Excellent Weather... maybe...

We had excellent weather for the whole week, but alas, the good old days end sooner or later. This morning, it was not raining when I left for work. However, when I got off my bus, it started pouring. It was like the timer went off and the tap went on. It took only a few minutes before I was completely drenched! It was just a 5 minute walk to the train station from the bus and when I arrived, I was completely soaked! My waterproof, breathable, helly-tech jacket and my non-trusty umbrella were missing in action. Actually, my umbrella is broken. It went to its doom when it tried to pick me up like Mary Poppins. But unknown to poor brella, I was much heavier than her and brella was never the same again, sniff sniff. Anyways, I haven't gotten around to replace it yet...

Start looking...

On Monday I gave my month notice to the manager. He was quite surprised and convinced me to stay. He said I did good work, so I hope I'll get a good reference from him. Now i've got to start to look for another job...

Today I found out that in Ireland, there's something called the TV license. So anyone who owns a device that are able to receive cable needs to pay for a yearly TV license (per household) of 150 euros. This doesn't include any cable fees. (Sounds ridiculous to me!) There's supposedly TV license officers that randomly go around to households checking for the license. But according to this guy I work with, he hasn't heard about anyone who has been checked.

Some pictures

Hello Everybody,
Here's some pictures we took in Dalkey, Bray and around Dublin. There's also a picture of Sophie, and one of the outside of our flat. http://www.travelgoats.ca/Europe2005/Bray/

We went to see Batman Begins this weekend. I think it's pretty good, and alot better than the last one. But it seems different than the comics. Last time when we went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith it was in the evening and we were able to reserve specific seats while we purchased the tickets. There are ushers that took us to seats. I've never been taken to my seats in a movie theatre... When we watched Batman this weekend it was a before noon show so it was a first come, first serve on seats.

We went to have Dim Sum at a place called 'Imperial Chinese Restaurant' on Saturday and we will never go there again. Their food is cooked by using the microwave (not steamed) and yes, we can tell! So far, we have found 3 Dim Sum restaurants in Dublin and this is the worst (the worst we've ever tasted anywhere!) All were around the same price... pricy. The one in Stephen's Green, just beside the Gaiety Theatre is the best Chinese Restaurant (Dim Sum and dinner) called Millennium.

Gaiety Theatre will be hosting the Riverdance for the next 3 months. We got some tickets for next Saturday so we'll let you know how the show is...

Bad Sophie, Bad!

Sophie is not behaving! She keeps peeing around me. On one evening, I had to mop the kitchen floor twice and it also crapped on the carpet! That little creature must go, it's now stinking the whole place up. My housemate is not home enough to tend to it, so I guess he's not as responsible as I first thought.

I'm no longer freaking out with unexpected things popping up with our flat... it's like, 'Really, we have no more water again, wow, I didn't think we'd have water for so long...' So yesterday, we have no water (YET AGAIN) Last time when we had no water, it took them about aweek and a half to fix. This time it only took them 2 days to restore our water. Actually, this time is even worse than last time cause even the showers don't work. It's like living in a little third world flat where we have to fill up buckets with dropplets of water.

At around midnight last night, there was these two drunks singing (loudly) outside our flat. We had the window open because Ireland is currently experiencing it's one week of summer so it was abit hot. Fortunetly, we had ear plugs and it did the job. We were able to get a good nights rest. (Never leave home without one)

Our 7th housemate, Sophie!

We have a new addition to our apartment recently. Her name is Sophie, and is only 8
weeks old and really cute. She's crawling around stubling over everything. I want to hold her, but i'm afraid that I would drop her, or get pee on. She's not making alot of noise in the middle of the night, so everyone is sleeping well. But tends to wake up really early in the morning wanting attention. My house mate is pretty young, only 24 years old. He's taking good care of her, giving her regular baths so she smells good (most of the time) I have some pictures of her, i'll try to post them soon.

On Tuesday, we went to check out another flat (in the city centre area). The flat looks pretty good. It would have costed almost double our current rent (but it's ok). It's got 2 bedrooms and ours was pretty big and had an ensuite. I liked the place until I found out that one of the guys sleeps on the couch (the other guys gets the other room all to himself) On Saturday, we saw another flat in the Dublin 8 area (just a couple of blocks from where we're living now). This flatt is not in the city centre area but is only about 15-20 minutes away (walking). In short, we didn't like this one. The place looks like it hasn't been cleaned for a long while. The carpet looks gross and the room stinks. (There's 2 other guys living there) Needless to say, we shall look some more, and fast, cause the music in the bar is getting louder than when we first moved in! The bass is so loud over the weekends that our room is vibrating!

