On Friday Peter took me over to the Concentrix branch in inner Belfast. We’ve had loads of work
to do there and he arranged a meeting with Marc from the Technology department of the firm,
so that they could get us to know better. We’ve talked about my background and what’s
the stuff I usually work on in Germany. Marc was very kind and told me that he will talk
to David who’s the leader of the helpdesk and development part of the Tech. Dep. so that we
can get some more IT related tasks. When I finished talking to the people Peter took me around the building and we decorated some walls with the firm principles, world maps and clocks.
After a short lunch break which I took in a nice Greece restaurant which offered meals for cheap prices, we had to relocate some lockers into other floors so that people can store their valuables safely. The firm has got a hot desk principle which means that one usually never stays at one desk
for longer then one day, you can log in and start working wherever you are. In the afternoon
we had to clean up a room on the first floor and when we’ve finished Peter took me back to the Lesley Exchange building to meet up with Eric and Max. All in all my first week on Concentrix was okay. We hope to get some different tasks soon, but David will call us back during the next week so lets see what we can expect for the next time.
The weekend has been pretty eventful. The evening at the „Karma Stone Bar“ was great and the music was good, but all in all a little too noisy. We stayed until the Bar closed and Ryan drove us home after the night, as we planned.
On Saturday I spent most of the day relaxing and getting some sun since the weather was surprisingly warm and nice for Ireland. In the afternoon I went for a walk and took a look at the stores around my neighborhood. It’s very convenient to have them close by in case I need anything fast. My “Hostdad” and my “Hostbrother”came home really late, it was already 2 am when they arrived. They have been at an event all day and brought friends with them when they came home.
The party went on until 6 am. Today I prepared everything for work, cleaned my room and did my laundry.
Peter who’s still responsible for us and our work in the
company is very busy so he couldn’t observe us the whole time.
So Eric, Max and me were given several tasks to accomplish on our own.
He has (like all local people I’ve met there and here) a strong Belfast dialect
which is at times pretty unique. That and the fact that the people speak very fast
sometimes make it hard to follow conversations, but I slowly adapt to the
normal day english. In the Lesley Exchange building on the 2nd floor was an improvised
storage section which was pretty messy. It seems like all departments of the company
tucks their stuff away there and forget about it, so it was our job to tidy it up
and rearrange all the things neatly and organized. It was very time consuming but
we were able to manage that on Wednesday. After we had finished we were told
to drill brackets off the left side of the desk and drill it again to the right side of it.
Because there were many of them (and still are) this was (besides some smaller ones) our main task for Thursday, too.
My first week at Speechstorm is over and I am more than happy that my work there will not be a everyday task like changing keyboards or bringing a monitor from place a to place b and contribute to their product. Its amazing how everyone is so friendly and supportive and after just a few days I feel more than accepted, even more than that I feel like I am part of something big which will definitely change my view concerning small companies and their way of working.
I will try to define my work there in one of my next posts and show how a day at Speechstorm looks like.
We are in Belfast for quite some while now and I can certainly say that the daily tasks and troubles are more and more easy to handle. Being able to send groceries at home by ordering them online is still on the to-do list as we preferred taking a cab to one of the bigger Tesko stores.
Still I can´t believe how the people get a long when everything is so expensive in comparison to Germany but talking to random strangers on the street is helping a lot to understand their way of living.
we went yesterday to a market in the city centre, at the market there is a lot of food from many countries of the world and it was very interesting but also very expensive.
We visited a german shop which offered german „Bratwurst“ , I’m so happy about this because the irish food is delicious but not my favorite. So i bought 10 german „Bratwursts“ for a lot of meals.
The german had a tent which looks like a small Munich Beer Festival and there were a lot of people.
The people there looked very over dressed and I think it was a big event in belfast.
Today it was raining the whole day and it is a really depressing wheather but thats not a reason for irish people not to run an marathon.
Two weeks ago we arrived at the airport in Dublin. And we had time to see the city and speak the the people living here. I have to say Dublin is a beautiful and a really nice place to be. The people here are really kindly and the overall feeling in the city is wonderfull. I hope evryone have a good time here.
Yep, this weekend was truly a little bit of nothing, so let’s resume the last few days. At Thursday some of our German teachers visited us at our companies. They wanted to get an idea of our work placement and our tasks there, but the question, what I already have learned was quite funny. I was happy to know the names of all my new colleages. In the evening we met again at the Maddison pub/hotel/restaurant. The Maddison was known to my Irish colleages as pub for all the divorced mid-thirties womens, but actually it was quite nice (and without grannies). We had planned to go to the gym after our meeting, but we didn’t go. So we had planned to go at Friday after work, but my dear couch potatoes err roommates had found a new game for their smartphones and because of that, the Friday evening was another lazy evening. But finally at Saturday we went to the gym and afterwards to the city center for some shopping and browsing at the local market. And today was our BIG shopping day, we bought so much, that we even had to take a taxi for our way home. And now I’m looking forward to Tuesday, because we want to go to the cinema then.
