Week 9

MN Landscape Arboretum

I was looking for something to do on Saturday after returning back here, and discovered that the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is pretty close to where I stay, so I took a drive up there with my camera.  There’s plenty of different types of gardens and collections there, and even though I spent most of the afternoon there, I don’t think I managed to cover much of it at all!  Here’s some pictures:

Great River Bluffs State Park

I’d seen this state park highlighted in a guidebook advertising great views of the Mississippi, so thought I’d make the two hour drive down to Winona to check it out.  It was brutally hot all day, but I managed a couple of hours of walking around and taking in the sights:

This guy didn’t want to come home with me, no matter how much I wanted:

And a view of the Mississippi:All in all it was a fun day, but tiring and probably not worth the 2 or so hours to get down there – let alone the hundreds of mosquitoes!

Lake Riley

After work on Friday it was a nice cool evening, so I cycled 8 miles or so down to Lake Riley to watch the activities on the lake (and to use the 70-150mm lens I’d bought back with me).  There was some watersking:
Some fishing:
And some sailing:

It was fun to get out on my bike, and explore another trail.

St. Paul

I’d been meaning to head to St. Paul for a while, although admittedly I hadn’t really thought about cycling it.. but on Saturday morning I was feeling suitably energetic, and it was cool out, so I jumped on my bike and covered the 20 or so miles to Como Park, which unsurprisingly has a lake:

After cycling through the park, I came across the St. Paul sculpture garden, with this jolly rabbit: Then I could see the top of St. Paul’s cathedral, so started cycling towards it.  It’s an absolutely stunning building:

There was a wedding going on, and I got there just as the bride and groom were leaving:

Then it was on to the Capitol Building, which still appears to be under construction:

I liked the difference in architecture in St. Paul.  I ended up cycling back through downtown St. Paul, along the West River Parkway and back up to downtown Minneapolis to head to the Pizza Luce block party.

Pizza Luce Block Party

The block party took place downtown, and hosted several bands with pizza and beer.  The weather was great, the music was pretty decent and the setting was stunning:

The outfits were… interesting:

It got pretty busy later on, and some of my kind neighbours offered me a lift back home, so I gratefully took it to try and save my legs a bit for whatever Sunday has in store.

Leisure – Week 7 / 8

So another two weeks have passed, and I’ve been a bit slack on updating again.  But in all fairness, this update is all about a trip back to the UK, so its a bit different!

I set off on a Wednesday afternoon, and via an 8 hour flight to Amsterdam, 50 minute stopover and then another 70 minutes to Edinburgh, I arrived at 8am with no sleep to a bleak, rainy Scotland.  I’d planned a busy few days, so sleep would have to wait until night time.

First things first, I picked up a rented kilt from a shop for my friend’s wedding.  This was going to be the first time I’d worn a kilt, so I was both looking forward and dreading it.

Next up – important things.  My car had been staying at a friend’s parent’s house for the past two months, so an enjoyable 90 minutes drive down to the borders in my friend’s 350Z and I was reunited with my ’92 MX5.  Here’s a shot of a windfarm on the A68 taken from the passenger seat:

To my surprise, it started first time!  A quick drive back to Edinburgh reacquainted me with a proper gearbox and driving on the correct side of the road, and then there was time for a couple of quick pints at The Mad Hatter and finally some sleep!

The next day, I drove across to Ayrshire for my friend’s wedding:

I was staying at a cottage with his family and one of the ushers.  There was a lovely barbeque on Friday night, then some more sleep and the big day was upon us.  After a fairly quiet morning, I put on the many layers of wool that would be my friend for the day:

The humaist ceremony was at Dundonald Castle, which was absolutely beautiful.  My part of the ceremony was playing the bride down the aisle – an acoustic cover of Songbird by Fleetwood Mac.  It all went pretty well, and then it was on to Dalduff Barn for some dancing and ceilidhing into the small hours:

There were more fireworks at some point:

All in all it was a great wedding, amazing weather and my heartfelt congratulations go out to Dan and Morgan.

