Red Tape + Unrelated Picture

UCC pays its employees monthly two business days prior to the end of the month. This makes last Thursday, June 26th, the first payday for our internship program. In theory, this was supposed to be the day on which my coworkers and I were paid for our first 2 weeks of work. However, things do not always go according to plan (or, in this case, theory). All the Irish students got their pay on Thursday as scheduled. For the international students such as myself, however, things were not so simple.

When my international coworkers and I first started work, we were sent down to the social security office in Cork to apply for PPS numbers, the Irish equivalent of a SSN. Everyone who works in Ireland is required to have a PPS number, so we cannot be paid until we get a PPS number. The Irish government being a normally functioning slothlike bureaucracy, our PPS numbers have not come yet. They are allegedly coming "soon", but I'm not exactly sure if a government employee's idea of soon and my idea of soon are the same thing. Regardless, we don't get paid until the PPS numbers arrive because we technically aren't doing any paid research at UCC until we have PPS numbers.

And here is a completely unrelated picture of the Irish countryside a short way northwest of Cork city around Blarney.

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Euro 08 Final: Spain v Germany

Spain won. It was a very exciting game, and I thought Spain thoroughly deserved to win, but I'm not here to analyze soccer games. I thoroughly enjoyed the pregame closing ceremonies, which I also got to enjoy Irish commentary for, a treat I would not have enjoyed in the United States.

Let's be honest with ourselves; everyone enjoys listening to a pair of old Irish guys describing 16 balloon sculptures emblazoned with flag patterns of various countries dancing with each other. Everyone.
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Gaelic Football

Today Dublin played Westmeath in one of the Leinster semifinals for Gaelic Football. I watched it on TV, and it was a fascinating game to watch. It was the first complete gaelic football match I’ve watched and it was really quite entertaining. Gaelic football is played 15 v 15, just like hurling and rugby, and has a scoring system identical to hurling. You score points by putting the ball either into the goal (which is very similar to a soccer goal) for 3 points or over the bar and between the uprights (like a field goal in football) for a point. Here were some of my thoughts at the time, in bullet form:

Evidently when Dublin plays matches at Croke Park (their home stadium) the matches always start late because their supporters can’t get there on time. They have the shortest distance to travel there and are the only set of fans that are chronically late. Go figure.

Everyone seems to expect Dublin to crush Westmeath by 4 or 5.

Westmeath have a goofy prematch ritual in which everyone gets into a big crowd and throws themselves around trying to bounce off one another for about 30 seconds. Reminds me of the Hawaiian football team dance, except its less organized and decidedly less intimidating.

1st minute Dublin wins the throw in, which is very similar to a basketball jump ball except 2 players from each team are allowed to participate.

2^nd minute That was fast. Number 4 for Westmeath fouls a Dublin player, and with the resulting penalty a Dublin player scores a point. This looks like it might be high scoring.

4^th minute Two more shots from Dublin, two misses. We are no longer on pace for 35 points.

5^th minute Point! Maybe I was wrong, this could turn into a pointfest after all. This time its Dennis Glennon for Westmeath, and we’re tied.

6^th minute First blood (literally). Dublin player leaves the pitch to get treatment for rather extensive bleeding in the general face area. He is replaced by another guy, a “blood sub”. It seems like if somebody is bleeding you’re able to replace them temporarily while they are treated, after which you can put them back in.

7^th minute GOAL! Westmeath guy plays a long ball through the defense and a teammate gets there a fraction before the Dublin keeper to punch it over him, and it bounces into the goal. This removes any remaining doubts I may have had about how exciting this sport is. It seems to be on the high-scoring side.

9^th minute Another point. Westmeath are in danger of running away with this, they’re up 5 points to 1.

10^th minute Dublin respond with another point off a free kick. We’re 1/7 done with this thing, and we’ve already got 7 points between the teams.

