So, I’ve been back in Ireland for several weeks now. How goes the culture shock? Well, let’s make a list of the stuff I’m missing from California:
C, who’s still back there finishing up her contract. Hurry up, C!
All my friends I left behind in the US :( Come visit!
The weather (well duh)
Trader Joes: low-cost, high-quality organic and near-organic food
The excellent Mexican and Southern food. Mmm, Taco Mesa
Super-cheap cocktails — although having good Guinness makes up for a lot of this
The back country — desert, mountains, snow, national parks. Ireland may have more surviving history dotted about, but it’s just flat. I miss the mountains
Netflix — haven’t spotted a replacement for this yet. There are companies in Ireland that use a similar idea, but it appears every one just about manages to screw it up and render it useless, generally by introducing throttling, late fees, or slow turnaround. meh
The way my Irish accent meant I could get away with pretty much anything. That trick doesn’t work in Ireland ;)
In other news: the broadband choices situation has pretty much gone to shit.
It turns out that all the good options are quite dependent on local-loop unbundling, which — somehow — still hasn’t gotten around to my local exchange. As a result, guess who’s going to be stuck on the wrong end of dialup, no less, for “2 to 3 weeks” until Eircom deign to switch on the bitstream access for my new BT-resold ADSL connection? Here’s hoping there’s a neighbour with broadband and wifi when I move back in. Joy.
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