The next day was a 6 hour drive from Ayrshire over to York to see my family for my birthday.  The traffic was awful, but I eventually got there in time to go out for a nice Moroccan meal.  The next day, we went for a rainy walk at Fountains Abbey:

The grounds are absolutely beautiful, but I wish the weather had been a bit better to get all the way round to the abbey.

The next day I headed back up to Edinburgh to sort out my flat for AirBNB after saying goodbye to this handsome chap (and my parents!):

 That left me with a couple of nights in Edinburgh to sort out the flat and generally enjoy the city:

I managed to see my friends, the city I love and get everything sorted with my flat and even had time to find a home for my car for the next 4 months:

I could’ve spent another week in Edinburgh quite happily, and didn’t realise how much I missed everything back home.  Apart from the weather.

Friday came around, and I was on a flight back to Minneapolis all to soon.  Another uneventful couple of flights via Amsterdam (apart from the lady next to me spilling her drink over me and telling my some sage advice about avoiding Mexicans and homosexuals, and someone else passing out leaving our plane on the tarmac for a good 30 minutes) and I was back in my apartment and fast asleep.

Leisure – Week 5/6

Uptown Food Truck Fair

Food trucks are a big thing here, serving a vast range of cuisines.  Four times a year, there’s a food truck fair, so taking advantage of a gloriously sunny day, I headed to the uptown one.

It was really busy, with way more food than I could manage, but I did get a red Thai chicken burrito that was great!

After that, there was a quick ride around Lake Calhoun, stopping off halfway round:

You’ll notice the clouds gradually getting more and more menacing in each picture.  I started cycling back when there was a light amount of rain, but about 5 miles into the 10 miles home, it was bucketing it down.  As I was already pretty wet, there wasn’t much point in stopping to take shelter.  That might’ve been a mistake:

I ended up cycling through some impressive thunder and lightning, and eventually made it back completely soaked to the bone.  But still, I had a good day!

Brand New

It turned out one of my favourite bands was playing at The Cabooze.  Seeing as it wasn’t sold out, I thought it’d be pretty rude to not go and see Brand New, so I got a ticket and drove in after work.  I was expecting an indoor venue, so was surprised to see a huge outdoor stage set up in the car park:

It was a great gig, and the novelty of being outdoors in a t-shirt at 10pm won’t wear off any time soon.

Independence Day

I had Friday off work to celebrate some freedom, and my boss asked if I wanted to meet him down town for some beers.  It would be a poor show to refuse such an offer, so I hopped on my bike and headed to New Bohemia, followed by some food at Red Cow and then finally Fulton Brewery:

Again, great weather, a nice bike ride down the Cedar Lake trail and it was nice to see some new places.

On the Saturday, I was invited along to a colleague’s Independence Day celebrations.  I got a lift into down town, where there were a couple of beers by the pool and then two hours on a peddle pub, which is a bar with pedals for everyone.  I think they fit about 15 people, and our charismatic driver navigated us around for 2 hours.

Peddle pubs are brilliant.  You basically turn up with a load of beers, and pedal to pubs whilst drinking more beer.  It was really quiet down town, with most places closed for the 4th, but the 2 hours flew by.  Here’s an after photo borrowed from Facebook:

Following the peddling and the pubbing, more drinks were had along with a grill, then it was out to a couple more pubs until the small hours.  At some point there were some fireworks:

Apologies for a lack of photos.  I was having far too much fun to take any.  On Sunday I felt rough.

Baseball

Work were kind enough to furnish me with a ticket for a Minnesota Twins game, against the Baltimore Orioles:

I cycled in after work, as the stadium is only about 40 minutes straight down one of the trails.  It was a great experience, and I’m definitely keen to see some more!  I’d watched some baseball on TV already, and had a fairly good idea of what to expect.  Unfortunately I decided to leave after the 9th inning on a tied game, as I had to cycle back along a completely unlit trail in the pitch black.  Typically the winning runs were scored by The Twins just as I was getting on my bike to head back, but never mind!

Cycling back along a trail where you can see about 15 metres in front of you (and yes, that was with lights) was quite the experience, and I won’t be repeating it any time soon.  I think next time I have to cycle back late, I’ll take one of the main roads where I won’t jump at every single noise.