13^th minute Dublin foul results in point for Westmeath. This just doesn’t stop. In case I’ve missed something, the score is Westmeath 1-3 to Dublin 0-3 (the first number is the goals and the second number is the points, so to get totals you’d multiply the first number by 3 and add it to the second number). To most people, that’s 6-3 Westmeath is leading.

14^th minute Basically the same play and foul leads to a free kick for Westmeath, which leads to a point. 7 to 3. The bleeding Dublin guy is back and no longer bleeding.

15^th minute That looked painful. A Dublin player was running at full speed and abruptly pulled up clutching his hamstring. I don’t think I’ve seen that while watching a sporting event in quite a long time. I’m happy I don’t see it more often, it hurts to watch. No surprise, he is subbed off nearly immediately.

17^th minute Dublin point!

18^th minute Times two. These points seem to come in flurries.

20^th minute And a bad Westmeath pass is intercepted and leads to yet another Dublin point. They’re only down by 1 now, 7 to 6 Westmeath.

22^nd minute That was odd. Westmeath got a free kick and immediately kicked it directly out of bounds. I’m not sure if that was incredibly stupid or somehow strategically significant. I’ll go with the former unless this is some subtle mind ploy that I do not understand (which is I suppose possible, considering that I understand very, very little about Gaelic Football)

24^th minute FOUL! And Dublin’s number 8 gets the first second yellow card of the match. I have no idea when the first happened.

26^th minute Another yellow card for Dublin now, and I’m very curious about that first yellow card that the announcers keep referring to but do not show a replay of.

27^th minute A pretty sequence of play from Westmeath following the yellow card leads to a point. The 3 or 4 passes leading up to it seemed to be the Gaelic Football equivalent of approximately what Spain have looked like in Euro 08

32^nd minute A yellow card for someone from Westmeath (the first one not to go to a Dublin player) quickly followed by two missed shots by Dublin. They’re supposed to be walking all over Westmeath today. Apparently Gaelic football commentators have similar powers of prediction to most American sports commentators.

33^rd minute Dublin point! That ties it up at 8 all

34^th minute Dublin number 9 is replaced again by number 18 as a blood sub. This guy bleeds a lot, evidently.

1 minute of stoppage time

35 + 1 minute Halftime. Whew, that was an exciting first half. These GAA people like their sports high scoring.

Aaaaand they’re back. Dublin made 3 subs, apparently. Or maybe it was Westmeath, he just said a manager’s name that I did not recognize, although it sounded very traditionally Irish.

36^th minute Dublin win the throw in and then score almost immediately. Their first lead, I think.

37^th minute A shot at goal! Those don’t seem to happen too often, no goalkeeper to block points. The Westmeath keeper saved this shot though. I’m not exactly sure what the goalkeeper’s special privileges are (if he has any) because everybody is allowed to use their hands.

39^th minute Wow, that was a bad shot. Westmeath player tries for a point, comes closer to the corner flag than the upright. Dublin crowd jeers.

44^th minute Long span of possession followed by missed shots ends with a Westmeath free kick that they convert for a point, tying the game at 9. The action has seemed to slow down, after this amount of time in the first half we had seen 7 or 8 points.

45^th minute And of course just as I say that, Westmeath score another point to pull ahead, 10 to 9. This is back to looking like it did in the first half, we’ll see if they keep up with they points in flurries theme.

48^th minute Evidently not. A Dublin player misses a painfully easy free kick that I think I could’ve made (20 yards out, pretty much centered between the uprights) off one of the posts. Dublin number 9 comes back from bleeding. I wonder how long this will last, he seems to be rather blood prone.

51^st minute Yellow card for Dublin number 19. I have absolutely no idea what for, that seemed really arbitrary to me.

52^nd minute Two quick points put Dublin in the lead again, although most of the action has degenerated into the middle third of the field (which, incidentally, is massive. Even with 15 people per team these guys must be doing an incredible amount of running.) Scoring and chances have cooled off in the second half.

