At my school here in Ireland Easter break was from April 4th to April 19th. My mother, sister and girlfriend Sarah took that opportunity to come over to Ireland and visit. They were here from the 4th until the 12th (Easter Sunday). We spent that whole week gallivanting around Ireland and engaging in acts of tomfoolery. While my mother was showing off her much improved Ireland driving skills, Sarah and I sat in the backseat playing twenty questions. Which later became a game of “just keep guessing until you get it right” mostly because Sarah kept forgetting to count when it was my turn. Kimberly outdid herself this time in her role as trip planner/overall coordinator as well as outloud reader of travel guides. Our trip brought us from Waterford (where I live) to Dublin, Blarney Castle, the Ring of Kerry, Dingle Penninsula (more beautiful than Kerry but less known), the Burren, and back to Shannon. Between the four of us we took over 800 pictures total and only about 30 are of us. The other 700 odd photos are all of scenery (it could easily be turned into the slideshow from hell).
Instead of creating the slideshow from hell, I created a short video of some of my favorite pictures and videos from our trip. The video contains a song by an Icelandic band named Sigur Rós. Unless you speak Icelandic don’t bother trying to decipher the lyrics. The name of the song is Við Spilum Endalaust which simply means “We play endlessly.”
I hope you enjoy it.
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I just heard a group of drunken Irish girls singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” outside of my window.
“No matter where you go, there you are.” – Buckaroo Bonzai
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Here are the videos I promised my quiz teammates. All of these were filmed on February 4th on the way back from the fees protest. Just note that these videos were taken on a bus at night so you can’t really see anything.
If you’re easily offended or my grandmother I would not recommend watching to the last video. I apologize if at any point you can hear my horrible singing voice above everyone else’s horrible singing voices. I’m still amazed at how many of the students know the Tenacious D album, I mean know it cover-to-cover. My apologies to Amy and John for not posting these earlier but every time I tried to upload them from Manor Village the connection timed out so I had to wait until I was back on campus.
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As I mentioned earlier, this week is RAG week at W.I.T. On Monday I went to a charity quiz night that was being held at a bar called “Revolution.” My original plan was to convince a couple of the lads from Computer Forensics or Applied Computing to be part of my quiz team. Unfortunately, when I arrived at school Monday, NONE of the Forensics guys were here (this actually isn’t too surprising given how bad their attendance is) and only about half of the Applied Computing guys were here. Cathal wanted to go but he had his dad’s 60th birthday party to go to, Emma got lost at the campus pub before I could ask her, and Sean didn’t want to be the only other one going. Defeated, I decided to just go alone, have some drinks at the bar and listen to the quiz.
After a few minutes at the bar two people approached me: John and Amy (or it could be Jon and Aimee, I didn’t ask for I.D.). They asked if I was the person that had been recording the sing-alongs on the way back from the Dublin protest. I told them that I had recorded a couple videos of the singing on my digital camera. They asked if I had posted them on Bebo (a social networking site that’s popular over here, it’s very similar to MySpace) and I told them that I didn’t have a Bebo account but I would happily post them here on my blog. So I gave Amy the url and then they asked whose team I was on. I told them that I didn’t have a team, so they offered to have me join theirs. I kindly accepted and they then introduced me to our other teammates Chris and Chris’ girlfriend (who was very nice but whose name I can’t remember). We all moved upstairs and grabbed a table to sit at before the quiz began and they told me the name of the team: “The Nymphos.” Which, I think, serves me right for not asking before I joined the team. Not that I’m one to judge, David Duchovny is a sex addict and he’s a member of the F.B.I. So, you know, takes all kinds.
Unfortunately, The Nymphos did not win the quiz. We did however answer some of the hardest questions in the quiz. Chris’ Girlfriend knew the names of the 3 tunnels from The Great Escape (Tom, Dick and Harry), Amy was one of the only people to know the names of the actors kissing on the cover of Gone with the Wind (Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh) and I knew the name of Morpheus’ ship in the Matrix (The Nebuchadnezzar). I am glad that I didn’t try to do the quiz alone or else would have failed miserably. The categories “General Knowledge” and “Sports” were heavily Irish-centric. Two of the questions from “General Knowledge” were “What county has the highest mountain in Ireland?” and “Who was the first Taoiseach?” The sports questions seemed to focus mostly on horses and football.
