Friday July 9, 1999 A nice sunset bid us farewell yesterday. Our last glimpse of America, our first sunrise in Ireland. We arrived around 7 in the morning in Dublin. B managed to sleep through most of the flight, while E only slept for a little bit. (She did manage to fall asleep just before dinner, however, and then wake up just after they picked up after dinner. What're the odds?) Going through Customs was interesting; this time, we got in the EU line, instead of the non-EU visitors one. B gave them his EU (Irish) passport, and E her American one. We were fine, though we do need to go into the immigration office and get an ``enter with no condition'' stamp on E's at some point in the next 90 days. (Very likely to be sooner than later.) In October, after we've been married for three years, E can get an EU passport as well and then we'll be all set. :)
We debated back and forth about whether to take a taxi from the airport to the apartment we'd be renting for the week, or hire (rent) a car. We finally opted for hiring a car not only because its rate of £30 w/ unlimited mileage all day was only £5 more than a taxi would've cost us, but also because if Catherine, the landlady renting to us, wasn't able to appear on time we'd rather have the ability to go for some lunch and the like. The image of being left sitting outside an apartment building, with our bags laid around us, for an indeterminate length of time was too dark an idea. It took some work to get our bags (including the two four-foot seventy-pound ones) onto a cart and then into the car, but it went smoothly enough.
After Catherine met us at the place, we gave her the Banker's Draft we'd gotten back in Boston, and learned how to work some things, we were all set. Being the practical travelers that we are, the first thing we did was figure out how to dial up. There was a crazy hassle with Sprint to get the access number for Ireland, which we'd misplaced. On the back of our calling card it said you could make a collect call to a particular number, and they'll give you the appropriate access number for wherever you are. Tried it, but the MCI Worldcom person we spoke with (the international operator of the moment we think) said that the number we gave him was in fact set to refuse collect calls. LAME. So we called direct, talked to a guy named ``Bito'' who claimed he'd just accepted our call (bull, we were calling direct), and got the stupid number. After then making a 24-minute call to California just to download our email, we signed up with Esat, a local Internet provider. (They were suggested by a friend of B's who works on the C++ committee with him and lives in Ireland.)
Being at this position on the globe is really strange for us at first. It can be after 10pm at night, and there will still be light in the sky. What feels like perhaps 7pm in California is in fact 10:30pm. This is having a funky effect on our sleep patterns; without really good drapes, our bodies would be convincing themselves that they should stay awake, it's still early. Apparently you get used to it over time; B's Aunt Helen was surprised when we mentioned it.
So our first day in Ireland was spent running around to a letting agent's place getting a bunch of lists of places that were available for rent (to let), and also went to the appropriate transit office for cards to use on the DART and on the buses. (Much easier than always having the insanely heavy coins at hand to drop into the machines. You just swipe your card in, it beeps, you get it back, and on you go. If you go more than a couple of times a week the price ends up being a savings.)
Walked, walked, walked.
Dinner tonight was a quick and easy pasta dish, our first meal made in Ireland. Spaghetti, some pasta sauce (the small store near us didn't have canned tomatoes), some Grand Mere's garlic oil, onion, and some more garlic of our own. Yummm. We got the last loaf of bread (with poppy seeds, those things just love to get caught in your teeth don't they?) letting us make some garlic bread. Ya notice a theme?
Saturday July 10, 1999 In the morning, got the Bewley's sampler from Mammy. (Buzz, buzz, the thing used to get entry into the building is damn loud.) Bewley's, for those of you not in the know, is a chain of tearooms where one can get tea, coffee, coffee drinks, lunch and great breakfasts, for not too much money. They are the embodiment of Ireland for us, just because we eat there a lot.
Walked around Dalkey, checking out one place with a (long distance) view of the ocean. This walking thing is getting easier.
Dinner with Mary and Sheelah at Mao's, a trendy place near St. Stephen's Green. It was Asian influenced cooking, and really yummy. The waiter had some great suggestions for wine and for Sheelah's meal, but then we think he forgot about us later, so it took a bit for the bill. The place was nice tho, minimalist with splashes of color.
Rocky Horror Picture Show is playing at the Classic Cinema in Terenure, has for a good 25 years. The show starts at 11:59 PM on Saturdays. We just realized that if it started at midnight, then it would be Sunday, now wouldn't it....