56^th minute That was very strange. A Westmeath player fouled a Dublin player, resulting in a free kick. Dublin took the kick too quickly for the ref’s liking, however, and so as punishment he gave the ball back to Westmeath. That strikes me as bizarre and could almost encourage fouling in some situations. Maybe that’s just me.

A few subs happened in the past few minutes, is seems like each team is allowed a lot of them.

60^th minute TRICKERY! CHEATING SCUM! Or at least this is what they tell me. One of the Dublin players just threw the ball, which evidently is a sin similar to handball in soccer. All previous (legal) handpasses have been rather like an underhand serve in volleyball with the ball held in one hand and struck with the palm of the other. This motion looks (to me, at least) nearly identical to the underhand throwing motion this Dublin player was just penalized for. Go figure.

64^th minute After a few more assorted misses on either end, Dublin appear to be preparing a sub. How may of these are allowed?

66^th minute Man down! Man down! Westmeath number 5 is lying on the field in pain.

He’s ok now.

67^th minute Point! We have more scoreboard changing to do! That took long enough, and puts Dublin up by 2 with only 3-4 minutes to play. Westmeath are not in such great shape, but they aren’t down by the 5 or 6 that all the pundits were predicting before the match.

69^th minute Westmeath are reduced to playing long balls and praying for a goal. It does not look good for the underdog at the moment.

70^th minute And that is probably the final nail in the coffin. An impressive buildup of passes by Dublin leads to a point to put them ahead by 3. One minute of stoppage time.

70 + 1 minute A free kick for Westmeath is turned into a point, but it is not enough. The match is over, Dublin are advancing to the Leinster final.

Dublin 0-13 (13)

Westmeath 1-8 (11)

That was very interesting. And there is a Euro 08 final to watch later. Read more

Blarney

I visited Blarney Castle today. Blarney is a small town only a few miles outside of Cork. Its a completely unremarkable town except for the large medieval castle that is located pretty close to the center of the town. The castle itself is pretty imposing, and the top of the castle has an outstanding view of the surrounding countryside, which is gorgeous. It is, I suppose, what a stereotypical "Irish countryside" is like, with gently rolling hills covered with mostly open fields punctuated by trees and the occasional house. The castle was surrounded by a surprisingly large estate which included a lake, a number of small streams (possibly man-made moats), and large fields. The picture to the left is of the main castle from just below it.

We took a bus from the City Centre Center to Blarney, where the castle is about a 2 minute walk down the road from the bus stop. The bus ride was only about 20 minutes, so it was actually very simple and easy journey to make. The castle itself and the grounds were quite interesting, and in relatively good shape for how old they were, I thought.

As you can see from the above picture, it has been recently discovered the defenses of Blarney Castle were far more advanced than any historians had previously imagined.

This picture is of the lake on the castle grounds, although the hills are not owned by whoever owns the castle

This picture is of the Blarney House taken from the exact same place that the picture of the lake is taken from. The castle is behind the house, not visible in either picture.

This picture was taken from the top of the castle, near the Blarney Stone, which is supposed to give one the gift of eloquence if kissed.

And that, for the most part, was my visit to Blarney. Gorgeous place, and being a few stories up made the countryside that much more beautiful. Fortunately it was a clear day.
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Americans + Unrelated Picture

Today I ran into Americans for the first time since getting to Cork and starting my internship. We had a social sort of event with the participants in other similar internship programs at UCC and two of the students in one of the more biology oriented were American. Interestingly enough both are from the west coast (LA and Seattle). They lived with a bunch of other international students from their program, just as I did. I later ran into them by complete coincidence on my way home from the pub after watching the Spain-Russia semifinal.

