ダニエルの冒険

The Aer Lingus plane had seat-back entertainment with on-demand films, TV, and music, and even thought it was glitchy and had to be rebooted a few times by the air hostess (is it ok to call them that?), it worked well enough in the end. They were all running Linux, by the way. I arrived in San Francisco Airport and found where the shuttle vans were. I found the SuperShuttle people but they couldn’t find my booking in their computer, even though I’d paid $18 online through my credit card, and after spending ages sitting in the van waiting for more customers to come, I eventually just gave up and got a taxi for $42 from the airport to the house. When talking to the SuperShuttle people, I noticed that all the drivers were almost all Chinese and the lady checking my booking was from Bulgaria. The driver who I got in the end was called Mischa or something and sounded very Eastern European (and was really rude). The taxi driver was from the Ukraine. This trend still continues. Whatever about Limerick, it’s actually not very common to see white American citizens unless you’re downtown where it’s more crowded.

I arrived and met the owner, Karen, who showed me my room, which is as they say here, ‘awesome’. I have a toaster, microwave, fridge/freezer (but the fridge part doesn’t seem to work so all my drinks are frozen), TV with cable and DVR (though it’s been on the fritz for the last couple of days… Karen kindly ordered a new cable box though), queen size bed with a really comfortable mattress, and I can see the ocean from my window. It’s a short walk from that tram/subway thing (the Muni) that runs right up to my office. It takes about 45 minutes from leaving my apartment to getting into the office.

After Karen showed me around, she told me where the nearest supermarket, “Safeway”, is and I went there to get some shopping done. I couldn’t find any bread without sugar or high fructose corn syrup and actually had a bit of a panic attack at the super market, looking at every single sliced pan and feeling a sort of “water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink” feeling. In the end, I just bought orange juice, Diet Pepsi Max, and bananas. I spoke to the guys at work today and they mentioned some brands and some shops that have actual real bread and real food and one of the guys is diabetic so he knows all the tricks. Can’t wait to be able to eat toast.

I’m still a total public transport n00b. On Sunday I tried finding the station for the Muni and had some trouble with it so I asked a lady at a bus shelter if she knew if I could get downtown from there. She was Polish, which shouldn’t have surprised me because white = eastern european here, and was really helpful. I thought I had two dollars, but I didn’t read my coins correctly and it turned out it was actually two quarters I had, and I mentioned “I don’t have correct change”, but she understood it as “I don’t have enough money” and actually handed me a dollar bill! I paid the fare and paid her back immediately once I figured out that I misunderstood the currency. I also got my coins mixed up again today. They all look the same to me!!! In Europe and Japan the colour and size vary so much it’s easy to understand but the US dollar is such an ugly, uninteresting currency I can’t get used to it.

I did get my Muni pass sorted though, which is in the form of a $45 card which allows me ride as much as I want all month. Without this I would spend about $100 a month on fares, from my calculations.

I also got a phone sorted out today. Verizon Wireless (just because the only person I know in the US who I’d call is Cassie, who’s on Verizon, and it’s free to call the same network any time). It’s a prepaid phone, and interesting in that it only charges you for the days you use it. If I don’t use it at all in a day, I pay nothing, but if I do use it, it’s 99c for that day. 10c/min for calls to any US number. 10c to send/receive a text message. The phone was $50 plus tax and I bought $30 credit which brought me up to just under $100 for the lot.

Yesterday I went to Japan Town and spoke to an old lady (Sasaki-san) for a while. It was really great speaking in Japanese to someone and made me feel at home, in the same sense as I felt at home when I was in Japan. I really do feel relaxed in a Japanese environment and being in Japan town, surrounded by Japanese people and Japanese culture really helped me lose some stress that had been building up that day, it being my first weekend. I asked her about getting a digital camera and she recommended Circuit City on Van Ness. I actually bought it in the smaller shop across the street, called “VIDEO ONLY”, for $249.99, and a 4GB HD-SD card for $33. It’s a Canon Powershot SD 1100 IS, which is basically the same as the one I lost on the plane, but with image stabilisation and a few more fun features like colour swap and colour accent. The image stabilisation works really well and is going to be a great help to me. I usually take two or three of the same shot and pick whichever is the steadiest, but with the IS feature, it’s rare that a shot isn’t steady. Can’t wait to try some night shots with it!

I picked up a leather carrying case (official Canon hard leather one!) and new earphones in Circuit City, got some dinner in Mc Donald’s and went home.