Lawyers, Guns , Money?

Predictably, the day after I write about the sluggishness of the PPS number saga, the numbers arrive. We've given our paymasters the numbers and will hopefully be paid sometime in the next week or so. If all goes well there will be money in my Bank of Ireland account by the end of the week, which would be ideal because the current plan is to visit Dublin on Saturday and a working Irish ATM card that doesn't charge me any fee would be a godsend.

I've been watching a good deal of Wimbledon, which isn't difficult because its on when I get home from work. On Monday night we got to see Andy Murray come back from down 2 sets and a break to beat Gasquet in five sets, and earlier today we saw Nadal completely destroy him in less than two hours (I think). Evidently John McEnroe's commentary is also played in Ireland. His tennis commentary empire extends beyond the United States and to the BBC. I had no idea. I also didn't realize the extent of the pro-Murray hysteria among Wimbledon fans. Quite entertaining, in any case.

Speaking of Wimbledon, I discovered yesterday that the Brookfield complex (where I am staying) has two grass tennis courts. This is, of course, AWESOME. It's been raining ever since I discovered the courts themselves, but once it stops I'm heading down to play on the surface that inspired serving and volleying.
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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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