Sunday July 11, 1999 Set up to get a tour of four places from Home Locators on Tuesday, including the one in Dalkey.
ISDN here is £384 + VAT (VAT's like sales tax, sorta) for installation, and then £29 a month + VAT. A good six week delay, or longer, before you have a hope of being hooked up. Bleah.
Apparently every Tuesday at one in the afternoon, the Dublin Symphony is doing shows at the National Concert Hall for only £4 per person. (That's about $5 US.) Given how it's only a 15 minute train ride into the city, and not too far a walk from there to the hall, mebbe we'll try going for a show?
Monday July 12, 1999 Hassles begin---wrote Cygnus asking them to fax a letter to Home Locators saying that I'm currently employed, and will be for the coming year. Also asked the bank to fax a letter to the Home Locators saying we were a valid account. (Interesting that you need all of this...)
Dawson's Creek is on Channel 2 here at 7:35pm every Thursday. Woo hoo!!
Got the tour of an apartment in Sandycove, droooooooool.
Donnybrook, the area where our apartment for the week is located, seems nice. A couple of convenience stores, two pharmacies, a few restaurants (not a lot), and a nice quiet neighborhood throughout. We did notice that many of the cars we see are of the BMW/Volvo/Saab/Alpha Romeo sort here. That, and equal testimony by both Catherine (the lady renting the place to us) and Aunt Helen, lead you to believe that actually owning a home here isn't close to cheap. Though we're seeing that as the case in a number of places.
Tuesday July 13, 1999 None of the four other places we saw really fit the bill, so we're going to go with Sandycove. It's a little more expensive for the rent, but the stuff we get in trade is remarkable. We drew up a grid in our notebook, used to make note of the various features of each place. Washing machine? Check. Furnished? Check. Allow pets? Nope. Fireplace? Sometimes. Etc etc. Now completed, the table has interesting comments on it like ``icky furniture'' and ``neat skylight''. A place in Blackrock was the second candidate, but it cost only fifty pounds less a month and had far less space. Bzzt, disqualified.
Hopefully a wire transfer from the US has been successfully processed at the Bank of Ireland, since we need that money in there in order to get the Banker's Draft (aka cashier's check) for getting the place in Sandycove. We called the bank at 6pm, but they said it didn't show up yet; in theory, the US side had been completed at about 5pm our time. Hmm. Apparently it all depends on how you do a wire transfer. If it's noted as ``urgent'', it'll be in within 24 hours of the completion of the transfer. If it's not, however, they told us it could take up to two days to be completed. Arrghh!! We've only got til Saturday to pull this off.
Tonight we're crossing our fingers that we'll successfully get the great place in Sandycove. Cygnus should be faxing Doreen the employment letter (asked 'em to send it there instead of Home Locators, no stress), and with luck the wire will credit our account tonight. Even with B's stress, Doreen will probably still let us get the place if the credit is delayed to Thursday. B is, of course, worrying unnecessarily. No matter how many times he rubs his beard, we'll get a place to live.
B's Aunt Helen offered to use her car in a couple of trips to actually move into our place when we get it. She's so nice!
Our accents have kicked in; little tilts in our words, not realized until after we say them. We're getting used to using the busses, DART, and walking fairly long distances now. Back in California, walking from our place down Castro Street to the train station was quite a hike. Now we're doing multiple mile stints and just taking them in stride. (Groan.)
There's a show from London on TV each day called The Big Breakfast, which we've realized is the predecessor to Fox After Breakfast, a show that was on in the US for about two years. Star Wars opens here on Friday. Thus, The Big Breakfast has a majority of guests from Star Wars this week, including Samuel L. Jackson, Liam Neeson, and George Lucas.
Since we stayed at the Shelbourne in April (a rather posh hotel in town where some of B's work happened for a week), we've been using it for bathroom breaks and gathering information. We tried to find a sushi bar today and borrowed their yellow pages for a moment. Three days in a row we've used their bathrooms. ;-)
We're also slowly becoming more comfortable getting to the top of a double decker bus safely, though we've both taken a header but saved ourselves in time on the stairs. You swipe your card or drop off your change at the front of the bus, and just as you reach the stairs to go up to the second level the bus kicks into gear and continues on its way. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to manage to get up those stairs and into a seat without inflicting any pain on yourself or others.
