#3 – Communication, helpful people and life-savers

Greetings everyone,

on todays entry I would like to talk about the task to get a proper communication environment setup for us, as well as incredible helpful people. Additionally I will show you the real life-savers of Dublin.

But first things first. As we heard even before we got to Ireland it is a good idea to get Irish SIM cards to be able to communicate with each other without paying a fortune for communication pieces like “let’s meet at 2000.”

Thus we (meaning Erik, Christoph, Robert and me) went to an O2 shop asking how this actually works and how much it will cost and so on. Our vendor was really friendly and quite helpful. As appreciation I got most of my colleagues just to him to get the contracts done (should give him quite a bonus for this month 😉 ). Additionally he, of course, got a 5 of 5 rating when I got the message to rate him. He allowed us to take a picture and add it in our Blog. Thanks Karl!

 

Also very helpful are the people at the reception. They have been a great help so far to get anything we lacked,  for example dishes and a Kettle. It takes them one or two days to get what we asked for. (They just went to IKEA and bought it there!)

As last point I’d like to show you a picture of the life saver of Dublin. The left handed driving is giving us a bit of trouble but these little instuctions actually make sure we won’t get run over. (Traffic lights don’t seem to have any importance for walkers anyway. Even the police does ignore them!)

 

 

Thats it for now, more stuff incoming with my next entry. I may just cover my first workday, theres enough to tell about that. Just keep on reading!

 

—  TO BE CONTINUED —

The first few days at the Museum

Hello <insert your name here>,

it is now Friday evening and the first days of work at the NMNI (National Museums of Norther Ireland) are over. As most of you can probably guess I am working in the IT-Department of the NMNI which only consists of Gordon, Robin, Graham and Keith, who only does audio and video related work.

Where to now?

My first thought, when I heard I was going to work at a Museum, was <sarcasm>“Great working at the Museum can only mean first level support.“</sarcasm> but as it turns out a was so far off. The thing is the IT-Department is responsible for everything inside the NMNI which is , even if it is only remotely, related to Computers, Networks, Server and etc.

Cute IT deparment, isn't it?

The department is situated in Cultra, which is located near Hollywood (yes there is a town outside Belfast called Hollywood ;)), and I have to take the train to work. It is a really convenient way to work, I get on the train at Botanic (5 minute walk from the apartment) and get of at Cultra.

Platformview from Botnic railroad station.

 

On Tuesday I had my first workday which basically meant to be introduced to everyone, setting up my work place and getting to know the place and everything. On Wednesday and Thursday I tried to get hang of how things work and trying to understand the infrastructure of the NMNI. Besides that I got to work with DrayTek SOHO VPN-routers which I will implement in the following few weeks, the goal is to achieve a VPN connection between Cultra and Armagh (70 miles outside of Belfast).
Today I met with Graham and worked at the Ulster Museum until noon because we some had some tickets to attend to, e.g some hotdesk PCs weren’t supposed to be working (as it turned out they worked perfectly fine).  After that we went back to Cultra and had to sit out the 2 hour server shutdown because of maintenance at the SAN arrays.

All in all it is a I can say I got lucky with my placement, I really like the familiar atmosphere and that my workplace is surrounded by green is a nice bonus.

And if someone is curios the weather in Belfast is a nice british grey with hints of rain 😉 And if you will excuse me now I have a beer to attend to 😀

 

Yours sincerely

Tobias

P.S I will try to post new blog entries every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, if anyone cares ;p

A small sign of spring 😀

interviewt at Guardian 24 and first rain!

Hey,

On Wednesday we had an interview at Guardian 24. It was interesting but we don’t really know what we are going to do there. Tomorrow we have our first working day. It will show us what else comes next and what we will be doing in our company.

In the last days we have seen the city and have met a very funny Spaniard who lives above us. This is very good, because one speaks much more English then as in a group of German people.

Today it started raining in Belfast (I add a picture tomorrow). And we had to buy a bus ticket because our employer is about 5 miles away. At least it is on the coast and we have a beautiful place there to spend our breaks.

I’m excited what kind of work we will do for the company and how the employees are. I  am curious what comes next and what will happen in the following weeks.

more coming soon.

The first Days

Dear Reader,

the first few days in Ireland are over and now we are really arrived. After an, more than less, complete renovation, our apartment sufficient for these 2 months.
I can proudly publish: We can shower now!

And now we enjoy our stay here in this beautiful city with all these peoples and different cultures. It’s a kind of save and pleasant feeling you will never have in Berlin.

After we visited Margaret on Monday, we were invited to visit the Guinness storehouse.

Waterfall Guinness storehouse

 

Inside the Guinness storehouse bar

 

As you can see we enjoy our time here regardless from our accommodation.

 

See you later with some impressions from my workplace.

Yours sincerly,
Alexander

 

The first normal days…

Hi folks, it’s me again.