The pub where I watched the semifinal seemed to me to be the complete stereotypical small, friendly Irish pub. When we arrived about 45 minutes before kickoff there were about 3 or 4 other patrons, so we more than doubled the number of people there. The bartender was friendly, joking and conversing with the few people at the bar. It was decorated in a rather quaint way so that it almost seemed like I was in someone's living room. It wasn't a big sports bar type place so the crowd watching the game was not huge, but it was, all in all, an excellent place to catch the match. Sadly, Russia lost. Even more depressing nauseating horrifying were the jerseys that Spain chose to wear. The Irish commentators generously described the color as "mustard" and proceeded to disparage its hideousness. I wholeheartedly agreed.

On my way home from the match I ran into the Americans, who were walking with their housemates to the Lough (pronounced lock, like Loch Ness), a large lake not too far from the UCC campus. I went with them. It was interesting to speak to Americans again. It also occurred to me that from their conversation they seemed to have very little social interaction with their Irish coworkers. I have spent most of my time with my newly made Irish friends, and for some reason this group of international students seemed to remain more a unit, in their own social sphere. Their approach to life and work in a foreign country ends up being a bit different than mine, I guess, although that may be because in their case they are living with other Americans.

In any case though, it was interesting to run into another American, and funny when they ended up being from places relatively close to where I live.

And the picture is of a sidewalk on the way to the grocery store (Tesco!) from my house.
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Disorienting

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Pubs, Trivia, and Rainy Mornings

Last night I went to a pub with a few friends of mine to do a trivia night sort of thing. It was a ton of fun, and I felt like I got a very Irish sort of pub experience out of it because I was the only non-Irish member of the group for the majority of the evening, which was a first for me. Later Bartek, my Polish housemate and coworker, joined us. All in all, it was quite an entertaining evening and me being American actually helped the trivia team. A few questions about American TV, tennis, and the Beach Boys came our way, which I happily helped out with. And we finished tied for 3rd, so we won some money out of it as well.

The most amusing part of the evening was when we ran into a group of English tourists. It was a group of about 6 girls who were part of some sort of organized Cork festival. As they loudly proclaimed their love for all things Irish, it occurred to me that by doing so they very obviously marked themselves as non-Irish, especially because they were describing Irish things in very non-Irish ways. They marked the first group of people who I've come across outside of work who have appeared more obviously non-Irish than I am, or at least the first group that I noticed. I suppose I'm not a particularly good judge of such things, but it seemed a rather interesting thing that I observed to myself at the time.

This morning was gray and rainy, standard Irish weather. I actually quite enjoyed it. A short walk to work in a rather light rain is not an altogether negative way to start a day so long as you're wearing a jacket that does a good job of keeping you dry.

On a completely unrelated note, this is an awesome website.
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Sports, Shops, and Rain

People in Ireland like sports. A lot. It seems like there is always some form of sports on television and nearly half the people you see on the street are wearing some form of replica jersey, usually either something related to the County Cork GAA or an English Premier League team. Gaelic sports, specifically hurling and football, are huge. They vary in relative popularity depending on the part of Ireland you're in. In East Cork, where Cork City is, hurling is more popular, although football is quite popular as well. In West Cork football enjoys more popularity than hurling, although hurling is still quite popular there. You see a lot of red Cork shirts walking around town.

There always seems to be some sort of sporting event on TV. If no Euro 08 match is on at the time there is always something on, either cricket or rugby or non-European soccer or hurling or Gaelic football. I even saw a bit of of USA v Canada in rugby yesterday. All of this on standard television, with about 10 channels. I'm pretty sure you'd need uber-cable to watch that rugby match in the United States, and here its on their equivalent of NBC. They like their sports here, obviously.

Earlier today I saw the end of a hurling match. Its fascinating to watch. Everyone here claims that its the "fastest game in the world". I'm not quite sure what that means, but the game is very high tempo, although I'm pretty sure its impossible to quantify speed of play and compare across different sports.

