Thank goodness for electronics

My last post complained about the lack of stuff – glass half empty (more like 80 percent) sort of stuff.

Now I’ll try to look on the bright side.  I am very grateful for the iPod and the docking station we purchased.  What little furniture we have is concentrated on the lower level (garden level or basement, depending on your point of view).  So I spend a nontrivial amount of time down there, often listening to music.
Lately, I have been amused by my rather eclectic musical library, with interesting sequences of songs.

Yesterday (which is indeed gone now), ORBJ (younger daughter) was very cute and she was shaking her fists (her version of dancing) to a somewhat obscure 80s hair band, Tesla.  The song – Yesterdaze Gone – did have a good beat.  She continued with the next selection of Abba’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man after Midnight).”

This morning had more amusing playlists such as Motley Crue, Jay Farrar, the Doors, the Cure, and Billy Joel.  All good stuff, but I’m not sure how many people would enjoy all the songs.

Here I should point out that a substantial part of my CD collection is from the late 80s and early 90s (which included my college years), where I joined, cancelled, and rejoined the BMG music club a few times.  Through careful purchasing, I bought 100 or so CDs for an average price of $3-$4.  Even now, it seems like a good use of my summer and part-time job money (grading papers, washing dishes, etc.).  During my time in San Francisco, I added to my CD collection via the clearance isles at Amoeba Records in the Haight.

Finally, I love watching Wimbledon the BBC.  I will love it even more after the Brits (other than Murray) lose so I can watch the best matches instead.

Waiting for Stuff (not Guffman)

It has been nearly 6 weeks since the movers packed up our stuff in Kentucky.  Yet our stuff still has not made it to Ireland, let alone our house.

I apologize if I’ve complained about this before, but it is one of my greatest frustrations at the moment.  Earlier, I noted how meal preparation has been affected by the lack of items such as a peeler or can opener.  Similar challenges also arise from a lack of measuring cups / spoons and a lack of spices.  With the lousy weather and time on my hands (unlike LBJ, who already started work), I’d like to make a nice big batch of chili.  But there are simply too many obstacles.

This week, I caught a cold.  I’m feeling better, except when I have a coughing fit.  Being sick is another area where it would be really nice to have our stuff.  I’d love to relax on the couch and put my feet up, but we have no couch.  I also think we packed a few medicines, etc. that would be useful, too.

Another thing I have learned here is that over the counter (OTC) medicines are WAY more expensive here than in the U.S.  Supermarkets here don’t sell stuff; as far as I can tell, a pharmacy is the only place to buy such items.  I just wanted something like Nyquil to help me sleep with coughing or being so congested.  I got a small bottle that cost 8 euros – roughly 10 dollars if not more.  And the bottle was tiny – 10 servings.  A generic equivalent in the U.S. is about 3 dollars.  Oh well, what can you do?

Back to our stuff: the latest estimate is that our stuff will arrive in Dublin port, or at least in Ireland, sometime late next week.  Then it needs to clear customs.  This has been quite a challenge for us, as the customs department requires substantial documentation to show that we were living in the U.S. and we are now living in Ireland.  Otherwise, they will charge us VAT (value added tax), which is in excess of 20 percent.  We did not keep a lot of documentation from the U.S. – didn’t think we’d need old utility bills, etc.  But my parents nicely mailed us copies of our last utility bills (we forwarded our mail to them).  Fortunately, the gas bill listed the duration of service, illustrating that we were in Kentucky for 6 years.  We are hopeful that this bill plus a couple years’ tax returns will be sufficient proof.

Then, if we’re really lucky, our stuff will clear customs late week AND get delivered to us by the end of the week.  Otherwise, we should get our stuff the first week of July, 7+ weeks after it left our “old Kentucky home”.

Heat

We are making ever so slow progress on getting settled.  Over the weekend, we finally got the heat to start working.  You’d think that we could have waited a few months on that task; it’s summer, after all.

But you’d be wrong.  The last tenant moved out in March, so the place hadn’t been heated since then.  So it had a chill, even with nice weather upon our arrival (in the 60s F, that is).  But lately it’s been cool and rainy, with highs in the 50s.  So heat would be pretty nice.
It was quite a saga to get it fixed.  First, the heating guy says that there is not electricity to the thermostat, so he has no clue whether it’s working or not.  The electrician fixes the problem.  The subpar gardeners hired by the landlord (his preferred gardener was out of town) apparently clipped a few electrical wires.  That’s surprising given how little of the hedges they seemed to clip! 

