Sleepless in Seattle
There, I did it. A crap joke about the fact that I'm in Seattle and awake at a stupid time in the morning. I arrived here on Saturday, and applied my usual technique of "staying awake until a normal time on the first night, then going to bed really tired". It's a technique which has always worked in the past for snapping me into the new timezone.
However, this room has a real flame fire. It's rather nice. A little switch by the bed puts the fire on for a timed hour, meaning that you can fall asleep by the light of a roaring fire, and then it'll turn itself off afterwards. The problem is, though, that a roaring fire makes the room warm. And a warm room makes for a sleepy room. And so yesterday afternoon, when I put the fire on to stave off the rain pouring outside, I found myself waking up quite a few hours later thinking "oh, bugger!". And true enough, despite getting to bed at a sensible time last night, I woke up at 5.30am today. "Bugger" indeed.
And so here I am, looking out of the window at a sleeping Seattle, with the occasional (well actually rather frequent - and really ridiculously long) freight train rumbling past. I find it weird the way the train line isn't segregated from the pavewalk (or do I mean sidement?) in the way we would in the UK. There are barriers and warning lights for cars and people, but the train line is pretty much open - no fence to stop people wandering onto it. I guess they just rely on the fact that people won't wander into the path of a train...
Believe it or not, despite having been to a few far-flung places, this is the first time I've been to the USA. Strange but true - I've made it to the age of 37 without crossing the Atlantic. Until now. Working at Symbian for so many years meant that my business travel was always in other direction - to Japan, China, Sweden and - erm - Manchester. Despite the horror stories about US immigration and how many hours can be spent being grilled about the exact nature of your visit; it was under an hour from the plane touching down to when I was in cab heading to the hotel.
I spent yesterday being a bit of a tourist. "Original branch of Starbucks" - check! Most of the day was spent wandering around the aquarium. Then wandering around it again when I realised that I had my camera on the wrong setting and hence all the photos had come out blurred-but-not-blurred-enough-that-you-notice-it-on-the-little-screen-on-the-camera-itself. Got plenty of photos of sea otters, though. They are SO cute, it's untrue. Look...
However, this room has a real flame fire. It's rather nice. A little switch by the bed puts the fire on for a timed hour, meaning that you can fall asleep by the light of a roaring fire, and then it'll turn itself off afterwards. The problem is, though, that a roaring fire makes the room warm. And a warm room makes for a sleepy room. And so yesterday afternoon, when I put the fire on to stave off the rain pouring outside, I found myself waking up quite a few hours later thinking "oh, bugger!". And true enough, despite getting to bed at a sensible time last night, I woke up at 5.30am today. "Bugger" indeed.
And so here I am, looking out of the window at a sleeping Seattle, with the occasional (well actually rather frequent - and really ridiculously long) freight train rumbling past. I find it weird the way the train line isn't segregated from the pavewalk (or do I mean sidement?) in the way we would in the UK. There are barriers and warning lights for cars and people, but the train line is pretty much open - no fence to stop people wandering onto it. I guess they just rely on the fact that people won't wander into the path of a train...
Believe it or not, despite having been to a few far-flung places, this is the first time I've been to the USA. Strange but true - I've made it to the age of 37 without crossing the Atlantic. Until now. Working at Symbian for so many years meant that my business travel was always in other direction - to Japan, China, Sweden and - erm - Manchester. Despite the horror stories about US immigration and how many hours can be spent being grilled about the exact nature of your visit; it was under an hour from the plane touching down to when I was in cab heading to the hotel.
I spent yesterday being a bit of a tourist. "Original branch of Starbucks" - check! Most of the day was spent wandering around the aquarium. Then wandering around it again when I realised that I had my camera on the wrong setting and hence all the photos had come out blurred-but-not-blurred-enough-that-you-notice-it-on-the-little-screen-on-the-camera-itself. Got plenty of photos of sea otters, though. They are SO cute, it's untrue. Look...