Unfortunately, the Irish love of all things sports-related does not seem to extend to tennis. Yesterday I went into town and looked in at least 3 sporting goods stores for tennis balls and returned empty-handed. This could have something to do with the weather. It rains quite often here, making regular tennis training a rather difficult goal.

Speaking of rain, on the way back from town after looking for said tennis balls I got caught in a rather heavy downpour. It rained nearly 2 inches yesterday, and as luck would have it most of that came all at once in the afternoon during my 20 minute walk from the City Centre Center to my house near UCC.
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Soccer match + Pictures

Cork City FC 5, Cobh Ramblers 0. The match was at Cork City's home stadium, Turner's Cross. It was about a half hour walk from my townhouse. It was quite an experience. Cobh (pronounced cove) is about 20 miles from the City of Cork, making this a derby of sorts. I went with the Irish guy who lives in the townhouse with me. I enjoyed it immensely. Its much much different from watching soccer in America, but mostly in ways that are difficult to explain. Oh, and we got front row seats, which was sorta cool.

That picture is of the 4th goal, which was actually scored by a guy who isn't in the picture. Cork were wearing green, Cobh that sort of maroon.

As we were walking to the match, the closer we got to the stadium the larger and larger the crowds who were joining us became. It was a fascinating and awesome sort of enlarging stream of fans who simply walked to the stadium or parked far away and walked, converging on a single place by walking down ordinary streets. The stadium didn't have a parking lot, so this was the only way for people to get there. There was a pub right next to the gates, and the stadium is surrounded on all 4 sides by streets so that it turns out that all the gates are literally right on the sidewalk. When we got inside we went into the stands and sat in the front row of the Curragh Road End (apparently also known as "The Shed"), nearly directly behind the goal. Off to our left there was a large group of committed supporters waving flags, holding scarves, and standing for most of the match. There was another such group over at the far left corner (from my perspective) in the Donie Forde Stand as well as a bunch of away fans in the far right corner in the Derrynane Road Stand.
vocal Cork fans with flags in the Donie Forde Stand.

Cobh free kick behind which you can see the Donie Forde again.

The fans sang or chanted in some sort of semi-organized way pretty much throughout the game. One of my favorites was about a 5 minute stretch when they yelled in unison "hey!" when any Cork player got the ball and "boo" whenever any Cobh player touched the ball, which became rather amusing after the first 10 or 11 yells or boos. The stadium itself wasn't particularly nice but it did have a sort of character and charm to it that made it a pretty awesome place to watch a match.

Only 15 euro for a ticket and then 3 euro more for a program. Not too bad, overall. As we were walking back from the match it occurred to me that since I'm here in August I might be able to fly over to England and catch an English Premier League match on opening day. That'd be cool.
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Soccer in Pubs + Unrelated Pictures

Last night I went out to a pub to watch the Euro match between Germany and Portugal. It was a very exciting match, so watching in the pub was fun even though not many people were there watching with us. It's a strange and wonderful experience to be watching a soccer match in a public place with random, everyday people who arn't very into sports but still understand what's going on. Not like that in America. Oh, and the picture is of the main quad on the UCC campus. Not a bad looking place.

Today we had our health and safety "training". It was, as expected, horribly boring. By the end of the hour when the instructor asked if there were any questions I was tempted to ask if it were ok to drink the chemicals we were working with. Sadly this guy probably would've thought I was serious. Either he really enjoyed repeating obvious things or he thought that pretty much all of us were completely oblivious about lab safety. But that is rather what is expected when someone tells you about a mandatory safety training.

And since people remember the first and last things about writing, here's a picture of one of the main shopping streets in the City Centre Center taken from the end of it where most of the activity peters out:

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Rain, Tea, and Surfing

It rained pretty much all day today, varying from a steady light drizzle to a rather steady downpour from when I woke up until 6 or 6.30. As the French postdoc in my lab put it, "welcome to Ireland". The view from the window of my lab is rather incredible. It looks out over the attractive part of the UCC campus and on to the town itself, including the City Centre Center and Cathedral. the portion of the window directly next to the desk that my mentor and I share has a number of haikus written on it, many of them relating to rain. Go figure.