After the quiz my teammates went to dance at a club called Ruby’s and I went home to sleep. I woke up the next day with the black lung (my term for a cold) and as a result missed classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. Which is really a shame because they had a cowboy themed night at Revolution on Tuesday where I could have shown my unparalleled mechanical bull riding skills. Now, when I say “bull riding” I really mean “falling on the padded mat.” That bull is a frickin’ jerk, the mat is where all the cool kids are.
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This week I received a package of goodies from my mom, Kim and Sarah. Included were some very good oatmeal raisin cookies, assorted chocolates, Nutella spread and my blackberry. Now, I’m not one of those people who is addicted to their blackberry (unlike President Obama and this guy) so living without my cell phone has been very easy. Although, it does surprise people when they ask for your mobile number and you tell them you don’t have one. So I went down to the city centre in Waterford to buy an Irish sim card for my phone. Once there, I found an amazing phone service that’s offered by a company called 3 mobile. For €10 a month I get free Skype on my cell phone. How great is that? So now I can talk to people in the U.S. using Skype for only €10 a month. That doesn’t include the fact that I also get text and cell service as well. The phone uses its 3G data hook-up to access Skype and makes calls using the data network. They also have a cool prepay system here called “top-up” which enables you to pay for phone usage almost anywhere: grocery stores, corner shops, gas stations. You just tell them you want to top-up your phone for however much money, they print you a receipt with a code on it and you enter that code into your cell phone. Done. The cell (mobile) phone system is the first time that I can say that Ireland really has a much better system than the U.S. An area that they are really behind in is internet video. No Hulu, no NBC.com (they block European ip addresses) and no movies or television shows in their iTunes store.
This is going to be an interesting week at school because it’s RAG week. RAG stands for “Raise and Give” (actually, according to wikipedia that is a ‘backronym’) and it’s a week when the Student Union of a school holds tons of charitable events (concerts, contests, etc.) to raise money for different charities. As a result of the festival-like atmosphere it has also become a week known for partying and severe levels of intoxication. Our dorms have had signs up for the past week declaring that there will be no guests allowed during RAG week, if someone doesn’t have i.d. (we have magnetic swipe cards) they will not be allowed into the building. That seems like a reasonable precaution to keep the size of the parties to a minimum in a school-owned building (note: alcohol consumption is allowed in the dorms here unlike schools in the U.S.). However, I found a letter from the Student Union under our door this morning denouncing any “anti-social behaviour” during RAG week and claiming that they will be forming a neighborhood watch to drive around the estates here (non-school owned houses where students and members of the general populace live) and report any parties they find. Now honestly, what do you envision when you think of one of these neighborhood watchers? Do you know what I think of? Someone on rollerblades with a helmet on, wearing rainbow reflective sunglasses (at night) and a walkie-talkie. Come on, if a party gets out of hand people will inevitably call the Garda (police) so is there really a need for a neighborhood watch? I think the whole thing is just a thinly veiled attempt to justify someone’s purchase of some sweet walkie-talkies.
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It’s offcial, I am an uncle. Adam’s wife Gizella gave birth at 3:03pm yesterday to 7lbs 12oz, 21″ long baby boy. They haven’t decided on a name yet so it’s just a little baby no-name at the moment. It’s been less than 24-hours since the baby’s birth and Taco has already posted pictures on the internet.
Now, I use the term baby loosely here because, like all newborns, it resembles an alien (Bill Cosby would say a lizard) more than a human child. I’m not making this up or being mean spirited here. I offer the following two photographs as proof: photo 1, photo 2.
Seriously… that’s some Chariots of the Gods sh*t right there.
