ダニエルの冒険

There are lots of things I really like about being here, but a lot of things I don’t like too. Fortunately, the things I don’t like seem like they’ll go away as I get used to my new lifestyle. Good things about living here:

• The food.
• People aren’t afraid to talk to themselves or sing to themselves in public. In Ireland or Japan I always have to stop myself doing this.
• Everyone’s really nice and no one hassles you. Even the homeless people are great people and I gave a couple of dollars away to a few. One guy had a sign asking for money for “ALCOHOL RESEARCH”, and I didn’t give any to him.
• Way less homogenous than Ireland or Japan. I’ve hardly seen any “Americans” like you might think from watching TV or films, but mainly immigrants or naturalised citizens from China and other eastern countries such as Vietnam or Thailand, and Eastern Europeans, from Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Poland, etc. Black people are so cool. It’s like they have more personality and charm than five whites or a dozen Japanese. Although the only people in the world with filthier language is the Irish.
• Lots of public transport. The muni’s really handy and the N will bring me straight to work (Judah & Sunset up to Montgomery).
• Dollar is totally getting the smackdown from the Euro. Everything is so cheap!!
• Nice room. I even have a DVR (Digital-Video-Recorder… same as Sky+) and internet that’s so fast that when I ran a speed-test from the wireless I got 20Mb/sec, which is 2.5MB/s, which is the speed I get on my wireless. As in, the external internet connection is so fast that the bottleneck in my line out is actually my own network equipment, not the ISPs. Dealing with eircom all these years, this is really new for me.
• tv.com‘s TV schedule, the Internet Movie Database‘s release dates, Rotten Tomatos‘ showings information, Google Maps’ Street View, and many video sharing sites are not only faster but actually contextually relevant. Usually I have to add a day to TV showings and then download from the internets, do a bit of research to figure out the Irish release date of films, go to my local cinema’s listings for cinema showings, can’t use Street View, and I never realised how fast streaming videos can load. I always assumed that they were configured to upload the video data to the user at about 110% of the bitrate of the content, but after all, that’s just because I was always viewing from Japan or Ireland.
• The TV. I love American TV. Last night at the same time there were about seven fantastic films on all at once. Pretty much every TV show that I really enjoy is American, with the exception of a few british comedies (Peep Show, the IT Crowd, Saxondale…) and a handful of Japanese dramas (Hana Yori Dango, Gokusen…).
• The radio. Japanese radio’s kinda crappy. Irish radio is boring (you have: loads of talk-shows, always talking about things I don’t care about; R&B pop; more R&B pop; non R&B pop music yet music that I just don’t enjoy (the likes of 2FM or Limerick’s 95FM always play songs I don’t know by bands I don’t know… am I too young??); Lyric FM, which is nice but I can’t listen to it for more than 10 minutes). Here there are lots of great stations playing great music by performers I’m familiar with.
• Japan Town. It’s such a sanctuary for me. To be honest, I felt myself getting a little stressed today, but I went to Japan town and talked to a lovely old lady called Kazuko Sasaki for a while, while she was selling raffle tickets, and it was really relaxing to speak to someone in Japanese. I actually forgot I was in America for a while!!

Bad things about living here:

• The food. Everything has high-fructose corn syrup, except the “natural” food products, which have sugar. I can’t eat either.
• The fridge froze my drinks.
• The general uncertainty that hovers over me until I get into a routine. I spilt pepsi on my sheets this morning. What do I do about washing them? What about the rest of my dirty clothes? What sort of washing up powder should I get? Where should I go when I need a haircut? What will I do about food considering my no-sugar diet? What time do all the shops close? What about recycling and throwing out stuff? What will I do with my housemates (who I haven’t had the chance to speak to yet) about stuff like towels in the bathroom? Why can’t I get out of the habit of saying “toilet” and start saying “restroom” so I don’t sound so rude? What words do I say that won’t be understood? Why do I catch words more easily in Japanese in Japan than in English from the foreigners here (I think a girl spoke to me in Spanish today. Am I not white enough?)? Is my research today enough to get me to work on time? What should I do about breakfast tomorrow? What should I do about dinner today?
• I’m still getting used to figuring out how public transport works. In Japan, you open your phone, enter from where, to where, and when, and it tells you where to go at what time to get where you want to be. Not as simple here.
• Time difference between here and other countries sucks. Whenever I go onto World of Warcraft the whole place is empty, as evening here is middle of the night in Europe. As soon as I get home from work, everyone at home will be gone to sleep. As for Japan, it’s not as bad, but if any of my friends happen to be at college or working from 9-5, that’s basically no communication for that day.

Detailed account of my first weekend coming soon.