{"id":118,"date":"2006-08-27T22:11:57","date_gmt":"2006-08-27T22:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/archives\/2006\/08\/no-snakes-on-this-plane\/"},"modified":"2006-09-06T03:04:31","modified_gmt":"2006-09-06T03:04:31","slug":"no-snakes-on-this-plane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/archives\/2006\/08\/no-snakes-on-this-plane\/","title":{"rendered":"No snakes on this plane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had an enjoyable first few days in the US (Boston, MA). My apartment is really nice (considerably nicer than the student places I&#8217;ve been in for the last 2 years!), plus Dave (flat mate) and <a href=\"http:\/\/planet.gentoo.org\/developers\/seemant\">Seemant<\/a> + Aimee have been really helpful in terms of getting me settled in.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve figured out the public transport system and ventured into the city a few times. As I don&#8217;t start working until September, I&#8217;m enjoying having the time just to wander around with a slightly alienated feeling (everyone talks funny, drives on the wrong side of the road, etc) and no real commitments as of yet.<\/p>\n<p>A few things have struck me while trying to get on my feet:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The banking system is weird. The high street banks here seem to lack the efficiency which I&#8217;m used to back at home. And what&#8217;s this about paying monthly fees just to have a basic account? Savings accounts which offer only 0.40% interest? Having to pay to get a <s>cheque<\/s> checkbook?<\/li>\n<li>Holes in the <s>mobile<\/s> cell phone network&#8230; Having a tri-band phone on a UK network allows me to connect to any GSM network out here, but reception of any network in my apartment is basically non-existent. Things don&#8217;t even get much better in the local town area, although it was OK in the city.\n<\/li>\n<li>Lack of any decent pay-as-you-go cellphone plans &#8212; I don&#8217;t see myself using a cellphone too much if I can&#8217;t even get signal at home, but it looks like all &#8220;prepaid&#8221; phone plans really suck out here<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It has also been an educational experience. I now know the value of a dime (why is a 10 cent coin smaller, thinner and lighter than a 5 cent coint!?), and discovered what a corn dog actually is (haven&#8217;t tried one yet, but this Americanism had been bugging me for a while).<\/p>\n<p>On Friday (my 20th birthday) I met with Dave &#038; Megan and friends, <a href=\"http:\/\/planet.gentoo.org\/developers\/seemant\">Seemant<\/a> &#038; Aimee, Mike Frysinger and <a href=\"http:\/\/planet.gentoo.org\/developers\/nichoj\">Joshua Nichols<\/a>. We ate at a nice bar in the city, which was fun. I hope we can meet up again soon, once I&#8217;ve adjusted to the timezone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had an enjoyable first few days in the US (Boston, MA). My apartment is really nice (considerably nicer than the student places I&#8217;ve been in for the last 2 years!), plus Dave (flat mate) and Seemant + Aimee have been really helpful in terms of getting me settled in. I&#8217;ve figured out the public [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reactivated.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}