Month: March 2023

Henrietta Street 14 Museum

Sure, it was funny, cool, and special to visit a museum on the street with my name:

But regardless of the name, the house’s history is remarkable, and the museum is extremely interesting. That’s what I have been repeating to myself for the last couple of weeks since I returned from Ireland: yes, these days, you can find all information on the internet, but I would never think about looking up this information if I won’t visit Ireland, and if my incredible friends won’t take me everywhere!

So, back to Henrietta’s street. In the 1700s, it was a place where noble Irish families lived, and this particular house was occupied by the family of Lord Viscount Molesworth. But after 1801, when the power moved to London, and all noble families followed, this house went through major transformations. After being used for different offices, in 1876, the building was bought to be converted into a rental property. Shame on me, but I didn’t know that “communal apartments” were not invented in the Soviet Union. Apparently, in Dublin, a tenement was an 18th or 19th-century townhouse adapted to house multiple families. Thus, Henrietta Street 14, instead of being a home for one family, became a home for over 100 people.

The museum shows all stages of the house’s history: several 18th-century restored rooms would give an idea of how the Lords lived, and several restored flats represent different living conditions for families on different socio-economical levels.

I took very few pictures because I was very busy listening to the tour. It is astonishing how much life in the tenements was similar to life in the “communal apartments” in the Soviet Union.

During my first full day in Ireland, I walked more than 30,000 steps!

NATO Voting

Just one big sigh of relief. I know this is very egotistical, and I know that Finland has reasons to worry about future attacks while Ukraine is under attack right now, but still – a huge relief. One reason for my feeling this way is the concern that Boris expressed some time ago: what if when Russia attacks Estonia, Turkey would say that NATO should not defend her? I mean, as Anna said, that’s the whole idea of NATO, but any treaty is as good as all of the participants follow the terms. Yes, we live in a civilized society but

About Mom

Several new developments with mom. First, in February, I submitted an application for her citizenship. That was as long and tiring a process as you can imagine, and because of all the other things I had to do, it took me several weekends to complete all of the paperwork and to get the required documents from mom.

Originally they said it would be a nineteen-month-long process, but then they suddenly sent us the fingerprint appointment and said it would be a total waiting time of nine months. That sounded much better, only that the date for fort fingerprints was scheduled for one of the days of my European trip, and in addition, Igor could not take time off work on that day.

Fortunately, Anna was a savior: she came to Chicago and took mom for that appointment, But three days later, they sent us another notice telling us that the fingerprints could not be processed and we needed to come one more time. This one more time ended up being a Good Friday, which was very disappointing since I have it off once in a lifetime! But what can I do?!

We managed to get through several of mom’s medical appointments, including tuning her hearing aid (Igor took her there while I was away). The timeline in short: call the doctor’s office, schedule a tele-visit (mom has to be present, so I had to take time off work and come to mom’s place). Getting the referral, scheduling the audiologist, taking mom there. Scheduling her ear cleaning, taking her to that appointment, looking for the audiologist referral to the audio lab (finally found it), and taking mom there. And lots of calls in between.

She is still complaining about her left wrist, and now she is saying that she never said she did not want an x-ray, and I am making it up. I started by requesting a referral for occupational therapy. Mom’d doctor said that she would try to request the home visits and if not, then “we’ll see.” When I looked at the referral, I saw that there was no provider name or phone listed, so I had to call to find out (waiting, leaving a callback number, they call when I was in the meeting, etc.). They looked for the information, then gave me the name of the place, and then we got disconnected. I did not want to wait on hold again, so I googled the place, called, and left a message. Nobody called back, so the day later, I called again and asked to connect to the reception. They found the mom’s referral but told me that since she is on Medicaid, not Medicare, the house visits are not covered. They said they do not do office visits, which was a pity since this office was very close to mom’s house.

I had to request another referral, which meant another office visit. Fortunately (?) I had to take her to the doctor anyway because she needed the ear cleaning, so we saved one visit. I finally had the name of the place and the phone number, but the next available appointment was in four weeks (I accepted it), and it was very far from where we leave. I am contemplating ditching Medicaid and asking what would places close to where I live charge uninsured people.

Also, in the middle of my trip, mom started to email me that I was hiding from her where I was, and because of that, she had no idea.

All My Travels

I am back home and going back to work tomorrow. Although not everything happened as planned, I am happy with my trip. I boarded a plane eleven times during these two weeks, my personal record. Out of these eleven times, four times it was business class.

It turned out that business class might be very different even within one airline, from “barely any difference” to something very sophisticated:

The bug plus was that I was able to use lounges on every connection because of the Finnair Gold. If not for the lounges, I won’t survive the travel of that intensity. I stayed at nine different lounges (two different ones in Helsinki and three different ones in Heathrow); Vaanta and Heathrow are on the top, although one of the lounges in Heathrow was so crowded and loud that it was not much different from waiting in the gate (of cause, there was a delicious food which makes a difference :))

I loved this tea service in one of the Heathrow lounges: you can pick up the tray with the teapot and milk pitcher, choose your teabag, pour the hot water and the milk of your choice, and happily enjoy the tea!
Breakfast in Paris
Finnair lounge breakfast

Another thing I learned on this trip is that you can survive without some beauty products for several days. I always take my “thirteen bottles of liquids” everywhere I go, and I mastered the art of fitting them into a one-liter bag.

