[EDIT] My special little project is done and you can enjoy it right here.
I want to say thank you to each and everybody responsible for making this experience the enjoyable 8 weeks that it was.
Until we meet again,
Angelo
[/EDIT]
So I’ve been working on something special for you guys and I’m going to find a way to share it with you as soon as it is uploaded in the best quality that I can possibly manage. It can only be a couple more hours :S.
So please be patient and wait for the better-quality version here.
If you cannot wait, have a look at this version but be advised that it is really crappy…
I haven’t checked but I think I might be the last person to tell you that this is our last week here in Ireland. In fact, it’s not even a whole week anymore and I am sad to leave System Dynamics and Ireland. I enjoyed the time here very much and I have seen more of the country than a lot of the Irish ever did. I have, however, left a ton of places that are worth visiting and I know a lot of the places that are worth visiting again.
I just want to give you an overview over the last couple of days.
I haven’t really done anything on Sunday because I was pretty exhausted from the week that lay behind me. There was a party at the house that I didn’t join because I wasn’t in the mood to be around a lot of people. The sun has also gotten to me pretty bad on Saturday and I was minding my sunburn and tried to ignore the mild headache that was probably due to dehydration. The party was a welcoming party for Thomas, Anne’s son who lives in Australia for almost 7 years now. He brought his wife who is from Cork and their Daughter Saoirse who was born in Australia. They’re here for Saoirse’s christening, Anne’s 60th and some other event but I forgot what that was.
On Monday, I took care of all the Europass paperwork and started to get rid of any lose ends to my work here. There are still a couple of cables in the rack that I have put there to get rid of other cables that are just in the way of everything but I didn’t get around to switching them and Eamonn seemed afraid to do it so I guess I’m not going to mess with it and just remove the surplus cables again.
I ordered a MacBook Air yesterday for 1366 € with 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, i5 processor and an external drive as well as 2 adapters for Ethernet and VGA. I felt filthy afterwards but I guess the good thing is that it was neither my money nor my responsibility once the thing gets here. I ordered it for one of the managers who needed it for mobility reasons.
I’m going to have a “full Irish” breakfast in an hour or so with Eamonn. It’s going to be my first ever and my last for now. I’m looking forward to it because I keep snacking on nuts and raisins.
Tomorrow I’m going to bring in some cake that I will buy later today at Lidl. I think it’s going to be some kind of double chocolate fudge thing and maybe carrot cake to give everybody a false sense of security about eating healthy. After all, vegetable cakes can’t be bad, right?! I’m scheduled to go to the Ferryman with Linda, Eamonn and Genevieve and whoever else would like to join us for a pint.
Friday is going to be quite a stressful day at least half of the day. I’m going to work in the morning pretty much just to say my goodbyes and clean up my desk. Around 11am, I have to hurry to Margaret to give her a final report on how the internship went. The Derrians are arriving at Dublin Airport sometime between 1pm and 2pm and the plan is to stash their luggage in my room at Anne’s house and go into city center because they want to check out the Guinness Storehouse. In the evening we’ll go out and buy beer (probably Budweiser or Carlsberg) and snacks and head to the airport to stay the night and wait for our flight on Saturday morning.
I am also working on something that you will get to see in my last post on Sunday. I enjoy working on it so I hope you’ll enjoy seeing what it is.
Steak, potatoes and carrot/onion/parsnip-vegetables, that’s what. I had a great time at their house and after dinner, Eamonn, his wife Angela and I sat back and watched the England vs. Uruguay game. Everybody that cares knows how the game went so I won’t go into detail here; I will just say that I think the outcome was absolutely deserved on both sides. It was an interesting enough game to watch.
When the game was over, we all got into the car and Eamonn drove me home using the opportunity to show me around the neighborhood some more. He lives in Malahide which is north of Dublin and we took the coastal route, detouring only through Howth to see the sun set from Howth Summit. It was beautiful to see the lights of the city on one side and the light of the dying day on the other. This could’ve only been made better if someone would’ve handed me a Guinness and maybe lit a fire to keep us warm.
On Saturday, I tried sleeping in, which turned out to be no longer than 9 am. This already includes the half hour of vividly turning around while trying to find a comfortable position. I had my usual breakfast of toast with Nutella and – today – a boiled egg of which I find one or two sitting on the stove every now and then. When brekkie was over, I packed a banana and a pear that I had lying around my room for the past 2 days, a Snickers bar and the bottle of water that I bought Friday afternoon at Tesco.
