I arrived in Dublin this morning around 10 am for the first leg of a 5-week round-the-world usability tour for work. I like Dublin so far. I haven't seen much, but it reminds me of Noe Valley (in SF) or maybe Notting Hill in London. Or at least the bits around Trinity College, Merrion Sq., and Fitzwilliam Sq.
What I've learned so far:
(1) Ambien is great. I slept almost the entire plane flight. My Peltor ear mufflers and an eye mask helped too. I've always hated sleeping pills and painkillers -- I don't like the total blackout feeling, the where-did-my-8-hours go. But when I went to Vienna for New Year's last year, the jet lag f*cked me up for about 5 days and the only reason I got over it was because I went to St. Anton and boarded all day. Anyhow, I asked the doc for the meds this time to help regulate my sleep.
(2) I saw a horse wearing [faux] antlers.
(3) The Davenport rules 'cuz it has adapters for US and European plugs built into the wall. Yay, I can charge my toothbrush without buying an adapter!
(4) I forgot to pack pajamas & bought a pair at La Senza. I love La Senza. It's cute, not expensive, and holds up as well as any other brand of lingerie I've bought.
(5) I have cellular connection in Europe! Not on my Verizon-powered Treo, naturally, because Verizon doesn't have roaming agreements with any non-North-American networks, because clearly they hate me. I had to buy an unlocked GSM phone ($150 razr from cellhut) a couple of weeks ago and today I bought an Irish SIM. I was able to buy EUR 10 of credit at the shop. I quickly ran out today, making a couple of calls to the U.S., and was able to top up via phone without actually giving them any sort of payment or billing information. I wonder how this will work. Obviously at some point they will want me to give them money or I won't get to use the phone.
(6) I set up my US 415 SkypeIn number to forward to my Irish cellphone. This means that U.S. people can dial the US number and it gets routed via VOIP to my Irish cellphone. I pay SkypeOut minutes (cost to connect to a real phone from Skype, which are cheap); incoming calls to my cellphone are free. Not bad. Sound quality is a B+.
(7) Tomato relish sounds like a nice thing that I would enjoy eating on a grilled cheese sandwich. Unfortunately, it turned out to be ketchup. Yuck.