We are now here in Dublin for five days and everybody survived the first days of work.

Sunday was regular weekend. We bought some stuff for the household and something to eat.
But we didn’t go out or something like that. We were just walking around looking for other possibilities to shop and so on.

On Monday we had a short meeting with Margaret Purdy from Internsplus. She gave us additional information about our working places and helped me and my three colleagues to get a bigger apartment on Tuesday. We had some problems with the new apartment but they were solved Wednesday.

I finally got to know my workplace. It’s Gerriko Technologies and the office is right beside Margaret’s office located at the Guinness Enterprise Centre.
Diana (my boss) is very kind and the other colleagues are very friendly too.

The job itself is not that IT (e.g. Personal Computer, Server and so on) related as I thought but there is a lot of electrical engineering involved in the current project which is fun too.

 

 

After the meeting with Margaret we were visiting the Guinness Storehouse. It was pretty interesting and we were also able to craft “The Perfect Pint”. We even got a certificate for that.

 

 

We also got the possibility to get a free sample of Guinness on our tour.

 

 

Here is a small overview of the Guinness Storehouse.

 

 

Later that day we were in an O2 Store to buy some Prepaid Cards and after that we went to Supermacs for lunch.

 

Because of the fact that my work place is not that related to PCs, I am right now learning the basics of electrical engineering and was also able to solder some circuits.

That’s about all for now.

On the Weekend I plan to make some kind of sightseeing inside of Dublin and make a couple of pictures for the Blog and my family at home and in Bavaria.

Here is a first impression of what you (hopefully) can await.

 

St. Anns Church

 

See you soon.

 

Markus

My First Workday

Hi dudes,
So at Monday I wasn’t at work. The first thing we did was meeting
Mageret. She was very friendly, after the meeting we got
free tickets for a visit in the Guinnes Store House. It Was
very interesting. At this day I got my next Certification from
Guinnes-Company ^^. It was a very funny day.


Yesterday was my first workday. Mr Fitzgerald and my new collegues
are very polite. It is a small company but I like it.
At my first days monica shows me how the strukture in this company
is and how the system does work. The next days I will basically look
what my collegues do because I must learn a lot.

In the next blog I will describe my project.
The guidelines are very strong at my workplace but I think it is ok,
as we work with finance data.

In our appartment we have a clear role setup: I’m the chef,
Stefan and Christoph clean the dishes and Robert cleans
the Kitchen/livingroom.

Ok dudes

see you next day

My first few days here in Ireland

Hey Folks,

 

I am very sorry that you had to wait so long to read me, but my first days here in Ireland were very turbulent, interesting and exciting.

So, let me start with my travel to Ireland. I never flight before and that with a good reason. Even if planes are statistically more secure than Busses, Cars, Trains and Ships, you still have no control about your journey over the fluffy clouds. And let me say: Humans can swim (water/boat), they can walk (land/car/train) but the hell, they aren´t made to fly!

Never the less we arrived in one piece in Ireland. And I think, it was a very interesting experience. But to be honest: I don´t want this experience anymore. It was interesting to be pressed in your seat when you started, to feel, how the pressure changed arount you and to see the biggest citys beneath you. But really, Citys are made to walk in them. Not to see them from above. 😉

 

This brings me to my next pint, oh, sorry, I meant point. But the pint has a point of course! Our first thing we made in Ireland was to experience the culture from Ireland. That means: We went to a pub. I never drank Guiness (it´s also called a Pint) before, but I have to say that it tastes very good.

Ater that we went to the inner city. I life in a Bed and Breakfast in Rathgar. It is a district of Dublin and the Owner of this BnB is a very nice and gentle older woman. So, Rathgar is a little abroad so we had to take a long way to see the other ones. So we saw the Appartements of one other group and yeah. That´s it. We wanted to meet the third Group (from my Class it´s Stefan Korte and Erik Herzog) buton the way to them there was a person laying on the ground. Bleeding, Crying and barfing. So we had to call the ambulance and help him. We wanted to meet the third Group in an other pub but gentle like we are we waited until the Police arrived and then went to this pub.

Unfortunately it was to late and the third group left the Pub. But we sat there in this wonderful Pub called O´Sheas and listened to the live music. That was very beautiful and both voices from the man and the woman there were magical! After that I and two other guys from my accommodation took a Taxi to go home. Except with the bleeding and nearly dying guy it was a super day!

The next day was a way more quiet. We finally arrived completely in Dublin, bought some things and looked a little bit around the city. I don´t have to say much more about Sunday except the fact that all Supermarkets have open on Sundays too. That was a very nice thing.

 

I think I will tell you tomorrow or one day after tomorrow something about Monday and the days after. I am very sorry that here are not that much pictures but I promise they will come soon, too.

 

Now I just want to hang around with the other guys in my BnB and want to chill out.