Then we traded texts and voice mails with the landlord / owner (it’s a house) until he finally understands that we’re cold and without heat.

So the heating guy shows up at 8:15 on a Saturday morning (when the kids actually slept until 8!).  After about 3 minutes, he determines that the problem is an air lock.  He shows LBJ how to address future air locks, and we’re in business.  So we occasionally use the heat in the middle of June.

It’s quite a change from Kentucky, when we tried to avoid using the AC in May if possible.  We often succeeded by being out of town for the last two weeks.

So, we appear to have all the utilities, etc. working, a mere 4 weeks after arriving in the country.  If only our furniture would arrive…

Polish beer

Why, you say, is a blog about the move to Ireland talking about Polish beer?  Did we sneak away to Poland for a few days?  If so, why?

No, this post is about Polish beer because Lidl, one of the grocery stores where we shop, has a special on Polish beers.  Why, you ask?  Because Poland is one of the co-hosts of the Euro 2012 soccer (i.e. football) tournament.  Ireland qualified for the tournament  (unlike the last World Cup).  As a big fan of Polish beer (from my days living in the Chicago area, which has a reasonable Polish population, and therefore a reasonable selection of Polish and other Eastern European beers).  All in all, 6 Polish beers were featured.  I purchased all 6 (most beers can be purchased individually), and here is a brief statement of each:

Lech: This was the most expensive beer (although hardly expensive).  It was disappointing, as it had very little taste.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t particularly good either.

Tyskie: This was the last beer I tried.  At this point, I had a hard time distinguishing it from the other beers.  It had more taste than Lech (or likely Tatra).

Zywiec: this is my favorite Polish beer.  In fact, my Chicago-based friend TK and I consumed a couple of these the last time my family and visited Chicago back in May.  So I was quite happy to find this at a reasonable price.

Warka: I was pleasantly surprised by this offering.  It has a good, golden color and a reasonable flavor.  It has some body (i.e. “umph”) but is still pretty smooth.

Tatra: It had a bit more flavor than the Lech beer, but it was not as good as the Warka beer.  The Lidl ad described it as “an easy drinking, refreshing beer”.  I suppose that’s true, but I also like a bit of flavor in my beer, and this beer fell a little short.

Argus: this is the cheapest beer by about 50% (at a euro a can).  It was perfectly respectable, and it tasted much better than anything you could get in the U.S. at the same price.  This beer and Warka were both good value beers.  But I’ll probably buy Zywiec, as they are essentially the same price.

To sum up the Polish beer, I liked them all.  I was disappointed by Lech and surprised by Argus.

After I’ve started work (and thus started receiving a paycheck), I plan to frequent a wine and beer shop in the neighborhood.  They claim to have a wide selection of Irish craft beers, and I look forward to trying them in the near future.  I’ve tried one so far (thanks to D. for sharing), and it was quite good – O’Hara Irish Pale Ale.

Hot press

The hot press is a curious staple of Ireland (and elsewhere in Europe, I imagine), but it is unheard of in the U.S.  The basic idea behind the hot press is to use the heat created by the hot water heater to provide a spot for drying clothes to reduce the need for a clothes dryer.  Let’s face it – the clothes dryer takes a bunch of electricity to do a job that can occur naturally.  Is it not mere coincidence that no clothes dryer is rated as Energy Star (or whatever the energy efficient designation for electrical appliances is called).  In good weather, a clothesline will suffice.  However, in Ireland, a clothesline is not always so useful in the rain (i.e. liquid Irish sunshine).  So, the hot press contains a lot of slats on which one can hang clothes to dry.  It seems perfectly sensible and a better use of what, in the U.S., is wasted space.  In our former home in Kentucky, the hot water heater and furnace were in the cellar (dirt covered), where I tried to avoid going – my wife was even more successful in her avoidance of the cellar.  Anyway, this is a long-winded to post to say that I like the concept of the hot press.  It seems to be common in old homes as well as new.  This house is 200+ years old and has a hot press.  My in-laws house, built in the 1920s or 1930s, has one as well.  A friend of my wife’s, we’ll call her LG for short, has one in her house that she just completely renovated down to the studs.

By the way, we also have a dryer in our house, which is quite rare for Ireland.  In two weeks, we have used it once – to dry FABJs pajamas because they weren’t quite dry at bedtime.  Somehow, we forgot to pack more than one set of long-sleeve pajamas.  The rest of them are “on the boat” as we describe everything that we shipped (as opposed to bringing with us on the plane).

