Stranger in a Strange Land

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.

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.

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.