I could have taken the bus and then the DART but decided on walking into city center instead to take the DART from Tara Station. It saved me money and contributed 10000 steps to my daily quota right away. The train ride into Bray was beautiful enough because the rails follow the coast line and you can see beaches turn into cliffs and vice versa. When I arrived in Bray, I made my way to the beach which was relatively busy with people playing games on the grass or walking over hot stones and swimming on the other side of the walkway.
The cliff walk towards Greystones is obviously 6km long, if you believe the 2 signs that are put up at 1/3 and 2/3 of the way. The sun was shining mercilessly and I didn’t expect that seeing as the forecast was for cloudy weather. I guess the sun burnt the clouds right out of the sky like Icarus back in the day. It’s a very interesting walk winding along the coast of Ireland and there are a few places where you can sit down and rest while enjoying the view, the sweet song of the ocean and the voices of many a bird.
I made it into Greystones at around 3.30pm and walked past a few nice looking restaurants on my way to the DART. I didn’t bother eating there only because I knew I was going to come home to a prepared meal. It is in fact a nice plus for my wallet but kind of restricts social behavior, as well. I had to wait for the DART for half an hour and started watching Game of Thrones on my phone. The ride back was just as beautiful as the walk towards Greystones.
I got off at Tara Station and walked home from there, managing to put down 35073 steps for the day.
643k steps and that only got us 4th place. The leading team, the Holy Walkamolies, has 161696 steps on us and all that after I walked my feet raw last week. I am determined to lead my team to victory, though. So up until now, I already walked 60000 steps and after work today I will go to the pharmacy to get cushions for my toes because I have blisters in the most annoying places of all. Once my toes stop bothering me, I will keep going and going and going like one of those freaking bunnies out of the Duracell commercials.
I want to go (as in walk) to the Dublin Zoo on Saturday and walk back home, as well. I’m hoping to score another 60k at least on the weekend if I go to Greystones on Sunday, maybe. Even with some of my team members hanging behind – and I still think they’re doing a good job – I believe we can gain on the Walkamolies and even let the other two teams eat dust because we’re not too far away from them with 674k and 690k respectively. I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.
On Tuesday I sat in on a meeting with a guy from BT together with Eamonn and Emmet. System Dynamics wants to move their servers into a cloud environment. Well, sort of. The plan is actually to move the virtual machines onto new servers, connected with new switches, stored on new disks and stored in BT’s datacenter. I created a little draft with Visio to show what System Dynamics thinks how the setup will have to be and brought it to the meeting. My colleagues liked the way I did it and I listened in on them discussing different possibilities to set this thing up. Nothing is decided, yet and I believe I won’t be here by the time something “interesting” happens in that department but we’ll see how far this thing goes before I’m gone.
On the topic of being gone: It’s just over 2 weeks now until I have to go home. I’m happy I’ve seen as much as I have but there is still a lot left that I haven’t seen so there will be a vacation that has to be spent here within the next years. Something I’m already looking forward to.
The Problem with the flight home is the time it was booked for. It leaves at 7.10 in the morning and that is a terrible time to get to the airport in any convenient way, at least in Dublin and I don’t want to take a taxi, let alone have to get up at freaking 3 in the morning. So I’m actually planning on spending my night at the airport with the guys and a couple of beers. Probably not Guinness, though because it’s just too heavy and also not quite convenient to drink from the can It’s much more likely to be Budweiser or Heineken. Hell, if I get a good offer on Carlsberg, it’s going be that for sure. I’m not sure what we’ll do for dinner but there is supposed to be a McDonald’s that’s open 24/7 at the airport. I’m pretty sure that’ll do.
Tomorrow is the SD BBQ and the infamous Treasure Hunt. All I care about is steps, food and drinks and interesting conversations. Which is pretty much what it is. 😀
That is why on Sunday, I got up at 8.45am, had breakfast and at 9.20am left the house to go (as in walk) to Howth. Google says that I walked around 32km that day but it’s not as accurate and it was more than that because I also did quite a lot of back and forth around the paths there. I did 47634 steps which brought me to a total of 136467 steps and my team of 7 people to 643791 for the week.
I actually awoke to the sound of rain which kind of put my mood down but I was still hell-bent on doing this walk. The rain only lasted a few minutes and then the sun tried her best to dry up the streets and sidewalks. It wasn’t dry but quite warm when I left the house and started towards Artane Castle to buy water and a snack at Tesco.