New Camera

Well, my trusty Lumix G2 has finally given up.  Well, actually the body of the camera is fine, but the 14-42mm kit lens it came with sounds like it has a substantial amount of grit in the mechanism, so it takes about 5 seconds to focus… assuming that it’ll actually focus on the right thing.  For $100 or more than the cost of a new lens, it turns out you can get a new camera and lens, thanks to an Independence Day sale.

As I’m basically tied in to the mirrorless micro-4/3s standard, I knew I was going to get either an Olympus or Panasonic.  I found a great deal on the Olympus OM-D EM-5 Elite (picture from Wikipedia):

My initial  impression is good.  The body is much smaller than the Lumix, thanks in part to a separate flash, but still retains an electronic view finder – which combined with the smart control set up makes a very capable and easy to use camera.  The thing that swayed me towards this model is the high praise for the jpeg output of the camera, as well as the image stabilisation.  One thing I didn’t realise would be so much better was the speed of burst images – there was always a delay on the Lumix when taking bracketed images for an HDR shot.  The Olympus doesn’t have any delay at all.

The kit lens is fine, but I’d like to pick up a fast prime soon as well; probably a 25mm f1.8 offering.

Tourist Day

There’s a bunch of places I’d seen at night that I wanted to revisit during the day.  The new camera and an overcast day seemed like a great excuse for a nice 40 mile cycle into Minneapolis via a bridge that I’d noticed when driving to Brand New that might have a good view:

Yup, I’ll be heading back there at night.

Then it was on to the Mill City Museum, which I’d first seen during the Northern Spark festival:

There’s also a great view of the Stone Arch bridge from the downtown side (4 images stitched together):

Following this, I cycled up to Loring Park, where there’s a fountain that looks like a dandelion:

Straight through Loring Park brings you out at the sculpture garden, where there’s the most iconic Minneapolis image:

The sculpture garden is well worth the visit, and I bet it looks amazing in autumn.

New Wallet!

Not the most exciting purchase, but I finally bought a new wallet as my trusty Etnies one has just about split into two.  So I get to carry a bit of Scotland around in my pocket at all times, I purchased this:

Next time I’ll try not to leave it two weeks between updates.

Leisure – Week 4

Lone Lake

It’s probably safe to say that less than a mile walk from any point in Minnesota, there’s a lake.  I thought I’d take a visit to the one near my flat called Lone Lake.  I found a sneaky path down an embankment next to the main road, which led me out on to the trail to get to the lake:

Then through a small tunnel where I saw a snake, and definitely didn’t jump:

There’s probably a couple of miles of routes around the lake, and they’re all pretty picturesque (like most things here):

It was pretty warm all day, and just being out for a couple of hours was pretty tiring.  As I was heading back towards my flat, I heard something in the trees and managed to capture a picture:

Fine, so I’m not going to be wildlife photographer of the year, but but there’s a deer!

Mid-week Bike Ride

Nothing so exciting this week, I just biked out to Lake Calhoun and grabbed some food at The Tin Fish.  It’s a nice distance, and the food is worth it.  Seafood is pretty good here, and fish tacos are becoming a bit of a favourite.

One Man Roadtrip

I got up early on Saturday to make the 3 hour drive up to Duluth, which is on the shore of Lake Superior.  I’d forgotten what long distance driving here was like – you basically chuck cruise control on and try to keep yourself entertained for a few hours.  It’s a lot less tiring than driving in the UK, mostly because the roads are pretty quiet and there’s no corners.

I got to Duluth at about 10ish and grabbed some brunch.  Duluth is an interesting place – there’s a huge docks here, as boats from the Atlantic can take the Great Lakes Waterway and Saint Lawrence Seaway to get here.  It’s a pretty industrial town, with some great views across the lake.

Keen to crack on, I left Duluth and headed North up the old coast road towards Gooseberry Falls, stopping a few times at various nice looking spots.

The shore of Lake Superior is stunning, and I could quite happily head back up there for a couple of days.

