I figured I should try to write this as I go along otherwise I’ll either have one exhaustive post which will be too long, or conversely I will forget almost everything and not be able to write nada.

Yesterday was the big drive to Vegas. My word what a night. In short, we ran outta gas in the middle of the Mojave Desert and had to hitchhike to a gas station to bring some back. On top of that, the cops stopped us and treated us like drunk drivers. I was navigating but went to sleep for an hour and woke up to find we’d be going in the wrong direction for 1 hour. In summary - leave San Francisco at 4pm. Arrive at hostel in Las Vegas at 7am.

We’re so tired today that we’re not even attempting to go to the Grand Canyon today. We’ll go tomorrow. Gonna hit Vegas and do some more relaxed sightseeing, then head out to a show tonight. Have to say though, from what I’ve seen so far, Vegas is impressive. We drove past Caesars Palace, Circus Circus and loads of other famous places last night all lit up like a Christmas tree. It’s such a bizarre thing to drive through miles of desert and suddenly a huge city pops up in the middle of it. Photos to follow.

As of 3pm today I am officially on holiday. I stayed up half the night trying to finalize details of our roadtrip as my friend had to pull out last minute. So now it’s going to be 4 of us - me, Sue, and two Korean guys I’ve never met.  And Sue is Korean. So should be fun!

The first couple of days will be Vegas and the Grand Canyon.  We’re actually driving to Vegas at 3pm so I started work today at 6am after about 4 hours sleep. Then in less than 3 hours, we’re driving to Nevada which will take at least 10 hours. But our hostel in Vegas looks cool, it’s got a swimming pool and hot-tub so good times are ahead! I’m not very interested in the casinos in Las Vegas, but I’ll have to check one out just to see it*. Hopefully we’ll catch a free show though.

Grand Canyon tomorrow, then back to Vegas and then to Los Angeles for two days. Venice Beach, Universal Studios and Hollywood. I want my photo with Angelina Jolie’s star on the Walk of Fame! We leave LA pretty late on Sunday night, so we should be back in San Francisco around 2am. And I start work at 6am on Monday morning. I’m expecting much tiredness.

Some of the French people at my house got jealous of our trip and copied us. They’re renting a car too and going to Vegas today as well. But they’re going to go to Death Valley and stuff after, not really fussed about that. Valerie is one of those French people though, so I’ll see her later in Vegas. Awesome.

* I’ve set myself a gambling limit of $1. I think I can handle it.

Sailing

I signed a few forms yesterday so I am now officially a volunteer crew member on board the Alma. It’s the same boat as I was on last week, and I had a good time and even learned a bit about sailing so I thought I may as well sign up. It’s a pretty good deal - just turn up for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, do a bit of work on the boat then just keep an eye on the tourists and enjoy the view. Yesterday we had a three hour sail around the Golden Gate; the weather was beautiful and the passengers were for the most part easy going people.
My neighbour Gaelle’s boyfriend is visiting from France at the moment, so they rented a car for the weekend so they gave Valerie and me a ride up to Hyde St Pier to begin the day’s sailing. Captain Al was pleased to see us, and First Mate Alice was happy to have us on board too. There wasn’t too much to do, just raising the fore, staysail and other words I’m pretending to know. Usually the first 15 minutes of the voyage is everyone on board lending a hand, but a good proportion of the 27 tourists on board were seniors so they weren’t much help. In fact, I spent most of my time keeping them away from dangerous areas on the boat and dealing with an awkward French woman. I never noticed but the French can be very rude…
So once we got sailing, it was pretty easy going and the sun was out. I learned my lesson from last week and wore sunscreen. I actually felt a little cold at one point and had to put a jumper on. Perhaps I’m beginning to adjust to the warmer climate?! I got some cracking photos too. Definately the worst part was when we went under the bridge - the water got pretty rough and, to my delight, the auld French doll got a soaking.

My boat. Not bad eh?

Sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge

Valerie insisted on a picture with me. Spot the Damien Rice Irish hair.

I’m actually quite impressed with this picture, given the usual quality of my camera.
The sailing was fun, but afterwards we were all pretty tired, and Gaelle was moving to Berkeley so I gave them a hand to get their stuff packed into the car and had a doze for a few hours. Valerie and I headed out to the Metreon later to see The Nightmare Before Christmas, in 3D at the IMAX theater. It wasn’t pretty, you get those nerdy specs and the 3d was quite impressive in places.

Ice Skating

I took Valerie ice-skating on Friday night. I told her I was crap. She told me she was probably even more crap, so it sounded like it would be a blast. I was slightly dissappointed that they gave me rubbish skates that were a horrible pigeon sick colour. My disdain is evident in this pic:

Horrible skates, and solely to blame for my poor performance
In total I only fell once, and in my defence it’s because she pulled me down with her. In total Valerie fell 6 times I think. She was right, she was worse than me. Even worse I had to listen to her guerning about her sore arm for the rest of the night. After the skating, we went to the top of the Hilton Towers hotel where they have their ‘nightclub’. It wasn’t the best place for talent, mostly old people so we didn’t stay long.

