That’s it. I enjoyed the time and I’m glad to come back to Berlin.
I still have something to do at work such as installing 2 laptops or changing hardware on a server. I purchased some cake and muffins for today. Now everyone is saying good bye to me and I’m feeling kind of sad at the moment.
But going home to Germany sounds really good and I am looking forward to seeing my girlfriend and my family again.
Nevertheless, I’d like to say thanks to all the people in the programm that made it possible for me to get the chance to work and live in ireland. Thanks a lot to the OSZIMT and the Afib for planning and supporting us.
I think this will be my last article and won’t write any more blog entries.
I am really busy at the moment. There is a lot to do at work and I am really slowly while finishing all the paperwork that we have to do for the OSZIMT. There are several installations for different PCs and customers. I changed the pickup rollers on two printers and I had to upgrade the Disk space and RAM of two Server Systems. In addition to that, there is a Laptop which needs to be repaired (I think that I have to change the mainboard). Beneath, I’m trying to complete my european mobility pass and my report for the School.
Kevin, our organisator, is back in Belfast and we invited him to have dinner with us this evening. As no one else in the house is able to cook, I’ll have to do that. But I don’t care because it’s one of my hobbies.
So there ist not much time to get on with the paperwork and I think that I have to finish the report at home.
I’m at work again and I have nothing else to do than, as you already know, installing computers. 2 Laptops and 2 Dekstops today. That’s all I have to do. I am thinking about anything else to tell about and that’s the weekend.
Sebastian, Oliver and I went to Glasgow on Sunday. Over there we visited the Celtic Football Stadium. I think that I’ve never seen such a great pure football stadium before. Just awesome. I think more details are included in the groundhopping article of Sebastian. Glasgow is a nice City and I regret that I was there for only a few hours.
Back in Belfast we all went to bed immediately. On Sunday we watched Germany beating England in a Pub.
That’s it. No Pictures and nothing else left to tell about.
That’s just a short explanation of what I’m dealing with right now at work. Since Yesterday I am „on site“. That means that I take care of problems concerning customer’s networks. Yesterday I had to configure a Cisco Router and a Firewall to provide secure Internet access. I also established a VPN tunnel to the head office of the company. It took about 4 hours to realize it, but finally it was working.
Today I am on a different customer site. I reconfigured the firewall here as well. I had to change the external IP address because their old one was on the black list caused by spam mails originating from their server, which hast been hacked before. But it is all fine now. As you can see the internet is working right now. The internet at our house at home is not working sufficiently so I just write the article from here. The next one will be on sunday, because it will be a busy weekend for me. I think all of us is dealing with all the different papers and sheets we have to fill out for the oszimt and the projects.
Let’s see if we can provide all requested documents until we come back :).
Leo: I was just upset about Mr. Bavar writing to all of us as a group and tagging the Mail to CC. That could defenitely lead to trouble with our companies.
I don’t think that all of us aren’t writing enough Blog entries. It’s just a few.
Referring to Mr. Bavar’s Email I am writing a new blog entry for today. I usually upload my entries at work but it was too busy yesterday that I didn’t have time to create it. I don’t write them at home because our internet is not stable and very slow.
It’s just a normal day today. I woke up, got dressed, went to the trainstation, went to Antrim, got picked up by Jonny, approached Nitec and started work.
Today there are a few more installations and support issues (troubleshooting) concerning two laptops. One Laptop is overheating and I contacted HP to get support from them because there is nothing we can do about it here. I am still trying to reproduce the problem on the other Laptop which is supposed to be a screen that’s not working properly.
Yesterday there were different task to do for me. I had to take out the harddrives of 40 PC’s and I had to order a collection for them to be destructed. I was heavy work and my back is feeling bad right now. Additionally to that I had to take care of the waste and there were a few installation of different customer’s PC’s. When deliveries come in I have to take care about them as well.
That is kind of a special task for me because it is the first time that something more interesting happens than installing PC’s, dealing with deliveries or just taking care about the waste.
In my next blog entry I will tell you something about the „Giant Causeway“ which I visited on my weekend. But I am not able to write an article every two days because my collegues don’t like me to sit at my desk dealing with non work related issues.
Yesterday another week started which is supposed to be as unspectacular as usual. There is not much to do at work but that’s finde because there is a lot of football matches that are waiting to be watched. But I’m able to tell you something eventually interesting about last week.