Continuing North, I finally got to Gooseberry Falls.  This was really busy, but the crowds disappeared the further away you got from the concrete trails and into the wilderness a bit.  There’s three main waterfalls – the upper (which I didn’t get any good pictures of) and then the middle and lower:

After Gooseberry Falls, I’d planned to head up to Split Rock lighthouse.  I did no research, and didn’t realise that it was set in a spectacular state park.  I got up there and paid my $5 fee, then jumped out the car with my camera thinking it would be a nice short walk to get some good views.  I’d planned so well that I was wearing jeans, vans and a shirt.  Prime hiking gear.  It was about 26C at the point, so fairly warm as well!

I ended up walking about 6 miles around the park, covering Little Two Harbours (with a fantastic view of the lighthouse):

I climbed Corundum Point, which was well worth it for the view:

I followed the coastal trail around Crazy Bay and ended up at Split Rock Point.  There was a butterfly somewhere along the way:

Then I eventually emerged on the Gitchi-Gami state trail, to walk back up to the car park:

A couple of miles later I’d made it back to my car.  I was thinking of hanging around and seeing if I could get some shots of the lighthouse lit up later on, but considering I had a 3 hour drive to get back, I just headed home instead (after buying a whopping $25 of fuel).

Week 3 – Leisure

Northern Spark

Being a a lad of t’North, this sounded like it’d be right up my street.  Northern Spark is an annual art festival in Minneapolis that starts at sunset, and finishes at sunrise.  I was pretty excited to see some more of down town Minneapolis, and after being spoilt with a great meal and some greater beers at a colleague’s flat, we headed into the city:

I’ll be honest, my recollection of the order of events is a little hazy, but we definitely visited The Walker Art Centre and the sculpture garden (both places that I’m going to check out again in the daylight) and I think the Mill City Museum.  There was a plaza somewhere that had some weird writing gladiatorial contest going on:

In all honesty, that was a bit wanky for me – the human foosball was far more up my street, but the queue was massive.

We also took in a couple of bars (Brit’s Pub where I felt right at home), and eventually ended up heading back to find transportation back at about 4am.

If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know that I live about 15 miles from down town Minneapolis, which is great for getting to work, forcing me to cycle places and sitting in traffic.  Uber is available in Minneapolis, so I thought I’d give that a bash for getting back.  If you’ve not heard of Uber, it’s basically an app that lets anyone be a taxi driver, often undercutting local firms by a significant amount (although possibly for not much longer).

Here’s some advice; if you’re going to try and use Uber in another county, make sure your card actually works with it first.  Pre-paid cards will add to Uber just fine, and appear to work until you actually try and book something.  Then it will just constantly be denied, not letting you actually book anything.  More about this shortly.  It was about 4.30am by this point.

Thankfully, Minnesotans are every bit as kind and friendly as reputed.  One of my colleague’s friends let me jump in his Uber back to St. Louis (ironically with the same car and driver we’d started the night with at about 11pm), then I used all my Northern charm to persuade the nice Ethiopian driver to drive me back to my flat for cash.  Unfortunately, I had no idea how to get to my flat when I wasn’t on my bike, so despite my distinct lack of sobriety and a slight language barrier, we eventually ended up at my place and I finally got into bed at 5.30am.  I wish I could give the driver feedback, because I must’ve annoyed him no end, yet he was still perfectly polite and patient, and when we did manage to make some conversation was a funny chap.

Lake Calhoun

When I was initially offered the placement over here, I was sent some links to some great looking apartments near Lake Calhoun.  I didn’t end up living in them, but I really wanted to check out the area.

It’s a hair under 9 miles from my flat, and I timed myself doing it in just over 30 minutes on my bike.  I headed there on Sunday, and again on Wednesday evening after feeling guilty for eating a whole four cheese pizza, to see if I could get some nice shots of the Minneapolis skyline in the dying light:

And a couple of around the lake:

Part of me wishes that I hadn’t gone, because it’s an awesome area and I’m now more aware than ever that I’m in the middle of nowhere, but I guess you can’t have everything!

Stone Arch Bridge Festival

The Stone Arch Bridge Festival is an arts festival held on the Minneapolis river front.  I headed down there on Saturday and met up with some friends to check out the art stalls and some awful free wine tasting.  There’s some great views of down town from this area, and I’ll definitely be heading back when it’s quieter.

