kierenmccarthy.co.uk

I got married to Sapna this morning at Santa Ana Courthouse. I’m pretty happy about that. We do have a much bigger and fancier wedding planned for 3 April next year but since I’m leaving my job at ICANN, and since we really didn’t want to spend alot of time apart, we decided we needed [...]

One of the bizarre but wonderful things about living in Los Angeles is that when all your friends are freezing cold or trapped under the snow in January, you get to walk in the sun and witness the most extraordinary sunsets.
Last night I saw the makings of an extraordinary sunset and jumped on my bike [...]

So British superband of the moment Coldplay is being sued in Los Angeles for plagiarising guitarist Joe Satriani in their hit Viva la Vida. Joe says that the song – also the title of Coldplay’s fourth album “incorporated substantial, original portions of Plaintiff’s composition ‘If I Could Fly‘.”
Read the actual court document detailing the [...]

It’s a funny thing living in the United States of America as a visa holder. As neither citizen nor green card possessor, you are an “alien” or, more accurately, a “legal alien”.
This no-man’s-land status brings with it certain absurdities. When I arrive back from a trip abroad, for example, I am questioned as if [...]

I’ve just been through my first earthquake experience. I was on the phone and the building started swaying. It was perfectly quiet and nearly not noticeable. But as soon as you notice it – probably one or two seconds – it consumes your attention. The building continued rolling and swaying (apparently many of the anti-earthquake [...]

It’s been six weeks since I last posted here. That can’t be good. And I have a ton of stuff to get out of my mind through my fingers. The one-day trivia brain of Los Angelenos; the US presidential election process; the insane bureaucracy and mind-control of this peculiar and remarkable country. Plus, lots of [...]

There are some advantages to not being able to sleep – you get to catch the sunrise in my new flat on Santa Monica beach.

The organic food-market is an extraordinary thing. Supermarkets always claim to be providing what their customers want, and so since a large number of people are growing increasingly concerned about the chemicals shoved willy-nilly into our food, supermarkets provide organic food.
But you know their hearts aren’t in it. All the mass-produced, completely supply-reliable, unrottable, choose-your-shade-of-green [...]

I have just discovered how Americans have their bacon the way they do.
I hate the way Americans have their bacon – crisp and brittle. Thin strips that crumble and snap and taste like a bacon crisp (sorry, potato chip). But up until this morning I had no idea how they managed to make it [...]