Last week I had some more installations to do. Basically, I install one of them, take an image and apply it to all the others. Afterwards I set a new system ID and thats it. Thursday and Friday were more interesting. I was on site with Mark (a technician from Nitec). We had to replace a PC in Lisburn at a Company which is dealing with dental prostheses. Then we went over to a site where there was a problem with the Citrix server. A harddrive failed but we couldn’t replace it because of the HDD being too old. The server was 7 years old and applying a new hard drive would cost the customor an amount of about 600£ so we decided not to schedule further on and even charge him for that. There were a couple of PC installs later on but nothing special, just plugging them in, join a domain and finish the task of. We had an issue with a PC that was infected by some viruses and trojans. We removed them and had to provide a repair installation for that PC. So you see, that is not really what I’m supposed to do as a network related IT guy, but that’s just the way it is over here. But I was having a good time with Mark because he has got this typical irish humour which I actually like the most about the irish people ^^. During our journey he phoned Jonny (the guy I’m working with in the first 3 days of the week) and told him that I stole his car and left him behind beside of the road. After a few minutes he explained Jonny that he was joking, but he is very good in sarcasm so that Jonny actually believed him the first time.
My weekend was quite exhausting but interesting, too. My girlfriend and a good friend of mine visited Belfast last weekend. On Friday, we met Mr. Schlenger in the Bourbons Bar to have something to eat before getting into a Pub („The Laverys“) to watch the rest of the World Cup’s football match. I think it was Uruguay vs. France. We explained Mr. Schlenger how we settled in and that most of us are feeling comfortable living in Belfast. A lot of experiences were covered and we were happy to tell him how many cultural differences we found between Germany and Ireland. There was much to tell about and not all of our stories could have been told. I think it was great that at least someone participating in the organisation of the exchange vistited Belfast and managed to see all of us. We’ve had a very good time in the Laverys for the whole evening although Mr. Schlenger had to go to bed a little sooner than we had to. I regret that I don’t have a camera but I think al the other guys took a lot of pictures of the Laverys and Mr. Schlenger.
On Saturday I god up early because of having bad pain in the back. I got to sports and felt better afterwards. Later on we went into the City to purchase some things and to give my friends from Berlin an understanding of the City and to show’em the good sites of the City Centre. After coming back, we went to „The Bot“ to watch England’s first football match.
"The Bot"
After watching the game, we walked over to „The Empire“. It is a very impressing pub in the South of Belfast. The building was a church before and they just rebuilt it into being a pub. There was a liveband playing there and we had a lot of fun (spending a lot of money). I attached some pictures of „The Empire“. They had a windows filled up with stuff from Jaegermeister and we took pictures of that as well.
We met a lot of irish people and we were at in the pub for a really long time talking as much english as possible. After the pub closed we went to our friends from Switzerland who we met in the few weeks spending here. Down at their place, we met other people from different countries. I think a lot of them are international students in that house.
We used the Sunday to relax and to see the City Centre again. In the evening we went to „The Bot“ again to watch the Germans winning against Australia. Nothing too spectacular for me and my girlfriend because we went off after the game even earlier than the others. Sebastian told that in his previous article.
I think that is a good summary of the last days 5 that I spent in Belfast. Of course there is a lot more to tell about but it’s defenitely not suppoosed to be written in the blog…
I finally could upload some pictures of my work today. I will try to describe my journey and my workplace, so let’s start with the journey to Antrim.
Roadmap (Jouney to Antrim)
This is a map where you can see where Antrim is. I have to travel by bus and by train. Most of the time I am traveling by train. The red line on the map indicates my route to Antrim.
Lanscape of Ireland
I also added a picture that I took out of the train because you can see the great landscape when the weather is good.
At Antrim’s railwaystation someone’s picking me up every day. We are driving by car for about 15 minutes. I’m glad to be picked up because otherwise I would have to walk for 40 minutes. Antrim is a nice and small town in the middle of Ireland. I really like to see the small houses and towers of the different churches there.
Technology Park View from outside
Nitec is located in a so called „Technology Park“.
I attached a picture of that park, too.
Sry, but I’m not aware of uploading pictures in my articles. That’s the reason for them being so unorganised. The following pictures were made at Nitec. Espescially in the workshop which is the place where I spend the most time at work.
I think that is all I can tell you about my work for now. I mean until there is interesting work coming in. I didn’t upload pictures from my collegues because they did not want to (the internet never forgets). Traveling to Antrim everyday can be very exhausting. I have to leave my house in Belfast at about 8am and I come back at about 7pm. You see that there is not much free time for me from Monday to Friday.
I heard that some of our instructors complained about the blog and that we write 80% about fun and 20% about work. Actually, there is not much time to meet people or improve my english or „social skills“. All our companies expect us to gain experiences about culture and language but we do not learn this at work. If you want us to improve our social skills and our language you have to understand that we have to go out and meet people. I can understand that the purpose of our internship in ireland is the work. But i think that I don’t have to go to Ireland if I just want to work. I can do that in Germany as well. The most important thing here is, that we meet different cultures, go out and meet people. And that is only possible on the weekends. So please do not complain about us writing the most about our weekend activities. Work is work, even in Ireland…..
