Back from Ireland!
It was a good trip, and I'll give the brief run-down here...
We flew from JFK to Shannon (near Limerick) on the red-eye, arriving Thursday morning. The rental car was small, dirty, electric blue and had a huge dent above the left rear wheel. S didn’t like it, so I went back in to the rental place (Hertz) and they gave us a BMW! Well, it was the tiny little BMW Sports Hatch of the new BMW 1 Series, so it didn’t really feel like a BMW, more like a tiny European car. I had to shoe-horn myself into the thing, but was perfectly comfortable once I was in the seat.
Driving on the left is weird! It was pretty nerve-wracking for S, too, because cars approached the road from the left. In the U.S., when something is coming from the right, you subconsciously know it is going to stop. Things coming from the left usually are going to hit you, unless you give way. Well, cars pull up to the road from the left all the time in Ireland, naturally, and if you don’t force yourself to remember they have to stop, you get scared they’re going to hit you…
We drove from Shannon down to Tralee, in County Kerry, where S’s father is from. S’s mother, father and sister had flown over a week earlier and had spent time in County Cavan, where S’s mother is from. We were to meet S’s family at the Tralee Marina, where we were staying. Unfortunately, the Tralee Marina isn’t a hotel – it’s more of a long-term stay place and has no front desk on the premises. We went into the city (well, it has about 20,000 people, so ‘city’ is a relative term) center and got something to eat. Then, we went to the store where S’s aunt works, got her phone number, bought a phone card, called the aunt, and found out what apartment S’s family was in. Finally, we could relax – I was pretty tired after the red-eye flight, 2 hours of driving on the left on tiny roads, and then running around Tralee trying to figure out how to find S’s family.
The place was nice, a 2-level, 3-bedroom affair with a big living room and nice kitchen. We actually wound up staying there for about a week.
The rest of the trip I’ll have to flesh out in later postings, but here’s the summary: the wedding was on Saturday. We did family things until Tuesday, when we drove the Ring of Kerry. Along the way, we went to the greyhound races in Tralee, and intended to go to the Listowel (NOT pronounced "Liss-towel" I have learned...) horse races, but never made it. We drove up to Galway for the Oyster Festival, spending 2 nights in the middle of downtown Galway (very nice city!). Then, we drove to County Cavan, staying in the town of Kingscourt and doing things in the town of Bailieborough. Finally, we gunned down to Dublin, in time for the All-Ireland Gaelic Football championships, where the underdogs Tyrone beat Kerry in front of a crowd of over 80,000, ourselves included...
I breathed a big sigh of relief when we returned the car unharmed, as I apparently had a deductible of over 1000 Euro in the case of an accident, something I didn't know about until I picked up the car....
We flew back Monday night and slept all day Tuesday.
The Guinness was good!
I'll give more details later!

Good to be back! I missed you guys - last time I was in Ireland, we were all together!

C
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 9/30/2005 01:12:00 PM

 
since C isn't around to do it, I will have to:
SOMMERLOCH, or maybe INDIANSOMMERLOCH!!
not much is really going on with me. the usual. work is fine, am going to be in Lancaster assessing thin women tomorrow and thursday and then next week will be in Indianapolis and Florida. and then after that, JP will be here! very exciting.
my friends Rory and Amy will be in town this weekend for a sustainable energy conference Amy is participating in. I am excited to see them. we probably won't do much - just the usual eating at yummy restaurants and maybe a hike or two in Fairmount Park.
I did buy some wine for the occasion, so should be a good time. I can imagine some music happening this weekend, as our basement is rapidly turning into a den of instruments: Gavin has his guitars down there, our friend Radder brought his three keyboards over permanently, and a friend of Gavin's brings his drums over often and they all play together. The volume isn't too bad, but I am a bit concerned about our neighbor, Jimmy Wong, the laser scientiest at Penn. I would think the man needs his sleep, but apparently the walls are thick enough so that the music does not disturb him, even when it's going on at 2 am.
not much to report otherwise. hope all is well.
booyahkasha.
H
- posted by H @ 9/20/2005 12:10:00 PM

