Quick and Dirty

Greetings everyone! I hope you enjoyed your February off, I know I sure did. I have to make a blog post now because in a day or so I'll be departing for two weeks of spring holiday. I'll keep my destinations a mystery for now, I'd hate to spoil the surprise...

So first thing's first, I'd like to show you show some Irish Media:

-The Rubberbandits are a popular Irish comedy duo that released the wildly popular video "Horse Outside" in 2010. They wear grocery bags on their faces to conceal their identities, though since they've become popular everybody knows who they are. At this point it's just kind of "their thing."

If you liked that, you should also check out their guide to Temple Bar as well as their newest video "I wanna fight your father," which is a bit more R&B. A heads up on that last video though, there's a Gaelic version as well that's totally different. Watch both. 

Next is a group I was fortunate enough to see live at a club downtown called Veroa. They are a three piece band with unique vocals and an active sound that's great live. Below is the song "My Achilles" (no video). 

^^If that doesn't work, just look for their myspace.

Lastly we have Kid Karate, who I saw at a very hipster venue on the North side of the Liffey with my friend Luke. I couldn't figure out how to embed the song, so here's a plain ol' link to it. It's called "Heart" and is something like electro punk? 

http://breakingtunes.com/profile/1287/track/5778

And that's about it for the media portion of this post. 

Around school, I've been keeping active with a couple societies that I joined. Filmsoc has regular showings of a wide variety of films, ranging from classics like Star Wars all the way to Nazi zombie flicks. In case you were dying to know, the Germans make terrible horror films. The upside to that is, the worse a horror film it is, the better a comedy it becomes. 

The other society I'm involved with is WorldAid Soc. They're a fun bunch. It seems that after meetings, all the societies here (at UCD) go to pubs to hang out for a bit, then to a club to cap off the night. That's something I'd like to try and bring back to the States. I experienced my first ever postering with WAS, which was a unique experience for me. Basically there is a main drag on the UCD campus where most of the buildings are located. Every Thursday at 7am, societies are allowed to reposter the area to keep passers-by up to date on the societies events and promotions. So the strategy is to get as many people from your soc there as you can, as early as you can (because other socs will be vying for spots), and hold your positions until a guy comes out around 7:30 and says "go." At which point everybody posts their signs and goes out for breakfast, only to come back the following week... 

Classes at UCD are very different from those at Temple. First, I only have one lecture per week for each class. At least 50% of your total grade will be the final, which is comprised of 2 essay questions. Another 20% or so will be a group project or presentation, and whatever is left over will be participation and/or an individual project/essay. Each class is 2 hours of lecture with a 5 minute break in the middle. There's very little back and forth between the teacher and students. The day's powerpoint is posted online for later review (as it should be in the States). I believe that 45% is considered a passing grade. 

Beyond class, going out, and checking out Dublin's music scene, I've also attended a couple Couchsurfer meetings in the city. They're excellent opportunities to learn how to mingle because you pretty much walk into a room full of people you don't know, and you won't have fun unless you know somebody. Your initial consideration to leave as soon as you get there is quelled by 3.50 pints, and a chain reaction of socializing and having a good time is set into motion. In two meetings, I've met people from Brazil, Poland, Estonia, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, and Germany. Pretty awesome, if I say so myself. 

Here's a picture of the ingredients to an uncommon meal to the Irish, and a taste of home for me. 

Yes that is strawberry jam, but I've also been known to use grape or raspberry as they are available. Note that the peanut butter is "American Style." They didn't have crunchy :(

Moving along, last weekend I took a trip to the Netherlands. I arrived in Eindhoven via the very inexpensive RyanAir and couchsurfed there for the night before heading to Amsterdam the next day. 

Me about to leave home, per the request of my father

"The Blob" of Einhoven, a shopping center

If you're Dutch, you own a bike

The train station in Amsterdam. That was a NICE train.

Iamsterdam

The view from my couchsurf host's apartment...

...and my couch. Free apples! 

Unfortunately, the weather was terrible the entire time I was there. To illustrate the point, it was snowing when I arrived in Eindhoven. It remained cold and damp for the whole weekend. In spite of this, I still got to walk around, check out the canals, send some postcards, and go to the Rijkmuseum where Rembrandt Metsu were on display. 

Frites and mayo. I didn't get a Royale with cheese, but I can do that some other time. 

Cheese souffle. Pretty tasty, and it came out of a vending machine!

And there were coffeeshops. 

And then I came home!

Today, I printed my boarding passes, wrote a lengthy email to a penpal, did some business-skyping, did my laundry, returned a library book (The Long Tail), and composed this very post. I think there were poptarts involved with at least one of these activities. Oh, and I also spent about 4 solid days in intervals of two hand coding octoberskateboards.com 's new website, which should be live by Saturday March 5th. You heard it here first, folks! 

I think that's it for now, I'd hate to give you too much in one sitting. Frankly, I'm not sure you could handle it. 

Until next time, dear readers...

-Dave

"Master of Suspense"

It's not that I've been too lazy to post, I've just been creating a suspenseful state of anticipation for you, dear reader, to better enjoy my blog from. The time is now 1:09 in the A.M., so let's see how long this takes to kick out.

I've done a lot since my last post - some hiking, eating, drinking, socializing, traveling, sight-seeing, drinking, and other wonderful things. I'll try and fill you in as best I can. I'll write in reverse chronological order for your convenience.

So a few days after my birthday, I joined some friends for a hike. We took a bus over to Blackrock where we got on the DART to Bray (Bré in Irish). There was a sizable hill between there and Greystones (our destination)...

 ...and we decided to go over rather than around it...