After deciding we’d earned some light refreshment, I was introduced to a beer rocket:

We got on pretty well.

After that, we walked up to Bauhaus Brew Labs in the North East, and then to Dangerous Man Brewing for some great tasting beers, and good glassware:

All in all, a good day!

The Car

I finally have insurance!  Me and the Nissan Note or Similar have been out terrorising the locals.  It’s nice to be able to buy more than a rucksack’s worth of food at the shops.  I’m just about used to driving here now, but I really miss my MX5.

That being said, I’ve managed to get the bluetooth on my phone synced to the Nissan Note or Similar.  It turns out there isn’t a button to do it, or anything so simple.  Oh no.  You have to press the “phone” button on the steering wheel, and then say something along the lines of “Setup Bluetooth”.  After about 20 attempts, it finally recognised my (mostly) Yorkshire accent and I can now accompany my drives with the soothing tones of my terrible taste in music.

Payment Woes

As I alluded to earlier, I had some problems using my card with Uber.  There seems to be problems with using an app from Google Play that requires payment for a service.  I ended up changing my home address in the Play Store to my US one, but as my card is still registered at a UK address, payment still wasn’t accepted with Uber.  However, changing your address lets you install the US version of Uber from Google Play, which let me add Google Wallet as a payment method.

“Great!” I think, and update my Google Wallet with my pre-paid Mastercard, and the UK address that it’s registered to.  Still doesn’t work with Uber.  AWESOME.  HOW IS IT SO HARD TO GIVE SOMEONE MONEY FOR SOMETHING?

I contacted Uber who suggested I should add my PayPal account (which I’ve used here with no problems).  Solid plan, apart from the Uber app on my phone doesn’t have the option to do that.  In the end, I managed to purchase a pre-paid gift voucher for Uber and I think I’ve tricked Google Wallet into allowing me to use my pre-paid card with a US address – although I’m fairly sure this is just a recipe for disaster that will end up getting the card blocked.

Hayfever and Bites

I thought my hayfever wasn’t actually that bad when I got here.  I’m not sure if it was the change in climate or what, but I actually thought I might not get any this year.  Turns out, that was completely wrong.  The itchy eyes are back in force, so much so that I couldn’t even see through the viewfinder on my camera the other night, and I’ve been sneezing a lot.  Back on the antihistamines I guess!

I also started growing a second elbow:

Something clearly liked the taste of my flesh, thankfully the swelling disappeared overnight and it just looks like a normal bite again now.  I’d still like to know what it was that actually bit me, but for now I’ll just assume it was some rare flesh eating hornet.

Questions from Ross

This week, Ross wanted to know whether or not Minnesota is worth visiting as a tourist.  I can’t speak for all of Minnesota just yet, but Minneapolis always has stuff on during the summer.  Every single weekend is a different festival, and the weather is hot but not unbearable, so being outside is nice.  If you like craft brewing, there are plenty of breweries that are within walking distance of each other downtown.  There’s also plenty of art galleries and museums in the city to keep you occupied – I think you could spend five days here on a holiday and still have plenty to see.

Next weekend I’m hoping to head out of the city a bit, up North to check out some of the scenery around Duluth.  Hiking is big attraction here, with plenty of trails and national parks to explore.

Week 2 – Leisure

Bike Ride #1

The day after I got the bike, I thought I should give it a proper ride.  A colleague at work recommended trying the Midtown Greenway, which is an old railway line that runs from Hopkins to the Mississippi.  I thought I’d give it a bash, and maybe just head along as far as Lake Calhoun, but ended up doing the 14 mile route below out and back:

Midtown Greenway:

A bit of Minneapolis:

On the way back, I was pretty knackered, and in need of a cake.  Luckily, The Depot is on the way back and sorted me right out:

All in all, a fun ride.  The bike feels good, and I managed a decent pace.  The Depot has live music a few nights a week, so I’ll probably head back there at some point to see what it’s like.