 
JP: I read "a scanner darkly" in my sci fi literature class in college. The old Dick is good stuff. I am wading my way through Quicksilver. Talk about heady, I can't believe the detail Stephenson has come up with for this book. I can't even imagine what the other two books are like.
been looking into more grad school stuff. I am going to meet with this guy, Dr. Andrew Newberg, who is in the department of radiology at Penn and does meditation research, next month to talk about programs and who is doing what kind of meditation research. He was actually in the "what the bleep do we know" movie, talking all kinds of jive, but was one of the more seemingly reputable, less new-agey 'authorities' in the movie. he has been really nice so far and offered to chat with me in october after his grant is submitted. cool stuff.
hope C got the the green isle safely.
love,
H
- posted by H @ 9/15/2005 05:05:00 PM

 
busy hot week here in Philly. work has been interesting, with moving and other shenanigans. Was in Florida last weekend visiting Gavin's grandma. She's losing her sight pretty rapidly and we decided to go for a visit while she still has it. Her 90th birthday is in December, and really, the only health problem she has is the eyesight. I know I have raved about her before, but it's just so amazing! she is kinda down though because so many people in the retirement community around her die, and she's one of the few from the "old crowd" who is still truckin. From what I understand, she moved down to her community in the 70's and was one of the first to do it.
Florida was nice, we went to the beach Saturday and the water was 80 degrees F and awesome. The beaches down there tend to drop off immediately after the you step into the water, so I practiced swimming and treading water. used sun tan lotion to protect the skin of course, but got a little tan anyway.
C, have fun in jolly ol' Ireland. I left a message with you last night but you must have been busy packing. JP, nice talking to you yesterday. can't wait to see you in a few weeks.
Dad, how is Ming?
not much to report otherwise. doing grad school searches as I have to start requesting letters of recommendation from various current and former bosses and teachers. my list so far (it is not long):
Penn
Berkeley
Univ of Wisconsin, Madison (maybe)
maybe U of Cali, San Diego
love,
H
- posted by H @ 9/14/2005 02:37:00 PM

 
JP - any Los Angeles power outage stories? I remember the August 2003 outage in NYC - I had some crazy stories after that one, but it lasted a lot longer than this one in L.A.
With this outage coming on the heels of the terror warning, though, I understand a lot of people were nervous...
Let us know what happened, OK?
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 9/13/2005 12:30:00 PM

 
I'm leaving for Ireland on Wednesday night - we'll be taking the red-eye, arriving in Shannon Thursday morning (Aer Lingus flight). S's cousin gets married on Saturday in Tralee, County Kerry (where S's father is from). We're going to travel a bit and probably go up to County Cavin, where S's mother is from. Finally, we'll go to Dublin and fly back to JFK on Monday the 26th.

So, could JP and H please email their new addresses to me on my yahoo account? - I haven't written H's down, and I have no idea what JP's would be. Dad - your address is easy to remember!

Let me know if you want anything specific from Ireland!
C
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 9/12/2005 03:33:00 PM

 
It gets worse...
According to the Red Cross, the state of Louisiana would not allow the Red Cross to enter New Orleans with relief supplies after the hurricane.
Apparently, the Red Cross tried to get to the Superdome and the Convention Center in N.O. after the hurricane, but were turned away by the Louisiana authorities. They still are barred from entering the city, by state authorities...
Crazy...
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 9/08/2005 03:28:00 PM

 
Dad - the Katrina aftermath is very bad. I donated some money to the Lutheran Disaster Recovery program last week.
FEMA and the federal government did drop the ball on this one, but if you want to be depressed, look at the complete and utter failure of the state and local government in Louisiana. It takes the federal government 3 to 4 days to organize and move relief efforts, so you have to depend on your local government until then. I remember that the first appearance by the federal government after September 11 was on Friday, September 14th... That took over three days, too.
But New Orleans and Lousiana are a mess. You can argue that N.O. didn't have a functional government before the storm hit. Look at N.O.'s hurricane evacuation plan as of July 24th, just a few weeks ago, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayne:

City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation. ... Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city.

They didn't finish this project, but this was their hurricane evacuation plan - tell people they are screwed...

On top of this, N.O.'s official hurricane plan calls for using city and school buses to evacuate people without transportation. What did Mayor Nagin do? He let hundreds of buses be flooded and become unusable. Satellite pictures of the ruined buses are here and a smaller, Yahoo News picture is here:


Blanco, the Louisiana governor, does not seem to be able to handle the task. According to the Washington Post, "Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency..."
In addition, the governor has control over the local police and the state's National Guard units. When it seemed that these resources were not being used effectively, the federal government offered to take over control of the police and National Guard, but Blanco said 'no.'

To compare, look at Mississippi, which was much harder hit than Louisiana, and where many more people lost their homes. You don't hear any reports of looters taking over Mississippi towns, or people shooting on relief efforts or workers trying to fix the levees. The state and local governments did not break down in Mississippi as they did in Louisiana.
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 9/06/2005 03:03:00 PM