Yesterday, Sunday, was the World Refugee Day. The Africa Centre and other social organizations took part in a fair play football cup organized by the UNHCR.
I was also playing for the Africa Centre and it was a lot of fun. I think we reached the semi-finals and were knocked out by a more professional team, who played together before. There were free drinks and free food for all players. All in all in was very nice.
After the cup, Mbemba, the guy who is responsible for me, asked me and another intern, she is from the United States, to lunch. We went to an Italian restaurant, which makes very good pizza.
Today, at work, I backed up their old accounting software “Quicken 2002 Deluxe”, because I have to reinstall the computer where the software was installed.
My CCNA Voice knowledge is going ahead, but it is a really hard stuff.
Not more than two weeks till the internship will be finished. I am looking forward to see my girlfriend and being home again.
The last days were really impressive I think. The Friday was not soo great, but the FIFA World Cup has started. yeah 🙂
On Saturday I was with Tino, my colleague, in Howth, which is located in the north-east of Dublin. Howth is located on a peninsula. And this peninsula we have explored. Certainly not quite, but enough. That was impressive! We have seen beautiful Landscapes and furthermore seals, which were feed from the tourists there. That was at the Harbor of Howth.
We couldn’t go around the whole peninsula. But we have done the quarter of the peninsula I think. There we have seen very impressive cliffs and landscapes.
The World Cup started also for Germany on sunday. Certainly we watched it. Very nice game I’ve seen so far in the world cup.
Well I am going to tell you a little bit about my company.
In my company there are working a lot of friendly people, most of them very young. There are about 70 employees; six of them are interns, including me. As I told you in my last blogs I have to work hard and the work is pretty boring by now. The first weeks have been quite alright but since yesterday it don’t want to work there anymore. Ok whatever, about two weeks after my first day a friend told me that they fired a college of him. She was replaced by, guess what… an intern. Last week a second girl was fired and today; what a surprise my friend got fired, too!!! So, who is next? Hopefully no one of course but still the atmosphere in the company is weird somehow. I will be very glad when my time at this company is over. I think this will be my last blog about work and the company. By the way the name of my company: chasetravel.ie.
Still I have a really great time here in Dublin. I just got home from a pub where I celebrated Brazil’s victory, together with my Brazilian friends. Pictures and videos will follow in my next blog.
To work with SCCM 2007 takes a lot of time. Unfortunatly you have to read reams of log files to know if the installation or package or whatever was successful. Sometimes it is boring, because you just have to wait and push the F5-button every second. We can not interrupt the other employee, therefore it could take hours to push out a simple package and to find out if it works fine.
But I get another small project. To install and manage a information pc for a railwaystation here in N.Ireland. I will use the programm „FLIP PDF“ to convert the pdf files to a flash presentation. The tool is very nice and ease to use.
I just have to wait for the computer. Meanwhile I try to find out how to start the computer via Mouse. Because the information pc has to be secured as much as possible. The only device which the user can use to navigate trough the flash presentation, will be a mouse (and just the left-button).
Its weird, we can fly to the moon but it seems to be unpossible to power on a computer by a mouse. The rest of the computer will be secured by windows group policy.
There are some movements at work. I explored some solutions for Microsoft Outlook how to share Contacts from each pc with each other. I looked closer to OsaSync. It’s a freeware solution with the possibility to share/synchronize contacts from four PC’s. Unfortunately, it doesn’t share/synchronize distribution list, but I showed them how to send a distribution list with a mail and how the receiver can use them out of the mail, so nothing special, nothing difficult.
I continued working on my CCNA Voice, also looking up my mistakes in the Cisco NetRiders Challenge to improve my knowledge. If someone wants to have a closer look to the Packet Tracer Activity at the Challenge, I will upload it.
On Saturday my girlfriend and me went to the Phoenix Park and afterwards to the Dublin Zoo. It cost 15€ each, so very expensive. It wasn’t as good as some people tell us, but it was ok.
On Sunday my girlfriend had to leave, because her holidays were over. So I am on my own.
Maybe I will upload some pictures from the Zoo later.
Hi folks!
At work we occupied with bugs and translations, like the last weeks. That means we have to find bugs on www1.hostelworld.com, this is the beta website with a new design and new functions. During the next few weeks the beta website of hostelworld should be transfered to the first website of hostelworld.
At Friday I took a girl from germany over the city of Dublin and our apartment, after I picked she up from the airport.
At Saturday we looked some sights of Dublin and went by the tram with 2 peers of the other apartment to a big shopping center. On Sunday we visited the „Irish National War Memorial Park“, thats a ancient monument from the first world war. After that we cut across the biggest park of Dublin, the „Phoenix Park“ and saw some deers there. In the evening we enjoyed the brilliant win of Germany in a bar with 11 screens.
„54, 74, 90, 2010
Yes we all join in
With the heart in the hand and the passion in the leg
We will be World Champion.“
I hand the pictures of some sights in later.
Greetz to Belfast but principally to Berlin!
Chriz
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…
On a really rainy sunday, Oliver and me visited another football ground here in Belfast.
