My Final Fantasy

[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

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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…

What’s For Dinner?

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.

Please enjoy these photographs:

Cheers,
Angelo

Barbecue and PUBlic viewing

Hey everyone,

the weekend was very nice and passed quickly. We used the fine weather and the good atmosphere for a nice barbecue. At Saturday midday I met Joel and his girlfriend in the city centre and showed them a little bit of Dublin. After that we went home and had a delicious barbecue with a lot of family members and friends of the Brady’s. In the late evening we all went to the „Cat and Cage“. We watched the last match of the World Cup and had a few beer.

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Today I, Jonas, Paul, his sister and her husband went to Carlingford. We had a nice walk and lunch in the alleys and enjoyed the nice weather.

Yours George

Live every day to its fullest

Hey everyone,

only ten days left but I live every day to its fullest. Yesterday the Brady’s(Hostfamily) and I went to „Nando’s“. It is a South African dining restaurant and they are specializes in chicken dishes. I eat ten chicken wings, a bowl of chips and drink 3 glasses of water, because the chicken wings were very spicy. Also so chips were spicy but delicious. After that we all eat ice cream and had a nice conversation at home.

Today the weather was awesome. We had twenty-three degree and I enjoyed it much.
Ryan asked me if I like to play soccer in the afternoon with him and some older men.
I agreed and right now I take my clothes and get ready for the match.
That feels like a typical summer…

Yours George

Doing Nothing Never Works

“…things just never turn out the way you expect them to.”
…ect them to…
…ect them to…
…ect them to…

I tried staying in bed but I guess all this walking makes you kind of addicted and I couldn’t find any rest. So I thought about what to do and around noon headed into town. I took the bus into the city center because even though I was restless, I also didn’t want to overdo it and my legs still hurt from the activities of the past few days.

When I arrived in O’Connell Street, I went to the Savoy movie theater to check out their times and found out that A Million Days To Die In The West was playing in just over an hour. I remembered George saying he wanted to go to a store called ForbiddenPlanet so I thought I might just see where that was. It was easy enough to find and it was open as well so I figured I can have a quick peek inside and see if they sell any cool belt buckles. ForbiddenPlanet is a chain of comic book/pop-culture merchandize stores and I believe Eric actually already had a post featuring the Belfast store.

I didn’t find any buckles or anything else of interest, unfortunately. After about half an hour I left the store to head back to the movie theater and went into one of the many Carroll’s stores of Dublin. I needed a few more postcards and also something for myself to take as a souvenir since I didn’t get to buy a buckle. In the end I ended up buying a set of six coasters with different Irish idioms on them. They’ll be nice on the small sofa table I have back at home.

A Million Ways To Die In The West was hilarious. It has this strange kind of humor that comes with everything I’ve seen from Seth MacFarlane so far. People argue that the best scenes have already been seen in the teasers and this might be true but as far as real humor goes, this movie has a lot more of it than a few flashy scenes with someone’s head being squashed by a huge block of ice – a scene that really was very enjoyable. After the movie I thought I might just follow the way the 16 bus takes in case I want to get on it at any point but my legs felt fine so I ended up just walking all the way home.

Dinner was waiting for me when I made it home and soon after eating I went to bed, trying to find sleep in my room that was hot from the sun shining into it all day.

I walked to work on Monday morning and pretty much on every morning since. I also walked home every day except for Monday because as I was walking towards Connolly Station where I used to get on the bus, I felt my shins starting to hurt and I decided to give my muscles a little bit of time to relax. Besides, my team walked 732491 steps last week of which I contributed 160000 alone. Unfortunately, my team mates don’t seem to take this thing as seriously as I am and I’m lucky if we can take and keep 3rd place. The other team had just under 3000 steps more and I’m hoping that either my team finally starts walking or the other team gets tired and does less steps this week. We’re definitely not going to win this because the guys in team one are either cheating or are more people or whatever but I doubt that all of them do 18k steps a day every day of the freaking week. I mean I do more than that and I know how much this sucks and I just can’t believe that they are all doing that. So I suspect cheating or just carelessness when it comes to calibrating the pedometer and it just counts more steps than are actually done. Nonetheless, we have a shot to even get to 2nd place but that would require my team to really “go the extra mile”.