Bike Ride #2

For my second ride, I wanted to go to Minnehaha falls, which is mostly the same route as before, but just a bit further down the Mississippi.  I did this 6 days after the first ride, and was pleasantly surprised to find it much easier.  Minnehaha falls are well worth checking out, if only for the scallop tacos from Sea Salt in Minnehaha Park:

The falls:

The rest of the park is worth wandering around as well:

The Car

This is becoming a saga.  It’s transpired that I didn’t have any insurance, and adding it is apparently impossible.  So I have a car in the garage under my apartment that I can’t drive.  At least it means I’m cycling everywhere to get food!

The Bike

I did a bit of research about the Schwinn Varsity that I’d bought.  It’s from 1976, although obviously at some point the gears have been swapped out for a single speed.  Even the grip tape looks original, which is probably why it’s so hard and un-grippy:

Apparently I’m going to need a better haircut to be taken seriously with it:

Looking at some old catalogs online, it looks like the bike weighs about 40lbs – equivalent single speeds nowadays seem to be about half that, so it’s no wonder I’m having so much fun going up hills!

Drinks

I got out for some drinks with a few colleagues on Thursday night, and got to try some nice local beers (such as the Surly Bender).  Minneapolis has some great craft breweries that were instrumental in changing the laws here relating to selling food and drink on brewing premises – meaning that micro breweries here have more viable ways of generating revenue.  Apparently there’s a biking brewery tour that’s been recommended, so I might see if I can find someone willing to go on that at some point.

Phone

I finally got my T-Mobile SIM, and for $30 a month get 100 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data (first 5GB is 4G) with no contract.  I accidentally ordered a full size SIM instead of a micro-SIM, but some swift cuts with a pair of scissors fixed that.  Coverage is great, and I’m really valuing having Google Maps available all the time.

Taxes

Ross asked me “Why don’t prices include tax?”.  I guess the taxes aren’t included in prices, as they can change from county to county, let alone state to state.  Minnesota’s state sales tax is currently 6.875%, which doesn’t apply to unprepared food, clothing or prescription drugs.  There’s a 2.5% additional levy on alcohol.  Then there is a 0.15% sales tax added here in Hennepin County to fund the new baseball field for The Twins, and a region wide 0.25% sales tax to fund improvements to public transport – so sales tax here is actually 7.275%.  If you go into Minneapolis, there’s an additional 0.5% to pay.

Because these can change fairly regularly, it’s far easier to adjust the percentage added on at the till than modifying all the prices in a shop.

If you buy something online, you get an estimate for the tax depending on which state it’s being shipped to.  You’re then charged the tax as a separate transaction a few days after the initial order.

Week 1 – Leisure

I’m hoping to update this every weekend, with each post broken into two sections – work and leisure.  If you’re not that interested in pictures of questionable interest and quality, then you should probably just watch this instead.

Essential Purchases

If you thought this was going to be about groceries, think again.  I always knew I was going to buy a guitar when I got here, so one of the first adventures out of the apartment was out to Pawn America and picked up a Fender CD60NAT for $70.  If I had to guess, I’d say that it hasn’t even been played more than three times – the protective film was still on the scratch plate, and there isn’t a mark on the body.  Once I get some heavier strings on it, I think it’ll be a great sounding acoustic.

Next up was some running shoes.  I’d given myself shin splints some time ago from over enthusiastically upping my mileage far too quickly, and I’d never really recovered from it.  Well I hadn’t really had any pain in my shins from playing squash, so I picked up some Nike Flex 2015 for $45 in a sale.

I’ve run four times this week, from a couple of tentative mile long runs to a slow 5k.  So far, I’ve had no pain in my shins, although it’s made me realise how incredibly unfit I’ve become.

Next up on the purchase extravaganza was a new phone – I’ve had a Galaxy Note (first gen!) for 3.5+ years.  It’s been running Android Lollipop for the past few months, and the age of the hardware was beginning to show.  So I’ve picked up a Asus Zenfone 2 from Amazon.  My initial impressions are good – it’s snappy, and best you can uninstall most of the crapplications that come bundled with it.  I’ll post more about it once I’ve had a chance to put it through its paces.