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So after a week of struggle (with a lot of naps) I finally have my blog up and running. I’ll be working on adding a bunch of backdated entries from when I first arrived in Ireland. I think I’m going to steal most of the entries from e-mails that I have sent to people since I have arrived. So don’t be surprised if you’ve seen some of it before.
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It’s the first day of classes and out of the four classes on my timetable (class schedule) I only actually attended one. Is this the result of my laziness? No, it is because only one of my professors came to class. I asked my flatmates why none of the professors were there and they said that the first day is just for picking up your timetable. No one actually goes to class the first day. I also heard from some other people on campus that apparently a lot of the professors are in meetings this week. The word ‘exams’ was also used as an excuse a number of times. From what I can ascertain the professors were in meetings all day to discuss the results of last semester’s exams. Why wouldn’t they bring the professors in a few days early for that or schedule the first day of classes after the meetings are finished?
I did finally get my bank account open. Only to discover that international checks take from 6-7 weeks to clear. Luckily, I discovered that my debit card from the U.S. does work here. So my situation is much less dire than it could have been.
To be honest, my first day of classes didn’t go so well. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.
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The past two days have been pretty boring. I walked to the school and attempted to open a bank account yesterday only to be told that I’ll have to wait until I get my WITcard on Monday. My passport photo comes out blurry on their copier and they need to fax a copy of a photo ID to the bank headquarters. Although it may sound like a short visit, it wasn’t. I ended up going from office to office to office to get all the paperwork that I needed filled out only to be rejected after my 3 hour quest. I did however take some pictures of the IT building. They’re all interior shots because it was cloudy yesterday so any outdoor photos would have looked dreary. I only had one quest today and I failed to complete it.
Next time I’ll use magic missiles.
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I went to orientation this morning where I received my welcome packet, information about my classes, and a tour of the campus. Apparently, I am the first international student to have chosen the computer forensics major. From what I can tell, most of the foreign students choose to take business classes. The campus looks awesome. The computer science building was only built two years ago so the architecture is cool and everything is still very clean. The best part is the art in the computer science building. Apparently an Irish artist donated a good portion of her life’s work to the school. As a result all of the walls in the building are covered with her art. Our guide said it was valued at two million Euros for the entire collection. I’ll take some pictures of it when I get a chance.
After orientation I walked back to the dorm with some of the other international students. Although my flatmates are here, none of theirs’ are, so they were all talking about how bored they are. I suggested that we all have lunch together, a plan that everyone liked. So we went to the grocery store and bought food (most of us hadn’t been shopping yet). I bought this week’s groceries for about €20 and then we spilt the cost of our pasta lunch (which came out to about €2 each). We then left the shop and went back to the dorm where we all put our groceries away and then reconvened in the room of two Brazilians, Bruno and Raphael. There was five of us total, myself, the Brazilians, a girl from Chicago named Gwenyth and a girl from Slovenia name Ivana. We all worked together making the pasta and I ended up eating quite a bit despite the fact that it had huge bits of onion and garlic in it (my two mortal enemies). I did, however, skip the garlic bread. Truth be told, this morning was a bit rough. My flatmates took me out drinking last night. We started off drinking vodka and coke in the dorm. We then took a cab uptown where we stopped in a pub named Geoff’s. Once at Geoff’s I switched to Guiness while Deirdre stuck with vodka. We only had one drink at Geoff’s before going to Ruby’s, a dance club accross the road. This is where we remained for the rest of the evening. I drank only one more Guiness during the whole three hour stretch that we were there. This is something that (despite your opinion of him) Dane Cook is right about: guys don’t go to clubs to dance, ever. There are only ever two reasons why straight men go to clubs, they’re trying pick up women or their girlfriend dragged them there. Since I was at a club for neither reason, it turned into an exercise of nursing a Guiness for three hours. Not that I want to seem ungrateful for the invite. My flatmates were very nice the entire time and I honestly felt bad that I couldn’t be more entertaining In the end, it’s like bringing a polar bear to the equator, there’s just nothing for him there. I’m going to go sleep now. My sleep schedule is still all messed up.
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