On another note, I think i'm going to give my one month notice sometime this week and try to find work closer to the City of Dublin. In a month I think I would be able to complete the major parts of the project so it's not like i'm leaving them hanging (so I don't feel bad for them) Amazingly, I'm all up to date on the documentation so they should be able to maintain it without much trouble.

There are loads of Chinese restaurants here but almost all of them offer the northern cuisine. So far, we found 2 southern style Chinese restaurants in Dublin. Yesterday, we had DIM SUM in one of them. It's taste is suprisingly good. Compared to Calgary, it's about double the price and the selection is limited. (My southern taste buds just screaming for moms southern style dishes)

Today Bo decided to make it a cleaning day, and I helped move furniture around while he's vacuming. Bo vacumed the room and also his laptop keyboard. His keyboard keys are all secured so none of the keys got sucked in... remember, alway check that your keys are all locked in place before vacuming it (Max)

Sleep, work, and TV, what a balanced life!

We aren’t doing much these days except work, sleep, TV and video games. Riley lent us his Nintendo Cube and we just bought the Donkey Kongo game (the one with the drums) One of my house mates also has a PS2 so I bought the UK version of DDR and a 8-way dance mat (yes, this games uses all 8 directions). But I don’t really like the layout of how the arrows come out. They come from the center and moves outwards. So it’s a bit confusing. I think the next version of the UK DDR game has the same layout as the North American and Asian versions. We also received care packages from Kitty, with the whole season 4 of 24, Apprentice 3 and HK shows. So we were busy watching North American TV shows and playing video games. (P.S. if anyone else wants to send us care packages, our mailbox always welcomes them)

We just watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith (just came out this week in Dublin) I thought it was a really funny movie. A must see for Brad Pitt fans!

Got sick again...

Eeek, I got sick again. My throat is giving me problems again. Luckily, it turned into a cold instead of a flu. I missed 2 days of work. I think it’s the air pollution that’s caused me to fall ill. There are so many people smoking here. Little kids are smoking and drinking in plain sight! Maybe we are just in a dodgy area. I guess that explains the 10 police vehicles that suddenly showed up directly outside of our little apartment one evening. We had no idea what was going on. Maybe it was a bar fight? But it was a big scene, one side of the road is blocked off, lots of people were screaming at each other, and also at the cops. But at the end, we only saw one person get arrested.

Day trip to Bray (Wicklow)

We went to Bray for a day trip. It’s in Wicklow which is south of Dublin. It was only a 40 minute train ride away. If you haven’t gathered already, places are pretty small in land mass, therefore everything is pretty close. In Bray, there’s a nice beach area just 10 minutes from the train station. We walked across the whole beach, and at the end of the beach there was a nice little hiking trail. But it’s nothing like K-Country. It’s a fairly easy hike and took us only 30 minutes to get to the top of the hill. The view is nice at the top. We can see parts of Dublin from up there. We will probably recommend this area to anyone who comes to visit us. I’ll try to put the pictures together, stay toon.

I still miss everyone!

It's been a while since I updated this thing and not too much as happen, but I promise to update the blog more often.

I bumped into Riley at the outdoor shop, one of my lunch mates at the U of C! He's been here for four years studying dental school at Trinity Collage. I didn't think I would find anyone here I know. He said Dublin changed alot during the last 4 years and it's '100% better'

We went to see the 'Book of Kells' at Trinity Collage with Riley (more like he took us there). Then we walked the hills in 'Killiney' where many of the rich and famous reside. We walked by Bono's estate...

Bo and I haven't moved yet and I haven't quit my job yet. I've finally started to code in dot NET. Anymore document writing and i'll be going mad.

One of my many moments of frustration:
So one day, as I was on my way to work, walking towards my train station, I was told that my station was closed. So I quickly dashed to the next station to catch my train. Alas, I was there and on time. I waited there for while and no train came. Very long story short, they screwed up (so typical) and all of us, who needed to take the ICE (Inter City Express) to the North, ended back at the same station in city centre at 10:30am. Keep in mind that I was at the city centre train station before 8am. Needless to say that I called into work and asked for a day off (they probably don’t want to pay me a full day of pay for a half day of work anyways). Someone had committed suicide and jumped in front of the train that day so everything was delayed. It turns out that this happens a few times a year.

It seems like everything works really (NO EXTREMELY) slowly here. I've finally got my PPS AKA SIN number after working in Ireland for 2 months. It was also hard for me to talk to them since they are only open on weekdays between the hours of 9:15-noon and 1:30-4:30pm. I had to take time off from work to go and talk to them! It took numerous tries and it was always this one person who will NOT issue it to me. One day, after I got turned down again, I waited around there for a while wondering how I would ever get this PPS number without moving! I mean all they wanted was a proof of residence from the landlord, but the landlord just doesn’t want to give us the letter of residence. Luckily as I was contemplating nothing, the guy went on break and another lady took over the one and only window that deals with PPS numbers. I went and talked to her, gave her my proof of residence (bank letters and employment letters) and she took care of my PPS application right away.