I did not want to be impolite but I think living in foreign countries is more than just „working“.
After a very interesting weekend (Pary in our house again), I started another week at Nitec. Things haven’t changed yet, so I’m doing the same tasks as usual. Installing PC’s, waiting on more interesting jobs to come in. I would prefer to tell you something interesting but there is simply nothing to tell about. So don’t be confused about me writing more about my weekends and fun stuff. It is just no use to keep telling about my work if nothing happens. I tried to upload some photos of my workplace and the journey, but the Internet at our house was too slow, so I stopped the upload process. Maybe this evening it will be more successful. But please do not think that I am not happy to work here. All the employees are very friendly and treat me like an equal. I feel very comfortable here and I am pleased to be here. Every day someone’s picking me up at the railwaystation by car, that I do not have to go by feet. It’s just unfortunate that no interesting jobs are coming in.
Now, I am just waiting for this working week to end because on Friday my girlfriend’s going to visit Belfast for the first time. It’s going to be a good weekend because of Mr. Schlenger coming to Befast as well and the Fifa World Cup’s begin on Friday. So let’s see if the weather keeps being great like in the past.
Sebastian and I went to Dublin last weekend. We catched the bus at 9am in Belfast.
Down in Dublin we met Marco and Alex who were waiting for us at the bus station. We went to Dublin to see a football match (Sebastians idea) between the Bohemians FC and the Shamrock Rovers F.C (also called „the hips“ by the Bohemians).
Tim and Lionel joined us on the way to the stadium. I dont want to talk a lot about the game because is was not very interesting at all (the reslut was 0:0). But the atmosphere and the Stadium were pretty cool. The entry was the smallest and tightest I’ve ever seen. We had to enter it by making yourself as thin as possible. Maybe Lionel is able to upload a picture of that. The support of the fans was quite good but I was not able to understand what they were singing.
After watching the game we chilled out in the appartment of Lee, Tim and Maik. I would like to say that it is a nice place to live, but in my opinion it is a real dump. In the OSZIMT they told us that the apartments in Dublin are nice and clean. I can tell you that it is the oposite of that. I am really glad to live in Belfast right now because our house is very much better than this small and untidy flat.
Anyway, we were drinking a lot of beer waiting for the time to go on. We actually wanted to go to the pub but it they told us that it is too expensive to go there before 10pm. The reason for that are the prices being extremely too high for them in Dublin. That is something I really have to complain about. Why are young people sent to Dublin, although everybody knows that they cant afford that? It is not possible to improve your English if you are forced to sit at home because of not having enough money to go out?….I don’t get that….
But later on we spend a real good time in the pub that would have been much better unless the high prices. I was only one day in Dublin and I spend over 100€. Lionel told us that this is a problem you have to deal with all the time in Dublin. We visited two different pubs. It was really funny although the music was extremely to loud. I like the bathrooms in Dublin’s pubs because they are extremly clean and you can get parfume for free ^^.
After partying in the Pub until 1am Sebastian and I got home at half 4 (4:30). We fell asleep immediately……:)
Conclusions:
Dublin is a nice City
Dublin is too expensive for students like us
I’m glad to live in Belfast after visiting Dublin
It doesn’t matter in which city you are: Irish pubs are great !!!
I have to tell you something. Over the last 4 days we didn’t have warm water in the bathroom. Yesterday the Houseowner came over to fix this problem. After figuring out, he said that someone misconfigured the heaten of the house (probably a spanish guy) which is applied to the house’s water system and supposed to warm it up. When he got into the house he saw that it was really dirty arround here.
Let me explain why it’s so untidy inside the house. The reason for that is, that the spaniards invite their friends every single evening of the week. They always drink beer, cook dinner, listen to music very loudly and….of course…they don’t clean up. I did not feel responsible for their waste and so I didn’t take care of it.
Anyway, the Houseowner (don’t remember his name) complained about the house being so untidy. He also reported that to the Agency that is responsible for the organisation of the exchange students. Today I got an email informing us about an inspection that will occur on the next days. If there are any damages or cleaning to be done at this time they will charge us a fee.
DO YOU REMEMBER THAT ONE OF THE GUYS IS THROWING A PARTY TONIGHT???
I replied apologising for the dirty house and now I am responsible for cleaning it. Damn, I’ve been living here for about 2 weeks now !!!? My only hope is that they clean the house after the party. Next week a lot of the spaniards are leaving Belfast. Maybe we get rid of the waste then….:(
Hopefully, your not gonna get into such trouble, too, guys.