This time, I knew I would need more than that because it was a two-week journey without touching base in Helsinki, so I had some extras in my checked luggage. However, when I was heading to Paris from Stockholm, I was already more than a half through, and I decided to consolidate all of the remaining liquids in one bag. And I left this bag in my carry-on, just because I always think: what if the luggage is delayed and I will need something?

And you know what happened?! In Stockho;m, they told me that my one-liter bag was”too big” and I needed to repack my liquids into a smaller bag which they gave me. And they told me “it’s EU regulations” as if I was not on the second week of my trip! They would not give in, and I was nervously choosing what I could leave behind (my checked-in luggage was already checked!) I decided that the hotel would have shampoo, conditioner, and a body lotion and parted with those, only to find out that this hotel in Paris had only the body wash! It was a completely ridiculous situation because some of the tubes had very little of the cream left. At the same time, I had two bottles of the eye wetting drops in two bags inside my backpack, and nobody paid attention!

But I learned that I could wash my hair with a body wash and survived without the hair conditioner. And moreover, when I forgot my eye cream in the hotel, I found out I can survive a day without it as well 🙂

PG Day Paris 2023

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

I know that these days, people do not blog about the event three days after, but I think it is still better to blog about a great event than not.

On Thursday, I attended PG Day Paris for the second time; it was the first time I presented there. Also, this year, it was a two-day event, with a training session on day one and two tracks on day two. And also, one track was all-female :).

My personal milestones it was my first presentation of something I developed while being with DRW and the first time I came back from the conferences not with just “I learned some interesting things,” but with “I learned something new which will be useful for us, and I want to implement it right now!”

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The Trinity College And The Book Of Kells

I know you do not have to visit Ireland to learn about the Book of Kells, and most like, it would be better if I knew about it beforehand – then, I could be more appreciative in advance of what I was going to see. In case you are like me and had never heard about it before, it’s an amazing 800 A.D. manuscript containing four canonic gospels (BTW, I thought that the four gospels were canonized later, but that happened in the 4th century!) This amazing manuscript was produced by four monks who copied the text and three illustrators.

The wiki page for the Book of Kells reproduces a lot of illustrations and provides a lot of historic contexts. And obviously, you can’t take pictures of the book itself, so that’s the only way you can have an idea of how it looks like. Just one thing I want to say – it feels surreal when you think you are looking at the book produced 1200 years ago and think about real-life humans who did it!

Here are some pictures from the exhibition about the Book of Kells:

I thought that many years ago when I was really into history, I read about the origin of the name Pangur, and I thought it was used in the Gargantua book, but I can’t find any references now. All the links point to that cat 🙂
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Backfilling: A Walk To The Lighthouse

I am on my way to Helsinki from Paris, and tomorrow, I will fly back to Chicago. There are 400+ photos in my picture gallery, and I know that the moment I am back in Chicago, other things will take priority. That’s why I will try to show more while I am still en route.

Going back to my first day in Dublin, I discovered that the air temperature felt different than in Chicago, and what I thought of as late spring weather was anything but. The first day was the warmest, even with the strong winds from the sea.

Continue reading “Backfilling: A Walk To The Lighthouse” →

“How did you find Paris?..”

That was a line from the “Titanic” musical: How did you find Paris, Mrs. Astor? – Oh, thank God I didn’t have to find it – John knew exactly where to go! That is to say, I was not well prepared for one free day in Paris. And Paris was not kind to us. Both times I was here before, it was the same time of the year, but the weather was much warmer, and I could not imagine Paris not being welcoming enough for us to wander the streets aimlessly. And also, with so many things going on in my life, I didn’t spend time on the VisitACity app and didn’t book any tickets in advance, except for the Louvre a night before. It was still not bad; we got “almost” as much as we could out of the day.

We bought a Botobus day ticked, and it was fun – I didn’t take a boat on the Sienna before. Because of the boat, we checked at least some touristy points.

Pg Day Paris

Today, I presented a talk in Paris for the first time! Once again, I saw many people I didn’t see since October and had great conversations! And – I am in Paris again!

We arrived yesterday, and guess what – there is another transportation strike going on! Fortunately, it was not as bad as in London last week! We walked around a little bit; saw the reconstruction of the Notre-Dame, and returned back to the hotel.

A view from our hotel window

More to come!

Still Traveling

I have 300 more pictures and 30 more stories to tell about the time I spent in Ireland, but life goes on, and I can’t keep up with it!

I arrived in Stockholm last night and spent the whole day not leaving the hotel, attending the conference, and talking to friends and peers. And tomorrow morning, I am leaving for Paris!

The whole conference was great, filled with presentations, meetings, and conversations!