Driving here is amazing. Loraine, who took us around to see places today, could drive while talking on the cell phone. She drove a stick shift, and would alternately pull out a printout of the places we were going to see, and serve to avoid a truck/car/cat/anything in our lane. We were both hanging on for dear life. She drove a Land Rover (much like the one you can see in Jurassic Park, sans the dinosaurs attacking it of course) with the rear view mirror broken off of the window. She also had a heavy rock dropped on her foot over the weekend, thus causing a noticeable limp at each stop. (This is only of particular consideration because the task of getting into her Land Rover involved raising your legs up a good two or three feet into its cab, all the while maintaining a delicate form of balance.) A very interesting drive, that.
Elana saw a man wearing jeans that had a Camel cigarettes logo on them---wonder how much he had to smoke for those?
Wednesday July 14, 1999 Got email from Rose at Cygnus saying that they'd faxed in the letter to Doreen. Yay! Also got in touch with the bank, who after redirecting us to talk to our local branch. A wonderful fellow named Edan was able to confirm that the transfer was coming in today and we could stop by the branch to get a Banker's Draft from him, even though our current balance didn't have it noted yet.
We called Immigration, to find out what Elana will need to do to be able to stay here. We need all of her passport, both of our birth certificates, our marriage certificate, and four passport pictures of Elana. Weiiiird. We're glad that we made a point of getting copies of those papers before we left and carried them with us.
We may also need to register with the Registrar of Marriages. Apparently it's in our best interest, otherwise there's not necessarily any proof, to them, that we're married. That's okay, though---we're regularly wondering how we can prove to ourselves that we're actually married, since everyone around us believes it but we're still convinced we've played a joke on everyone. :-)
Wednesday July 14, 1999 We went in and met with Doreen at three this afternoon, with the expectation that we'd be getting the keys to our new place. No such luck, though...the letter from the Bank of Ireland, confirming that our account was in place and could support the rent payment, hadn't yet come in. Arrgh! Tuesday afternoon we went by and met with Anne, a wonderful lady in customer support at the bank who was the person we worked with in April in opening our account. We gave her the name, address, and fax number for Doreen, noting that we actually needed them to receive it, instead of Home Locators as we'd originally said earlier in the week. We weren't sure when it would be getting to them, though.
Late this afternoon we called Doreen, to see if anything had yet changed. Yep!! She received both the fax from Cygnus and, more importantly (the one she was holding out for), the letter from the bank as well. We're set to meet with her at 4pm on Thursday to sign the lease and get our place. Wheeeeeee! That's probably too late in the day to try to also move into it, but we could just do that on Friday.
Thursday July 15, 1999 We've got a home! It has two bedrooms (one of which will probably be B's office), a nice living room, dining room and a big sunny kitchen, and the whole place just got new appliances and everything. The view is KILLER. It came with pots and pans, and some kitchen utensils, and a couch and two armchairs, and a dining room table, and a great bookshelf/china cabinet, and, and, and, !!!!!!! We love this place.
The town is right behind us, leaving us with a two block walk to get groceries. The water, so big we had to take two pictures, one of the left portion and one of the right, is on the other side of us, and we can see the James Joyce tower and Forty Foot Men's Bathing area (well, part of it--it used to be a men's nekkid bathing place...we don't see that part :-) ). Across the water we look on Howth, is north of Dublin. We can watch the ferries go over to England and France (a few every day). We're gonna do that sometime soon!
Signed the papers, got the keys (one set, still need another). Wow. Only negative: Doreen told us that our phone was turned on, and that she'd take care of having the phone company change their records to show our name as having that line. Only after she left did we discover the phone actually wasn't on. Fudge! This afternoon we left her a message (she wasn't there) mentioning that, along with a cable bill in the mailbox asking for the payment for the first six months, which was now overdue. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
We called IPS Groupage, the folks handling our crate. They sent us info and a transfer of residence form, mailed to Aunt Sheelah's, the address we'd used for the shipment. The form's the trickier part; we need proof that we were in America for more than a year, and that we're going to have permanent residence here. (We luckily kept the original lease for the apartment in California, the specific piece we need for that.) We also have to come up with a bank or utility statement. This is so odd; it's all so we don't get slammed with an excise tax, which apparently is omitted for residence or people moving into the country.