Bo also had troubles with his PPS number and he also had to deal with the same guy I had. This guy was constantly refusing to process Bo's PPS application. However, Bo eventually got his PPS number when the guy went on break, and he talked to some other person. Bo and I both came up with the same conclusion about the guy… *$%#

On another note, I haven’t been disturbed by any ‘knackers’ lately, so my experience in Ireland is getting better. ‘Knacker’ is a term used by the locals who describe the jobless people who cares about no one but themselves, who has no interest of working or finding a job, who are most of the time drunk, who has tons of children (so the government would give them a bigger place to live), who likes to give anyone and everyone a hard time.

Pictures from our Galway trip is up!

http://www.travelgoats.ca/Europe2005/GalwayIreland/

Another week, another post

Not much happening this week. Just the usual… getting up early for work, taking forever to get there, sit in front of the computer and type away for 8 hrs then taking forever to come back… Yeah, nothing exciting this week.

Observations:

• Shit, shit, shit… shit they’re everywhere! Watch your step, there’s loads of crap on the sidewalk. The dog owners just let their dogs go anywhere without cleaning up after them (at least that’s what I found in Dublin)
• Did I mention lots of stores open late and close early? The “Hours of Business” signs aren’t very popular here either!
• Motorcycles are the way to travel during rush hours. I see them weaving between the cars, by passing all traffic
• Tons of people steal stuff from convenience stores. When they are caught, they are told to put the product back and leave the store(this is true for at least one convenience store that I know of)
• Street police officers do not carry guns, they are often seen stationed alone without much backup close by
• Most of the LRT stations only have one ticket machine. During the rush hour, I always see huge lineups in front of the ticket machine. The train will pull up and lots of people cannot get on because they're still lining up to buy a ticket!

Weekend trip to Galway

Bo, Danny (our house mate) and I went to Galway for the weekend. We took the bus from Dublin and it took about 4 hrs to get there. We arrived in Galway at around 1pm. We booked a hostel on line before we left so we were set for a place to crash. Tip when booking on line, don’t book at the first site that you find… I found 2 sites for the same hostel and one site was 25% less than the other. And always plan ahead and book early. We booked our hostel about 2 days before arriving and it took me forever to find a vangent hostel with 3 beds. I wanted a 4 bed ensuite but every hostel I found was full.

Anyways, Galway is a lot smaller than Dublin. We walked through the entire city centre in a few hours. We went to see the usual stuff like statues and the bay area. But we’ve already been to several bays, they all look very similar. So nothing really special. We met an Australian in the hostel and he stuck with us for the afternoon. We had Chinese for dinner. Nothing special except that the prices were higher than Calgary and the portion was A LOT smaller. That and the food isn’t as tasty. Did I mention that the weather really sucked… it poured all day long! Oh, I did notice that Galway was a cleaner city than Dublin.

Sunday, we took a tour bus to Burren Region and the Cliffs of Moher. The Burren is the Irish version of the rocky mountain. If you’re an avid scrambler (Joanne) it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. The cliffs were nice. Everyone was crawling to the edges and looking down… it was a loooooong way down. A few tourists fell last year and the bodies were still not found.

There were other stops along the way but the only one worth mentioning is the stone burial ground. Along time ago, people piled large pieces of stone on top of graves. Its pretty hard to image how they were able to lift the large pieces of stones without any machinery.

I’m sure Galway is a great place, but I didn’t have a wonderful time when I was there because I didn’t sleep well in the hostel. What I needed were a pair of ear plugs and an eye mask. You can imagine what happen… I didn’t function extremely well on Sunday.

Day trip to Howth

Bo, myself and 3 of our house mates went on a day trip to Howth on Sunday. It was a 45 mins bus ride (31A) from Dublin city centre. We would of taken the train but there was no weekend services due to upgrades. I would suggest taking the train if its available because it would have only taken 15 mins and its much more comfortable.

We walked around the pier, took some pictures and proceeded to hike up the cliff path to the summit. Sounds technical right? Well, it’s not. We could have hiked it in less than an hour. But we stopped a lot to take pictures. It was a real gradual slope up. But still, if you fall off the side, you’ll surely die! Anyways, it was fun. I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of K-Country… until I heard people with their Irish accents. Pictures below:

http://www.travelgoats.ca/Europe2005/IrelandPart3/index.html

The Weekend's Here!

Finally, it's Friday today. I've survived another week at work. I took Bo's MP3 player this week and that made such a big difference for my commute to work. I've also decided to take the bus to city centre then switch to the train... before I was taking the LRT to city centre then take the bus to work. The bus to Balbriggin takes me alot closer to work but it's just too unreliable and is always late. I've waited as much as 40 mins for the bus one time. But now that I take the train, I better not be late for it cause the train comes once every hour! I'm also exercising quite a bit. I'm now walking an average of 45 mins per day, getting from the train station to work and from work back to the train station.