Finally, a biggie, that will probably be a surprise to any of my friends back home:

Yes, I love my car, and I love driving in Scotland – and I hated cycling in Edinburgh so much that I quickly stopped.   But Minneapolis is different – the roads here are really wide, but you don’t even need to use them most of the time as the old railway lines have been converted into at least gravel trails, although they’re mostly tarmac:

Tomorrow I’m going to attempt the 12 miles from my apartment to down town Minneapolis.  About a quarter of a mile of that will be on the road.

So what did I buy?

I’m not going to pretend I know anything about bikes.  I went into a local shop that sells used and new bikes, and ended up with a Schwinn Varsity single speed.  It’s been kitted out with new wheels, brakes, bottom bracket, chain and rear cog thing.  I cycled about 10 miles on it today, and everything feels great.  I also didn’t neglect an important element:

Ammenities

There’s really not a lot within walking distance of the apartment.  The closest places to get groceries is about 10 minutes drive away.  However, I’ve managed to find all the basics fairly easily.  Food at supermarkets costs about the same here as it does in the UK – in general stores like Walmart will have all the basics, and more specialist places like Lund’s will have the harder to find ingredients.

My apartment is well equipped, and I’ve been able to make my favourite chickpea curry with no problems.  The insinkerator is a little terrifying though…

General Routine

I’m still getting over the time change a bit – I frequently wake up at 4.30 / 5am absolutely starving.  Hopefully I’ll get over that soon!  It was nice to discover that I can walk to work fairly easily, but now that I have the bike I’m probably just going to bike in.

I’m still trying to get a new SIM card over here – it’s apparently quite hard for a non-US resident to get hold of one, but I think Amazon have come to the rescue again.

Anything else?

Anything you want to know?  Add a comment and I’ll try and include it in my next post.

Week 1 – Work

I’m hoping to update this every weekend with two posts – work and leisure.  If you’re not that interested in software engineering, the work section is probably not going to be your cup of tea.

First Day and Initial Impressions

The first week at any software firm is a pretty fixed formula – you do some HR stuff, you get a tour, you get a PC and you end up spending two or three days setting it up.  My first week followed this formula pretty much spot on.

Going from an open plan office to a cubicle was a bit of an adjustment, but I can see the benefits of both.  Whilst the open plan arrangement in Edinburgh does promote a lot of interaction and discussion, it can also be incredibly loud and disruptive once someone decides that they’ll have a meeting at their desk.  UK colleagues may be surprised to see a telephone on my desk.  As it turns out, Americans are big fans of phone conversations as a way of talking through problems.  With a cubicle to sit in, it actually kind of makes sense as there’s an element of privacy – and it’s more practical as well because the person you’re wanting to talk to will be often working remotely.

I was introduced to my manager, and the chap who would be helping me get set up and running.  It quickly transpired I’d been given a PC that could only be described as “condemned” – nothing on it worked, it was missing a hard drive and it was slow.  However,  it was good enough to get going with looking at the resources on the company’s Confluence pages, which is a technology I’m fairly new to.

Thankfully the IT department were pretty quick about sorting me with a new PC, so on Wednesday morning I arrived to discover a shiny HP Z620 on my desk (with the protective plastic still on!).  The monitors I have are a bit old, and the keyboard looks like it might’ve been hewn from rock by neolithic man, but it all works so I’m not complaining.

Once the new PC arrived, setting up the system took up the rest of the week, as I’d already lost a couple of days to the condemned machine.  I installed a whole host of programs, including VS2010 / 2013, mercurial, TortoiseHG, TortoiseSVN and CMake.  Thankfully the tools are fairly similar to what I used in Edinburgh (with the exceptions of VS2013 and CMake), so there wasn’t any unpleasant surprises.  I also chucked on a couple of my go-to applications Rapid Environment Editor (for modifying environment variables in windows) and my favourite text editor, Sublime Text 3.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the US company’s setup guides were fairly thorough, and although time consuming, easy to follow.  Some other good things I’ve picked up so far:

• Remote access – working from home is encouraged to provide flexibility, and can be done through an IE browser (blurgh).  I tried this on the second night I was here, because I didn’t believe it would be any good, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was perfectly usable.
• All the meetings are set up with WebEx, and dialling in for standups is completely normal.
• Standups have a project manager who’s only interest is project management.  These keeps them from getting too technical – there’s a distinct line between engineers and the project management team, and my initial impression is that it really helps keep things focussed.
• Going out for a “proper” lunch at a restaurant is a regular occurrence.  I’m going to need to do more exercise.
• Office coffee – there’s always brewed coffee in the office, and it’s passable.