As luck would have it, the rain was hardest as I was walking home. The rain actually made me decide to put off my planned trip to the bank to finalize my bank account, which is turning into much more of an ordeal than I expected it to be. To open an account at the Bank of Ireland you need to have a letter confirming an Irish address and two forms of photo ID. Evidently you must live in Ireland to hold a bank account here. I personally find this absolutely bizarre, I don't know why a bank would care about where you live. The other thing I found strange about the process was that when I gave them my California Driver's License as my first form of ID they said it was no good because it had my American address and not my Irish one on it. The lady who helped me then asked to see my passport. She either didn't understand my explanation that my passport would have the same address because it is my permanent address or didn't get that because I'm living here for 10 weeks I'm not going to have any ID with my address here on it. Either way, I thought it was strange.

Today was the first day I was asked to come into work at a relatively normal time. They decided to ease me into it by asking me to get there at 12 on Monday and 11 on Tuesday. Today I got in at 9.30 and did a bit of preparation with my mentor for the day's experiments. Then at right around 10 or 10.15 everyone in the lab went off for tea. My mentor and I were among the first people in the lab, so most people were at work for 15-20 minutes or so before tea, which lasted until about 10.45 or 11. Then most people worked until 12ish, when they went off for lunch for roughly an hour. Not me, though. Mixing and stirring chemicals until 12.30 and then a lecture at 1, lunch in between. I'm not sure when most people leave though, my mentor and I left early because of a screwy reaction that we ended up leaving overnight. Not having anything else to do we left around 4 or 4.15. In any case though, the pace of work and mentality is far more relaxed than in America.

During some down time in the lab today I was talking to one of the grad student and it turns out that she surfs. I was rather shocked, I suppose I knew that there were surfers in Ireland but I had always assumed that they were transplanted Americans making the best of a gorgeous, if not stereotypically surf-friendly, coastline. Evidently I was wrong though, my coworker is from somewhere in County Kerry and her accent demonstrates that she's lived in Ireland for a long time. It does seem like it would be rather cold though.
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MINSTRELS! and pub

Today I went to the big supermarket after work to pick up some food. I expected it to be a rather uneventful experience but little did I know that a rather surprising find would turn the experience awesome. As I was going through the isles grabbing bread, salami, and other various simple food items I saw a packet of Minstrels, which I rushed over to and grabbed immediately. For those of you who don't know, Minstrels are an Irish candy made by Galaxy. They're rather similar to M&Ms except they are slightly larger, don't have varying coating colors, and are made with better chocolate. They are quite possibly the best mass-produced candy I have ever eaten. My day got exponentially better after I found them. Coincidentally, today has been the worst weather so far since I arrived. Wet and gray much as I expected it to be like all the time.

Yesterday night we had an introductory dinner for the internship program I'm doing here. We sat through a brief introductory lecture earlier in the day and then they sent the six international students off to get some sort of government tax number. After we finished that we had a few hours break and then met at a restaurant in the City Centre Center for a sort of social dinner so that we could meet everyone involved with the program. The meal was excellent (and free!), although the portions were so enormous that I almost felt like I was in Texas. Afterwards the group headed over to a nearby pub, which made it much easier to intermingle and meet everyone than it was sitting at a long skinny dinner table.

Today was my first real day on the job. I met my French student supervisor for the first time and was walked through an outline of what my project for the next 10 weeks will be. My supervisor, Guillaume, will actually only work here for another two weeks which he will spend primarily training me how to do the synthesis he's working on up to the point where he is now so that I can continue it after he is gone. Since Guillaume is the only one currently working on this particular project, once he leaves it will become my project and I'll report directly to my PI, not a grad student, which I thought was sorta cool. I'll even get my own desk. It turns out that I have an access card that Guillaume does not have for reasons I do not understand. In any case, my actual training starts tomorrow, I only did some reading today, so there isn't too much to explain, only Minstrels that need eating.
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The Silent Head Nod

The Irish do not use the same forms of silent acknowledgment as Americans do. In America the generally accepted way to say a silent hello while walking past someone is to make eye contact and then nod slightly. I assumed this was a universal form of greeting and that I could use it without any alteration in Ireland. I was, of course, completely wrong.

