in line. After several minutes of waiting for a customer and an employee to discuss a return, I figured I had been in there too long, and couldn’t really spend any more time walking around the store as by now they were probably starting to think I was weird. I headed to Nordstrom.

This time, I walked in with a new attitude. I was going to walk right in there, admit I know nothing, and walk out with a shirt. And I pretty much did that.

Me: I need a white dress shirt and I don’t know my measurements.
Her: Trim?
Me: [Having no idea what this means] Sure.

I was then measured, and headed to the back and got a shirt my size. Before she went to the back room, I let her know that I would also need a tie. “There are ties on all of the tables,” she said, trusting to find something that matched. I picked what appeared to be the only non-pink tie (I would have been fine with pink if I didn’t think that pink ties were a fad on their way out), and brought it to the counter. And by the way, for the little amount of material they use, ties are expensive!

Me: Will this match a dark suit? I obviously know nothing about fashion.
Her: Charcoal? Gray? Black?
Me: [My mom said “dark suit!” Trying to think of what my suit looks like…] Black.
Her: Oh, yes, that will look very nice. You picked a good one. This is a [says some brand name that I can’t remember] tie. They last forever. One customer always buys these kind of ties and says that he’ll be able to give them to his son when he’s older.

That was easy, and kudos to the Nordstrom employee for being so friendly. I don’t really enjoy shopping because I don’t feel confident doing it, but it does feel good to dress nicely.

After all that, I proudly presented my wardrobe to my parents only to learn that I was wearing the wrong pants.

One of these days I want to get a painted portrait of myself which shows me with my eyes closed, so I can hang it over my fireplace. I’ll then wait until someone asks me why my eyes are closed, setting me up for the punch line: “I blinked.”

He drew this for me in Seattle.

Everyone in the US should have just gone through this experience, but I’m blogging about it since I may find it fun to read later, and you may find it interesting if you’re not in the United States.

On March 8, 2010, I found a plastic bag hanging on my door. It contained a census form. I knew it was coming, because about a week before it arrived, I received a letter from the US Census Bureau informing me that I would soon be receiving one. It’s a good thing they spent money on sending me that warning letter, because if the form had arrived unexpectedly, I would have no idea what to do with it, even if it came with a letter explaining how important it was, just like the warning letter had done.

Inside of the bag was an envelope:

The envelope contained a letter explaining a little bit about the census. It asked me to mail back the form that day, so even though I saw the census when I came back to my apartment after work, I got it in the mailbox before midnight.

The back of the letter revealed an interesting note about confidentiality. I didn’t know that the replies were kept confidential for 72 years and then made public.

Ah, yes, the old “use the destination address as the return address to avoid postage fees” trick 🙂

It was comforting knowing that if I ran into trouble, help was only a phone call away:

I didn’t need any help, though, as the form was very short, and only took me a couple of minutes to fill out. Here are some pictures of it:

Full first page | Full second page

These are the ways Person 2 could be related to Person 1:

And here were some of the options for race:

Pretty painless, huh? All that was left was to seal the form inside of the postage-paid envelope and drop it in the mail. And the U.S. Census Bureau even had a well-placed thank-you note on the flap of the envelope:

1. I earn enough points from using my Chase credit card that I’m eligible for a rewards check.
2. I’m lucky enough to log on to my bank’s website during a time that it’s not down for maintenance, and order a check.
3. A week or so later, a paper check is dispatched from Reward Headquarters, USA, and arrives in my mailbox.
4. A week or so later, I get around to checking my mail and place the check on my coffee table.
5. A week or so later, I drive the check from my apartment to a Chase ATM and make a deposit.
6. On the next business day, the money is available in my Chase checking account, which I use to pay my Chase credit card.