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
Archive for March, 2009
Mar
05
2009
Protest Singing
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.
- Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Monty Python
- Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
- Failed Attempt at Wonderwall by Oasis then Amhrán na bhFiann (Irish National Anthem)
- Tribute by Tenacious D
- F— Her Gently by Tenacious D (Explicit Lyrics)
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.
Mar
05
2009
The Day is Mine Trebek!
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.
Mar
01
2009
Turn on, Top-Up, Drop out
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.