We talking about Glentoran F.C. and their famous stadium „The Oval“. The club is located in the north-east of the city. You may remember the Groundhopping Part I when I visited the home of Linfield FC? Glentoran’s biggest rivals are Linfield. Linfield and Glentoran are nicknamed Belfast’s Big Two as they have traditionally dominated local football in Northern Ireland.
The Club colours of GFC are green, red, and black.
Unfortunatly the Oval are more like an army base. With really high walls and barbed wire. Therefore it was quit difficult to take any picture inside the stadium.
Oliver and me tried our best, I hope you like it!
Just take a look at the MAIN entrance! You may remember the entrance in Daylmount Park, they are so different from germany.
Another big different to germany is the location of the stadiums. In Germany most of the football grounds are in outlying districts or far away from the city center. In Ireland and N.Ireland you walk through the streets and if you turn around the corner you stands infront of a big stadium. If you don’t look up and maybe notice the big floodlights, by the way they are so cool, you don’t even expect to see a stadium. One reason for this is, most of the grounds a smaller refer to stadiums in germany. For example the Oval have a capacity of 15.000 people. (Windsor Park: 20.332) I am still addicted to these kind of stadiums!
After we get back home, totally wet, we prepared ourselfs for the first groupe stage match for Germany against down under. Means we tried to get dry.
Then it was time for Pub Hopping! We conquered the Botanic Inn and annexed it. We won 4-0 and celebrated the victory late into the night.
What about some new Belfast stories?
There is still nothing special to tell about my work right now…
But I can tell you about my funny weekend where I was really sick, lying in my bed.
Well, actually that’s it I was sick. On Sunday morning (around 3 am) my flatmate Bartosz woke me up with a noisy, piercing cry. After I was able to get up and went down the stairs I couldn’t realize anything except an open door. After closing the door I went back to bed. A while later Bartosz came to my room and told me about the things which have happened. There were two young thiefs in our house which were running out as Bartosz came home. He saw them and started to shout out for help.
By running away Bartosz caught/vanquish one with his Judo experience (Hey Steffen!) after they’ve splitted up while running away. The Police was coming soon and picked up one of the guys which Bartosz caught. At 10pm the forensic people came around for securing of evidence, they also told us that the other thief was caught too.
Except of this we were out of gas at saturday afternoon. The counter showed a remaining volume of 15m³ but it’s gone offline anyway. Nothing special so far ‚cause there are Centra shops which have opened 24hours a day where we can pay for our gas. But I really have to say: this way of paying gas sucks! WTB our „good old“ oil (:
Today I stayed at home because I feel sick. I don’t know if I am going to work tomorrow but at last I got some time to write another blog.
If you wonder why I don’t write much about my work instead more about going out and you think that these guys are actually in Ireland to work, you got a point. Sadly my work is really boring at the time so there is just nothing to tell you about. I am really disappointed from the choice of the “Swaninstitute” to put me in this company. The first two weeks in the company were quite interesting because I got to do some IT related tasks for example writing some scripts or SQL queries. But since my direct superior is on holidays for almost two weeks now, I only build Excel tables. Yeah that’s basically it. You see there is not much to tell about work. Still I met a lot of young people at work; some of them are good friends by now. So it’s easier for me to stay at the company. Furthermore I don’t speak English at work, just at the lunch break and when I am on my way to/from work. I still most of the time speak English at the pubs. I keep in mind that you might be interested and I will tell you if I got to do some interesting stuff to do but till that day I will keep up telling you about the nightlife and the City of Dublin.
Last week Mr. Bavar paid a visit to Ireland. He visited some of my colleagues including me at the companies on Thursday and went to Belfast on Friday. Friday in the evening we went out to grab some beer at the pub located in the hotel of Mr. Bavar “Arlington Hotel”. There even was a Live Band playing at the pub. Afterwards we met some colleagues of Tim and we went to the pub “Sweeneys” and later to “The Purity Kitchen”. On Saturday Tim and I went to the beach at Howth again to relax at the beach for some time. In the late evening we went to a rock bar “Fibbers”. We just heard the last two songs from a band playing live in the pub but fortunately they got a dance floor. So there was no reason to go home. We even got invited for a dance by some girls. On Sunday two friends of mine from Berlin visited us here in Dublin for a couple of days. So we did some Sightseeing on Sunday and Monday. On Monday there was Holiday for Everyone in Ireland and we got the chance to visit the Shakespeare festival. In the evening on Sunday we were invited to a home party from a friend of mine and on Monday we went to the Porterhouse (the Folk one). I already told you about the Porterhouse in another blog of mine. All in all we had a great weekend. Here are some pictures:
Arlington Hotel Friday Evenig with Mr. Bavar
The Porterhouse
Live Band @ Porterhouse
Shakespeare Festival
On Tuesday evening I went to a concert from “Rage Against The Machine”. Sadly we just had seated places because the standing tickets were sold out. Here some pictures and video of the last song. The sound quality is really, really bad. Sorry for that. By the Way the concert hall is called the O² Arena, like the one in Berlin.
Rage Against The Machine
I took me about three days to upload the video, thats why the blog is late again.
