So I’ve been here for a few days now, and I’m not actually sure what I can write about, since not much has really happened.

Yesterday we had food at a Thai buffet. The food was rather bland, but at least they had a large selection (including a few things I had never eaten before). Nom nom.

I bought the first season of Torchwood and the Planet Earth series here, as they are cheaper (and region free). Unfortunately, the other 4 movies I bought that were marked as all regions are actually region 3, so I will likely want to buy an external DVD drive at some point so I can watch them without changing the settings on my laptops’ drives.

Turns out that I was right, and the shutter on my D50 is shot and needs replacing. This will run upwards of 5000 baht ($150), so I’m basically going to be getting rid of it once I return to the US and buying a D90. It’s not worth the repair cost.

I still find it silly how full-service everything is. Buying something at a department store involves one person to hold the merchandise, one person to scan it, one person to bag it, and one person to take your money and give change. Restaurants aren’t much better… one person to refill water, one person to remove plates, one person to take your order, and one person to bring you food (often on a per-table basis), not to mention the people who bring you to your table, park your car, whatever. I guess labor is so cheap here that you can afford to basically hire a 1:1 ratio of staff to customers, but it feels kind of wasteful.

Besides that, we’ve been driving around getting some legal issues resolved and eating lots and lots of food. Mmm food. Mmm tasty Thai fruit.

7 days, lots of people, and 10755 photos later, my time in Pittsburgh has come to a close. I had more time this year, and so got to do a lot more of the things that I wanted. However, I still can’t help but feel like I didn’t get enough time to spend with everyone. I suppose the only way to remedy that would be to live here full-time.

In any case, it was an awesome week, and many of my photos will show up on photos 2 or portraits at some point… likely not until later this week, since I will want tomorrow to sleep in and recover from the awesomeness.

So yeah, it was good seeing all of you again. My next trip to Pittsburgh will likely be next Carnival. I hope to see all of you then.

Today in the adventures of aIan and Alan, we got really, really bad haircuts. Whee!
At least mine looks a little better after the shower and subsequent restyling.

Lesson learned. Supercuts is acceptable but pricier. Great Clips is cheap cheap cheap but terrible.

Also, Pittsburgh is awesome and yet, even with a week, I’m still worried that I won’t have time to do everything and see everyone that I want to.

My flight from SFO to LAS today was fun. When we were starting to take off, the flight crew asked for aisle seat people’s help with the “Southwest express snack service” and put packets of peanuts on the ground such that they slid back in the plane as it tilted upward during takeoff. They also made a lot of random jokes and puns during the safety announcements (“In the event of a water evacuation, there is a life jacket under your seat… [insert usual stuff]… Feel free to start paddling towards shore. We’ll follow behind with all the beer and spirits we can carry.”).

Now I have a 3 hour layover here in Vegas, and I will be in Pittsburgh around 11:30 local time tonight.

I leave next Sunday 4/19. There should be lots of adventures and photos and halfprice and ITG over the next week.