Saturday July 17, 1999 We saw Star Wars on Friday, its opening day in Europe---yay! We hadn't gotten to see it back in the US. We both liked it, though B wants to get to see it in a theatre that has a really hefty sound system in it. Liam Neeson was awesome. Originally we were heading for our first dinner in Sandycove, but with no reservations, we were out of luck. Thinking the movie theater might sell hot dogs, we went in. There was reserved seating (we were in seats H7 and H8), because advance booking for movies is big here. One of the big theaters on O'Connell Street has a separate box office for it. The seats were okay. B had a man with a big head in front of him, another reason for wanting to go see it again. As for food, we got a vacuum sealed bag of popcorn (not expecting it to be fresh, pleasantly surprised when it was) and a soda. Went to Bistro Vino (a cafe for winos? :-) ) for dinner after, and they fitted us in as their last table of the night. Finally walked around the corner and home at around midnight.
Also on Friday morning, we went to the US Embassy (scary looking place) to get info on how to still vote for California/US stuff from here. This guy with a bald head and buff arms was the door guard there, and in fact helped us with the questions we had. When we mentioned that we were going to be living here for at least a year, and E would be working here, he gave us a scare. He said we had to make sure we went to immigration to register, and in particular mention that E would working here. He then gave us these doom-saying tidbits about how you can easily get deported, and how the folks in immigration will catch any fishy stories and deport you even faster. What the hell?? Way to make people feel safe, dude...
This morning we went back to the Donnybrook apartment to meet with Catherine's daughter and close everything out. We got most of our deposit back, less the electricity meter and phone costs. We were able to wire up the laptop to download email one last time (no phone at home sucks!), and at the same time chat a little with her. Turns out she's a computer science major who's just graduated and is looking around at jobs. She has an interview next week for a position involving Java development, the programming language she's most adept using. Elana reassured her that she shouldn't have much trouble finding a position...companies seem to almost salivate at the thought of getting programmers who can do Java stuff (even when those calling for the company to use it don't really have any idea what it actually is, just that their marketing people have mandated it).
Heading next into the city, we went to Arnott's and got a TV and a VCR. (We were going to try to resist it and go without any television, but couldn't do it.) The one we wanted to get wasn't in stock, though, so we'll have to wait a few days. Oh noooo!! How will we survive? Heh. They had these new plasma sets that are amazing (almost as amazing as the price they're asking for them). They're wide-screen affairs, similar in layout to that of a movie theatre's screen. Pretty fancy.
We headed to Aunt Sheelah's place, to pick up our ATM cards (she'd been nice enough to go to the bank in May and get them for us), and to get the letter from IPS Groupage, the one that would call out the fate of getting our belongings. :) We got off the bus a little early on the way to her place, and walked a good length. Free exercise! Luckily it wasn't raining, and we got to get a good look at the areas we were going through. While there, we met an interesting character. One of Sheelah's neighbors has a dog named ``Spot''. Why, you ask? Three black paws and one white one. He's really cute, but my word what a commotion when one of Sheelah's cats exchanges a glance with him. Wham, the little dog starts barking with fervor and runs erratically down the street, seemingly having lost control of the actual direction of his paws. It's clear that this is a well-engineered game on the part of the cat; while the dog's exerting amazing levels of energy to attack his nemesis, the cat leisurely jumps back over a wall to safety, a laughing expression playing across its face.
Before leaving the city, we were in search of some wax paper to properly cook some chicken for dinner. My word, the expressions we received when asking for this were remarkable. Somewhere between disbelief and mockery, the glances aimed at us were on the order of asking how to find a form of food found only in the African plains. Known to the natives simply as ``schlagh'', and retrieved by the clever trapping of a nearly extinct bird, this mythical ``wax paper'' we spoke of was certainly something you discover in the middle of a drug-induced haze. At the very least, it wasn't something your local market would carry, that's for sure. A woman at Centra's (the Irish 7-Eleven) actually told E to go to Eason's, a bookstore across the street that also sold stationery. We just pounded the damn chicken in a plastic bag with a wooden spoon. Tasted just as good. :-) The hunt continues.....