I continued down the road a few minutes later and turned left at the T-junction, walking towards the Artane roundabout. I wound my way through the streets of Dublin this way and soon came to Dublin Road which is kind of a coastal road leading to the Howth peninsula. It started to drizzle even before I came to that road but as I turned onto it, the wind from the sea was so strong that the tiny raindrops „fell“ horizontally and felt like needles, piercing the right side of my face. I kept walking and soon felt like this was some kind of punishment I had to withstand to be worthy of the sight that would be at the end of this road. The rain kept on lashing me for quite a while and only stopped when I reached Sutton which is located right at the entry of the peninsula. Of course, the rain started again a few minutes later and continued all the way until I reached the end of Howth harbor and the public restrooms. I was so unbelievably happy to see those restrooms.
I thought about having lunch in one of the restaurants but I don’t really care for seafood that much and considering the prices displayed on the menues, I stopped caring about “real” food altogether. I grabbed the small bag filled with nuts and raisins that I bought at Tesco earlier and took a couple of hands full. 200g of this mix really fill you up even though the taste isn’t as satisfying as that a nice steak with French fries would deliver, accompanied by a nice Guinness. Anyway, it kept me going and so I walked around the peninsula, came by the lighthouse, the beach and walked all the way back towards my home. Those last kilometers were really difficult and I had to sit down a few times just to rest my feet. My ankles and even my hips started to hurt before I finally arrived home. I had the dinner that was waiting for me in the oven, took a shower and went to bed, happy that I had used the day the way I did.
Just a reminder: These photographs are resized to conserve space so if you would like to see any particular photograph in its original size and quality, please contact me when I’m back in Germany. 🙂
On Friday afternoon, Eamonn offered to take me to Galway on Saturday and maybe on Sunday to go up Croagh Patrick with him. Unfortunately he cancelled but offered to take me to Glendalough on Saturday instead.
Around 1.30pm, I met him and his wife Angela in the parking lot of Tesco and off we went in their car. We took the M50 that, much like the A10 for Berlin, runs around the city of Dublin. It is a tolled road but it is the quickest way from one side of the city to the other.
We drove through the Wicklow Mountains and stopped occasionally when there was something to see. There were definitely a lot of things to see as you will notice in the gallery below. In Roundwood, a small town along the way, we stopped for lunch and I had a burger with rocket, the famous green stuff that apparently everybody loves… personally, I think of it more like Reinald Grebe who put it something like “the weed that comes from abroad, is a lucky one”. Rocket is just a fancy dandelion and it doesn’t taste even remotely good. Fortunately, the beef and the onions were able to cover up the taste of it. The fries were awesome as well and I was absolutely satisfied when I had the cup of tea afterwards. The food was Eamonn’s treat which I found very generous of him.
We went on to Glendalough which is a glacial valley in Wicklow. There are different difficulty paths that run through the whole valley, along lakes or up mountainsides. It’s a very beautiful place to be and up on the mountains that enclose the valley, the air is serene and filled only with the many voices of nature. I took a lot of pictures that you can see in the gallery below but unfortunately none of them were able to catch the real beauty of the place. I’m starting to believe that no picture will ever achieve that. *sigh*
View Towards Dublin
National Park
Water
More Water
Deer
Glendalough Valley
Glendalough
Waterfall
Glendalough Valley
The Path
Sun Piercing the Scenery
Glendalough Monastery
Tower Plaque
Tower Entrance
When I came home that day, Anne and her Family were having a BBQ so I joined them for dinner and later had 3 Guinness with Eamonn (Anne’s husband). It was a very nice evening and it went on for hours. I went to bed around 12.30am and set my alarm for 9am. Come back tomorrow to learn what I did on Sunday and why I had to get up so early.
Have you guys ever had a song stuck in your head because you heard it somewhere, even though you didn’t hear the whole song but actually only caught a snippet over a conversation in a pub? For me it is this song that’s stuck in my head since yesterday evening. I heard it in the Glencormac Inn at the bottom of the Sugar Loaf Mountain in Wicklow. A group of 14 people from System Dynamics went up the mountain after work. It was a good hike and at the end of the day I had 17898 steps on my pedometer and a couple of sandwiches as well as 2 Guinness in my tummy.
Down there at the pub
Halway, almost all the way around 😉
Allllllllllmost there
Whoooohooo!
Also, Mr. Bavar, Mrs. Teichmann and Mrs. Neumann came to System Dynamics yesterday to see how and what I’m doing here. It was nice to be able to show someone what I actually do here instead of just having to describe it as best I can. Nicola and Eamonn were talking to them as well over tea and coffee.