In Ireland they have a gesture that serves a similar purpose. Unfortunately, it is just different enough to have completely confused me for the first few days I was here. Their form of the greeting begins in exactly the same way, with eye contact (generally while walking past one another). However, instead of nodding as we do in America, they follow it with a short movement of their head to the side, like an abbreviated shake of their head rather analogous to the American abbreviated nod. Until today I was always confused when I nodded to people and they responded with their own shake of the head because I assumed that they somehow disapproved of me or my greeting. It was rather distressing because I thought that if I were interpreting their gesture correctly that the people of Cork were either generally not friendly or they just didn't like me for some reason. I am rather relieved to learn that this is not the case.

On a completely unrelated note, I got a (cheap) Irish cell phone today at the Tesco near where I am staying, which is evidently the largest supermarket in all of Munster (the southernmost Irish province). It was missing the back, so the battery and SIM card are exposed, although after paying 25 euro including 10 euro of credit towards talk time I can't really complain.

On another walk through Cork this afternoon I passed the large Protestant Cathedral (which was quite impressive and rather on the large side considering that the vast majority of the Irish population in this area is Catholic), a number of interesting shops in the City Centre Center, and a small, pub-type place that apparently is among the best microbreweries in Ireland. I haven't really taken any pictures to speak of so far, I've been trying to get my bearings walking around town and get a feel for where everything is before I go around snapping away with a camera. That should start soon though, I think I've figured out the main parts of the city decently enough to get myself around in a reasonable manner. I'll start posting then when I start taking them.
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Irish Euro Commentators and Cork City Centre Center

Irish commentators are infinitely better than American ones in terms of soccer. I feel strange listening to an account in English that coincides with a soccer game and is delivered by someone who has some idea about what is going on. Its awesome though. Not only do they have intelligent commentary, they also have insightful and extensive (taken to a ridiculous extreme, even) post-game and halftime commentary. The thing that surprised me most though was that multiple stations show each match live. It's bizarre. I guess if you don't like one commentator you get a choice, but it still seems strange to me. Sometimes you even get lucky and find hurling while channel surfing at halftime. Always a bonus.

I also went into the Cork City Centre Center today. Twice, actually. A very interesting town. At first I thought that they did not have any street signs to label streets at all but I have since learned that they cleverly hide them by posting them in arbitrary places, often on private houses or walls on the corner of streets. Needless to say, this makes navigation and direction-giving difficult and sometimes rather aggravating. On one of my trips I saw an Irish guy walking around swinging a hurling stick (hurley? I don't know what they call them). I've seen a bunch of people walking around in Cork GAA and hurling gear. Evidently all of their sports teams are the rebels, which I think is a reference to the county's history of resistance to British rule. The downtown City Centre Center district seems rather small but actually turns out to be larger than one would imagine from just looking at its several long, skinny parallel blocks on a map. It contains an almost American-seeming mall, which completely shocked me. I thought those sort of things did not exist in Ireland and it seemed completely out of place next to rows of shopfronts.

Sadly, I saw a Dominoes Pizza on the walk to the City Centre Center. Evidently Dominoes has invaded Europe. I personally think this is horrible news, Dominoes is very low on my list of American food chains that I want to succeed/advertise to the rest of the world. I didn't see any other unexpected American food chains except for a rather interesting-looking European version of Johnny Rockets called Eddie Rockets (and McDonalds, but that wasn't much of a surprise).