Today was much more boring. I went to work and am considering going to the gym then getting to bed early. I start work at 7am again tomorrow. Starting next week I’ll be doing a 60-hour week to make up for the days I take off for my Grand Canyon trip. Stupid America.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Google’s share prices recently, because they’ve been going up…and up…and up. In fact, as of today, just one share in Google will cost you around $620. That’s insane! I’ve put together a few statistics just to really get my head around how huge this company has become:

So the highlighted figure is Google’s annual revenue. $181 billion dollars. One company. One hundred and eighty one BILLION dollars. Unbelievable. To put that in perspective, this is Wikipedia’s list of countries by GDP:

The oil-soaked United Arab Emirates generates $168 billion dollars of economic activity every year, which is still smaller than Google. At the moment, the search engine giant is almost bigger than Portugal. This blows my mind. I also recently read that Microsoft was bidding for a sizable stake in Facebook, like 20% or something. Turns out Facebook’s net worth is around the $500 million mark. Insane.

Does anyone remember that episode of Black Books where Manny becomes a police officer for a day? I can’t remember the plot that well, I think last time I saw it was the time Emma and I watched all three seasons back to back and that was at least a few years ago. Anyway, from what I remember, Manny stays up all night watching the Sweeney or something and drinking coffee so the next day he gets confused and ends up being mistaken for a real cop and trying to track down a criminal. Then at the end of the day he just picks up where he left off. My Saturday was kinda like that.

It was weird. In the morning I slept in after staying up very late the night before and doing absolutely nothing productive with the extra time. In the afternoon I went shopping in Haight Ashbury for a jacket, which remarkably I couldn’t find despite all the thrift shops. I ended up at Hyde Street Pier leaving my friend off there, and through one circumstance or another was recruited on board a sailing boat as crew. It was slightly confusing, a bearded guy called Captain Al asked if I knew how to coil a rope, I said no, so he showed me. Next thing I know, myself and my two French friends are volunteering on this boat for a bunch of tourists going on a bay cruise. It was fun, it was a beautiful late afternoon and we went sailing past Alcatraz and over towards the Golden Gate Bridge. I actually learned a little about sailing in the process. In fact, it was a lot of fun. I didn’t get paid for my 2 hours work but I did get a free bay cruise and a healthy bit of sun so I may just go back next Saturday. Assuming I can find Captain Al’s boat again.

On the way back from the wharf, I remembered I had completely forgotten to feed myself all day so I had a fantastic serving of clam chowder (my new favourite food) from Pier 41, and I had a very interesting talk/jam with a homeless guy playing a keyboard at the bus stop. Pity he didn’t know how to play any Journey.

In the evening I discovered it was Lisandro’s 32nd birthday (didn’t actually realise he was anywhere near that old) so we headed out to a blues bar in North Beach. It was a little crowded and definitely caters for the over 30s crowd, but was fun nonetheless.

But today I’m back at work, starting at 7am. Very wet day in San Francisco. I have a good week lined up though. Second date with Valerie tonight (ice skating at last!), going out for dinner with the office folks tomorrow (all paid for as a reward for hard work) and possibly a picnic movie at Alamo Square on Wednesday evening. Tis nice to be busy after several months of working and moving accommodation!

Saturday lunch for me back home always consisted of a big Ulster Fry, and since moving to Belfast as a student it became a more than once-weekly meal. Some have branded this national favourite as a “heart attack on a plate” but there are very few Irish people that don’t enjoy a good fry every so often.

Since moving to San Francisco, I have missed my native cuisine immensely so yesterday I decided to do something about it. I went to Safeway to pickup a short list of items to make my very first American Ulster Fry. Below was my list of items I deemed essential to complete the meal:

• Sausages (pork or beef, preferably with apple or Guinness)
• Bacon (hickory smoked back bacon)
• A egg (cooked sunny side up)
• Potato bread (called fadge when fried)
• Baked beans
• Soda bread (again, fried)

Safeway has a huge selection of food available, but sadly they don’t give much consideration to the Irish. The sausages I chose were ‘British Bangers’ which was the closest they had to a normal sausage without straying into Bratwurst country. Bacon was easier, Americans love their bacon. So much so that it’s laughable to expect to buy six rashers in a pack. Instead, I had to fork out for a pound (1 lb) of hickory smoked back bacon - like 15 rashers! Eggs proved difficult, they only sell eggs by the dozen so I decided to leave the eggs for now and mooch one off the French girls. Potato bread is practically non-existent, which saddens me because it’s probably my favourite part of the fry. Soda bread too was scarce and I happened to go shopping on the day they were sold out. Luckily, they had plenty of baked beans albeit without the traditional tomato sauce. I chose ‘country style’ which had a barbecue flavour and extra brown sugar.

So at the end of my shopping trip, my actual shopping purchases actually looked like this:

• Crappy ‘British’ sausages (sage and onion flavour)
• Too much bacon (with more fat than meat)
• No potato bread (sadness ensued)
• No soda bread (disappointment again)
• Barbecue baked beans in a ‘family size’ tin (much farting resulted from these)

When I got home, I started to cook along with some Korean girls. They were naturally curious as to what I was preparing and after explaining it was our national dish, they expressed interest in sampling some. Here’s a few photos of my culinary excellence:

You’ll probably have noticed the beans in the second picture. It’s not a bad photo, they really were that horrible baby poo colour. And they tasted absolutely awful. In fact, after smelling the beans, the Korean people suddenly didn’t want any anymore so I was left to eat the whole thing. I have loads of leftover bacon because I just couldn’t face eating a pound of the stuff. My overall verdict was that it was by far the worst fry I have ever cooked. I’m even embarrassed to associate myself with such a disgrace of a meal. Don’t think I’ll be cooking another fry anytime soon unless the six aforementioned ingredients are all available and to my regular standards.

Oh, and the French girls didn’t have any eggs. Valerie used her last 3 eggs to make a French omelette which turned out worse than my fry and smelled very bad.