Parks for yummy mummies and immigrants

We have discovered two nice parks with a 10-15 minute walk of our rental house.  It is interesting to note the contrast in the two.  The first is located in Blackrock park, quite close to a shopping center.  It is the closer park, and you get nice views of the sea en route.  It is fairly small, but the equipment is nice.  Because I did not know about the existence of the second park, this first park is the one I’ve frequented with the girls.  However, I noticed a couple of things about the park.  First, it is never very crowded.  Admittedly, it is a bit exposed, and it is at the bottom of a hill, so it’s not ideal.  Second, English is rarely spoken by the parents or kids in this park.  I’ve seen a couple of Irish families there for a few minutes, but the “regulars”, those I’ve seen multiple times, are not native English speakers.  Thus, I refer to this as the immigrants’ park.

I made my first visit to the second park on Saturday (my wife LBJ took the girls there on Friday as well).  This park is located in a more upmarket neighborhood, and the parents there are pretty well off.  Thus, LBJ has labeled this park as the yummy mummy park.  As you can infer, a “yummy mummy” refers to an upper-class, attractive mother.  The term is popular in the UK as well as Ireland (perhaps elsewhere as well).  Anyway, the kids like this playground better because it has better slides and climbing options, as well as a see-saw.  But it is a bit further away.

Once LBJ goes to work on Tuesday (Monday is a bank holiday here), I’ll have to figure out which park to frequent.  I’m not a mummy, I’m an immigrant, and I’m lazy.  But the kids (and LBJ, of course) like the YM park better.  And, as mentioned in a previous post, I can do my glass recycling there.  I could easily put the glass bottles in the bottom of the stroller.

That leads me to my final thought for today’s posting.  Strollers are great for storing stuff when running errands!  I’ve even been tempted to take the stroller (without a child) for ease of carrying the stuff home from the local supermarket (a five-minute walk away).

I can see!

On Saturday, I picked up my new glasses from Specsavers (Lenscrafters is probably the closest U.S. equivalent).  I am very excited to have glasses that aren’t broken.  Needless to say, it became tiresome to keep trying to fix the broken ones.  I am also pleased that they gave me a 50% off coupon for the next 6 months.  I suspect that I’ll get a backup pair given the annoyances of going without a back up pair.  Surprisingly, the glasses were cheaper than a comparable pair in the U.S.  This pair was about 2/3 the cost of my last pair, although the frames are not a name brand (the pair that broke were Fossil).

In general, we have learned the hard way about modern conveniences and the inconveniences of doing without them.  For example, on Friday night LBJ (“Da missus”, as she prefers) wanted to make a simplified version of coq au vin.  However, this task was complicated by the lack of a peeler (for the carrots) or a can opener (for the canned – “tinned” – tomatoes).  I don’t know how she improvised.  In the case of the can opener, I don’t think I want to know, especially after seeing the top of the empty can!

“Now for something completely different”: recycling is a bit different than the U.S.  Curbside recycling accepts fewer items.  At least I assume it will – we’re still waiting for them to bring the bins so we can start recycling, etc. rather than our current strategy of putting everything in the 2 bins that were left by a previous owner.  Sprinkled throughout the area are containers for recycling glass, with different container for different colored glass: clear, brown, and green.  It appears that our closest glass recycling spot is near a nice playground – the playground will be the topic of a future post.  I am not sure where cardboard gets recycled, but my father-in-law offered to take our cardboard with his as he was driving to the cardboard recycling.  He was convinced that he had a large load until we showed up with cardboard from bunk beds, another bed, a futon, a small couch, and two lights from Ikea.  And we still have some of that in our living room because the kids are using them as toys.  Who needs toys if you have giant cardboard boxes (if you’re 2 or 4 years old, that is)?  I still haven’t figured where to recycle all the Ikea plastic wrapping (admittedly, we’ve used the unripped bags as trash bags).

broken bed

Ok, before your mind wanders too far down the gutter, let me explain how I broke it.  I got up around 6am to attend to an unhappy child.

The bed in question is an Ikea futon.  We put it together on a Saturday night after the kids went to bed (at the grandparents’ house).  Ikea furniture is not the easiest to assemble, as many of you know.  I blame the wine we drank to assist with the assembly.  Apparently, we didn’t get the futon quite right.  If you sit down (or try to get out of bed) at the spot where the back and the base meet, the bet folds partway back into the futon position.  Fortunately, LBJ has been able to fix it each time I forget and sit in the wrong spot.  However, her patience is wearing thin.