Trying to get home after giving up our search was an adventure of its own. Turns out a group called The Corrs, an Irish band that are just beginning their first world tour, were playing at Landsdowne Road, a rugby/soccer field used for concerts. (REM played there last night.) The show was a sell out (40,000 tickets), something that is unheard of for an Irish band other than U2. The street Landsdowne Road was shut to anyone but the people who lived on it (oh, yes, there are houses about 20 feet from the entrance to the field) and when the train crossed the street all we saw were about 1000 people heading down towards the venue, around 200 stopped by the train gates. The trains were jam packed with people going there; there were even trains being put through doing only that route, which is actually the first stop out of the city's center. It ended up taking a good hour and a half to actually get home, for whatever reason.
We in fact had what we thought was a great idea at the time, which turned out to not be an original thought. Rather than stand around at Tara Station (the second of three DART stations inside the city proper), we'd just get on one of those ``special'' trains headed only for Landsdowne Road. Getting off there, we'd just grab the next train headed south. The gamble was that the majority of the people on the trains were headed for the show, and thus we shouldn't have too much trouble going on the rest of the DART route southward to Sandycove.
It was in Landsdowne Road station that it became clear everyone else had come to the same realization. The resulting southbound train was also fairly packed, though it wasn't so long a ride as to make it too much of a pain. :)
So it turned out that Doreen, the agent who got us our place, was in fact not in the office on Friday. That message we left was picked up by someone in their office, but for whatever reason they didn't call the problem in at the phone company. Phooey. In calling the agent's office to learn this, B ended up using a phone in a bar near here. Three minutes later, he walked out and his beard and clothing were absolutely coated with the smell of cigarette smoke. The bar had been a solid cloud, broken only by the occasional older gentleman exhaling in the middle of a sentence that was describing why the football (aka soccer) match on the TV was a load of you-know-what.
We discovered another Internet cafe (sans any cafe really) in Dublin on O'Connell Street called Interpoint. They've got 10baseT ports (a type of plug, similar to a telephone port) for networking their machines. So that means we could go up there and plug the laptop in to download our email if we need to. (The other part of the equation, having it dynamically give us an Internet address for our machine, is also apparently set up there.) The only loss in this possibility is the fact that the laptop would need to be carried there and back. :-) Interestingly, the man staffing the center was from Texas.
Sunday July 18, 1999 First day of rain since we've been here. It's been gray all day, but not too bad overall. We walked through Sandycove to Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leery)---not a far journey---and back along the water. There was a marching band rehearsing in the park across the street, which we learned later was for a parade of bands down the Marine Parade (the street our building is on). There were about 10 bands, all with good drum sections. Of course, that was the only part we could hear, since they were going away from us, but it all sounded nice. On the way back from DL, we walked through People's Park, which we had never seen before, and stopped at Teddy's for an ice cream cone, supposedly a tradition here. Get a cone from Teddy's with the kids on the weekend, walk along the water, get back on the DART too soon and the kid throws up halfway to Dublin. Oh, sorry, that was last weekend :-). The ice cream was creamier than the soft serve cones in the US, and we even got a half of a Flake bar inserted in it. Yum! They are called `99', and according to the poster, we should ask for it by name.
Today is just a day for reading the London Times (has a lot of stuff in it...three magazines!), and being shocked by the news about JFK Jr. We, of course having no radio or TV, won't know updates until tomorrow's paper, but it is surprising. The Times had half the front page, and the whole of the next two, talking about John-John and the Camelot Curse. Too bad there isn't more in there about his wife, her sister and the flying instructor who were all in the plane with him. I would have liked to have known more about Carolyn B-K.
Monday July 19, 1999 Last night after dinner we went to a nearby pub, to check out ``the locals.'' The place was relatively full, with a soccer match up on a large screen showing the Sky Sports2 satellite feed. What was of particular note was the clientele---they were on average at least fifty years old, with a strong majority of them being female, not male. So much for those stereotypes. We sat down, ordered two pints of Guinness, and watched a bit of the game. A nice lady named Anna and her brother Jack (who's ``not good in the head''---trouble speaking and focusing his eyes) sat down next to us, and Anna proceeded to talk up a storm. Intermixed with questions about who we are and where we're from, we learned that one of Jack's sisters lives in Los Altos (the town next door to Mountain View), and another lives in Sunnyvale. Her own brother, now 73 years old, was going to come back to Ireland to rent for a year, and see how he likes it. (Much as we are.)