Friday came and went, much like today except that today is Sunday and there’s no work on Sunday. After work I went home, had dinner and got ready for a night at The Karma Stone. The Bar is owned by a cousin to George’s host family and Ryan, his host brother is the barkeeper there and he gave George, Jonas and I a ride home.
I had a few pints of Budweiser and a water to end the night but I still had a little headache the next morning. After breakfast the headache was gone, however and I went to get ready for my trip to Dún Laoghaire on this beautiful day. I took the train from Tara Station only a few minutes before 12 and I don’t actually know when I arrived at Sandycove, which is actually one stop past Dún Laoghaire DART Station.
I made my way down to Marine Parade/Marine Ave. and turned right, where I spotted a nice little place to set up the camera and take a few pictures. Unfortunately, I don’t understand the way my camera is processing the panorama pictures because towards the end, there’s always a small piece missing from the picture and this peace is just gray. There also doesn’t seem to be any kind of focusing involved so the pictures turned out quite crappy and I won’t bother uploading them. I took a few pictures with normal settings, though and I’m going to paste them at the bottom of this post. My Mobile seems to be much smarter and the panoramic pictures turn out quite good, so you will 2 of those down in the gallery as well.
10 minutes later, I put away the camera and tripod and made my way down to the water. I was pretty much alone down there so I took the opportunity to listen to the sea on one side and Passenger on the other. I sat down a couple of times, just enjoying the sun, the water splashing against the old steps of the quay and the music. I used the „silence“ to let my mind drift to a place it hadn’t been in a while. My thoughts stayed there as I made my way further towards the East Pier of Dún Laoghaire. I walked pretty slow, letting all kinds of people walk past me. Old people, enjoying the fresh air and just going for a walk around the place they might have known for years; young people, satisfying the desire to fill their minds with pictures, moments and experiences of any kind; and the people that were just looking for a spot to read their books, be by themselves, get rid of the things that put them down or just get tanned.
The walk towards and along the East Pier is brimming with memories, carved deep into the stone. Literally! People have carved their initials into the stone, made their confessions of love somewhat eternal or have erected monuments to honor the dead. It takes quite a while to reach the old battery right at the end of the pier but I didn’t walk fast and the pier is a mile long, after all. I had an apple on my way back and thought about walking home. it was only 2 o’clock and the walk would have taken not more than 4 hours. However, I didn’t make it past the third DART Station on my way home before deciding to break it off and just take the train and bus home. I was spent and so I also decided against going to the Docklands Festival as was my plan this morning.
I had chicken and rice for dinner, took a shower, put cream on my face and neck because the sun had left its mark on my skin and went to lie on my bed for quite a while, reflecting on the day. I have to admit that I was actually disappointed. I don’t really know what I had expected from this walk but whatever I had hoped to gain or lose, I obviously failed.
Today began like yesterday ended. I washed up after lying in bed for a couple of hours, unable to rest and caught up with The Big Bang Theory. Now I’m sitting/lying here because I can’t seem to find a comfortable position in this bed. I can’t sit up against the wall because my bed just slides over the floor when I put too much pressure against it. I’m going to see what Ann’s husband has prepared for dinner in an hour or so. I might watch a movie later tonight because I have finished reading The Notebook and I don’t really feel like playing anything. Tomorrow is a work day after all.
Our third day was kinda like the second they you just have to switch the plaster part with cleaning out the hall on on the third floor. It was a mess! I have to say I never so so many I Mac cases at one place. We made a fun out of it and stacked them as high as we could. The task took a awfull lot of time.First we had to get everything out and then we have to put it back but better so that there is more place and then to put there even more stuff from the other floors. It took us the whole day to manage it but I am really proud of our final product. This day Tim and I decided to go to that mexican restaurant next to that Fish and Chips place. I got a Chilli Beef Burrito and it was really good!
That was my work experience for thursday! What happend at friday will you see in my next post!
At Wednesday we started our second task. We had to install desk holders for the PCs also one problem there we had just one drill. So Tim was the one who were constantly under the table with the drill and my job then was it to install the holders. Then Peter called us because he needed help with the first aid kits. So we splited into groups and went through the building to fill up missing parts in the first aid kit. It took us nearly the entire day because this building is so huge. Tim legs were hurting this day because he was training so hard the last days at the gym. So we decided to get us a taxi to go home.
Oh and I forgot to say that Tim and I found a restaurant where they sell Fish and Chips for lunch for just 3,50!
What we experienced at thursday you will see in my next post
