A Time to Make Friends

A tiring, whirlwind two-week trip for work finally came to end this past week and I finally got enough sleep last night to spend some time blogging it:

New York
The trip started off in NYC, where our office is nicely situated near Times Square, although it's definitely gotten ridiculously crowded. I'm no New York veteran by any means, but I've finally gotten to the point where I've seen most of the popular sites in the city to just enjoy bumming around. The Times Square area was of course bustling as always:



I was unfortunately there for only one night, but managed to catch up with a couple folks who I hadn't seen in a couple of years, first off was dinner with Jesse, a fellow Cedro staff member when freshmen actually thought we knew what we were doing. We went to some hole in the wall burger place that's situated in the stylish Parc Meridien hotel:



Not one to normally turn down a drink, he called it an early night on account of illness, so I instead grabbed a drink with a fellow high school volleyballer:



London
Next stop: London! I had gone last July when things were going fairly poorly with our project, so it was definitely better to go back under better circumstances. With a few full days here, it was also nice to get to catch World Cup games with British commentators who sound oh so intelligent about football. Watching Englad scratch out a few goals to beat T&T at the office was great, followed by hanging out with another high school friend, whose company rented out a huge screen and invited the neighboring offices:



Bored of the Sweden game, Roger and I then headed out to grab some grub by the river. I've known him pretty much since I started school in Singapore; we go way way back (about as far back as any non-family member that I still keep in touch with), so it was fun to catch up:



Food in London can be pretty terrible. I had to of course devour some fish n chips one night, the greasy stuff was actually pretty good, but unfortunately ketchup is a little hard to come by:



Luckily, some of my coworkers directed me to better food, including Wagamama, which was thankfully near work and where I ate lunch instead of at the office. James also took me to a random burger place, which had quite the mountainous burger which I of course completely devoured:





Before heading out of town, I took a stroll from the Tower of London back along the south bank of the Thames back to Victoria and caught some nice sites. It was a really nice week weather-wise in London and the route is highly recommended. A requisite shot in front of Parliament and Big Ben:



Dublin
Instead of spending the weekend in bustling London, I headed to... Dublin? It was nice, although somewhat nondescript, but the main reason was hang out with... another high school friend! Beth married an Irish fellow and moved out to Dublin after college and I don't think I had seen her since high school graduation, so it made for a lot of catching up. I spent a lot of the weekend hanging out with Beth, Larry (her husband), and Paul (Larry's Irish friend). It was a grand time, plenty of drinks (can you believe Tiger beer is a premium beer here), crass language (half of which I had trouble understanding due to the thick Irish accent, but clearly making out "shite"), World Cup action (silly Americans unable to score), and a combination of everything (an intoxicated Irishman calling the Ghanians "savage" for their excellent play against Brazil):



The highlight in terms of sightseeing in Dublin was the Guiness factory tour, which was also actually kind of boring. Guiness is pretty gross, but the drink was included with the tour, so I felt compelled to try some:



Check out Beth's blog for a more photo-packed tour of a Dublin neighborhood.

Hamburg
Last stop was Germany, which I really enjoyed when visiting Munich and Berlin while on my Central Europe tour with my brother before I started work. Hamburg was somewhat like Munich, minus the beer halls, with the addition of a lot of waterways and bridges. It was a nice town built around a massive harbor, which I checked out while walking through the city:



In each of the World Cup cities, there was a fanfest set up. The one in Hamburg included 32 tents, one for each country, serving the country's food. I went both nights I was in town, the second of which with a coworker to watch the Brazil - Japan game. After grabbing some Costa Rican food, we took in the sights, including...

The sweet TV screen:


The multitude of people:


The craziness of fans:


The time to make friends:


It was super sweet to be in the heart of World Cup country, hearing the ceaseless honking of horns after matches, and enjoying the matches.

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What was my favorite? Hard to say... all the cities were great for different reasons. New York is always fun and will always have friends to meet, London has so many sights to see and great for supporting the English football team, hanging out with Beth and folks in Dublin, and the World Cup in Hamburg!

Uploaded some more photos in my gallery what a pain.. I'll have to try Picasa Web Albums next time.

Oh yeah, I also did work during the weekdays.

Random travelling tidbits

Random smattering of thoughts (forgot the camera cable, so no pics):

- Wrong side of the road is confusing; despite growing up in Singapore, I'm already conditioned, whether it's walking into oncoming pedestrian traffic as I walk on the right side or looking the wrong way when I cross the street (I now just always look down since they have painted on the street which way to look)

- Airlines are stupid; they do know that the napkins packaged with condiments always smell strongly of pepper, don't they?

- The English take their football much more seriously than Americans; pubs routinely disallow entry if prospective patrons are wearing any football affiliations to avoid confrontations

- Europeans are much friendlier than New Yorkers; they actually randomly introduce themselves to me, although cheek kissing still freaks me out

- American English is so boring; it's fun hearing all sorts of accents in the London office, even swearing like "ass" sound so elegant with an accent

- My wallet's mis-sized; is it really that weird that we have a currency that's all the same color and same size? I can never fit the bigger bills!

- Attending international school and Stanford rocks; the world feels like a much smaller place when you have someone to visit almost everywhere you go

Catching up on photos...

Oops, it's been a while... quick summary of the last couple weeks:

1) Went to the first A's game of the season a couple of weeks ago when Ruth was in town.. picked up tickets to the game against the Giants thinking Bonds would have done his dirty deed by then, but he went on his cold streak and was stuck on 713 when we saw him.

The A's did a pretty nice job tarping off the upper deck and making the atmosphere feel more crowded:



Our little crew at the game:



And finally Bonds:



He unfortunately just did a lot of looking at pitches.. none of them even came close and he struck out to end the game with the A's up only one run. all in all pretty poor.

2) I had the good fortune of visiting the hot and humid Houston over Memorial Day Weekend, which involved a lot of hanging around the house and chilling with Ruth and her folks. It was pretty hot during the day, but it was nice in the latter part of the day, which we took advantage of to walk the dogs:



The dogs look like they have a lot of fun in the massive backyard that I'd feel kind of bad to keep a dog in a smaller place. Logan looked particularly happy to not have to stay in the cage all the time!