We spoke a bit about the safety of the area, mostly to find out for our own benefit where things are safe versus not. Anna told us about a poor girl who had her handbag taken, it being a sorry state recently as the whole country was getting more dangerous. (Drugs and all, you see...) She graciously warned us to ``stay away from the lonely spots''.
Tuesday July 20, 1999 We've got a phone! We went to the Telecom Eireann office in the city, wanting to just sit down and get it done once and for all. We spoke to the customer services person there, and he discovered that in fact the line had been turned on---four minutes ago.
In the morning, the first thing we did was go to immigration and take care of getting E registered. We felt a little more confident about things when the lady at the window said, of her own volition, how we should apply for ``post-nuptial citizenship'' for E in October, when we'll have been married for three years. We had read the same thing in some papers from the Irish Consulate in San Francisco, but weren't really sure if it was applicable yet. We were also relieved to find that the whole process here was in fact not too difficult (it helped that we called last week and found out what we had to bring, like our marriage certificate and passports). We certainly didn't get the vibe that we were this ->*<- close to getting deported, as Mr. Happy Guard hinted to us.
Today we learned, in calling for the status of our order, that the TV we were supposed to be getting had in fact been discontinued. The sales dude at the store didn't mention that to us on Saturday, of course. We did a lengthy walk back, and met up with a new sales dude who through a bunch of steps and conversations, was able to score us a different TV. (The option of taking the floor model of the one we'd originally asked for was available to us. We asked if we could get that other one over there, which was £30 more in price but would they be kind enough to give us a discount on it since we'd been going through such trouble? heh) We had to carry the VCR home (had been for sale on clearance there), since Sony themselves---not the store as was going to happen before---would be delivering the TV to us tomorrow. Wow. This other sales guy was awesome, and tried really hard to help us out. Thus you can imagine the guilt we feel now as we realize we never actually learned his name.
We took care of other little creating-your-home bits including getting a clock for the kitchen (only cost £3, about $5), dropping by the bank to get our ``Banking 365 PINs'' (their automated/online system), and E got herself some plants, including basil, chives, and other spices. :) So as is the habit for us, we managed to take the train home in the midst of rush-hour. Overall tho today felt really productive.
Random note: they're building a twelve-screen movie theatre in Dun Laoghaire, due to be done in October. It would be so awesome if they actually had THX sound there...
Wednesday July 21, 1999 Address changing day. Credit cards, bank, ISP, calling card. Of all of them, only two companies had folks taking the information who could deal with the oddities of a European address. Case in point: the system for one of the credit card companies refused to accept ``Co. Dublin'' as either the State or zip code fields. They finally had to put all of ``Sandycove, Co. Dublin'' as the city name to make it acceptable. Funnnnky.
We were in Dun Laoghaire (the town next to us, some cool stores and a big supermarket) looking at the cost of answering machines. (We brought ours over, but are having a lot of trouble finding a replacement power supply for it.) In one store they have a catalog of the various items you can get from them, in a setup similar to Service Merchandise in the US. You put down the number of the item you want, and they have it waiting for you in a pickup area. In one part of the catalog, they have a large number of phones and answering machines, or the two joined together into one device. Under every one of them, they have, ``We apologize but this product is not currently available in the Republic of Ireland.'' Like ten products per page, at a few pages deep, with every single product carrying that note next to it. What's the point of including that? One reason we were told was to make it clear which things would work with the phone/power system here, versus over in England. Kinda strange.
We luckily chose not to get anything at the store for now. When we were home that afternoon, we chatted with Aunt Sheelah, to coordinate how we'd get our stuff from her place including our two bikes that we'd brought over in April. (She actually drove the stuff over!) Anyway, we mentioned we'd been looking at answering machines, to compensate for things like folks trying to call us when we're out. (She'd done exactly that, as noted in an email she sent today. Interesting, no? :) ) She said it was good that we hadn't, since we could just sign up for Call Answering with the phone company---for free. Unbeknownst to us, both call waiting and call answering (aka voice mail) are freely available to anyone. We called to get it after trying the instructions in the phone book to no avail, and learned that our area doesn't yet have the system in place to automate the addition of the services. They put in an order, so we'll be getting it turned on in like a week. Kick butt!
