Citizenship

I just learned I misinterpreted Becoming an Irish citizen through naturalisation and I can apply now (whereas I thought I would have to wait until 2015). I am significantly excited about this.

In all honesty

Let's face it, this may be my last blog post. The European Union is going to physically disappear in a couple hours, I have a terrible disease (medical experts call it a "throat infection", but I'm sure this thing is more serious than it sounds) and my daughter is going to be jailed soon when she'll try to use her Hello Kitty camera to record Puss in Boots in a cinema because she's sad I couldn't come along.

I have lived a happy life. My only remorse is that I never managed to use "insofar" in a sentence without making it sound awkward.

Merry Christmas anyway.

Fashion

Me: Your t-shirt is awesome!
Coffee guy: You like it?
Me: Yeah, I love the concept of fake hair, I want the same one!
Coffee guy: ... Why does everyone say that? It's not fake hair!

Me: Oh, really, what is it?
Coffee guy: It's a tree. A TREE!

Me: Ugh, sorry... Mind if I take pictures?

Delta

People often ask me if my life has changed since I realised that the difference between the price I paid for my house and its current value equals the price of a brand new Ferrari (albeit the cheapest Ferrari, with no optional stickers). And the answer is no, my life hasn't changed. Thanks for your support.

Back from Seattle and Irvine

I came back from the US Monday. Photos of my trip are here.

In-n-Out burger revelations

I went to In-n-Out today. This was by no means the first time I did but, this time, I had locals with me who told me about the secret menu. It's truly amazing.

In the past, I always said no to the onion option. I just didn't see the point. Now I do. You can't not order onions on your burger at In-n-Out, that would be missing most of the experience. But that's not the point of the secret menu. The menu they display is dead simple: it's either burger or cheese burger (basically, it's slightly more complicated but only slightly). You have a number of secret options:

• You can tell them how to cook the meat (I recommend "well done" in this particular case).
• You can tell them how to cook the fries ("well done" is interesting but not my favourite here).
• You can ask for an N-by-N (2-by-2, 3-by-3... Niall says it's capped to 4-by-4 and he's sometimes right, although often foreign), N being the number of steaks and slices of cheese you want in your burger.

And that's pretty nice. On top of that, ingredients are all fresh and you can absolutely tell the difference: it's really, really good fast food.

Besides the secret menu, they also hide references to the bible on the soda cups and other wrappings. Not entire paragraphs but things like "John 3:16" or "Revelation 3:20." In-n-Out burger is owned by a christian family, and that's the kind of easter eggs they came up with.

Also, I was served by Barbie. An actual person named Barbie.

Data-driven it is.

Those who don't get the reference can click this link to fully embrace the hilarity. Oh. The. Hilarity.