James Ring’s Photoblog

In the few dozen hours that I’ve been here so far, the following things have been real weird for me:

• Customs and immigration

It was weird because it was easier than I’d heard. I didn’t have any problems at all and I was through the gates in less than an hour after landing. Just answer their questions, don’t make jokes about stuff, your stuff might get searched thoroughly.

• They drive on the right

Yes! It’s true! We all know it! But, it is still a complete mindbender for me whenever I go to cross the road. Cars come from nowhere! I always stop and look in every direction before crossing the road. I still don’t get it!

Also, (while driving, riding, walking across the road, whatever) you often try and make eye contact with drivers on the road. I found myself constantly trying to make eye contact with an empty passenger seat, and I don’t even realise what’s going on until after the car has passed you, or whatever. What I’m basically trying to say is that driving on the left is so fundamental to the way we use the roads in Australia that it will take you a while to get used to it here.

• Four-way stop

Four-way stop signs are very frequent. Basically, legally you must come to a complete stop (just like stop signs in Australia), but everybody seems to actually stop (unlike a lot of places in Australia). Check out “Driving in the USA“.

• Currency

All the notes are the same colour and size as eachother. Their coins are smaller. It’s impossible for me to eyeball a handfull of change and estimate accurately how much money is there. I think you get used to that pretty quickly though.

• Units of measure

Fahrenheit, feet, pounds, inches, blah blah. The highway speed limit is around 65mph, so it’s pretty much a mile per minute, making estimating driving time a little easier.

• Beer!

I ordered a Guiness from Red Robin (mmm.. burger). Firstly, I was ID’d, which was weird. The legal drinking age in California is 21, so I’m only just old enough to do that! After showing my ID, the waitress asked if I’d like a 16 or 22. I didn’t know how big either beer would be, so I of course chose 22 (bigger is better). Later, I figured this means “fluid ounces”. 16 fl oz is a pint (470 or somthing millilitres), 22 is then 1.2 pints. 1.2 pints is a lot of beer, which is good.

Needless to say, they don’t know what a schooner is, and they don’t sell VB.

• Table service and tipping

In my limited experience, the table service here is much better than most places in Australia. It’s way too easy to keep ordering beer when your old one runs out, because somebody is almost instantly on hand to get you another one!

Generally you tip around 15-20%, if you get “personalised services” (waiter/waitress, taxi driver, whomever), but not, for example, when you order a burger from Macdonald’s. I’ve heard that you tip 15% if you’re pretty indifferent about the service and up to 20% if was good.

So, I landed in SFO today! My colleague rented a car, and I got a lift with him. All I can say is: I’m glad he was doing the driving!

He had stuff to do, so I had him drop me off (sans luggage) in the middle of Mountain View somewhere. After discovering that all the rental car places were closed, I wandered into some bike shop. I impulse-bought a nice bike for around US$600, then rode around.

After around an hour of riding, I was totally lost. Then my chain broke. Fortunately, I met a fellow cyclist, Dan, down near some random cocktail bar. We went into the cocktail bar, and I had the bar call me a cab… but not before people had put a couple of rounds on the bar for me, just because I was Australian!

The cab came, the driver hardly spoke any English, but he did have a sweet GPS. So, I stuffed the bike in the back and he drove me to the apartments. I paid him, then proceeded to rip a small hole in his upholstery with my bike’s gear cluster! So, I gave him some more money to try and lessen my own guilt!

After all that, my new roommate and I went down for a dirty great burger at Red Robin and a couple of beers.

Photos to come (as soon as I get a camera)!

Hi there!

My name is James Ring. I graduated from the Australian National University in December, 2005, in the degree of Bachelor of Software Engineering with Honours. I worked for six months as a software engineer at Geoscience Australia before accepting a position at Google Inc.

I am currently working in Google’s Sydney office, but I am moving to Mountain View, California, on the 29th of October. The primary purpose of this blog is to share my experiences in the US, and I will be posting photos of interesting places that I’ve been.

On the topic of photography, I bought my family a Canon EOS 350D a while back, and I was thinking of buying the new 400D to take around California. I would love to have some sort of GPS facility, so that I could use Google Maps to show you not only the photos themselves, but where (exactly!) they were taken. Any ideas?