it's like whole other country

[a7sharp9]

• There seems to be a parallel world, a different dimension - Domain Of The Morning; I came in touch with it yesterday. The 5:30 express bus to the airport was packed, and with people who weren't, like me, passed out sprawling on the seat trying to catch the remaining couple of winks - but they weren't also those imaginary ever-perky, ever-friendly, robotic types that feature in the ads for some financial advisor or other (the Briefcase Brigade, with cups of Starbucks in one hand-looking appendage and the fresh copies of WSJ in the other, the ties strictly perpendicular to the horizontal surface), no, just some breed of human, theretofore hidden from my sight, who thought that this time is appropriate for the kinds of activities they needed to undertake for this particular day, and went about them. Imagine that. The airport looked completely different from normal, too; the slogans on the wall and the breakfasty-cheerful billboards frighteningly reassembled themselves into something that actually started to make some sense.
  
  I have greeted the rising sun from the cafe at the eastern wing of the C terminal of General Edward L. Logan Boston International.
  
  Yes, with a cup of Starbucks in my hand.


• JetBlue Airways is famous for having leather seats and satellite TV/radio in the seatbacks. Mine (on a relatively small Embraer 190; Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica S.A. is apparently one of the, but not the, largest exporters of anything from that country - the biggest one producing what, I wonder? Samba? Football players? Churrasco?) were ripped up and non-functional, respectively. Not that it mattered any - I, being of the non-artificial human variety, was dosing through the 4-hour flight.


• Austin airport is a recently (1999) converted Air Force base, an expanse of cracked concrete (and two parallel runways, one of them of the regulation 10 000 ft length precisely) with a theoretically modern terminal which in fact looks just like any other terminal anywhere (most recently one in Düsseldorf). The locals are very proud of it; they also plastered it all over with DELL logos (the logos have arrows under them - I would not be surprised if, when followed, they lead in circles; there is no Dell outlet on the premises, and the HQ is about 30 km away).


• I have (for the 5-mile drive to the hotel and the office, which are adjacent) actually been given a time machine - a car of the 2008 model year, with 300-some mi on the odo. It is also a GM attempt to introduce for the domestic market a vehicle resembling the ones that the entire Europe is driving - a subcompact with wheels at the corners, 4 doors and a upward-swinging vertical hatch in the back, opening enough space for a couple of grocery bags, - and it sucks, confidently, nonchalantly, completely and with conviction. The only reason I can see for its production appears to be to serve as an argument that American public will not stand for a small, fuel-efficient runabout.
  
  On the other hand, the first 2-door Smart I've seen in this country was parked on the main Austin drag yesterday night. I don't know how its owner can sleep at night - it's like kicking a shi-tzu out of the house to meet with the pack of neighborhood German shepherd half-breed mutts.


• A blue-and-white MedEvac copter just crested the roof overhead, dipped by the window (surprisingly not crashing into it) and a minute later alighted on the roof of the hospital across the road. No one in the room batted a lid. I guess this is more or less a daily occurrence.


• The city is built in the same "imperial capital" style as Washington, and very much resembles it - except that there are about half as many people on the streets on the workday as there are in DC on Sunday (when that place is completely deserted). They say life here begins at sundown; if so, it must have been taking a break yesterday night. Other sources of local pride are the Capitol (a replica, too - but taller than the real thing! See, you're in Texas now!), the UofT campus (go Longhorns), a 5-block faux-adobe-facade segment of the 6th Street littered with faux-Mexican eateries and the famous Congress Bridge bats (population in 7 figures, apparently - flying out of that bridge nightly, free entertainment by Mother Nature, don't forget to reserve your table at the restaurant of the Four Seasons directly overlooking the bridge for best viewing experience); I think I'll go see them tonight.


• It's a balmy +35 out (which is a big improvement on the +40 they were having the last couple of weeks), so you could actually contemplate having lunch on the terrace of a cafe. At night the temperature falls precipitously into the upper 20s.


• Food is ridiculously cheap, and they are not afraid to actually put at 7 cents (instead of a dollar) the price for a piece of bread to go with your $4.60 barbecued half-chicken (yes, an entire half of a bird, perfectly smoked, slapped on the brown paper which is laid down directly on the plastic cafeteria tray - and on this same paper one is supposed to slather a blob, or, if you are feeling unusually elegant, a strip with a flourish at the end, of a dipping sauce) and a $1.15 styrofoam cup of iced tea (ingredients: tea, ice, straw). On the other hand, posh steakhouses down by the lake (aptly called Town Lake and, naturally, not a lake at all, but a dammed portion of the Colorado) charge whatever they like.
  
• Here comes that copter again, the other way. Looking up, I could see the pilot looking down at me.


• workworkwork


• Now that's what I call a rainbow. The thing is huge, it's fat and it is loooong, a complete unbroken arch, flattish though, with the center of the circle way below the horizon. It really looks like it is separating the sky above from the sky below - the areas seem to possess a slightly different brightness, the inside being lighter (now there's a fluffy cumulus underneath, neatly inscribed into the right corner). It is also a prima facie evidence that Newton's subdividing "indigo" from "blue" was completely bogus - there is green, there is blue, and then there's violet. Wonder how Russians and Italians are so different that they see what English cannot.


• Turns out, it's been 3 weeks now that Town Lake is Lady Bird Lake, in honor of the recently deceased widow of LBJ. Big changes. Austin, the city on the move.


• Jazz, on the other hand, is of the extremely decent grade in these parts. I told myself that I was not expecting the 30-gallon-hatted, cigar-chomping, drawling oil tycoons traversing the avenues of this fair place in pink Cadillac convertibles with a pair of longhorns strapped to the grill (there aren't any), but I did put this place down as almost exclusively country, maybe blues mixed in, stereotypes all the way, baby.
  
  They had a roaring jam yesterday night in a long dark basement bar downtown; I was hanging by the skin of my teeth just to keep up; most of the guys coming to our homegrown jams definitely wouldn't cut it. But they don't have an established club for listening to this music. Go figure.


• I've got to figure out how to take a set of Russian stickers with me - or finally learn touch-typing.

Comments

[eta-ta.livejournal.com]

Why is this country operating in km and Celsius?

[a7sharp9.livejournal.com]

Oh, it doesn't; I still do.

[eta-ta.livejournal.com]

Really? After how many years?
You are a rarity; I don't know anybody who didn't switch. But then, people I know are architects, designers and engineers - they have to...

[a7sharp9.livejournal.com]

17, coming up in about a week.

I can do them gallons and yards, too - but the little calculator in my head converts everything back and forth, whether I ask it or not.

[eta-ta.livejournal.com]

...and I have to make a conscious effort to convert inches into cm. Thankfully, last time it happened 7 years ago while I worked on Mexican hotel.

[uzheletta.livejournal.com]

i didn't switch either.

[eta-ta.livejournal.com]

You're two rarities.

[uzheletta.livejournal.com]

i loved your comment! :)
but, if there are two of us (who didn't switch) in this thread, and only one of you, it's you who's rarity!!!

[eta-ta.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, in limited confinement of this thread, I guess I am. But in a wider world...my world, at least, you are!

[evgenii]

sorry to say, haven't switched either. Do remember miles, but not inches Fahrenheit, gallons... not so many years here, probably ;)