Because I didn’t want to go to the hike in my work clothes, I changed into jeans and a t-shirt. Unfortunately, I’m a man of habit and my habit is to keep my Leapcard in my pants pocket… my work pants pocket…
I didn’t have any change for the bus but Bridgitta, a colleague from SD, gave me 3€ so I could at least take the bus home. I decided to walk to work this morning to bring my step count up and also because I didn’t have enough money at home. It was a nice exercise, took me just over an hour and brought me 8k steps for today. I’m now up to ~9500 and I’m thinking about walking home, as well. That would easily be another 17k-18k steps for today but I’ll sleep in tomorrow because I have to get a rest at some point. Depending on the weather, I might walk up to Howth around noon tomorrow but I might also just do that on Sunday or even next weekend. We’ll see…
today me and Toni met our instructors Mr Bavar, Mrs Teichmann and Mrs Neumann in the Arlington Hotel. We had a very nice conversation about our time here in Dublin, the host families and about our currently workplaces. They invited us for a few drinks and gave us some useful tips for our work. The week is nearly over and we have only three weeks left. I will enjoy the next days and weeks and looking forward for new unpredictable impressions.
Arriving at Dublin Airport around 7.20pm on Friday, George and I went to Avis to pick up our car. After my VISA was declined, we had to book an insurance packet with Avis directly which cost us 12€ per day on top of what I had already paid in advance. It’s still very cheap to get a car for the weekend and after that minor setback, we were off to the guys in Derry. The drive up there was nice and after around 20 minutes on the road, sitting on the right side of the car, shifting with the left hand and driving on the left side becomes quite natural. The only thing that bothered me up until the end was the indicator being on the left side of the steering wheel which made it virtually impossible to use while shifting gears in a roundabout for example. When we arrived in Derry we had a small birthday party for George with Budweiser and Cake.
The next morning started off with a nice breakfast after which Joel came to Tobi and Paul’s place and then we were off to meet Max on a parking lot near to where his girlfriend was staying. Paul was kind enough to burn his road trip CDs for both our cars so after a few minutes our cars both looked kind of like this.
It took a little getting used to driving with another car behind me so when I came upon a place I thought was beautiful and well worth taking a couple of pictures, I pulled over with Paul rushing past me. Granted, I was kind of quick in my decision making and didn’t really have the time to indicate my desire to pull over so I wasn’t surprised that Paul didn’t make it. I was actually glad because I myself barely managed to come to a stop before the pocket ended. After that, it went rather smoothly. I tried watching out a little more and we reached every place safe and sound. We even came across a nice place where I had the chance to transform my Renault Mégane into a Dodge Ram. Well, sort of… 😉
Pimp my Ride, Hillbilly Style
The first stop of this journey was Mount Errigal in County Donegal. The Saturday sun blessed us with an amazing view as well as a nice tan/burn. We climbed 688 meters all the way to the tippy top which took us roughly two and a half to three hours and about an hour for the way down. I had to change my t-shirt and the others had to change their shoes and pants because the bottom of the Mountain was quite boggy. We started toward Galway at around 2pm and got there at 7.30pm. We spent the night at a nice little B&B run by Larry Bogan who’s a very nice man. Before going to bed, we decided to go into city center to eat something and maybe also have a pint of Guinness. It turned out to be quite hard to find a place that everybody could agree on and so we ended up in a diner eating burgers and drinking milkshakes. We were all pretty beat after climbing that mountain and driving down to Galway so we went home after that dinner.
Mt. Errigal
Mt. Errigal
The next morning, Larry made pancakes for us and we had toast and fruit as well. We left his B&B at around 9am, walking on the beach of Galway Bay for a bit, taking pictures and collecting a few shells; well, I did that anyway. After that we were off to the Slieve League Cliffs which are not as famous as the Cliffs of Moher but reach almost 3 times higher. The look down to the Atlantic waves smashing against the walls of the mountain was entrancing and so was the drive up and down the narrow roads there, going up and down, left and right.
Galway Bay
Sliabh Liag
Sliabh Liag
Since Paul had to return his car before the rental place closed, we had to make our way back rather quickly and also get gas before returning the car. We managed it all fine, got back to Tobi and Paul’s place and had a little time to relax before we made our way into the city to have something to eat and drink. Since their favorite restaurant was closed, we ended up getting bat wings coated in cornflakes and dipped in scalding hot fat. The Hillbilly’s Family Meal comes with 6 pieces of chicken, 4 helpings of fries and a 1l soda. I went to bed at half past twelve and got up at 8 to have a final breakfast in Derry, before leaving for Dublin via the Giant’s Causeway and the Causeway Coastal Route.