 

We read us Folks, keep interested!

 

Your´s sincerely,

 

Lars

#2 – First impressions, supermarket prices and pub density

Hello again folks,

as promised I will now tell you a story of first impressions on the outside, the first supermarket prices we saw and a bit of the Irish „architecture“. But first I need to apologize as I did not have had the time to take any pictures of this yet. Maybe I will be able to do so on the weekend. Also, for now at least, I am writing about pastly events but i guess i will catch up soon enough.

Well, enough introduction, lets get to the topic:

So right after we stored our Luggage, we went outside to get the first items required for our survival. The first thing we noticed was the garbage laying around on the side of the streets. This down is really „dirty“ – and i don’t mean the positive kind of „dirty“, like in „dirty girls“, as most guys might be thinking right now! On the other hand we seem to be living right beside a big shopping street, and between a few more hostels, so there are lots of people everywhere.

Second thing noticable where the weird ample sounds (these sounds are actually for the blind citizens). As soon as the ample turns green (and yes, we also have a yellow traffic-light for walkers), you actually hear some thing you would sort to as a lasergun-sound and a ticking afterward. We noticed that many people are are making jokes about this, just like we do „pew tiktiktiktik“.

There are quite a lot supermarkets around so we had a look at the first one we saw – „Spar“. This one actually is as expensive as german gas stations are (yes, we thought we are screwed at this moment)! We checked about 2 more until we found a „Super Valu“. This was better, but still disastreous compared to germany. A whole toast-bread actually costs about 1,50 € here. Well we where exhaustet and had no other choice, so we did gather all items of desire and got home.

Home again my roommates pointed to me, that there are police- or ambulance-sirens going on all the time. They are right! This feels like a kind of „real-life-GTA with 4 stars“! (this joke actually goes to marku, thanks a lot!). They also noticed the sea-gulls that where quite loud before i did. -> If I close my eyes and stick my feets into a bin filled with sand i could mentally „escape“ to a beach! *yay*

Last thing we actually noticed on our first lookaround: there are pubs EVERYWHERE. And I am not exaggerating when I say there is one at literally every corner Dublin has got to offer. We of course tried one on our first evening. It was decend but lacked life music (WE WANTED LIFEMUSIC!). We will look for something like that next weekend i guess.

So this is it for this entry. My next Blog entry will include the task to get means of communications for us, and incredible helpful people, so keep on reading!

— TO BE CONTINUED —

First days in Ireland

After we landed in Dublin, we traveled by bus to Belfast. There we checked out our apartments.  The apartments are ok and new, they are a little small but it’s ok.. The last two days we explored the city, bought food, checked out the pubs and the Irish Guinness!

My first thought when we were there was that I landed in a dirty ghost town. Nobody was there, trash on the street and dilapidated houses and creepy people. But today in the morning the street was full with cars and people and the most trash was away. … What has happened … OH the students are back!

Today we had a meeting by Rsm Tenon, we learned nothing really new, only a few organizational things. On Wednesday I have an interview with two colleagues at Guardian24.

I will report my first experiences in my next blog.

Of frozen pizza and orange juice or the search for Lidl

It is now the third day in Belfast and I have, more or less, settled in. The main goal of the last two days was to secure our (our ,that is my flatmates and me) main supply of food, water and other things to secure our survival in this foreign country.
For this we went on the quest to find the holy halls of Lidl, where treasure of affordable prices where promised by our predecessors. And after Minutes of consulting the holy institution  of Google Maps© we found a Lidl and went on a journey which would make Bilbo Baggins proud.
After a hellish 2,6 miles of road and evading cars, because we where looking in the wrong direction (left-hand driving is so wrong on so many levels ;)) , we arrived at our destination with a yellow sun of Lidl rising before us.
We ventured into the holy halls of Lidl and returned with precious treasure containing water, frozen pizza (the best friend of every humble man), bread, cereals (the breakfast of true man) and other small items of importance, like shaving cream.
Our return trip took longer than expected, mainly because we did not account for the additional weight of our loot, and the 2,6 miles back felt more like 5 miles.
But at the end of the day our small Party was victorious and was rewarded with warm pizza, a cold cola and a good conversation over a shared meal.
I hope you enjoyed my creative writing style, because the truth is not much has happened until now.
I arrived in Belfast, had a little look around the neighborhood and went shopping the next day for food and supplies. In the evening we went to the local pub and had a Guinness, which tastes way better here than in Germany by the way.
Today we had meeting at RMS Tenon for a small introduction and going over some details for my/our stay in Belfast, after that we had a small walk around the city center and bought ourselves some simcards.
Tomorrow I will be introduced to my workplace, I am very excited because I still do not know what to expect.

Read you soon

Yours sincerely

Tobias

 

P.S.

Please excuse the lack of Pictures but I will upload some pictures with my next entry.