Thursday July 22, 1999 Got a courier (aka guy with a motorcycle) to bring our barrage of papers over to IPS Groupage, finally. Later in the afternoon we got confirmation that they'd received them, and that the stuff was going to be forwarded on to customs. ``Now you just sit and wait,'' were the instructions. Gahh. Maybe early next week we'll hear back if customs got everything they wanted to let us get at the rest of our stuff.
Random fact learned: there aren't ``drop boxes'' for things like FedEx and UPS here. At least in the case of UPS, you call them and ask for a pickup. The guy shows up, with the envelope and airbill to fill out if you need them, and takes them from there. The weird part of all of this was discovering that FedEx doesn't really have much of a presence in Ireland. You see their trucks going around to do deliveries, but they aren't big on shipping things out of the country. The only option we'd have with them, if we were to ship something out, would be to get up to the Dublin Airport and leave it at their office there. Don't know about DHL and other companies, but as far as we can tell UPS has a hold on the market here.
In Ireland you have to pay for a television license to watch TV, tuned to the amount of £70 a year. It's not that it blocks you if you don't have one, but from what one person told us, if we go without it and they discover it, they'll whack you with a £500 penalty or somesuch. Don't really understand it, but apparently it's always been this way, and people don't take it as anything strange.
Errand day for other things: much like PG&E in California, you can use direct debit from your bank account for your electric bills. Actually it's the only viable solution---you could instead choose to give them £120 in cash or Banker's Draft, which you'll get back in fourteen months assuming you paid all of your bills on time. We opted for the bank debit (you do still get your bill each month, it's just automatically paid). Other errand was returning the phone that was in the apartment when we arrived. The phone company will give you a phone to use in your home, it seems---but they'll also charge you a rental fee for it. We're using the small black phone that E got when she was in college, and used back in Mountain View as well. We didn't get a refund of the fee when we returned it (according to the guy we were talking to, it was maybe 2 or 3 pence), but did get our account changed. Wonder what the actual fee is? The phones weren't really the fanciest but I guess they work if ya want 'em. (Tho you can get a phone for like £10, wonder what's persuasive about renting?)
Friday July 23, 1999 It's like £78 to get a power supply that'll work here with our Kodak DC210 digital camera. (The thing that's letting us put these pictures up.) What in the world?? The search continues for another solution.
The park in front of our place appears to be the romping ground of choice for dogs being taken for walks (which is just fine with E). They chase each other, stretch their extendable leashes out to their maximum length and then continue to pull their owners further. Really cute ones. :) (The dogs, not necessarily the owners.)
Ya know, TV is okay here, but it's currently controlled by two entities: ``Sky'', who own all of Sky One, Sky News, and a barrage of movie channels (Sky Premier, Sky MovieMax, Sky Movies, et al.); and RTE, the television company in Ireland. That's it. We both agree that Sky and RTE need another company in the mix, since right now it's all too centrally controlled by a small group of people, choosing what people can and can't see. E's adding that there's TV3 (shows mainly US programs, a bit out of date) and MTV UK, that's pretty much only dance music.
After dinner, we walked to the other side of the park to Teddy's, an ice cream window that is a tradition here. Got two cones, each with a stick of Flake (glorious chocolate concoction) in it, and walked back through the sunset to the apartment, on the seawall next to the water. This is why we got this apartment.
Saturday July 24, 1999 Restful day, finish the journal and get the thing uploaded finally, dammit. E's hoping that we can rent a kayak for a bit and paddle around Dublin Bay. It's gorgeous today, and we're taking into account something Sheelah said when we got here: "The weather is so dodgy, that when it's beautiful outside, you put off everything you were going to do and spend the day out. Since you don't know what tomorrow's going to be like, you enjoy the day you were given." It's clear, with a light breeze and sooooo sunny. The water is almost a Carribean blue.