Towards the end of the week, I got a quick tour of one of the applications I might be working on, which gave me my first introduction to the Chromium Embedded Framework – a framework for embedding chromium browsers into applications.  I’m pretty excited to look into this in more detail, as it looks like a neat framework.

As a side note – I was happy to discover I can walk to work in 30 minutes, so I don’t have to drive every day.  Sweet.

Getting Here and Initial Impressions

Flight and Landing

After all the bureaucracy involved with actually getting into the the US, I’m still slightly amazed that I got here.

I flew Edinburgh -> Amsterdam -> Minneapolis / St. Paul, as I didn’t want to have to go through the rigmarole of getting through immigration in the U.S. and then having to catch another flight.  My flight was at 11am from Edinburgh, and that got me in to Minneapolis at about 6pm local time.

Straight from the flight, I had to queue for immigration and customs for about an hour, and eventually received the magic stamp that lets me stay here until November 28th (which conveniently is when I’m coming back…).  Picked  up my bag from the carousel and then it was on to picking up the car!  MSP airport is fairly big, and there’s a monorail between the two terminals, which you have to jump on to get to the car hire place.

Ah, the car hire.  Enterprise are seemingly alien to the concept of a company paying for an employee’s car hire, so after about 45 minutes of waiting around and various phone calls, I emerged from the airport in my shiny new hire car.

The Car

The hire car I’ve been given is a Dodge Dart SXT.  Here’s a picture of one, because I’m 99% sure most of my friends in the UK won’t have a clue what they look like:

PHWOAR.  On paper, it doesn’t actually look bad – 2.4L, 184bhp.  But that’s an American 2.4L engine, which is completely gutless (even over 6krpm) and the automatic gearbox is slow and clunky.  Driving from the airport to the apartment was an experience – there was torrential rain, I was just off a 10 hour flight and it was rapidly getting dark.  Thankfully, I’d had the foresight to plug the address into the satnav, so I just blindly followed that, and 20 minutes later was at my destination.

The Apartment

Getting into the apartment was the next challenge.  I pulled up outside the reception at about 8pm, only to find it was locked.  After wandering around a bit, and determining that it was definitely locked, and there was no one around, I decided to just chance getting into the building and hoping there was a key waiting for me or something.

I managed to collar a resident in the same complex, who kindly let me in and fortunately the apartment was unlocked and the key inside.  Crisis averted.  Now more important things could now be tackled – WiFi and food.  Here’s some fairly poor pictures of the apartment:

It’s quite nice, a decent size and well equipped.  The complex is a fair size, and all the neighbours I’ve spoken to so far are all nice and friendly.  There’s a few ponds and fountains, a gym, tennis court and pool.  The only bad thing is that there’s no shops within walking distance.  There’s a coffee shop and bar about 20 minutes walk away, and an off licence a bit further, but that’s about it.  It’s made me appreciate how much you need a car to live out of the city here.

I nipped out and got a sandwich from a sub shop (Jimmy Johns), then finally managed to crawl into bed and sleep off my 30 hour day.

An Introduction of Sorts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEvpZMdW530

I’m a software engineer for a large company, currently working in Edinburgh, where I’ve lived for almost a decade.  All being well, I should start a placement in Minneapolis at the end of May 2015.  This blog is going to chronicle my experience.

First things first; a bit more about me.  I’m in my late 20s, and I’ve been in my current role for just over 3½ years.  I write software for viewing medical scans (MRI, CT etc.), using a combination of C++ and Javascript.  In my free time I play squash, darts, tinker with cars and am a keen photographer.  One thing  I’m really looking forward to is exploring and capturing some of the amazing scenery in America.