Different stuff

• The police are called the Gardia and they don't care if you j-walk. In fact, they do it themselves.
• On the bus and the train, there's fines signs warning you to buy a valid ticket or else be fined. But we saw someone get caught without a valid ticket and the ticket checker asked the person to get off at the next station.
• Lots of traffic circles (they them roundabouts) and some of them have traffic lights. That totally defeats the purpose of a traffic circle!
• On average, movies and TV shows are 6 weeks behind Calgary.
• There are admission fees for churches in Ireland. Gotta pay to pray!

Easter Monday

Well, it's been two months since we arrived in Ireland. We have a long weekend this week. Easter Monday is a holiday here instead of Good Friday in Canada. But we didn't go anywhere. I'm just so tired on weekdays that I just didn't want to do anything except nothing. However, we did have a dinner get together with a New Zealand couple on Sunday. We met them in the hostel, and they're also here for a working holiday.

Before leaving Canada, I thought that I could live in Ireland for a few years. But it seems like the longer I'm here, the more I want to go home. I know it's only been two months but I’m missing home a lot already. Things are not too much different here, yet everything seems different. That doesn't make any sense at all! They say it takes three months for the culture shock to pass. In that case, I guess I’m going to feel weird for another month. I think I just need to get to know this place some more and find some good things that can keep me here till the end of the year. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks. I think Bo likes it here in Dublin though.

More Pictures!!!

Last set of pictures from Denmark (Hamlet's Castle)http://www.travelgoats.ca/Europe2005/DenmarkPart3/DenmarkPart3.html

Here are some Ireland pictures:
http://www.travelgoats.ca/Europe2005/IrelandPart1/IrelandPart1.html
http://www.travelgoats.ca/Europe2005/IrelandPart2/IrelandPart2.html

Parade pictures from St. Patrick's Day:
http://www.travelgoats.ca/Europe2005/StPaddyDay/StPaddyDay.html

I guess you all know about my job situation eh? Kind of a dilemma (can't move close to either work places) I think it would be bad for me to quit and look for another one since I already accepted the job and starting for a week already. I'm thinking of maybe crashing at the hostel a day or two a week... suggestions?

First Week of Work

My first week of work. I didn't do much except for sitting around, looking busy and reading a bunch of documentation. Being a contractor and all, I thought that they would give me more to do. I've only worked for 4 days this week cause St. Patricks Day is a holiday in Ireland, but the commute is beginning to be unbearable! How am I suppose to work there for another 10 months if I can't stand it already? Someone give me some advice please!!! We can't really move closer cause then it would take Bo forever to get to work. We are thinking to move into the city centre so at least we don't have to compute into city centre then switch transportations...

It turns out that no one goes out for lunch, everyone either brings their lunch or eats in the company cafeteria. The company I work for is pretty big but I think i'm the only Asian... I miss Canada, the multiculturalism, my family and all my Canadian friends.

On another note, there's lots of Asian foods in Dublin. Today we had hotpot for dinner with our house mates. Good stuff!

Some differences:
- Lots (and lots, and lots...) of people swear lots in their conversations.
- More rude people (towards Asians and blacks), but also met lots of nice people
- The buses and trains are very confusing... everything is priced differently, depending on what you take and where you go.
- Lots and lots of people smoke (and drink)... it seems like everyone's a chain smoker here.
- I see alot more drunk people (any time of the day) here in the last month then the entire year in Calgary.

St. Paddy's Day

I got today off and went to see the St. Paddy Day Parade... I didn't think it was too good, but then I'm not a big fan of parades anyways. Bo took lots of pictures, I'll have them posted soon, but don't expect much commentaries. For all those 'green' beer drinkers in Canada, the Irish have no idea what 'green' beer is...

We didn't drink at all today, but instead, had someone over for dinner. She's a Canadian girl that we met while we were at the hostal. We both had to get up early for work the next day so drinking would be bad anyways.

Bo's got a job!

Bo accepted an offer from the company in Dun Laoghaire. I guess he made an impression, and didn't even have to go for a second interview. The lucky little Bo starts work on the Monday after. He gets to rest for another 2 weeks!! Kind of... he's waking up at the same time as me, to make me breakfast.

Bo's got another interview (third time's a charm)

Things are starting to look up for Bo too. He's going for an interview today at Dun Laoghaire (very south side of Dublin) and looks like he may have a couple more lined up. It takes him 1 hr to get there. Bo thinks the interview went well. He was telling them what they should do (he's so arrogant) If he gets this postion, he would be responsible for .NET development. Wish him luck.