Dear readers,
Now it is time to write a little résumé. After two months it´s nice to know that we are getting back to germany on saturday.
The first weeks at work were pretty easy and exciting. Ross and Keith made it very easy for me to become an active part within Wilson Computers. I don´t know why, but it doesn’t felt unfamiliar on the first days. Well everything felt totally new to me, but these guys made it very easy for me.
Within the next few days I was a bit confused about my tasks. In the job description was written that I would be able to work with servers and doing some networking, but this was disproved quickly. As I arrived with Ross at one of our ‚contract customer‘, we had to update a ’server‘. I was wondering where the server room would be, but there wasn´t one.
I should have known better that this was just a normal PC with file sharing on it and one of the costumer was working with it at the same time.
At this time i recognaized that a normal PC will be the ’server‘.
The daily way to work was the longest trip compared to my german colleagues. Bangor is a bit more than 20 miles from Belfast away. Luckly it was a ‚one way trip‘ which means i just had to take the train to bangor. This was the biggest problem during the stay over here. I had to spend like 120 pounds for my monthly ticket. As I noticed, that my job descriptions was wrong, the agency subsidize my train ticket.
After arriving at Bangor i was picked up by Ross nearly every day. I couldn’t belive that they were so nice to me. I said it isn´t really necessary to pick me up every day, but Ross and Keith said that they would do it everytime with a colleague who is coming into a foreign country and is going to work with them.
I really appreciate this attitude. On top is was really funny to talk with both while driving through the landscape of Northern Ireland (NI). I was surprized that each of them were that kind of oppenminded. We were able to talk about everything, like relgion, the country, politics and of course our german apprenticeship system.
While visiting some costumer I was always introduced like: ‚That’s Tristan, he is doing an internship and he is from germany.‘
After the second or third introduction I was expecting the same questions everytime.That was nice, because I already had the same answers everytime and it felt like daily routine.
I was able to pick a very import issues from these conversations. Keith and most of the costumer were complaining like: ‚Why do we have no kind of apprenticeship in NI anymore?!‘
Well Keith explained me that the most of the companys don´t want to spend money for young trainees and the companys wont see the postive aspect of growing up there own staff, just because it is too expensive. ‚They will just take students, who were not setteled into their business and don´t have any clue how a stick of RAM looks like‘ thats what Keith said :D. I agree with that, but I know that this isn’t that way everytime.
Anyway the work was not that challenging as I suspected. We did a lot of hardware repairs, like faulty harddrives, damaged displays, faulty keyboards (laptop-keyboard) and even more software issues like Windows 10 upgrades, Office 365, Maleware, Spyware, SAGE(accounting software) and even more. Most of these stuff we did at our Workshop.
On the other side we had to do a lot of work on site. There were problems with vpn, dhcp-leases, printer issues or just setting up a new email account.
Generally speaking the job was ok. I gained more hardware skills and more english skills as well. I am a bit disappointed about my chief, because he wasn´t that much in the office and I didn´t spend that much time with him. Probably it is caused by the party he works with and that there were the elections in May.
Whatever my colleagues gave me a little present last friday. They gave me the jersey of the Northern Ireland Football Association. I was really surprised and happy about it, because i just noticed once to buy it myself anyway. This made my day cause I feld like a 3 year old child pleased by sweets or whatever.
During the last week i wanted to say thank you to each of them. So I bought some little coffe cups with a special and personalized signature. As you know we were working with I.T. stuff and on the cups there was written like: ‚I don’t need Google, my wife knows everything‘ (Keith is married), ‚I don’t need Google, I’m a f*cking genius‘ (Ross is a nice guy) or ‚It’s wine o’clock!‘ (Scott doesn´t drink any beer). After handing them off, they were all laughing a bit ;-D. I hope they will use them as often as they can.
Now it´s time to get back to Belfast. I love this place. There is really much to do, but everything is kind of expensive. It was really funny to get out with the german colleagues and to have some beers in a pub everytime. I gonna miss the irish ale. It was too delicious.
I hope i will stay in contact with some guys over here and I will get back to Belfast sometime definitly.
At the end I am also happy about the accomodation situation and with our agency as well. The social events by ‚Intern Europe‘ were pretty good as well.
The sands are running out. Just 3 days left. I try to enjoy these last days anyway.
Bye Bye! =)