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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