PlanetAnya

NOT amused here. I’m losing hours and hours a week to crap IT support. One hour after i put down the phone to one of the support team earlier today I got this:

Last time I got this error was a month ago. I’m still waiting for the tech support call back (got someone else to fix it). I think this is telling me that the weekend has started.

I just spent a couple of days in Chicago – I stayed in a new hotel for me – the Indigo. It was close to the office and cheap as chips ($72 dollars a night – I’ve paid more than twice that for B&Bs in the UK).  In any case it was pretty clean and bright and comfortable but two things troubled me:

1) how the recenptionist answers the phone.  It starts off with the usual 10 minute preamble of “good evening and welcome to the Indigo Hotel, Schaumburg blah…blah….blah”. Then “how can I INSPIRE you?”. Retch.

2) the sign that suggests you might want to save the planet (as opposed to saving the hotel money) by recycling towels was a Haiku.  Too much.

Help Us Save Water
Use Your Towel More Than Once
Mother Earth Says Thanks.

The bedroom was pretty good for 72 bucks though.

Apparently there’s an election bout to happen here – who knew?

actually for a no-resident alien it has been an interesting process to watch. Firstly I was surprised at how much people on the same side took chunks out of each other – seriously undermining each other and pointing out how the other was unelectable (I mean you Hillary and Obama). You’d expect this from the opposition but not from someone on your side.

I’m also soooo bored with all the Palin-mania. She’s often described by the media as “folksy”. I’m not sure quite what that means but I think it is American for “total liability”. Some of the more entertaining parts of the election coverage have been her trying to answer media questions without a script whilst trying to form a sentence.

It has all been about image and presentation and the policies hardly come into it. Event the wives have been wheeled out – all blowdried and hair laquered  – with copywritten speeches. Actually even with the presidential hopefuls, much of the talk about the debates has been how they came across not the substance of the policies. The best bit of the debates is always the post mortem – where all the pundits explain why it was that their chap won.

Personally I think Obama will win it. Mostly beause McCain is a multiple cancer patient in his 70s and his back up option is Palin.  Scary.

The chaps here are completely obsessed with germs. Scaremongering tactics (probably orchestrated by the bleach industry) have made all Americans terrified of actually touching something that someone else might have touched. Many carry around sanitising spray in case they have to touch a door handle and even supermarkets have sanitising wipes for the trolleys *sigh*.

That’s probably why there’s a very different attitude towards irradiation. I recently read an article that expressed concern that salads mostly don’t yet benefit from being zapped to get rid of all those possible germs. I guess I’m used to the European opinion – why on Earth would you want your food to be nuked before you eat it? That’s completely crazy – just buy and eat it as fresh as possible. My mind was made up on irradiation when I lived in Berlin. I left a pack of tomatoes in the fridge – and forgot about it for around 6 – 8 weeks. After this time the tomatoes looked just the same as when I had bought them. I threw them away and have steered clear of irradiated food ever since.

This whole germ thing is irritating though. We’ve survived for centuries with germs – after all, how does your body learn to deal with the big ones if it isn’t tested along the way? That’s why people today have more asthma, more allergies, and a greater susceptibility to the likes of MRSA.  Let them eat dirt I say.

The other day I had a blocked sink. The problem wasn’t conveniently just underneath the sink, it turned out to be at the most inconvenient and hard to reach part of one of the pipes buired in the cellar somewhere. I think it had something to do with the veggie peels and coffee grounds I’d been feeding the insinkerator thingy.

Anyway not having a working sink is not an option so a trip to Home Depot was in order. Calling the hopeless chap who is supposed to help with this was not an option – I’m still waiting for some stuff I asked for 3 months ago. In any case, unlike its British cousin (B&Q), Home Depot has reasonably helpful staff (yes they are still care in the community types but much better all the same). In any case we found the plumbing section and were standing looking at the bewildering selection of pipe unplugging devices and toxic liquids. Whilst looking at all of these, one of the orange dungaree wearing types came up.

“Can I help”
“Yes, I’m looking for somethign to unblock a drainpipe.”
Then he took one look at me and said “its blocked up with hair, right?”

Cheeky sod.

I’ve made it to Hamster Jam. Surprisingly in one piece after the taxi driver drove the whole way up the gridlocked motorway on the hard shoulder – apparently undaunted by the stationary traffic there and the fact that sometime the hard shoulder just disappeared. Anyway on arrival he asked if I like sushi. I didn’t get why until I saw the place – it turns out I’m staying here  . It is a Japanese themed/ owned hotel and it is AWESOME.

The place has a Michlin star for one of its sushi restaurants. I didn’t know this when I went to eat there tonight. I thought it a little strange that the menu was just pictures of food with no prices. Given that I can eat my own boy weight in sushi it could have been v expensive but actually not toooo bad. OMG was it good though. A colleage and I got the last seats in the restaurant – we sat at the sushi bar(why does everyone prefer tables  – we virtually had a private sushi chef in front of us). Melt in the mouth food. Yum.

The rooms are pretty good too – mine has a great bath with a large flat screen TV above it. I’ll definitely given them a whirl. I’m less confident that I’ll try any of the alarming toilet control options though. I shudder to think what the ‘oscillating’ button does.