The weather was also really nice these last couple of days with over 22°C and double rainbow sunshine all the way, oh my gaaawwd! No, it was really, really beautiful and not at all what you would expect from Ireland.

Work wise, I played around with my virtual machines again and I’m having some kind of problem with my DHCP because the machine that is supposed to get an IP doesn’t get anything. I still don’t know what the problem is and to be honest, it also doesn’t really interest me anymore. I might still finish it, just to have done it once but it’s not exactly my idea of a fun project.

I’m invited to Eamonn’s house for dinner tomorrow and he and his wife seem really worried about what to prepare for dinner. We had a very funny conversation over it today. He asked me if I was okay with rice and I said yes, asking what it came with. He said it’s an Indian kind of dish with chicken, curry paste and stuff. He looked nervous when I told him that I’m looking forward to it and for some odd reason I told him that I don’t really like to have Indian food at a restaurant just because of what it reminds me of. I had to spend 5 minutes promising him that I would eat it and that I don’t want steak instead.

We’ll see what they decide on feeding me, I’m just looking forward to the evening.

Btw: Here is my featured song of the week ;-).

Phoenix From The… Poo?

Even though I drank 2 full glasses of water after coming home from the BBQ on Friday, I woke up with a killer headache on Saturday. I believe that the Heineken is probably to blame for that because Carlsberg never gave me this tingly let-me-park-ma-chainsaw-in-your-head sensation. There’s nothing that kills a killer headache better than a nice long walk so I got up, had breakfast and went to Tesco to pick up a bottle of water and a few bananas and then made my way down towards Phoenix Park and the Dublin Zoo.

George had already made plans with his host family so I went on my own. I walked down towards the intersection where I used to meet George in our first week here and kept walking towards city center.

I walked along the River Liffey, my jacket tucked away in my backpack because it was quite warm despite the thick carpet of clouds covering the sun. The Liffey is an interesting River to watch because depending on the time and therefore the tide, you can see it flow towards the country, towards the sea or not at all.

The Dublin Zoo is pretty small and there aren’t many animals in it which I was kind of happy about. I hope the 12.80€ that I paid for my student ticket, are being used to make the animals that are “living” in the Zoo feel better. I won’t include any pictures of lions or tigers because for one, I only have one picture showing a lion and for another, I think those animals would be better off not being imprisoned here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not starting a crusade but seeing the Zoo as what it was and knowing how we treat animals, captive or free, I’m actually ashamed I went there. What good is it to keep an animal behind bars for “preservation” purposes? It actually only frees everybody else up to destroy the natural habitats of those creatures instead of preserving them!

Anyway, I walked through the whole Zoo in about 2 hours and I was really taking my time because my feet already hurt and because I had nothing else to do with my day. I watched screaming children of ignorant parents bang against the windows of the enclosures or yell at the gorillas to “wake up” because the animals weren’t doing “anything fun”. Seeing not only the big animals of the African Plains but also the apes like gorillas or orangutans sit in their artificial environments, minding their own business, I couldn’t help but think of the The Planet of the Apes movies and especially the last one that showed just how much our distant relatives actually understand of their situation. I’m probably getting a bit off topic here… sorry about that.

“The forest drips and glows with green,
The tree-frog croaks his far-off song.
His voice is stillness, moss and rain
drunk from the forest ages long.

We cannot understand that call
unless we move into his dream,
where all is one and one is all
and frog and python are the same.

We with our quick dividing eyes
Measure, distinguish and are gone,
The forest burns, the tree-frog dies,
yet one is all and all are one.”
Rainforest, Judith Wright

I walked home through Phoenix Park again but this time I walked on the grass because I thought I might as well put my body down there for a nap or something. That idea went as fast as it came when I discovered that there was so much deer poo in the park that it was actually astonishing that the grass still looked green and not blackish-brown. In light of this new discovery, I just kept on walking home.

I had burger and French fries for dinner and talked to Anne and the new housemates, 2 girls from Austria. They don’t know that I’m German and I’m still waiting for a good opportunity to surprise them with a German sentence.