Summer finally arrived in Dublin today.  For the first time in our roughly 10 days here, it rained (drizzled, mainly) on and off nearly all day.

We celebrated this fine weather by spending some quality time at the GNIB, the place where foreigners (i.e. me) register.  Or, as FABJ called it, the place to “make me Irish.”  It was an interesting mix of people.  As in LBJs U.S. citizenship ceremony, the continent of Africa was well represented.  As were the Philippines and the middle East.  Anyway, after a fair amount of waiting and the taking of a picture and lots of fingerprints, I have my Certificate of Registration card, which is “not an identity card.”  But I think it gets me in Ireland the next time I leave.  I can’t wait to repeat this procedure a year from now.

Hostages in Ireland

My wife (we’ll call her LBJ to protect her anonymity) suggested today’s post.  Hostages you say?  That’s right.  Our wine glasses are being held hostage.

Perhaps some background information is in order.  LBJ bought these wine glasses in the spring.  We unpacked a few for daily use, and put some in the garage.  I put them up high (a shelf above my car) to protect them.  That was my fatal mistake.  I had one meeting on moving day, and I was in this meeting when the movers packed up the garage.  And … you guessed it, they didn’t see the wine glasses.  So I shipped them to my wife in care of her parents here in Dublin.  Alas, the Dublin customs people did not read the form to see my comment “shipping to self”, so they charged us 65 Euro in VAT charges.  The Irish postal service paid the VAT and billed us.  We, of course, don’t want to pay VAT on our own wine glasses.  So we (i.e. LBJ) are jumping through the hoops to try and get our stuff without paying the VAT.  We’ll see how that goes.

In other news, our older daughter (FABJ …) seemed to enjoy, or at least tolerate, her first day of school in Ireland.  It’s hard to tell – she’s already mastered the teenage quality of telling us essentially nothing about her school day.  For now, I’ll just say that this school goes until the end of June, and they were willing to let FABJ go for the month of June.  Assuming all goes well, she can start in the next grade in September.  If not, she’ll essentially repeat pre-K (called junior infants here).  Given that she was not exactly intellectually challenged this year (aside from being too lazy to read at times), we are optimistic about her chances for progressing to senior infants next year.

Last but not least, I am about to drink my first Guinness in Ireland.  Sadly, it’s been over a week.  We’ve been too busy unpacking and too tired at night to ask the grandparents to babysit for a trip to the pub.  When I discovered that Guinness was on sale (8 500ml cans for 10 euro), I went to the shops after FABJ went to bed.  I believe the beer is sufficiently chilled – Sláinte!

School Sports Day and Lidl

On Tuesday, we took our older daughter to her new school to meet her teacher and see her classroom, etc.  Her first “real” day is tomorrow.  They had a “sports day” today, with kids doing all sorts of games / sports like basketball, badminton, etc.  Despite my research suggesting no gains to Catholic school on many dimensions, my daughter is enrolled in one.  They are hard to avoid in Ireland, and they are subsidized.  Ireland has a voucher-like system that many of my right-leaning former colleagues in Kentucky want.  It was amusing to see a bunch of small children running around trying to do sports in their school uniforms, which for 4 and 5 year olds is a polo shirt and track pants.  The uniforms get worse as the kids get older.

After that, we went shopping for food at Lidl.  Lidl and Aldi are owned by the same parent company as Trader Joe’s.  So the store has many of the same fine qualities as TJs: good food at low prices largely due to a lack of name brands.  However, the décor of Lidl is pretty much nonexistent.  It’s an ugly store, and employees are endangered species.  But, again, the food is good and the prices are really cheap.  I’m looking forward to trying all the obscure beers I’ve never heard of, many from Poland in honor of its role as co-host of the Euro 2012 soccer championships.  I guess Ukrainian beers aren’t as popular.

My only accomplishment of the afternoon was to find a place to send a fax so I get the Irish equivalent of a social security number.  And I registered my Leap card, which provides access to various forms of public transit in Dublin (bus, light rail, commuter rail).  It’s like the Oyster card in London or the Clipper card in SF or whatever it’s called in Hong Kong.  In fact, my trip to a Centra convenience store to “top up” my card reminded me of stopping in 7-Eleven in Hong Kong.