Roadtrip

Starting this Saturday, I'll be mainly offline going on a roadtrip as it is a typical activity in the US. We'll go to different National Parks and end up in San Francisco. I never understood, why people do so many road trips, but as I booked my flight back from SF to Santa Barbara, it turned out that this flight will be as expensive as the car we rent for five days! Thinking of trains, it takes nine hours or more to get from SF to Santa Barbara. And it's kind of impossible to reach the National Parks with trains or buses if you're not considering traveling with an agency.

The zipcar thing

To resolve my last post: It worked! I had booked a car from the car sharing company zipcar and I could unlock it with my zipcard. Fortunately, the tank was more than 1/4th filled up, because if not, you have to get gas - but the company pays for the gas, so you don't have to worry. But sometimes the car's credit cards don't work and you have to pay etc. lots of things could go wrong ;-)

The car itself was working great and it was mainly clean, too. It seemed to be useful for longer drives as well as it had a cruise control. I booked it for one hour and I returned it on time, so I didn't have to pay any additional fees. The total cost for the trip was 9.18 $. And after it took me such a long time to become a member, actually getting one of their cars is easy :-)

Zipcar

Maybe you have heard of car sharing and even zipcar. The general idea is that several people own or rent a car and use it from time to time. Zipcar is a huge international company that owns cars in lots of towns (even here in Isla Vista there are four!) and once you are registered as a member, you can book a car for about 10$/hour. You don't have to pay for gas and you don't have to reserve a car for an entire day (as car rental companies usually do it). Thus, you can easily go grocery shopping, pick up a friend, go to a party etc.

However, I had lots of trouble getting my zipcard (but I fought for it and I'll test it tomorrow). Their website service didn't work properly, so I couldn't submit my application. After I called zipcar five times, it turned out, it's a problem with the web page; during the first four calls, the people I spoke to didn't know what's wrong. Wow. If you submit your application via the website it takes about 30 (!) days to be processed. Well, that's when I'll have left the US.

So, I had to track them down at the head quarters in Los Angeles. Only a day trip, haha. Yet, I got my zipcard! You have to scan your passport and send in your driver's license to get your zipcard activated. That should take three days. Of course, nothing happened after three days and I had to call them again - and suddenly, my account was alright and I could reserve a car, yay!
The zipcard you get acts as a key to open the car; the actual keys for the motor are inside.

However, a friend told me a similar story about their service. He booked a car, but was sent to another one (0.5 miles away) because the first one was shut down due to maintenance. The car he was navigated to was also shut down. He ended up taking the bus to pick up a friend. It seems to be that the zipcar thing is great, if it's working ;-)

Cups and mugs

It took me some time to adjust to the imperial units as inches, gallons etc. as people use it here. This is not impossible! Many people complain about it, but it's doable! Instead of "a few meters away" you say "a few yards" and so on. I can kind of estimate how tall people are now and e.g.  "he's six feet" started meaning something to me. Temperatures are a lot harder to deal with, but I got the point that 30°F is kind of cold and 60-70°F is alright. 

BUT, I always thought that a cup means cup (volume measure, eight fluid ounces are one cup, 16 cups are one gallon). Thus, when I was cooking rice I took a coffee mug, filled it almost up and because the recipe said "one cup of rice goes with one cup of water" I added the same amount of water. Indeed, it wouldn't matter how large a cup is, if the ratio rice:water was 1:1, but it wasn't for some weird reason (maybe they assume that the same amount evaporates and the rice:water ratio is constant, but not actually 1:1?!). It said, if you have 2 cups of rice, take 1.75 cups of water etc. As I visited friends, they had a measuring cup (Messbecher) and I learned, that a cup is tiny! It's like a small tea cup. So my "cup" was about twice the actual cup, hups. However, my rice worked out fine ;-)

Key Lime Pie

Last week, we met for lab lunch and somebody brought a key lime pie for dessert (key lime = echte Limette). It consists of a cracker crust (or rather crumbles of a cracker crust) and a filling made of eggs, condensed milk and key lime juice.

Key lime pie at group lunch.

It was great and since I wanted to bake it as well, I searched for the recipe online and also for "lemon pie" as I thought, it's the same, just with lemon juice. But it's not! Absolutely not! For a lemon pie, people use actual dough and half the pie is made of some sugar topping.

I ended up making the crunchy cracker crust and the key lime pie filling with lemon instead of key lime juice. Of course, it worked although the taste was a bit different due to the different fruit. But when I told people I had made key lime pie with lemon juice, they were astonished that it worked! "I mean, really?!?! With lemon?!" I'm not sure if I understood the tradition of key lime pie correctly and I hope I didn't commit a cultural sin.

Campus at night

The campus at night is not as dead as I expected. Most of the office buildings are empty indeed, but the university center becomes alive again. Lots of clubs, student unions etc. meet there. Lots of people go to the sports fields as well which light up the sky with their floodlights (as in the picture, behind the trees on the left).

Happy early birthday!

A few weeks ago, I was invited to a birthday party. It was a Saturday, but I knew the person's birthday was on the Monday two days later, so the person was celebrating two days early! I was highly confused. Was the birthday-date information I had wrong?! Or did they plan the party for Sunday night and put Saturday by coincidence on the invitation? There's an old superstition in Germany, that it's really bad luck to wish somebody a happy birthday before their actual birthday. And on the party we did that of course and sang happy birthday. I didn't talk to anyone about the possible bad luck we have in Germany, but I was confused.

Then I got another invite for an early birthday party. So it just seems to be common around here. Fortunately, I talked to a friend the other day who's going to Germany soon, that he wondered why Germans can't celebrate their birthday early and that it's bad luck.This was very illuminating! Apparently, it's really German to not do congratulate someone early.