 On the way up, the hill was covered in some kind of bramble bushes that had inch-long nettles. Some of it was tough going, but it helped if you ran through the rough spots. We also found an overgrown side passage beside the main road, which we of course explored.

(Photo credit to Mr. Eric Santagada)

Upon reaching the top of the hill, we were rewarded with a nice view of the surrounding area.

A few days later, the international and erasmus students at UCD were taken on a cultural field trip (for free!) We were taken to a church north of the Liffey (that I'm sure is very famous) and shown the crypts that contained several bodies, including that of an 800 year old crusader. It was considered good luck to touch his finger ("shake his hand"), so I'm now a lucky person. 

Following that adventure, we were taken to the Guinness Storehouse - Mecca of Ireland. 

The storehouse is seven stories tall, and the top floor is the "Gravity Bar." 

Of course, to get to the Gravity Bar (for your free pint of Guinness), you first went on a self-guided tour around the facility. There were two good things about the tour: it was interesting and educational, and I found an extra ticket (which later translated to an extra pint). If you ever get to somewhere that isn't the U.S., try a Guinness Foreign Extra, it's delicious. 

The next scheduled event for the group was to go and have dinner at the Arlington Hotel and enjoy some traditional Irish song and dance. Unfortunately my friends and I were separated from the group and spent about 45 minutes wandering Dublin City looking for the Arlington Hotel. Which we found. Funny story though, there are actually two Arlington hotels in Dublin, pretty much on opposite sides of the city along the Liffey. Naturally, we found the wrong one, though they were able to point us in the right direction in time for us to catch dinner and the show! (I had salmon)

Moving right along, that was a Friday. On Saturday, I attended my first official Couchsurfers event at a pub by Trinity. I met a Kiwi, two Brazilians, two Spanish guys, a Polish woman, and an Estonian woman. Overall it was a lot of fun, and pints were only €3.50! 

Monday brought with it a new adventure - a trip to Howth! It's a small town north east of Dublin with a nice hiking path around it. In addition to being a fishing town, it also had some very cool architecture.

At this point, my diet is mostly Bran Flakes (for breakfast), pasta, a sandwich, a pizza, and/or some Ramen for the other two meals. There's also variable quantities of beer as dictated by the situation. Granted, every now and then I like to go out and eat real people food rather than just college kid food, but that stuff costs money :/ Pfft. 

On the 28th (a Friday), my history class was taken to the National Museum for some good, wholesome fun. I'm not sure that photography was allowed, but I didn't reach that conclusion until after the photos had been taken... There were also 4 bog bodies (bodies that had been disposed of discreetly in bogs hundreds of years ago) on display. They were leathery and in various states of disrepair. One still had a beard, the other you could see the fingerprints on, it was all very interesting. 

Getting closer to the present, I did some laundry tonight, and pretty much spent the whole day looking for the best deals on Ryanair. I've included a spreadsheet that had some of my figurings on it.

Suffice it to say, it took a while. The red things are date comments. 

I finally settled on five days in Brussels and a week in Barcelona before returning home for St. Patty's Day. The grand total of my flights is $91 US. From here, I'm going to reach out to some Couchsurfers for places to stay and stuff to do. I'm also going to The Netherlands and London before I return to the States. Maybe one more trip? We'll see. 

Oh, I've also been doing some reminiscing in my spare time. Here's what it looks like:

Hell yeah. 

The time is now 2:52am, now do you see why I post so infrequently? It takes me forever! But have no worries, as faithfully as you read, I shall post. Plus I'll have more to post once I start doing more traveling, both abroad and around Ireland.

Until next time, dear readers, I bid you adieu!

-D

A Recap of My Birthday

Ah, what an excellent day...

So after completing my daily routine, I took the 46a downtown to meet Kristin from couchsurfing. At her recommendation,  we went to the Queen of Tarts on Dame Street right across from City Hall. We each had the Hearty Breakfast (pictured below) followed by a raspberry pastry (which was eaten to quickly to be pictured). Everything on my plate, despite my skepticism, was fantastic. Even the toast was above average! The meal included bacon (ham), half a tomato, a potato cake type thing, some sweet tomato relish (similar to ketchup), and a fried egg (aka sunny side up) which I now love. The lesson learned is that you should always try the local flavors or else you might never know what you've been missing out on.

After breakfast, Kristin and I wandered around until we came across Thomas Street, which was full of shops, markets, butchers, and produce stands. Following Thomas Street, we headed north and ran into Jameson's Distillery. Tours were something like 11EU for students, so we opted to just take our pictures outside instead.

At this point we parted ways and I continued East to the Samuel Beckett Bridge, the Dublin Famine Memorial, the Wheel of Dublin (which high winds made very exciting), and finally the bay.

After returning home, some friends came over and made an excellent pasta and vegetable dinner which was enjoyed with the finest of wines (for 10EU). We ran out of cups...

After that awesome dinner, I joined some Temple friends (one of whom I shared a birthday with) for a pub crawl to top off my day. The group met outside of Trinity College and hit 4-5 pubs over the course of the evening. The group included maybe 6 Americans, 10 Norwegians, 2 Germans, 2 Australians, a Kiwi, and some other people. Some of the pubs were multi-leveled and featured live music on one floor and different genres on other floors. Great craic!  (side note: Australians take a sick pleasure in being able to drink you under the table)(and they don't drink Fosters, I asked.)

^^Our guide/shepherd

Germans!

This morning I woke up at 10, finally readjusted to time overseas. I did 105 pushups, had porridge and a kiwi, and started to plan the rest of my day which I think will include an adventure to a specific pizza shop in Dublin that my sister might be familiar with...

That's all for now, folks!

-Dave