Somehow I ended up checking out a few Burrito places around town. I Absolutely love how a notable part the Irish gastronomy is engaging in Twitter. Not just the “Find us on Facebook” B.S.. Some of them are really starting or taking part in a conversation.
So, Burritos & Blues and Little Ass Burrito Bar were eager to get my feedback. I like! ‘Boojum’ and ‘Pablo Picante’ didn’t respond to my tweet, but 50% still is a good quota, I’d say.
When I went there a few days ago (thanks for the delicious Burrito again!), Phil of Little Ass Burrito was around, too. We had a nice little chat: I was mentioning that the engagement of the gastronomy in Twitter is considerably higher here than it is in Germany. He thinks that it’s because the recession hit hard here, and now everybody does what he can to keep on going. That would at least be one good thing about the recession, I’d say.
And then, shortly after that, I went in to Burritos & Blues again. At the checkout, the cashier asked me if I was on Twitter or Facebook, and I told him that I actually have had a few converstaions with the B&B Twitter account. “Oh, you’re Timm! Nice to meet you!” That was kinda cool. I had expected most of the Twitter action to come from some back office, but this was a nice surprise. Much better han havin some PR agency doing your social media for you, like it’s common in Germany, I’d say.

#nomz, brought to me by Little Ass Burrito Bar!

All or nearly all of the burrito places have student specials. At 5€ or 6,50 €, even including a drink, these are good deals around here.

Special Offer for Students @ Burritos & Blues

To me, Twitter feels like a much better kind of interaction than a ‘like’ on Facebook. For example: I asked about Litte Ass’s opening hours via Twitter, because the am/pm scheme got me confused a little. Et voilá, a few minutes later, there was an @-reply with a (positive, k-tsch!) answer.
But the engagement in Twitter doesn’t seem to be limited to the gastronomy. Even all of the societies of Trinity College mostly are on Twitter. Of course the last Tweet sometimes is like 2 days old, but the difference to Germany is astonishing nonetheless.

Anyway: If you’re ever in Dublin and fancy a Burrito, make sure to have saved this carefully curated list on Foursquare beforehand.

I’m propably the last person on the planet to come to this conclusion and the 100th who tells you this, but: ‘Girls’ is a great TV show. Maybe the best I’ve seen in the easy-to-digest <30 minute section.

Watching it, my facial expression often times completely derailed out of astonishment or joy of what was happening. I think only ‘Game of Thrones’ also had that effect on me in recent years.

‘Girls’ has extreme characters, but doesn’t let them clash onto each other for big laughs. Instead they develop in a very real way, so that you get a good feeling for them. That doesn’t mean you don’t laugh watching ‘Girls’, you do! But there aren’t gags that the moment builds up to, the humor is more contained in situations as a whole. Sometimes it’s some character’s fabulous monologues in which they express how they see the world. Hilarious.

I also like the way how it’s shot. Beautiful pictures. HBO did good by letting Lena Dunham do her thing.

I love Apple for their duck head concept. And I hate them for not selling the different kinds of duck heads individually. Of course, they want me to buy the world traveller pack with six different duckheads for 40€. Yeah, the world traveller might make use of that. But it contains only one adapter of each kind.

More feasible for individuals visiting one specific country is this: Buying the local iPad power adapter. It comes with a power cord and a duckhead, both sporting the national kind of plug. This way, you can charge your iPhone or iPad and MacBook simultaneously.

Talking of power plugs: OMG the UK plugs and sockets are just ridiculous. But everybody should know that by now. I’m just re-realizing that.

What really struck me when I was wandering around the city center during my first days here in Dublin was the usefulness of Foursquare. It really is underestimated. People laugh at you for checking in at some place, being the one guy at the table who’s staring at his smartphone (just for a few seconds, ideally) and absolutely don’t see the value in that. But Foursquare is way more than a way to tell others “Look at me, I’m at this awesome place and you’re not!”. That also. But not just that.

I found several coffee shops and other places and then saved them to a Foursquare list. Mostly they were recommended to me by people I know via Twitter and App.net, but I also looked at other people’s Foursquare lists full of recommendations. When you’re in the city and just know the name of a place and the general area, then you realize: The collection of places to go to is only half the job. Having all of the adresses ready when you’re actually in the city center and longing for a good cup of coffee is equally important.

Guess what: Foursquare does that. Or, if you don’t know exactly what you want, you can look at your list for inspiration. I just go somewhere in the city and can rely on my Dublin-To-Do list with around 50 places on it:

In the (iOS) app, you just go to your profile (bottom right), then to your lists, and then select one of them. Then tap on the map. There you go.

I don’t understand why Foursquare kind of buries this powerful feature just somewhere in the app. They really should embed your personal lists as an extra tab in the ‘Explore’ section. But hey, nobody’s perfect, and Foursquare’s app has come a long way.
However: If you manage to get a few suggestions before you go some place, that’s way better than the already okay ‘Explore’ feature, I think. They should let you opt out of suggestions of Starbucks coffee shops, though. But that’s just me.

I really think Foursquare could be massively useful to even more people than Twitter. In my experience just a subset of Twitter users also use it, which is a pity.

One last thought: Like I will be stating in a blogpost that’s soon-to-come, all of the gastronomy people here really embrace Twitter. But regarding Foursquare, they obviously don’t care (that much, if at all) if their address is right, their opening hours (powerful feature!) are listed and so on. Weird. Maybe that stuff still just happens on ‘Yelp!’ here, which is not that widespread in Germany and I don’t know that well.