I went to bed, thinking that on Sunday I would definitely not do anything. Well, things just never turn out the way you expect them to.

Treasure Hunt and BBQ

Friday was System Dynamic’s treasure hunt and BBQ. The BBQ was actually not on board of the Jeanie Johnston as I had wrongly assumed but on the Cill Airne. That is also where our hunt for boo… bounty ended. We were very fast and had no real problems with solving all the riddles but unfortunately, some idiot ran his car into the entrance of Trinity College recently and so we had to split up because the clue we needed for the final puzzle was on one and the clue for the next stage on the other side of it.

That was where we lost a lot of time because the other part of my group decided that it would be best to just go further around Trinity College while Eamonn and I waited at the entrance we all came in from. After waiting for a minute, we decided to go around the corner where the others should have gotten the next clue already. It wasn’t even that far but our team mates were just nowhere to be found. We collected the clue and went to the next stage as fast as we could when one of the others called Eamonn to ask where they had to go. We told them to meet us at the next stage and also where that was. When we got there, we collected the next clues and soon after, the others arrived.

It was very humid that day and I was drenched and so was everyone else. All that was left to do was to take a grelfie (group-selfie) with the Oscar Wilde Statue in the background and then head back to the boat. We arrived about 2 Minutes after the leading team and solved the riddle but unfortunately for us, it’s not enough when a member of your team just yells it out to the committee, it had to be reenacted. How do you reenact a scene from Titanic when your clue reads “I’m the king of the world”? Exactly, you go to the front of the freaking boat and take a picture of the whole thing. We were farthest from the door at that point and after the answer was out, the other team stormed of. The game had been lost and we felt cheated because it actually didn’t say anywhere that we had to take a photo. We consider the game won even though we weren’t awarded anything.

We were all given a captain’s hat, a black paper wristband and 3 golden doubloons. The hat was for fun, the wristband gave us access to the barbecue and the doubloons were to buy any kind of drink at the bar. I used my first doubloon to buy a pint of Heineken and stayed with that until I got more doubloons later that evening. It was but then that I saw the bottle of Captain Morgan behind the barkeep and ordered a Capt’n Coke right away. I had two of those before Eamonn and I made our way to Connolly Station to get the bus.

At the end of the night I had over 30k steps on my pedometer and didn’t think that I would be able to do anything on the Saturday. Stay tuned to learn what I did on said Saturday despite the growing pain in my legs.

Cheers,
Angelo

Sunbathing and Soccer

Hello everyone,

the weekend passed very quick. I and my hostfamily watched the „Soccer World Cup 2014“ games and we speculated which team will be the winner. We decided the best team should be the winner..except England. Unfortunately there is no Irish team in the groups.
I also realized that a lot of Irish people go to the betting office and challenge their luck.

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Actually we planned to go to the Irish east coast, but we deferred out trip to next Sunday because Ryan and Dillon worked the whole weekend. For that resaon we stayed at home and enjoyed the wonderful weather with drinks, snacks, music and more soccer games.

Along these lines..Cheers!

Weekend plans

Hey everyone,

the last days were very nice. At Work there arrived three new students from Portugal. We all work together and I am trying to help them anytime. Their english is not so good and it is very difficult to explain them something. I hope I can help them to enhance their english and technique skills.

The last two days we had nice weather in Dublin and Paul and I made some plans for the weekend. On Sunday we will drive to the east coast next to Northern Ireland and take a walk at the seaside and some lunch. I also want to meet some friends at the weekend. Hopefully the weather will be as good as today.

Yours George

Tuesday is cinema day

I got up in the morning and the sun shines right in my face and I though:

well it seems today will be a nice day.

After I reached my workplace the corrugated iron on the roof made some unusual noise. In the next moment I looked out of the window and saw a lot of hailstones.

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I thought it is June and not December..typical Irish Summer

Tuesday is cinema day in Dublin.
In the afternoon Angelo and I went to the cinema next to „The Spire“ and saw
„X-Men: Day of Future Past“. I didn’t saw the movies before and still it was a very nice film.
After that we took a walk instead of the bus and enjoyed the evening sun.