Food aside though, I did run into very surprising American items in a sporting goods store that I poked around in for a few minutes while one of my housemates was buying running shoes. Right next to all the Cork GAA and assorted professional soccer team apparel I found a bin of sports balls which held soccer balls, rugby balls, bigger rugby balls, and (to my shock) an American football. Next to it was a rack of 3 or 4 basketballs. They seemed very out of place and I'm sure those same 3 basketballs and 1 football have been in stock for the past 2 months because I can't imagine that there are many basketball courts or football fields in Cork. It seemed like just a run of the mill sporting goods store too, not a specialty store or an extra-thorough enormous one. It was very strange.

Oddly enough, I was almost killed crossing the street today and it was not my fault and not because I looked the wrong way. The guy in the car decided not to slow down coming around a blind corner when turning left on a red light. Fortunately he stopped in time, but rather frightening nonetheless, especially because when I first heard him honk I assumed that I had done something stupid, which didn't turn out to be the case.
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Jetlag

Traveling from San Diego to Cork (ORK) takes a very, very long time. I left my house at around 11.30am PDT (7.30pm Cork time) on Thursday and landed in Cork at about 1.3opm Cork time on Friday at ORK airport. In other words, about 18 hours of travel time not including picking up baggage and getting a cab to where I'm staying, but both of those took very little time. As I expected, my attempts at sleep on the long plane ride from LAX to Heathrow were futile. Consequently, I'm very tired. It was quite an interesting journey.

My flight out of LAX was delayed by what British Airways called 35 minutes, so we ended up taking off about an hour late. The baggage dropoff system in the international terminal of LAX is, quite possibly, the most poorly-conceived and convoluted system that I have ever seen. After agonizing through that for almost an hour I went through security and walked to my gate, which was in a half-constructed terminal complete with construction noises. Eventually I got on the plane and spent a little over 9 hours sitting in a cramped seat trying to stay comfortable. On the plus side they gave us dinner and breakfast and their in-flight entertainment system had a very large selection of movies and music you could listen to, all in a very cool touch screen setup.

Heathrow confused me. I do not understand why any person would design an airport the way Heathrow is designed. I went through at least 3 sets of immigration/customs/security and had to walk at least a few miles because my connecting gate was so far away from my arriving gate. As I followed the signs leading to my gate, I seriously began to fear that the hallway would just end and nothing would be there. That was how sketchy-looking and remote this gate was. Apparently AerLingus is not the most important of carriers flying through London.

The view from the plane window as we landed in Cork was incredible. The coastline giving way to rolling, green hills that seemed so stereotypically Irish was an awesome first vision of the island. On the ground, its very strange to have to look to the right when crossing the street, and I was completely disoriented in the cab on the way over from the airport, although that could have been partially due to being exhausted from lack of sleep. Either way, I'm probably going to be nearly run over in the next week or two because I look the wrong way when crossing the street.
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Airports and Islands

And so it begins (almost). Tomorrow afternoon sometime I will get in a car, drive to LAX, give my bag to an airport employee, wait for a few hours, and get on a plane and then sleep sit and try desperately try to close my eyes for the next few hours. Fortunately, I have a window seat so I have something solid to lean against. After that plane lands in Heathrow I'll go through the entire process again except with customs and without attempts at sleep. I'm scheduled to land at Cork Airport (ORK) at around 1pm local time, which is around 5am San Diego time. Presumably I will stumble around until I find a cab to take me to where I'm staying in Cork.

While I'm not looking forward to the whole physical fatigue and jetlag part of this whole travel bit, it has just occurred to me that this will make Great Britain and Ireland the only islands that I have ever flown to in addition to being the first foreign countries I've ever visited. Not that I'll be able to tell, in any case.

Its supposed to be in the 50s and rainy this weekend in Cork, a bit of a wake-up call to Irish weather coming straight from mid 70s and sunny in San Diego. Everything has a downside, I guess.
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