Beautiful Ireland
Dunluce Castle
The Giant’s Causeway was beautiful, the rope bridge tiny – from up where we looked at it – and the Causeway Coastal Route was amazing, breathtaking and fast. I had a blast riding that road like a dolphin rides the waves of the ocean.
George
Giant’s Causeway
The Chimneys
Der Causeway und ich
Giant’s Causeway
Giant’s Causeway
Rope Bridge
George and I stopped at a restaurant which made the famous ‘golden seagull’ its emblem and took off ‘flying’ down the M1 Motorway towards Dublin. Now, when I say flying, I don’t literally mean flying like but I was going almost 180km/h at one point though the overall speed limit is 120 if not lower. But what can I say; it’s frustrating, having a fast car that isn’t allowed to go fast.
Giving the car back at the airport was easy enough since there was no damage done to the car, the tank was full and we even threw out the garbage. We made our way into the city by bus and when I came home, I put my clothes in the washer, went to Tesco to get some cash as well as deodorant and had dinner and a pint of Guinness with Eamonn, my host dad. After that I took a shower, shaved and went to bed.
In short: whoever said that driving 250 miles is hard, is not well informed because after driving roughly 1331 kilometers this weekend, I think 250 mi are a piece of cake. 😉
Thursday was a very nice day. I’ve started playing around with one of the servers here that is not in the productive environment of SD and set up a couple of virtual machines. It’s nice to see, that I haven’t forgotten everything that I’ve learned in the Windows seminar in my first year. I was able to set up an active directory, DHCP and DNS and was fumbling around with users, groups and respective policies.
At around half past four in the afternoon I set out with Linda and Genevieve towards Phoenix Park and the Dublin Staff Relay. The drive there was crazy because the traffic was unbelievably bad and there was one particular funny/exciting moment, when Linda drove up the bus lane all the way to the next intersection and when we were waiting there to cross the road, sirens came out of nowhere. We both thought that we were busted but when an ambulance came around the corner, we laughed delightedly at the daring maneuver and that we got away with it. However, we were still pretty short on time so Genevieve jumped out of the car and ran for our tent with the runner’s numbers and we tried to find a parking spot somewhere. After a couple back-and-forths, Linda found a spot on an adjacent field that was accessible from the road. We carried drinks and food towards the tents, looked for ours for about 10 minutes and set everything up, when we finally arrived. We were surprised to see, that we were actually sharing a tent with quite a lot of other companies like Mitsubishi and Europcar.
I didn’t really see a lot of the running but that was fine as I got to talk to the people instead. We had a couple of beers in the tent and most of us went to the pub afterwards. Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones to have that idea and the pub was crowded, so we had to stand around with drinks in hands. It was a very nice evening and I talked to pretty much everybody that came to the run. I have to remember to buy the next round when we go out again because I was freeloading 3 drinks and I don’t want that to pop into people’s minds when they think about me. 😉
I was given a ride home by another colleague and went to bed at around 12 o’clock. Needless to say, this morning was far from being a good morning. I stayed in bed as long as I could and actually even longer than I should have, had breakfast, filled my water bottle and left after already having missed the first bus. Fortunately, I was still quite early and the office stayed quiet till well after 9am.
I’m also going to go home early today because I have to wash my clothes for next week as I will leave Dublin tomorrow morning for Connemara. I’m very excited about that as you must know! J
Seeing as I will get a visit next month, I will follow end this post with a short description of where to find System Dynamics.
The River Liffey cuts Dublin into 2 parts. Close to the harbor mouth, the „recently“ built Samuel Beckett Bridge spans from Sir John Rogerson’s Quay over to the North Wall Quay. The first thing you notice about the bridge is the shape it has. The Beckett Bridge looks like a harp and is easily distinguishable from any other bridge in Dublin.
When you get closer to it, no matter on which side of the Liffey, you will see that O2 has an office building right next to the bridge. On the bottom right of that building, there is a passage that leads you to Whitacker Court and if you turn left the door into the building will be on your left hand side. It’s of no use to describe the rest because you won’t get past that door unless the woman down there buzzes you in. I found out that she is not really the door opener for the building but belongs to another company in the building and she also seems to leave that front desk fairly often.
